TokyoPop was founded in 1996 by Mixx Entertainment to bring Japanese manga to English-speaking audiences. Tokyopop has become the leading publisher of English translated manga in sheer volume of books. They produce a high volume of very popular series, in a popular formart and price point that have become standard in the Western manga industry. However the faithfulness of their translations to the original script varies between series. Many of their books play fast and loose with Americanized adaptations that emphasize flashy talk and slang (Love Hina, Initial D, Brain Powered, Chobits) over straightforward translations of the Japanese dialogue.
I've been following Tokyopop since their debut in 1997, when I first learned of a new manga anthology called MixxZine which would contain the manga version of Sailor Moon. Why a start-up like Mixx and not one of the established manga publishers (Viz, Dark Horse) had finally licensed Sailor Moon was a mystery to me. It was the first successful shoujo anime on North American TV and had a large built-in audience. At that time, however, Viz and the like were publishing manga for an older, college age audience, and not for a young mainstream market.
Tokyopop's success is not based on consistent superiority of product. They have always been hit or miss with their adaptations, although quality control has improved enormously since the early years. It is their practice of identifying mainstream-friendly manga that will appeal to younger readers, female readers, and ordinary bookstore consumers who seldom frequent the niche comic book stores. In other words: the majority, not a marginal set of fanboys or snooty critics with a penchant for hyper-masculine, 'edgy' stories. Tokyopop's most successful manga have always been those which already have a large fan base, and from the start, many of those series have been shoujo.
The Sailor Moon manga very much made Tokyopop (it was their best seller of all time), and they've continued to attract large numbers of female readers by publishing books for young girls (something never tried before Sailor Moon) and more recently, young women who have grown up in the manga and anime industry and need their pop culture to mature with them. Female comics fans have always been here, but only in the past few years have we been openly (and aggressively) marketed to.
Sailor Moon debuted as the flagship title in the short-lived MixxZine, which initially serialized four manga: two shoujo (girls') and two seinen (young men's). MixxZine was promoted as a "mix" of stories to suit both boys and girls. In reality the magazine consisted of two magical girl stories (Sailor Moon and Magic Knight Rayearth) and a gory sci-fi story and a violent police drama (Parasyte and Ice Blade). Most people bought MixxZine for the girls' manga and were often shocked at the explicit nature of the other two. I kind of liked Parasyte myself, but I didn't want my kid sister to read it so I'd tape up those pages so she could read Sailor Moon and Rayearth. The magazine had a lot of trouble reconciling its very different content. Perhaps this is why Sailor Moon was moved out and given its own monthly comic book. This move was a public relations disaster at the time, as subscribers to the magazine were not notified of the move until after the subscription renewal period.
After a shaky first year in which the green young company's every editorial decision seemed to tick off some segment of the growing Internet fanbase, Tokyopop began publishing collected volumes of the MixxZine manga in the same way that Japanese manga is collected into volumes called tankoubon after being serialized in anthologies. Tokyopop's translations and the quality of their graphic novels weren't up to the high standard of quality that Viz and Dark Horse Comics consistently produced, but they had manga series that readers passionately wanted in English, and enough good ideas to outweigh the bad ones.
A year after Sailor Moon debuted in English, Tokyopop created a magazine called SMILE to run the later chapters of Sailor Moon (SuperS and SailorStars) and to try to attract a female readership with some truely awful "girlz lifestyle" content (this version of SMILE was not very successful). MixxZine became TokyoPop Magazine in July 1999 and changed to an Asian pop culture zine with only a couple of manga titles. It ceased publication after the November 2000 issue and its manga continued to run as graphic novels. Tokyopop began publishing manga in single issue comics just like Viz and Dark Horse, and the faltering SMILE magazine was revamped and turned into an all-shoujo manga anthology with the May 2000 issue. This was much more positively received than any of Tokyopop's previous products. It served as a vehicle to introduce some wonderful shoujo manga that would continue in graphic novel format long after the magazine ceased production in summer 2003. Tokyopop's translations and product quality were also improving.
The poor quality of Tokyopop's early manga - low paper quality, hit and miss translations, frequent typos and haphazard editing, neverending delays - and the overall careless way in which they handled their manga, had given them a reputation of being a flighty, unprofessional company whom fans could not rely upon. Amazingly they turned around their image with a radical marketing move that few could have predicted such a company could carry off.
In early 2002, in order to cut costs and speed up production time, Tokyopop announced they would no longer be publishing single issue manga, but from then on would publish all new manga series as graphic novels printed from right to left. They would also leave the sound effects untranslated, for the most part, for the "authentic manga experience". Up to this point almost all manga had been printed "flipped", with the artwork and panels reversed to match the English reading direction. At the time it seemed doubtful that readers would adapt to such a radically foreign format.
