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Farewell Tokyopop – Publishing Division to Close End of May

No question the big news of this week (and likely of the year) is that Tokyopop’s CEO Stu Levy announced that as of May 31st, the company would be closing down shop in the publishing industry.

This comes as a huge blow to many manga readers. While the company may not be releasing as much now as they have in the past, they’ve still got numerous series on the go that’re now in limbo including several recently premiered (such as Clean Freak, Little Butterfly and Lady Konoko). Most poignant though is the rattling of faith seeing that what was likely the biggest and most-influential English manga publisher go down. Love them or hate them, this is the end of an era.

There hasn’t been a lot of details regarding the shutdown for things such as the fate of licenses and any potentially returning story rights to OEL artists. More information on things such as liquidation of any remaining stock will likely come in the near future. The Yaoi Review has confirmed with Tokyopop that their boys’ love imprint BLU will also be shutdown, and the Tokyopop German division seems to be going strong still.

If you’re looking for more information and reactions about the news, I recommend Katherine Dacey’s round up over at Manga Critic.

I could go on for pages upon pages about my thoughts on Tokyopop and what they mean to me as a company. I’m not going to now though (at least not yet) but I will say this: I’ll miss them terribly. I love Tokyopop. Yes they’ve made mistakes (that website, gah!), but at the end of the day I own hundreds (if not thousands) of Tokyopop books for a reason. I’m really sad that several series I’m collecting may never see completion now such as Pet Shop of Horrors and Shinobi Life, but I also know I’m one of few people saying the same so whose to say they even could’ve been finished regardless of TP shutting down. But they gave the titles the longest run they could (Genju no Seiza for pete’s sake!), they released tons of series with a little for everyone and they were there with something new and shiny every time I went to the comic or book store over the past decade.

Tokyopop was manga for me and will always be a big part of manga for me now, from the piles of books surrounding my room to the many Tokyopop books I’m bound to buy even in the years to come. Goodbye Tokyopop – it really was a good ride and even though you’ve chosen to stop it, I’m not quite ready to get off yet.

About the Author:

Lissa Pattillo is the owner and editor of Kuriousity.ca. Residing in Halifax, Nova Scotia she takes great joy in collecting all manners of manga genres, regretting that there's never enough time in the day to review or share them all. Along with reviews, Lissa is responsible for all the news postings to the website and works full time as a web and graphic designer.



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7 Responses

  1. mb says:

    this can be saved please dont give up what has happend is that he has given up and does not care about it anymore the germany and uk im not sure but they dont seem to be closing down and maybe the need an investor or something but we can send letter to the geramny or someone to help continue he can go but please save oit before its too late lets make history by fighting back and send letters all the ongoing series also blu they jsut dont care aso please make them see sence send it all over, lets save tokyopop and blu.

  2. […] try to give a new series two books to prove themselves to me. It’s too bad however that with Tokyopop’s sudden shutdown it’s very unlikely Clean Freak will have a chance to prove itself […]

  3. […] doesn’t feel there’s much to miss any more. Lissa Pattillo, on the other hand, is going to miss them a lot, and Anna lists the series she will miss at Manga […]

  4. […] a less positive note, Tokyopop (which recently announced its shutdown of the company’s publishing division) is gearing up for a complete tear down of its website. […]

  5. […] thing to note about this license is that it’s not a ‘license rescue’ from the recently shutdown Tokyopop. Ed Chavez says the company has been working on these licenses long before […]

  6. […] Life which we’ve had to say farewell to early because of Tokyopop’s shutdown. That wasn’t an easy goodbye in itself either – so […]

  7. […] look. Tokyopop hasn’t had a website of its own since the publishing side of the company was shut down abruptly in 2011. They handed over the .com and their mailing list to another company that used them to […]

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