Archive for the Digital Manga Category


Kadokawa Launching English Version of Bookwalker

September 24th, 2015

KGBW

Official Press Release:

Debuting at NY Comic-Con 2015: BOOK☆WALKER KADOKAWA’s Online Store for Manga & Light Novels direct from Japan SEPTEMBER 24, 2015 – Kadokawa, one of Japan’s largest media, entertainment, and publishing companies is launching an English language version of BookWalker, their eBook online store in Fall 2015. Promotions will kick off at New York Comic-Con 2015, along with the addition of over 700 comic and prose titles in English – many exclusive to BookWalker. Starting on October 8, 2015, readers around the world can check out the redesigned BookWalker website at http://global.bookwalker.jp/ and download updated versions of the BookWalker apps for iOS and Android mobile devices on the Apple App store and Google Play.

BOOK☆WALKER AT NEW YORK COMIC-CON: New York Comic-Con attendees will be able to take BookWalker for a test drive at the BookWalker booth at NYCC (#854), or try it out on their smartphones, tablets or personal computers. Visitors to the BookWalker booth at NYCC who show the signed in BookWalker account on their phones or tablets will get a chance to win prizes.  Everyone will receive an $8 BookWalker gift card, which can be used to buy almost any manga or light novel on BookWalker.

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So, will this be a big deal? I don’t know…yet.  Here’s the part that is of most interest to me:

BookWalker [is] gearing up to be the premier destination for manga, novels, books and magazines in both English and Japanese from Japanese and American publishers, including VIZ Media, Dark Horse Comics, Digital Manga, Creek & River, Cork, Futabasha, and Harlequin, with more to be added soon

Reading into press releases is a sucker’s game, but there are couple of things of note here:

The platform will be in English. I have used ComicWalker, but only in Japanese. And I’ve only read samples, not purchased anything. It works. I’m not blown away, but it works and the built-in reader is does not require a download and is pretty easy to figure out. Obviously, as soon as I can I will try it out and report back.

Offerings are from multiple publishers. This is good, and it is problematic. There is a war on for your digital manga dollars right now – Amazon recently sucked up Comixology to make sure they win it. Crunchyroll is still hanging on to a small corner, but will a Japanese publisher have an edge by offering a selection you can’t get anywhere else? This remains to be seen. It appears that they will have the same publishers already accessible on Comixology. So, you get to give your money to an American conglomerate or a Japanese one, for access to the same content. Neither site charges for access, just for purchase, so it’s a coin toss on the money side.

One the Japanese content side, Kadokawa is the winner hands-down of marketing the living daylights out of their IP, and they own many or are part of a joint venture with many of the most popular anime franchises. They do a lot of anime based on Light Novels, (like the Suzumiya Haruhi and Sword Art Online franchises) so there will definitely be a lot of popular content on the site. Their inital JP additional publisher, Futabasha has a metric ton of stuff licensed here by a bunch of distributors, they seem to be the only other publisher not afraid to spread their IP around. And they have some of the artists you like.

This could be a very good thing for Yuri fans, if the Global site is tied in with existing Japanese content. Ichijinsha is already offering a number of their Comic Yuri manga in digital format, even older, out-of-print titles. And Shinsokan has at least some of their their Hirari books. The problem is that Global Walker was historically not tied in to their Japanese site and only had Japanese content that had been licensed out. I don’t know if this is going to work for us, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed and have asked Kadokawa for some of their time at NYCC. We’ll see how it goes. Keep an eye on this space for follow-ups!





More Miscellaneous Musing On Digital Manga

January 20th, 2013

“When there are standard formats, more scalable systems, more ubiquity, we’ll see more adoption.”

Oh my goodness, what utter douchebag said THAT?

Ah, erm, yeah, it was me. ^_^;; And I wasn’t kidding, although I was being ironic. But let me begin from the beginning.

This past Thursday, JManga launched what I consider to be one of the best Yuri licenses they have, Ameiro Kouchakan Kandan by Fujieda Miyabi.

I posted this on my personal timeline on Facebook and someone I like and respect brought up many of the same issues I’ve heard from others in regards to digital manga; specifically “ownership” vs. “possession” and format standards.

