Anime Crash - Episode 1: Of Grand Vision

Anime Crash. In the history of anime rising to become a significant entity within the United States, Anime Crash has most certainly played a role. A role perhaps more forgotten now than known or even accepted, yet very real none the less.

I ended up on an NHK news segment in late 1995, as someone who was interviewed about why they like anime. The cameras caught me at Anime Crash New York at an anime screening they had. I wore my Otakon 1994 t-shirt and looked quite dweeby. The next day I walked into the place wearing normal people clothes, with a letter of recommendation from a mutual acquaintance looking for a job at the store. I started that day, stacking a shipment of 200 Gundam model kits that had just arrived.

This was actually the "before" picture.

Anime Crash began in 1994 as a retail entity, a sort of outgrowth of a chain of stores in New York called Little Nemo’s, which had existed for decades and were the country’s first retailers devoted singularly to comics and comic fan culture. Companies like Central Park Media, Orion, and AD Vision were just beginning to make an imprint in home media, while Viz, Dark Horse, and Eclipse were taking manga to national publishing channels. Before too long (and with the help of the VP of sales & Marketing of CPM, Mike Pascuzzi), the owner/manager of Little Nemo’s (Chris Parente), had noticed that anime and related goods were selling strong, and partnered with the owners of what was then Image Anime to grow Anime Crash from a section of a comic store into a separate pop-culture retail entity, incorporated in January of 1995 (this is gonna be important later), and opened up on 13 East 4th St in New York City, right near Tower Records and next to what would eventually become the hipster-infested Other Music.

In a year like 1995 in order to be successful in media and pop-culture retail, you had to maintain a very strong air of frat-boy disrespect for customers of anything that wasn’t mainstream, and anime retail was no exception. I buried my fandom as best I could, but still unabashedly used it to recommend titles to make a customer walk out with 4 tapes instead of 1. Anime Crash, from its interior design to the staff was an exercise in the design of insulting your customers. In order to prove to both the American and (even more so) Japanese distributors that it was a legitimate business that took business seriously, it wasn’t enough to simple have a professional detachment from the fandom. What was required was a display of an almost outright hatred of the customer base at the time, which was the pre-internet (now long-past) 90% male, socially awkward otaku who may have smelled bad and did not follow trends at the time. No one was better as exuding this frat-boy 1980’s “cool guy” as Scott C Mauriello, the 3% minority owner of Anime Crash.

The one there w/ the Y Chromosome.

After my first day stacking Gundam Models and helping tourists from Kansas open up to the joys of Devil Hunter Yohko (who were only there because they had come down to see Tower Records across the street) I realized that Mauriello was the archetypal loudmouth manager type who stuck his name on things once all the hard work was done. Every business has a guy like that, and in this case the work done by the stalwart team of managers at the store wasn't really compromized by those antics. But I buddied up to him anyway, because it can never hurt to be friends with a guy near the top. He was great in front of the press because he spoke in sound-bytes, hated “nerds” and had the kind of manic energy that can only come from ADD and long-term stimulant abuse. He’d show up at 11:30 am, complain about how the air-conditioning wasn’t turned up high enough, and then crank it to maximum as he stepped out for a 3 hour lunch. This was perfect, since that let most of the real work get done unhindered. He was a great opener, and an opener was just what the place needed to get mainstream retail, media, and investors to pay attention.

Protip: Get mentioned in Newsweek, and CNN, and they pay attention.

Anime Crash hit the scene during an economic bubble in the news media capital of the world. If it had been any other city, anime as a market force would have never had the kind of press it took to get investment money thrown at it, or the shelf space it would get in the major channels when it did. Written up in the NY Times, Washington Post, Time Magazine, Newsweek, and had stories run on CNN, NHK, ABC, Bloomberg, TBS (Japan), and more than I can remember. The store did so well that it was able to open up a second location in Harvard Square in Boston and co-produce gallery shows and artist signings of the likes of artist Yoshitaka Amano, J-Pop group S.K.I., director Mamoru Oshii, and actor Sammo Hung. The majority owner (97%) of the company ended up zooming up to Boston to run the Harvard Square store and a soon-after Anime Crash opened Providence location as well. While those two locations were physically larger, the New York location was by far the most famous and sold the most goods. Celebrities came down to le trendy village in Manhattan to get their Ninja Scroll on or buy some of that weird “Japanimation” stuff. Kodansha and Bandai executives came to see the very first foothold of 100% legitimate retail in the USA of anime and Japanese pop-culture goods (and we'd inevitably end up signing direct distribution deals), and people stopped in on a daily basis to check out an anime VHS section that put Suncoast to shame. From 1995-1999, the store cleared an average of 500 anime VHS tapes a week, with dubs outselling subs at about 7 to 1 (yes we crunched the numbers).

If it was anime in the 1990’s there’s a big chance Anime Crash had something to do with it, which is I guess the nicest way I can Segway into APOLLO SMILE.

I'll give you a hint which one is Apollo: It's not the person behind the camera.

Apollo Smile was basically created by Apollo and Anime Crash to be a kind of brand ambassador for the store and the emerging medium of anime as a whole. She was hired to host in-store events and appear on advertising. Her biggest roll-out was when Crash put her on stage at AnimEast 1995, she sang she did her thing, and she got us customers. She was up on stage when Anime Crash hosted the actual New York theatrical premiere of Ghost in the Shell at Cinema Village (yes that was us working w/ production IG) and led a fan-parade straight back to the store where we were selling tapes and other merchandise.

At one of these things, she got cozy with the guy from SciFi channel (back when it was called SciFi channel and when it was run out of New York), and worked out a deal to work around her agreement w/ Crash to become the “live action anime girl.” And that's how anime got on SciFi in the 1990's, using Anime Crash as a barometer and Apollo Smile as a mascott. This was not something that went over well on the Crash side... after the money and time they spent building anime into an entity that was at least starting to become recognizable to mainstream channels and audiences. Thought when we saw what ended up on SciFi, we were kind of feeling like we dodged a bullet with that one. Anime Crash’s new brand ambassador was "Hikari" ...a straight up copy of the mascot from the logo, which worked out just as well.

Rather than subject you more Apollo Smile, here's the Crash and Production IG groups (Mamoru Oshii center) getting ready for the after-party of the Ghost in the Shell event. I don't remember how or when Susan Napier showed up, but there she is...

At AnimEast 1995 is also where the split between Anime Crash and Image Anime happened. You have to remember that this was 1995, and no single otaku cared about whether his merchandise was “legit” or “bootleg.” Retailers sold lots of non-licensed merchandise like wall-scrolls and SonMei CDs. Anime Crash had Japanese executives in and out all the dam time (we even had people representing Masamune Shirow show up), so we couldn’t exactly have bootleg merch of their stuff lying around. Image didn’t exactly see it that way and would table at conventions separately, cannibalizing customers and mixing up inventory with questionable origins. This didn’t go over too well with Managing Director Scott Mauriello and, at AnimEast 1995, fisticuffs were indeed brought to bear in the hotel between the two factions. The locks were changed the next day and eventually Image anime opened up a store in Midtown. Oddly enough, the hard core otaku fans were happy to follow bootleggers until the "great awakening" in 1999 or so.

