The recent feather in their cap is that they picked DNAngel back up after the series had been on hiatus for a few years. I hope that’s a sign of good things in the future, and that maybe they’ll be able to follow through on the series they start from now on.

I used to be wary of picking up suspended series, and worried that series I read would get cut off, but I realized that the best thing for that is probably to just go ahead and buy them anyway. It’s a lost cause when it comes to those Kodansha titles since the licenses were all revoked (I’m really bummed about GetBackers, it got cut off 27 volumes in), and I worry that it may be the same for those Korean titles too, since all of them stopped simultaneously and don’t seem to be resuming, but all the same, buying them can’t hurt their cause.

It really makes me appreciate what Viz did by publishing titles like Please Save My Earth, Banana Fish, and Basara all the way through to the end, even if they had to outsource to do it. :) I was reading all three of those titles as they came out, and I can’t tell you how awful it would have been to have them just stop.

I’m a bit wary of Tokyopop titles now, since they have such a spotty record of following through. I don’t want to get invested in great new authors/series if they’re only going to get yanked, but I also want to support the good ones with my money so there’s a chance they might get to continue. It’s quite the dilemma.

I always forget about manga selling because of anime. I think that usually happens here with shounen series. We do get some shoujo anime series on DVD, but since they don’t show them on television, I don’t think many people watch the series that don’t already know about the manga. I think the last shoujo anime I can remember being shown on TV was Cardcaptor Sakura.

We had the same thing here, too, with a lot of manhwa coming out at once and then being suspended. It’s happened a few times with a few different companies, and I always think that there are very few manhwa series that actually finish properly, with the exception of one publisher (and even they have a few that got cut off early). Manhwa doesn’t do too well in English at all, I think, which is a shame since there are a lot of good series available. Or at least a few volumes of them, anyway.

Old shôjo are not more successful in France. La rose de Versailles was a very popular anime in France (it was entitled Lady Oscar), that’s why the manga was sold. There is also an other series of Riyoko Ikeda lately published in France: Onii sama e (Dear Brother). There was also an anime here but it was censored due to ambiguous relationships between high school girls in a dormitory xD.

Titles such as Kaguya Hime, Basara or Banana Fish are not “old” enough. Moreover, lots of readers find the design poor and then, don’t really want to read them. Especially Basara. There was no anime for these manga as I was a kid so no success, even they’re old. Though Basara was not successful, 7 SEEDS is being translated. As this series doesn’t sell so well, people have to wait 4/5 months to read one volume. Normally, it takes 2 months but delay has been changed.

This is really a shame for Hotel Africa not selling well in France. I think the “manhwa explosion” occuring years before didn’t help: manhwa suffered of poor image. There were to much manhwa published at the same time, and, I have to reckon, lots of crap too. So at the time Hotel Africa and Fever were published, I guess lots of people didn’t try them because of the “manhwa” image.

We did get Moon Child, by the same author as Princess Kaguya, in English, but it had similar problems towards the end of the series. One of the publishers that tries to release old shoujo manga in English just slowed the releases down to a volume every 10 months for titles like Swan and From Eroica With Love, and the last couple volumes of Moon Child came out very slowly too. I would love to read Princess Kaguya, but I think Moon Child wasn’t popular enough for another series to come out in English. Same with Basara and 7SEEDS, I keep hoping for more by that author, but I think Basara didn’t sell well enough to release 7SEEDS in English. I didn’t pick up Basara and Banana Fish until after they’d finished coming out in English, so I’m not sure how often the volumes came out. I think almost nobody read Banana Fish, including me for a long time, but it wound up being one of my favorite series, and I would love to read more by that author.

I’m sorry to hear that Hee Jung Park titles are having problems finding readers in France, too. That’s a shame about Hotel Africa, that it got cancelled in the same place. I hope Martin & John does better in France. It didn’t have much of a chance in English since only one volume came out, but it was my favorite of all of her books that I read, and I’ve heard that the entire series is one of her best.

I was the same way with Too Long, even with all the other Hee Jung Park series, I didn’t know about Too Long. I think it was excluded from the first round of advertising/press releases about the titles, and I overlooked it until much later. It is truly unfortunate that her titles weren’t given more of a chance. Fever was my least favorite of the three other titles, but I fell in love with Martin & John and Hotel Africa. Martin & John is still running in Korea, too, so I’m hoping another company like Yen Press or Netcomics will be able to pick it up and release that one, at the very least, if not the others as well.

I am a French fan of Park Hee Jung’s work. In France, only Fever has been completely published. Hotel Africa was stopped after two volumes. It was first “delayed” for one year, and then, definitely cancelled (the publisher didn’t give any information). I hoped I could read volume 3 in English but it was cancelled as well… This author is like being cursed or something.

Now in France, Martin & John is going to be published. I’m not very interested by this one but I cross the fingers, hoping it will be enough successfull to make people willing to read Hotel Africa (and more Park Hee Jung). But it’s hard here as the manga/manhwa market is full of stereotyped shôjo romance comedies with high school girls.

Anyway, your blog is wonderful. And I also love 7 SEEDS, Basara, and of course: Banana Fish. As in USA, I can tell you shôjo manga of this kind are really not successful in French. Do you know Princess Kaguya? This one is also cursed in France: it’s been finished with 27 volumes in Japan and because it’s not successful, we can only read one volume per year! Banana Fish is a really great manga. I have a copy of Kisshô Tennyô and Yasha by the same author and they seem pretty promising. I read Kisshô Tennyô and though dealing with high school students, it is quite mature.