Matt Moylan Talks Iwamoto's X Series Manga (Updated)

Reader Flame put the question to UDON's managing editor, Matt Moylan, about whether or not UDON plans on translating Yoshihiro Iwamoto's famed Rockman X manga series, citing that like Ariga's Megamix, there has been a great demand to see stories come stateside. Matt's answer:

"It is something we will think about after seeing how well the Megamix and ZX mangas sell. If these series do initially well, next we would do Ariga's Gigamix, and then think more seriously about Iwamoto's X manga.
There are a few things to consider.

1)it is a big investment, as Iwamoto's X manga runs something like 12 tankobons(manga volumes)
2) his art is pretty retro, but there are people who like that style
3) price - since the X series is less popular than the classic mega man, and the art style might not be for everyone, we'd expect this series might not sell as well, so we might have to raise the price a little if we did this series.


I have checked out some of it though. It's definitely a little more old school that our other manga series, but it has its own charm. Story wise I'm afraid I haven't read enough to comment yet. "

Personally, I'd love to see these in English, but I can see where Matt's coming from on this one. So, what say you?

UPDATE: Matt has come through with a follow-up:

"If we did do the X mangas, I'm pretty sure we would do them in the 5 mega-volume collection format. But even in this format, there would still be a lot of investment needed.

By investment meant I meant not only the cost of licensing fees, but also the cost of translation, lettering, printing etc. Even if we licensed only the first MMX mega book as a test run, that book is huge, like almost 600 pages (I have a copy on my desk here actually heh). Just the first volume be about as much work as the whole Megamix series. So there's that to consider.

On MMX's popularity, there are definitely tons of X fans out there, I know, and they are a dedicated bunch. But as a spinoff it's always going to be less popular than the core series. We can see this with our two mm complete works books. Released at the same time, same price, similar contents, MM Classic OCW is selling better than MMX OCW. Neither sells BAD, but there is a gap between them for sure. So when thinking of X manga, we have to assume that sales on it VS the classic Ariga stuff will have a similar sales gap. Also a longer series with a more expensive price point per volume (regardless of page count) affects sales as well. It's a much tougher sell to the casual buyer.

But even with all that, it's not to say any of this is a deal breaker, it's all just things we have to keep in mind."