In addition, another party involved themselves in the conversation, taking the part of “Perpetually Angry Fan”. I wanted to re-state some of my points here for future reference (and address the issues around being a P.A.F. I know not all of you are perpetually angry, probably not even most of you. Okazu readers are some of the sanest, most reasoned people on the Internet – something for which I am forever thankful. But if you are – or you know people who are – perpetually dissatisfied and angry about not getting what you “really want” or because you can’t “have nice things” I hope you’ll read it with an open mind.)

So this post is not about anything…it is quite literally miscellaneous musings on issues surround the transition to digital. Change management is complicated, especially when we’re managing someone else’s change.

Here’s the ideal world we all dream of – media comes out in globally accessible open standards, with multiple languages and flexible formatting. So I buy a print book, get it also as an open standard e-book which can be read on any device anywhere in the world (and, ideally in any language I might want.)

Reality looks like this – Japanese companies manage print and digital licenses separately, so one has no relationship at all to the other. Most licenses are by country, so America and the UK have to have separate licensing companies, with separate agreements.

Things are changing, but probably not towards our ideal world, just towards a new reality.

Point One: The concept of “ownership” is being detached from that of “possession.”
And it’s freaking us out.

For those of us who started watching anime in the late 80s, early 90s, the only way to watch anime was to own it. We would buy a VHS tape and watch it. That was the only way we could watch it. No anime was on TV. There was no Internet, no DVDs/BDs, no streaming, no video files.

If we wanted to read a comic book, the only way to read a comic book was to own it

The point is, if you are not under 12, you have been trained to associate *consuming* media with owning a physical copy. You may not even realize to what extent this behavior has imprinted itself upon you. We like books because we are used to books. We like scanlations and fansubs because they give us a file which we hoard on media storage

And yet, this horse has already left the gate. People “purchase” books on Kindle by the millions. They listen to music on Pandora. They stream movies on Netflix. People who do these things are not angry about not owning a copy. They are paying to enjoy the content on that platform. You’ve been renting movies for decades. You don’t own the movie, you don’t get to keep the movie…and when the local Blockbuster closed, it took that movie with it.

This issue, I’m sorry to say, is over. Books are around as long as my generation is around. When I pass away, books will already have been passe’ for decades. It’s not a bad thing, really. I’m watching Airbender: Legend of Korra on Amazon Instant and I’m very pleased with it. I really don’t need to have the DVDs. I just want to watch the show when I have time to watch the show. I am  pleased when I can log into Funimation and watch anime without having to buy it first, just to watch it. It would be nice if my selection wasn’t format/company specific, but that is out of my control.

Point Two: Things change.
And it’s freaking us right out.

Dear Perpetually Angry Fan, I understand that you feel disappointed because:

Tokyopop went out of business, and wasn’t able to finish printing your favorite manga.

CPM went out of business and wasn’t able to finish printing your favorite manga.

CMX went out of business and wasn’t able to finish printing your favorite manga.

ADV went out of business and wasn’t able to finish printing your favorite manga.

Go Comi! went out of business and wasn’t able to finish printing your favorite manga.

Infinity Studios went out of business and wasn’t able to finish printing your favorite manga.

And, for good measure, DC or Marvel cancelled the comic you like with the artists you liked.

None of this actually gives you any imprimatur to be angry or feel betrayed. Change happens. Businesses have life cycles and absolutely none of that has anything at all to do with you. Companies are not “betraying” you when they change their business model or if a series you like is not selling well enough to pay for itself. Can you imagine, for a moment, having a friend who took it personally that McDonald’s cancelled the McRib sandwich? That seems kind of extreme, right? It would seem very odd to me if a person ranted that they were NEVER going to McDonald’s AGAIN because they cancelled the sandwich. (I’m not saying people don’t do this, but it does seem an extreme over-reaction to, you know, a sandwich.) Fiction has characters we begin to identify with, see as friends. So of course when those friends are no longer in our lives, we’re sad.

