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Tokyopop (styled TOKYOPOP; formerly known as Mixx Entertainment) is an American distributor, licensor and publisher of anime, manga, manhwa and Western manga-style works. The German publishing division produces German language translations of licensed Japanese properties and original English-language manga, as well as original German-language manga. Tokyopop's US publishing division publishes works in English. Tokyopop has its US headquarters near Los Angeles International Airport in Los Angeles, California." LET'S GET IN TOUCH." Tokypo. Retrieved on March 15, 2018. "TOKYOPOP U.S.A.: 5200 W Century Blvd, Suite 705 Los Angeles, CA 90045 USA"
It is owned by POP Media Holdings. Tokyopop's parent company's offices are in Tokyo, Japan and its sister company's office is in Hamburg, Germany.
Tokyopop published a manga magazine called MixxZine which serialized exclusively four classic manga of Kodansha including Sailor Moon, Magic Knight Rayearth, Parasyte, and Ice Blade. Eventually, MixxZine became an Asian pop culture publication entitled Tokyopop Magazine. Additionally, the company published a manga and tech magazine entitled Smile Magazine.
Cultural anthropologist Rachel Thorn praised Stu Levy for opening up an untapped market for animation with the publication of Sailor Moon and other. Before Sailor Moon, the belief among entertainment executives was that "girls don't watch cartoons." Due to Sailor Moons immense popularity, Tokyopop discontinued the serial from its magazines, and released it separately as its first manga graphic novel. They engineered prominent book distribution via retail stores, standardized book trim size, created a basic industry-wide rating system, and developed the first-ever retail manga displays and introduced the world of graphic novels to an audience of teenage girls. Also, together with Diamond, Tokyopop offered retailers free spinner rack displays for Tokyopop manga, thereby increasing the visibility of the medium in bookstores.
Tokyopop also licensed and distributed Japanese anime. In 1996, Mixx Entertainment acquired the rights to the anime biopic of Japanese poet Kenji Miyazawa, and Stu Levy produced and directed the English version of the anime film, entitled Spring and Chaos. The film was directed and scripted by Shōji Kawamori, who created Super Dimension Fortress Macross and The Vision of Escaflowne. Taste of Cinema ranked "Spring and Chaos" thirteenth in its list of Top "25 Weird Animated Movies That Are Worth Your Time." From 2000 to 2004, Tokyopop released multiple film and television projects such as Street Fury, which Stu Levy created, GTO (English version for Showtime TV), Rave Master (English version for Cartoon Network's Toonami), and (English version for Cartoon Network's Adult Swim.) Tokyopop also released English version DVDs for: Initial D, Marmalade Boy, Saint Tail, , Vampire Princess Miyu, , FMW, High School Ghostbusters.
In Japan, most published manga is written to read from right to left, but when an English translation was published in the U.S., however, the common practice was to use computer-reversed or mirror images that allowed the books to read from left to right. As a result, this distorted the artwork. Tokyopop's decision to use the original right-to-left format allowed the artwork to keep its original form and also enabled Tokyopop to release most graphic novel series on a frequency three-to-six times faster than the industry standard at the time. Tokyopop volumes hit the shelves monthly, bi-monthly or quarterly versus the six months or longer typical of competitors. It also allowed Tokyopop to sell books for an industry-leading price point of $9.99 per book, at a time when most competitors charged $12.99 to $16.99 per book.
Tokyopop was the first U.S. publisher to adopt such a sweeping policy. While some Japanese manga artists had required that the English versions of their manga be published from right to left, Tokyopop was the first American publisher to unilaterally announce that it would maintain the original format for all of its future manga titles.
An "authentic manga" how-to guide was included in each graphic novel to keep readers from accidentally reading the final page first, and the authentic manga also featured special packaging.
Tokyopop launched its first "Rising Stars of Manga" contest on August 15, 2002, and ended it on December 16, 2002, with more than five hundred American artists submitting their 15–25 page, English-language stories.
The 5th Rising Stars of Manga competition added the People's Choice award, where the top-20 finalists had their entire entries judged by the fans on the Tokyopop website. "We are really pleased to open up the Rising Stars judging to the fans," commented Tokyopop editor Rob Valois. "Since so many people have been vocal on the message boards and at industry conventions, we're offering them all a chance to shape the future of manga. I'm personally excited to see how the fans' favorite will compare to our own."
