Comments on: Getting Their Feet Wet

By: Brack

Brack — Fri, 29 May 2009 18:43:04 +0000

@Brian You mean someone like their own subsidiary Viz Europe? Seeing as they are essentially licensing from themselves, AND have a European subsidiary, it all smacks of a lack of joined up thinking on the part of Shogakukan.

Which doesn’t surprise, just disappoints me.

By: Brian Henderson

Brian Henderson — Thu, 28 May 2009 20:04:43 +0000

They don’t have a choice, they legally do not have the right to distribute outside of the very narrow confines of their particular license. If you want someone to do it for the UK, you need to find a company willing to buy the license and set up the service in the UK.

By: Brack

Brack — Thu, 28 May 2009 05:33:32 +0000

It’s worth mentioning that this initiative geoblocks any web-user outside North America. And doesn’t even warrant those users with a message to that effect, instead the manga reader app. just appears broken to them.

So as a British manga reader, I’d prefer other companies NOT follow Viz’s example, and instead actually embrace the worldwide nature of the web instead of having their efforts hamstrung by the internal bureaucracy of different divisions and sublicences.

By: Brian Henderson

Brian Henderson — Wed, 27 May 2009 20:06:30 +0000

It’s about time a company stopped whining about not making sales and actually did something about it. It’s a simple reality that the Internet has introduced a new paradigm in merchandising and marketing but far too many media companies are terrified of it and would rather point their fingers at boogiemen like “oooh… piracy”.

It’s funny that every time someone actually gets off their backside and does what we’ve been suggesting for years… IT WORKS! It’s successful! It makes money!

There are a lot of companies that I’m happy to see go out of business because they really do everything they could possibly do wrong, but VIZ is one to look up to and admire, at least they’re taking a chance and those chances are paying off more often than not. Too bad most other companies won’t learn from their example.

By: John Jakala

John Jakala — Wed, 27 May 2009 16:25:32 +0000

I agree, I’m really impressed with the online offerings Viz has done so far. I know some people don’t like the Flash interface, but I find it really elegant. Most importantly, the art and text is clear and legible no matter what size I’m viewing the manga at. I think it’s the best online viewer I’ve seen from any comic publisher.