Feel disappointed – go ahead. I was very disappointed when the Aria manga was cancelled the first time by ADV and disappointed again the second time when it was cancelled by Tokyopop. (Then I finished it in Japanese and realized I didn’t like the end anyway.^_^;;) Feeling disappointed is absolutely reasonable. Feeling betrayed is a little less reasonable. To betray you, there had to be at least a social contract – betrayal is an act of intention. You don’t guarantee that you’ll buy a book when it’s published…there is no social contract between you and the publisher. They are not going out of business to spite you. Be unhappy, be disappointed. Don’t be bitter and perpetually  angry. The thing about tantrums is not that they are only for children – it’s that they indicate the person having one is a child. If you’re blaming companies for going out of business and forcing you to read scans, that is a tantrum. No one forces you to consume any kind of entertainment in any format. It is not Stu Levy’s fault that you read scans. ^_^

Let me stop and try to explain where I’m going with this analogy.  If you read this blog and you talk to the computer screen every day, I will never hear it. You talking to your screen is not a social contract with me. I have no idea you are there, because, from my perspective, you are not. If you’re angry that I liked something you didn’t or did not like something you did, you were not betrayed by me.

If tomorrow I were to announce that I was done and will no longer be writing Okazu, it would be a really super-self-absorbed leap for you to think that I had betrayed you. My decision, when that times comes, will not be about you, it will be about me. Understand?

My point is that you have never once been betrayed by a manga or anime company. Not. Once. They have made decisions you don’t like, yes. That is not a betrayal. It’s business. So, Perpetually Angry Fan, your righteous burning anger that companies are screwing you by not fulfilling their part of the social contract you have never committed to is pretty meaningless. I have had otherwise sane people tell me quite honestly that they can “never trust the manga/anime/comic companies, since they’ve been screwed so many times.” Fans have never been “screwed,” (again, this implies intention) they have been disappointed. And the manga companies don’t want or need “trust,” they need people to buy books. Translation is an art, not a science. Being critical about translation choices is the least clever thing you can be on the Internet. It is not a betrayal if a choice made is not the choice you would make if you were the boss.

Please, if you are perpetually angry or dissatisfied, please stop being so negative all the time. It’s not helping. It’s not righteous, it’s not meaningful. The only thing it does is alienate the companies that are, actually, trying to help you. Take a second to think about how rough it is to be the person who realizes that their life’s dream is disintegrating, they have thousands of dollars in debt and they have to lay off dozens of people they like? Please be more vocally appreciative for the options you do have right now, for entertainment you like right now.  Thank you very much.

Point Three: A Quick Guide to the Points System on JManga.
Which is not as confusing as it seems.

The point system is to make it possible for everyone globally to pay a fair price. 500 points equals 500 cents, 500 yen, 500 pence, 500 euro cents. So everyone around the world is paying a fair, very reasonable price for digital manga. If you bought Ameiro Kouchukan Kandan in print it would cost 900 yen. Even at an unrealistic 1 cent=1 yen exchange rate that would be $9.00 In reality it would cost $9.98 plus shipping (at time of printing. it was actually a little more when I first wrote this.) On JManga you get it for $5 or £5 or whatever the standard is where you are.) JManga pays the creators, the publisher, the translator, editors and letterers, so I gladly give my money to support these people.

Last night on Twitter someone from Japan asked me if Ichijinsha was showing flexibility by charging half price on Ameiro and I said yes. That they are allowing a digital license at all is pretty great, that they are comprehending the perception that digital ought to be a lower price, since we are not paying for physical materials (although we are still paying for work like translation, editing and lettering) – all of this shows some real flexibility on Ichijinsha’s part. I’m pleased when I see manga magazines with sample chapters online, as well.

Comparing legit manga to illegal methods of distribution is always unfair. Because scans are free and unregulated, it always seems like you’re getting ripped off when you’re asked to pay. I think $5 is a very fair deal to read manga, especially when that is basically 50% of the retail cost of print, and no shipping. Despite the fact that I worked on this, I still paid for it (and all the other Yuri Manga, sans Yuru Yuri, on JManga.) Because I truly believe that digital manga is the best possible solution for a global market. And I do put my money where my mouth is.

Point Four: We are in the middle of technological change.
Suck it up.

Yes, I said these words, “When there are standard formats, more scalable systems, more ubiquity, we’ll see more adoption.” I meant it – and I believe it, to some extent. Except the bit about standard formats. Those will never last more than a short while from now on.

Kindle, Nook, Sony Reader, iPad, Android tablet…yeah, every hardware has its own format.

People did not collect books when “books” were gigantic heavy vellum things that took years to transcribe. It was the invention of a process that standardized the creation of “books” that made it possible for regular people to read them and own them.

