Ten REALLY GOOD Ways to Buy and Not Steal Manga

Posted on March 5, 2010 by Daniella Orihuela-Gruber

There’s been a lot of debate going on lately about plagiarism, piracy and scanlations in the manga world. No doubt you’ve heard of the recent trouble Nick Simmons has gotten himself into. With everyone up in arms and the conversations starting to turn to the feelings of entitlement amongst fans who feel it is right to steal, I came up with a few ideas on how to not steal manga and ruin things for the rest of us who actually do buy manga.

1. Go to the library:
Some people have some misguided ideas about how libraries work and think that it’s akin to reading scanlations. WRONG. At some point the library either had to buy the book or it was donated by someone else who had bought the book. Also, if a book is worn out from frequent use, the library will (more likely than not) buy a new copy to replace the old one. Most, if not all, libraries are free. All you have to do is sign up and you can borrow manga for free! FREE!!!!!!!

2. Make Friends, Borrow Their Manga:

Again, unless your friends are kleptos, they bought the manga at some point, so it’s not like scanlations either. Not only does this method allow you to read manga for free (FREE, YOU GUYS!!!), but it encourages you to read manga that you may not have read before because your friends suggested it or something. And it’s always good to have friends, especially ones with similar interests. If you’re still not convinced, look at your mom. Does she lend and borrow books from her friend? If so, you see anyone getting upset over it? Nope. Why’s that? Because this method of sharing allows word of mouth to spread and word of mouth is a GOOD thing for publishers.

3. Watch for deals and sales at retailers that stock manga:

I buy a LOT of manga. I have to save money somewhere, right? Right. So I sign up for every reward benefit thing at every store I go to that sells manga. Barnes & Noble gives members a little bit off each purchase and coupons; Borders often has coupons or buy 4, get 1 free deals; the local comic book shop in my hometown takes $1 off every $10 spent; RightStuf has amazing deals every single week and a well-stocked bargain bin. Those are only a few examples, but most every retailer uses such tactics because they know you’re more likely to come and buy one or two books from them if you have a coupon in your hand.

4. Contests and giveaways:

Let’s start with TOKYOPOP because I know them best. They keep giving away free copies of their new releases if you follow them closely on twitter. There’s plenty of other contests through their website. DMP also gives away free previews online manga to their followers on a regular basis. I’ve seen a number of manga blogs do the same thing. I’ve already gotten a few manga this way myself. VERY USEFUL. Even if I don’t enjoy the manga, I’ve read something and kept myself from being bored for awhile. Again: FREEEEEEEEEEEE!

5. Publisher-endorsed online manga:

Publishers are getting the hang of the whole online manga thing. Viz has it’s SigIkki website, as well as Rin-ne and Arata: the Legend. I know TOKYOPOP is already releasing a few chapters of manga here and there (most notably Re:Play) and is looking interestedly into getting digital rights to put more online. Netcomics has everything online for pretty low prices. So does DMP. Vertical has previews up (the glory of their print editions really demand that you purchase the hard copies, however.) Even Marvel is putting more comics online. Not all of these online manga are free, but most of the prices are pretty reasonable in my opinion.

6. Used Book Stores:

There are a number of used manga book stores in my area, but I’m lucky because there are large populations of Asians in Los Angeles and Orange County. Still, when I lived in my small college town, I was able to find used manga every once in awhile in the many used bookstores the town held. You might have to be pretty diligent, but I think it’s worth it for cheap manga.

7. Go to Cons:

Cons are great places to buy manga because retailers always have great deals going on so you’ll buy THEIR manga. In fact, I just went to Long Beach Comic Expo a few Saturdays ago and got some manga for $1. That’s an AMAZINGLY GOOD DEAL. Sure, it was a little hard to find something I was interested in, but my friends who got there before me kind of cleaned the place out of stuff I really wanted. I also got 40% some hardcover graphic novels! At Anime Los Angeles, I bought so much manga, the retailer gave me an even better discount than posted and gave me a box to carry it all in. Any manga fan who knows where their towel is will be walking out of a con with armfuls of deeply discounted manga.

8. Learn Japanese:

This is the most expensive and time-consuming way to buy and not steal manga, but it has other non-manga related benefits. If you are around the average age of manga and anime fans (high school- or college-age), then you could actually do with a foreign language in your repertoire. A lot of colleges and certain jobs really really like bi- or multi-lingual people, so it’ll increase the chances of you getting hired in the recession. Hey! You could even get a job in the manga publishing industry. Wouldn’t that be a dream?

