This news report is 100% complete as of the time I typed it, but there are still plenty of Industry panels to come at Anime Expo, so expect more updates later on.
Yuri Anime
A second Ichigo Mashimaro OVA has been announced, so members of the “Cult of Miu” rejoice! (And look – I made us a badge. lol It’s crappy. I don’t care and I don’t see you making one, so shush, you.)
Funimation announced that they have picked up distribution rights for many Geneon and ADV anime properties including Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, Murder Princess, and Kyoshiro to Towa no Sora, which was licensed (and already suspended) by ADV as Shattered Angels. Kyoshiro first volume was technically released and Volume 2 suspended, but I haven’t actually seen Volume 1 anywhere, so basically, we’re waiting for it from the beginning.
Nozomi/Right Stuf announced Gakuen Alice at their Expo Panel last night.
***
Yuri Manga
Big news this week is that Kodansha is launching a Kodansha US office to release manga on their own. While everyone else is musing over how this will effect their Del Rey and other licenses, I have a completely different take on it. I think that Kodansha is about to run into the the uncomfortable truth that is the reality of the manga market here in the US. From various dealings in the industry, I think that a lot of the Japanese companies are under the impression that they can *sell* a lot more manga than they actually can. Here’s why.
In Japan, manga and anime are easily accessible by a large portion of the population on a weekly/monthly basis. Along with free TV release and weekly cheap manga mags, they are bombarded by a never-ending stream of advertising for product. When the tankoubon, the collections, come out, there is little advertising in them, because the stream of distribution *ends* at the tankoubon. In America, the distribution begins and ends at the tankoubon. There are very few anime that are easily accessible on free TV. Most of them are Shounen Jump titles, and not coincidentally, SJ is one of the few magazines that comes out regularly here. So those titles do really well in sales. But most of the other titles are printed, stuck on a shelf and have exactly zero advertising, promotion (other than licensing announcements) or recognition. Without an anime to beat the title into people’s heads, the actual number of people who will ever care about a non-anime title is going to remain low. And without weekly or monthly chapter of a manga to keep interest high, all you have is tankoboun on the shelves.
Here’s what I imagine happens. J Company thinks – we sell 30K tankoubon here of x title. If we assume a 2% audience in the US, we can assume 6000 books will sell. Which seems fair. Only…the amount they will actually sell might be 1500 – 2000. Because the American audience doesn’t have the constant stream of promotion and availability, so Joe Blow finds it easier – and cheaper – to grab a scan, or read a book in the bookstore. And another 25% of the potential audience has no clue about the title’s existence or availability at all.
I think that when Kodansha realizes that without a lot more advertising and a TV anime, their books really won’t do well no matter how popular they are, they will be surprised – and sad. In the meantime, let’s bombard them with letters asking for a translated version of Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou. We’ll only get two volumes before they pull it for lack of sales, but hey – that’s two volumes we didn’t have, right?
Which leads me to the next thing I wanted to mention – Seven Seas has put several of their Yuri series on hold, First Love Sisters among them. The stated reason is that sales were well below expectations and they didn’t break even. I could have told them that if they had asked. The Yuri audience is small, cheap and sales of 2000 are exceptional, not average or low. Personally, I can see Hayate x Blade failing in the exact same way because the ONLY promotion that title will get is me talking about it. Neither Seven Seas nor Tor is going to spend a cent telling people it exists, and it has no anime. Which is a damn shame, because it’s an awesome series which *could* be popular. But if your marketing plan is to print too many copies, send them anonymously to chain bookstores to disappear them among crowded, unlabeled shelves of manga…expect it to fail. You want people to buy it? You have to invest in promotion. Contests, ads, bookstore displays, more ads, ads in things other than your own books, like gaming magazines, and Giant Robot (an awesome Asian pop culture mag) and on websites. Did I mention promoting the effing hell out of it? Because otherwise, it’ll sell 1000 copies and once again you’ll wonder why. Jason, Adam – I mean you.
And as for you, Yuri audience. Buy the books, buy the anime. These companies spend $$$$ on *you*. Stop being a bunch of cheap bastards – and *still* complaining that there is no Yuri out there. Buy Yuri. From Infinity, from Seven Seas, from Tokyopop, from Yen Press, from Media Blasters, from ADV, from ALC Publishing. Stop complaining that there is none. There are many series at this point and you aren’t buying them. For god’s sake – stop whining and put your money where your whinging is. Please. Thank you.
