News: Tokyopop Shutting Down US Publishing
Tokyopop US Publishing to Close At End of May
On Friday, April 15th, Tokyopop announced that they will be closing their publishing division in North America, largely blaming Borders' bankruptcy and internet piracy. The shutdown wasn't exactly a surprise. At the beginning of March Tokyopop laid off the full-time marketing and editorial staff and switched to freelancers; that's not the move of a healthy company. But considering the giant influence Tokyopop had over the manga industry over the past ten years, I still have trouble believing they'll soon be gone.
Over the years, Tokyopop did a lot to change the manga market. Many of their biggest hits were shoujo titles - Fruits Basket, Card Captor Sakura, Paradise Kiss - bringing more female readers to comic books. Tokyopop also a lot to attract new readers to the manga market by heavily promoting their titles in regular bookshops like Barnes & Noble. Interestingly, this actually drove manga out of the highly-specialized comic book stores, as companies like Viz and Dark Horse dropped the 'monthly issue' release schedule standard for American comic books for the $9.99 graphic novel. I believe - but am not certain - that they may have been one of the first (if not the first) to bring Korean manhwa to the US. Tokyopop teamed up with young artists discovered through their 'Rising Stars of Manga' contests to create “Original English Language” (OEL) manga.
For a time, they had a girl's magazine called Smile that printed typical Seventeen-styled articles alongside chapters of manga. There wasn't really enough manga content to interest the comic book reader, and the teen articles didn't appeal to a mainstream teen audience, but it was an interesting idea. Also interesting was their attempt to run one of their OEL titles - Peach Fuzz - as a syndicated Sunday newspaper strip.
But it always seemed like Tokyopop, in their enthusiasm to try new things, couldn't follow through on old ideas. The OEL program was cut rather abruptly, with many of the stories ending on cliffhangers or completed but unpublished. The comics' creators were locked in contracts with Tokyopop, so they couldn't publish the stories elsewhere. The company tried to make their website into a social site for manga fans, encouraging visitors to post fanart and original compositions - but a lot of the material shared was pirated, and the lack of moderation on the site made it a mess. I always found it a huge pain to navigate when I would pop by to see when the next volume of my favorite series would be released. Combined with massive over-publishing - for a time, it seemed like Tokyopop was coming up with a new title every week, in addition to continuing series - and then dropping series suddenly when licenses ran out, Tokyopop could be extremely frustrating for their fans.
A lot of the company's ADD-fueled trajectory can be traced directly to the CEO. Mr. Levy has always seemed like a great idea man, but lacking the patience or interest to stick with the initiatives once they've been running a while. I can remember seeing criticisms of his management style as early as 2001, 2002. There's an excellent summary of the criticism over at CBR, so I recommend reading that. It's far better informed than anything I can write up.
Tokyopop debuted when I was in 7th or 8th grade, if I remember correctly, under the name of “Mixxzine”. They started with four titles - Sailor Moon, Magic Knight Rayearth, Ice Blade, and Parasyte - and wow, talk about a strong catalog to debut with! Sailor Moon was huge at the time, because the anime had been on TV for several years and had developed a decent-sized fanbase. Magic Knight Rayearth was either the first or second CLAMP series to come to the United States (I can't remember if Viz was publishing X/1999 at that time) and helped introduce one of the biggest selling mangaka teams to an American audience. I remember contacting them, back in the early days, asking about internships. Being all of fourteen, my original letter was probably very much along the lines of “OMG I LOVE YOUR COMPANY I WANNA WORK FOR YOU LET ME BE YOUR SLAVE!!!” I actually got a response from Stu Levy, the CEO, and as a young teen, that was horribly exciting - even as he let me know (quite gently) that I was years away from consideration for an internship. I've enjoyed many of their titles over the years - Parasyte, Pet Shop of Horrors, Tramps Like Us and Paradise Kiss ended up on my 10 Comic Book Series You Need to Read lists - but I have to admit, part of me is really curious to see how the void their departure will create in the manga market will be filled, especially as Kodansha, Japan's largest manga publisher, enters the arena.