9. Turn off your computer:

Being on the computer a lot is actually really bad for your health. It deteriorates your eyes and causes a lot of joint problems in your hands. I know so many people who are slowly going blind or have carpal tunnel from too much computer time. These are pretty young people too. So you might as well save a little bit on your health care bills by turning off the computer and reading a print edition of something.

10. Feed me:

By buying manga you are essentially allowing me to eat. Since you’re reading this blog, I assume that you might care whether or not I live or die. Since I’m currently working in the American manga publishing industry, buying manga (TOKYOPOP manga, but I won’t judge if you buy Viz) inevitably puts food on my table. Now just think of all the hundreds of other employees like me who publish  manga in order to buy their daily bread. If all of  you keep reading scanlations all the time instead of buying the manga, the companies we work for will STOP PUBLISHING MANGA. Sure you may think that’s a good thing, but just wait until you want to read your favorite series and the scanlation group has decided to disband, leaving you in the dark. And what if no other groups take it up? Huh? Well, guess what: publishers (YES, EVEN TOKYOPOP) try REALLY REALLY hard not to do that to you. Yeah.

I’m not going to lie: I don’t really have problems with anyone reading scanlations of unlicensed series. That’s one of the very few nice things about scanlations, you can read some manga that aren’t licensed yet or might never be licensed in the U.S. BUT IT’S NOT COOL TO STEAL FROM PEOPLE WHO ARE JUST TRYING TO MAKE A LIVING. (Trust me, very few people in the industry are raking in the dough.) If you insist on doing so, I’m going to haunt you when I die from starvation. Just so you know. No high horse here. I don’t think I’ve ever read a licensed scanlation, except for one time when I read one in order potentially promote the legit licensed version because I was short on time. I felt so dirty afterward, I definitely don’t want to do THAT again.

If anyone has any other suggestions on how to buy and not steal manga, let’s hear them!

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Tokyopop goes on tour

Posted on March 4, 2010 by Daniella Orihuela-Gruber

A few minutes ago, TOKYOPOP released a call for interns for a summer tour.

Here’s what I can tell you:

1. TOKYOPOP is going on tour! Hitting up cons,  local bookstores and libraries and just generally getting themselves out there. You should keep an eye out in case they come your way. There will probably be contests, giveaways and the like. Fun stuff, you know.

2. It’s going to be HUUUUUGE in a lot of ways. Too bad I can’t tell you how so yet. Have fun speculating.

3. I wish I could go on it. It looks like a lot of fun, but this internship is my last class. Considering how I’ve landed myself a job already, I’ve got plenty of reasons to not join this tour. Also, I suck on camera and that’s one of their requirements.

4. This means TOKYOPOP is looking to spread its reach. A grassroots tour is an interesting way of doing it. (I can’t help but compare it to election campaigns since there’s a tour involved.) I know of a few of the exciting things that’ll be part of the tour, but I imagine there’s much much more that I don’t know about it. I’m excited to see what exactly will happen.It sounds like a pretty cool way to connect with fans face-to-face. The only other way fans usually get to connect with publishers is at cons!

Let’s see what surprises this tour will bring us!

P.S. Great way to get some college credit AND travel the country.

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Read the March TOKYOPOP Insider Liveblog here

Posted on March 1, 2010 by Daniella Orihuela-Gruber

I hope everyone enjoyed the TOKYOPOP Insider that aired today. I know I’m super excited for Neko Ramen. I wrote some recipes for the site. Please try them and enjoy some tasty ramen! Also, we heard a lot of positive news about Gakuen Alice (the speed up starts in June), Genju no Seiza, Bizenghast, East Coast Rising and many many more series. (Apparently the Gothic and Lolita Bible might be coming back! Yay!) We also learned that some TOKYOPOP fans might have their eyes on Editor Cindy Suzuki and Marketing Manager Kasia Piekarz… Too bad they’re both spoken for!

March Tokyopop Insider Coverage

P.S. I’m sorry about the barrage of tweets about ramen at the beginning of the liveblog!

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Watch the March TOKYOPOP Insider with Commentary!

Posted on March 1, 2010 by Daniella Orihuela-Gruber

In about 20 minutes, the TOKYOPOP Insider will be starting. I know personally that there will be a lot of announcements and some fun contests for this Insider. It’ll be quite exciting.

You can join here.

And if you want to watch the liveblog along with the TOKYOPOP Insider, please click here.

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Gakuen Alice on the Fast Track

Posted on February 23, 2010 by Daniella Orihuela-Gruber

I was in the TOKYOPOP offices today doing my normal thing, a copy of Gakuen Alice vol. 7 on my desk to take home later, when Associate Publisher Marco Pavia strolled by and started chatting with me about it. (I’ve been reading the series over the course of the last week. It was also my #mangamonday pick this week on Twitter.)

