MangaHelpers Has Pulled Gunslinger Girl

I noticed today that all the raws and scanlations (ours and the South Korean ones) for Gunslinger Girl have been pulled from Mangahelpers with a note that this has action has been taken "due to licensing restrictions".

They're still up at MangaFox and Spectrum Nexus for the moment.

I wonder if Seven Seas is behind MangaHelper's pulling it?

It's highly possible.

I noticed the story a few days ago about the crackdown on manga sites while catching up on anime and manga news on Mania.

Article on Mania

Personally I think this is a witch hunt.

Geez, I've heard that before. Throughout history this sort of thing has been done, damn industries conducting witch hunts.

5 Insane File Sharing Panics BEFORE the internet.

Blast. Did anyone download all the volume files? I can't remember what I have and on what computer(s).

A mysterious cloud of vapor vents out of KodokuRyuu's USB port forming a ghostly figure of a dark skinned freckled girl with long twin ponytails, blue eyes, dressed in a pair of jeans, sleeveless turtleneck shirt, beat up sneakers and holding a netbook in her hands. She points to the netbook in her hands and smiles slightly.
"I've got up to Volume 10 in my archives." the girl says in a barely distinguishable voice.

Back in Southern Moo Hampshire...

"Dammit, Karin has been accessing my netbook AGAIN."

KodokuRyuu wrote:Blast. Did anyone download all the volume files? I can't remember what I have and on what computer(s).

I've got all the translated chapters (1-64) if that's what you're looking for...but I think everyone has that.

Maybe Kisk has a copy of the RAWs?

I have the Volume raws (1 - 11) plus the chapter raws of 67 through 73.

And thus Kisk saves the day.

Sweet. I'll check my various archives and see what I'm missing. Then I'll get all the raws up on MediaFire.

Triela Hilshire wrote:I noticed the story a few days ago about the crackdown on manga sites while catching up on anime and manga news on Mania.

Article on Mania

Personally I think this is a witch hunt.

How is this a witch hunt again? Isin't removing licensed content exactly what they're supposed to do?

Godot wrote:

Triela Hilshire wrote:I noticed the story a few days ago about the crackdown on manga sites while catching up on anime and manga news on Mania.

Article on Mania

Personally I think this is a witch hunt.

How is this a witch hunt again? Isin't removing licensed content exactly what they're supposed to do?

In order to protect their rear ends from prosecution, yes it is. Even sites located outside the United States will pull contact if it becomes licensed in the US, only a few countries don't offically recognize US licensing laws (China is one of them, but even then, some of the sites hosted there actually DO pull content for one reason or another)

That said, it's 'possible' this could be evidence of them getting back to translating the missing volumes and releasing them. Then again, it might also be them going after these sites for having material 'illegally'

The thing is though, is Gunslinger Girl's manga even licensed anymore considering they haven't released a new volume in nearly FOUR YEARS?

Kalshion, Seven Seas Press just purchased the English rights to GSG, and is planning on re-translating and releasing vols 1-6 early next year, and then continuing on with the rest of the series.

I have not had a problem with the rights aspect in regards to MangaHelpers because ADV abandoned everything but the rights to it. Now that it is being worked on again by someone who wants to make some money off of it and has gone through the trouble of purchasing it, I have to respect their rights to their property.

Do scanlations hurt sales? I think they do, though not to the bankrupting point that some claim. There are a lot of manga I've read online that I have gone on to purchase in print, and I plan to do so with GSG. This is because electronic information is perishable, to an extent, and I prefer to have the CD, or book, or whatever so that I have it in a physical form. You can always take a book, you can't always take a laptop.

How many manga have people purchased that they did not go past the first volume? In my particular case, Battle Vixens sits alone on my shelf because I just could not get into it. There are lost sales not attributed to internet. On the other hand, I've taken a liking to Yotsuba!, ashamed as I am to admit it, and I am purchasing the manga that I have already read online, not because it's no longer available online, but because I liked it. There are sales because of the internet.

I would like to see more rights-holders keep their stuff online, but in the end, you have to respect their rights because they paid for and own them.

Why are they retranslating it though if it's already been translated?

Kalshion wrote:Why are they retranslating it though if it's already been translated?