(And if you *do* buy the anime and manga – thank you. Very, very much. Not just for myself, but for the artists and writers, directors, voice actors and publishers. Thank you.)
I found this news item to be kind of interesting in a “huh?” way – Aurora, the US imprint for Oozora Publishing, will be putting out a manga version of Hitohira. Since Aurora’s stuff is usually Ladies Comics and more adult stories, Hitohira seems an odd series for them. Guess we’ll see, huh?
And DMP has announced the license for the Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS manga. I reviewed the first volume a while back. It was fun. Not particularly Yuri, but fun.
***
Other Yuri News
I’ve been very good about not talking about this, since I was told about it. lol
Nozomi/RightStuf is going to be launching the full Maria-sama ga Miteru website soon and when they do, it will include a submission form to *ask Konno Oyuki-sensei questions*! How cool is that? You’ll have a chance to ask her good questions like “Will we see Yumi as Rosa Chinensis?” and fandumb questions like “Will Sachiko and Yumi ever kiss?” and thank her for providing us with hours of entertainment. I am so going to be putting questions up for her.
bystrouka tells us that both Blue Drop and Mnemosyne will be shown at the Paris Japan Expo this weekend. This is tantalizing, because we haven’t heard any licensing for these titles, but what is being shown is supposedly already licensed. Interesting, huh? bystrouka promises to report back!
And Polish anime/manga portal Tanuki now sports a Polish-language interview with Erica Friedman, thanks to Grisznak! Some of the questions were the usual, but some were pretty funny, so in case you are not a Polish reader, here is a link to the English-language version.
***
That’s it so far for the weekend, but expect more as more industry panel feeds come in. Media Blasters has said they they are holding their big announcements for Otakon, so I’ll see if I can get a preview of those to see of there’s anything relevant to our interests. :-)
Agreed- if people want more Yuri, buy more books. It’s so simple, really.
I’d much rather actually buy the manga, and have it in my hands, reading, then reading it on my cruddy computer screen. (My opinion on ebooks are very similar).
I have a friend who downloads the manga straight onto his DS via homebrew, and I’ve tried that with mine too, but it is still teh suckage, can’t get used to it.
It’s a shame they’re putting First Love Sisters on hold, though. I was waiting for the second one to come out.
My hardcopy collection is tiny but growing! Too bad you don’t have a show’n-tell category, haha, I’d send you pics of my collection.
Cheers
First Love Sisters is on hold? And the second volume was only a month or two away… Is Last Uniform still on, at least?
You can check the Seven Seas forums for the complete list of everything on hold, but expect that most of the Strawberry Line, except for Tetragrammaton Labyrinth (which isn’t Yuri, really) is on hold.
It’s really too bad with Seven Seas, because I’ve been following their Strawberry titles and enjoying them. We can only hope that putting them on hold won’t be permanent, but we’ll see
I’d like to see Japanese manga publishers (maybe this is something Kodansha can do) get together with magazines like Boy’s Life and Seventeen. The Japanese publishers would get the publicity and the magazines could draw in a whole new demographic. Even “literary” young adult periodicals like Cricket could easily find material to fit with their editorial guidelines. And at the other extreme, so could the lad’s mags.
On the Shattered Angels/Kyoshiro to Towa no Sora bit, volume one was indeed released – I myself bought a copy through Amazon, and have seen it shelved at Best Buy and Borders. Funi has said that it will be picking up right where ADV left off on most of the series, save for those doing poorly, so the second volume is already on it’s way (all the production work has been done, it just was never replicated).
A big problem is that the Yuri community is international. If I look in Yuri forums/livejournal communities, I can quickly spot many people who don’t live in the United States or Canada. And still, the Yuri community isn’t big. The ones who might buy Yuri are thus a smaller group than one might think.
For me, it’s impractical to import Yuri from the US, when I can instead just import Hatsukoi Shimai/Yuri Hime/Mikomajyo directly from Japan. Even Kyoshiro to Towa no Sora. I’m not alone with this.
It isn’t that all of us are lazy or cheap – it’s that ordering from Japan directly gives us the mangas sooner, and then we actually know we will have the full collection, as opposed to risking never being able to buy more than the first volume.
…Also, another reason: I rather have a “Hatsukoi Shimai” in my shelf than “first love sisters”. People won’t go “omg incest?!” on me then. It’s odd, sometimes foreign words just seem better and less embarassing, even if the translation is literal.
