The Rise of Online Manga

Posted on October 18, 2009 by Daniella Orihuela-Gruber

This blog post won’t exactly be news, persay, but more of a discussion on an emerging trend in the U.S. manga market.

I saw this tweet this evening as I was trying to think of what to write:

manga_critic New blog post: Rin-Ne, Vol. 1 http://mangacritic.com/?p=2187

Rumiko Takahashi's Rin-Ne (copyright of Viz)

Rumiko Takahashi's Rin-Ne (property of Viz)

The link is a review of the first volume of Rin-Ne, a manga by the famous supernatural manga creator, Rumiko Takahashi. Rin-Ne is a part of a very new movement in the American manga publishing industry, a fight to battle scanlations, fan-made translations that are posted online and completely free, by putting content online.

Obviously, free material is a huge problem for any industry and many fans of manga don’t feel the need to pay for what they can get for free. Cease and desist orders are able to stop scanlators, as the creators of these translations are called, but publishing companies don’t have the means to police all the scanlation sites. Some scanlators are polite enough to take down a manga when it is licensed by U.S. publishers, but this does little to stop others from keeping content online through other means and even then thousands of people have read it already.

So how do publishers battle a scourge like this?

By posting these manga online before they’re even released in stores.

But how is this different than scanlations? How can the publisher make money?

It’s not much different than scanlations, which is the point. The publishers want their manga to be read online. That’s where their readership is right now. Then, right before the book is released at bookstores nationwide, the manga is taken off the internet and if manga fans want to read it, they’ll have to buy it.

Pretty ingenious in my opinion.

Rin-Ne and Viz, its American publisher, are at the forefront of this battle against scanlations. Rin-Ne is released chapter-by-chapter each week simultaneous with the Japanese release. This prevents scanlators from getting their hands on it before American publishers can, allows fans to read manga online for free and allows the company to control the profits by keeping the content on their site and taking it down when it’s time to sell it in stores.  Everybody wins.

Although Rin-Ne is currently the only manga Viz is releasing simultaneously with Japan, the company is putting out large quantities of online content for their Ikki and Shonen Sunday lines.  It seems to me that Viz is really just testing the waters here. If sales and advertising bring in enough, then Viz has cornered the market and given scanlators a real run for their money. Then again, there are some series, such as Bleach, where the Japanese version is way ahead of the U.S. releases, allowing scanlators to put up chapters that the U.S. publishers haven’t gotten to  yet.

Viz isn’t the only publisher with similar plans in the works or already online, but so far they are the only one to have done so to such an extent. Will such control revolutionize the industry and prevent scanlators from taking away valuable profits? Not completely.

In the end, the manga industry in America isn’t nearly the same size as Japan’s. This is a great solution for some series that are just being released like Rin-Ne or are relatively unheard of like  most everything from Ikki, but not for others that have already been released or extremely popular such as Bleach. At the same time, some of the manga that scanlators pick up will probably NEVER be published in the U.S. for lack of popularity, for their content being offensive or controversial or for just being old and scanlations bring about the only way for them to be read by non-Japanese speakers. But sometimes, it’s just a matter of not knowing whether a series will be picked up by U.S. publishers.

What’s your take on the rise of online content from manga publishers?

An article on Rin-Ne from Deb Aoki.

An article on Ikki’s U.S. debut.

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Comic Book Movies: Astro Boy

Posted on October 13, 2009 by Daniella Orihuela-Gruber

If you were an American child in the 1960’s, you probably watched “Astro Boy” on T.V. and I’d call you lucky because I grew up in the late 1980’s and didn’t know “Astro Boy” existed until I did a small history project on anime in middle school.

But now I know and the new “Astro Boy”  movie is coming out in theaters on Oct. 23rd and, boy oh boy, am I excited!