I would speculate they want to re-translate the first six volumes for consistency to avoid a sudden change in how the following volumes feel.

They probably wish to avoid something similar to what was pulled with season one and season two of Gunslinger Girl. The art wouldn't change but the dialogue would be different.

Not to mention that the ADV translation could be considered ADV property. It really doesn't make all that much of a difference to us, but if Seven Seas pays for and spends time on their own trans, ADV can't take them to court for copyright or something like that. A pound of cure for an ounce of cold or something like that.

What was said above is just as good a reason as well.

True, you have a point there. Though I will be comparing translations to see if there's much of a difference (usually is)

maverick375 wrote:Kalshion, Seven Seas Press just purchased the English rights to GSG, and is planning on re-translating and releasing vols 1-6 early next year, and then continuing on with the rest of the series.

I have not had a problem with the rights aspect in regards to MangaHelpers because ADV abandoned everything but the rights to it. Now that it is being worked on again by someone who wants to make some money off of it and has gone through the trouble of purchasing it, I have to respect their rights to their property.

Do scanlations hurt sales? I think they do, though not to the bankrupting point that some claim. There are a lot of manga I've read online that I have gone on to purchase in print, and I plan to do so with GSG. This is because electronic information is perishable, to an extent, and I prefer to have the CD, or book, or whatever so that I have it in a physical form. You can always take a book, you can't always take a laptop.

How many manga have people purchased that they did not go past the first volume? In my particular case, Battle Vixens sits alone on my shelf because I just could not get into it. There are lost sales not attributed to internet. On the other hand, I've taken a liking to Yotsuba!, ashamed as I am to admit it, and I am purchasing the manga that I have already read online, not because it's no longer available online, but because I liked it. There are sales because of the internet.

I would like to see more rights-holders keep their stuff online, but in the end, you have to respect their rights because they paid for and own them.

Yotsuba's great; don't worry about it . I myself have bought about 5 of the volumes, even though I haven't read too far into them yet. Great stuff though.

It's hard to say how much online manga harms the industry. While you might buy the published product, I'm certain a lot of other people won't. There's unfortunately no way of adequetely measuring the harm scanlations cause the industry, but it's certainly there.

Kalshion wrote:True, you have a point there. Though I will be comparing translations to see if there's much of a difference (usually is)

I'm glad ADV manga dropped the series, those incompetent morons. The wait was literally years between v3 and 4. And while I can't attest to this myself, I have heard their translations were of terrible quality anyway. It's also those kind of wait times that cause people to just search out scanlations in the first place or, if they don't bother with that, killing fan interest. I'm faced with a problem when I argue against piracy and the like when companies pull off crap like this. Good riddance, I say.

I probably fall into that category that because of the internet, I don't buy as much manga/anime as I should. I'm not a big enough fan of the medium for me to want to purchase merchandise unless I REALLY like the show.

To date, I've bought less than half-dozen series. So in general, if I can read it online, then I don't and won't buy it. Then again, I'm one of those "I wouldn't buy it anyways, so it's not a missed sale."

maverick375 wrote:Kalshion, Seven Seas Press just purchased the English rights to GSG, and is planning on re-translating and releasing vols 1-6 early next year, and then continuing on with the rest of the series.

Let's just hope that Seven Seas doesn't go the way of so many other publishers lately...

MadHatChemist wrote:

maverick375 wrote:Kalshion, Seven Seas Press just purchased the English rights to GSG, and is planning on re-translating and releasing vols 1-6 early next year, and then continuing on with the rest of the series.

Let's just hope that Seven Seas doesn't go the way of so many other publishers lately...

With the way the economy is right now; there's really no telling how things will go. We've lost so many publishers over the past five years, and I wouldn't be surprised if there are some we've lost that I've never of.

That said, let's just hope that things go ok for them.

