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Old 07-03-2007, 07:37 PM   #1
Talon87
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"Futari H" manga licensed

Tokyopop apparently has licensed the Futari Ecchi manga as "Futari H" for American distribution. As we have discussed here in times past, this manga ought to be considered an H-manga due to its explicit sexual content. However, this same sexual content is provided purely as "educational and humorous" and is not (strictly speaking) meant to be whack-off material.

For those who may not know (BBB or nobody -.-), the basic premise of the manga is "a 25 year old virgin dude meets a 25 year old virgin girl at an arranged-marriage date. They hit it off and decide to get married. Neither knows the other is a virgin until their honeymoon night. Hilarity ensues, and the entirety of the series is dedicated to how these two lovebirds explore each other -- and themselves -- sexually." It's basically Sex Ed with a story and a lot of naughty pictures. Very rated-X, yet with a PG heart.

Now, as for the rest of us. There are fifty volumes of this ongoing work. Even if I wanted to buy it all, I couldn't possibly afford to at $10 a book. That's $500 for 30-something volumes I've already read ages ago and another 10-something that I'm not necessarily dying to read, either. So I'm wondering ... is Tokyopop aware of this? (That most otakus interested in Futari H have already downloaded it and read scanlations of it?) Or do they not care, and they think they can get enough money from people who have never heard of it before but would still be interested?

My other question is, is this going to be shelved as "manga" along with everything else in most bookstores? If so, we're going to experience a MASSIVE backlash in 5 ... 4 ... 3 ... 2 ... 1 ...! You get my point. It's a ticking timebomb. It's asking for trouble, to shelve this in between "Fushigi Yuugi" and "Galaxy Angel." No good will come of this. Some 7 year old is going to pick it off the shelf, be surprised, show it to his mom, and the lawsuits against Tokyopop, the bookstore, and all of otakudom will begin. However, there's no precedent for an "adult section" for printed hentai in America. Digital hentai (i.e. PC games and anime), yes. They put it in the adult section at Frye's and Fye's (and SunCoast, before SunCoast went out of business). But manga? No. Nobody who currently carries manga has an "adult section" except for Mom & Pop anime stores. Borders ... Barnes & Noble ... Waldenbooks ... none of these stores has pr0n, so they're not ready for printed pr0n, a.k.a. "hentai".
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Old 07-03-2007, 08:25 PM   #2
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Re: "Futari H" manga licensed

Like Berserk FE will be shrink-wrapped with a huge NSFW sticker on it.

And TKP understands that the internet has already devoured the title, they don't care - they're only aiming for non-mainstream internet savvy anime/manga otaku. The reason is TKP is finding it harder and harder to license good manga titles since that god dang bloody Shueisha/Shogakukan cartel prevent a majority of published manga from ever getting to other American companies not named VIZ Media (imagine a librarian reserving half of her library's contents for one student and not letting the other children check them out) and Del Rey has a contract with Kodansha. Both companies have more Japanese-market clout than TKP which also has a poor reputation in American for bad quality nowadays anyway.

Hence, why TKP is going gangbusters with the manhua and 'amerimanga' stuff. They'll be happy with whatever manga they can get their hands on nowadays.
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Old 07-03-2007, 08:40 PM   #3
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Re: "Futari H" manga licensed

I remember back when I started collecting manga in 2003. There were two companies back then who did manga -- Tokypop and somebody else (probably Viz). I remember thinking to myself back then, and many people agreeing with me, "Tokyopop is the good group, so always hope that your favorite mangas get picked up by them. [The other group] is the bad group. Their mangas look like shit and they overcharge." This was back in 2003 when I purchased Chobits and Angelic Layer and was beginning to collect Pita-Ten.

Genshiken was my first Del Rey title, purchased in the summer of 2005. I remember being skeptical of the $11 pricetag at first but falling in love immediately after I completed the first Genshiken volume. By 2005, I had already been studying Japanese for one year, so I had an appreciation for a company who retained honorifics and had an endnotes section at the back to explain culture and select translations (like "fan-zine"). I also noticed that quite a few of the hottest new titles -- Negima and Tsubasa, for example -- were licensed by Del Rey, meaning that Akamatsu Ken (Love Hina) and CLAMP (Chobits, Angelic Layer, etc.) had switched alliances. It was a sign: Tokyopop was out, and Del Rey was in.

Not long afterwards, I noticed that Tokyopop licensed only one thing I was interested in, one thing I had hoped Del Rey would pick up: Rozen Maiden. Outside of that, Tokyopop was (and is) as good as dead to me.

Now, granted, Del Rey isn't exactly perfect either. The lamination on my older Genshiken volumes is peeling even though I've only read them 3-4 times and they've been shelved the rest of the time. They still charge $11 even though they've got their foot in the door, and they will probably bump it up to $12 in the near future to adjust for inflation. And they really haven't licensed anything I'm dying to read -- nobody has. The only manga I buy these days are the newest volumes of Genshiken and Rozen Maiden. That's it. Sort of difficult to say I really have any "allegiance" to Del Rey, and it's also difficult to say I've "cut off" Tokyopop when they're still getting 50% of my manga budget.
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Old 07-03-2007, 10:23 PM   #4
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Re: "Futari H" manga licensed

It's tough to figure out who does the best job on manga when there's a virtual oligopoly on manga sources such that even powerful anime companies (ADV, Geneon) can't enter the market and stay competitive. Geneon doesn't have the start-up costs and facilities even though they want "in" really badly, and despite being the largest anime company in American business right now ADV's manga line is almost defunct.

