And now we get to the other stuff with Conner. Some not so Seven Seas related stuff you may or not find interesting. Well, it still does have something to do with the manga industry though. Anyways, this is it. All combined, this is probably close to 10,000 words of this! I hope you all liked it, and if you have any thoughts about the conversation, feel free to comment below. Here’s Part I and Part II in case you missed the other two.
Justin: All right, let’s talk about a few other things. I had noticed on your Twitter you commented on how US Manga is under reported, or at least lacking. Can you elaborate on that a bit?
Conner: Yeah, and I should say this is my opinion as a fan, and this is in no way representative of my position at Seven Seas and the opinions Seven Seas has, this is purely my opinion as a fan. Now I’ve always been pretty vocal about this that I believe the US fan base could do a lot better in reporting and representing our industry. And we don’t have as robust an industry as Italy, France, or even Germany when it comes to manga. It’s frustrating at times because there’s a lot of misinformation that is thrown around, there’s a lot of lazy reporting that goes on and it’s not a good culture for the fandom at large in the US. It’s good that we’re seeing growth, but I wish that fans would take more action in actively learning about publishers, manga series, authors and artists, but I mean there’s still a lot of younger people that don’t have the access or they wouldn’t really get that, they don’t have the proper tools to learn about that and I don’t expect people to get the fine details of things. I don’t expect people to know that this author for this series had one series published by Viz back in 1999, I don’t expect that. I would just like fans to be more aware of their surroundings. Like when you see people linking Mangafox, be like, “hey dude this series is out in English, go support it.” That can be a bit frustrating at times. I’m not the kind of person to say that scanlations/fan translations are just the bane of everybody’s existence. I feel that they do have a role to play, they’ve brought a lot of fans to the buying market too. You’re going to have your people that are just going to read fan translations and never buy a single volume manga, they’re not going to buy an English release, they’re not going to import a Japanese release, they’re not going to do anything. They’re just going to be there to be a leech on society and the industry. And that’s ok. There’s always going to be people that just view anime and manga as disposable entertainment, in that they read it, they watch it, they throw it away, they don’t care about it, that’s what they do in their day. But we do have thankfully plenty of people that also like to support publishers, support creators, so thankfully we have those people. I just wish there’d be a bit more general awareness because it’s surprising at times at how many people just simply don’t know that manga are out there in English or “hey go import these manga if you’re reading it.”
As for reporting news and stuff, it’s not an intentional job at Crunchyroll or Anime News Network. They do good pieces too but I think a lot of it is they take what other sites have done and reported and they just kind of rehash it. I believe we’re competent enough fandom here in the US that why can’t we have people that are also reporting on this, and why can’t they be the first person to report on that? It doesn’t have to be all the time and I’m not saying why the heck doesn’t Crunchyroll and Anime News Network have a dedicated staff of Japanese reporters living in Japan, picking up every single magazine, every manga magazine that comes out every single day. That’s not realistic. Anime News Network had an opening for a Japanese based reporter so I know they’re trying. I just think we can do better. This also dictates to US industry based news, that you don’t see lot of news coverage for the US industry. You see manga licenses but hey, what about new covers for manga? What about reprints? Sure it may not be a thing that many people care about but it’s still kind of like you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours. You need to also help promote the industry you’re reporting on. You can’t simply stop at the most basic introduction of ‘this is this company they’re releasing this series.’ It needs to go deeper look that because when you look at a lot of French websites, for example Manganews, it’s like the biggest French portal for manga news and information around. If you go to their website you’ll see this amazing catalog, they have every series you can imagine, they list who published it, they list the covers, the Japanese publisher, etc. Anime News Network has a similar system but as any person who frequents the site knows their search system is just awful. It doesn’t work, it’s horrible to navigate, and its frustrating. So you know that is one aspect I think we can do better on, we can do better in promoting the US industry, and not just licenses but report on various aspects because how many publishers now are actively engaged with fans on Tumblr, Facebook, or Twitter? We have Seven Seas, Vertical, Kodansha USA, Viz and their lines Shojo Beat and Shonen Jump, they’re all actively engaged with fans every single day on these platforms. There is plenty, plenty to cover and report on. It’s almost criminal just how nobody pays any attention to so that’s definitely part of it.
