I Heard a Rumor

April 15, 2009

John Jakala found the Inuyasha VizBig Edition on Amazon and noticed something that I didn’t see on Simon and Schuster; it says it will be left to right, just what I DIDN’T want.  Greg McElhatton commented on that blog post saying he heard a rumor that all Takahashi manga was contracted for left to right reading.  As stupid as that sounds, I wouldn’t be TOO suprised if it was true.  But this brings up a new question.  Will Takahashi’s new manga, to be released simultaneously with the Japanese be flipped as well?

If Viz does have this all-encompassing contract with Takahashi that keeps all her manga in L to R, then the simultaneous release will do nothing about scanalations (if that’s their reason for it).  There will still be scanalators putting out the manga in it’s correct R to L orientation.  And there will still be people reading them because THAT’S HOW THEY WANT THEIR MANGA! And don’t try and tell us “that’s the way Takahashi wants it”.  No it isn’t.  Any creator wants their work recreated as close to the original as possible, while still being sellable.  R to L sells just fine.  Don’t assume that just because it’s by Takahashi it’s going to get tons of sales automatically.

Come on Viz, try and think of the fans and your readers, just once.  Please say when you negotiated for Rin-ne, that you got it in its proper orientation, and that you got all the other manga to go R to L as well for the BIG Editions.  Please, don’t let us down.

2 Comments

  • John Jakala April 16, 2009 at 3:49 am

    My guess is that because Viz is releasing RIN-NE online to correspond with the Japanese release, the series will be R-to-L. I’m assuming they’re getting the file digitally from Japan and only taking time to translate it. (Although I suppose if they’re taking the time to do that, it would be a small matter to flip everything digitally, so maybe it will be L-to-R after all.)

  • Brian Henderson April 16, 2009 at 4:08 pm

    Unfortunately, there aren’t many fans who get upset enough at this nonsense to refuse to buy the product, which means Viz is going to keep putting it out that way. The only way to convince them to change their mind is to hit them the only place they care about: their wallets.

    Of course, that’ll never happen. Too many Takahashi fanboys out there.

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