Tokyopop held eight Rising Stars of Manga competitions between 2002 and 2008, as well as one in the UK in 2005.
Several Rising Stars of Manga winners went on to publish full-length graphic novels with Tokyopop, including Josh Elder with Mail Order Ninja, M. Alice LeGrow with Bizenghast, Mike Schwark and Ron Kaulfersch with Van Von Hunter, Lindsay Cibos and Jared Hodges with Peach Fuzz, Wes Abbott with Dogby Walks Alone, Felipe Smith with MBQ, and Nathan Maurer with Atomic King Daidogan.
As of July 2022, a new Rising Stars of Manga 25th Year Anniversary edition was announced.
Tokyopop was also instrumental in the introduction of manhwa to western audiences. Brad Brooks and Tim Pilcher, authors of The Essential Guide to World Comics. London, said that Tokyopop "published many Koreans artists' work, possibly without Western fans even realizing the strips don't come from Japan. Series like King of Hell by Kim Jae-hwan and Ra In-soo, and the Gothic fiction vampire tale Model by Lee So-young are both Korean, but could easily be mistaken for manga." In 2005, Tokyopop began a new, free publication called Manga (originally Takuhai) to feature their latest releases.
Tokyopop secured newspaper distribution in the form of Sunday comics, featuring its titles Princess Ai, Mail Order Ninja, Peach Fuzz, and Van Von Hunter.
In March 2006, Tokyopop and HarperCollins Publishers announced a co-publishing agreement in which the sale and distribution rights of some Tokyopop manga and books, under this co-publishing license, would be transferred to HarperCollins in mid-June 2006. The agreement enabled Tokyopop to produce original English-language (OEL) manga adaptations of HarperCollins' books. Meg Cabot's books were the first to be adapted into the manga format, along with the Warriors series by Erin Hunter. The first line of Tokyopop-HarperCollins OEL manga was released in 2007 with the goal of publishing up to 24 titles each year.
Tokyopop entered a licensing arrangement with Kaplan, a leading provider of educational and training services in 2007, to help students study vocabulary words in preparation for the .
Tokyopop has released several series based on American games, films, and characters, such as Warcraft, the Kingdom Hearts video game series, and Jim Henson films. They released the first volume of a series based on the video game in April 2008.
During the restructure, Tokyopop laid off 39 positions, equating to 35%–40% of its American workforce. Most of the positions cut were those involved in the direct publication of its books which resulted in a scale back of publication output from Tokyopop, Inc. Tokyopop reported that it would be cutting the volumes released per year by approximately 50%, to an average of 20–22 volumes per month.
Tokyopop's Japan division was also to be split, with one unit operating under Tokyopop Media and the other becoming a subsidiary under the overall Tokyopop Group. In response to Tokyopop's restructuring, declining sales, and losing 20% of its manga market share, Tokyopop UK cut its publication release schedule from approximately 25 volumes a month to 20.
In December 2008, citing "dramatically low sales" in the publishing industry as a whole, Tokyopop, Inc., laid off eight more employees, including three editors, and noted that the company would have to rearrange some of its upcoming publication schedules.
On August 31, 2009, Tokyopop announced Kodansha was allowing all of its licensing agreements with both the North American and German divisions of Tokyopop to expire as it would start to publish its own official Kodansha series of English manga translations. Due to this loss in licensing, Tokyopop was forced to leave several Kodansha series unfinished, including the popular Rave Master, Initial D, GetBackers, and Life series. It would be unable to reprint any previously published volumes, rendering all Kodansha-owned Tokyopop releases out-of-print.
Several other titles licensed and published by Tokyopop, including best sellers Cardcaptor Sakura, Chobits, Clover, and Magic Knight Rayearth, were reacquired by Dark Horse Comics, though two other titles Kodansha licensed to Dark Horse had since transferred to Random House by then. Samurai Deeper Kyo was relicensed by competitor Del Rey Manga, a division of Random House, which published the remaining volumes of the series.
Tokyopop said that it expected the loss of the licenses to have minimal impact on the company economically due to its diversification of their holdings over the last few years, though they acknowledged the loss would hurt fans of the ongoing series who face uncertainty about the completion of those titles from other companies. ICv2 reported that Tokyopop would continue to publish from Kodansha and that Kodansha appeared to be planning to publish its own titles through its partnership with Random House.
