Broccoli Books Blog

Japan Trip Day 7

Last day for business meetings.
In the morning, we headed over to Shinshokan. We met them for the first time last year at TAF, and we’ve been meeting them regularly to talk about the industry in general.

We only had the meeting w/ Shinshokan today, so for the rest of the day, President Kaname & I headed over to Akihabara to check out the stores. So we stopped by Gamers, Tora no Ana & Animate.

Tomorrow, I head back to the US.

Japan Trip Day 6

Today was a full day of meetings.

First up was JIVE.
They had moved to into a new office with their parent company who publishes children’s books.
We talked about the current progress of Coyote Ragtime Show and My Dearest Devil Princess, and the possibility of licensing few more titles. There’s two titles that President Kaname really really really wants to release (one of which he read in real-time when he was a teenager).

JIVE gave us lots of sample books, which will haunt us later as we get more books to carry around town throughout the day. Remember, we’re WALKING to every single meeting.

Next we headed over to Enterbrain.
It was mostly to say hello, and to talk about a few new projects.

Next we headed over to Kadokawa Shoten.
We spent a lot of time talking about things, but it was my peak jet lag time of the day, so it’s all a blur. And stuff I can’t talk about. So much off-record stuff! Myu!

Last, we headed over to Libre.
They’re still in the same offices as Biblos was, but it was my first time meeting them as Libre. I’ve been communicating w/ Libre via email for almost a year now, so it was nice to finally meet them in person. We talked about lots of different things, including licensing new titles.

After all the meetings, President Kaname went to eat dinner w/ former colleagues & I went to eat dinner w/ staff from bishoujo game maker Circus.

Japan Trip Day 5

Since it’s no longer TAF, I re-named the subject line series as “Japan Trip.”
Too bad I couldn’t come up w/ something better.
Like “License Acquisition Trip Spring 2007″… eh, iroke ga nai.

The first meeting was with Bunka-sha/Kaiosha.
Bunka-sha is a really really old publishing house that releases “salaryman” manga. Or what I like to call oyaji manga. Like 4-panel comics that you read at a ramen shop.

Kaiosha is a subsidiary of Bunka-sha, and they publish BL manga magazine Gush.
So we talked briefly about the progress of Sex Friend and a bunch of other things which I can’t discuss yet.

Next meeting was with Eichi Shuppan, the publishers of COSMODE.
I had assumed that they do all their print work digitally, but they pride themselves as a “photo book” publisher & actually submit their photos as positives to the print shop. The layout itself is done in Quark, so that’s a lot of work on the print shop side.

Last meeting of the day was w/ Bandai Visual, which is more on the Synch-Point side of things, so read about it on the Synch-Point blog.

We went to dinner w/ Bandai Visual after the meeting. When we walked over to the next building, we crossed a bridge walkway that was all shiny & futuristic looking. All the buildings in the area are brand new too, so everything was glittery & sparkle-y. It was like the opening sequence to Metropolis. Hard to explain in words, so if you have the chance, head over to Shiodome/Shinbashi area.

As posted on Broccoli Books MySpace:

We were contacted by a TV producer who wants to interview American teenage girls who are shoujo manga fans for a Japanese TV show.

Date: March 15 (Thurs)
Time: 6pm - 8pm
Location: Torrance, CA

Address:
The Third Planet
3631 Pacific Coast Hwy
Torrance, CA 90505
TEL: (310) 791-6227

They’re going to be shooting at The Third Planet store located in Torrance.
Participants will be paid $20 gas/mileage stipend.

If you are interested, please send an email to Gloria (glokat ‘at’ earthlink.net) with your name & your age.

And make sure you say “I love Broccoli Books!”
(or any of our titles)

—
So we will reward you heavily if you go and sing praises about Broccoli Books.

(retro post below)

So the main reason for me to come up to N California was to attend the sales conference for Publisher’s Group West. Usually I would send sales manager Ardith or editor Dee, but they were busy & I’m more familiar w/ the new releases for 2007… so I ended up going.

I promised them we’ll get the press release out for Title Madadane, Title Calendar Girls, and Title Angel Food Cake in a Box this week, so they can add it to their database.

So maybe… Friday?
Ganbaru nyon!

(retro post below)

I went on a petite business trip to North California w/ President Kaname.
I had other reasons to go up north (see 11/15 blog), so we decided to kill more birds with one stone by visiting everyone we can think of in the Bay Area.

We met w/ Kinokuniya San Francisco, because store manager Nagashima-san is a really cool guy who supports the manga & anime fandom/industry. We knew him from the Costa Mesa store, so we still keep in touch w/ him in SF too.