I see the "lost sales" as being the sales that would be made to people who buy Vol 1 of a series and find they don't like it. Reading on-line can prevent that but then so can spending 20 minutes in Borders with a cup of coffee and just, you know, reading the darned thing a bit before buying it. Blaming scanlation for losing that custom is like being angry you aren't allowed to trick customers by lying to them.
I've said before that I think the lost sales are actually from other languages where the prevalence of a good scanlation makes it harder to justify the cost of translating the work again (by the publisher) when the expectation is that the market has already been exposed to all the content. One solution would be to license the translations from the scanlators of course. I imagine that would be cheaper than re-doing it from scratch? The danger is where a bad scanlation drives people away from a series and then they won't try the paper version because they've "already read it and it was crap".
On the whole I'm in favour of scanlation because very often it's the ONLY translation of a manga that there ever will be because of licensing and so on - and this is true even for English, let alone scanlations into minority languages.
What we really need is good quality, cheap, effective on-line teaching in Japanese language so we could all import the original manga / animé.

mistersaxon wrote:I see the "lost sales" as being the sales that would be made to people who buy Vol 1 of a series and find they don't like it. Reading on-line can prevent that but then so can spending 20 minutes in Borders with a cup of coffee and just, you know, reading the darned thing a bit before buying it. Blaming scanlation for losing that custom is like being angry you aren't allowed to trick customers by lying to them.
I've said before that I think the lost sales are actually from other languages where the prevalence of a good scanlation makes it harder to justify the cost of translating the work again (by the publisher) when the expectation is that the market has already been exposed to all the content. One solution would be to license the translations from the scanlators of course. I imagine that would be cheaper than re-doing it from scratch? The danger is where a bad scanlation drives people away from a series and then they won't try the paper version because they've "already read it and it was crap".
On the whole I'm in favour of scanlation because very often it's the ONLY translation of a manga that there ever will be because of licensing and so on - and this is true even for English, let alone scanlations into minority languages.
What we really need is good quality, cheap, effective on-line teaching in Japanese language so we could all import the original manga / animé.

Yes, we should check out what we're reading before we buy it. But none of that addresses the fact that people who turn out to like the series who would normally buy it never will because they can get the series online for free. Buying translations from a scanlation group is also probably illegal since scanlations are an illegal process anyway. Even if it wasn't, translation costs are probably not even the issue since I can't imagine they make up the bulk of their expenses. Purchasing the license and distribution/production costs probably are. The main problem here is that it's a free alternative to actually having to shell out money for something.

I once heard somewhere that manga is a lot cheaper in Japan, and this is probably because they have a much larger market that's more than willing to buy their products. In other countries, there is a much smaller market for them so they have increase the price to make up for their smaller market. Scanlations cause even less people to buy them leading to further increases in price, continuing the cycle.

Learning Japanese is an extremely time consuming process. I've just finished one year of college-level Japanese and invested countless hours studying it and I still couldn't possibly work my way through a manga in Japanese. Yes, there are manga that will never be released outside of Japan and you're justified in looking for scanlations. But, for plenty of manga, companies actually try and make them accessible to everyone else, and that's the market that scanlations hurt. Mangahelpers keeping up the manga while GSG wasn't being published is perfectly fine, but the moment a legal means becomes reasonably available, taking them down is exactly what should happen.

I'm really surprised the licensees just don't release them on the web themselves as internet books or something.

The folks reading scanlations on their computers would have no cause not to embrace digital downloads and the production and distribution costs would be much lower plus no worry about retailer returns of unsold product you then need to send to the compost pile.

I can buy the GSG anime in the iTunes Store - I should be able to buy the GSG manga on there, as well as a visual iBook. And with the resolution of the iPhone 4, it would look as good as the actual paper (if not better, frankly).

And with that said, that is my issue with this witch hunt.

I can understand the lack of revenue as I myself am a small-business investor. However, the Internet wasn't invented yesterday. The entire industry has had over a decade to get used to and adapt to an emerging media outlet.

The major players within the entertainment industry seem to be so stuck in their ways that they refuse to take advantage of this new outlet in order to reduce the costs and increase exposure and thus consumption of any media they choose to market. My personal first rule of economics; percentage is profit, dollars are a dead end. In other words, the raw currency revenue itself will be lessened, but the percentage profit gained by using a more efficient distribution method will be exponential.

While most of the mid-major and smaller start-up companies have embraced this new means of marketing by way of digital downloads and e-book subscriptions; the big boy's in Japan (Kodansha, Shogakukan, Shueisha) and the US (Viz Media, Tokyopop, Funimation) have been slow to adapt or refusing outright to embrace this method.