People have no idea how powerful Kodansha, Kadokawa, Shogakukan and Shueisha are in Japan - when people say they've got a hold on the printed, they mean those four companies own nearly all published manga/light noves/visual novels in the whole country. Even Hakusensha and Square-Enix, both big companies, have nothing on the "Shitennou" and virtually everyone else either publishes manga in a non-manga magazine (as in the case of Nobuyuki Fukumoto with Akagi and Kentaro Miura with Berserk) or operates in the doujin market.

I never knew how much of a "beacon of hope" for the doujin world TYPE-MOON was until I glanced over a small comment in the .txt of OMGWTFOTL not a couple days ago. TYPE-MOON is a well-known company in the ELC, but it has almost legendary status in Japan.

In any matter, the criminal part of the crazy cartoon cartel is that when companies make exclusive deals with some corporations to force others (TKP and ADV) out, as in the case with Shueisha/Shogakukan permitting no other company (except a weird case with Raijin) access to their manga, while allowing VIZ Media to still license manga from the "maverick" companies. Del Rey isn't much different, even if it is smaller, sadly - Kodansha is perhaps bigger than Shogakukan/Shueisha combined, even though those two are the second and third largest companies (respectively) following Kodansha.

Same bull-crack with Bandai and Geneon Entertainment for anime (for the most part), which is part of the reason I'm getting more pissed off at them nowadays.
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Old 07-03-2007, 10:40 PM   #5
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Re: "Futari H" manga licensed

I don't know if I'd say Geneon's in a position to threaten ADV today as compared with the past. When I joined the anime community, Geneon was still called Pioneer; and back then, Bandai was afraid of Pioneer usurping its position as #1. Pioneer got the name change in 2004 to Geneon (right in the midst of the Chobits DVDs coming out), but with it came a decline in their licenses. Geneon began to get noticeably fewer and fewer titles, with more and more of them being shitty. Geneon got Chobits and X back in the early 2000s; there's no way they'd get those same titles today. Not by a long-shot. Take a look at their sneak peeks for what they got recently -- they got Doki Doki (which I love but nobody else does), the lesbian-priestess anime which even lesbians and miko fanatics disliked, and the horrible Chrno Crusade anime. Meanwhile, ADV gets Elfen Lied and Bandai picks up Haruhi. Bandai and ADV are zooming off towards the horizon while Geneon finds itself receding into the darkness along with MediaBlasters.

Back to your discussion of Japanese companies ... if you find this stuff interesting, Doppel, then I have a J-drama recommendation for you. I haven't seen it myself, but it won Japan's equivalent of the Emmy's as best drama of 2007 and apparently it netted 30.4% of the viewership for its final episode in Kansai (Kyoto & Osaka), and a respectable 24% in Kanto (Tokyo). That's insane. 24% ... most J-dramas consider themselves "da winna!" if their finale gets even 20% of the viewership.

Here's the link: http://wiki.d-addicts.com/Karei-naru_Ichizoku
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Old 07-03-2007, 11:23 PM   #6
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Re: "Futari H" manga licensed

Quote:
Originally Posted by Talon87
I don't know if I'd say Geneon's in a position to threaten ADV today as compared with the past. When I joined the anime community, Geneon was still called Pioneer; and back then, Bandai was afraid of Pioneer usurping its position as #1. Pioneer got the name change in 2004 to Geneon (right in the midst of the Chobits DVDs coming out), but with it came a decline in their licenses. Geneon began to get noticeably fewer and fewer titles, with more and more of them being shitty. Geneon got Chobits and X back in the early 2000s; there's no way they'd get those same titles today. Not by a long-shot. Take a look at their sneak peeks for what they got recently -- they got Doki Doki (which I love but nobody else does), the lesbian-priestess anime which even lesbians and miko fanatics disliked, and the horrible Chrno Crusade anime. Meanwhile, ADV gets Elfen Lied and Bandai picks up Haruhi. Bandai and ADV are zooming off towards the horizon while Geneon finds itself receding into the darkness along with MediaBlasters.
In the past year through now, Geneon got Rozen Maiden, Higurashi (AFTER it premiered), FSN and Shana as a pre-license, Magical Lyrical Girl Nanoha (both seasons), the latter of which is one of the highest selling shows on DVD ever as well as one that got good ratings (pedo-licious -.-), Serei no Moribito (GITS: SAC...in feudal Japan!), Gankutsuou, Black Lagoon and they're consolidating what classics they can get their hands on like Harlock and Getter Robo.

