Mainichi reports that a man has been arrested on suspicion of damaging a city-owned statue of Ryotsu Kankichi, the main character of long-running manga “KochiKame.” The suspect broke off a maraca in the statue’s left hand while intoxicated, and turned himself in after seeing the extensive media coverage of the vandalism.
Perfunctory: The Situationists did it first.
Thought I going to say The Simpsons, didn’t you?
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At Okazu, mangaka and former Garo contributor Rica Takashima reminisces about her first exposure to the groundbreaking magazine after touring the Garo exhibition at The Center for Book Arts.
Edit: Correction (thanks, Erica.)
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A storm appears to be brewing within the visual novel translation fandom… Japanese eroge developer minori erased an entry on their games on a publicly-editable wiki, and told a few translation groups to desist projects that infringe on their products. Some of them might not comply. Beyond the usual copyright concerns, as Tsurupeta noted, Japanese eroge companies are now facing serious free speech challenges at home from religious elements and social conservatives, whose rhetoric of late has been buttressed by complaints and negative reporting from abroad.
A source of amusement in this discussion, and its analogues in fansubs/scanlations/warez, is the amount of concern the pro-piracy side apparently has for the financial health of the creators and companies. Such legal actions to protect copyright would hurt the company’s online visibility, ergo their bottom line, so they argue… but without having worked as accountants at the company, they have little knowledge to make that claim. And unless they were the owners of the company, they have little right to make financial decisions for it. (No matter how smart it would be to let Warren Buffet handle your investments, you’d want for him to have your consent at least, wouldn’t you?)
Rationalizations for fan translations, be it anime or manga or games, are certainly not without merit. But once the rights holder begins asserting his rights, for whatever reason, I think it’s time for the unauthorized translators to call it a day.
That said, minori’s editing of a fan-maintained wiki might be a little out of order. The page remains erased, as the editors have locked it from further edits. I suppose, had the page actually contained direct links to pirated material, minori would have at least a modicum of justifiable cause. But no company should be in the business of censoring factual information, no matter how much the company may be damaged it.
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By way of Yomiuri, ANN reports Naruto has cumulatively sold over 100 million copies. One Piece is almost twice that number already.
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Missed it… Anime Today speaks with Viz’s Mike Montesa about Tsutomu Nihei’s Biomega, while mangaka Q Hayashida shares insights into his work process at SigIkki. A shame the images are so small. (Second link via MangaBlog)
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Sankaku Complex translates an editorial about Shueisha’s recent missive against illicit manga scans that makes the following points:
- Publishers fear digital distribution as a whole.
- Publishers fear their role would be marginalized.
- The main source of income for mangaka is in royalties.
- A growing number of mangaka are putting their works online to boost tankoubon sales.
- Online distribution frees mangaka from publishers.
To address these one by one…
1. Manga publishers do not, in general, fear online distribution. They fear devaluing their core product line. Subtle, but important difference.
It’s a fallacy to present online distribution as a general system; not all online distribution is equal. Publishers see little reason yet to invest heavily in web publishing where piracy of manga is easy and rampant, the expectation for content to be free is strong, and there is no single standard in formats or commerce (such as iTunes provides for music). On the other hand, manga publishers in certain genres have embraced distribution through mobile phones, because on there they have solved a lot of the problems that still plague the web.
Ask yourself, why are publishers excited over Kindle and iPad when everything they do, can already be done with any of the hundreds of millions of PCs that already exist? It’s all about the environment those platforms provide.
2. The observation that publishers fear being marginalized is… obvious, to say the least. Of course publishers would want to protect themselves. But their fate is ultimately in the hands of creators. They choose whether they work through the traditional publishing system or not. Is it still better for creators to work with an organized company with resources and services, than to go it alone? Yes. Might Amazon or Apple replace specialized publishers one day? That’s also a distinct possibility, but that doesn’t necessarily mean a better situation for all creators, or that piracy wouldn’t still be a threat to online publishers.
3. The primary source of income for mangaka are royalties, but royalties only come in *after* the book is published. What do mangaka depend on while they are drawing the manga? How do they pay for food, rent, assistants, and materials? Page rates from magazines. It doesn’t matter that magazines are not the main source of income, or that some even lose money… they still generate revenue, amortizing the cost of manga production, funding the system of editing, research, and marketing that publishers provide. Choosing to go it alone means going without those kinds of support. Which is fine for some artists, but not all.
Could print magazines be replaced with online magazines? Perhaps. But keep in mind the work involved in terms of man hours to provide that level of service, versus the kind of ad-based magazines that the internet can currently support. Think of how many news blogs actually do original reporting, versus commentary. Commentary is by far the majority of blog content, because it takes much less man-hours to produce.
4. Artists putting their work online is perfectly fine, that’s their choice. There are publishers who put work online for free, too. That seems inconsistent with points 1 and 2, and has nothing to do with Shueisha’s request to end online piracy.
5. Can creators be free from publishers? That assumes creators were ever not free. The internet isn’t new anymore. It’s been around for a while. Anyone can self publish.
Artists do not just “depend” on publishers. They depend on the services, the financing, the organization, and the leveraging that publishers currently provide. Neither print nor the internet offers those things intrinsically.
Can a strictly online publisher provide those things? Sure, eventually. But right now, it hasn’t happened because online publishing isn’t generating the same kind of revenue as traditional media. If it did, Crunchyroll would be making its own anime instead of licensing them. Youtube would be paying for every single video uploaded by its users. The internet isn’t magic, where suddenly things can cost less than what it takes to produce them, or artists can live without advances. The money has to come from somewhere. The real problem is that hardware companies and new media titans and wannabes aren’t the ones putting it up.
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That is just awful.
Now this is more like it.
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