This story isn't new either.

Seeing how independent comic authors were using the Internet to publish and distribute their comics since the inception of the World Wide Web; Marvel struck while the iron was hot and launched Marvel Cyber Comics in 1996 to allow a streamlined process of distribution and subscription.

However, fearing this new wave of competition, main rival DC Entertainment filed an anti-trust lawsuit in the early 2000's (which was promptly dismissed) over the new Marvel DotComics property which they felt had cornered the digital distribution market for American comic media. Third major, Image, had also used the Internet for distribution and was paramount to it's success in the market; yet despite acknowledging that Marvel had established a firm foothold in digital distribution, refused to join DC in their lawsuit.

For most of the mid-major and smaller publishers of manga(both here in the US and abroad), this attack on scanlation hosting must seem as a slap in the face.

And to note; does anybody remember when Betamax was going to ruin the film and television industry?

And to note; does anybody remember when Betamax was going to ruin the film and television industry?

I'm familiar with it, but are you familiar with the printing press. For those who haven't checked out the following link from when I posted it earlier. Enjoy.

Jacen Starslayer wrote:Geez, I've heard that before. Throughout history this sort of thing has been done, damn industries conducting witch hunts.

5 Insane File Sharing Panics BEFORE the internet.

Yes, they could really cut their production and distribution costs with e-books and they would then extend these savings to consumers with drops in prices. You could see increased sales this way too. I still prefer physical products though. I also worry that e-books are hurting brick and mortar bookstores, cutting out the middle man as they do. I could see bookstores being completely put out of business as e-readers become more commonplace, which I take issue with.

This still won't stop people from finding free alternatives unfortunately, although it will probably help cut down the number of people that do. Between two electronic mediums, both easily accessible, we'll still be getting plenty of people who choose the one that costs less ($0). They would have absolutely no excuse at this point though and I'd call it outright theft.

Godot wrote:Yes, we should check out what we're reading before we buy it. But none of that addresses the fact that people who turn out to like the series who would normally buy it never will because they can get the series online for free. [...] The main problem here is that it's a free alternative to actually having to shell out money for something.

Really? I have to think that most people who like comics (which manga is) like to read them. Reading on screen is a sucky, delay-filled, scroll-wheel-hell experience and also not really portable. Maybe the iPad will change this but I wouldn't bet on it since Steve J has it locked down pretty tightly so my feeling is that people who are happy to only read online are pretty unlikely to ever shell out for a book anyway. In the absence of scanlations you might get them to buy the books but I don't think they are the majority of scanlation readers. YMMV of course - you may be perfectly happy with the on-screen experience but generally if there's an alternative in dead-tree format I'll take it. Maybe I'm very untypical in liking manga and wanting to collect it. Maybe some folks print out their scanlations and make their own books too (but, having made my own edition of MegaTokyo volume 6 to read while out and about, I know how tedious that process is and so I doubt it) and also, at a few pence per page, it wouldn't be that much cheaper for a very sucky pirate book.

Learning Japanese is an extremely time consuming process.

Well I was really joking about that although it would definitely work. I also know a sure-fire cure for malaria which is about that practical: everyone leaves every malaria zone and goes to live somewhere else for a couple of months. With no hosts to complete the lifecycle, the malaria parasite is immediately wiped out! That's a hugely difficult and massively over-the-top response but it would work

Godot wrote:Yes, they could really cut their production and distribution costs with e-books and they would then extend these savings to consumers with drops in prices. You could see increased sales this way too. I still prefer physical products though.

There is always Print on Demand. It's more expensive on a per issue basis, but still relatively cheap, overall.

Godot wrote: I also worry that e-books are hurting brick and mortar bookstores, cutting out the middle man as they do. I could see bookstores being completely put out of business as e-readers become more commonplace, which I take issue with.

They've been hurting for some time, however. The smaller stores were run out of business by the large chains (B&N, Borders, etc.) and now the low-cost volume movers (Costco, WalMart) are pushing the larger chains to extinction.

