Angel Cop. © Manga Entertaiment.

Manga also has two police series: hyperviolent cop Mad Bull fights crime in New York, while Tokyo's Angel Cop battles terrorists, government conspiracies and cyborgs, while being stalked by "psychic hunters." In the supernatural series Devilman, only Akira, a purehearted teenager who has acquired a demon body, can defend humanity against a race of demons.

Rounding out the current collection is Manga's latest feature-length release, Ghost In The Shell, a co-production with Shodansha, the giant publisher, who first serialized Shirow's story in one of their mangas. The Oshii-directed feature is both a high-tech suspense thriller and a contemplation on what it means to be human. Cybernetically augmented agent Motoko Kusanage is on the trail of the Puppet Master, an artificial intelligence created for government use which has escaped into the Net, having developed a mind--and an agenda--of its own. Terminator director James Cameron called the film, "a stunning work of speculative fiction, the first truly adult animation film to reach a level of literary and visual excellence." After playing theatrically in over 30 US markets, it was released on video in mid June.

Ninja Scroll. © Manga Entertainment.

A Breakthrough Film?
Manga hopes Ghost will be a breakthrough film, the one that inspires the uninitiated to take the anime plunge. They're marketing it heavily at combo retailers--those big outlets like Suncoast and Wherehouse which were once known as record stores. "As mass as we get," Gleicher explained, "is Musicland and Best Buy. Music stores now get it--it's a no brainer to take a 12 pack of our best rather than pick through 40 or 50 titles puzzling over which to get. Tower has everything." The real stumbling block has been video rental chains like Blockbuster, which only take select titles in small quantities. "Rental stores tend to ignore anything that didn't take in $100 million at the box office. Offer them a surefire Hollywood hit, each branch wants 20 copies. We can only persuade them to take one copy of Ghost. But that copy is always out! Eventually, we'll educate them.

"We have to look for things that will first of all do well in the US, then the UK, and after that continental Europe," says Preece. Spain is closing on the UK and France carries 30 hours a week of Japanese cartoons, making it an extremely promising market for Manga. "We're now looking at the emerging Eastern bloc, at Poland and Russia." Despite the large amount of bootlegging that goes on, Preece still thinks the films will do well.

Manga has the rights for the South American territories, potentially a bigger market than Europe. So far, only two titles have been dubbed into Spanish, but there will be more. "Brazil with the largest Japanese population outside Japan, is extremely promising. Australia and New Zealand have, of course, been Manga-branded for some years."

Future Plans & Hopes
As to the future of anime, Gleicher says that, "for the past two years, the non-Japanese market has doubled annually, but I don't think that can continue. There aren't as many great titles. We'll still out-market and out-perform all the other distributors, but growth will probably slow down." Preece concurs. "We've bought virtually everything that moved, all the really good series and features." While there is still good stuff untapped, in terms of more episodes of the longest running series, he cannot see any US or UK company going back and translating 5 or 10 years worth of TV episodes; they would not be contemporary enough and it just would not be worth the cost. New production, they feel, is the way things are going.