Dragon Ball Z
The latter five make me happy: Pokemon, Hellsing Ultimate (this in spite of all the difficulty with Geneon, and FUNimation only reacquiring the license in July!), Devil May Cry, Bleach, and-- bless the lord! --Black Lagoon, also a summer Geneon rescue. (DMC was too, actually.) Huzzah! You may have spotted that FUNimation is the winner here, with five of the top ten titles; VIZ has four and Warner Bros. has one.
As for manga, I won't share the entire list of 25, but I was impressed to see In Odd We Trust-- Del Rey Manga's Dean Koontz “Odd Thomas” graphic novel –round out the top five list,
Vampire Knight
after Naruto, Vampire Knight, Fruits Basket, and Bleach. It's also interesting to see Vampire Knight having bumped Furuba out of the top-shoujo-manga spot, although with the latter ending and the former really just perking up in its English releases, maybe it shouldn't surprise me.
There aren't really many other surprises on this list, although it's worth noting that of the 25 properties, VIZ has the rights to a full twelve of them-- very nearly half. TOKYOPOP only has five, but one of them is Furuba and another is Loveless (#7). Del Rey actually ties with Tpop in having five; the remaining three are two Dark Horse titles (Berserk and Hellsing) and one Yen Press (The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, of course, although it just made it to #25).
Speaking of Haruhi, I wonder whether ICv2 will include illustrated novels like the upcoming Haruhi series in the manga properties list? Or if they'll just get ignored as novels? I don't know whether, say, Fullmetal Alchemist illustrated novels get included as part of FMA (#10 on the list) either. Hmm!
on Dec. 30, 2008
Ya! Yen Press, fight your way to the top.
But I do say it would make me happy as jello if Battle Angel Alita was tagging along on the list too. But O well we all got our favorites.