It’s hard to explain, but in the pre-internet and pre-DVD world, where the market for anime, manga, and pop-culture goods was made up of almost exclusively single males, and never had anything close to the social structure it does today. Anime Crash turned “anime” from a genre into a medium. It made anime an acceptable addition to a product mix of any retailer, and not just as a VHS commodity, but t-shirts and other merchandise as well. In January 1997 I most of a speech for the Japan Society’s Pokemon event, where anime and its emerging market were discussed. Of course, the one speaking had to be Mauriello, since sharing the spotlight wasn’t his thing. I didn’t care at the time as long as it was for the greater good. And it was actually on this very day, Halloween of the same year, where J-Pop performer Sayaka (not the one born in 1986) played a packed house where we were able to show clips of Perfect Blue before it even hit theaters in Japan.

Yes this is me as the MC of that showing.

The Anime Crash brand was on the scene and the right people and publications were paying serious attention. Unfortunately, so did the competition, which wouldn’t have been so terrible if not for the fact that Anime Crash was now in the hands of an irratic megalomaniacal personification of incompetence. In hindsight, it was like a party on the Titanic.

To be continued on Nov 7, 2011.

Now, there is a LOT that I'm glossing over or just plain leaving out (like how some feminist group got upset at the front window display of the Ghost in the Shell poster... or how making that display attracted a bit of police attention). I had an entire paragraph ready to go just about how media in New York invariably shapes retail markets for consumer goods especially home-media and music... and another one just full of wacky stories about individuals who would come in and ask weird/stupid question... or that one shoplifter we caught. That's probably what people want, but we're talking serious tl;dr potential. I'm leaving out specific times that I've created news stories specific to anime because that bragging is for a resume/CV not a blog, and I've left out a number of individual people because don't feel like going into their whole backstory. So if there are specific things you want to know about the early stages, leave a question in the comments and I might answer it.

Cranime Nash: When this blog will resume

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This blog will resume weekly postings as of October 31 (Monday). We will continue to bring you articles of awesomeness, with the continuation of the saga of Anime Crash.

New York Comic Con 2011

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I will be at the New York Comic Con this year. Doing some licensing stuff, and hanging out with Blue Fin Distribution.

Picture unrelated.



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Update regarding when posting will resume.

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I was finally able to clinch a deal on an actual place (you know... to live in) and so I'll be able to move in and unpack (you know... from living Japan... in 2010). This means that weekly postings will resume on October 31. ooooo.

Sounds about right.

Thinking Autumnal Thoughts.

Next up: Anime Crash: Part 01

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OMGWTFBBQ house keeping!

Don't abandon things.... that's a $5,000 fine.

When good luck brings bad luck;

So, posts here stopped being regular. There has been a matrix of activities which have coalesed to form a constilation of happenstance preventing regular updates. (means "shit happens").

#1) A serious work offer in the finance sector. While it's outside the media industry and manga/anime licensing I was doing, it's regular employment, and it's a lot better than the kind of "you might get paid if this project gets licensed... or not" dynamic I was working in before. Financial literacy is still in demand I guess... I was gonna write something about the MBA finally being useful, but I think I actualy got trolled by Zac from ANN about that, from the thing I wrote in April about their take on T-Pop shutting down.

#2) Living space. Since coming back to New York from Tokyo, I've been effectively couch surfing... (that's 10 months just in case you were paying attention). There are boxes that still haven't been opened since they were shipped out from Shinjuku on Sept 20 2010. Now that I started a 50hr a week job back in Manhattan... I'm still couch surfing... with family... who I literally can't stand to the point where it's actually caused symptoms of depression from having to be within the same building. So I've got enough problems. Good news; I signed on a place a few blocks down from Dave (& Grats) from Fast Karate, so I'll be ok soon when I have other human beings to hang out with.

#3) El Internet. The house of a certain relative I am trapped in at the moment had no internet connection for quite a while. When it worked, it did so only long enough to show me one page then turn around and laugh at me and call me stupid for thinking anything good would ever happen for me ever. That's over thanks to power line networking, but that was only recently.

#4) I've actually got an offer on this Crash story which doesn't involve a blog. I'll give you 3 guesses. So I'm not sure if the next post will actually continue the Crash saga or if I'll save that for a more profitable use of calories, oxygen, and typing.

So. ... ... There it is. September is going to be full of moving and the end of it will probably see the return of weekly posts and so on. I'd have probably kept up better with the whole blog thing if it actually paid anything, but it doesn't, so me and my knowledge have better things to do while trapped where we are (and a little bit of C₂H₅OH doesn't hurt either, so there will be plenty of Pinky Mixology when the dust settles too).

After fucking leaving fucking Tokyo, I fucking thought the fucking days of having a fucking earthquake and a fucking typhoon in the same fucking week were fucking behind me. But no, it's gotta be NYC 1985 all over again with an earthquake and a hurricane.

Prime Minister Kan resigned. ...meh. It would be news worthy if that wasn't the norm for prime ministers.

Anime Crash - Episode 0: Get ready.

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ANIME CRASH: You say it sounds familiar, but you don't know why...

The Anime Crash mascot-logo from 1994.

Sometimes (read; every minute of every day), it's tough to look back on the wild roller-coaster ride through the anime industry that I've been on, and surmise just what role that ride played in the meteoric rise of anime as a commercial force in the USA. My experience as a working professional in the world of Japanese animation and Asian pop-culture has brought me from the lowest depths of fandom to the tops of the highest ivory towers overlooking Tokyo. Now I can't help but feel that it's come some kind of full-circle. Oh sure I've got a few more angles left, a lot more important contacts in my rolo-dex, but it feels like I'm just like that poor bastard Ace Rothstien at the end of Casino; Back where I fuckin' started.

I didn't even get a pair of those cool KJI sunglasses.

I was very hopeful for a cathartic release of a massive level and a specific kind of tangible validation regarding this history when I was contacted by a certain writer for ANN exactly 365 days ago. A writer who stated that they intended to write a story about this this entity of Anime history that was Crash. This person had actually shared a small bit of experience with that same entity, and asked for information about the great rise fall (and later rise and greater fall) of Anime Crash and its other incarnations like Crash Cinema (for you martial arts fans out there). To have this story reach a much wider audience was exciting enough, but to have it come through the high intensity validating lens of a 3rd party (like ANN)? That was huge for me and the state I was in, somehow taking that long march of grinding attrition I suffered through and saying, "hey, it accomplished something" even if it didn't work out the way you were hoping.

I must have one of the largest classic martial arts DVD collections in the USA, all by accident.

Everyone knows that immense feeling of confident validation which wells up inside when you are "backed up" by an independent source in front of a crowd. It's worth waiting for. But 365 days, 5,000 written words and 250 pages of reference material later, that cathartic validation has yet to materialize, and I have given up the hope that it ever will. Just another small piece of cumulative psyche damage to add to the pile caused by believing that good things can happen in the face of cruel reality... It's not like this is even close to the first time where someone told me that something helpful to my situation would happen and then the exact opposite has come to pass. Where a pending event was something I hung a few hopes on, only to see them disappear into a black hole. Another year, another reason to just kill yourself (but only after the final Harry Potter movie comes out though...).

The more recognizable Anime Crash corporate logo.