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Originally called “Tetsuwan Atom” in Japan, the comic-book-turned-anime-turned-film has captured the heart of many kids and adults alike ever since it was released. It tells the story of a robot implanted with human memories created by Dr. Tenma to help him get over the death of his son. When that goes awry, Astro becomes a crime-fighter, particularly focusing on human-robot conflicts, out of control robots and evil doers looking to exploit robot powers.

The movie follows a similar origin story, but also focuses on self-discovery and a typical good-v.-evil energy conflict, which makes me happy since various filmmakers worldwide now feel the need to address ecological issues. I’m sure  the legendary Osamu Tezuka,  the creator of  “Astro Boy” would have approved of the eco-friendly message too.

Speaking of Osamu Tezuka, Dark Horse Comics publishes the U.S. version of “Astro Boy” and still has 23 volumes and a few other Tezuka titles for sale. Nozomi Entertainment/Right Stuf International publishes and sells the anime version.

Vertical sells a number of Tezuka’s darker and deeper works including “Buddha”, “Ode to Kirihito” and “Black Jack” amongst others.

Also, “Astro Boy”-related comic book is “Pluto” which is a post-mortem collaboration between (the very much alive) Naoki Urasawa and Tezuka. “Pluto” is like a darker version of “Astro Boy”, but instead of focusing on Astro, it focuses on Gesicht, a German robot working as a detective. Astro (called by his original name, Atom) and Gesicht are two of the world’s seven great robots and the mysterious Pluto is murdering these  robots and their creators for their involvment in the 39th Central Asian War.

You may remember Naoki Urasawa since I mentioned him yesterday in my post about the debut of “Monster” on Syfy, and he is half the reason why I really love “Pluto” too. More importantly, it’s a really gripping read. Urasawa really took Tezuka’s idea and ran with it until the readers are left on the edge of a cliff trying to see who’s dead on the ground below.

But just because the new movie and “Pluto” are modern takes on Tezuka originals doesn’t mean that Tezuka’s genius won’t shine through. I’m looking forward to seeing it next week.

See some exclusive pictures of the film on Comic Book Resources.

Some more stills from the movie and pictures of some of the cast from Comic Book Movies.

A Wikipedia article on the film.

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Viz begins to accept original submissions/Naoki Urasawa's "Monster" makes SyFy Debut

Posted on October 12, 2009 by Daniella Orihuela-Gruber

VIZ_Media ES: Show us what you’ve got. VIZ Media is now accepting submissions and pitches for original comics. Go to http://bit.ly/1iH8la for details.

This is pretty big news. I think it’s pretty unprecedented for Viz, seeing as they are pretty much a medium for Japanese publishing giants Shogakukan and Shueisha’s manga titles.

Deb Aoki, a prominent manga writer, editor and cartoonist talked to Viz editor Eric Searleman (who tweeted the big news) about this major decision:

“Eric Searleman: ‘We’re considering everything. The format will suit the material. For example, there’s no law that says our original comics need to mirror our manga trim size. Let’s mix it up.’

“We want to do something fun and fresh. Why bother otherwise? We want our books to be an alternative to what’s already out there. It’ll be hard work, but we are confident we can get it done. The bottom line is this: the quality of the comic takes precedent over everything else.”

Here’s a link to the rest of that article.

While Viz isn’t the only U.S. manga publisher to put out original (non-Japanese) content, original English manga (OEM) in the past has been either substandard or hard-to-sell. Currently, Tokyopop, the former bastion of OEM publishing, has scaled back its OEM efforts to only those manga with huge fan following or commercial ventures due to economic hardships. Other manga publishers only have small lines of OEM content, if any at all.

Can Viz do it? Probably. Despite closing the girls’ manga magazine Shojo Beat earlier this year, Viz opened the New People building in August with much success. In other words, I think Viz is becoming more experimental. The company is just cutting out what no longer makes them money and trying new and exciting things they think could work.  Obviously they wouldn’t try it if they thought it would be completely unsuccessful.

