Kodansha Comic-Con '12 interview
About.com's Manga section recently posted an interview with Kondansha from SDCC, and there's some info on Sailor Moon & their other properties in there. Link here!
At the start of the panel, Middaugh thanked fans for making Sailor Moon the best selling manga series in North America for 2012. It's no surprise that Sailor Moon is so incredibly popular with fans old and new. For years, it was one of the most-requested titles after the TokyoPop editions went out of print, and became hard to find.
But with strong passion for this title sometimes comes strong opinions on how it should be presented. A few fans spoke up at the panel, raising a few complaints about the Kodansha Comics' editions of Sailor Moon, as well as asking questions about the recently announced anime reboot. Here's a sampling of the questions and comments:
Q: "There are some translation errors that some fans have pointed out. Will you fix these errors when you reprint Sailor Moon?"
Middaugh: "There was one error that we fixed, but as for the rest of them, I don't see them as 'translation errors' so much as translation choices. There are translation choices that some people think we should have made differently, but I stand behind those choices."
Q: "Why were translation notes omitted in one of the volumes of Sailor Moon?"
Middaugh: "When we publish any books, they are in signatures, 16-page signatures. When we do a page plan, we make some decisions about what to include in back of book based on if there's room. We literally only had 1 page of translation notes for the volume you're talking about. To add that one page, we'd have to add 16 pages, and figure out what to do with the extra 14 pages. in a case like that, we drop the translation notes."
Q: What will you do to remedy the fact that several volumes of Sailor Moon Volume 5 were printed with smudges?
Middaugh: "We inspected all the books in our warehouse. We found this (problem) in 2% of the books. When anyone has emailed us at publicity@kodansha.com, we have replaced the copy. But we first recommend that you contact your retailer (either online or offline bookseller), and tell them that there was a problem with the copy you received. They'll usually replace your copy.
The number of people who have contacted me via publicity@kodansha.com is exactly six people -- that represents .001 of the print run. Is it a problem? I take it very seriously, but it wasn't a widespread problem."
Q: "Are you planning on re-releasing the Sailor Moon art books?"
Middaugh: "I can't say a word about that."
Q: "Will you release the 20th anniversary editions of the Sailor Moon manga in the U.S.?"
Middaugh: "We don't know. We just started releasing these new editions of Sailor Moon last year. We only got the news about these new editions this past Friday ourselves. We're still taking it all in and figuring it out."
"The manga industry is what it is because of Sailor Moon. When i first started working with Del Rey Manga, Sailor Moon was one of the first titles I asked about. So, my hope is that people will see that as the volumes progress, we are listening and taking your comments into account. We're reading them and we know about them."
He also added that, at this time, it's not clear how this new series will adapt the original Sailor Moon story, but that it's likely that more details will emerge as the Summer 2013 release date approaches. "We're the manga publisher, not the anime distributor, so we don't know that much about the anime," Middaugh added.
At the start of the panel, Middaugh thanked fans for making Sailor Moon the best selling manga series in North America for 2012. It's no surprise that Sailor Moon is so incredibly popular with fans old and new. For years, it was one of the most-requested titles after the TokyoPop editions went out of print, and became hard to find.
But with strong passion for this title sometimes comes strong opinions on how it should be presented. A few fans spoke up at the panel, raising a few complaints about the Kodansha Comics' editions of Sailor Moon, as well as asking questions about the recently announced anime reboot. Here's a sampling of the questions and comments:
Q: "There are some translation errors that some fans have pointed out. Will you fix these errors when you reprint Sailor Moon?"
Middaugh: "There was one error that we fixed, but as for the rest of them, I don't see them as 'translation errors' so much as translation choices. There are translation choices that some people think we should have made differently, but I stand behind those choices."
Q: "Why were translation notes omitted in one of the volumes of Sailor Moon?"
Middaugh: "When we publish any books, they are in signatures, 16-page signatures. When we do a page plan, we make some decisions about what to include in back of book based on if there's room. We literally only had 1 page of translation notes for the volume you're talking about. To add that one page, we'd have to add 16 pages, and figure out what to do with the extra 14 pages. in a case like that, we drop the translation notes."
Q: What will you do to remedy the fact that several volumes of Sailor Moon Volume 5 were printed with smudges?
Middaugh: "We inspected all the books in our warehouse. We found this (problem) in 2% of the books. When anyone has emailed us at publicity@kodansha.com, we have replaced the copy. But we first recommend that you contact your retailer (either online or offline bookseller), and tell them that there was a problem with the copy you received. They'll usually replace your copy.
The number of people who have contacted me via publicity@kodansha.com is exactly six people -- that represents .001 of the print run. Is it a problem? I take it very seriously, but it wasn't a widespread problem."
Q: "Are you planning on re-releasing the Sailor Moon art books?"
Middaugh: "I can't say a word about that."
Q: "Will you release the 20th anniversary editions of the Sailor Moon manga in the U.S.?"
Middaugh: "We don't know. We just started releasing these new editions of Sailor Moon last year. We only got the news about these new editions this past Friday ourselves. We're still taking it all in and figuring it out."
"The manga industry is what it is because of Sailor Moon. When i first started working with Del Rey Manga, Sailor Moon was one of the first titles I asked about. So, my hope is that people will see that as the volumes progress, we are listening and taking your comments into account. We're reading them and we know about them."
He also added that, at this time, it's not clear how this new series will adapt the original Sailor Moon story, but that it's likely that more details will emerge as the Summer 2013 release date approaches. "We're the manga publisher, not the anime distributor, so we don't know that much about the anime," Middaugh added.