It would be nice to think that instead of being at the end of the film Casino, I'm just in the middle of Otaku-no-Video, sitting at the bottom of a giant downward angle that will surely acutely rebound if I just "ganbare" a bit more... After all, I am working on an anime property with real names behind it and real license partners. But my intentions and ambitions have been sufficiently and repeatedly stabbed in the neck with a pen to the point where optimism is simply one more way through which harsh reality can deliberately inflict pain via a Tantalic prohibition of even the slightest amount of success with sneering gleeful energy as it flings fickle fortuitous fate at others. I tend to avoid optimism whenever possible these days.

This story is in fact, the very reason that this blog exists. Did you think The Angry Otaku was actually "angry" about your crappy fanfic?

YOUR
FANFIC
SUCKS

This is quite the harrowing tale, spanning almost two decades, three continents, and the tragedy of material loss in the face of boom-times which should have provided the very opposite. It's a long story but I can assure you, dear reader, that it will be more than just some bitter rantings from the last one to go down with the ship. The impact that the Anime Crash entity had on the landscape of anime in the USA is a corner-stone of the structure that fandom is today. Not the biggest, not the only one, but a very real one. Yes I have proof. Yes you will see it. It is often overlooked, not because of a willing ignorance, but simply because this story and its supporting information have never been put together in a way which would make any sense.

Why yes, it does involve white guys who think they're Asian beyond Steven Seagal proportions.

So friends, prepare for a multi-part (maybe 3) epic which includes; The country's first comic store, and first anime specific store (FYI- neither of which were Anime Crash), the origins of Apollo Smile, and Media Blasters (they're not connected), the first anti-bootleg movement by a retailer, the premiere of Ghost in the Shell in the USA and its screening a year later at Cinema Village with Mamoru Oshii closing Decibel in NYC, Hentai Night, Saturday anime on Sci-Fi channel, the very first anime DVD sold in the USA ever, Anime Conventions, Kung-Fu bootleg murders, Mafia Triads & Yakuza (oh my), death, resurrection, and anime production, Korean shenanigans, Mexican food with the writers of Robot Chicken, the fanfic website from hell, Tokyo trips, nipple slips, and a maniac CEO who managed to drive it all into the ground with ego, sex, and blind stupidity. This chain of crazy events has led to quite a few ups and downs.

Was it worth it? Well, how many people can say that they helped put together something that ended up on the inside cover of the Kodansha Sailor Moon tankobon before they started college? (I think it's issue 13... which was weird because the address was also 13... go look it up if you don't believe it).

I won't blast this whole saga out at once with a whole bunch of consecutive posts, (that would just be mean), so be prepared for it to continue on a monthly basis or so... or whatever I really feel like.

Video Killed the Video Star: Anime Music Videos Leave Gamification Vaccume

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The Anime Music Video (AMV), was once a potent and significant component of American otaku community development and enabler of social mobility within the various strata of fandom. It has since devolved into the Toxoplasma Gondii of Anime fandom everywhere, spreading to everything, and accomplishing nothing.

Kill all the hyoomans!

Technological realities once kept the supply of AMVs down to a low stream of relatively few per year for two reasons. First, the editing skill, available anime video library, and hardware needed to actually complete an AMV used to be quite significant and unattainable for many otaku. Such limitations included age, financial reach, and most importantly, talent. This resulted in the AMV being a time consuming effort, undertaken by the few individuals who were confident enough in their abilities and resources to produce a proper AMV. Second, once made, AMV distribution was extraordinarily limited to basically the convention circuit, and a few clubs that managed to get a copy of AMV competition reels or talk Duane Johnson into making a copy of his collection on VHS. They were rare and they were unique, making the level of "otaku bragging points" they carried pretty high on the totem pole.

The AMV is still a part of otaku culture, but this art form has gone from something of high-value, to the lowest possible level of filler activity on par with fanfic writing. Sure you might find one out there that only slightly sucks ...maybe (talkin about fanfics here), but there are millions of poorly written fanfic linguistic vomitbags being churned out by high school freshmen who've got a boner for Gurren Lagann. Neotakus who are just starting to attend conventions since the day after youtube was invented will never experience the dynamic that the AMV formerly played in the social hierarchy of otaku culture.

Lets list the factors which caused this transition. While it's tempting to just write "The Internet" for every single reason behind the downfall of the AMV as a tool of gamification, we're going to try to be a bit more specific.

The 5 Reasons AMVs are Dead*:

#5) Linkin Park: There is no single demarcation line where AMVs definitively became the bad cholesterol of anime fandom, but that year where literally every other submission in the Otakon AMV contest was Linkin Park set to "anyfuckinganimeever" comes painfully close. The viewing was painful, the premises were crap, and it got so bad so fast, that within 2 years the Linkin Park AMV had degenerated into a fucking parody of itself.

What no one realized at the time, was that the rage virus was out of the monkey, and AMVs now became the battleground of emo Weaboo who brought the product of their own "deep" introversion to the anime fandom scene despite the fact that no one asked them to. Look, every generation goes through its "they just don't get me" phase, but what's unforgivable about the post-internet emOtaku crowd is that they shoved that into the AMV contest to the point where we actually hurt our asses waiting for all that shit to be over so we could watch the 5 funny ones at the end of the contest screening.

There's a part of one of the AMV Hell collections (I think) that is 10 Linkin Park songs set to Evangelion over about 30 seconds, but I can't find it. Just use your imagination.

Proper criticism at the time (2003-04): I know you feel a certain way you little emo bastard, but why can't you just read manga while blasting the music they play at Hot Topic? Don't shit into the pool of AMVs out there. You're seriously ruining this for everyone, junior.

#4) Self Esteem: The Mr. Rogers effect of injecting "you're super special and awesome" levels of self esteem by helicopter parents into their precious snowflakes, has had some devistating effects. In terms of AMVs it has allowed some of the crappiest shit to exist by rendering their makers immune to self-criticism and the ability to feel shame and disgust when they step up to the public stage with a work that is painfully sub-par. Perfectionism has taken a back seat to a self centered mentality of throwing out absolute garbage just to prove to others how big a fan of Ouran High School Host Club you are. This is in and of itself a gamification behavior, but has a muted effect due to other factors coming up on this list.

The day youtube dropped 5 star rating for thumbs up or down style was the day we lost our last chance, and past the event-horizon of fail.

AMVs stopped being special when some shithead decided that leaving the subtitles in the final edit was OK. If the subtitles are anywhere in the AMV, you suck - redo it! If there's a DIVX or TV station bug in the corner that comes and goes, you suck - redo it! If you start the video by matching up things litteraly with the song and then stop doing that half way through, you suck - redo it! Failure needs to be accessible early and often, for it leads to self-correction, discipline, and a productive sense of determination. Sadly this isn't happening in America because since 1975, the youth of America have always been told the lie that 100% of what they do/say/think has some sort of value in objective reality. Spoiler alert: That's bullshit.

There's a reason that amateurs aren't allowed to drive F1 cars, there's a reason that NASA rejects 99% of their applicants, and there's a reason why your AMV sucks and shouldn't see the light of day (but apparently you haven't heard it yet).

This should not exist. It should have been taken down in shame, and the person who made it should have bettered themselves with practice until they could produce something that could stand on par with what an AMV should be. Yet the comments are full of "omg! you put a character I like in there so therefore this is totally awesome! squeeee!!!!!" This is why we can't have nice things.

Proper criticism at the time (2008-Yesterday): You suck, and here a list of things you did wrong as certified by experts in video editing, rolled up inside a huge bag of shame! Yes, I know you got a whole bunch of thumbs up on youtube, but those are from 12 year olds who just happen to like Deathnote & Nickelback.

