However, facing declining sales and a change in the company's focus, Antarctic Press decided to cancel all of their translated manga titles in late 1997, laying off several employees in the process.

One of the employees let go from Antarctic Press was head translator Kumi Kimura, who took several projects that had been in the planning stages to his new company, Studio Ironcat.

Studio Ironcat was founded in 1997 by manga artists Kuni Kimura, Masaomi Kanzaki and Stephen R. Bennett IV.

The new company started publication in January of the following year by releasing the Vampire Princess Miyu manga by Narumi Kakinouchi, then moving on to a series of other books under its Studio Ironcat and Sexy Fruit imprints.

A report by industry website Anime News Network (ANN) stated that a company employee reported multiple cases of fraud by Kimura, with the alleged cases of Ironcat funds being given to friends in Japan, took unauthorized trips to Thailand and frequently used company finances for personal expenses.

During the post-Kimura restructuring by Kanzaki and the Bennetts, Office assistant Kathryn Hofer left in January 2000 due to lack of pay and bias treatment, Chief Graphics Designer and Copy Editor Mark Hofmann departed in June 2000, citing an issue with internal, "high-school" company politics and lack of pay.

On October 6, 2003, Brown, Johnson, and Graphics Editor Ellen Ohlmacher gave an interview to ANN, accusing Bennett of denying pay to themselves and several other company employees.

This was brought about by Ironcat's biggest coup, obtaining the publishing licenses for Megatokyo and Maelyn Dean's Real Life, two major webcomics.

[6] By June of that year, however, AmeriManga magazine had become the focal point of Ironcat's products and a modest hit, boasting a subscription of 600 subscribers.

However, at AnimeNEXT, on October 4 of that year, Bennett announced that AmeriManga would go on hiatus, and that it was awaiting responses from the represented artists before proceeding with plans for future issues.

However, while Ironcat had expressed an interest in continuing the series, it would have been difficult as Senior Editor Kei Blue had departed the company in July, and fourteen other AmeriManga artists followed suit.

In turn, Saya made a public statement, voicing that she was easily able to be contacted via her website, that she had never received any payments from the company and that she would never work with Ironcat again.

Deep in debt and unable to obtain additional capital, Ironcat was forced to cease printing its current properties and to decline options to license promising manga titles.