Then Marco let me know that because Gakuen Alice is the most popular manga on the scanlation conglomeration site, Mangafox. As you can imagine that’s quite a problem for TOKYOPOP as the licensors of Gakuen Alice. So, according to Marco, the company is speeding up the release of the manga in order to catch up with the 21 volumes already available in Japan. (For reference, TOKYOPOP is releasing vol. 10 in two weeks time.)

I’m sure I don’t need to tell most of the readers of my blog that reading scanlations of licensed series is wrong and you really should be buying or borrowing from friends or your local library, but remember that scanlations steal money from the publishers who try to bring you quality manga.

Gakuen Alice is about a girl named Mikan who follows her best friend to the mysterious Alice Academy. After discovering that the Academy is a place to educate children with special powers called Alices, Mikan goes through a strange entrance test to discover her own Alice and gets a crash course in some of school’s weirder charms.  Mikan has a particularly rare Alice and now must face the difficult task of fitting in with her classmates. Along the way, she strives to learn more about the strange workings and going-ons at the Alice Academy.

It’s a very cute manga with elementary school children in most of the main roles, but it has some dark undertones in it, so I wouldn’t pass it off as too young for older readers. Please, please, PLEASE support this manga by buying it. If you need a better reason than that, then I implore you to consider the fact that I want a job at TOKYOPOP. By buying this manga, you are supporting the chance for me to get the job I want and love!

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Black Jack Vol. 3 – Medical Anomalies and Coincidences!

Posted on February 21, 2010 by Daniella Orihuela-Gruber

I picked up a copy of Black Jack vol. 3 on Friday and I just finished reading the chapter “The Boy Who Came From the Sky.”

The chapter is about a Russian (Uran) military family who defects from their country in a top secret jet in order to save their son, Andrei.  Andrei has a very serious heart condition known as Eisenmenger’s syndrome, which puts an extreme amount of pressure on the heart and causes a wide number of side effects, such as blue baby syndrome, which is almost exactly like it sounds. Eisenmenger’s syndrome is often caused by a ventricular septal defect (VSD) where there is nothing separating the left and right ventricles and blood flows in between them.

It’s a very very serious congenital heart defect and I’ve been living with it for more than 22 years.

Well, sort of… I actually had surgery when I was a year old to correct my VSD. I now have something there, keeping my ventricles nicely separated, but I did have Eisenmenger’s and blue baby syndrome before my surgery. As if that weren’t enough, my VSD is actually one of four heart problems I have, a part of another heart defect called Tetralogy of Fallot (which Andrei did not seem to have, lucky him.)

As I read this chapter and realized that it was written about my heart condition, I realized it was written a few years before or around the time that the surgical procedures needed to save my life were perfected. (I was born a few years later when these techniques were commonplace.) Unlike Andrei, I didn’t have to be surgically attached to my mother’s lungs just to survive while they waited for fresh lung transplants. They operated on my heart before the pressure became that critical.

I’ve been chugging along for 21 years with no more surgeries since and no more needed for at least another five to ten years! My surgeon certainly had some skills akin to the miraculous Black Jack’s!

Although the story didn’t have a totally happy ending, the important thing is that Andrei was saved and in the real world medical technology has advanced far enough that people with the same VSD can be easily treated. They’re even developing minimally invasive surgical techniques in order to reduce the risk of correcting these delicate problems. It definitely eases my mind knowing that these techniques should be standard practice by the time I need surgery again.

Forgive me for all the medical jargon and all that. I just had to share this little coincidence with you. I never imagined that the great Osamu Tezuka wrote about a condition that I have –it just makes me so excited and kind of happy! I can relate to this chapter so much…

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GoComi! Mini-reviews

Posted on February 15, 2010 by Daniella Orihuela-Gruber

In October 2008, I attended Yaoi-Con. I was pretty bored because I had figured out that I was not a hardcore yaoi fan, let alone a fan at all.

So I spent most of the con talking to the wonderful ladies who were staffing the GoComi! booth. They were sweet and taught me that the manga industry was pretty warm and friendly when you got to know the people behind it. A great boon for me because it was just as I was thinking seriously about getting into a manga-related career.

I have also enjoyed a fair number of their titles from Japan Ai to Ultimate Venus and so I bought a few titles over the course of their Black Friday sale in 2009.

That was a mistake. Mostly because I was moving out of my school dormitories a few weeks later. Luckily for me, my old co-workers at the campus mail distribution center sent me the package.  My mom got it at her house and I JUST got it from her on Feb. 7th. FINALLY.