#3) "Fuck you, Japan!": No matter what happens, Japanese studios and publishers always seem to retain a fundamental lack of market understanding no matter how many times it's explained to them that things like AMVs are not piracy and that shutting them down will do nothing to protect their sales, and only generate a wedge effect, further de-humanizing themselves in the faces of American fans making them look like "faceless corporations" making lots of money and doing what they will in the face of customer input (like Apple).

In no way can AMVs really have any tangible negative effect on anime titles and brands. They are helpful indicators of brand strength, and help grow the market for a title as well as energize current customers. They don't displace sales, they don't replace the original program, no one is going to not buy K-ON because there's a 3 minute music video with a little sexual innuendo on youtube out there instead.


So what's the problem? Well, if you watched that AMV, you might notice that there were 35 different anime titles in there. How much you wanna bet that they are all from legit DVD purchases or downloads and not a single one was pirated at all? Yeah...

Studios seeing an AMV don't see a marketing tool for high-intensity and high-context customer engagement with gamification dynamics... they see a fucking bootleg of their title that someone illegally downloaded and just happened to use an an AMV! Horrible over-reaching analogy: If your child died in an accident and I downloaded their genetic code and cloned my own version using a rented uterus, it wouldn't really matter to you if you never found out. But if I kept making videos of my clone of your dead kid and shoving them in your face, you're not gonna approach things very rationally. Same thing is happening here to a lesser extreme; You're just shoving the fact that you stole their license right into the face of the writers, animators, artists, sound engeneers, directors, and office workers who make anime for a living. They're not going to see past that, and therefore continue to be hostile to AMVs.

Proper criticism at the time (1999): Gentlemen, thank you for joining me at the first international Japanese animation global marketing conference. I'm glad to see every anime studio and distribution label represented here. Now, let me tell you about multi-platform viral marketing strategies...

#2) Digital Everything: AMVs were once like hot-rod cars. People worked hard on them, stuck in very unique aspects that no one else would have access to, and then the would take them someplace where they could show them off to other people who would be impressed with their work. Otaku points would abound if you could find footage of an anime that almost no one had ever seen before, or a JPop song that was currently burning up the charts. Using multiple titles in a rapid fire mode was a pretty awesome thing to do, because it meant that this person has lots of anime and knows where to find these scenes. Almost nothing screamed "I'm more Otaku than you" louder and to more people than a top-tier AMV. The best example of this, forever and all time, has got to be Duane Johnson's "Dare to be Stupid" AMV, which at this point is pushing 15 years. Think about that.


This had incredible value, because lots of this footage wasn't easy to find at the time. It didn't even matter if you had/have no idea what those titles are, the song ties everything together in a literal sense so you don't miss out on the enjoyment factor. The elusiveness of all of the different anime titles in there, combined with the quality of the editing meant that this was worth some crazy otaku points back when there was no way your stupid ass was ever going to get a copy of this AMV for yourself.

No longer is that the case. While the digital revolution did basically create the separate but related creative forms of the"Overdub" and the "Mashup," which have as much if not more entertainment value, the damage done to AMVs was severe and irreparable. AMVs lost their ability to add value to social fandom the day a few mouse clicks could conjure up any footage of any anime almost instantly. To top it all off, it would already be encoded in a digital video form, ready to go for whatever low-end editing software you had. The result?



Somehow underwhelming.





Or just total shit.

Proper criticism at the time (2001): "Can" ≠ "Should" ...Any questions?

#1) The Fucking Internet: In this context I simply mean that it's now far too easy to just sit down wherever you are whip out a smartphone and have access to enough AMVs to litteraly occupy every second of every day for-fraking-ever... instantly. Watching AMVs was once something only available to convention attendees, and even then only for 90 minutes or so. They were so valuable that in the 1990's I would enter the Otakon AMV contest just to get copies of the other entries (they were always good though, my last was in 2002). We'd show them on the Anime Crash CCTVs every now and then to a packed house, and that was because these things were rare pieces of Otaku fandom. You'd never fill an anime store (let alone convention) these days by announcing you were going to show a few AMVs, because you could watch the same thing at home in your undies while doing 3 other things online at the same time.

Over-abundance via saturated distribution has caused just about every problem there is with the decline of the AMV. Some things should not be available to 11 year olds, and the internet enables them into producing total crap. Even enabling an entire generation of retards who can't tell which songs aren't actually by Weird Al Yancovic. Nice AMV but it's not Weird Al. Not that one either. No, not that other one, I don't care if it "sounds" like him. Really? Weird Al's own website says that's not his! And so on and so forth. The unreliability of the internet mixed with the notion that your opinions somehow have value (from #4) have combined to create a fan that literally thinks that their retarded tumor-baby of an AMV they've created from an anime they like and Windows Movie Maker is something other than a sickening creation deserving of only contempt. Contempt that you've wasted everyone's time on this crap.

The result of commoditized AMVs made possible only via the internet (nothing else could do it) has had two major effects:
A) AMVs are now not only abundant but tremendously accessible. Searching AMV libraries by theme, character, song, series, artist, etc, has become so easy, that the need to seek them out at conventions is no longer prevelant.
B) Development A has caused the value of the AMV as it pertains to the social structure of the American Otaku market market to deflate, leaving a vaccume in sources for "Otaku-points."

Proper criticism at the time (1998-99): WE'RE DOOOOOMED!

AMVs and Gamification.

I truly believe that the explosion in cosplay that has come to dominate Otaku convention culture over the past 5-10 years, was (in part) a result of the "points" vacuum created by the hyper-commoditization of the AMV. Otaku Wee'Bos could no longer tangibly rise further in the fandom hierarchy via the creation or possession of AMVs, because they were everywhere and anyone could make one at that point. This left the option of creating a costume better than those of the other schlubs as one of the few viable means to earn slight elevations in the pecking order.

Anime fans often socially interact in ways in which establish a hierarchy where rank is based on possession of items, fandom knowledge, important contacts, or other things with limited access. That means everyone is trying to out-fan each other a lot of the time (not always). I assign the term "Gamification" to this dynamic, but that's not really accurate, as "Gamification" is a more structured group activity where the channels of upward mobility are top-down designed and implemented by a central authority which engages in pull-marketing (think FourSquare). In the otaku social space, these channels of upward mobility and rules of engagement have developed organically, and therefore are also subject to intense fluctuations, so when you win you really win, but you also run the risk of a ton of worthless currency, such as AMVs.

As noted, AMVs formerly held a position of high value currency but are now pretty much worthless in that grand scheme of things:



For clarification: Rare means that the overall supply is a low ratio of AMVs to Otaku, where as and Limited Access means that there are only a few channels which can deliver AMVs to Otaku, regardless of how many AMVs there are. The rest other categories should be obvious. Such qualities made the possession and creation of AMVs a source of otaku fan authority, and the more you had, the more points you earned. Bring an AMV reel to an anime club meeting and you were god (or close).

But, the need to engage in the social activity and the gamification that such activity still entails, means that something must step up to fill that need. There have always been extreme sources of otaku legitimization; Industry Job, Published Artist, Voice Actor, Big Retailer, etc, but these opportunities are simply too few to contribute to the larger mass of regular otaku consumers (many of which are just too young for any of that) and fill the gap that AMVs have left with their devaluation. Enter cosplay:

AMV scores a little differently against Cosplay here. Rather than having all X marks, because this table of comparison is for a convention setting, where an obscure title is still worth something and where there's always an air of competition in almost everything.

