Kodansha Picks Up Its Toys and Comes Here

The Japanese media giant Kodansha, best known for its manga, announced yesterday that it was creating a US subsidiary and transferring many of its copyrights to the new Kodansha USA.

Kodansha previously licensed its works -- an extensive series of licenses with Tokyopop, now somewhat diminished; a few, mostly more mature titles with Dark Horse; and a current extensive relationship with Random House's Del Rey Manga imprint -- but will now also publish some works directly.

Early reports indicate that existing licenses are expected to stay with their current US publishers, perhaps indicating that Kodansha wants to leverage its huge library of titles in Japan. They may perhaps be aiming at a somewhat different market than Del Rey and Tokyopop, though those imprints mostly do shonen and shojo titles, which are the largest market segments here as well as in Japan.

And, as always when something happens in the SF/comics world, io9 is there to misunderstand the story and comment confusedly -- clapping their hands in glee as if this heralded a massive new OEL program. Pity the clueless, for they will walk into many walls in their time.