How Many Times Can the Sky Fall in Anime Fandom?
It’s happening again. Envision a bunch of headless chickens running around, bumping into things at random, screaming their throatless cries of incoherent terror as… horror of horrors… Tokyopop reorganizes. Oh, it’s the end of the world as we know it, they brainlessly whine, whatever will we do?
Grow the hell up, that’s what you’ll do. Now granted, I get to hear all the inside poop on the anime and manga market, considering my wife is editor-in-chief at Manga Village, but even if that weren’t so, it’s pretty sad to see all the anime and manga fanboys acting like the world is ending because these poorly-run companies are getting a well-deserved dose of reality.
A year or so ago, when Geneon went belly up, we got weeks of whining that the American anime market was collapsing and soon, we’d have no more anime in the United States. The simple fact is that since then, not much has changed. Sure, some individual shows that Geneon owned the rights to stopped being produced, but those were shows that really nobody wanted to watch in the first place. Geneon bought all kinds of shows that had virtually no fanbase and wouldn’t appeal to a decent audience, it’s no wonder they went out of business, they made a lot of bad business decisions.
Now, it’s time for the manga side of things to experience a much-needed readjustment. Tokyopop has announced a reorganization that will split their media side from their publishing arm, as well as a downsizing of manga titles that didn’t sell well to begin with. Tokyopop should have learned from Geneon, they were guilty of the same buying frenzy mentality without consideration of the marketplace and now, they’re suffering the same problem and a virtually identical solution: dump the dead wood.
I guess it’s no surprise, considering most of these anime and manga companies are run by fanboys, not businessmen. They buy titles because they, themselves want to read or see them, not because they have any chance in hell of selling enough to make a profit. It doesn’t take long before these badly run companies find out that the whole world isn’t made up of clueless fanboys who will buy anything, no matter how awful, just to support the industry. They actually have to put out a quality product aimed at a significant portion of the market in order to recoup their investment. Imagine that!
In some ways, it’s funny to watch the manga blogging community freak out, like it was back in the day with the anime community and Geneon, but seriously, it does get rather tiring when the sky falls for these people every other week. It’s about time they realize that the anime and manga market is just like any other market, it operates on the rules of supply and demand. If there is no demand, there should be no supply. Companies like Geneon and Tokyopop which buy because they want to watch it themselves deserve to go out of business because they are being irresponsible. Every manga title that comes out in Japan isn’t going to be appropriate for an American audience and the successful company is the one that can pick and choose from among the titles available and provide the best and most likely to be successful in the United States. Sorry if that upsets the people who want to read niche titles but that’s the way the cookie crumbles.
This should blow over in a couple of weeks, as Geneon did, at least until the next fanboy crisis and the next time the sky will be falling and it will be the end of the world as we know it. I know I’ll be feeling fine when it does.
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