A small tempest has been brewing at MangaGamers, the eroge download site, over the deletion of a few CG images from the title Soul Link. The decision was made by the original publisher, who cited legal considerations for the removal.
As someone who has been in this exact situation numerous times, and understands the kind of risks they are already taking, all I’ll say is that they have my complete sympathy. It’s not their job to fight our free speech battles.
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AltJapan has picked up on an interview with a Madhouse CFO who had a very downbeat assessment of the current Japanese anime industry, and feels the future of animation lies in China. His candid sentiments are not popular all around. to say the least…
Globalization and outsourcing are convenient scapegoats in troubled economic times, but they’re really not the core issue. The problem is greed and the concentration of profits toward the top. Investors who demand too much, bosses whose salaries equal that of 1000 employees… it’s the devaluation of workers, those who actually do, create, innovate, and the unwillingness to invest in retaining those essential skills that are killing industries left and right, anime included. Until focus is turned back onto the craftsman, the artists, the skilled laborers, there’s nothing anyone can do to improve the situation. The moment those outsource countries decide foreign money is no good, is when the loss of production capacity is going to bite investor countries in the ass.
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Technologizer has the first in-depth review of BN’s nook. Unfortunately, it doesn’t spend any time with nook’s PDF abilities, but we’ll rectify that soon enough…
Semi-related: While the comparisons between print and digital sales are kind of iffy (among the suggestions for making ebook sales profitable is cutting royalties to authors), this article’s claims that Amazon is losing $2 per ebook sale seem quite believable. This probably accounts for the disparity between Kindle ebook prices versus BN’s.
Edit: CNET has its review up, and it does cover PDF and image handling. (No zooming on PDFs confirmed. Sigh.) Engadget and Gizmodo have mixed impressions, but mostly fault the software, which will be updated.
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Some clever souls decided to declare the last week of the year, during which Diamond will not be shipping any new comics to stores, as Indy Comic Book Week. Check out their blog for more details and messages from participating publishers/creators.
So, now we have FCBD, ICBW, and May is Manga Month. Don’t you think porn comics deserve something too? It could be on April 29th, to make it extra special.
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Forget the nook. I read manga on my Droid of all things. One page basically fits a screen, and it looks beautiful. And it zooms pdfs and other images quite nicely.
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Tying Mangagamers problems with some of the discussion of ‘why anime is so totally terrible these days’ and creative globalization, you’re going to have a little bit of disconnect between cultures whether legitimate concerns or just perceptions.
A lot of those perception problems are also going to be influenced by how your market nation ‘wants’ to be perceived too; all over the Ex Machina commentary, you hear ‘the sophisticated American audience’ and you hear about how anything ‘pro-gun’ won’t fly in the US.
So, in the case of Mangagamers, they aren’t just looking to serve us perverts, they have to consider the law and general puritanical views on sex of certain western nations. In the case of Chinese productions on the levels they’re talking about, there’s some schisms that will harm the actual productions. Just look at the difference between ‘Blood Brothers’ and the original ‘Bullet in the Head’ to see what the mainland did to HK cinema.
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>and you hear about how anything ‘pro-gun’ won’t fly in the US
Wha?
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“It’s not their job to fight our free speech battles.”
The only problem with that is that everyone keeps saying that over and over and over with no one seeming to want to start this fight I keep hearing about.
I would, but then I don’t own or make decisions for a manga publisher. But if I ever do, I plan to start the fight. Boy howdy do I plan to.
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