On March 1, Tokyopop continued to lay off workers, removing many high-profile employees such as long-time manga editors Lilian Diaz-Przyhyl and Troy Lewter. Tokyopop's management also eliminated the position of director of sales operations. In an interview with ICv2, Stuart Levy revealed that the layoffs were due to Borders, Tokyopop's largest customer, filing bankruptcy in March 2011, no longer carrying Tokyopop stock, and not paying debts that the company owed to Tokyopop.
On December 10, 2012, Tokyopop's website relaunched with a letter from management stating that the company was down to a few select employees who were starting a 'new incarnation' of the company. Partnered with 'Right Stuf on Demand', they began offering ebooks of various titles for which they retained the rights.
Their company blog article stated:
Luckily new technologies that have only very recently become practical are enabling us to re-emerge. Conventional publishing has irrevocably changed, and it is impractical for all but the largest and most established companies to pursue publishing as it has gone on for centuries. But by embracing ebook and print-on-demand technologies, we believe we can move forward and continue to produce some amazing manga as well as bring you Asian Pop Culture in many forms.
A letter from Levy on January 6, 2013, stated:
Digital technology has transformed many industries including publishing. This hit TOKYOPOP very hard since we didn't have ebook rights to most of our series (except OEL). Unfortunately our Japanese licensors did not move fast enough to provide a legitimate alternative to piracy, and piracy shows no mercy. As a result, TOKYOPOP had to shut down its LA office and the licenses to Japanese titles expired, reverting to the Japanese licensors.What that means is TOKYOPOP is evolving as a company. I know many fans would prefer us to return to being a manga publisher like we were for most of our history. However, manga will never disappear – we will do what we can to deliver manga. I plan on experimenting with new ways to bring you Asian pop culture. Please keep an open mind – and give feedback (not just negative when you don't like something but also positive when you like something) so we can tweak our approach.
Throughout the publishing closure, Tokyopop Media remained open for business, continuing its efforts to produce film and TV adaptations of Tokyopop's manga, as well as reinvigorating the Tokyopop YouTube channel, launching several original web series and adding trailers for Japanese film and TV. In 2013, Tokyopop partnered with MondoMedia to release an animated short film based on the Tokyopop manga Riding Shotgun, Riding Shotgun which was directed by Michael Davis and starred the voices of Yuri Lowenthal and Jessy Schram. The short film garnered over a million views in its first month, and led to an IndieGoGo campaign to finance a full animated series.
In 2015, at Anime Expo and San Diego Comic-Con, Tokyopop announced that it would be relaunching its publishing operations in North America in 2016 and hinted that its first major licensor would be Disney.
In January 2018, Tokyopop announced the release dates for three new properties: Konohana Kitan, , and Hanger. Additionally, TOKYOPOP initiated "International Woman of Manga" to showcase non-Japanese female manga writers with the publication of five titles: Ocean of Secrets, Goldfisch, Kamo, Undead Messiah, and Sword Princess Amaltea. Tokyopop's "Nightmare Before Christmas: Zero's Journey" was nominated for two 2018 Diamond GEM awards in the categories "2018 Best All Ages Series" and "2018 Licensed TP or HC of the Year".
In 2021, Cracker Barrel restaurants agreed to sell specific Tokyopop Manga by offering Disney's The Nightmare Before Christmas adaptation by Jun Asuka in its North American in-store gift shops.
In addition to publishing popular manga titles, Tokyopop GmbH also expanded the market by producing new and exciting cross-media content, including licensing popular video game franchises such as Assassin's Creed and Zelda and bestselling novels such as James Patterson and Warriors. In 2013, the company launched a prestige project called Manga Library, which adapted classic literary novels into manga.
According to GFK Entertainment, as of 2014 in the core segment of manga, Tokyopop GmbH is currently the second largest provider, with a market share of 27%. Additionally, in the last two years, Tokyopop GmbH had the fastest growth rate out of the big three manga suppliers in the German market, with a growth rate of 29% in 2014. This compares with Egmont Ehapa at 6.5% and Carlsen Verlag at 1.8%.
Tokyopop distributed some of its titles to Australia and New Zealand via Madman Entertainment/Funtastic and in Greece, Tokyopop properties were licensed by Compupress. Tokyopop partnered with IDW International in February 2018 to license its original intellectual property (IP) and manga in overseas markets.
The company alleviated some of the concerns by noting that the anime series would receive an "unedited, subtitled, Japanese language" DVD release. The manga series remained edited except for the first volume, which was accidentally printed before the editing decisions were made.
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