Ryan over at Same Hat! Same Hat! had a post yesterday that I thought was really neat. A friend of his graced him with a copy of a 1978 edition of Keiji Nakazawa’s Barefoot Gen, which it seems pretty safe to say is most likely the first English translated manga. With handwritten text and an existance age of forty years, I’d definately say Ryan’s got himself a piece of manga industry there.

Ryan also asks for any readers who know of a possible contender, for that position as number one, to comment on the posting. I’m interested to see if there’s anything to challenge for the role of first.

Icarus Publishing’s blog has posted a list of titles (via MangaBlog) currently cancelled, or postponed, from Tokyopop’s July selection of releases. While many of the titles seemed to me as ones few will be too upset over, the two BLU titles did surprise me: Love Mode (Vol. 11, final) and Gakuen Heaven: Nakajima especially with them being some of BLU’s best-selling titles in the past.

I asked about it on the BLU forums and recieved this response from BLU’s forum rep and editor:

“Right now, these are postponed. Please support Love Mode 10 when it comes out in August. If it sells as well as volume 9 or better, it will be very difficult for us to not do volume 11.

It’s getting harder to do hardcore books because stores are often not ordering them. If you’ve had trouble buying our books in stores lately, please order them off Amazon. And I know you guys are already doing this, so thank you! Junjo 6 is currently the best-selling manga(all manga) on Amazon right now. Also, if you buy off of Amazon, the price is only $10.39!(not sure of the shipping rates though…)”

So looks like for now it’s a postponement over a flatout cancellation but as of now there’s no word on if the same applies to the other non-yaoi titles listed.

On the note of something else said in the forum reply, I noticed Junjo (Vol. 06) was currently number one the other day, beating out both Fruits Basket and Naruto, when I checked in on Amazon’s newly updated Manga shopping section. Interesting to see a yaoi, especially one of BLU’s, make the list. The recent anime adaptation of Junjo Romantica seems to have done quite a bit for it’s popularity as of late, based on reactions of various online communities I pop in on.

In the last few days, artists have been coming forward to let their fans know whose global manga series are hit by the Tokyopop chopping block. While some, such as Rivkah’s Steady Beat will be printed on web only, other’s such as Bettina’s My Cat Loki will not see publication by TP at all. Despite that, it doesn’t seem Tokyopop is cutting all ties with its artists whose series are dropped however:

…so sad to say…as of now, there will be no My Cat Loki 3…~,~ With all the cuts TP had made recently, MCL just didn’t do well enough to make it. *sigh*

While I’m sad to see it end without an actual ending, I’m a little relieved, as it frees my time up for bigger and better story ideas I’d like to pitch to other companies. But for now, TP has plenty of licensed property work for me, enough to keep me busy for the next 1 1/2-2 years…

Over at her DeviantArt gallery, Christy Lijewski is happy to announce that her series RE:Play is still scheduled to print as she continues work on volume three. She also sends her support to fellow artists who’ve been cancelled and urges fans to do the same.

Contrary to what all the manga and anime news sites are reporting not EVERY OEL from TokyoPop is canceled/direct to web.
I’m happy to say that RE: Play made the cut and that the 3rd volume will be coming out in print, on schedule, as planned!

So please don’t think I’m out of the game ha ha ha, I’m still around and the series will be going on as planned :3

However the fact still remains that most of my friends series have been canceled and/or delegated to the web, so please if you know any OEL artists that have been sacked, don’t be rude about it. Even if you don’t like OEL know that the people behind these series, we all work REALLY hard to do our best to get books out that we really have love for. So please, if you know a TokyoPop OEL artist now would be a great time to give them your support, because dammit, if times aren’t tough!

Seems safe to say we’ll be hearing similiar messages from other authors and artists in the coming while, not to mention the wails of those who still anxiously wait to see which manga series in general don’t survive Tokyopop’s slimming down.