True, the company hasn't gotten as much as it did in the past, but the company was the same size back when it was Pioneer all the way until now, where it has grown tremendously. This is because there were three periods of a serious surge in the interest of anime with doldrums in-between: 2000, with Pokemon, 2002 with Yu-Gi-Oh! and Shounen Jump, and 2004~2005 with Naruto, Elfen Lied, GaiaOnline's meteoric rise and the awareness of how to use torrents to get free anime.

During the Pioneer days, most of Pioneer's dubs went through Canada and distribution was limited because interest in anime was low. The company went under more direct control from it's "parent" in Japan who actually aquired a majority equity in the formerly "American company acting as a vendor for a Japanese one" (not unlike what happened to VIZ Media, which occured in 2002~2004 with the Shueisha equity purchase) and the company went bankrupt a couple times as Geneon.

But now that the hideous Bang Zoom! Entertainment exists close to Geneon's head quarters, a good portion of anime sales can go through the internet (not to mention traditional distribution networks have expanded greatly), the company is starting to get a greater foothold. tempest mentioned their net revenue in the past year was $50 million, which is still small compared with FUNimation and ADV in the hundreds of millions but far higher than the paltry sums it was taking in years past.

The companies that have been doing really well recently are FUNimation and VIZ Media, the "old tired giants" are Bandai and 4Kids, who are still comitted to the "old fashioned" way of anime as a commercial with merchandise the real gold mine. Bandai got into the moe business to recover from Gundam SEED's massive commercial failure, but now that Canada "wants to be different from the US" Bandai has jumped on the opportunity to promote that trash show to our neighbors in the north.

ADV hasn't had a hit since EL, for the reasons I hypothesized - too many corporations are entitled to certain anime so ADV can't get a grip on them. They've got a friendship with Gainax and that netted them Gurren-Lagann, but aside from that most of their licenses are pretty sad, weak titles. The "best" they could come up with last year was Utawarerumono.

Geneon and Media Blasters pull up the rear, but MB's sad state of affairs was because of a huge tactical error: GaoGaiGar. They were hoping for a Berserk/Rurouni Kenshin and had to pay an OUTRAGEOUS sum from Sunrise, who was already annoyed Bandai USA "didn't want" GGG and the lack of promotion/poor reviews of the title will almost certainly kill the company. MB enjoyed nabbing surprise big-hits from time to time and sadly GGG was the first, and likely last, major dud.

Great show though...

Quote:
Originally Posted by Talon87
Back to your discussion of Japanese companies ... if you find this stuff interesting, Doppel, then I have a J-drama recommendation for you. I haven't seen it myself, but it won Japan's equivalent of the Emmy's as best drama of 2007 and apparently it netted 30.4% of the viewership for its final episode in Kansai (Kyoto & Osaka), and a respectable 24% in Kanto (Tokyo). That's insane. 24% ... most J-dramas consider themselves "da winna!" if their finale gets even 20% of the viewership.

Here's the link: http://wiki.d-addicts.com/Karei-naru_Ichizoku
I might look into it, but my real interest in corporate history is everything from Reagan's de-regulations on, here and abroad.
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Old 07-03-2007, 11:31 PM   #7
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Re: "Futari H" manga licensed

You're right (about Geneon's many quality licenses you just listed).

You're right (about Elfen Lied being ADV's last good license; it's also the last ADV DVD set I purchased, come to think of it ...).

Hats off to you tonight, Doppel.
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Old 07-03-2007, 11:47 PM   #8
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Re: "Futari H" manga licensed

Chrono Crusade was an ADV show Talon... Also an ADV Manga (which is so much better).
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Old 07-28-2007, 07:23 PM   #9
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Re: "Futari H" manga licensed

Can anybody confirm if the following image is a shopjob or if [the wife; I forget her name] really has cheated on her husband!? She avoided it for so long! She was so pure! Has the artist really run out of ideas and has had to resort to staining their pure marriage?

The reason I ask is, the text looks like it's been typed in by somebody on a computer; and the image itself looks like it's been resized downwards from an original scanning size and saved that way, perhaps by an amateur not well-acquainted with how image files ought to be saved or resized.

Also, I don't remember his wife ever being called 優良 ("superior"), yet that is what is in the text bubble on the bottom-left: "Calm down! There's no way Superior-san would be in Yamada-kun's room, right!?"

Problem is, the text on the top of that same cel does ominously state, "However, this is the REALITY." As Makoto's wife (whose real name eludes me atm) is being cummed into by some young kid I don't remember atm (Yamada-kun? ) and her husband is feverishly trying to deny what he's seeing.

WARNING! The following link leads to a picture of a comic displaying sexually explicit material. Do not click on this link unless you are above the age of 18 or have permission to do so. The image does not violate any laws in the USA and UPN is not responsible for any damages claimed or implied by those who choose to click on this link.

http://img514.imageshack.us/img514/8669 ... 391ma9.jpg
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Old 07-28-2007, 09:27 PM   #10
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Re: "Futari H" manga licensed

It's a doujin. Different censorship style.
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Old 07-28-2007, 09:34 PM   #11
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Re: "Futari H" manga licensed

Thank god. *sigh of relief*
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