Like a zombie that just won’t die, Tokyopop is back in business.

It had apparently been rumored for a while, but the return of Tokyopop was made official at their panel at Anime Expo.  Their plan is to publish “hidden gems” from smaller publishers that have yet to be snapped up by companies that release manga in the U.S.  In addition, they’re also planning to put out artbooks, light novels, “collector’s editions,” pursue film and TV productions with the properties they already own, various projects on YouTube, and a Pop Comics app which will allow users to upload their comics to share and retain full creative control and ownership.  It’s an ambitious plan, and that’s the big problem here.

Tokyopop rose to prominence by starting the “manga revolution” in offering cheap, unflipped manga which revolutionized the existing market and brought it a whole new audience in the process.  Years later, the publishing arm of the company declared bankruptcy after their relationships with key publishers in Japan soured, their efforts to promote Global Manga didn’t turn a profit, and diversification into TV and film didn’t work out either.  Anybody remember the “Priest” film?  In the process, they burned a lot of bridges with creators like Brandon Graham, Felipe Smith, Becky Cloonan, and Svetlana Chmakova when they didn’t return any of the rights for the series they created to them.  In Graham’s case, he wasn’t able to re-publish “King City” until Image came in to negotiate a deal.

The part about licensing “hidden gems” makes me want to be optimistic for Tokyopop’s return.  Going for a smaller, Vertical-style, approach to publishing sounds appealing as well as the only way to compete with the big guns of Viz and Kodansha who have nearly all of the best-known and best-selling stuff locked down.  Also, I’m interpreting “hidden gems” here to mean “weird-ass seinen and josei manga” since this approach would need to target older readers with plenty of disposable income.  It’s hard to imagine most kids having time for lesser-known titles when they’re already being well-served by the likes of the Shonen Jump line and the likes of “Attack on Titan.”

Of course, as one perceptive poster in the comments thread for the article on Tokyopop’s return noted, this approach is more out of necessity than anything else.  They cleverly paraphrased the company’s plan as, “We burned our bridges with the major publishers in Japan, so we need to find some new suckers.”  This isn’t even taking into account the ill will the publisher incurred by keeping all of the rights to the Global Manga titles they’ve published.  Even if Tokyopop does find new publishers in Japan to work with, the titles they have to release are going to have to be GOD LEVEL in quality for them to get past the bad blood still simmering from when they ceased publishing operations.

Then you have the fact that the company is ALREADY talking about TV and film projects before they’ve even published a new manga.  Tokyopop’s new agenda sounds a whole lot like they’re trying to pick up exactly where they left off, albeit on a much smaller scale.  More than anything else, this makes me think that their return is doomed from the start.  Nobody has any good memories of what the company did beyond their manga publishing efforts, so it really makes you wonder why they’d want to go down this road again.  Even if this does turn out to be more PR fluff than anything else.

Looking at this another way, Tokyopop founder and owner Stu Levy is behind the company’s return as well.  It’s been said that his inability to focus, and flights of fancy into other media are what caused the company’s downfall in the first place.  Also, a series of tweets he made disparaging manga publishing towards Tokyopop’s end did nothing to engender any kind of sympathy for him or his company at the time.  Since then, however, he really hasn’t done anything of note save for a blink-and-you-missed-it documentary about Japan’s recovery from the Fukushima quake a few years back.  Given that Levy apparently hasn’t been able to make a go of anything else, it’s not surprising that he’s trying to revive the one truly successful thing he was responsible for.  That he’s trying to do the same things all over again based on the information from the panel…  Well, you know what they say about those who don’t remember history.

No dates were given for when we can see new manga from Tokyopop.  There’s also a chance that the reaction from this announcement could cause Levy to throw in the towel before things get going.  One thing that I would’ve liked to have seen in their announcement is some acknowledgement of what they did wrong before things came crashing down and their plans to make sure it didn’t happen again.  Without these things, Tokyopop’s resurrection will continue to be a contentious affair as those who remember the company only for the manga will be pitted against those who remember the company for a string of broken and empty promises, and some outright treachery.  If the company does manage to put out new manga in the future, I’m honestly curious to see if it’ll be as entertaining as the drama circling around them right now.