As many know Seven Seas is partnered with Comixology and we do our digital releases through them. We didn’t want to have our own app or anything like that, we wanted to make it nice and simple and easy for fans to access. In that same IcV2 article regarding growth in the manga industry it showed a slight decline in digital sales. Now digital manga has always, or kind of been, unknown territory, or unexplored. So a lot of companies have been trying to figure out how to go about it. Digital sales still represent a very small margin of manga sales in general. I don’t think it’s gonna overtake print anytime in the near future, as the vast majority of our sales come from brick and mortar stores. That’s not to say people don’t like digital manga. There’s plenty of good reasons to buy digital manga because some people just don’t have the room. I can relate — I have a storage unit where I have to take manga that I just don’t have room for in my house and box it up every month after all my manga that I buy comes in, and I pick series that I finish or hasn’t been updated in a while, I box them up and put them in a storage unit because I simply don’t have the space anymore for it.
Yeah, same here. Whenever I’m done with a manga or anime I have to eventually decide where they go so I have to put them in a box or re-order my bookshelf so it does get a bit crazy.
Yeah yeah, so I do understand where people are coming from or something like “is this manga gonna be available digitally?” and some times it is, sometimes it isn’t. But for the future of digital manga in general I do see manga remaining on digital platforms. I think it still needs to change a little bit in how it’s handled because it’s still way too scattered, it’s not easily accessible because you “have to go to this app and that app; well it’s also on Amazon but it’s also on this blah blah blah,” and it’s too scattered. I think that was a point on manga news in general, it’s too scattered. You can find it in so many places, but if you ever want to find it in one place, too bad you’re not going to find it in one place. I don’t think manga is ever going to be available in one place, it’s never just going to be on Comixology, it’s never just going to be on Crunchyroll…each publisher’s gonna have their own way of distributing it, but I do see it remaining in the future. I don’t think it’s gonna go away or die, even take over print sales, But it needs to find a way to co-exist to with print sales, and I don’t think it’s quite found it’s spot just yet.
Crunchyroll was pretty big, a big step for them. That’s a big partnership between them and Kodansha. That’s going to be something that develops and everyone should keep an eye on. That was a big shocker just because that’s the Japanese company, and it’s Kodansha going to Crunchyroll and saying, “hey, we want to do digital manga with you guys.” That’s going to be a really interesting way of how business may be handled in the future. That isn’t necessarily new: Japanese publishers joined up together and did JManga. We all know how that ended. But there were other issues with that, not just a bunch of Japanese publishers and they couldn’t decide on any one price or way of distributing it. It also had to do with the way they announced titles, what titles they had available at launch, titles that they promised and never did…there were a lot of problems with JManga that I don’t think Crunchyroll is going to have an issue with because they came out with a robust lineup of manga that fans have really wanted and even with some fan favorites that Kodansha USA is handling the print and digital versions of. I think Crunchyroll still needs to develop a better way of letting people know, they’re starting to send newsletters of new releases, but I still think they have a ways to go in order to get a better, cohesive system for their digital manga releases. I do have faith in Crunchyroll sticking to that and being able to deliver a consistent platform for digital manga. I don’t think anybody really doubts that they’re going to screw this up.
For in general I think digital manga will still be a thing. Viz just bombed down their entire catalog of thousands of titles to just about every available digital platform, so they’ve definitely gotten out in the race and they’re in full swing. That’ll be interesting to see if that comes back to bite them at all since they released everything at once rather than gradually putting it out there. I’ve seen some people say they’re a little bit weary of that maybe poisoning the waters because it’s just too much at once. You don’t have the time to sift through thousands of titles from the late 90′s to the current times, that’s just so much manga to go through and you’re not giving it time to breathe by announcing all these old series. You want to spotlight each and every series and for us, we do 3 or 4 titles every week on Comixology, and that gives us time to breathe and spotlight each volume. You’re not gonna miss anything. This is what we have, this is what’s available, we’re not gonna rush you, we’re just gonna gradually build up our catalog, and that’s what you have to work with. For fans that’s a lot easier because you’re not saying here’s 500 titles, you’re obviously not going to have enough money to buy every single one of them and you know it’s overwhelming. Even from a consumer perspective that’s just too much, just way too much. So it’ll be interesting to see if publishers continue to drop their entire catalog into these new digital venues. I think Comixology will be around for a long time because it’s not just manga, they have American graphic novels and comics, and that’s huge for them, and I think they have one of the best, if not the best, digital platforms available right now. All these other digital platforms I’m not so confident about. I think there’s going to be a lot of changes in the services available, so I think there’s going to be a lot of changing hands for other publishers. Kodansha USA has gone from their own app to other places to put their catalog down on and so I think there’s going to be a lot more change in actual services for digital manga but I think there’s going to be consistent platforms like Crunchyroll, Comixology, those are going to probably be around for immediate future.
