Nymphet Post Mortem

Well, I’m still hoping for some kind of retraction, but barring that, Seven Seas’ Nymphet appears to be stillborn.  Here we’ll just discuss a few of the reasons (there are too many for a thorough examination, not here… ), so let’s take a look at the suspects, shall we?

The Market

He who holds the purse strings decides the fate of the book, and that’s the retailers.  As much as some may cherish the romantic ideals of publishing, it’s still a commercial business, with overriding financial concerns.  If retail support is insufficient, then it’s not only a waste of time and money for the publisher to proceed, but also a waste of effort for the artist as well.

Of course, the booksellers’ reticence may in large part be attributed to…

The Internet

Much of the coverage used scanlated pages from the book out of context, and careless tossed around words like “loli” and “shota” and “porn”.  And rage dumps are never out of vogue on the web, as multitudes of bloggers and forum goers bash the book sight unseen.

The Name

…or perhaps the entire way the book was marketed.  But the word “Nymphet” itself is quite provocative, and regardless of the fact that it was the artist’s idea or that it actually describes the main character’s personality perfectly, someone should have stepped in and said this was a bad idea.  But to be fair, this is 20/20 hindsight, I’m a jerk, and a direct translation may have been problematic as well.  (Kodomo no Jikan is literally “Child’s Time”, or with an added ironic twist, “Age of Innocence.”  And that definitely won’t work.)

Seven Seas

Ultimately, it was Seven Seas’ decision to cancel the book.  Perhaps they didn’t want one book to hurt the reputation of their entire line of manga, or maybe the retail support just wasn’t there, or perhaps they got tired of all the negativity being directed at them.  But they pulled the plug.

I listed the factors for Nymphet’s demise (excluding the controversial nature of the book itself; visit the many places of discussion and make up your own mind) to make this one point, especially to the hardcore fanboys/girls out there: publishers are battered at all times, from all sides, by external forces far beyond mere sales sheets or the simple faith in and desire to publish a certain artist.  Some books require localization, while others need no more than delicate marketing, and then there are some that can’t be published at all.

Most importantly, publishers have responsibility not only to serve the readers, but also licensors, the retail market, and above all, the creators… responsibilities that scanlators and even the fans themselves will never shoulder.  That’s why publishers sometimes need to make unpopular decisions.

So I ask the fans out there to be understanding of Seven Seas, a company whose staff wear their hardcore otaku credentials on their sleeves with the properties they choose to license, who have shown real faith in those books.  They took a risk and realized they bit off more than they could chew, but nonetheless they took it as far as they could.  They license books for a special segment of readers that have been underserved by others.  And they’ve still got He is My Master, Venus Versus Virus, Neconoclasm, and Strawberry Panic coming down the line.  Support them.  Support variety.  One misstep is no reason to turn your back.

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There is one thing that truly worries me from all the recent net outrages, including the Nymphet ordeal: the rise of websites and bloggers from both sides of an issue whose sole raison detre appear to be inciting acrimony between different sectors of fandom and the belittlement of opposing dissidents, and the willingness of many to lend credence to them.  That general attitude is troubling, as it portends a shift in strategy by such grass-roots causes from advocacy, to the smear-and-ridicule tactics more befitting of political or religious extremists.  Rather than taking a step up, the call has increasingly become for everyone else to take a step down.  That is not empowerment.  These spontaneous umbrella causes do not truly concern themselves with promoting the interests of individual people whom they count amongst their members and place on their banners, but the advancement of singular ideology and the desire for everyone to march in lock-step with it.

The sucess of genre-centric manga such as shoujo and boy’s love certainly wasn’t built on the charred corpses of others, but by brave publishers who were willing to buck institutional assumptions and conventional wisdom about the market, and readers who exercised their right to seek out and enjoy works that speak to them.  Yet it is these very same forward-looking publishers who pioneered new genres and have done much to dispell the image of comics as a boy’s club, that are most susceptible to the factors that felled Nymphet, and thus most at risk of becoming victim to any special interest evangelical group employing the same slash and burn tactics.  Be wary of what you sow.