Your Occasional TOKYOPOP Update
Things had mostly quieted down on the TOKYOPOP front, the panic giving way to more thoughtful analysis (like ComiPress’), but today Simon Jones published this list of cancelled and postponed TOKYOPOP titles, as gleaned from Diamond Comics’ order form.
The titles are mostly titles that I expect the majority of manga readers not to be overly concerned with, but I did notice that two of the titles are yaoi– and rather popular yaoi at that: Gakuen Heaven (Nakajima ver.) and Love Mode. Granted, neither is a series I’m personally very fond of, and BLU has plenty of other series to work on, but…really? It’s odd, too, considering that the vast majority of Japanese yaoi coming out in the US is coming from DMP or Blu. (Deux Press and Kitty Media are putting out books consistantly as well, but a much smaller number, as well as Broccoli’s Boysenberry line, which has only four series to begin with; Yen Press has three Lily Hoshino books but they’re not due out just yet.) I would think TOKYOPOP might use the silence of Drama Queen and Be Beautiful and the closure of Iris as an opportunity to push their BL a bit harder, but I guess not. Or maybe Gakuen Heaven the first and Love Mode aren’t selling as well as I’d expect.
The other big names on the list are Shin Megami Tensei, MS Gundam Ecole du Ciel, the Trinity Blood novels, and arguably Sorcerer Hunters, but I always gathered that those first three weren’t doing all that hot in spite of their relations to popular franchises, and Sorcerer Hunters is a reprint anyway, so it’s probably a lower priority than new books.
June 18th, 2008 at 9:46 am
[...] Earlier I expressed surprise at the reported cancellation of the popular yaoi manga series Love Mode (pictured) and Gakuen Heaven, and now that the jig is up, BLU editor “Shonen-Ai-Samurai” offers up this comment on the BLU forums: Right now, these are postponed. Please support Love Mode 10 when it comes out in August. If it sells as well as volume 9 or better, it will be very difficult for us to not do volume 11. [...]