Anime News

Tokyopop To Move Away from OEL and World Manga Labels
Date: 5/5/2006
Global Manga is now Tokyopop's term of choice.


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Tokyopop is moving away from the labels "OEL" and "World Manga" to describe its properties created by non-Japanese artists. Susan Hale of Tokyopop explained that OEL is innapropriate because many of their titles originate from non-anglophone creators, for example Yonen Buzz, which was originally published in German.

Although originaly proposed by Tokyopop, the term "World Manga" was never extensively used by the company. The term OEL is believed to have been coined by Carlo Santo on his Irresponsible Pictures manga blog.

In an interview for the upcoming issue of Protoculture Addicts, Tokyopop Editorial Director, Jeremy Ross, explains, "The fact that manga fans have largely stopped using the term Ameri-manga (which has negative connotations) and are referring to it as OEL for Original English Language (which is at least neutral) and more recently, global manga (this more respectful and accurate term surfaced on www.pseudome.net, among other places) is but one indicator of the growing respect for our manga creators."
Source: Anime News Network