I wished someone could rescue all or nearly all the wonderful titles TP released over the years, but even more so for the titles that were nearly complete. Most investors do not want to lose money. TP is hemoraging thanks to Borders. TP did everything they could on their end, they cut employees, they cut titles back and they raised prices, but if TP is not getting paid for the books being sold by the number 2 bookseller in the US, you are going to go out of business quickly.

An investor looking at TP, would A)be willing to lose their money and B)let Levy stay in control. No one obviously wanted to do that, so Levy made the decision to close up shop. I do wish the European office completes the current stable of titles, especially the ones that only have one to three volumes left, so they are at least completed.

I know manga is here to stay in America, but I really wonder if VIZ, Yen Press or Kodansha will ever take the risks TP did with many of their shoujo, josei and manwha choices in their 14 year history.

TP was not ALL Stu Levy, but he was the company’s CEO and owner. I loved the people that worked under Levy, the editors, translators and cover designers. The mangaka created so many wonderful series, but the employees at TP brought them to us. I look at my TP manga collection with pride that so much got done and may never be read by future manga fans. Farewell Tokyopop you did change the course of manga here in America and we, fans will miss you.

If you look at TOKYOPOP’s track record with license rescues, it’s not hard to see why publishers are reluctant to give series a second try; for every Yotsuba&!, there are three Arias or Tactics, which didn’t sell well, even when a new publisher tried to re-package them.

Kodansha has announced plans for new editions of Love Hina, Tokyo Mew Mew, and SM, and Dark Horse has been re-issuing some of the CLAMP titles that Tokyopop published in the early 2000s, but a significant part of the Tokyopop catalog is destined to go out of print.

I don’t think anyone is saying most of TP’s titles are unsalvagable. I think most of us agree that rescuing a lot of them just isn’t going to happen. Aria, as wonderful a title as it is, just doesn’t sell a lot of copies. And in this economy, with publishers already dropping their slow titles (Viz ending Gintama prematurely for example), no one’s going to pick up another publisher’s slow sellers.

Obviously, one or two former-Tokyopop titles owned by Kodansha (excluding “Sailor Moon”) may see print from Kodansha USA in the future, but I’m not quite willing to declare all marooned Tokyopop titles “unsalvageable”. Bear in mind that Tokyopop Europe is still up and running, and until a Tokyopop Europe rep chimes in about the future of various licenses, I’m holding out hope that someone, somewhere, will finish the remainder of “Aria” (even if I have to resort to reading it in German).

By the way, “Priest” opens in theaters this week. If it finishes ahead of “Thor” or “Bridesmaids”, I’ll flip my lid (but if it finishes with less than $5 million on opening weekend, I will laugh my head off).

There a plenty of titles that TP had that would make good rescues, but I don’t think we’re going to see any, and certainly not from Yen Press. Hassler has stated straight out that he doesn’t want to pick up anything from other companies no matter how good they were or what the fans might want.

We can say as much as we want “Oh, such-and-such company is for sure going to rescue this because it was a good series and selling well” but I seriously doubt that’s going to happen. As Alex said, CMX had some great titles that never got rescued. There is absolutely no guarantee that anything Tokyopop put out will ever be rereleased or finished up by any company. That “I’m very proud of what we’ve accomplished” leaves a bitter taste when you think about everything that now may forever be left undone.

As far as license rescues, there were some really great CMX titles that we all expected to get rescued that never did *coughStolenHeartscough* so the chances of some of TP’s best shojo titles to get rescued are also slim.

I honestly couldn’t tell you what TP was publishing in shonen besides smutty action stuff. I doubt anyone is champing at the bit to get those titles.

I think one can be proud of their work and still leave that work for other pastures but it is the pulling of the plug that’s the real issue here. You might say that TP was starting to become more relevant again but with the collapse of Borders, I think TP was in danger of going under as well. So Stu, who’s grown weary of the manga business, takes the opportunity quit, shut down the business on his terms, declare victory, and move to his new pastures.

I think TP could have survived under the right leadership but that would mean Stu would have to give up control. Since he wasn’t going to do that, TP gets shut down.

Still, there’s potentially a big positive for companies like Yen Press and Seven Seas to pick up some choice titles for rescue and improve their own brand library.