“I haven’t actually seen Volume 1 anywhere, so basically, we’re waiting for it from the beginning.” Interesting to note: I did manage to spot a copy of Kyoshiro at Best Buy but I glossed right over because I didn’t recognize the title they’d chosen.
If these industry people want to sell their wares better, wouldn’t it make more sense to go with the original title for recognition’s sake? Is there some industry secret as to why they choose to translate the title of anime series into such total non-sequitors? Like maybe there’s an unspoken rule that a foreign series can’t possibly sell under the original title? Even though Samurai films do… Although the Marimite DVD title change was an eyebrow raiser, my favorite changed title is still: Mahou Tsukai ni Taisetsu na Koto -> Someday’s Dreamers. I think it’s fine when they just add a subtitle like “The Count of Monte Cristo” to “Gankutsuou”
I buy as much of the Yuri titles that I like in order to support the companies and the artists. There quite a few “Yuri” titles that I won’t purchase simply because they don’t interest me (and I do mean hideous things like Venus Vs Virus). I purchased all of the Seven Seas Yuri titles currently available that I fancy, and even purchased the Yuri titles that interest me in Japanese because I was afraid of this very thing happening. I agree with Erica on most of her points. What is wrong with publishers and marketing? If money really is an issue, why not recruit some of the Yuri fans to assist with marketing? Why not make a deal with some media outlets for an even exchange of marketing, tit for tat?
Western manga publishers have got to start being creative if they want to survive. And their fans are clamoring for them to stay afloat. To the cheapskates out there downloading free manga without at least purchasing the title once they’ve figured out that they like it…..you’re making it more difficult for yourself and the rest of us Yuri fans in the long run.
I’m disappointed that First Love Sisters has been put on hold as well as the general state of Yuri manga here in the states. I try to do my part and purchase as much manga as I can, but it frustrates me that it seems to make no difference. It continues to be difficult to obtain good Yuri titles (I’m not talking about scans or torrents, I mean at a bookstore!) and it sucks that I will follow a series only to not have the rest of the books published for English release. yeah, so I’m kinda mad about First Love Sisters…among others.
Ah, 7Seas delayed Hatsukoi Shimai? Geez, too bad. Now I can see future problems with HxB too :/ Well, one more reason why study Japanese and count on reliable publishers. There are more and more delays or cancellations.
Thanks for info.
R.
(I still have small hope I’ll complete my English collections.)
ffffffff
Of course, never finishing series isn’t a very good way to get people to buy books. Buying manga is basically like buying old record players at Tennessee yard sales…you never know if it’ll actually work out.
Besides major marketing issues, the Yuri fanbase just isn’t big enough. The American anime/manga community just isn’t big enough. I don’t see much marketing for yaoi, either, or just anime/manga in general. Some titles manage, but just as many end up shelved indefinitely. I haven’t checked up on Candidate for Goddess (a shounen mecha manga) in years, so it might have been picked up again, but at the time I got to Vol.4 and suddenly there was nothing. Same thing for Peacemaker Kurogane, although that was later picked up again, much to my pleasant surprise.
Pitching a title under a genre might work better than pitching it as Yuri. Yuri doesn’t really define a target group of people, IMO. Cutesy schoolgirl stories, dystopians, fantasies, sci-fi, romance, yes, but not Yuri. I have no intention of buying anything from Seven Seas for now, because none of it appeals to me from a story standpoint. Whether it has Yuri or not would only bias me slightly.
I’ve thrown my lot in with Mushishi, Eden, and Simoun for the moment. Let’s hope they stay afloat.
Yes, the Yuri fanbase is small. That is a major problem, as I said, with what appears to be reasonable estimates of sales that turn out to be way too high.
This problem is not at all confined to Yuri titles. Manga in general faces it. No anime – no title recognition.
The problem with most fans’ point of view is that they feel that it is the companies’ responsibility to complete the series. It is not.
If a series is not profitable, it will be cancellled – not because they want to screw fans (NO company wants to screw fans,) but because they simply can’t afford to put out the capital for a series that will not make it back. It’s a reasonable choice by the company.
Only a company with sufficient investment capital could afford to continue a series that was not making back what it cost to print. Viz has that, Kodansha US will have that. Whether any non-Japanese owned manga company will be able to truly make a go of this field remains to be seen.
Once the industry revamps, if they step back and successfully lower expectations (which might not be doable, if J companies insist on their own projections,) they might be able to restart some less popular series. Maybe.
