Fun Club The Metroid Zero Mission Manga almost came to the US.

[Mer.Saloon]

I have a gut feeling this information is gonna be lost to time soon so I thought I'd best just record it somewhere.

I found out this info from some TVtropes forum post for the manga like 3 years ago or so and tried to get it out to news publications, but no one seemed to care.

But yeah, the infamous Metroid Zero Mission manga almost was gonna come to the US through Tokyopop back in 05. And the only evidence of this release's existance is its ISBN number.

ISBN-13: 9781591827382

Search with this number on Amazon and you'll be taken to a pretty ancient looking page for a Tokyopop release of a book just called Metroid, to be released in February 1st, 2005. (Remember when Amazon used to be just about selling books?)

That's really it. No press releases or anything so no one know exactly why this didnt happen. I mean, i have a theory that since this was around the time Tokyopop was going belly up due to bad financial decisions the release was just quietly canceled. But again, I'm just some nobody on the internet, not like I'm able to track anyone down for this information.

Just wanted to preserve this information in somewhere that wasnt some obscure TVtropes forum post.

 

[Derachi]

This is a good find

put it right next to the ARMS graphic novel in the “books Nintendo SHOULD STILL PUT OUT” pile

 

[Mer.Saloon]

This is a good find

put it right next to the ARMS graphic novel in the “books Nintendo SHOULD STILL PUT OUT” pile

I mean in this case, people would need to complain to Viz and then Viz would complain to Nintendo.

Seeing as theyre the ones who deal exclusively with Nintendo these days.

 

[IsisStormDragon]

It's always kind of baffled me that this and other Metroid manga were never officially translated/released, so it's interesting to see that it was, at one point, actually going to happen.

 

[Tangerine_Cookie]

This is a good find

put it right next to the ARMS graphic novel in the “books Nintendo SHOULD STILL PUT OUT” pile

I mean in this case, people would need to complain to Viz and then Viz would complain to Nintendo.

Seeing as theyre the ones who deal exclusively with Nintendo these days.

They're clearly waiting for the ARMS 2 reveal for the Switch 2 launch to release it.

 

[Mer.Saloon]

It's always kind of baffled me that this and other Metroid manga were never officially translated/released, so it's interesting to see that it was, at one point, actually going to happen.

The problem likely stems from the lack of relationship Nintendo had with US publishers at the time. Tokyopop makes sense considering how big they were in licensing properties at the time.

No other manga studio had a strong enough relationship with Nintendo to get this release out there.

It wasn't until 2008 I think that the Zelda manga were officially translated by Viz, (that was after the Phantom Hourglass manga came out in 07.) and even then thay took a lot of fan effort to get Viz to pursue localizing them.