Yes, we should check out what we're reading before we buy it. But none of that addresses the fact that people who turn out to like the series who would normally buy it never will because they can get the series online for free. Buying translations from a scanlation group is also probably illegal since scanlations are an illegal process anyway. Even if it wasn't, translation costs are probably not even the issue since I can't imagine they make up the bulk of their expenses. Purchasing the license and distribution/production costs probably are. The main problem here is that it's a free alternative to actually having to shell out money for something.

Except that not everyone is like that; for example, there was an anime that was fansubbed some years ago, it was then translated and recieved stateside last year - both S1 and S2 of the series. I bought both, in order to support the company and the creators.

For GG, however, I refuse to use scanlations (mostly since of the sites that scanlations were available on that have been listed here I have blacklisted on my network, due to some very odd and suspicious network activity between my computer and the sites server, I tend to blacklist those sites because there is no reason for that to happen)

That said, even so, even IF I had looked at scanlations for GG. I'd STILL buy the volumes, to support the company and the writers. After all, if there's a chance they'll expand the universe and includ more manga's and more anime adaptations, then it's best to support such a chance.

Kiskaloo wrote:I can buy the GSG anime in the iTunes Store

Not in the UK you can't. Clearly Apple don't want my money and neither do the animé publishers since only S1 is available in R2 PAL on DVD. Rumour has it that S2 and the OVA are on their way though - I'm so excited that I'll finally be able to see a series that the entire world has had for about two years.

Who me? Bitter? Why on earth should I be? I watched the torrent . . . :| If and when they want my money they can have it - all they need to do is ask!

[Edit to add: I could, of course, import an R1 / NTSC DVD at about twice the price it ought to cost plus shipping and import tax and then watch it until my DVD drive stops region swapping and locks me in or out. Luckily, if I could stomach the pirate importer prices, I can use a tool like DVDFab to remove the region coding and make a PAL version for my own use. That's all "piracy" of course even on media I'd have bought and paid for. The whole copyright / piracy argument is deeply skewed in favour of the distributors in legal terms. I have no rights at all basically.]

mistersaxon wrote:

Kiskaloo wrote:I can buy the GSG anime in the iTunes Store

Not in the UK you can't. Clearly Apple don't want my money and neither do the animé publishers since only S1 is available in R2 PAL on DVD. Rumour has it that S2 and the OVA are on their way though - I'm so excited that I'll finally be able to see a series that the entire world has had for about two years.

Who me? Bitter? Why on earth should I be? I watched the torrent . . . :| If and when they want my money they can have it - all they need to do is ask!

[Edit to add: I could, of course, import an R1 / NTSC DVD at about twice the price it ought to cost plus shipping and import tax and then watch it until my DVD drive stops region swapping and locks me in or out. Luckily, if I could stomach the pirate importer prices, I can use a tool like DVDFab to remove the region coding and make a PAL version for my own use. That's all "piracy" of course even on media I'd have bought and paid for. The whole copyright / piracy argument is deeply skewed in favour of the distributors in legal terms. I have no rights at all basically.]

If you buy a Matsui DVD320 multi region DVD player you can reset its region code as many times as you like

I expect the Blu-ray releases are unlocked, so they would be an option, as well, if you have BR.

Kalshion wrote:

Yes, we should check out what we're reading before we buy it. But none of that addresses the fact that people who turn out to like the series who would normally buy it never will because they can get the series online for free. Buying translations from a scanlation group is also probably illegal since scanlations are an illegal process anyway. Even if it wasn't, translation costs are probably not even the issue since I can't imagine they make up the bulk of their expenses. Purchasing the license and distribution/production costs probably are. The main problem here is that it's a free alternative to actually having to shell out money for something.

Except that not everyone is like that; for example, there was an anime that was fansubbed some years ago, it was then translated and recieved stateside last year - both S1 and S2 of the series. I bought both, in order to support the company and the creators.

For GG, however, I refuse to use scanlations (mostly since of the sites that scanlations were available on that have been listed here I have blacklisted on my network, due to some very odd and suspicious network activity between my computer and the sites server, I tend to blacklist those sites because there is no reason for that to happen)

That said, even so, even IF I had looked at scanlations for GG. I'd STILL buy the volumes, to support the company and the writers. After all, if there's a chance they'll expand the universe and includ more manga's and more anime adaptations, then it's best to support such a chance.

