this post should be in r/mildlyinfuriating 😭

And we guys shit so much on viz for the logo chnage, yikes this is way horrible

Bro, we Germans and the French suffer badly because of Crunchyroll. The prises increased extremely even though they have series that are top sellers in both countries(the licenses are different) It's not that they put the ugly logo on it. They also changed designs even worse than this example. New layout and different colors. The good thing for the Germans is that the first print from continuing series has the old design with a Crunchyroll dustbag around it that you can take off. Just the reprints have the new design. The French had the change instantly. I saw a picture of a series that was nearly 50 volumes long, and suddenly, the design completely changed. There is no reason for it

Apparently they're doing it because they lost access to the designs for completed series after firing all the Kazé employees (even though they agreed to keep the staff when they took over). To hide this, they're pretending it's on purpose and changing the ongoing series too. This means we likely won't see reprints of less popular series at all. I've been told that quite a few of the retailers are pretty annoyed at the design changes and the price hike too.

This makes no sense imo. If they don't have the rights to the designs, then they would need to change a lot of title logos as well. Especially the ones that were translated from japanese to german, for example, which they didn't. Another question would be why they changed some spines extremely and some have just the new logo and the orange line, for example JJK, Spy x Family or Blue Lock. But other series like Tokyo Ghoul, Seraph of the End, Orient, Magi or Rache schmeckt süß( I don't know the international title) have been changed completely. It's not even about if the series is finished or not. Rache schmeckt süß and Orient are ongoing but still were extremely changed. It's completely random. Seraph of the End and JJK have the same publisher, and so does Orient and Blue Lock. There can't be any problems with the rights to the designs.

I think you misunderstood my point somewhat. This isn't about copyright, but design elements of the spine in a specific translation. Depending on the series, there are elements that are created by the Japanese rights-holders that most if not all translations use. But each spine has elements that belong to the publishers of that translation as well. Design choices like whether the cover art is printed on the spine (and if yes, in what dimensions), the alignment of the title, the precise texture of a background, sometimes the entire font of the title. As an example for Kazé: Compare the title logos for Tokyo Ghoul on the spines of the English edition, and the original German release. They look completely different. These logos don't come from the Japanese printed edition but where created by the staff at Viz and Kazé respectively. Now compare that to the Crunchy edition: Hey, isn't that the font of the German edition of Tokyo Ghoul :re? The logo that doesn't have the grey-blue shadow as part of it's design? The one where the font is perfectly clean (on a white background no less) and they just had to recolor a bit? And funnily enough even though they added the cover art, the spine still manages to look emptier than the original version. The people who would have the files for the original logo by Kazé (the one with that ink splotch) as well as the overall design of the spine have little incentive to just hand over their work to the people who screwed them over. But Crunchy does have access to some of the files from the printing presses - the series that actively had a new volume in print (or reprint) during the takeover. The series that are getting the dustjackets (aka the series you list as having very little change in the design) are among these. The ongoing series that didn't get a dustjacket simply didn't have a volume in active print at the time - so their design was lost - or they don't sell enough to be worth it. Honestly, considering it's release schedule, it's a miracle Blue Exorcist managed to get dustjackets for its first editions. The reason Crunchy is doing the dustjackets at all is so they can pretend that they're doing it because they want to put their own spin on all their series, not because they don't have the files they'd need to perfectly recreate the work of Kazé for the series that are not getting them. That and to appease the fans of their bestsellers like JJK and OPM. The reason why the background color changed so drastically in Orient is that colors look different on a screen vs in print: Crunchy literally doesn't know the exact shade of Orient's cover and even if they scanned and colorpicked an existing cover, it would be ever so slightly off after printing. By chosing a very different shade, they can claim it was on purpose instead. What's my source for this? I had been wondering about why they decided to change all the designs myself and had the opportunity to ask an industry insider about it a while back. These were their explanations.

They told me it's to create a shared visual identity between their different series. So just a dumb branding decision from people who just care about money. Not buying them any more manga after the completion of my ongoin manga.

Oh yeah, on the "just care about money" part. Even disregarding the price hike (OPM going from 7 to 10€ is still insane), have you seen the Hell's Paradise box set? The original run by Kazé went for 6.95€ per volume. There are 13 volumes, so the series costs a total of 90.35€. The box set includes all volumes and 9 prints (which I've been told are not exclusive artwork, but rather art that's already in the volumes) and a coupon for a 30 day free trial of Crunchyroll. What does it cost? 149.95€.

Aye bro I'm not trying to shit on it, just saying people go pretty hard when viz makes a slight logo change ,compared to this vol it's a massive change Love to all manga readers and our problems with esthetics.

paying 1,50€ for the extra cover thats going to end up in the trash is rough tho

I'm lucky I just had one ongoing serie from Kaze but it always infuriate me when I look at the drastic change of appearence on my Chainsawman volumes T\^T

They didn’t even try to make it subtle like… they could have just did the logo without the orange background, and why did they add the spine art when the previous volumes didn’t have it 😭

jesus christ that is so fucking ugly, crunchyroll cant do anything right

This is so bad, if it's your only volume like that I would consider displaying it with the cover facing you. edit: typo

the cover is just a giant crunchyroll logo

Nightmare

Ah they’re going with the tokyopop approach I see

I actually talked to an industry insider a couple weeks ago about why they're doing this and yeah... It's cause Crunchy agreed to keep all the Kazé employees and then fired them shortly after the takeover anyway. So they don't have access to the designs of any of the spine designs for completed series, only the ones still actively in release, but they are changing those too so it's not immediately obvious to customers that there's a pattern. They're marketing it as putting their own stamp on these series instead. And it also means we can expect them not to reprint less popular series. Cause they don't want to bother with designing new spines for all series they now own. It also means that for series like Unterm Wolkenhimmel (Donten ni Warau) and Kinder des Fegefeuers (Rengoku ni Warau), we are unlikely to ever get the spin off (Donten ni Warau Gaiden).

oh my fuck I'm so sorry for you I thought it was bad collecting series like OPM and One Piece with Shonen Jump constantly changing their logo but this 100% takes the cake

I'm having Mega Man NT Warrior manga flashbacks...

Bruh..

That big orange look at me logo.

Hmmmm hard to say

dont forget the upcharge you gotta pay for

The only thing that I can say about this is f big big f

Not sure is it the first Volume?

Crunchyroll bought Kaze. And now every new print they release will have the new logo. Only first editions/prints of still running series will still have the Kaze logo for people to have the chance and finish a series complete with the old spine. Edit, for some reason I misread your comment lol bit still gonna leave the explanation

The new design looks nicer to me but it definitely sucks that it looks out of place next to the others

It looks So Much Better guys. I love the offsetting

You bought it so why are you posting this now?