I was REALLY pleased that GoComi! had sent me a free volume of manga with my order, so we’ll start there:

Kamisama  Kazoku by Yoshikazu Kuwashima and Tapari

The story follows a young high school student named Samataro Kamiyama who has the unique blessing of being (a?) god’s only son. Along with his guardian angel, Tenko, he attends school and tries to learn what it is to be human in order to become a god. Meanwhile, his family gets in the way of all his attempts at a normal life.

That pleased feeling of getting a free manga didn’t last very long. It felt VERY rushed, like we were supposed to know who these people were already and so all their character traits were squeezed into one page as an introduction before moving on to the next character. Then came the main character’s family. God, or a god, it is not explained, is a lazy bum interested only in some wifely eye candy and pleasing his son. If his father trying to constantly spoil him rotten with little miracles wasn’t bad enough, his mother, a goddess, continuously attempts an incestuous relationship with Samataro. His sisters seem normal, but they’re warped too. They like to meddle in their brother’s life with no regard as to consequences. It’s hard to believe these people could actually exist, even with the “theological” themes of the manga.

The  rest of the story itself isn’t bad, but it isn’t anything to get excited about. However, this is the first time I’ve read a manga where I said “This manga is FUCKED UP” every time I looked up from my reading.

The generic, but pleasant art from Tapari (who is actually Korean) is the only thing that prevents me from giving this manga a big solid F, instead of a D-.

Bogle by Shino Taira and Yuko Ichiju

Bogle is about a girl who transfers to a new school and is suddenly recruited for a secret group of thieves called Bogle. A bit of an amateur thief herself, Asuka Hamuro quickly fits in and begins to participate in the group’s commissions, which consists of stealing items that are important to people in one way or another.

I bought this series because the art reminded me of some kind of cross between Chika Shiomi and You Higuri. I like both artists a lot, so I was pretty pleased the art turned out like I’d hoped. The story’s not half bad. It’s episodic nature keeps things from getting too deep, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing depending on how you look at it. There’s a lot of focus on teamwork, and while the characters aren’t spectacular, they do their job nicely.

The only thing that REALLY bothered me was that every once in awhile, someone would say something along the lines of “You’re so mysterious, Asuka. You make friends with everyone.” It was pretty dumb considering that Asuka had never uttered  an ounce of mystery or unfriendliness in anyone’s direction. B- for Bogle. It’s not exemplary, but it’s nice.

Crown by Shinji Wada and You Higuri

Crown is the story of Mahiro Shinomiya, who is the long-lost princess of Regalia. The story starts out with her utterly down on her luck, but cheerful despite it all. Then her brother Ren and his friend Jake swoop in to save her from destitution and protect her from all the sudden attempts on her life.

Apparently Shinji Wada is a fairly prolific and well-known mangaka in Japan, which was surprising news to me. I found out this was because a lot of his other works are drawn in the 1970s’ and 80’s and anything much later than 1995 seems to be a collaboration between him and another artist. I pretty much bought this series because I do like You Higuri and she can create magnificent manga… when she has full control of the wheel.

Much like Kamisama Kazoku, Crown’s beginning starts off fast. The introductions aren’t so bad, but once Ren and Jake swoop in to save Mahiro, it takes no time at all for Mahiro to regain all her long-forgotten memories, such as not being related to her deceased “parents” at all. No time is spent in confusion about the sudden re-appearance of her brother or her identity. This is pretty much Mahiro to a T, she’s about as deep as a puddle. She smiles for everyone. She hugs everyone. She does not doubt Jake and her brother when they suddenly strip off their tuxes to reveal full combat uniforms and start shooting guns at the enemies despite the fact that she did not know they used to be mercenaries or that she’s a princess. Mahiro doesn’t have a bad bone in her body and that is really a problem. She’s supposed to be the main character. Instead, she doesn’t ever know why she’s being protected and Ren and Jake take over as the driving force of the manga. Thank goodness because they are better written.

But do they, some other interesting characters and the pretty art make up for a rather flimsy female lead and a really poorly written story? No. C- for Crown. It was only gets a better grade than Kamisama Kazoku because it didn’t gross me out every few pages.

I’m really disappointed in these series because I love so many other GoComi! series a lot more. I know every company has their hits and misses and some titles are pretty much meant for the backburners, but I’m kind of wondering what the hell went wrong here.

I’m sorry, GoComi! I want to love you, but I can’t love these series. Except maybe Bogle if you ever release the next volume. I’ll continue to love Ultimate Venus, Bound Beauty, Song of the Hanging Sky and A Wise Man Sleeps as much as you’d like though!

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