Tokyopop North America Closure

[Susano]

I'm not certain if anyone has seen this or not, but Tokyopop has announced their closure. It was mostly due to the recent bankruptcy filing for Borders. All manga due to be released in mid May onwards was canceled and the last days for the US office is in the end of May 2011. This announcement was preceded by a massive layoff of staff. Oddly enough, the film production half is still in business and awaiting the results of the Priest adaption.

[Firestorm ZERO]

While I am glad that they helped bring to notice manga to American audience, I'm sorry to say I won't miss them. Tokyopop was like the ADV of manga. They focused on quantity instead of quality with poor translations, paper quality and such. Kinda like ADV, I had a feeling they were going under when they lost all their licenses of Kodansha (pretty much all their good series) to Del Ray. Isn't there also now a Kodansha US branch?

[Slaigar]

Not going to miss them. Their translations were awful. I really hope other companies pick up some of their titles for a re-release (like Blame!).