Ask John: What’s the Status of the .Hack Manga?

Question:
Has the .hack//DUSK manga been completed in Japan? If so, why hasn’t Tokyopop released the final volume? If not, why did Tokyopop license it if it wasn’t finished?

Answer:
The third and final .hack//Legend of Twilight Bracelet manga was just released in Japan earlier this month.

With the competition in the domestic anime and manga industry as fierce as it is nowadays, domestic licensors generally can’t afford to wait until an anime or manga series is complete before securing its distribution rights. Hot properties get licensed quickly nowadays, so a distributor that takes a “wait and see” attitude may end up finding the titles under consideration already snatched away by a competing distributor. This also results in a percentage of poor quality and “second string” anime and manga titles being licensed for American release because they’re either licensed sight-unseen or licensed as “plan B” options. But that’s a subject of a different discussion.

Especially in the case of the .Hack manga, it was probably wise of TOKYOPOP to rush the title to shelves as quickly as possible to capitalize on the current American interest in the .Hack franchise. By comparison much of the interest in the series among Japanese fans has already subsided. The .Hack anime is no longer in Newtype (Japan) Magazine’s top 20 most popular series, and none of the .Hack characters fall within Newtype’s poll of top 10 characters or Animage Magazine’s poll of favorite 30 characters. Even original .Hack animation studio Bee Train has moved on to release two new anime TV series since finishing work on the .Hack franchise. Among Japanese fans, .Hack is “old news.”

Anime series tend to retain their relevance and popularity among Western fans longer than they do among Japanese fans, but even so, there’s no telling when interest in the franchise may cool off among American fans. So even if the series isn’t complete yet, it’s a wiser business decision for TOKYOPOP to release some of the .Hack manga now, while it’s popular, rather than wait for the series to finish and risk losing potential consumer interest during the interim.

TOKYOPOP representative Jake Forbes has been kind enough to inform us that the “mammoth 260 page” third manga volume will be published in English this fall.