I know you’ve been keeping up with Arpeggio, has there been any other Fall Anime you’ve been keeping up with?
Yeah. Now first and foremost, I’m an anime and manga fan. I watch whatever I possibly can fit into what meager free time I have. So you know on Crunchyroll, I’ve mentioned on Tumblr, my hands down favorite of the season is Kill la Kill. I’ve been watching Trigger form and seeing what they’ve had to offer, from Little Witch Academia to Kill la Kill…it’s so much fun to watch and it reminds me of when I was a teenager and watching Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, it reinvigorated a certain fire within me as a fan. Aside from that I’ve been watching One Piece, and I’m super excited that’s on Crunchyroll now. You don’t know how happy it makes me to now be able to watch One Piece on Crunchyroll and not have to deal with Funimation’s just terrible streaming, I couldn’t handle it–
H-hey! They fixed the website! They said it’s improved!
No they did! But I’m glad I don’t have to rely on Funi’s streaming service anymore!
Absolutely, and I’ve convinced my friends to get their own Crunchyroll subscription. I’m like, “They’re up to over 18 series in a season now!” And it’s like Crunchyroll’s simulcasting everything. There’s only a few things you can only get fansubbed.
Like I think there’s two shows um…One is Gaist Crusher, the other is Yozakura Quartet.
And that was a series I never got into. I read the first 2 volumes of that when Del Rey was still in business, so yeah I’m one of those fans that read the manga — 2 volumes of it — and I never watched any of the other anime series, which I heard you kind of have to have watched the other version of it to understand the current version, but yeah. There’s maybe 2 or 3 series that aren’t simulcasted by Crunchyroll, Viz, or Funimation.
Outbreak Company I’ve been enjoying. That’s resonated with me a lot, just the humor in that, this would be my underdog of the season, just watching how hilarious it is, and it’s really clever too. A lot of people look at a title like that like it’s gonna be kind of skeevy, be creepy fanservice etc, etc, but it’s been a lot of fun. Hunter x Hunter, that’s just been a journey for me, an intense journey now that it is in its second to last arc. Been watching the Second Season of Valvrave. Having a lot of fun seeing what new twists there’s gonna be every single week. Beyond the Boundary, the new KyoAni show, been enjoying that, and you know I see a lot of people taking some deep jabs at that, and I’ve never been one to understand why the fans like to lay into KyoAni. I think they’ve delivered some consistently great stuff that may not have been terribly new or interesting but I think it’s been great these last few shows that they have done and Beyond the Boundary’s been one of the titles I’ve been interested in.
Log Horizon’s been a lot of fun because people thought it would be the next Sword Art Online. It couldn’t be any different from that. It’s the popular trope in Japan right now of ‘oh no people are stuck inside an MMO’ but this is more the world became an MMO but we’re not worried about getting out, life goes on inside the MMO, this is our world, now we deal with it. It’s become a fantasy series. It has a great cast, and it’s really enjoyable. Been watching the second season of Magi, that’s been fun, I’ve been reading the manga from Viz too, I was super stoked when they announced the manga, I had been waiting a long time for it, saying “when is Viz gonna do this? This is like their new Blue Exorcist, why haven they licensed it?” And it finally was announced and I’m like “cool we finally have this manga that I’ve been wanting to read for years!”
I’ve been watching Non Non Biyori, this was a series that I was screamed at that I had to watch. There was a question from Tumblr about Non Non Biyori and I glanced over it at but I didn’t look too deeply into it, and then Sentai said on their Twitter account to go watch it. Non Non Biyori is a really fun, cute series that’s surprisingly enjoyable but I have to laugh when people ask, “you should license this manga” and I go “Hmmmmm…I don’t think this manga will go too well you guys, as cute as it is, cute doesn’t sell by itself in the US.” You need to have more of a hook than it’s really cute daily lives and it’s just like yeah, you can stop right there when you say cute daily lives of anything, like warning flags just start going up. “Ok ok, hold on, hold on, just look at some series that have done abysmally for cute and every days lives in the US.” The anime’s fine but the moment you try and do a manga like that and put it out in stores, you’re in trouble. But I’ve been watching that, that’s been a lot of fun. Samurai Flamenco, that’s one of the noitaminA series, and I was part of the people just going crazy over the reaction of Episode 7. I encourage anyone that has not watched this series yet that they need to get on it because this was an interesting title with superheroes and tokusatsu and Kamen Rider-esque influences, so yeah, it definitely was not what I was expecting it to be and then Episode 7 happened and it’s even more not what I was expecting it to be! *laughs*
Yeah I was seeing the reaction on Twitter and I’m like, “What the–what’s going on here!?? What am I missing out on?!?”