In this case, Limited access means that (unless you're Danny Choo) you don't cosplay to work on the train every day, and in order for your cosplay to satisfy your own motivational needs (and thereby create intangible value), the cosplayer requires an audience. There are two kinds of audiences, passive and the engaged. An example of a Passive audience would be passers by at the Yoyogi Park entrance off of Harajuku, who were not planning on seeing any cosplayers but, there they are. Reactions can range from mild interest to recalcitrant hostility if their path to the train is blocked... or some d-bag is dressed up like a Nazi. Then there are the engaged audiences such as those at anime conventions, who have planned to see cosplay activities and competitions. Both of these audience types create value for the cosplayer, but the engaged types are more likely to provide a kind of legitimization of hierarchy when it comes to where the cosplayer fits into the rest of the otaku universe by being better or worse than average.

To that effect, I would very much like to see something like a major and indisputable source of cosplay criticism. Not constructive criticism, mean criticism. A fountain of shameful, hateful, negative sentiment, washing away the unwarranted self-confidence that enables cos-tards with terrible costumes the ability to leave the house. The collateral damage they cause with poorly made hallway-clogging inspirations for eye-bleach must be called out as harmful by the otaku public, forcing these morons to better their attempts at cosplay before stepping out in public to inflict their lack of talent on the rest of us. This will help cosplay retain a position of being something that gives those otaku who excel at it, a higher standing in the fandom, and remain a viable gamification activity. You ever see a "bad" Japanese cosplay? No. Know why? Because the Japanese still have shame, and if they suck, they don't want other people to see that. While Cosplay Hell does exist, it really needs to create a standardized rubric of cosplay fail, then feed it into the internet hate machine engines and take a more active role in discouraging every lumpy pumpkin who likes Read or Die from going to a con in some god-awful rendition of whatever character and ruin cosplay for everyone... making it worthless and spreading it everywhere... ya know, like what happened to AMVs.

Self esteem. It's a bad thing.

Final note: Discourse continues in the comments, opposing and supporting views are welcome. Comments are moderated because I get lots of spam (check out this entry to see what happens when comment mod is off). That's the only reason for moderation, real comments will be approved as quickly as possible.

* (added July 18); Well now that the internet and everyone has seen this and taken it the wrong way, I obviously have some explaining to do. I go into this down in the comments, but just in case you weren't in the mood to slog though another wall of words, "Dead" in this case was the wrong term (high-context, which only makes sense to me, because I don't get other people to read these things before they go up). I only mean "Dead" in terms of AMVs as a high-return source of competitive gamification "points" in the otaku socual fanscape. So it's only in terms of the ability to produce a fandom silo-breaking gamification value that AMVs have fallen tremendously. The enjoyment value isn't the same as gamification value, since while gamification value exists and has a specific dynamic, it (usually) does not produce as much motivation to so something as the enjoyment value which is also very real, but just not the same thing. AMVs still produce a significant quantity of enjoyment value for participants and viewers, but inadequately articulated the way that is separate from the organic competitive gamification behavior that exists in anime fandom (or almost any fandom for that matter). Therefore "dead" is more like "dry well" or "vestigial feature" or "Zimbabwe dollar" but only specifically as the gamification mechanisms are concerned, AMVs are still fun to watch and do provide a sense of satisfaction when finished.

To go even further, "Gamification" isn't even the 100% correct term here, but that's addressed in Section 2 "AMVs and Gamification" paragraph 2.

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Oh, Canada: Canadian authorities charge American with Obscenity over drawn material

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If you've been reading this blog with any regularity you might remember that coverage of international incidents which ridiculous steps backwards in terms of freedom of expression and then hi-jack criminal justice systems to exact a punishment, violating all kinds of common sense and (in many cases) their own legal limitations which define what the law can and can't do. Now this kind of censorship with criminal penalties thing happens on a very regular basis in places like China, Iran, Myanmar, Saudi Arabia, and so on, which has sadly led to a general malaise dragging down any motivation to actually care about what is the status-quo for these countries. But when Canada does something like that, the "red flags" should go up.

PAPERS PLEASE, EH.

Before we get into the rest of the article, a bit of nomenclature clarification.
For the purposes of this piece:

"American" = USA "Canadian" = Canada

Please see the footnote at the end of this post for further explanation.

Canada. A country that is definitely more awesome than non-awesome, but still has committed a few acts of a special brand of stupid when it comes to touting the protection of "freedom" and "human rights" while clearly violating the hell out of them at the same time. They may not be very high profile, but Canada actually has their own actual thought-police who can actually put you in actual jail for saying or writing things that they deem worthy of criminal punishment. Canada's history as a country only very recently untethered from European colonial bonds, could be responsible for its adopting the very European style policies of banning and criminalizing unpopular speech under the guise of protecting human rights often leaving said "right-violating speech" so ill defined, that it is only by the whims of the political flavor-of-the-month that violations are prosecuted or ignored. In America, freedom of speech and press is almost bullet-proof thanks to a huge pile of Supreme Court decisions like National Socialist Party of America v. Village of Skokie, Cohen v. California, New York Times v. Sullivan, and the hot off-the grill Brown v. EMA. These decisions are Judicial applications of American Constitutional protections, roadsigns to local/state/and fed levels of legislative government guiding them as to what they can and can't regulate. These roadsigns don't exist in Canada because Canada has a different system of government and history, and path of legal development, which is normal because Canada is a whole separate country. But, the unfortunate result is a group of Commissioners who get together and decide if something you said hurt someone else's feelings, and if it did, they can send you to jail... because fuck you, that's why. I've been wanting to poo-poo on the CHRC for years, but could never connect to a theme that this blog covers... until now, mwa hahahaha!

Most people don't end up caring about this when it happens, because most of the people who end up on the business end of this misguided criminalization of speech are racist homophobic right-wing fucktards who most of the world would love to see get stomped in the nuts with golf shoes and left for dead. This is why I don't like calling out as bullshit these Human Rights Commissions that dole out criminal penalties for offending someone's sensibilities, since it often comes with inclusive labeling: That by criticizing these entities, such criticism is an ipso-facto defense of the distasteful actions and positions of the "offender." It's easier to let these racist/bigoted/crazy/whatever people get hung out to dry, even when the mechanism used to do so is antithetical to constitutional guarantees. But, it's from here where the dangerous infection spreads to places it shouldn't, because if you can reduce Section 2 to tissue paper when you don't like the potential protection it gives to batshit Ann Coulter or Geert-Wingnut-Wilders, then you can pretty much turn it into play-dough for anything; like a guy at an airport who may or may not have a drawing on his computer that you don't like.

These drawings maybe?

