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Viz Communications of California has branched out from manga publishing
to video distribution, but the company still spends most of its time working
on Japanese comics. Toshifuma Yoshida of Viz had some manga announcements
at the company's A-Kon panel: the Manga Vizion anthology will be discontinued
this summer and replaced by a new, similar publication to be called Animerica
Extra, that will include Steam Detectives, X:1999, Fushigi Yugi and the
first English-language release of the Video Girl Ai manga; the Dragonball
and Dragonball Z manga are strong sellers for Viz; and the Tenchi-Muyo,
Maison Ikkou and Ranma 1/2 manga will continue for years, probably into
the next century. |
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John Ledford (right) of AD Vision was an interested observer as Yoshida
spoke about the handful of new Viz Video releases: Night Warriors and Ranma
1/2 movies are coming to DVD discs from Viz ("We've got to do more Ranma
because it sells," said Yoshida). Maison Ikkou releases will also continue.
"We wish we had more titles to announce - we're not buying up all the titles,"
Yoshida said, jokingly referring to the flood of releases AD Vision had
announced earlier in the day. |
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Carl Horn of Viz arrived to talk about the company's future strategy.
"Manga fans aren't casual about it," Horn said, referring to hard-core
enthusiasts of the kind who attended A-Kon 9. "The challenge is always
to expand the market. That's where Pulp comes in." Pulp is the "mature"
manga anthology started by Viz in the last year, which features stories
that are not linked to anime series. That's a departure from Viz' stragegy
of publishing manga that are based on popular anime series. |
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Horn noted that in Japan, manga series produce anime series, while
in the U.S. it's been the other way around, and Pulp tries to reverse that
pattern. Popular series - whether printed or televised - always drive a
fan demand for souvenirs and collectable, and Viz has a line of that stuff
coming out; from the soundtrack of Key the Metal Idol to Ranma 1/2 T-shirts
and a Ranma watch. |
