POOR POOR LIPS, Volume 1 debuts on JManga!

February 7th, 2012

Okashi Nako is a young woman living in poverty. When she applies to work at a Gem store, she learns that store owner, Otsuka Ren, is a lesbian. Ren promises that Nako’s not her type, but she may be lying…. Nako takes the job and so begins a comedic tale of rich and poor, sickness and health, for better and for worse!

http://www.jmanga.com/poor-poor-lips/1

Yuri comedy 4-koma manga, POOR POOR LIPS, by Goto Hayako, now on JManga, in partnership with ALC Publishing.

***

That’s the PR. Here’s the real message. I need your help.

Folks who are not in North America are blocked from this and I think it’s a BAD idea. I am trying to convince the folks at JManga that a globally accessible Yuri portal would be a GOOD idea. You can help simply by contacting JManga and letting them know what country you are from and that you would *love* to be able to access their Yuri manga.

You can contact JManga:

On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jmanga.official

On their website: http://www.jmanga.com/contact (Kathryn adds, “if people are trying to access the JManga site from outside North America, all they will get is a blue splash page essentially saying “You are not allowed in here.” For people who therefore can’t access the “Contact Information” section of the website, their email address is:

info at jmanga dot com”

Thanks Kathryn for the heads up!)

On Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/JManga_official

Of course, please be polite. Express your interest in accessing Yuri manga. Even if you get a “we can’t do that at this time” email, please don’t get discouraged.

Also, fans in North America, you can help too. Send a message to JManga telling them how you support JManga’s efforts in getting Yuri to a global audience.

The goal here is to stop the gerrymandering policies that Japanese companies still work under. It’s time to let them know that the world is full of Yuri fans. ^_^

I think we can make this change, if we work together!

27 Responses

  1. Kathryn says:

    This is such a good idea. I hope that a lot of people will send messages. Good luck!

    By the way, if people are trying to access the JManga site from outside North America, all they will get is a blue splash page essentially saying “You are not allowed in here.” For people who therefore can’t access the “Contact Information” section of the website, their email address is:

    info at jmanga dot com

  2. DezoPenguin says:

    Signed up and purchased. :) Also snagged Morita-san wa Mukuchi vol. 1 as long as I was there.

  3. @Kathryn – Thanks for this. I’ll post it in the body to get to more people.

    @DezoPenguin – Thank you for your support!

  4. Jstlurkin says:

    Well I can’t say I’m keen on what I’ve seen of the JManga model/service, but it’s a chance to support ALC and digitally at that, so I’ve signed up and purchased Volume 1 as well.

    Hope to see more ALC content making the digital jump. I know I’d love to buy Yuriko again for Kindle.
    (And of course the sequel too.)

  5. @Jstlurkin – Thank you, thank you! Your support is greatly appreciated!

    Getting SnB on Kindle is on the to-do list, so one day, definitely.

  6. JIN H. says:

    I too signed up, to support, and purchase ‘Poor Poor Lips Vol. 1’. Also I saw under Seinen>Yuri ‘GIRLFRIENDS Vol. 1’ so I buy that also. And I put a message in ‘Contact Us’ but then I saw a [feedback] tab on left side of screen so again. I put this: “Yes, I signed up today because I saw you were getting some Yuri manga here. I hope to see more Yuri manga available here. I like your site and I will try to tell other Yuri fans about it. I also want to add that I support JManga’s efforts in getting Yuri to a global audience. Thank you.” I hope this message was okay. Good luck to you.

  7. @JIN H. – More than okay – it was perfect. Thank you!

  8. Atarun says:

    Thanks a lot! I’ve been waiting for so long for a productive thing to do about region-locking…
    I’m kinda sick of complaining about it (and believe me, it takes a hell of a lot of complaining to make a French person sick). ^^

  9. @Atarun – Hahah. I think it’s also fair to remember that the distributors are not the ones who decide this, the rights holders are.

    The case that the fans can bring to the bargaining is “I would buy this – if you let me.”