On another note, Tokyopop’s original content submission rules have been under a lot of criticism by aspiring cartoonists and others for being legally iffy and unfair to the submitters. While Tokyopop is a considerably more experimental company than Viz, Viz is usually more successful at similar endeavors so maybe we’ll see more fair submission guidelines from Viz.

Will Viz do it better? Odds are in their favor, but we’ll see when the first examples of original content come out.

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On another topic, also related to Viz, Naoki Urasawa’s “Monster” will be debuting on the SyFy Channel tonight at 11p.m. Pacific. My twitter feed is positively abuzz about it too.

monster

I’m pretty excited for this because “Monster” is one of the greatest manga I’ve ever read. Its a powerful, suspenseful drama about Dr. Kenzo Tenma, who has been wrongly accused of murder. In an attempt to clear his name and to erase a past mistake, Tenma goes into hiding and chases after Johan Liebert, who is the real mastermind behind the murders sullying Tenma’s good name.

Throughout the manga we see the extent of Johan’s evil and genius contrasted against Tenma’s tenacity, skill and inherant goodness. It is the kind of manga where you get to know the characters and when you put down each volume you’re excited about what happened and eager to read the next one.

I can personally vouch for this as I saw the manga be introduced to my anime club and then circulated so widely throughout the members that there were waiting lists for certain volumes. Each and every person I spoke to about the manga had the same excited reactions as everyone else.

The series, published by Viz, recently ended, so I am quite excited to see the anime go on air so that new fans can be pulled in. “Monster” is one of those classic titles that has been underappreciated except by hardcore fans.

See the reaction to “Monster” on Twitter.

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Not Good

Posted on October 11, 2009 by Daniella Orihuela-Gruber

Hi everyone,

Unfortunately my computer was attacked by some really vicious malware virus over the weekend. One of my friends who is much more handy with computers than I am is trying to fix things, but if that fails, I will be taking my computer to a professional place on Monday.

I will try to get a good post in once the dust has settled a bit more, but I will probably have to wait until Monday to do so.

Sorry!

-Daniella

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Beyonce is the New Wonder Woman/Kodansha Announces US Office

Posted on October 6, 2009 by Daniella Orihuela-Gruber

I never really expected Beyonce to appear on this blog, but here she is.

GeekTyrant Beyonce is Wonder Woman!? New Writer and Director Attached!? http://su.pr/29XwmL

Beyonce is going to be Wonder Woman. God help us all. (Your various religious beliefs aside.)

When I shared this shocking news with my boyfriend, he pointed out to me that she had previously stated that she wanted to play Diana Prince a.k.a. Wonder Woman. I remembered him previously mentioning this in conversation so I did some digging and lo and behold… An L.A. Times blog.

Now to the outsider, this might not seem like a big deal, but let’s take a closer look.

Beyonce is a VERY successful singer, but does a lot more on the side. Her most notable movie at the moment is “Dreamgirls” and ironically her spotlight was stolen by former American Idol contestant Jennifer Hudson. Her other movies (sidekick role in “Austin Powers in Goldmember” aside) are considerably less notable and unsuccessful.

Now let’s take a look at some of the other comic book movies featuring female superheroes. “Electra” wasn’t very critically acclaimed, especially after the mess that was “Daredevil.” And despite Halle Berry’s acting prowess (which may very well be an on again off again sort of thing), “Catwoman” was also a total flop.

At this point the movie could be saved, but heres some more reasons why it won’t be.

Joss Whedon, the genius behind “Firefly,” “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Dr. Horrible’s Sing A Long Blog,” was traded in for Stuart Beattie and David Elliot, who wrote “GI Joe: Rise of Cobra,” which hasn’t done quite as well as any of Whedon’s work.

Directing will be John Moore, who directed “Max Payne.” What’s that? You don’t remember that movie? Yeah, I thought so. Beattie at least has a few good movies such as “Australia” and the “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise behind him.

Shall we add it up?

