Ok, I know I was snarking on the new Tokyopop website yesterday, but I have spent a little time clicking around and I have figured out a few things.
First of all, if you want to find a particular manga, try the “Books” link in the left-hand menu, which will bring up an alphabetical list. If you click “Manga serials” you just get the books they’re pushing today, and “Manga” brings you to their manga feature page, where you can read Telophase’s manga column, which is one of the highlights of the site as far as I’m concerned.
If you can avert your eyes from the huddled masses in the blogs, there is actually some good content here. Most of the columns look good, and there is an interview with the author of Beck. However, a caveat: Given that this is still a company site, I can’t imagine the columns and interviews are going to wander into negative or controversial territory.
Finally, it appears that they are going to make lots of chapters of their featured manga available via a manga reader, except that it’s not quite ready for prime time. When I try to read a Chapter 1, I get a message that the Manga Reader is coming soon (although subsquent chapters seem to work). It could just be that I’m using Safari on a Mac, but my philosophy is, if you can’t accomodate Macs, you’re not really a website. Anyway, I’m looking forward to that feature being fully implemented.
Aww, thanks! :D As far as subject matter goes, I have not been given any instructions on what to write about or avoid, as long as it’s about manga in some way. I don’t know if other columnists have been told anything. (I suppose that if I wrote something analyzing the images in yaoi and hentai in graphic detail, I might get frowned at.) The only thing that I know so far I won’t write about is the “Why do girls like yaoi?” thing because AAAAH NO I DON’T WANT THIS COLUMN ENDING UP ON FANDOM_WANK! :) And that was entirely my own decision.
I’ve stuck with vaguely generic topics for the first few, but have some ideas for future ones that go further afield, but they’re going to require actual research instead of me sitting down and hammering something out using info I already know. (I’ve really got to work up more exciting titles, but I fail at lively title creation.)
Come to think of it, I was told one thing I couldn’t write. If I decide to review manga (separate from the column), I can’t review Tokyopop books in order to avoid conflict of interest.
That’s interesting! I can’t wait to see what you come up with!