Studio Proteus

Studio Proteus was a Japanese manga import, translation and lettering company, founded in 1986 by Toren Smith and based in San Francisco. Other staff included translator Dana Lewis, letterer Tom Orzechowski and translator/letterer Tomoyuki Saito. The company worked with many different publishers, including Viz, Innovation Publishing and Eclipse Comics, but its main outlets were Dark Horse for mainstream titles and Fantagraphics' imprint Eros Comix for adult (hentai) titles.

Early Years (1986-2002)

The intention of Studio Proteus was to provide a co-publishing service to comic companies who were interested in publishing manga: Studio Proteus would do the work of selecting, licensing, translating and lettering the manga, and share the copyrights and profits 50-50 with publishers such as Innovation Publishing and Dark Horse. [http://www.tcj.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=308&Itemid=48] Most Studio Proteus titles were Toren Smith's personal picks. Initially, Smith's instincts turned out to be right, even when his thinking was highly unconventional. In 1994 Smith convinced Dark Horse to publish Oh My Goddess!, although Dark Horse had so little faith in this manga (despite crosspromotion with the AnimEigo OAV release), Smith had to guarantee them against losses. Oh My Goddess! became a surprise hit, and for years was one of Dark Horse's bestselling manga titles. In addition, it was one of the first translated manga to attract a large female audience, along with Ranma ½. Throughout the 1990s, the team of Dark Horse and Studio Proteus was one of the two largest manga publishers in the U.S., competing with Viz. In 2000, Studio Proteus was involved with the launch of Dark Horse's Super Manga Blast, a manga anthology magazine intended to compete with then-current translated manga anthologies Tokyopop Magazine and Viz's Animerica Extra.

Later years, criticism and buyout (2002-2004)

As times changed, however, Toren Smith developed an acrimonious relationship with manga fandom. As shōjo manga became increasingly popular, fans berated Studio Proteus and Dark Horse for not releasing any shōjo. (Studio Proteus' output was predominantly science fiction and action; this may have reflected Smith's tastes, but also reflected the tastes of the American comics direct market and manga fandom of the 1980s and 1990s. Studio Proteus also released non–science fiction manga such as Makoto Kobayashi's relationship comedy "Club 9" and the pet manga "What's Michael?") In addition, Toren Smith vocally defended "flipped" manga at a time when it was growing unpopular. He became perceived as a conservative force in manga publishing.

The changing market affected the sales of Studio Proteus titles. After initial success, sales of Eros MangErotica began to decline, due to the difficulty of finding distribution outlets for explicit material and the widespread availability of pirated pornographic manga on the Internet. The much-hyped series "Cannon God Exaxxion" sold poorly, although Smith had predicted it would be a success based on Kenichi Sonoda's successful previous work "Gunsmith Cats". Furthermore, the comic book direct market was shrinking, while manga sales in bookstores were growing. In 2002, Dark Horse's graphic novel distributor LPC Group went bankrupt, hurting the presence of Dark Horse (and thus Studio Proteus) manga in bookstores. Companies like Viz and Tokyopop proved more able to compete in the bookstore market, and while the rest of the industry were shifting towards publishing small and inexpensive paperback-sized books in an "un-flopped", right-to-left format (tankōbon) similar to the original Japanese tankōbon, Studio Proteus continued to publish manga in the "flipped", left-to-right format of American comic "pamphlets".

In February 2004, Dark Horse Comics announced that it had purchased Studio Proteus. Toren Smith was allowed to stay on as an adviser and translator. In an interview with "The Comics Journal", he expressed his reasons for selling the company he had founded: "I was burning out. Over 15 years I had put out 70,000 pages of manga. I had no life...The manga business kind of moved out of my league. But if anyone believes that expansion can continue indefinitely, they're incorrect. Booms are always followed by a bust...My opinion is that what has occurred is the commodification of the product. All [bookstore retailers] care about is how it's formatted and what it costs...For a long time, America has seen nothing but the best of the Japanese comics, but there's lots of crap over there. There may be some smart bookstore buyers out there who can distinguish between them, but I've never met them." [http://www.tcj.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=308&Itemid=48]

Smith eventually adapted to prevailing trends and Studio Proteus began releasing manga right to left; recent Eros Comix manga such as "Pink Sniper" (2006) are published in right-to-left, graphic-novel-only format. The last manga produced by Studio Proteus staff in the flipped, left-to-right, American comic format was the "Blade of the Immortal" #131 in November 2007, after which the series moved to graphic-novel-only format.

Toren Smith has also done manga work outside of Studio Proteus, such as editing Tori Miki's "Anywhere But Here".

Titles edited by Studio Proteus, and their initial U.S. publication dates, include:

Regular Manga

*"3x3 Eyes" (1991)
*"Akira" (1988)
*"Appleseed" (1988)
*"Blade of the Immortal" (1996)
*"Cannon God Exaxxion" (2001)
*"Caravan Kidd" (1992)
*"Chronowar" (1996)
*"Club 9" (2001)
*"Cyber 7" (1989)
*"The Dirty Pair" (1988) (OEL manga by Adam Warren)
*"" (1993)
*"Domu" (1995)
*"Drakuun" (1997)
*"Ghost in the Shell" (1995)
*"Gunsmith Cats" (1995)
*"" (1994)
*"The Legend of Kamui" (1987)
*"The Legend of Mother Sarah" (1995)
*"Lone Wolf and Cub" (2000)
*"Lost Continent" (1990)
*"Metropolis" (2003)
*"Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind" (1988)
*"Oh My Goddess!" (1994)
*"Outlanders" (1988)
*"The Rebel Sword" (1994)
*"Seraphic Feather" (2000)
*"Shadow Lady" (1998)
*"Shadow Star" (2000)
*"Spirit of Wonder" (1996)
*"" (1998)
*"" (1999)
*"" (1999)
*"" (1999)
*"The Two Faces of Tomorrow" (1997)
*"The Venus Wars" (1991)
*"Version" (1992)
*"What's Michael?" (1997)
*"You're Under Arrest!" (1995)

Adult Manga

*"Alice in Sexland" (2001)
*"Bondage Fairies" (1996)
*"Co-Ed Sexxtasy" (2000)
*"" (1995)
*"Domin-8 Me!" (2007)
*"The God of Sex2" (1997)
*"Hot Tails" (1996)
*"Lust" (1997)
*"Milk Mama" (2007)
*"Misty Girl Extreme" (1997)
*"Pink Sniper" (2006)
*"S&M University" (2001)
*"Secret Plot" (1997)
*"Sexcapades" (1996)
*"Sexhibition" (1995)
*"The Sex-Philes" (1999)
*"Sex Warrior Isane Extreme" (2003)
*"Silky Whip" (by Oh! great) (1998)
*"Slut Girl" (2000)
*"Spunky Knight" (1996)
*"Superfist Ayumi" (1996)
*"Super Taboo" (1996)
*"Temptation" (1994)
*"Voice of Submission" (1998)
*"Were-Slut" (2001)
*"" (1997)

External links

* [http://www.darkhorse.com/news/interviews.php?id=620 Dark Horse Interview with Toren Smith]
* [http://www.darkhorse.com/news/interviews.php?id=622 Second Dark Horse Interview with Toren Smith]
* [http://www.darkhorse.com/news/pressrelease.php?id=937 Dark Horse announces their purchase of Studio Proteus]
* [http://www.tcj.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=308&Itemid=48 The Comics Journal Interview with Toren Smith]