That's where we start to get specific - with the recent case of an "American" being held at a border crossing, searched, then arrested and charged with the possession and importation of child pornography, now being defended by the CBLFD. It's been reported by the CBLFD and Publishers Weekly. The story also goes on to mention that there are no photographic images involved in this case, they are all created via artistic mechanism. But the reports are vague in a number of ways. One indicates that the "American" had printed images adorning the outside of his computer, prompting the agent to examine the content of the hard drive, while another makes it seem as if the digital devices were looked into as part of a customs inspection. There is no information about which border crossing this happened at, or where this person is now. There are 2 main issues for legal contention here:

1) The search: A warrant was obtained, which would seem to indicate that it was needed in order to access files on this person's digital devices. If reasons as flimsy as an anime sticker on the outside of your notebook computer is enough to get a warrant (as one report of this incident details), then why do you even really need a warrant? Now, customs inspection areas are not the same as just walking down the street, and if they want to look in your bag they can. What is a problem however, is the digital lengths that searches can go before The Canadian Constitution's Section 8 functions as a barrier to such a search. Lots of questions are going to jump out of this mess:
Is it ok to check files on computers and other devices coming the country? Is that new level of customs search allowed or not-allowed and would Section 8 apply at any angle? They don't search everyone's hard drive, that would take forever... so what made them want to take a look at this guy's machine? Would any guy or girl wearing an Urusei Yatsura t-shirt trigger the same scrutiny and would the act of that t-shirt alone be justifiable cause in obtaining a warrant (assuming you need one) to search digital devices?v What if that person is a doctor with patient information on there? ...This is gonna be a bumpy ride.

2) The content: OK so, what did they really find? Who fucking knows... but every source states that what was found was artistically created, and not photographically generated. Now, courts should really know that the difference between a photograph and an artistic representation of something is significant and very real difference indeed. I've gone into this at-length before talking about the Christopher Handley case and the (then) ongoing Schwarzenegger v EMA case (both in the USA), so I don't need to go on at length here. Simply stated, there is a difference, one is criminal and the other is not. It doesn't matter what you think of it, it doesn't matter if you like it, it doesn't matter if you're "offended," the drawn art-function-produced version is not a crime because of that difference.

Many courts have given a tangible value to that difference, and the value that produces in differentiating real photographs from other deceptions of events. Otherwise this image would be prohibited for violating the myriad of "camera in the courtroom" regulations. But it doesn't because because a drawing is not a photo. Endoffuckingstory!

The real photo of whatever the hell this is? It's just too intense man!

Point #2 up there, Content Regulation, gets us back to the "thought-police" notions of the state deciding what subject matter in media is permissible, making this an impossible decision in this case, as the images themselves have not violated the human rights of minors nor are they the product of a criminal activity. The Ottawa Citizen weighed in on June 29th, noting that:

"This puts the courts in the bizarre position of determining what is a work of art. Citizens cannot hope to know in advance what the law really forbids, and whether the judge will share their opinion of what is art."

-Ottawa Citizen

So the fact is, that such a broad spectrum of interpretation and different judgments could be reached, it goes to the extreme point where no two instances are ever going to be alike. Combine that with a wholly subjective need such a judgment would have to draw on to define "what is art," and the American sensibility is to error on the side of caution, call it free speech, and let the rest of the world call you a messed up weirdo for liking it. But what about Canada? Canadian sensibilities in general may fall into the same vein, but without the same history and legal traditions that Americans have, those Canadian feelings may have less quantitative examples to resonate with, and reaching the same decision will depend more on the qualitative conclusions of common sense. With a lack of bullet-proof style case law to be applied, the notions of common sense fall on the emotional whims of Canadian judges who are participants (or at least silent collaborators) in the limitation of free speech (oops) I mean free expression, because that's totally different:

"Freedom of speech is an American concept, so I don't give it any value. It's not my job to give value to an American concept."

-Dean Steacy, Canadian Human Rights Commission
(Quote from Wikipedia, but it seems legit).

Obviously, this American Idiot whoever he is, is facing an actual court and not going before the CHRC, and definitely not going to be judged by the person responsible for the above quote. But that doesn't matter. The fact that the CHRC even exists as a real government agency, populated by unelected officials, and able to expound sentiments all with the complicit support of Canadian Jurisprudence, means that there's a high chance this guy is totally fucking screwed. The depth of the power afforded the CRHC to criminalize unpopular speech speaks volumes about a Canadian willingness to forgo absolute protections of expression in favor of the more invasive knee-jerk European style approach. If I were in this guy's position, I'd be picking out apartments in Argentina right now.

In the dozens of times I've crossed the US/Canada border, I have only ever encountered a problem once. It was almost Christmas in Dec of 1999, (the day after the arrest of Ahmed Ressam), at 3:45AM on the Rainbow Bridge in an unregistered Honda Civic being driven by an immigrant Philippino with no Green Card while I sat in the back next to a guy from Pakistan named Mohammad... yeah that went about as well as you'd expect. After this manga mess though, I will think twice about going to Canada at all the next time it comes up (no, not really but I might just leave my laptop at home). ...but Tim Hortons in America just isn't anywhere near as good as Canada though.

Good Stuff.

Is it fair to assume Canada is going to convict this guy and slam another nail in the coffin of free speech expression in the "offended" age based on the blatantly overbearing antithesis of said free expression; the CHRC? No, no it's not. But I already had to apologize to the whole fucking world for Bush getting reelected in 2004, so fuck off.

And before anyone wants to get wise and mention that Section 13(1) of that Hate Speech code went belly-up in 2009, the other shoe hasn't dropped (the Royal Thought Police still exist).


Footnote:

American/America terminology:

I know people get hung up on this, but let me 'splain something to you using hypothetical role-play (This conversation is totally made up and totally didn't happen to me, a Canadian, and some guy from Brazil while staying in Okazaki Japan back in 2002... totally):

American: Blah blah blah, American agricultural policy regarding exports blah blah.
Canadian: Ahem, ya'know... "America" is two whole continents, not just one country...
Brazilian: Yeah.
American: So... you want me to start calling you both "American" now too?
Canadian & Brazilian: No.
American: Oh... you mean you have come up with a more useful term that we can all use do denote citizens of The American States United. Wow, it's a good thing you did that, since that's been an issue for well over a century, you must have had to really think about that hard because we've all been waiting for this word, don't make us wait any longer...
Canadian: Um...
Brazilian: ...Either of you know when the night-clubs open?

So as far as this post goes, that's how the terminology is, and don't leave comments that parrot the above "hypothetical" conversation if you don't want to be called American too, or if you don't have an alternative word to fix this situation.

What You’re Missing: Shiko Funjatta

A review of the live-action film シコふんじゃった! -or- Sumo Do, Sumo Don't.

The Japanese title sounds like "Shiko-fun-jatta"...which is a linguistic in-joke that someone thought was best approximated by the hideous English title "Sumo Do, Sumo Don't" translation. Yes it's kind of horrible, and no, you can't think of anything better. Seriously, what else can you call it. When you realize that a translator's job is to get a point across without necessarily literally translating every word verbatim one can only throw up your hands and take it as it is. Ok so now that that's out of the way, we can get down to business.



This award-winning comedy film from 1992, directed by Masayuki Suo (famous for his later work "Shall we Dance") features actor Masahiro Motoki, actress Misa Shimizu (also of Shall we Dance), and the gaijin Robert Hoffman, who almost never speaks any lines and has never been in anything else before or since as far as I can tell. It also prominently features Japanese actor and comedian Naoto Takenaka, who anime fans might recognize as the voice of Shiki from One-Piece, and from appearing in various advertisements that dot the subways and train stations of Japan.

He's on the left there.
Remember kids, the best financial advice always comes from Japanese comedians.

