While it’s horrible that Tokyopop is closing, at least folks remembering both the good times and bad have resulted in some thought-provoking reading. Tokyopop Changed the Industry For the Worse… Matt Thorn blames Stu Levy for depressing the page rate for translators to the point where professionals couldn’t do the job any more: The point being, there were standards, and even a rookie was guaranteed a decent rate…. Mind you, there was no shortage of enthusiastic otaku willing to work […]

Viz first began collecting multiple volumes of previously published manga series in 2008, with the release of “VIZBIG Editions” for Rurouni Kenshin, Dragon Ball, and later, Vagabond. All were boys’ manga, focusing on fighters, all were lengthy (ranging from 28 to 42 books in their series), and all were at least five years old (per their original American release dates). The next year brought shojo to the program, with Fushigi Yugi, Hot Gimmick, and Inuyasha. Again, two of these were […]

Following up on the closing of Tokyopop as an American manga publisher … Instead of updating their website, as previously announced, they have declared their intentions to shutter it on April 26. As stated in our previous newsletter, on Tuesday April 26th, TOKYOPOP.com will go offline. We know that you probably have kept copies of everything you’ve uploaded (photos, videos, drawings etc.), but we just wanted to be extra-sure and give you this notice so that you could pull anything […]

News broke yesterday that was simultaneously shocking and unsurprising. Tokyopop is closing as of May 31, although they plan to continue their film division (split off in a 2008 reorganization), an area where company head Stu Levy’s attention has been more focused lately and the reported holder of the intellectual property rights. Sales of those rights will continue out of Germany, where a licensing office will remain open, as well as the European publishing program. (This news might also explain […]

The Manga Guide series of true-science books — The Manga Guide to Statistics, The Manga Guide to Physics, The Manga Guide to Databases, and more — will continue this year with three new volumes. (The previous set of six came out in 2008-2009.) The Manga Guide to Relativity is due out this month, promising to help you master difficult concepts like inertial frames of reference, unified spacetime, and the equivalence principle. You’ll see how relativity affects modern astronomy and discover […]