Mediocre actress/hot singer + Unsuccessful angle on genre + Fairly unsuccessful writers and director = Probably not going to be a good movie.

I really hope they prove my theory wrong.

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Now onto more pleasant news – Kodansha is coming to the U.S.!

Kodansha is Japan’s largest publisher and has licensed a ton of manga titles to U.S. manga publishers. They’ll be putting their office in NYC and their line, Kodansha Comics, will be distributed by Random House, who has been their partner in recent years through Del Rey Manga.

Kodansha Vice President and board member Yoshio Irie and general manager Tomoko Suga will be heading up Kodansha USA Publishing (the company’s publishing name.) They have already announced two classic titles as Kodansha USA’s first releases, Akira by Katsuhiro Otomo and Ghost in the Shell by Shirow Masamune, which were previously published by Dark Horse Comics.

This doesn’t really surprise anyone who’s been watching the manga publishing industry for awhile. Kodansha has been killing its licenses as they expired with other publishers ever since they partnered up with Random House and Del Ray Manga in 2003. Earlier this year, they finally announced that they would not be renewing any licenses with Tokyopop, which Tokyopop editors said they had known about for awhile. The company had been publishing many of Kodansha’s hit series, such as Sailor Moon, Chobits, Love Hina and Beck.

Publisher’s Weekly article on Kodansha’s US office announcement

Publisher’s Weekly interview with Yoshio Irie

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Why I love Scott Pilgrim and so should you

Posted on October 5, 2009 by Daniella Orihuela-Gruber

I first read “Scott Pilgrim” when a good friend lent it to me a few years ago. Reading the rest of the five volume series eluded me until I got an extremely considerate Valentine’s Day gift from my boyfriend. His other gift idea was earrings, but he forever earned awesome boyfriend-points by giving me comic books instead.
Enough about my personal life because “Scott Pilgrim” is becoming a movie. This news is not recent by any means, but that does not make it any less cool. The “Scott Pilgrim” movie, entitled “Scott Pilgrim v. The World” as is the second volume of the series, is exciting because it largely departs from any other comic book movie you’ve ever seen.

Why’s that, you ask. Well, think about all the comic book movies you have probably seen. “Superman,” “Spider-man,” “Batman,” “Watchmen,” “Iron Man,” “Sin City” and most recently “Surrogates.” Do you see a similarity between any of these movies?

Serious, summer-blockbuster, money-making ACTION movies.

While “Scott Pilgrim” has it’s fair share of  fights, all the characters are  normal hipster kids, a few of whom may or may not have a strange super power. Let’s put it this way, if Scott Pilgrim himself is a super hero, then I’m the President of Venezuela. Pilgrim’s super powers have more to do with being kind of a loser who’s obsessed with video games and his band.

The premise is simple, to get the girl of his dreams, Ramona Flowers, Scott Pilgrim must fight off her exes all the way from an unrequited crush in middle school to a man with more control over Flowers than she lets on. For each ex defeated, Pilgrim wins some coins, a la the old Super Mario games.

What’s important about “Scott Pilgrim” is that there hasn’t been a comic book movie in my recent memory that wasn’t about the action since “Persepolis,” which wasn’t quite the same box-office success as the latest “Batman” movie.  Best of all, people are excited for “Scott Pilgrim v. The World.” Quite promising for a comic book movie that won’t really be focusing on a spandex clad hero and a grossly mutated villain. People will go see this movie, and if it’s done right, it will win the box office.

My only complaint is that Michael Cera is playing Scott Pilgrim. Cera, who has previously starred in “Juno,” doesn’t really scream care-free Canadian twenty-something to me so much as awkward, gangly high school freshman. Perhaps it didn’t help that “Juno” scared the living daylights out of my reproductive system even though I’m not a teen anymore and therefore cannot have a teen pregnancy. I don’t care how much indie-movie cred Cera has, he just doesn’t visually portray the character for me. It won’t ruin the film for me, but it might ruin my slight infatuation with the character.