Yeah I think it encouraged a lot of people to get on-board with the series and if they were behind to catch up because I’ve seen so many people be like, “All right, it’s time to catch up with Samurai Flamenco” and they have been loving it after Episode 7, or they’ve been loving it or hating it because it’s just so bizarre and so crazy. So yeah, that’s been a fun one. Other than that, Strike The Blood, a light novel adaptation…it’s all right. Galilei Donna…that’s been interesting. *laughs* I don’t really know what to say about that one!
All I know about it is that everyone compares it to a Dan Brown novel.
Oh yeah. Yeah I can see that. It’s…it’s really odd. But it’s very typical notiaminA. If anybody’s watched all the notiaminA series, this is definitely in the same and similar vein of that. I even talked with a friend about this and they said, “You know that series kind of reminds me of what Anime no Chikara wanted to be,” with the three series that Anime no Chikara did — Occult Academy, Sora no wo to, and Senko no Night Raid — and it seemed like that, that these different kind of projects that this is what it wanted to be. I even see a bit of Fractale in it, in that it wanted to be so revolutionary but couldn’t quite figure out what the plot is going to be, and now we’re halfway through the series and it’s like, “all right, time to speed things up and actually finish it!” So it will be one of those typical, crazy notiaminA series, or “oh yeah, those 11 eps, they’re gonna be rushed.”
…Yeah I don’t know how I’m d0ing it but I’m still fitting it in like 15 anime…
Yeahh…I don’t get much sleep…*laughter* I’m up late on Tumblr, watching anime on my free time, during the day working for Seven Seas, on Twitter talking and talking, and other free time reading manga, reading manga from Seven Seas, doing odd jobs from Seven Seas, and yeah I don’t know I’m doing it, but I’m doing it!
Ok, last question because you reminded me of it: What manga have you been reading and–NO, NO YOU DON’T HAVE TO SHARE ALL OF THEM! *both laughs* Just tell me a few of them!
Tell you a few of them…*both laughs* Well I’ve been reading every Seven Seas manga known to man. I’ve really enjoying a Certain Scientific Railgun, it’s always been one of my consistent favorites along with Haganai. From other publishers, Attack on Titan has been a big favorite of mine…from Viz I’ve been reading Magi, still going through Kimi Ni Todoke, that’s one of my weak spots there…that wonderful, wonderful shoujo about misunderstandings. I’ve also been reading another shoujo manga, Dawn of the Arcana. This is a really different take on the shoujo genre. From Yen Press I’m reading tons of stuff: Soul Eater, all the Madoka manga, the sequel to Doubt, Judge. From Vertical I’ve been reading Gundam the Origin — it’s amazing, everybody should read it, everybody should buy it — Flowers of Evil, I’ve been consistently enjoying Knights of Sidonia…Dark Horse, I’ve been reading Yasuhiro Nightow’s Blood Blockade Battlefront, where just its intensity and amazing action that you were accustomed with Trigun Maximum and stuff is here, so that’s been really fun. I’ve also been reading their Oreimo releases too. Yeah, that about covers it. I’m reading about 20 some odd series off and on. I still read a lot of manga. I spend more than I should. I’m buying probably 15 non Seven Seas series every month. So…yeah I have a considerable manga backlog when I’m not reading Seven Seas series so…yeah, I read a lot of manga, I watch a lot of anime, I’m still very much an anime and manga fan despite working in the industry. *laughs*
You know what? I’m convinced you only get like 3 hours, 4 hours of sleep nowadays. I’m convinced now!
I-I manage my 8 hour days. Once in a while. Not all the time. Not often. But once in a while.
Well all right, thanks for taking the time to let me talk to ya.
Thank you, thanks for letting me on!