I completely understand and sympathize that you may not want to switch to digital – see Point 1. I always said that I’d switch when digital became the best option for me, not just an option. Well, if I want to read Yuri manga in English, JManga is the best option for me right now. Additionally, I found that carrying 15 books around on my tablet, which incidentally also allows me to connect to my blog and Twitter, is loads easier than carrying 15 books around and a laptop when I travel. Digital is not the perfect option, but is a very good option right now for me. (When I can buy Light Novels from Amazon JP on my Kindle app, it will be the best thing evar.)

In no way am I saying that you should or have to move to digital.

You don’t. Not now, not ever. (Take a moment and reflect on elderly relatives who had one huge console TV that had rabbit ear antennas. That could be you, if you’re comfortable with that.)

I am saying that if you love reading Yuri manga, there is a way right now that allows you to access translated Yuri manga that is legal, mostly global (with some exceptions) and is becoming more portable as they work on it. The people who do the work are paid, the folks who create the comics you like are paid. It is not perfect, but it is a very good option and has the support of the manga artists and  publishers. When you spend your $5 on JManga you are not stealing anything from anyone. You can feel morally sound and enjoy your Yuri. ^_^

No, there is no guarantee that JManga will exist in 10 years. And I get that you can play your parent’s LPs. But you can’t probably play their 8-tracks or their Betamax. Some media formats last longer than others. We’re watching all sorts of formats vying to become a standard.  Pick a format that works for you and run with it. When it turns out that reel to reel, then Betamax, does not end up being the media standard, you have to re-purchase your favorite movie on VHS and again on DVD, then Blu-ray. Actually, you really don’t HAVE to. You can wait until you really need to get a new whatever and upgrade your media to fit it, get whatever is state of the art at that moment and just realize that there will never be a point in time when a “standard” exists for more than a few years.

The world is speeding up, don’t expect it to slow down just because you remember when it was slower. ^_^

In my life we’ve gone through punch cards, then large floppy disks, then small floppy disks, then thumb drives, SSD and the cloud. I’ve had to reformat some of my files completely a dozen times. This is not something to be pissed about – it’s something to learn from. Change happens and it never stops happening.

Welcome to the future – here are your dancing shoes.

Try, to the best of your ability to separate what you are used to/like from what is good and righteous. And, please, no screeds about how awful the companies are, how bad translation sucks or whatever imagined criminal infractions they have made against fandom. See Point 2. That having been said, your comments, rebuttals and miscellaneous musings are welcome in the comments.





Digital Comic: Bandette

January 13th, 2013

Recently I had one of those “why have I never heard of this before?” moments when I learned that Colleen Coover and Paul Tobin were collaborating on a YA comic with a female lead called Bandette.

Well, it just so happens that this year I had hoped to discuss more YA (Young Adult) indie comics with female leads. Let me first discuss the concept of “strong female lead” as I define it:
On Quora I defined a “strong woman” as “Women in control of their circumstances rather than just bearing up well in bad circumstances. Anyone might find themselves able to fight to the last breath in desperation, but the best make sure they never have to.“

Here on Okazu, I have elaborated, “Women who are perfectly capable living in a world populated by men and women; women who can take command of both men and women and be respected as leaders – and who are not judged by a set of standards that are skewed so they can only ever fail. Women who can find their own solutions to issues, not to have to excel at men’s thinking or men’s skills to be considered a success.”

Most action genre media portrays a “strong female lead” as a woman, pushed to the point of having nothing left to lose (i.e., already in circumstances out of their control), doing things more properly expected of male leads like fighting (i.e., excelling at “men’s skills.)

In Bandette, we see a story constructed within both the criteria I lay out for a strong female lead. Bandette is perfectly in control of her circumstances. Money is, clearly, not an object (much as it is not for, say, Tony Stark.) She is surrounded by friends and colleagues, whose respect and loyalty she commands through the use of respect and loyalty. When her “urchins” perform their roles beautifully, she calls them up to tell them so. How perfectly girly is that? ^_^

Bandette inhabits a world in which both Raffles and Saint Tail would be comfortable – inhabited by wealthy collectors, and invaluable art, Bandette’s world also includes city kids playing in the street and women in dance class. To add the dash of derring-do we all expect in a gentlewoman thief/artful dodger story, Bandette works with a grumpy, grumbly, allegorically foul-mouthed detective who could have stepped out of a Pink Panther movie, and rival/mentor Monsieur, who is the embodiment of all gentlemen thieves.

