Finding a new manga title that you enjoy is awesome. You pick up volume one on a whim, and twenty-four hours later you are obsessed. The characters have agency, the plot has a freshness that sets it apart from other titles in the genre, and the writing had you laughing and crying in a matter of pages. Every other month, you are first in line to buy your copy of the next volume of Your Favorite Series.
Until one day, the next volume isn’t there on the shelf waiting for you.
It’s so popular, you think to yourself with almost parental pride. They can’t even keep it on the shelves! You wonder who else is reading it, decide that if you ever bump into someone buying it you will be best friends pronto, then hit up another store. Which also doesn’t have the book in stock.
Now you’re starting to think that it’s you; maybe today isn’t the release date? It’s the 15th every other month, right? You go online and check. The next volume is not on the website. That’s strange. The last installment in your collection definitely wasn’t the end; there was that huge cliffhanger with the reminder to tune in for volume X. There must be some mistake. You search for the next volume.
Nothing.
Sooner or later, you realize that Your Favorite Series is going out of print. If you’re lucky, another publisher will pick up the license and keep distributing; if not, you’re looking at an incomplete collection of manga that will sit sadly on your bookshelf, a daily reminder that you may never know how the story ends.
What injustice put good manga on the chopping block? Here are a few reasons titles go OOP.
Publisher Troubles
For fans who collected manga in the 90s and 00s, TOKYOPOP was as much a staple as VIZ. Many of its licensed materials were titles from Japanese publisher Kodansha, but by 2009, these numbers decreased. In 2008, TOKYOPOP restructured and laid off about a third of its American employees. Kodansha started working more closely with other publishers and allowed old licenses to expire, inflicting a serious hit on TOKYOPOP’s catalog.
Titles such as Rave Master and Initial D were among those fans would be unable to finish collecting despite good sales and positive reviews. Others, like Cardcaptor Sakura and Magic Knight Rayearth, were picked up by other publishers (in those cases specifically, Dark Horse Comics). Kodansha, Ltd., an imprint of Random House, also formed in 2008, taking over Sailor Moon and many of the titles from Del Rey Manga, Random House’s previous manga imprint. In 2011, after more layoffs, legal issues with digital rights, and the bankruptcy of Borders—TOKYOPOP’s largest customer—the California office closed its doors. In late 2012, the official website announced that TOKYOPOP was making a digital comeback with a handful of its original titles.
Other manga publishers who either shut down or significantly reduced their number of licensed series include Del Rey Manga, Bandai Entertainment, ADV Manga, and CMX.
Poor Sales
If a series isn’t turning a profit, its publisher may discontinue it. No matter how much you love a manga, you’re probably only buying one copy of each volume. Most fans are. The process of translating, editing, and designing manga, printing, and distributing can get expensive, particularly in a niche market. If series A isn’t selling well but series B is, the publisher may decide to invest its resources in B instead of losing money on A.
To the A fans, this might feel like a personal blow. The choice to discontinue a series is difficult for publishers; after all, they licensed the title in the first place with the hope that readers would enjoy those projects. Manga is a subdivision of the book publishing industry, however, and it is a business. In order to have as many employees as possible working on as many titles as possible, publishers need to have a profit.
If this is inspiring a blog rant about how all publishers care about is money, think about how editors and designers must feel when the project they’ve put time and effort into isn’t doing well enough to warrant continuing. Weeks, months, maybe even years of work for an incomplete OOP series. To see that it’s just not working out is as disheartening for them as it is their readers.
While company troubles may be hard for readers to help with, poor sales are totally avoidable. If you find manga that you like, buy it, or at least check it out of your local library to show that there is interest and that your librarians should invest in this series. Tell your friends about the manga you like and you might get them to pick up copies as well; blog, tweet, and share; post positive reviews. Word of mouth is a powerful tool. The better a title sells, the better the odds of its sticking around on bookstore shelves.
Hiatuses, Delays, and Discontinuation
Sometimes the reason for a series being put on hiatus or discontinued entirely is beyond anyone’s control. Any delays on the original source material will affect serialization when translated. This may be temporary or permanent.
Take for example the Shojo Beat staple Nana. Its creator, Ai Yazawa, fell ill in mid-2009 and has been in recovery since; the series continues its hiatus today, and Yazawa may be unable to return to work. While the current volumes are still available, the series may go out of print without a resolution to the story, through no fault of the creator, publisher, or sales.
Bisco Hatori, best known for Ouran High School Host Club, saw her earlier project Millennium Snow translated, but this title was on hiatus for over a decade (volume 2 came out in 2002, volume 3 in 2013). VIZ released the first two volumes in North America in 2007, with volumes three and four not following until 2014; the first two volumes have since been reprinted, but for a few years, Millennium Snow was hard to find in physical stores.
Also, though this technically doesn’t count as discontinuing a series, occasionally the magazine or publisher in Japan decides when a title has run its course. Alternatively, creators may get tired of their current projects and end them. Either of these scenarios may result in an anticlimactic final arc or even unresolved plot lines (No, you didn’t misread the website; that really was the end.), and in many ways, the flat ending feels as much like an abandoned series as one put out of print mid-story.
Then, of course, there’s one last reason a series goes out of print…it was published and completed a long time ago, and the supply has met the demand. If you like a series, be sure to snag your copies now; they could be gone in five or ten years’ time.
A fan-compiled list of manga left incomplete in North America can be found here.