The end of an era?
30 Apr 2011 Leave a Comment
in Anime/Manga
I’m currently working on an article for Comics Bulletin about the US shutdown of mainstream manga publisher TOKYOPOP a few weeks ago. The whole mess has me asking a lot of questions about the future of the industry, especially since I’m supposed to be writing it as an investigative piece about what really happened. From what I found, there are multiple layers that contribute to TOKYOPOP’s decline, but one that really sticks out to me is the scanlation “industry.”
Scanlations are fan-translated computer scans of manga titles–many which haven’t been claimed by a US publisher. However, there are popular series like Nana, Death Note, Naruto, etc. that are still being illegally published online. When one site is forced to take the series down, it quickly pops up on another–a never-ending tug of war between publishers trying to recoup their losses and manga fans who want the series on demand for free.
I interviewed one fan who mercilessly blamed consumers of scanlations for the decline of TOKYOPOP and said he preferred owning paperback copies of his manga rather than read online. It made me reflect back on my love for Shojo Beat magazine, a subscription renewed every Christmas for me by mom for about 3 years. I loved flipping through the 300-page magazine all at once, devouring my favorite stories and anxiously guessing what would happen next with my sister.
When Shojo Beat folded and sent a said letter to me in the mail about my subscription, I read my first scanlation. I didn’t even know scanlations existed until a Facebook friend made a comment about reading Nana, my favorite comic in Shojo Beat, on OneManga.com. I immediately went to the site and drooled over all the titles available at the click of a mouse–entirely free. After romance title after title, I explored other genres and discovered my favorite: Death Note. I swear I did nothing that summer but read manga and go to work–I was hooked.
There’s a part of me that will always feel guilty for reading all that manga online for free. It wasn’t helping the mangaka any bit and it was screwing over publishers like TOKYOPOP. But at the same time, my love and interest in other genres wouldn’t have grown if not for OneManga. I’m sure I’m not the only person out there who feels like this, but it won’t make it stop. Just as people continue to download music through torrents, scanlation groups will continue to find new host sites to upload their projects.
I don’t think it’s the end of manga, but it’s definitely a threat.