The film follows the story about a floundering college sumo team and student Shuhei Yamamoto (Motoki), forced into the position of joining the team or failing to graduate on time, missing out on the job that awaits him. The rest of the rag-tag Sumo team has more or less joined it of their own will, but they have also brought along their own baggage. Shuhei has never wrestled before, foriegn student George Smiley is consistently disqualified for refusing to properly wear his mawashi, and team captain Aoki Tomio (Takenaka) talks a big game, but due to nervousness he suffers from psychosomatic irritable bowel syndrome forcing him to forfeit every match he's in with a frantic dash for the toilet.

Needless to say, the film is full of lighthearted human drama and interactions reaching an emotional crescendo in the form of a sumo tournament. Love is found, personal daemons are conquered, and everyone grows better from the experience. I don't really want to give away what happens, but I can assure you that the Hollywood formula blandness where every loose end is tied up with as much audience focus group pleasing-points as possible, has not contaminated this very Japanese cinematic masterpiece.

If you have seen the film PingPong, you're in for a slightly similar ride, but Shiko Funjatta doesn't tell the story of a meteoric rise of someone in a world full of intense people being intense about a sport as does Ping Pong. It is actually a bit better at drawing in the audience, with the "fish out of water" quality of the main character jumping feet-first into the world of Sumo, creating an extra foothold that the audience can latch on to in order to get more involved in the world created here.

Finally, unlike the previous film we looked at (Happy Flight), this title is perfect for practicing those Japanese language skills and is a great study aid, since the dialogue is very similar to things that normal people say in every-day situations, where as Happy Flight has a bit more technical terminology particular to the world of aviation. If you are studying/learning Japanese, give this one a try without subtitles and see what happens.

Shiko Funjatta AKA Sumo Do Sumo Don't.

The Japanese Region 2 NTSC DVD version does not have subtitles in any language other than Japanese but it's easy enough to follow, and again, the added Japanese subtitling makes this a great language study-aid. It's available at CD Japan for ...well about what Japanese usually DVDs cost. Book-Off might have it as well for quite a lot less.

DVD label Madman Entertainment released a Region 4 PAL DVD version (Australia) which is still available for sale online and does indeed have English subtitles.

Happy hunting.

Garage Kit Renaissance: MakerBot opens a window into otaku merchandise

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A look at the Good Bad & Ugly of Santa Claus Machines in the anime landscape;

Properties too obscure to justify any mass-production merchandise are now the potential cash cow of a new global market

MakerBot (recently featured on The Colbert Report) isn't the first Santa Claus Machine to exist out there in the great big world, but with its high level of public accessibility (the low price and small size) and its support via the Thingiverse community of design, it is the first device of its kind to seriously exploit avenues of application that go far beyond engineering; applications like character goods and branded merchandise. Where once it would have been 99 different kinds of impossible for a small company to make a 1/10 statue of an obscure manga or anime character, you yourself as a consumer now have the ability to make it right in your own living room with the likes of MakerBot. Anime and manga characters and properties too obscure to justify any mass production of merchandise are now the potential cash cow of a new global market for Japanese pop-culture goods, with no in-process time, and no costly global distribution network, served only by software and JIT end-user manufacturing.

Anyone who has followed this blog knows I usually come down on the side of rights-holders when it comes to technology that can be used to proliferate media. But that doesn't mean I am touting MakerBot as some destroyer of worlds for the Japanese animation and Asian pop-culture character goods and branded merchandise market. This development has some great potential for forwarding the progress of fandom while contributing to the health of creative companies as well (how often does THAT happen?).

The Good:
D&D applications aside, you can't tell me that as an anime fan you never wanted to see figures made of characters which you like, but Kaiyodo never made them because the only people in the world who would buy them were you and 2 other guys. This has been a major imbalance in the otaku world for a while; Anime otaku demand some of the highest quality and detail in the figures they purchase, but that has pushed production costs through the roof, ensuring that companies would take very careful studies of how many they could expect to sell before jumping into production thereby choosing only the highest of high-profile character licenses. The result was a limited market with low profitability, and the subsequent evolution of the Garage Kit. G-Kits were an interesting thing, and one could easily tell if you were getting a real licensed production or a bootleg knockoff made in some shady Hong Kong warehouse somewhere. I still have a bunch of my old G-kits, and their appeal was that you not only had access to characters that were relatively rare, but the customization levels started with painting options and progressed (via skill level) to changing poses with acetylene torches, sanding, or pinning on other parts. Their availability was limited, they were tough to track down and if you were going to make them from scratch involved some nasty chemicals.

Characters from different universes can now be put together in ways never before possible outside of a professional sculpting studio

Like digital video opened a new universe of fan-subbing, MakerBot is going to change otaku culture on a quantum level. Now, you can get hyper-creative with not only the design of any figure, but also in terms of characters crossing intellectual property lines. Characters from different universes can now be put together in ways never before possible outside a professional sculpting studio. Ranma in a StarFleet uniform? Not a problem. Vegeta punching out Spider-Man? Easy peasy. The mechs from Macross and Gundam having dirty dirty robot sex? Hell, that's probably half rendered by now. The creativity offered by this design software will allow for unique character goods to be made by the end-user, who will have a willingness to pay if it means they can get exactly what they want. Part of the fun with G-kits was also that you could paint them differently from their original designs (unlike PVC), and one of the best ever was a one of a kind setup we sold at Anime Crash, which consisted of 2 of the same Rei Ayanami figures (16 inches, standing, original white plugsuit w/ longinus spear) where one was painted normal and the other was painted photo-negative. It was awesome and the set sold for $1,000.

See, someone actually already thought of that... don't click on it.

Characters that would have been too costly to manufacture merchandise out of due to limited demand can now have digital blueprints made and sold to key consumers on a global scale, allowing them to purchase and then manufacture what they want. The overhead for a company selling these would stop at the fixed costs of design, with no variable costs what so ever. Even brick & mortar retailers can stop worrying about inventory issues for these pieces, when they can simply create products on-demand without ever dealing with over-stock and the associated shipping and storage costs. "Limited Edition" and "Sold Out" in terms of these figures and other types of merchandise will become terminology of the past.

The flurry of change doesn't stop with just animation and comic properties becoming more available as figures, but will also effect independent artists and creators who will now have access to a global market for their figures by skipping the cost-prohibitive stages of production and distribution, going straight from design to sale. As this technology develops and machines which can produce multi-color products become more prevalent (they exist from other technology companies but are very expensive), many of the barriers to entry which existed in the character-goods/figure/merch market will cease to exist. Waste and the cost of doing business will no longer keep creative artworks from being made available to the public. Just think of the money to be saved on shipping alone.

What would have been one single unique figure ...is now millions of potential pieces

The Bad:
Just like with Garage Kits it's a nebulous area when it comes to what this means for intellectual property rights. Sculpting a figure of your favorite character out of whatever material yourself, and putting it on your shelf doesn't technically violate a copyright, but that won't stop a company from interpreting that as a lost sale and hating you for it. This was never a problem because the time effort and skill to do this were only possessed by so few people that it didn't dent their customer base. With this new technology, we're getting closer to that event horizon tipping point. Although to properly design a dynamic character figure as a digital blueprint for the MakerBot would still take an insane amount of skill and time, the current dynamics of technology make things much more impacting. What would have been one single unique figure for the garage kit maker upon finishing is now millions of potential pieces in the new digital form thanks to the ability to transfer/copy files across the globe in seconds. A one time sale of an anime garage kit for $3,000 at an auction somewhere... companies don't bat an eye. But a MakerBot design of that same figure that's downloaded 1,000,000 times across the globe over 6 months? That's a big deal, and the rights holder is going to feel screwed.