Anyhoo, Kinokuniya bookstores are in a middle of a major face lift. They’re re-vamping the San Jose store (so store manager Nagashima-san wasn’t in), but they’re doing something even more amazing in the SF store. They’re planning to create a whole floor just for manga & anime! Kinokuniya Japan has a “comic tower” in Shinjuku area (I think that’s where it was), and it’ll be a mini version of that. Wow…

BTW, for those in the Bay Area who want to buy Prinny hats, they’ll be getting a bunch of them in this weekend, so drop on by.

The other meetings were non-Broccoli Books related, so skip for now. At least until more things come up.

Manga & comic related blogs have been buzzing about BGI buyer Kurt leaving his post. He was recently listed as the most influential person in the manga industry on ICV2’s anime/manga issue, so you can tell how important he is to the manga industry.

Kurt was a big part of Juvenile Orion being released in the US, which is how Broccoli Books got recognized in the US manga industry.

So I thought I’d contribute to the buzz.

In other manga industry news (terrible transition), Disgaea manga has been selling well recently. Last week, Disgaea was just under the top 30. And this week, it hit #19. YAY!

So… you may wonder, wasn’t Disgaea released in September? Why the sudden surge? Well… long story short, the books ended up getting to the bookstores late. So those who bought the Disgaea manga through Anime Gamers and other anime stores got them around September 20. Those who bought the manga from NIS America got them super early around late August (we rushed production so NIS America could make a Disgaea 2 PS2 game + Disgaea manga bundle). But none of those numbers are reflected in BookScan!! So sad, since Disgaea is selling well through the hobby market too.

Now I wish there was a petition for a English release of the Disgaea manga anthologies. (hint, hint. I could really use the numbers to get the proposal through corporate)

Wink.

We’re back in Los Angeles, where the weather is a bit gloomy.
Just as Tokyo was starting to get sunny & the cherry blossoms were starting to bloom.

Hm.
Bad timing.

Lots to catch up work-wise.

TAF day 2.
I took an earlier train from Ikebukuro today.

I had a bad feeling about it when I saw a bunch of JR wokers standing along the edge of the platform. They’re the guys who push passengers into the very very very crowded train cars.

Sure enough, I was pushed & shoved from all sides until the train was around 300% over capacity.

I always wonder if there’s anything similar in the US that I can compare this experience with. Concert? Elevator? Hmmm.

Our first meeting was with Square Enix.
We chit chatted about video games (even though we have nothing to do with ‘em), manga, and conventions.

Then we went over to Production IG’s booth to say hello.
We’re excited about all the new FLCL merchandise that’s being made this year.

Next we had a meeting w/ Company S.
It was the first time we’ve met them, and hopefully we can expand our manga properties with them.

After the event, we went to have dinner w/ the COSPA staff.

Broccoli has a long relationship with COSPA, starting with when Broccoli held cosplay dance parties almost 10 years ago. COSPA has the coolest looking t-shirt designs, and we want to bring them to the US with the help (and approval) of US licensors.

President Kaname was looking at a Gundam jacket ($120) and was trying to decide if he should get the black one or green one.

So that’s the end of the business portion of our trip to Japan.
We’ll head back to TAF over the weekend to wander around & say hi to more people.

Today was the first day of TAF.
Since our first meeting was at 11am, I took a 9:50 train from Ikebukuro to Tokyo Big Sight. Any earlier and the train would have been jam packed.

The Broccoli booth was all about Dimension Zero.
It’s a new card game that Broccoli released last year.

Our first meeting of the day was with Tora no Ana.

Broccoli and Tora no Ana might seem like a weird combination, but so is Broccoli and Movic, right? Even though we all have retail store chains in Japan, all the stores end up working together since each store has its specialty. Animate caters mainly to the female market. Gamers gets a lot of 20+ males. And Tora has the biggest doujinshi collection in Japan.

Our next meeting was w/ Geneon Entertainment.
We have a lot of co-promotion planned w/ Geneon.
Fun fun fun.

After the meeting w/ Geneon, we stopped by the Pierrot booth to say hello to producer Honma-san & international relations Iijima-san.

The last meeting of the day was with Company M.
We have one license that’s being finalized with them.

Oh, I also bumped into ADR director Michael.
I couldn’t chat for long, so need to search for him tomorrow.

I didn’t get to look around the entire exhibition floor, so I’ll have to walk around tomorrow. And say hello to the GAINAX folks.