There are many things to like about Bandette. Right out of the gate, it makes no attempt to “realisticize” itself. This is a fantasy world, just kick back and enjoy. And never, not in a single panel, is the series condescending or trying to prove what does not need proving. This series is post-“girls can be heroes too!” in the exactly right way. A girl is the hero. Yep. And then…a great story happens! No wallowing in the circumstances that forced Bandette to become… nope, just a girl having a hell of a lot of fun doing what she’s doing. (Again, reminiscent of Saint Tail.)

Bandette is not a sexpot…oh my goodness what a relief. I’m never forced to stare at crotch or breast, or anything but her big grin. Her body is simply not part of the equation. Her mind, which is the proverbial steel trap, is.

I *love* that the character intros are also the “Story So Far,” and I really like that we’ve joined the story after the mythos of Bandette is already established in the participants’ minds. This no origin story, Bandette is well-known and liked/loathed by the people in the story. We learn she has previous adventures and previous relationships with the characters.

The potential love interest is also set up with conscious deliberation. The attractive delivery boy is completely loyal to Bandette, and she treats him like a valuable member of the team – and as an attractive boy. In fact, she jokes about that easily, “This attractive young lad will…” without uncomfortable sexual tension or creepy “brain goes duh when attracted to male” that is still far too often the norm for female leads. He works with Bandette just as easily. No out of place blushiness, no nosebleeds. You know that he’s part of the team because he wants to be part of the team. If they get together, I’m confident that Coover and Tobin will craft a good arc around it and I won’t roll my eyes at all.

As a YA comic, the story holds up as sheer “fun.” No adult condescension, just young people being bad-on-the-side-of-good which is always a winning setup, and decent characters who are having fun being characters, no life-draining angst need apply. I even enjoyed the fanfic-y use of random French words, which gives the story that early 20th-century Lupin-esque flavor it deserves.

Monkeybrain Comics has released Bandette as digital only, through Comixology. I gotta tell you, my tablet was made for reading this comic, really. It’s the perfect size, the color pages look fabulous. It’s 99 cents an issue and worth every penny.

Ratings:

Overall – 9

I’d easily recommend Bandette to any comic reader, female, male, young or old.





The Future of Digital Manga, A Fairytale

June 25th, 2012

This morning, a post from Simona Stanzani came across my Facebook feed for a charming little comic called Rosie and Jacinda. I did a little research, found a delightful video trailer for it and ended up buying the comic. (Which seems to have been on sale in limited quantity, so I have no link for you at the moment, perhaps when they get it back in stock/print.)

This comic created a storm of discussion on poor Simona’s Facebook feed, so I wanted to move the conversation (at least my part of it) over here, where we’re free to write lengthy dissertations on why people who don’t agree with us are wrong. ^-^

Okay, let me first disclaim – I am a futurist. That is to say, I embrace change, look forward to it, enjoy the shift and ebb of format and policy and await new man/machine interfaces and forms of communication and information sharing with delight. This puts me in a very small minority of fandom. Fans (well, all people) are, by and large, quite conservative. Change distresses people. They rely on models they know, fear things they don’t, and frequently don’t understand that, whether or not they can see the reason for change, change is happening.

So, let’s start with the current model of comics and manga. I go to a store (online or brick and mortar) and I buy a physical copy of a book. There is very likely to be no other legal way for me to read that comic, as there are few comic/manga libraries. This model – I must purchase it to read it – is the old model on which both anime and manga industries are based. (For a really excellent look at this model, take a look at Justin Sevakis’ three-part series about the anime economy on Anime News Network. Part two is the most relevant here.)

Before digital, if I wanted to read a manga, or see an anime, there was a very small, slow underground for subs or translations. Buying the anime once it was licensed was the only real, legal option and, of course, all “true fans” did that to show their support.

