Taking a closer look at ADV's cutbacks

Two articles follow up on Wednesday's item about cutbacks at ADV, the Houston-based anime distributor and manga publisher:

Writing for The Pulse, Tom Spurgeon takes a look at ADV's entry into the manga market, and examines what the restructuring will mean to the company and the marketplace:

... For ADV, their future in manga depends on overall success in the business on which the company was built starting in 1992, perhaps more so than any competing publisher. It may also hinge on the success or at least mitigation of any setbacks when it comes to concurrent efforts with a television network. Yet it also allows for certain synergistic endeavors. As reported, the company's manga division will emphasize titles with a connection to properties for which they also produce related anime DVDs, such as Eijie Nonaka's Cromartie High School. In that case, the anime series and the manga trades have been packaged together and even used as cross-promotional tools. ADV hopes to pursue projects with the ability to stand out in some way in a crowded marketplace, related anime or no.

Meanwhile, retailer website ICv2 dismisses Internet doomsayers who point to the cutbacks as a sign of the "end of the manga boom," noting the prediction "is not borne out by sales results from either bookstores or the direct market."