It seems that one cheap guerilla marketing way to promote manga that are not tied to an anime series would be to run MMV contests on YouTune… Manga Music Videos based on slideshows of officially released panels (but, of course, just a sampling, maybe 5%-10% of the artwork available for download from a web site) … with the prize being a year’s subscription to a print run.
But grass-roots / guerrilla marketing can only do so much, in the face of the economics of small print runs that have always sucked, and ongoing competition from new media, both legit and ripped, that just makes it worse.
Its a shame there is no on-site Print-On-Demand distribution system to feed into, as it would swing the economics around if there was not the need to cover the material cost of unsold copies from a small print run.
I’m speaking here as someone who has bought literally everything in Seven Seas’s Strawberry line as well as all of MB’s Yuri Fan anime releases here: The problem, as I see it, with companies not finishing series, is that it immediately turns into *bad* advertising. Sure, maybe not enough people were buying “First Love Sisters” to generate profitable sales of Vol. 2…but even people who’d never read a Yuri book in their lives will read over ANN and AnimeonDVD and assorted other internet sites that Seven Seas was dropping the series because of bad sales. Which immediately makes them wonder whether something else that they WOULD be interested in will get dropped. How often do we see people say, “I’m really interested in Title X, but I’m not buying it until it’s complete” because they can’t trust the company to finish the job. Yes, 1LS may be a niche title, but essentially by spending the money to complete the series, they’re essentially buying advertising throughout the fan community (or, more accurately, offsetting the BAD advertising generated about the publisher as a whole). The question is, from a finance standpoint, how much lost business across their entire line of titles does cancelling a series midway cost them? That’s a difficult cost to estimate, in comparison to how much they’ll lose selling 500 copies versus a necessary break-even point of 1000 (or whatever) will cost them, but it IS a cost. Consumer expectations are always the biggest factor in any financial equation, and when you’re selling to a market that’s the size of a small town then those expectations travel at the speed of small-town gossip. I’d also mention–although I have no idea if these things even matter, given the size of distributors and chain stores–that if I were a Barnes and Noble buyer, I’d get sick and tired of dealing with a publisher who tells me that X book will be available on Y dates, taking pre-orders for X, and then having to tell my customers that the publisher won’t deliver X on Y…or at all (again, though, I have no idea if this makes a blip on any chain store’s radar).
Of course, given the fact that manga publishers basically don’t advertise AT ALL, as you pointed out, then it’s pretty clear that they don’t have a marketing department trying to quantify these figures and getting them an answer, but it IS a question that should be quantified before a cancellation decision is reached, not because they want or don’t want to screw over fans, but from a purely economic standpoint.
dezopenguin – Your point is a valid one, but if a company doesn’t have the 10K (or more) to publish a book…it doesn’t have it.
It’s not like a company can keep floating books just to gain the approval of a “fandom.” Since the majority of that group isn’t buying anyway, it’s a bad economic choice to try and gain its approval by bankrupting one’s company. :-)
I ran out and bought everything they put out when they put it out both because I knew they needed my support and because I wanted my local bookstore to keep getting the titles. I was so excited to actually be getting Yuri titles on the shelves in English. I was hoping it would be like yaoi was – when it took off, it took off big and every third manga on the store shelf seemed to be yaoi. I was into that when it was a small fandom like this and you couldn’t get yaoi manga in bookstores. Then it exploded and when I heard Seven Seas had licensed Yuri titles I was excited. *Maybe*, I thought…
Sadly, yaoi has a lot more fans simply because it appeals to straight females. There’s a bigger market out there. Secondly, Yuri titles didn’t advertise themselves very well at all. “Strawberry” was a codeword I would have known nothing about if it hadn’t been for the Yuri community – the average reader would have had little clue. It was almost as if they were a little embarrassed to admit to it – it looked just like any other shoujo manga out there. Yaoi titles were unashamed about their content and I could easily spot them – Yuri, well, if it hadn’t been for your review blog, Erica, I think I never would have known most of them existed.
Thirdly, as my husband bluntly put it “well, if non-Yuri manga stopped putting two women hugging on the front cover, we might know where to look…”
So, I’m disappointed, but I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. Manga/anime is in huge trouble over here right now, due to stupid expectations and too many titles (many of which I could care less about…) Sadly, that means the niche stuff gets to go, and we’re stuck with scanlations and online fiction… Unlike some hardcore fans, I don’t read any Japanese and probably never will.
