TP Germany loses Kodansha manga

2009 is kicking off with international intrigue.

According to an official Tokyopop Germany newsletter, which has been reposted on their official BBS, Kodansha has not renewed its licensing agreement with the company, effectively cancelling all Kodansha-owned releases mid-run.  The affected books include Beck, School Rumble, Hell Girl, and Cromartie High School.  (Whoa, they can do that?  So… why are we waiting for ADV to finish up Cromartie?)

I’m going by a Babelfish translation here, but it appears that this was not due to any lapse on the part of Tokyopop Germany, who were caught by surprise…  they held dicussions with Kodansha, but were neither able to convince them to reconsider, nor were they successful in coaxing an explanation.

There are plenty of possibilities, and not many of them bode well for Tokyopop.  Is TP Germany a victim of soured relationships at the parent company?  Is this another clue to Kodansha’s international manga ambitions?  Has Del Rey been posting recruitment ads for German translators recently?  Absent any explanation from the above parties, I’m tilting away from this being isolated to the German arm alone.  But there is another potential avenue to explore… Carlsen and Egmont are German publishers who also hold Kodansha manga titles, so whether or not they experience similar issues in the coming months (or perhaps, pick up a bunch of new licenses) may give Kodansha’s actions some context.

If there are any subtleties in the forum post that didn’t come through the machine translation, please enlighten me.

Edit: Oh, and apparently there is a German equivalent of Del Rey… Random House imprint Heyne publishes Kodansha manga exclusively (at least according to the list of titles on ANN), including Air Gear, Genshiken, and Flower of Eden, curiously.

Edit 2: Comics212′s Christopher Butcher offers additional insight.

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ComiPress has links to coverage of Comic Market 75, which was held on the last three days of 2008.

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Missed it… writing for Digital Strips, Brigid Alverson examines Manganovel’s demise and questions, among other things, the wisdom of incorporating fan translations in its business model.  I don’t particularly disagree with Ms. Alverson’s observations about the scanlation community’s insular nature, but I doubt it was a contributing factor when there were so many other things already going against Manganovel, namely the lack of major manga licenses, and the general monetization difficulties almost all such online publishing efforts face.

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Well, it looks like Mania finally done broke AnimeOnDVD and “TP-fied” it.  Sigh.

Anyway… Chris Beveridge writes about the 5 things anime publishers got right this year.  He also wrote about the 5 things the industry did wrong, but I can’t find it anymore amid all the rollover links and embedded videos.  Why does every page load 500+ items?

Hopefully, we’ll see a similar write-up for the manga industry…

Edit: Here’s the 5 things anime companies did wrong article (thanks, Fezmonkey).