This meant that I, as a fan, became a collector. Comics fans are often comics collectors, because it was obvious that after your piles of comics became too large to keep under your bed, long boxes would help you keep them in order…and mylar bags would keep them in good shape just in case you ever wanted to sell them. Which of course you would never do. So those boxes accumulate and voila! You’re a collector. Same with manga. You start to read One Piece and a few years later, it’s got three shelves of space to itself and you can’t get rid of it, because, well, you have all of it since the beginning, so you’ll just shift those other books to the other room and keep collecting. And, let’s be fair – there’s a certain level of OCD among us who are “fans” (as opposed to mere readers.) ^_^

Okay, so the old model was – you want the content, you must buy the physical item.

I’m going to skip the digital revolution and the implication of scans and subs here.

Here we are in a future that no one expected – the very system that fans created to make it easier to enjoy content has now begun to replace the model of purchasing a physical copy in order to enjoy content. Unfortunately, those same fans who are perfectly willing to enjoy the content for free digitally, only want to support it by purchasing a physical copy.

In other words, the equation “In order to enjoy it, I must buy it” has shifted to, “I must be able to own it, or I won’t buy it.”

Let’s talk for a bit about those piles of comics and manga we own. Do we read and re-read ALL of them? No, obviously not. We certainly re-read some of them, but it’s highly unlikely that all fans re-read all of the material they have collected. I have comics in my closet that I haven’t looked at in decades. I have manga on my shelves I read once and probably will never read again. I justify keeping them because they are part of my unique historical collection. But who really gives a shit? I mean, let’s be realistic. No one. Well…maybe one or two people on the planet. ^_^ I’m keeping them because I, like the fan I am, cannot imagine throwing them away. I’ve learned to do that with titles I really didn’t enjoy, things I don’t want in the house, titles that are irrelevant to me – I do contests or sell them. They are weeded from my collection. But still, the piles grow.

This is the major difference between the content and the physical item – space.

Right now, we’re perched on a precarious swing – one way we swing towards the past – “Print copy or I will not buy,” is the eternal call of the fan who grew up in the 20th century. The future is the cry of children being born right now, “A book? Oh, you mean those paper things Dad keeps in his study. I don’t know why he even keeps them, we have /madeupformatname/ now.” (Much the same as younger folks today look at their parents’ LP collections.)

Publishers are being squeezed to produce digital and print right now, because fans want both, but will only pay for one, or maybe might pay for both if they are “reasonable” (which means the lowest cost that item has ever been sold for.)

What it boils down to is that fans want to “own” the content, because we are used to “owning” the physical container of the content. Being able to access content isn’t comfortable or sufficient – we want to download it, because we are used to holding the content in our hands.

I’m going to pick one series and use it as a straw man. Kaguya-hime, by Shimizu Reiko, was a truly fantastic series. The art is beautiful, the story cracktastic and I loved it. Right now, I can see all 21 volumes of the series on my shelves. I love the manga content, but I really, truly don’t need to have the physical copies. If I were able to access the content without having the books themselves on my shelves, I’d dump them. Because I cannot access the content any other way at the moment, I keep the books. They take up space. Space I could use for something else. I am not likely to read Kaguya-hime all the way through again, but I do read bits and pieces of it – and I like to write about it, because it’s so nuts. Having access to to the content without having to keep the books themselves would be perfect.

Can one ever “own” content? Yes and no. I can own the thoughts and experiences of reading that content and the knowledge of that content. In the same sense that when I read a print book I borrow from the library, I can write about that book freely, but if I am to quote large passages of it, I’m required to get permission to do so because I do not own that content, but I can own my unique impressions of that content.

I own books, those physical containers of content. But, although I own the containers of Kaguya-hime, I don’t, in any meaningful way. own the content of the story. It says right in the book who the owners of that content are.

Let’s say I buy access to a digital version of Kaguya-hime. I still don’t “own” the content and now I don’t “own” the container, either. I will still “own” my unique perspective on the story. Many people strongly dislike this arrangement. Here are some of the valid, proven reasons why:

1) What if that company goes out of business?
2) Their proprietary format does not allow me access on all my devices.
3) I want to “own” what I buy.

The first is, of course valid, and people have felt burnt when companies changed models, formats, or gone out of business. This is of course true about many things, not just content – your gym might close, and render your membership null. Your house might burn down and render all those content containers you own into ash. Your mother might throw out your comic collection, rendering the few copies left of some old title that much more valuable to those people who will pay for it. As a futurist, I cannot believe that fear of possible negative outcomes should ever limit my mobility. Other people will chose differently. Our choices are all valid…but…those old models will change, regardless of whether we agree with them or not. As I said, I prefer to embrace change.