Ah well, maybe we’ll avoid some of the horribly immature fangirls that yaoi wound up attracting, too.
The sad truth is that SSE have done this to themselves. Yes they put out a quality release, i’ve never said they dont.
However thie customer service level is abysmal. They’ll blame anyone and anything other than themselves for mistakes. And rather than try and put the mistakes right, they ignore them.
As a result, we get this. Series on hold or canceled.
the main problem however lies where Erica said it does, they don’t promote.
They literaly dead drop the titles and hope they sell. they refuse to work with shops, promote the titles instore, in magazines, on anime channels and online. The only place you see any sort of adverts are in their own titles, which is only of use to people already buying the title. You can not reach new or potential customers that way.
As a ersult, SSE have shot themselves in the foot again. Tied with their habit of alienaiting the fans, is it any wonder the series they are selling are failing to meet quota?
The Dragon Disciple – You misunderstand me. The main problem is not that they don’t promote. The *main* problem is that the previous established audience that will buy manga is VERY small.
Without promotion, this audience will not grow.
Of course they drop titles that will not sell. It would be absurd for them to keep throwing good money after bad.
No company owes you anything. They are in it to make money, plain and simple.
Erica, you misunderstood my point. It’s not about what they owe me, but what they owe themselves.
They pay a fortune to license a series, then spend more on translating and get it ready for the english audience. Then just dump it on the market and expect it to sell.
Yes the demographic is small, but no market can grow if no one knows it’s there. You have to show people the titles are available, you have to promote them and get the word out.
Sticking adds in the back of your own manga isn’t getting the word out, since it’s almost impossible for new potential buyers to know about them, unless an established buyer tells them.
This isnt just an SSE thing though, it applies to all of the manga publishers. Specialist genres like Yuri need to be handled properly, otherwise your just wasting money.
And yes i agree, droping titles that don’t sell is common practice, and understandable. But you have to ask, why aren’t they selling?
The titles that they have are all great titles, many of which have a strong following. Yet out of all of thier Yuri titles which one has had any sort of promotion? Only SP got any sort of promotion, and that was minimal.
Then you have their distribution problems. For near a year now it’s been hard to impossible to get early volumes of some of their Yuri titles. So even if they did suddenly wise up and start to promote, what would the point be? No new comers can get the early volumes.
To be honest, many people, myself included, have seen this coming for the past month or so when SSE started answering reprint questions with their vague ‘later in the year’ reply.
Erica Friedman: The Dragon Disciple – You misunderstand me. The main problem is not that they don’t promote. The *main* problem is that the previous established audience that will buy manga is VERY small.
Without promotion, this audience will not grow.
As a disinterested observer, am I the only one who finds those two paragraphs contradictory? They DO need to promote and distribute the titles to sell them – I have yet to see a single Seven Seas Entertainment title in three years in town, and I’m not in a small town either – if I can’t find their titles in any bookstore, manga and anime shop, or gaming store in a city with a few million… then we’ve got a problem.
I’ve seen like ONE volume of Kashimashi in all the time they’ve had the license, and that’s it – the big chain bookstores don’t ever have it in stock, although it’s available on the website as printed, but ‘not currently available to order’. The smaller bookstores can’t seem to find copies, and nobody who deals with Diamond Comics seems to have access to it either.
Plus, other manga publishers (Del Rey, TokyoPop) do promote their titles in anime/manga magazines, or with in-store displays. Of course, a lot of these titles have anime that go with them, as did Kashimashi, but when you can’t even find a title (or any Seven Seas book) even when it’s supposed to have shipped recently… well, I’d have to say that distribution kinda sucks too.
Hell, the only way I knew Kashimashi had been licensed by Seven Seas was through other bloggers’ entries – no word in any magazines I ever saw about it, and I never saw anything elsewhere indicating they had the title. They really DID have some issues with promotion and distribution… and now, well, they’re apparently joining ADV Manga in whatever pit failed manga publishers go into.
The buyer was willing, but the stock wasn’t present and couldn’t be ordered easily. As a rule, I don’t generally order books online because the shipping costs, especially these days, aren’t worth the few dollars I’ll save (if I do) by buying online. Heck, they may cost more than buying it locally with whatever discount I have at the store in question.
The Dragon Disciple, jarlath – both good points.
The only thing I can say is that few, if any, of the anime/manga distro companies were founded by or are run by business guys. They are mostly run by fans with a bit of pocket change. When they are taken over by “suits” fans bitch, but the business usually deoes better. :-)
I don’t particularly have a issue with suits taking over stuff. Ballancing fandom and profit margins is a delicate thing, and frankly at times a pain in the rear.