MSNBC article on a new direction of comic book movies

Some photos of cast members

Some video blogs from the set

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'Surrogates' Movie Beaten By 'Meatballs'

Posted on September 28, 2009 by Daniella Orihuela-Gruber

Saw this tweet in my feed the other day, I was intrigued.

LosAngelesCP Los Angeles: ‘Cloudy’ has sunny second weekend as ‘Surrogates,’ ‘Fame’ flop http://bit.ly/22MTSy

So “Surrogates” had a dismal opening weekend after expecting to beat out the rest of the box office with the latest comic-book-turned-movie blockbuster. Instead, “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs” took the lead with one of the smallest drops this year in revenue after its opening weekend. “Surrogates,” which cost $80 million to produce and opened in 10 international territories, only raked in $15 million between the U.S. and Canada.  Many critics gave the robotic thriller a C, which is as bad as it gets.

“The Surrogates” the comic book, however, has gotten a better reception. GeekDad of Wired.com gave the comic books a pretty stellar review. Explaining the differences between the comic and the movie, (In the comic, the killer only murders the robots, whereas, in the movie, both the human users and the robot surrogates are killed.) he likens it to graphic novel classic and recent box office success “Watchmen.” Like “Watchmen,”  “The Surrogates”  has a lot of extra material in the form of newspapers and advertisements to explain more of the comic book’s world, but it seems the comic book version also takes a similar approach to the intense storytelling of “Watchmen.”

While it is only a testament that “Meatballs” is the better-selling movie, it is a little surprising that “Surrogates” couldn’t keep up considering the relative popularity of comic-book movies. I saw the giant billboards hawking “Surrogates” all over L.A. this summer and, frankly, they creeped me out. Still, it’s kind of surprising this movie isn’t selling better. It has everything going for it: a solid comic book background, Bruce Willis and lots of exposure via large and incredibly hard to ignore advertising. Perhaps the impression stuck that there were going to be otherwise perfectly human robots walking around eerily missing good chunks of their torsos and nobody wanted more gross outs a la the Prawns of “District 9.” (Which is amazingly written, don’t get me wrong, but those Prawns are the embodiment of my worst nightmares. If they had shown them in their billboard ads, I would have been A LOT more reluctant to see the movie.) Perhaps the premise of the movie was a little bit too “I, Robot” for people and just because a movie has all the right ingredients doesn’t mean people will be interested in seeing it. Maybe Bruce Willis just got too old for people. The models they used in those billboards were pretty hot. That’s some stiff competition…

My guess is that no matter how good the comic is, no one had really heard of “The Surrogates” the comic book. Everyone and their mother in the geek world had heard of “Watchmen” when it was finally revealed to be in movie production (attempts had been made since the graphic novel’s release in 1985, but movie-making technology was not quite there yet.), and if they hadn’t, then they got on the bandwagon faster than you can say Dr. Manhattan. But “The Surrogates” didn’t have that same recognition (“Watchmen” has a spot on Time’s 100 Greatest Novels of All Time list.) or the marketing team smart enough to hit where their actual audience should have come from: the comic book section of the bookstore.

What they should have done was put the comic book front and center in every chain bookstore they could buy out. I personally don’t remember seeing “Watchmen” on shelves before marketing efforts for the movie started, but once they did there was so much “Watchmen” merchandise that you could bust a paycheck on all the Rorschach figures and T-shirts with the iconic blood-stained smiley face. Not once did I walk into a bookstore this summer and see a similar big, flashy display for “The Surrogates.” The only time I saw it on bookshelves at all was on a normal shelf at the register in a comic book store. The owner had likely put it there because of the movie’s upcoming release, but let’s face it, not enough people go to comic book stores to generate enough revenue for a movie with an $80 million price tag.

Info gleaned from:

Los Angeles Times: “‘Cloudy’ outshines all other films again”

GeekDad on Wired.com: “The Surrogates: Know the Comic Before the Movie”

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