Wasn't Tokyopop the publisher that died after some Megatokyo fangirl got an important job and literally hid the sales figures from the higher ups about Megatokyo releases, causing them to VASTLY overprint them and run the company into the ground, or somesuch? Maybe a magazine instead / in addition to Megatokyo publishing?
Well, they're slacktivists. So they wouldn't go picket. They'd flood the social media and email inboxes of their targets instead, or maybe do phone calls.
The thing is, as annoying as social lynch campaigns are, they work. Usually because the company has already been infiltrated by a SJW mole that amplifies the external pressure or what have you. This can be just as simple as some hippy lefty going "eh, they're calling Rush Limbaugh bad names and I don't like him, may be we shouldn't work with him after all" or as devious as some dangerhair intern screaming bloody murder at everyone for "supporting that rape apologist neo-nazi white supremacist capitalist Tucker Carlson."
Can Ty go after someone for a bunch of organized anonymous calls to his business partners? Well... he'd have to find them, first. And lord I wouldn't want to be one of them if discovery lets Ty know one of the KickVickers (Hint: RENFAMOUS) organized this.
Related to that, Tokyopop continued the 90s anime market notion of buying anything and everything thinking it all sold either way, than turning their efforts on selling the hottest and best thing in Japan, and also tried to start up an Original English Language Manga production program that licensed any creators inspired to make their own manga.
Even for a 90s styled anime fan like me, times change and business requires adapation and recognizing trends and current events. Tokyopop did not adapt to the next needed step as the US anime and manga market eventually caught up with the hottest thing in Japan, and killed that with a glut of unfocused marketing and loose spending. Secondly, their OEL Manga partnership program was horrendously flawed, with one sided contracts, a massive pay dividend, and with all and any properties of authors to be under the ownership of Tokyopop. Tokyopop also had very poor PR and advertising their OEL line, and as I heard, Tokyopop was very loose on the QA and talent screening. So right when they were forced to throw up their hands into bankruptcy, every author was denied the rights to their titles. So if you ever hear the phrase "Fuck Stu Levy", someone's speaking the truth. Also Fuck Stu Levy.
As for Megatokyo.... wow.
I just stumbled upon a massive shitstorm in US manga history regarding the first publisher of Fred Gallhager. And I'll clarify that Tokyopop wasn't the publisher of Megatokyo when they got big. I'll try to make it short, but I'll start with the name of their first publisher: Studio Ironcat.
You thought Marvel and DC was eating the dirt hard by the time 1996 came? Studio Ironcat could had been the States' first successful hybrid importer and authoring publisher of manga in the States, but they immediately fucked up by 1999. By that year, Ironcat was beginning to become rife with embezzlement, in house authors and co workers were divided into high school drama bullshit cliques, and many authors were soon beginning to not get paid. On two conflicting accounts, rep Brian said Fred was claimed to have demanded more money for the license, while the other says many who preordered for Volume 1 did not get their copies, and they were still pushing for Volume 2 preorders despite shortchanging their customers. Either way, Fred left for Dark Horse after this, and the rest of his series is tumultous history.
And fuck me, either it's my lack of sleep or me coming further and further to the truth, because I'm getting more and more depressed about all of the shortcomings of the US manga and anime creative industry as I learn more and more about it.
archive.fo
archive.fo
