This week’s round-up focuses on—what else?—the new site design, summarizing user reaction and offering tips for navigating its newest features and pages. With the RSS feeds gone, I’ve begun the time-consuming process of “scraping” feeds from the 70 or so blogs I was monitoring. We’ll see how it goes… I’m hoping to have a regular Round-Up next week, but I can’t guarantee it.

TROUBLESHOOTING TP 2.0
Need help creating or modifying your profile? Having trouble uploading an avatar? Click here for step-by-step directions for using Tokyopop 2.0 (with screencaps...).

TOKYOPOP NEWS & EDITORIAL VIEWS
Throughout July and August, Tokyopop will be sponsoring events at Barnes & Noble stores around the country. TP artists and writers will be on hand to discuss their work, share tips with aspiring manga-kas, and sign books. Click here for the schedule.

Tokyopop is expanding its presence at MySpace with a preview of Vampire Kisses: Blood Relatives, a manga based on Ellen Schreiber’s popular novels, and animated shorts based on four OEL properties: Bizenghast, I Luv Halloween, A Midnight Opera, and Riding Shotgun. Brigid Alverson of MangaBlog has the scoop. Back at the ranch, the TP web ninjas have taken a quick break from debugging to reload the Online Manga Player with chapters of Battle of the Bands, ME2, The Tarot Cafe, War Angels, We Shadows, and Poison Candy, an OEL title that will arrive in stores in September. I don't know what it's about, but that title practically invites a cheesy tagline: Your mother always said not to take candy from strangers...

Also of note: the unnamed Manga_Sensei (is that you, Stu?) interviews Mike Schwark and Ron Kaulfersch of Van Von Hunter to find out how this intrepid duo brings their book from script to finished product… if you’re a regular reader of the Sunday funnies, you may have noticed a new strip alongside Garfield and The Boondocks: Princess Ai… and if you visit the Go Pro page, you’ll find tips for putting together a professional portfolio. Among the most important pieces of advice for aspiring manga artists:

If you want to draw manga, don't build a portfolio full of pin-ups and character designs. Manga is about visual storytelling, which means you need to demonstrate that ability with sequential art pages. It's okay to include some character designs, since that's a part of the manga-making process, but sequentials are key.

Anyone eager to avoid rookie mistakes at their first portfolio review should read this page, clip it, and memorize it. (Hint: lined notebook paper is never a good medium for showcasing your work.)

THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY
After slogging through dozens of rants and raves about Tokyopop 2.0, I can fairly say that reaction to the new site is mixed. Many folks like the new bells and whistles (especially the clan function... guess everyone is a wee bit Scottish underneath it all), but are frustrated that some of the site’s old features have been jettisoned. Of the dozens of blog entries I read, the most common complaints fell into one of the following three categories:

• Lack of customization. Many fans enjoyed customizing their profile pages and blogs with artwork, personality quizzes, audio clips, short animations and the like. The new site makes it difficult—if not impossible—to add cyber-bling to one’s personal pages. (I still can’t edit my profile page, let alone post “Which Trinity Blood character are you?” questionnaires.)

• Lack of email notification. The old site notified users about new messages and comments via email; the new site doesn't.
  

• Difficulty finding books in the TP catalog. Tokyopop’s decision to reorganize the catalog according to volume, not series, makes finding things a headache. I’m with the kvetchers on this one; I strongly prefer the template used by Viz, Go!Comi, and CMX which directs users to a “master” entry for each series, with additional links to individual volumes.

Of the many folks posting their two cents, MAGNUS8M’s critiques were among the most perceptive, and are worth quoting at length:

Some things I'd like to see worked on...

    * Ability to rearrange our fan/friend lists
    * A 'new content added' icon next to a fan's icon
    * Better arrangement of information.
    * Better support for your own editor!?!?!

Right now, things are kinda hard to find, and sometimes ridiculously so - I feel like I should be asking Mr. Owl "How many clicks does it take to get to the center of a TokyoPop!?!" Wow, that worked out almost too well.  But seriously....that front-most page? That kind of layout works good.  But for EVERY sub-page?  Not really.  It just looks too busy and too similar...hard to distinguish where you are, especially when each page is blinding-white in color.

In particular, I thought MAGNUS8M’s comments about the subpage design were spot on. The front page looks great, but when I click on, say, the Blogs page, it’s mighty hard to tell that I've accessed a new section of the site. And listing the “latest uploads” by icon makes no sense for polls, reviews, lists, blog entries, and other text-based postings. I hate clicking on five or six mystery avatars to see where they lead.

Some of the other comments/critiques I’ve seen (both here and at MangaBlog):

Chloe: “I’ve never been able to log in thus far on their new interface, and can only stare disdainfully at the rather vague top bars [which some brilliant marketing exec has labeled things like “Life” and “Hot”] and try to figure my way through all the excess bells and whistles.”

Mack: “I also do not like skimming through countless blogs to find one that interests me as I use to do. I have some of my favorite people saved as favorite sites but that only means ten if I have nothing else. Do you think if enough people send feedback that they will return the RSS feeds?”

Mariku: “Besides the RSS feeds not being on the site, my largest gripe is with the lack of customization for the fan pages. I had a certain order of fans that I loved to visit constantly. I do love the clans idea, and the increasingly social aspect of the site now. It's nice to be able to talk to people who really enjoy manga instead of looking down their noses at you. The flagging feature is another gripe I have with the site. I hope the clip feature will somehow put a stop to it.”

PhoenixFireV: “I’m not too happy with all the changes to the TP site. My biggest issue is not being able to log in! Yesterday I could log in for seconds, and today I can’t at all! I don’t know if I’m happy with the page layouts either. As ChunHyang72 stated, the catalog is a mess with individual volumes listed instead of just by series. And I couldn’t stay logged in enough to tell, but it looks like you can’t customize the blog pages anymore with banners. And I had just created some new ones too! I know big changes like this are hard, but I’m really wondering if some of the changes were really necessary.”

Rena: “I still found a lot of “issues” at the TP site and this is after I was a beta tester for the site…However... the site is easier on the eyes and seems to incorporate a lot of the Web 2.0 features that everyone is screaming about (I work in marketing/PR).”

POPCULTURESHOCK @ TOKYOPOP
Over at PopCultureShock, our new anime reviewer Carlos Alexandre takes a look at Samuel L. Jackson’s Afro-Samurai, Erin F. reviews a slew of new movies from Viz Pictures including Linda, Linda, Linda and Taste of Tea, and I review a new OEL title from Seven Seas, Madeleine Rosca’s Hollow Fields.

Want to know what manga will be arriving in stores on Wednesday? Then check out the latest Weekly Recon, which also includes brief reviews of Hellsing (Vol. 8), Samurai Commando: Mission 1549 (Vol. 1), and To Terra (Vol. 3).

STAY TUNED...
We'll see if I can "scrape" together RSS feeds for next week's Round-Up. If so, next Monday's column will be the usual mixture of links and news; if not, you'll probably hear me screaming in frustration.

--ChunHyang72