April 19th, 2011 
AstroNerdBoy A Translated Debate on Manga between Manga-ka Ken AKAMATSU and Manga Editor Kentaro TAKEKUMA
2chan.us has been allowed to translate a debate from February 2011 between managa-ka AKAMATSU Ken-sensei (Love Hina, Negima!) and manga editor TAKEKUMA Kentaro-san. Part 1 and part 2 of the debate have been translated with three more parts still to go. It is a fascinating read on the state of manga publications in Japan and I thought I would share this with you guys and encourage you to read the pieces yourself.
Thanks to Deb Aoki and Animemiz for alerting me to these articles!
Update 1: Part 3 has now been published.
Update 2: Part 4 has now been published.
Update 3: Part 5 has now been published.
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Thanks for sharing, ANB! Who’s that Mai girl in the picture, anyway?
I noticed something very interesting in that interview, about Japanese copyright, one which the should make a lot of translation groups should take note of. As well as any remaining individuals still interested in translating a certain long out of print set of light novels. *cough* *cough*
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QUOTE:
Akamatsu: Half of it was me wanting to read lots of old manga, and the other half was as a way to fight piracy. Winny was at the peak of its popularity at that time, and while publishers would take legal action for titles they were still printing, like “One Piece,” the publishers didn’t have the right to sue on behalf of artists whose books were out of print.
Takekuma: Yep, that’s right. The only rights that publishers are given are publishing rights. If they put a book out of print, those rights lapse, and then the only person with rights to the work is the author.
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Good to see Akamatsu finally got some of the bugs out of his online reader, since all he did was initially bitch about how it wasn’t generating revenue and was costing a fortune. From the sound of it, it looks like he wised up and started using Google AdSense.
Mai is from Itsudatte My Santa! It’s a one-shot (multiple part one-shot?) by Akamatsu-sensei
using google ads is the first step to go worldwide, as he stated in the interview. and that’s great. i’m happy to see that he and his website are on a good course, and when he adds translated content (and J-Comi becomes more known in the western world), THEN he’ll really start to make the money he should have made years ago
thanks for sharing, ANB!
Itsudatte My Santa! was indeed a one-shot manga. The 2-episode anime actually goes well beyond the materials in the manga. I think I have the manga. I should blog it this Christmas.
Oh — part 3 is up. I’ve updated the article to reflect that.
Oh, that’s right, thanks. To think I’ve even read Itsudatte my Santa!… I’m kinda forgetful at times. XD
@py
There’s already some English translated content there, it’s just that it’s plain text and not edited into the images.