Post 6/6: Tokyopop going bankrupt

I heard from a friend last week that Tokyopop is going bankrupt. Tokyopop is a manga publishing company that played a big role in the manga revolution in the U.S. Tokyopop introduced many popular manga series, such as Sailor Moon, Chobits, and Love Hina in the "unflipped" (meaning that the book reads from right to left) format for the first time. It is one of the most well-known companies that publishes manga here in the U.S., but they have announced recently that they are shutting down their U.S. operations as of May 31st. Their German office will stay open to handle publishing rights and their film division will continue.

I know next to nothing about the closing of their U.S. office, but in a way I am not surprised. I have been sort of disappointed with the selection of manga recently, whether from Tokyopop or another publishing company. Tokyopop is responsible for many of the mainstream popular series, yet many of those series to me are becoming pretty boring. There was a time when I was interested in all of these mainstream plots, such as characters with big swords and magical powers, but I'm getting a little tired of all that. I have lost a lot of faith in manga because of this, and there have been very few mangas that I have seen that pique my interest and seem to contain a unique plot. However, I heard from someone else that the main cause of this bankruptcy is because of Tokyopop taking the rights from the creators of these series. I haven't found anything about that yet though.

http://www.comicsbeat.com/2011/04/15/end-of-an-era-tokyopop-shutting-down/
http://www.icv2.com/articles/news/19869.html
http://manga.about.com/b/2011/04/16/tokyopop-to-close-its-u-s-manga-publishing-offices.htm