I must first begin by saying that I do not have any sort of problem with Tokyopop. I respect the company because they have done so much for promoting manga in America, and have been generous in releasing both popular titles and lesser-known series. Despite some earlier goofs, the translations have become very reliable over the years and I think they generally do a great job with presentation. But honestly, they screwed up with Island. Perhaps it was because it was their first Korean title, and they didn’t know exactly how to market it.

Whatever the reason, Island’s status as little-known is a direct result of a bad marketing strategy and a bad presentation. It begins with the covers. Instead of following suit with the Korean, Japanese, and Chinese covers featuring images of the cool-looking Pan or sometimes sexy Miho, Tokyopop devoted all but one cover to the various creepy aspects of Island. We get covers featuring the kumiko creatures, burning desire demons, the cursed skulls, and even the wraith that Kiyoichi can summon. While these colored shots are nice, they only attract a certain type of audience: horror fans. Which is sad, since horror manga is popular even with non-horror fans, if it has interesting characters and a good story (both of which Island has). But the point is that fans don’t know that Island has these great things, because all they see are grotesque creatures on the covers. Your average manga reader probably isn’t even going to pick it up to read the back. But how many more people would pick up a volume if an awesome shot of Pan was on the front, glaring at us? Or how many boys would check it out if Miho was on the cover? Quite honestly, if I didn’t know about Island and just saw, for example, volume two sitting on the shelf, I wouldn’t even touch it, despite being a big horror fan, simply because the image itself wasn’t that appealing to me.

The next mistake was that there were very few ads or promotions for Island. I buy a lot of Tokyopop manga, buying quite a lot while Island was still being released, and I never once saw a full-page ad for Island. A couple of times I saw an ad for “Extreme Manga”, with Island listed amongst others, not even a picture present. I never saw ads in any anime magazines, and for that matter never saw any reviews for Island in magazines (though this is probably the magazines’ faults rather than Tokyopop, though I wonder if Tokyopop sends them certain titles so that they can review them). I never saw any images from Island displayed on the Tokyopop mainpage either. It’s as if Tokyopop made no effort to promote the series.

The third mistake was that Island seemed to be hard to find. The first volume of Island I found was in a really great comic book store that had a huge section devoted to manga. I had to special order all six of the other volumes from a local book store that didn’t even carry manga, mainly because I couldn’t find the other volumes in the major book stores I normally visit, such as Walden Books, Books-A-Million, or Barnes and Noble. I’m not saying these stores never carried Island, but that the ones I visited never had them when I was there. There are four Walden’s that I visit and three Books-a-Million, so I find it odd that none of them ever had a volume of Island in stock when I shopped.

I don’t think that Tokyopop purposely tried to keep Island from being wide-spread or popular (that would make zero sense), but I do think Tokyopop made several mistakes that lead to Island becoming something only a select few know about. Whether it was because they simply didn’t know how to market it, or because they were focusing on other, more popular series, I don’t know. Either way, I think they should try re-releasing it with better covers and some actual promotion. Then perhaps more people could be exposed to this amazing story.