Del Rey Correction, T-pop’s Direction

* There are two fascinating things in this thread at Anime on DVD's Community Forums: the first is a forthright apology from Dallas Middaugh at Del Rey on the changes made in Air Gear; the second is the existence of lists like this one. As covered here in the past, there's a passionate conflict in manga circles between fans that demand authenticity in translated products and companies that wish to tweak sexual or cultural elements in order to reduce the chances for alarm from mainstream North American audiences.

* TCJ.com's Dirk Deppey gets into the question I think has been hanging over the issue of Tokyopop selling certain titles through its web site since it was announced: why would a company make such a move exclusive? His answer seems to be it's because they're dumbasses, as they're giving up a supplementary market that's a sure thing -- Direct Market retailers order non-returnable and in advance -- for a solo market that's completely unknown.

While this analysis sort of presumes that Tokyopop simply isn't floating a trial balloon and allowing for screw-ups as long as there's future gain, I also have yet to see anything to indicate that Tokyopop won't be collecting pre-orders and then printing with those orders in hand through their on-line store, too, much like the DM. At that point it becomes a functionality issue rather than a strategic one -- stores often pre-order at amounts that exceed initial consumer buying impulses, and because of this and the lack of discounts and general irritation by fans those orders collected by Tokyopop run a real danger of being super-low.

Deppey goes on to suggest Tokyopop's Mike Kiley and Stuart Levy may be seen as "two-faced jack-offs" because their recent pro-DM rhetoric fails to match up in acceptable enough harmony to the realities of this non-DM program. While this is its usual entertaining, one imagines this would be a tough if not impossible gauntlet for any comics company executive to run.
 
posted 2:54 am PST | Permalink
 

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