It's true, not everyone reads manga online and then never purchases them, but there are plenty that do and that's the issue. You might buy the manga and I know many people that would, but I also know some people who read plenty of manga online whom I don't believe ever purchased one.

Awinnell wrote:If you buy a Matsui DVD320 multi region DVD player you can reset its region code as many times as you like

I have a DVD player - in fact I have several. And if that's a legal player then why the f*** do they region code DVDs in the first place? I assume it's just to annoy people since it's so pathetically easy to bypass. Also, even if this player is very cheap it's probably tripled the price of my imported DVD from what a "proper" R2 DVD would cost. If I have to get an NTSC-capable TV as well then it's even more expensive. So that's the legal route versus watching a torrent: quasi-legality and enormous amounts of my money, almost none of it going to the original creator versus no legality and no expense and no money going to the content creator. If I send Yu Aida a couple of dollars as compensation he'll be way ahead. If everyone who read a scanlation or watched a torrent sent money straight to the author then they'd be very wealthy indeed. (Yes I know - more people make money than just the creator but not, for the most part, the people who actually make the animé who are all paid for their time).

Of course, with animé the case for purchasing is even less clear than scanlations because you can replicate the viewing experience exactly with your pirate media. Scanlations are screen vs. paper and I think the advantages of the "free" electronic version are not so clear cut.

Sorry - arguments are a bit woolly now - it's rather late here. Ask me to clarify if you can't work out what the bleep I'm on about.

Godot wrote:You might buy the manga and I know many people that would, but I also
know some people who read plenty of manga online whom I don't believe
ever purchased one.

Likely they would just not have read the manga at all if no scanlation was available - or they'd have borrowed yours! Casual readers are not a lost sale IME.

one of the biggest problems is the rate at which the licence holders release their issues ,literally years can pass between issues ,during which the reader, who may of started out purchasing the Manga, has got pissed off with the wait and gone off and read the scanlation and by the time of the release is so far ahead in the storyline they no longer care to buy it in paper !

Fair point, Awinnell. We had a huge delay between Volumes 1-3 and 4-6 of Gunslinger Girl here in the US.

There is a Seven Seas sale going on at The Right Stuff, however GSG is not yet on the list.

funnily enough the wait is how i ended up here ,like a lot of people i came for the scanlations,but i hung around afterwards

I think the point about the long wait pissing off users is not really a criticism of scanlation though is it? Why the hell does it take them so long to produce the translation versions? And clearly if they were faster out of the gate it would earn them sales, but it seems they would rather that we customers just waited around like sheep till they were ready to "fleece" us. Sadly the days when that sort of treatment of customers was something you could get away with are now gone (and nobody liked waiting ages for sequels even in the old print-only days).

So if publishers produced translations faster and more in synch with the .jp versions there would not only be no scanlation but likely more sales anyway yet the lost sales are the fault of scanlators? Uh no. Nature abhors a vacuum so if the publishers try and create one or just leave one hanging around then scanlators will rush in to fill it. If the publishers are lucky then people will care enough about their properties to still buy the paper books later although I still say that if people are happy to only read online there was little chance they would shell out for a series of books anyway.

This is litigation to cover up a lackadaisical attitude to book publishing and the slackness of a moribund system replete with footling legal traps and complications. If the publishers had any sense they would see that selling an online version of their work was a way round all this and doing so would likely speed up the production of translated works since, by necessity, the translation and image production would all have been done already, especially if it was planned that way from the get-go. Hell, they could sell translations directly over the web from Japan and forget distribution arrangements entirely if they could manage to resist charging the cost of 5 books just to ship one.

Yes the French editions are really nice with box sets and glossy slip covers with extra artwork on them. I have a couple of French editions but really so that I can use them to brush up my French which isn't fluent enough to manage without the English copy for reference.

And your publisher produced them in high quality and quickly without dropping the series after a series of irritating delays. I wonder how many French scanlations there are?

This is going to be one hell of a post.