What helped make the transition successful was the significant drop in price and the paperback-sized format. Neither of these were invented by Tokyopop. Standard graphic novel prices for manga ranged between $14.95 to $25.95 USD, for a larger, flipped volume. Both the price point and size had been pioneered by Lea Hernandez in her critically acclaimed Clockwork Angels, by 1999. Tokyopop was the first to price their books at $9.99 USD, in opposition to the industry standard of anywhere Leaving the art unflipped enabled them to pump out books much faster, although some of the early books suffered from the rushed production in the translations and editing (never Tokyopop's strong point). Results were quick: Tokyopop saw increased sales through 2002, and in turn increased their manga acquisitions. Faced with the competition, powerhouse Viz, who had been quietly publishing quality manga for years, followed suit. Existing manga publishers either adapted or closed up. New manga publishers, launched by anime companies, mainstream book publishers, or former employees of the industry, have all
The combined efforts of manga publishers to reach a mainstream audience finally paid off in a big way in 2003 with the introduction of manga graphic novels into regular book stores. Once manga got out of small comic book stores into the light of day, they were greeted enthusiastically by readers who were new to anime and manga, and by existing fans who were delighted at manga becoming more affordable, accessible, and diversified. Thus 2003 has been heralded as the year of the "manga boom," and as 2004 gets underway, American publishers no longer feel the need to "flip" Japanese manga to accommodate English readers.
TokyoPop has long had a bad habit of "spicing up" their translations with American slang-filled dialogue that sometimes bears only the slightest resemblence to the original Japanese script. Some of their early work was just plain bad. In the early years their adaptations featured awkward, over-literal translations, blatent mistranslations, or mangled dialogue. Bunny's Ambition features a comprehensive examination of the "MixxTakes" in Sailor Moon alone. Translations have improved as they have hired more staff (and obviously increased their budget). Their current books read much smoother, but they can't break the habit of taking creative liberties with translation. This affects some books more than others. As recently as the September 2003 issue of Animerica, Brain Powered's adapation had "characters' lines...swapped around, plot points mangled, and whole chunks of dialogue deleted and replaced with snappy, but generic bluster." Viz, on the other hand, successfully walks the line between being faithful to the original text and providing a very readable adaptation.
Tokyopop's graphic novels usually leave out the omake (bonus materials) found in the Japanese shoujo books. For example, the Sailor Moon graphic novels are missing the beautiful full-color mini-posters from the Japanese books and most don't even have the black and white bonus notes from Naoko and other fan materials in the back. Only a few of their especially artistic manga like Clover and Snow Princess include the original Japanese color posters.
In the past few years Tokyopop's jarring Americanization of every name, place and cultural reference has been mostly replaced with more faithful adaptations. Exceptions include the name changes in Miracle Girls and Initial D. Initial D was actually censored for content and edited to appeal to a younger mainstream American audience (ironically sales on the book bombed, due in part to the unwelcome changes).
Tokyopop continues to randomly change the titles of series instead of directly translating them or using existing English titles. As recently as spring 2004, Kimi wa Pet ("You're My Pet") was announced as Tramps Like Us, which completely changes its image for the worse. If you read the Japanese publisher's descriptions of their manga first, and then Tokyopop's, you can see how painfully lame their attempts at "hipping up" perfectly good manga continue to be.
The good news is that remastered editions of Tokyopop's older, poorer quality manga is underway, including Magic Knight Rayearth, Card Captor Sakura, and Peach Girl, which were initially published from left to right. Unfortunately the full remastered edition of Rayearth comes in a time-limited offer: first as two limited edition box sets that include the omake cut from the original release, in a separate booklet, and then as individual volumes without the omake. The first box set is now out of print. The oldest and most popular series, Sailor Moon, has never received the remastered "100% Authentic" treatment and is now out of print. This is mostly likely out of Tokyopop's control, because it has been reported that Takeuchi Naoko has forced the stopping of publication of her manga internationally (outside of Japan) for whatever reasons. It's a shame that English Sailor Moon fans can't seem to catch a break: both the anime and manga have received poor releases and been withheld (witness SailorStars) by the Japanese licensor Toei from the start. Compared to Tokyopop's other books, the Sailor Moon graphic novels, and the horribly mistranslated Scout Guides, are an embarrassment for fans who have been wishing for years for a professional release they could display with pride in their collection.
Read all the nitty-gritty details of Mixx/Tokyopop's history in the AnimeFringe archives: Full Circle: The Unofficial History of MixxZine.
This page last updated April 14, 2005.