    I’ll admit that I myself do not understand JManga’s model for this. I do not see any advantage at all to anyone by keeping all but two countries out of their offerings. (And furthermore, speaking entirely for myself as an individual and nothing more, I am completely befuddled by the complexity they seem to be layering on a UK release. Nothing personal, but – just unlock the UK as a region. It’s already in English, you don’t need to *do* anything!)

    As for proactive, always, always, reaching out and talking with a company will be more effective than complaining on forums. Companies don’t always get to make their own decisions, and sometimes the choose “wrong” but the more fans talk with, and not scream at, the better a chance they have of being heard. ^_^

  10. Atarun says:

    @Erica: so true, so true.

    I wrote on their FB page to let them know I’d buy their goods if I could and I sent them this message by mail (thanks Kathryn for the address, btw):

    “I’m eager to buy legal digital manga… It is not an option I have access to in France as of yet.
    I’m writing you today to let you know you can count on me if you ever obtain the rights to distribute your digital goods in France.
    Also, I would greatly appreciate it if I could subscribe to a kind of newsletter, in order to be warned when you do.”

    That doesn’t count as screaming at them, does it? ^^

  11. @Atarun – That was perfect. ^_^ Exactly the right tone, and the right message. Well done.

  12. Atarun says:

    JManga answered my mail already and here is their response:
    “Greetings and thanks for your feedback on JManga!

    We appreciate your desire to purchase legal digital manga, and due to the expressed wishes of people like yourself, are working on making JManga available worldwide.

    We will let you know when we go global!”

    I wish them the best of luck and I vow to not complain again about region-locking… not JManga’s, at any rate. ;)

  13. @Atarun – I’m very pleased to see that they’re giving a hopeful response. So much better than “not at this time,” don’t you think?

    We’ll need to keep up the gentle pressure, so if nothing changes in a few months, try again and see what they say.

  14. Because you mentioned that you had an interest, I wanted to mention that I will be previewing possible story lines for my web comic over in my blog over the next few days.

  15. BruceMcF says:

    Nobody retweeted my please retweet to lift regional restrictions T_T but @JManga_official did answer “@BruceMcF We certainly note your concerns and are working on making the site and Manga available!” ~ so I guess that’s a ^_^

    I also got a reply at JManga regarding opening up a Yuri category in Josei if they do not think that Poor Poor Lips fits in the Seinen Yuri category ~ they said they’d look at it as part of the site tweaks they will be doing shortly.

  16. BruceMcF says:

    I would note, though, that it would be nice to be able to read the emanga. On both my nook and my netbook, I rely on the “guided view”. Zoom and pan and scan and next page and zoom reset and pan and scan again is too much work for me to enjoy a manga.

    Now, I am guessing that Japanese emanga players have an automatic 4koma mode that works well enough, because neither Poor Poor Lips nor Moritisan wa Mukuchi have guided view info in the files, so guided view does not work.

    Ironically, Girlfriends, with far more varied panel layout, is far more easily read because it does have the panel dimension and sequence info.

    And I gave feedback to JManga in supoort of a usable “manual guided view” mode which would be workable for most situations.

    However, in the meantime, it would be nice if Poor Poor Lips had guided view. Flipping through in twopage mode (with the text illegible but anyway I could tell where the text boxes were), there would be about five basic patterns, all full 0%-100% horizontal width:
    * the basic “slice at a time” vertical 0%-35%; 15%-50%; 40%-75%; 65%-100%
    * full page and close-ups: 0%-100%; 0%-60%; 40%-100%
    * top half blow-ups: 0%-60%; 40%-75%; 65%-100%
    * mid panel blow-up: 0-35%; 15%-75%; 65%-100%
    * lower half blow-ups: 0%-35%; 15%-50%; 40%-100%

    That’s not strict panel by panel, of course, but the advantage is that you can flip through and tell at a glance whether to set the normal slice at a time or one of the alternate patterns.

    I don’t know what getting that guided panel view into the file entails, but if its too primitive, I expect that with basic file information I could help come up with a tool that paged through and guided view added panel info from a fixed set of alternatives.