Wow, I'd really love to have those box sets for the manga. Very nice. I would very gladly buy those. Seeing some of the good cover art next to the really vomit-inducingly-bad cover art of some of the later volumes really brings out the terrible quality of the latter though. Welcome aboard Nic2001! I'd recommend making a thread in the greetings section so we can have you introduced properly to the rest of us. Go ahead and post those pics there as well.

mistersaxon wrote:I think the point about the long wait pissing off users is not really a criticism of scanlation though is it? Why the hell does it take them so long to produce the translation versions? And clearly if they were faster out of the gate it would earn them sales, but it seems they would rather that we customers just waited around like sheep till they were ready to "fleece" us. Sadly the days when that sort of treatment of customers was something you could get away with are now gone (and nobody liked waiting ages for sequels even in the old print-only days).

So if publishers produced translations faster and more in synch with the .jp versions there would not only be no scanlation but likely more sales anyway yet the lost sales are the fault of scanlators? Uh no. Nature abhors a vacuum so if the publishers try and create one or just leave one hanging around then scanlators will rush in to fill it. If the publishers are lucky then people will care enough about their properties to still buy the paper books later although I still say that if people are happy to only read online there was little chance they would shell out for a series of books anyway.

This is litigation to cover up a lackadaisical attitude to book publishing and the slackness of a moribund system replete with footling legal traps and complications. If the publishers had any sense they would see that selling an online version of their work was a way round all this and doing so would likely speed up the production of translated works since, by necessity, the translation and image production would all have been done already, especially if it was planned that way from the get-go. Hell, they could sell translations directly over the web from Japan and forget distribution arrangements entirely if they could manage to resist charging the cost of 5 books just to ship one.

This is a point against the license holding companies. I did mention this earlier though with something to the effect of calling ADV manga a bunch of incompetent fucking morons. I also did mention that it is a lot harder to defend the companies when they pull off bullshit like this, as much as I would like to defend them. If they hold the license, then they have a moral obligation to actually do something with it besides letting it expire or dangling it over the heads of the exasperated fans.

I really don't like the idea of e-books though. Partly because it isin't a tangile product, a personal thing of mine, and partly because, like I mentioned earlier, as e-readers and the like become more commonplace, it will begin killing off bookstores. It would be a very efficient system though, I must admit.

mistersaxon wrote:

Godot wrote:You might buy the manga and I know many people that would, but I also know some people who read plenty of manga online whom I don't believe ever purchased one.

Likely they would just not have read the manga at all if no scanlation was available - or they'd have borrowed yours! Casual readers are not a lost sale IME.

Alright, you do have a point there. I don't really see that friend of mine actually ever buying manga either way. It does trouble me, however, that the only people we can really on buying manga are the serious fans. I'm pretty sure that manga sales comprise the bulk of their revenue. Besides the magazine publication, they aren't getting money from anywhere else.

mistersaxon wrote:

Godot wrote:Yes, we should check out what we're reading before we buy it. But none of that addresses the fact that people who turn out to like the series who would normally buy it never will because they can get the series online for free. [...] The main problem here is that it's a free alternative to actually having to shell out money for something.

Really? I have to think that most people who like comics (which manga is) like to read them. Reading on screen is a sucky, delay-filled, scroll-wheel-hell experience and also not really portable. [...] In the absence of scanlations you might get them to buy the books but I don't think they are the majority of scanlation readers. YMMV of course - you may be perfectly happy with the on-screen experience but generally if there's an alternative in dead-tree format I'll take it. Maybe I'm very untypical in liking manga and wanting to collect it.

Yes, fortunately it does provide a largely inferior, markedly different expereience from the actual "dead-tree format".
It really is just the ones that don't mind either way that are the problem. Again, we can rely upon the serious fans buying the manga, which is good, but I wonder just how sufficient that number is.

You do have some very great points though, mistersaxon. Great debating with you.

Kiskaloo wrote:

Godot wrote: I also worry that e-books are hurting brick and mortar bookstores, cutting out the middle man as they do. I could see bookstores being completely put out of business as e-readers become more
commonplace, which I take issue with.

They've been hurting for some time, however. The smaller stores were run out of business by the large chains (B&N, Borders, etc.) and now the low-cost volume movers (Costco, WalMart) are pushing the larger chains to extinction.

They have indeed, but e-readers might be just the last straw in this mountain of competition that's finally going to push them over the edge. It really does bother me that stores like WalMart are the ones that are murdering the business. I'm just waiting for them to start offering discounted elective plastic surgery.

