Rumor Update: Manga Publisher Kodansha to Open U.S. Branch
After a smattering of rumors shortly after Book Expo America in late May that were
shoo'ed away, yesterday Anime News Network and ICV2 confirmed that Japanese publisher Kodansha is launching a U.S.
branch for their manga publishing operations. Prior to this announcement, Kodansha's manga offerings in the U.S. consisted of their now
mostly out of print bilingual editions of manga such as Doraemon, GTO - Great Teacher Onizuka and Division Chief Kosaku
Shima, and their licensing of their extensive roster of new and classic manga to American publishers, which lately
has been dominated by their close relationship with Del Rey Manga.
The news of Kodansha's American expansion came mostly out of a news story from Nikkei.net, a Japanese business news website,and is
somewhat short on details, other than Kodansha's planning on launching this new divison in September.
Naturally, given Kodansha's close relationship with Del Rey Manga, tongues were wagging and inquisitive sorts were wondering, where does this leave Del Rey Manga? Dallas Middaugh, Del Rey Manga's Associate Publisher was quick to post a response on the Del Rey Manga blog:
Well, it’s business as usual at Del Rey Manga. We’re continuing to license manga from Kodansha, and as has been stated elsewhere, we’ve just about wrapped up our licenses for 2009 and are now starting to work on 2010.... Also, we will continue to publish all of our manga. Kodansha has not pulled any licenses back from us.
Given Kodansha's immense library of classic and current manga titles, there was no way that Del Rey or Dark Horse, their other major U.S. licensor could have possibly published them all. My hope is that this new division of Kodansha takes some chances and brings more of the
really cool and innovative manga that they feature in Afternoon and Morning magazines and some classic manga from their vaults. I would LOVE to see Kami no Shizuki, Chi's Sweet Home and even Doraemon published in English, so if this move allows more of Kodansha's great comics to the U.S., then I say bring it on!
POSTSCRIPT: Ed Chavez of MangaCast kindly reminded me that Doraemon is a Shogakukan title. The mix-up came because I forgot that Shogakukan also published a line of bilingual manga about the same time as the Kodansha line. Doh. On a side note, I wonder this recent development with Kodansha is why the license to reprint Sailor Moon has been so elusive lately.... Also, at their panel appearance at Anime Expo 2008, Dark Horse representatives were asked about the status of their current Kodansha licenses, including Akira, and pretty much gave a "no comment."
Comments
Hey Deb, Just wanted to send you a link to the Doraemon English-Japanese comic from Shogakukan not Kodansha.
Ah, thank you Ed. I stand corrected! I’ll make the tweak now. Now, I wonder when they’ll ever print Doraemon in English, especially now that he’s Japan’s official manga ambassador!
Well, if you were at the Viz panel you might have heard that Viz plans to release Doraemon… someday. I mean they even dedicated a whole office to him in the Viz offices. But as Viz stated, they are trying to figure out how to release that long classic in this market.
Sure, they’ve been talking about it for years. It’s nice to see that VIZ were able to figure out how to publish Oishinbo and Golgo 13, both super-long running series in a ‘greatest hits’ format. As you well know, classic manga and kids manga are hard sells in this market — but I’m sure when the time is right, VIZ will do what they can to promote Doraemon.