First apologies for abandoning blog. A lot is going on with my life, plus I’m quite sick in the last couple weeks. *sigh* Anyhow, on with today’s topic.
If you haven’t heard, Seven Seas has dropped Kodomo no Jikan. I just felt that I have to blog about this because people expect me to say something about it. All day long people have been walking into me on IRC trying to provoke a conversation from me on Kojikan. To be honest, I haven’t had time nor energy to keep up with ANY of the online debates about it, except for people who intentionally walk up to me to attempt to speak their point-of-view to me. Obviously, those are the people who whine about Nymphet being cancelled and how Seven Seas “lack balls”.
What do I have to say about this? Not too much, really. Disappointed? Yes, very. But that’s the fangirl-side of me speaking. Logically, I understand Seven Seas’ decisions. The title has caught my eyes before it was even scanlated by Akatsuki. In fact, it caught my eyes, as a manga with a cute cover that made #1 on amazon.jp (it was still on pre-order at the time too!). I just knew I had to get the book and check it out! Since then, I’ve been a faithful follower of the series, and I’ve gotten the first two volumes in Japanese.
Those who has read the series know exactly what I am talking about. The series is so enjoyable because the scenerios are so taboo, the plot is so funny because the situations are so awkward; of course, the fanservice is the icing on the cake — an-8-year-old-underaged fanservice, nonetheless. The above description just seems too obscure for the typical Americans to accept — typical American being those who think a nipple in a manga should be censored in order to protect the children. That’s why it puzzeled me so much when Seven Seas licensed the title. It seemed like a huge risk for a company who was just starting out. Nonetheless, I was excited to see it happened, while not expecting much from the outcome. (Seriously, I was expecting Seven Seas to bail out since they announced the title a year ago. I just never thought it would took this long.)
Seven Seas made many mistakes, I think. The biggest one, however, would be that they didn’t step up to address the controversies until recently, when the book should be hitting stores (and I’m guessing it’s retail stores that are giving them problems?). Why couldn’t Jason DeAngelis had made the public statement, the reasons why Seven Seas believes Kojikan shoudl be published, sooner? Of course, it would not have avoided the controversies and heated debates, but as of how things are right now, it definitely made it very difficult for the fan to understand Seven Seas’ cancelling the title, especially since two days ago, they have made such a public statement and a strong stand that they have good reasons to publish it. I supposed there were an overwhelming lack of retailers support, considering the letter seemed to have been addressed to retailers themselves (this is purely my own hypothesis, there may be a huge combination of reasons).
Now, what’s done is done. What are their other options if they were to publish it and avoided controversies as these? Obviously to censor the book! Would you be happy to get a censored copy of Nymphet? To be honest, I would prefer to not have it at all in that case (I am sure many of you are with me here). So that’s exactly what Seven Seas is doing, they took the book out, since they lack retailers support and they don’t want to censor. We, the fans, are all disappointed, but Seven Seas has made a decision that they believed to be the best. There’s really nothing you can do about it (well, aside from flooding their mailbox with complaints, which I don’t suggest anyways). If you really wish to read the series, I suggest you go order yourself a copy from yesasia and I’ll see about posting text translation in the summer if enough people bug me about it (and no scanlators pick the title back up again).
Oh, Oh, OHHH! I just have to mention this, go read the freshly released Otaku no Musume-san, translated by me. I proposed this title (and another one that will be coming soon), as Kojikan replacement projects to Akatsuki-Manga earlier this year. It took a bit longer than I expeted to come out, but it’s mostly my fault. I just haven’t had energy to do much in the last while. More releases should come soon. It’s not exactly like Kojikan at all, but it is about an awkward situation of a new-found daughter that a 25 year hardcore otaku just found out he has and must live together alone with her. It’s much more heartwarming than Kojikan, and the comedy is slightly different, but still very enjoyable. ^_^
[Edit: Hmmm, I missed this yesterday. It seems like Mangablog has a roundabout on all the Nymphet’s commenting. Go read if you’re interested. ^_^]
