§ Correction 8/13: These titles were announced as cancelled by a Tokyopop distributor, but ToykoPop has not announced them as cancelled as of yet:

Tokyo Pop has announced it is cancelling thew following titles, all due for January ‘09:

Beyond the Beyond Volume 5
Blazin’ Barrels Volume 11
Karma Club Volume 2
Kat & Mouse Volume 4
Kindaichi Case Files, The Burial Francs
Lagoon Engine Volume 6
Lagoon Engine Volume 7
Nosatsu Junkie Volume 7
Queen’s Knight, The Volume 13
Queen’s Knight, The Volume 14
Saver Volume 7

§ Over at Newsarama, Benjamin Ong Pang Kean looks at the coming of Kodansha with a long, intensively researched article that includes comments from the various US licensers.

Nevertheless, [Tokyopop] remains optimistic about the Kodansha USA news. “I just returned from ALA [the American Library Association] (where the librarians love manga!) and I saw the official news about Kodansha — it reminded me of the announcement of a few years ago when Kodansha and Del Rey announced their partnership, which helped to grow the market,” Associate Publisher Marco F. Pavis said. “We expect this move to have a similar impact on the U.S. market during these challenging times. We will continue to work with Kodansha on various, innovative projects. Our relationship goes back more than ten years — as you know, TokyoPop and Kodansha helped to launch manga in the U.S., and a number of their series are still among our bestsellers, including The Twelve Kingdoms, Samurai Deeper Kyo, and Rave Master (I can’t wait to meet Mashima-san at San Diego Comic-Con). Overall, we welcome Kodansha to join us as we continue to build the category.

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