The second is, in my opinion, the strongest argument, but not a complete one. Yes, companies ought to make every attempt to make material accessible. However, no company can be responsible for your decisions and if you chose to by a device that will not read software that has become the standard…that really isn’t the content company’s fault. I’m not a big fan of completely proprietary formats either, and prefer universal formats like PDF and epub. Many companies are making inroads with Android and iOS apps that allow you to share your library of content between devices. That’s getting closer to the kind of portability we feel we have with books.

While I sympathize with the idea of wanting to “own” what one buys, I feel that cable TV and Internet access has already killed it as a valid objection. You do not “own” any of the content you enjoy on Netflix or Pay-per-view, either. You pay for the right to access and enjoy that content. Why this model is so repugnant in regards to anime or manga is a little confusing to me. It’s a done deal – we do this kind of thing every day already for content. Except we never have done this kind of thing for comics or manga before. And that’s different because we’re not already used to it.

This third objection is simply a relic of previous models – you are used to a model in which you paid money for a container and were able to move that container around as you so chose – even lend it out, if you wanted, because you “owned” that container.  If/when we can share digital content the way we share physical content containers, we’ll be right on the edge of that objection going away.

And based on comments below, I think I need to add a fourth objection:

4) This all sounds well and good but I want it NOW.

There is nothing to say to that, really.

But, will these objections actually go away if people can share content, and are assured that they can access it the way they want and when and where they want?

Probably not. And the reason for that has absolutely nothing to do with the objections themselves, however sensible they seem on the surface. Fans, as I am repeatedly made aware, are extremely conservative thinkers, as I said. Change is bad on the face of it, because we like what we like and why should we have to learn to like something else just because?  We LIKE books. Obviously, we are used to books. We understand them and their use and limitations. They are portable, universal in format (print on paper) and the only limitation they contain is whether we can read the language on the paper. (Digital may one day eliminate that, by being able to translate what is on the paper, but that’s a different fairytale.)

My argument against all of these objections comes down to “Of course, because this is what you are used to. When you are used to something else, it will not seem strange.” Can you imagine someone explaining MP3s to your parents when they were buying their first LPs? ^_^ My Dad is 75 – he loves his MP3 player. People do get used to change.

Here’s my futurist fairytale – I have a device that supports all standard formats. On that device I can access any of my digital content, regardless of where I am, or whether I am connected to the Internet. I can share that content with friends AND still have it for myself, as I cannot with a physical container, because the content is no longer bound (literally or figuratively) to the container. My content is available in translation and in the original, so I can read it in whichever language suits me. I can switch devices and still access my content.

I no longer need to buy the containers for content, when I can access that content anywhere, any time.

I don’t own the content, but then, I never did. I just owned the containers and my thoughts about the content…and the two things that the content conferred upon me – portability and ability to share – are replicated by this new system.

Because content containers are no longer de rigeur, they have become less typical. They will, like LPs now, be collector’s items and works of art, like the swords I collect. Books are not objects of every day use, but efforts of craftsmanship and beauty. I have space on my shelves for these, because I can access the content I want anytime, so I can surround myself with the most beautiful physical objects.

No one will ask you to destroy your comics or manga collection, but I bet in 40 years it will be mostly gone. It made sense to replace your LPs with CDs and your CDs with MP3s, each one of which made your music more portable and sharable. It made sense to replace movie reels with VHS, and then DVDs and now on-demand video. It will likewise one day be quite sensible to get rid of all those old manga volumes, because you’ll have different ways to access your content.

As a futurist I believe that, since change is inevitable, embracing change leads to fewer heartaches. And if this next format fails, it’s really no big deal because there will be a newer, more flexible, more universal format right after that.

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As always, the comments are open for discussion, digression and argument. However, today I am putting an additional limitation on posters. The usual rules here are, do not insult or attack your fellow commenter or link to sites with illegal content. Today I’m adding this one rule: You may not tell a fellow commenter that they are wrong. Please feel free to express your opinion as freely as you like, but please also respect that everyone else’s opinion is valid. Thank you in advance.

I look forward to your perspective!