Gentosha wants to sell Manga in 193 Countries

[ware4me]

Top Japanese comics publisher Gentosha will take its already bilingual (Japanese / English) web magazine GENZO global sometime this month, with plans to offer it in 7 different languages (German, Japanese, English, Spanish, Italian, Chinese (Cantonese), and Korean). Gentosha has also stated the goal of releasing print manga in every country of the world (in 6 langaues to start with) in cooperation with respective overseas publishers simultaneously.

This marks the first such attempt by any player in Japan's manga industry to execute a strategy of this type on such a large scale. Maki Murakami's Gravitation EX seems to be one of the first works Gentosha wants to promote in a big way. Back in February, Tokyopop dropped a press release announcing their partnership on the title's rollout in the same month.

They mentioned: "the eagerly awaited sequel to Maki Murakami's bestselling cult-classic manga series, Gravitation. For the first time ever, a never-before-published manga of Japanese origin will be available on the same day at retail stores in North America, Europe and Japan. According to TOKYOPOP Publisher Mike Kiley, "TOKYOPOP and Gentosha have entered into an exciting partnership to concurrently release Gravitation EX around the world, marking a momentous occasion in the continuing globalization of manga. Never before in manga publishing history has a multi-country synchronized release been executed." Adds Gentosha Comics President Yoshihiko Ito, "We are very pleased to partner with TOKYOPOP for the worldwide release of Gravitation EX.

We look forward to watching the successful launch of this property and are keeping our eye on future opportunities with TOKYOPOP!" Hailed as the forerunner in the hugely popular shonen-ai (boys love) category, the Gravitation manga series boasts nearly half a million copies in print. A romantic comedy/drama about making it in the music industry, the popular series has spawned myriad fan collectibles including novels, soundtracks, pencil boards, calendars, phone cards, postcards, art books, anime and much more."

Gravitation EX has sold over two million copies worldwide to date. It's being serialized in GENZO and the company's portable site "GENZO/Gentosha comics" now. Other titles from Genzo will be offered in the future. More at: ANS

[jpier36]

Not to familiar with things like this and how it works,but sounds like a real big deal here.Makes you wonder why someone hasn't thought of this before.

Who knows,we may be seeing ground breaking stuff for future things to come.

[ware4me]

Well, i guess japanese still thought anime and manga were a loca phonomenon, but nowadays that has changed, and people all aroud the world really likes their stories and artwork.

It can be a good business if the are able to deal with piracy.