However, whether your a suit or a fan you have to realise that promotion is the only way to sell anything and make a viable profit.
If you’re going to do the job, do it properly. If you don’t all that happens is that you lose the fan’s. Look at what’s happened with the manga industry as a whole. Several changes were instigated purely by fan pressure on the companies.
Fans hold a great deal of power over the publishers, but it’s a two wat street. We want things a certain way, but we also have to support the publishers by buying the items. However when the publishers stop playing ball, why should the fans?
Recently one of the staunchest anti scanlation bloggers i know of gave links to scanlations because of whats happening with ADV. For ages she’s been on support ADV thing, be patient, etc etc. But she’s finally given up and started giving links to scanlations for certain titles.
It’s the same for every publisher. Treat the fans with respect and courtesy, and they’ll stick by you through thick and thin no matter what.
Ignore them, alienate them, treat them like they don’t matter, and when things get rough they’ll abandon you quicker than snow melting in a desert.
I buy my books, i spend around half of my monthly income on manga. however i only buy titles i like, i refuse to buy titles simply to bolster a genre or a publisher. I like Yuri, but i have specific requirements for my Yuri before i’ll buy it. I won’t buy titles that don’t fit those.
Everyone else is the same, we buy titles we like.
It’s certainly no surprise that a lack of operating capital can cripple any business operation. If just bringing the books to print eats the entire budget, leaving nothing left over for market research (which, ideally, needs to be done in advance so the publisher has some idea of what is actually a reasonable sales estimate, as well as correctly identifying the target market(s) so as to determine the best use of the marketing budget) or marketing/promotion (nobody’s going to buy the book if they don’t even know it exists!) then the publisher is in deep trouble.
Erica is of course correct–a company cannot afford to finish a series that loses money on a per-book basis even if they would otherwise want to (whether for the goodwill value, or becuase the license agreement contractually obligates them to do so or else damages accrue, or whatever) unless they have capital to work with. A Viz, a Kodansha, a Del Rey (they’re owned by Random House, I believe?) can afford to spread losses across the brand. Seven Seas, meanwhile, is releasing no more than FOUR books a month through next June. Four. My Tetragrammaton Labyrinth 3 shipped from Amazon this morning, and it’s their ONLY manga release this month (though the next light novels should be coming as well–at least since the Tor/McMillan deal was cut they do get their releases to the bookstores on the scheduled release dates). I understand that with that kind of size, they can’t afford to take a chance on what they expect to be a dead loss. And, as I said, I have been supporting their releases by buying one of everything in their Strawberry line thus far.
But…
It’s true that companies do not owe us anything. They aren’t publishing Yuri manga because it’s a Good Thing To Do (even though it is ^_-); they do it because they expect to make cold, hard cash doing it. Yet the reverse is also true. We don’t owe anything to a company, and as a consumer I have the right to spend my limited entertainment dollars where they will do ME the most good. As a consumer who actually IS paying for these products, I don’t appreciate being told that it doesn’t make a darned bit of difference (incidentally, Erica, I REALLY do appreciate the thank-you you directed to those of us who buy the products; all too often these publisher blogs/messages don’t acknowledge that anyone actually IS spending their hard-earned money on it and come off reading like they expect me to buy five or ten copies per title!) and that they, the publisher, aren’t willing to take basic business steps towards keeping my patronage. Let’s face it, if you don’t attract new customers, and you throw away your existing customers, you have…well, actually, you have Infinity Studios, but that’s a different rant.
When push comes to shove, I suppose what gets my hackles up is reading how the series I like are being dropped for what are allegedly arm’s-length business decisions when part of the reason the series are unprofitable in the first place was a failure to make basic, even obvious business decisions at the beginning.
Personally, I can see Hayate x Blade failing in the exact same way because the ONLY promotion that title will get is me talking about it.
Ahh I hope it does well. I know I will be talking it up and not just because I worked on the translation but because I loved how it parodies shounen, tokusatsu and dating sims. And for a MediaWorks title, the level of Yuri (though fanboy as it may be) seems pretty high. I loved working on those “Hayate is MY WIFE” jokes. ^_^
AHH I’ve got to start promoting this soon…
If I remember correctly, Hitohira started out as a seinen manga, so maybe it’s not too odd. The anime is loads better, though.