Hypothetical situation to help you better understand how this is straight up bootlegging: You take one of these things to an anime convention and start producing made-to-order figures or merchandise (cups, rings, toilet paper holder, whatever) featuring popular characters. Congratulations, you're breaking all kinds of copyright law and are gonna get sued. The Artist Alley operates in a quasi legal space due to selling things at very low volume and combining original characters into their offerings. Here's another way to think about it: If you had some OEM factory make a bunch of Pokemon figures and then hauled them somewhere and sold them, you'd be a bootlegger. The fact that now the factory is in some little box on a table filling single orders doesn't change that. Small retailers who live day by day, and who can barely make their rent payments are going to abuse the hell out of this, and stopping them from the outside is going to be quite difficult.

Now, combine this issue with the possibility that these devices will proliferate to something like 1 in 20 American households (less than Netflix proliferation), and you're dealing with another huge problem all together: Software piracy. Think about it, the utopian era of zero inventory and no shipping costs for retailers is going to rely on the ability of patent and copyright holders to control who gets the digital blueprints that these machines use to make stuff. Without an airtight iTunes-style network where these designs can be properly sold, licensed, and distributed by their owners and monetized accordingly, the internet is going to become a free-for-all where protected IP would stand no chance. Need a specific tool made right now which is patented by not-you? Just torrent that design and no one will ever know. Maybe you're a Ctrl+Alt+Del fan (really?); Just download that design for that awesome figure in that awesome action-pose that some fan made and put on the internet, and you'll have a great product based off of characters that will never send even a fraction of a penny to their original creators.

Her baby dun got bootlegged down to Peru.

the easier you make the legitimate distribution channel... the more people will gladly become paying customers

Moderate DRM, first mover advantages, and proprietary software/materials are going to be useful tools and strategies to combat this problem, but the number-one way to limit this kind of potential IP anarchy is to set up very strong barriers of convenience. What's that you ask? Netflix and iTunes work because going and torrenting that shit is too much trouble for enough people, and the result is that a stable customer base is created. Constantly changing code, or requiring that these machines use cloud computing to function properly is only one side of the coin. The more important side is; the easier you make the legitimate distribution channel to use compared to any alternative, the more people will gladly become paying customers.


The Ugly:

Yeah, weirdos who get a boner for a blow-hole are still out there

So you've come up with a 3D design that is of a 4 breasted Sailor Moon performing fellatio on a Totoro while he gives a rim-job to Inu Yasha and Sasuke as they kiss each other... the furry version! Oh, those furries... you almost forgot about them in all this mess didn't you? Yeah, weirdos who get a boner for a blow-hole are still out there, and they have enough cash and enough computer skills to make something like that a reality. So think of every possible pop-culture piece you could make with this thing, -and- now come to terms with the fact that there will be an X-rated furry version made out of literally everything you just thought up, where Kirk is like, an Ocelot or something. This is section is going to trudge into some nasty territory for marketing people looking to protect their brands as well as enter the arena of establishing real legal precedents in American law.

From a marketing standpoint, if you work for Ghibli and come across something like the above mentioned, you're going to want to smash it into the machine that made it, and then smash that machine over the head of the freak who designed it. But, unless this person is selling/distributing that piece/it's design or charging others to come see it, there is no legal recourse in the USA that you can realistically expect to take. If he carved the thing out of wood or made it as a sand-castle or ice-sculpture it wouldn't break the law, so without legislation specifically regulating the use of "replication machinery" (a term that has yet to be legally defined) there's nothing a rights-holder could legally do. The only legal issues in such a case would be in regards to distribution of obscene material if that raunchy sand-castle was in full view of the general public. But I'm pretty sure the Skunk-Fuckers* wouldn't be quick to display that kind of thing in their front window. ...hopefully. (* Link is not to actual skunk fucking or the fucking of skunks).

Laws applying to this machine and its capabilities in terms of subject matter are likely to be ineffective even if they are drafted into legislation, as the obstacles to making them realistically enforceable, are A) If the US constitution protects your ability to make anything you want from a block of wood with a chisel, then it also protects the same ability to do so via plastic and this machine, and B) it would require a government agency to monitor what you make on these things in your own home, bringing up some Supreme Court level privacy issues (well, any few that are left thanks to George W. Obama's extension of the Patriot Act).

Now, imagine something worse. The kind of stuff that would go far beyond what got Christopher Handley into trouble. I've always had a problem with the notion that drawn, sculpted, or otherwise fictitious depiction of something illegal is the same as a photo or video of the actual thing happening itself. So if someone uses this machine to make some pretty nasty stuff, we might see more court cases involving the notion of art as protected speech.

The fact of the matter is, that once some weirdo gets a hold of this thing, we're bound to see some crazy fucked up shit at some point. But the same thing happened with the internet, and even with Rule 34, the world didn't end. The kinds of people who are going to make the nasty stuff are probably not going to have that many people over to see it. They're gonna be messed up anyway with or without this machine, so let's just take it as a side-effect that is bound to happen.


Conclusions:
The proliferation of MakerBot and machines like it is going to happen and that's that. If anyone should freak out about it, it's Wal-Mart, everyone in China, and UPS. Like any emerging technology, it's going to take use by early adopters to determine how it will develop as a part of modern life. I want one myself, just so I can make my own personalized coasters and poker chips.

the Japanese company doesn't see a whole lot of $5 sales where none existed before, they see a whole lot of $25 losses

I worry about Japanese companies accepting this as a viable channel for the global sale of character goods. They're not going to. They tend to measure loss in such a way as to simply create unrealistic pictures of how markets operate. If, for example; "Character A" has a figure out there in stores and that figure sells for $30, and "Character B" doesn't have a figure because B isn't very popular, but then this machine comes along and the digital blueprints for figure B sell for $5 each; the Japanese company doesn't see a whole bunch of $5 sales where none existed before, they see a whole lot of $25 losses because that's what the price difference was. Never mind the fact that Character B was never going to get a figure otherwise, or that the sales are profit-generating since there was no overhead... it's going to be felt as a loss, no matter how loudly the math says otherwise. Video and book publishers have a tendency to see one torrent or download as one lost DVD sale, and miss out on other opportunities because the square peg of their product marketing doesn't fit into the little round holes of niche markets (though sometimes this is out of their control due to the high costs of reaching those smaller markets). Changing the thought process of the right decision makers could prove to be a very tough task.

There is an episode of Oedo Rocket where the characters find out that a play they put on has been surreptitiously recorded and posted to a youtube-type website. It's an anime inside joke and they feel a sense of loss and violation, and to an extent that's totally justified; people who didn't buy a ticket are seeing this and all that. But what escapes this mentality, is that now people who never could have possibly bought a ticket due to geographic distance now have access to this material -- and a portion of that group will be willing to buy it as a product. While that youtube example can't show an effective example of this monetizing process, the MakerBot is probably the closest thing yet to making that an achievable business model.

I'm working on the proforma now, so if anyone is interested in a micro venture-cap raise for an idea involving this (my idea, it's awesome), let me know.