The forum keeps breaking my text up into different lines randomly for some reason. Can only fix by sending the post and then editing it apparently.

Later when i get home (at the office right now) i can post a picture of the Alt covers... some of them are really nice

Godot, the real problem with e-books, even on an iPhone4 with >300dpi screen, is that it's too easy to screencap them and have something that is identical with the original. Only universal HDMI monitors and a ban on Ctl-c / Alt-PrtScn etc will ever stop that. It's tons easier to do than capturing a good quality online video and THAT is the reason that online manga isn't yet a reality. Maybe the iPad WILL be the saviour of us then since it's almost big enough and it definitely won't copy and paste unless the app vendor allows it.
But it's still easy to differentiate between online versions and paper versions by adding omake / bonus strips, extra artwork, etc. The problem is if you try and charge for it twice. I think if you buy the paper book you should get a one-off code that lets you have the online for an extra 50c say, or even free. If you buy the online first you get the cost of it off the book so that online sales drive paper sales. After all, selling the online doesn't actually cost anything at all apart from banking transaction costs if you are doing all the art and translation for the paper book as the main aim. But having the online version allows you to get to market far quicker than you can print, proof and ship paper books, even if you do all the printing in one country and ship international. In turn that speed prevents scanlation sites from harming any of your sales.

I think it's not so much laziness on the part of the license holders, but greed. As in they snapped up so many titles, the costs in money, time and talent to keep them all in regular production probably swamped them. So they're going to focus their efforts on shoveling out the most popular stuff (Inuyasha, Bleach, Naruto, etc.) because that is a guaranteed stream of money to keep the lights on.

The other, slower selling titles naturally fall by the wayside, starved for talent and money. I was actually surprised ADV released V4-V6 considering the financial straights they were in, but then here we have Funimation releasing GSG as one of their first Blu-ray titles, so who knows...

I wonder how popular GSG is in Japan? They forced Funi to sit on the BR discs for six months to prevent reverse importing (since the US discs are about a fifth the price of the Japanese ones) and best I can tell, Goodsmile never released the Triela PVC figure they showed.

I wonder how popular GSG is in Japan? They forced Funi to sit on the BR discs for six months to prevent reverse importing (since the US discs are about a fifth the price of the Japanese ones) and best I can tell, Goodsmile never released the Triela PVC figure they showed.

I don't have any anime sales figures, but as for manga, here's something copied over from the thread for Vol. 12:

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Well, here's the sales figures for the first week of Vol. 12's release - it entered in 18th place with a little over 60,000 copies sold. By the second week it had dropped to 30th place with another 20,000+ books sold. It's not eating up a rainforest's worth of wood-pulp like the Big Three, of course, but it saw at least some representation in the charts and given the many hundreds of manga in Japan I'd say that those figures are entirely respectable. I'm not sure what royalty rates are like for manga, but even if Yu makes as little as fifty cents on each copy (which would be less than 10% of the cover price of a manga that retails for around about six dollars), with two volumes a year plus magazine salary he must be earning at least $100,000 per annum. Even if he has to pay assistants and buy supplies from that, he's left with a fair tranche of $30-$50,000. GSG is still a successful concern!

Nic2001 wrote:So far I think that this is the best translated version that I can read of GSG, the name are intact (well they did change the name of Hillshire to Hilscher, but that’s how the French say it so it’s not too bad) and most of the jokes are intact.

Hilscher is probably more accurate. I've stuck with Hillshire in my translations mainly out of desire for backwards consistency.

Godot wrote:The forum keeps breaking my text up into different lines randomly for some reason. Can only fix by sending the post and then editing it apparently.

It's weird that way sometimes when you copypasta quotes. If you use the non-wysiwyg editor and pay very careful attention, you can usually stop it before you post.

how do u download all the files, i wish i could by past the first 6 or 7 books but as i stated before i cant read Japanese

Looks like MangaHelpers has pulled everything in the wake of the decision by Japan's Digital Comic Association to launch Cease & Desist orders to the 30 largest manga scanlation hosting sites backed by the threat of legal action if they do not comply. While MH has not yet been contacted, they figure they would be so they have proactively closed down the database and will no longer host scanlations.

News Item

I imagine they will shortly be joined by the other major hosting sites.