When I’m researching manga series to pick up and collect, one of the first things I check is to see if the entirety of the series has been released in English. More often than not, the series completed its English release and I’m able to continue looking into the manga to see if I want to collect it. However, there are times where I find that the English release was cut short and, in those situations, I am immediately put off from collecting the series since I won’t be able to finish the story. Knowing all this, the question becomes why are some manga cancelled in English?
The first and most obvious answer is simple, money. Even with the notoriously low pay in the manga translation industry, releasing manga in English is not cheap. Beyond translation costs, there is touch up to the artwork costs, editing costs, printing and distribution costs etc. This all adds up and can result in a series being unprofitable. Understandably, businesses don’t like to lose money and, rather than continuing to haemorrhage money, they might decide to just cancel the manga’s English release.
When it comes to series that were cancelled in English, we have a fair few examples. A particular series that I see brought up time and time again is the Viz Media release of Gintama which saw 23 volumes released in English before getting cancelled. Viz Media didn’t give any reasons as to why their release of Gintama was ended although it’s probable that it was due to poor sales. Other examples include Reborn!, Eden: It’s an Endless World!, From Eroica With Love etc.
A particularly notable example of a manga whose English language release was nearly cancelled was Vinland Saga. Back in 2015, well before the anime’s release in 2019, Kodansha Comics reported that Vinland Saga’s future in English was “up in the air” and implored fans to preorder the then upcoming volume seven. While the series ultimately continued and the release of an anime adaptation has seemingly secured the manga’s English language future, this was a surprisingly public display from a US manga publisher and really reminded me how difficult it can be to release manga.
Of course, sometimes series aren’t cancelled one at a time but en masse when a company shuts down. That’s what happened when Tokyopop announced that they were shutting down their American division. Understandably, any series that they were publishing at the time were immediately cancelled. While this does come back to money again, it’s quite different to cancelling series individually.
It always saddens me to see a manga series’ English release cancelled since it disappoints the fans who were collecting it and reduces the chance of people collecting the series in the future. However, it’s a fact that series that lose money are likely to be cancelled and, to be honest, it surprises me that we don’t see too many manga series cancelled these days. Let me know your thoughts on why some manga are cancelled in English, if you’ve ever been collecting a series when it got cancelled, if you’re aware of any non-economic reasons why a manga might be cancelled and any additional information you might have on the topic.
Hopefully you have found this article interesting and informative and, if you wish to seek any of the works I mentioned, don’t hesitate to use amazon.co.uk and amazon.com for all of your needs!