Kodansha Jumps the Pond

The big buzz in the manga world today was the official announcement that giant Japanese publisher, Kodansha will open offices in the US and begin publishing Japanese manga in English in September. The apparent thinking is, why license Kodansha titles to American publishers when Kodansha can publish the titles themselves, eliminating the American middle-man, so to speak.

Mangablog reported on a post from ICv2. Check out Mangablog for the breakdown of the day's unravelling.

Several US publishers release Kodansha titles, and what this move means is still a question mark. Dark Horse seems to have lost AKIRA but has announced the next volume of EDEN for next February. No word yet on Blade of the Immortal. Del Rey, the main publisher of Kodansha's manga titles said today they were not cancelling any titles, and that it is "business as usual" for 2009 and 2010.

So what does this mean?

We don't know yet, but the announcement coming two days before Anime Expo is no accident. If Kodansha really is going to be be releasing titles in the US in two months time, it is high time to announce them.

Many bloggers are saving their judgements but many of the comments on the blogs and forums I went sifted through today showed a positive anticipation of Kodansha's entry into the US manga publishing game. The hope is that titles will come down the pike faster and we'll finally get some Kodansha titles that haven't seen the English light of day yet.

Those are legitimate hopes, but I have several worries as well. Dark Horse will not fold if they lose all their Kodansha titles, but I do worry about the quality of the works if they were to come from another publisher (especially one not used to making high-quality transfers in English like DH does). Tankoubon in Japan go for about five dollars a pop. In the US they are 10 to 12 dollars on average. Personally I'd rather pay more for a solid release (paper, presentation and translation) than something that is going to fall apart. I know younger readers would probably disagree, but many of Kodansha's titles are directed for the more mature market.

Again, what this all will amount to will reveal itself in the future weeks and months. I fear for the future of smaller American manga publishers that might lose the tiny niche they have dug out with the introduction of more competition at the scale Kodansha can potentially present. If other publishers (Kodansha is not the biggest manga publisher in Japan) decide to follow suit who can guess what might happen? Hopefully reports from Anime Expo will piece some of the puzzle together.

Stay tuned...