Seeing David Taylor’s reaction to the new Tokyopop website got me thinking back to some thoughts I had about Tokyopop and it’s competition, Viz after my last trip to San Diego.

David writes:

Tokyopop doesn’t know what it is or what it wants to be. At one point it was a publisher of Manga, pushing the boundaries and setting the standards for what we take for granted nowadays. Then it tried to become the de-rigour provider of home-grown manga talent so much so that we’ve had OGM, OEL, Global or World and people don’t know whether they are coming or going and really are beginning to not care one way or the other. Now we’ve got this weird hybrid multi-media company with the Tokyopop Music label which would be fine if there was anything good being released. Then to top it all off we have a myspace clone sitting and not quite getting the hint that it’s not wanted.

A year ago I said:

At the moment, the manga market is saturated and competition for shelf space if pretty fierce. Viz hopes it can combat this problem by bringing in new readers, seeing girls as a market that hasn’t been fully realized. Throughout the Shojo Beat panel, shojo’s potential for growth was discussed and that the magazine aspires to reach someone who doesn’t read manga. One comment that I found interesting came when Shojo Beat managing editor Jennifer Morgan said that her goal was to fill Shojo Beat with articles that could draw readers outside of manga consumers. I hadn’t thought of evaluating the magazine that way, it might be an interesting project for another time.

Morgan explained that she was trying to bridge the challenges a new manga reader may encounter in Shojo Beat’s non-manga content. The cover is meant to draw the attention of fashion magazine readers and, hopefully, get them to browse the magazine long enough to find the manga selections intriguing. Similarly, Morgan hopes that the music section (profiling the fabulous Puffy AmiYumi in the debut issue) may draw J-pop and J-rock fans to check out the magazine and be drawn into the manga. The magazine will also include articles focusing on Japanese culture, like the article that explained how Japanese homes are arranged that preceded the first chapter of Baby & Me, to help bridge any cultural gaps…

While Viz sees the potential to grow a market where manga has done well, Tokyopop seems to want to take advantage of untapped genres. Their Original English Language Manga titles got a lot of talk, including Svetlana Chmakova’s upcoming serial in CosmoGIRL! magazine. Panel attendees were also encouraged to submit their proposals to Tokyopop. The success of the Warcraft OEL in Germany was mentioned (along with another title that I realize I did not note), seemingly to counter any thoughts that manga buyers won’t accept anything that’s not “pure” manga. Chuck Austin’s title brought on a few talking points about the established comic creators working on Tokyopop’s OEL titles that emphasized the enthusiasm they had for manga and the way it is paced differently from American comics.

Rereading my observations from last July, it’s interesting to see where the two companies have gone since then. Shojo Beat’s voice has gotten clearer and it’s become a solid magazine for young Japanophiles — who, if they aren’t reading manga are the most likely to be pulled into the artform by Shojo Beat’s articles. Viz has also made gains on the bookshelf thanks to their anime titles getting exposure on a national outlet, basic cabel channel The Cartoon Network. Meanwhile, the publisher has also managed to slowly increase the range of ages encompassed within their “hit” titles when Death Note, a title that skews older than most Viz hit series, became another frequent sighting in top sales lists.

In the meantime, Tokyopop has been… well, they’ve been reminding me of CrossGen in its last days, rolling out all sorts of product, usually moving on before the previously big thing can develop a following with customers. Originally, their OEL Manga line and BLU imprint seemed like a smart way to take advantage of areas of manga fandom that wasn’t getting adequately served by Tokyopop’s competitors. Now, the company is looking unfocused and the signal-to-noise ratio is getting worse.