Manga/Light Novels you would like to see licensed/continued

kuuderes_shadow said:
Unlike with anime, where fears of reverse-importing mean that older anime can actually have an advantage over newer ones in terms of getting the rights abroad (the Japanese want to keep them back at first), when it comes to manga and, particularly, light novels, the Japanese rights holder will want to push their newer titles, rather than one that was a big hit the best part of a decade ago, but which (as far as Japan' is concerned) is been and gone.
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They might prefer licensing newer titles but I don't think they'd have any reason not to license older titles. It's still more money and they could probably put less effort into authorising translations and such (assuming they still have easy access to everyone that would have a say) since there'd likely be less interest in the older title in general (so less need to maintain consistency/integrity).

If a company wanted an older title, they could maybe strategically pick up some new ones and say "hey why not throw in this old thing too?". If the licensor wasn't as concerned about their older titles they'd have no reason not to go along with it.

Of course, there probably are reasons for why things haven't been licensed. They may not be good reasons but there'll at least be reasons.
 
ilmaestro said:
Thankfully we had a Dengeki Bunko insider on the case to clear things up.
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I'd say something went over my head but nothing goes over my head, my reflexes are too good. I would catch it.
 
I think that was a sarcastic attack on me, because apparently you have to work for Dengeki Bunko to be able to point out reasons why something is not a case of "why haven't they licensed this series yet?" but actually something that would be surprising if they did license it.

I have never actually seen an interview from either side on the process of licensing light novels for English release. If anyone knows of any (in either Japanese or English, and featuring someone from either the English licensor or the Japanese publishers/authors), please get in touch with me as I would love to read them. Note - I'm not talking about the translation process or anything else but the actual licensing process itself. I'm not talking about a few words like Vertical have given in response to questions either - a good proper explanation is what I'd be interested in. I've tried looking but my search just gets flooded with info on license announcements (and Japanese sites about people buying the English releases of their favourite light novels to help them learn English).

To be absolutely clear: I have no direct personal contacts who work for Yen Press, ASCII Media Works or indeed with any personal involvement in the light novel industry.

Another point, although to clarify this is NOT a point specifically about Toradora! (which should be obvious but I just bet some smart alec would try to point it out if I didn't specify that), but I'm not sure that Yen Press have actually taken on any more staff to work on the process since they changed from the original plan of releasing 24 books a year (there are 40 yen on releases scheduled to come out in 2015 in total). Then again I haven't been constantly following this and thus it may have happened without me noticing. Or they may have simply taken on more people than they had originally intended, or transferred staff from other parts of the company.
 
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