Tokyopop Memories

Like most other manga fans, I was surprised to read about Tokyopop shutting down. Soliloquy in Blue has a post listing what might be the final volumes of many Tokyopop series. Here are some of the things I’ll miss about Tokyopop:

Josei

Perhaps contributing to low sales, Tokyopop was one of the few companies to publish longer josei series earlier than almost anyone else. Some of the classic josei series they published include:

Happy Mania
Tramps Like Us (Kimi Wa Petto) – One of my favorite Josei series of all time
Paradise Kiss
Suppli

Clamp

Now that Dark Horse seems to have taken over printing many of Clamp’s historic series with new translations, hopefully this means that many of these series won’t go out of print. I’m not counting on anything though, especially with the recent Dark Horse staff layoffs. Tokyopop published Cardcaptor Sakura, Tokyo Babylon, Wish, and more.

Manhwa

This is simultaneously good and bad because the glut of manhwa that Tokyopop pushed out during the boom years probably contributed a lot to financial problems later on. But I’ll always be fond of Queen’s Knight, which was the first Manhwa title I really enjoyed.

Sailor Moon
It seems weirdly cyclical that Tokyopop is shutting down just when the flagship title that touched off the manga craze in the US is going to be published by a different publisher. I previously about how stumbling across the Tokyopop editions of Sailor Moon got me interested in manga again after a long absence.

Some of my favorite completed Tokyopop series include:
Marmalade Boy
Mars
Kare Kano
Karakuri Odette
Gatcha Gacha
Planetes
Fruits Basket

Current series I’ll miss:

Skyblue Shore
Shinobi Life
Stellar Six
Alice in the Country of Hearts
Silver Diamond
VB Rose
Demon Sacred

I thought that recently Tokyopop had been picking up much more interesting shoujo titles, and I’d increased the number of series from them I was actively following. I’m sorry I won’t be able to see the conclusions of many of these series.