What manga are you currently reading?

[Weeaboolits]

Yumekui Merry

[Kinokokao]

I posted this in the chat thread, but I'll post it here, too, so everyone sees:

[url=http://am2con.org/http:/am2con.org/uncategorized/am%C2%B2-announces-the-tokyopop-liquidation-sale]TokyoPop Liquidation Sale[/ur]

Anaheim, CA at an animecon 4th of July weekend

[Weeaboolits]

Sgt. Frog

[Yoonah]

[Kimiko]

Hey there. I have some questions for you manga experts.

Yesterday I finished watching Hourou Musuko. I liked it very much, but the story feels incomplete. That's not surprising, as the anime tries to cover a huge span of a manga that's been running for eight years already.

So, I've decided I'd like to buy the manga. Fortunately, it seems to be available translated from . This'll be only my second time buying manga. The first was Nausicaä. I bought all seven volumes of that at once, but that's not possible for Hourou Musuko/Wandering Son, yet.

How soon do you think the translated volumes will be published? Will it take months or years?
Should I wait until it's finished and buy everything at once, or buy each volume as it is released? Or even preorder?
Is there a chance that the translations will stop before the manga ends? I'd hate to have something incomplete.

[Weeaboolits]

I think their release schedule is gonna be pretty slow, probably take them a long time, aside from that, the series is still ongoing in Japan.

I'm waiting on the paperback copies to buy it myself, since hardcovers cost too much and are ungainly. Unless they released the paperbacks already while I wasn't looking.

[Kimiko]

The cost is not a problem for me. I think the story is worth it.

[scy]

[Kimiko]

Really? Why do they go so slow? Couldn't they just chain the translator to the desk and get it over with in at most a few months? It's not like they need to edit the graphical content more than a few text balloons here or there, and getting something from digital to print takes only a few keystrokes after the first setup.

With release schedules and uncertainty of completion like that, it's no wonder manga readers turn to scanlations. Come on, this is the 21st century, not the 19th.

Would my pre-ordering help things, or make no difference? I'd prefer to buy a complete series at once really.

[scy]

[Kinokokao]

[scy]

[Kinokokao]

Waiting 3 months is a bit different than 5 years. Fantasy authors are notorious fuck-ups in this regard; even JK Rowling got huge flack for taking a year off to have a baby rather than crank out the next Harry Potter book.

There's a reason why even mega-prolific authors only release 1 book in a series per year at max -- even someone like James Patterson. Between co-authored and ghost-written books he might have a book every month, but they're at least in different series. Publishers want to find a good mix of "frequent enough so you care" with "long enough that we can sell a lot" -- this is especially true for your basic bestsell fiction where you parse out the hardcover, trade, and mass-market releases.

[scy]

Books themselves are a little different, though; not often are we talking about direct sequels and, even then, they're being written, not translated. Or whatever bizarre ritual GRRM does that looks like writing.

Manga serieses aren't something you just "pick up" and go with the most recent release; they're typically not a tri-yearly release thing (weekly/bi-weekly/monthly releases in Japan). It's one of those "doesn't make sense to sit on" situations. One would think, here, that more releases is better. Unless it really is "can't pay to display full series" situation so they want exposure time per volume so they can just replace older volumes.

Not that I disagree with anything you said, mind. Just that some of it isn't logical from a consumer standpoint.

[spoiler]I only bring up ASoIaF since I know a few people are waiting for the end before grabbing it (hell, I think Maxine mentioned that here too). And I jumped into the series after 99% of the wait for A Dance with Dragons so I can only imagine when the next books are coming and what that wait will be like.[/spoiler]

[Kinokokao]