  17. Anonymous says:

    Jmanga won’t go global and the reason has nothing to do with Yuri manga, this manga, or in fact any manga actually on the site.

    Jmanga is funded by a coalition of 37 manga publishers including the big 4 like shuueisha, shogakugan, etc… But none of the shuueisha manga are actually available on jmanga because they have Viz media in the US (and other corresponding ventures in Europe).

    Jmanga cannot go global without the agreement of ALL the partner companies, and the big ones have very powerful interests around the world who would feel threatened by a possible competitor.

    So even if the original rights holders of this manga AND jmanga both want to go global with it, they would be veteoed because of politics and that Shuueisha is purposefully trying to prevent jmanga from being a threat to any of its other regional business.

    Your pleas will be pointless: There is ZERO jmanga can do.

  18. @Anonymous – They are *already* competing with Viz and Yen, by including material they have licensed in print and JManga was working on a UK portal before this happened.

    Your pessimism is way out of proportion to the situation. Saying there is nothing anyone can do is the voice of fear. In reality, change is inevitable in business and there is always something that can be done to facilitate that change.

  19. BruceMcF says:

    It also should be noted that while global is the ultimate goal, expansion into the seven conventional “English Language Countries” is a less disruptive incremental change for some publishers existing licensing practices than global … and progress along those lines that falls short of the ultimate goal is still progress, and still a possible step toward the ultimate goal.

    Indeed, in anime its often the North American licensees who prefer North America only licensed while the licensors would rather issue ELC licenses, to cut down on their contracting costs.

    That fact that there are 37 Japanese publishers means that change at JManga is likely to be like swimming through molasses, but on the other hand the fact that there are 37 different publishers means that inside the group there are a lot of different ways of slicing up the world for licensing represented to appeal to in making the case for change.

  20. And, to build on @Bruce_McF’s comment, just because there’s 37 publishers involved with JMangawould not mean that all 37 had to agree on all things before any one publisher might change their access policies.

    It’s obvious that not all 37 major manga publishers are active with JManga, some have no connection with them at all. The 37 manga companies of the manga coalition doesn’t equal that all 37 have a relationship with JManga.

    So, incremental change leads to more change and the more we open up access, the more open access looks less frightening.

  21. Karin says:

    I, too, asked JManga kindly to make Yuri manga accessible to everyone and told them how I would very much like to purchase them from Germany.

    I’m positive all these messages will have good influence on reaching our goal of a global manga portal. :-)

  22. @Karin – Danke! I appreciate you believing in this dream. ^_^

  23. Karin says:

    I’m not sure if I’m supposed to spread this but I’ve been told by an official person JManga will open its doors from February 28th 2012! *_*

    The person who told me so asked me not to mention who I got it from although I think that part was rather a joke as it was followed by a winking smiley.

  24. Anonymous says:

    Erica, helping to ruin Yuri worldwide and then acting like she’s doing you a big favor as she pockets your money if you are dumb enough to go along with her bullshit.

    Stop helping already.

  25. @Anonymous – If only I could pocket some of that money. But no. I don’t make anything at all. If I did, I’d be licensing tons of Yuri manga and releasing it globally.

  26. Erica,

    I appreciate all you do in support of Yuri manga, and I appreciate your reviews. You’ve already turned me on to a couple of things I wouldn’t have found without you. I also recently mentioned you to the folks at DigitalManga as someone who might be helpful in expanding their selection of Yuri offerings.

  27. @Jennifer_Linsky- Thank you, Jennifer. You’re very kind. ^_^

    Don’t worry about the Anons. I feel pretty bad for them, because they can’t even see how broken their thinking is. I mean, cool, they found a book they liked through scans, I’m all for that, but when it comes down to now it’s their turn to cough up to show support to the artist, they really need to step up.

    As fans, the message people like that send to the artists is, “I like your work, but I don’t care about you.” Personally, I never want to be that person.

    But, really thank you. I write for people like you. ^_^

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