The Angry Otaku

Anime Crash - Episode 1: Of Grand Vision

2011-10-31T01:03:00.000-04:00

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

2011-10-27T17:05:00.003-04:00

.
.
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

2011-10-06T18:20:00.004-04:00

-

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

Picture unrelated.

-

Update regarding when posting will resume.

2011-09-29T21:22:00.007-04:00

-
-
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

-

OMGWTFBBQ house keeping!

2011-08-26T23:24:00.011-04:00

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.

2011-07-22T00:07:00.005-04:00

-
-
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

2011-07-15T00:26:00.036-04:00

-

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.

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

2011-07-08T01:22:00.019-04:00

-
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

2011-07-01T00:10:00.002-04:00

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

2011-06-24T00:05:00.007-04:00

-
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.

Failure to Deliver: Duke Nukem Forever PR debacle hilights the rift between industry and fans.

2011-06-17T00:22:00.016-04:00

-
When companies are out of touch: In PR, you're not supposed to get what you pay for.

All out of bubblegum.

The saga of Duke Nukem Forever is a tragedy. If it had simply never been made, and remained an unreachable dream composed of the collective musings of what might have been, it would have been a beautiful tragedy. However the fact that the game was actually made, released, and has invaded the imaginary notions of what Duke Nukem Forever would be. Notions that had built up for over a decade, makes it an ugly spectacle. A crime against nature, a product that was taken too far by someone who was not stopped in time, and now flails around the market place grasping at any source of revenue with its deformed limbs.We all remember that sinking feeling we got when we first saw JarJar show up in Star Wars I-III, and the disappointment of Axel's Chinese Democracy. Like those over-awaited things, Duke Nukem Forever had an impossible task before it, a task that wasn't always impossible, but had become so via circumstances created by egomaniacal managers who chose their own subjective reality over real reality, and were too rich and insulated to be told otherwise by outside observers. A perfect situation to trap the game in development hell for a long enough time for our imaginations to conjure up something so fantastical (or maybe fan-testical) as to be unrealistic in terms of being realistically achievable. It could do nothing but fail as a game to live up to expectations, and yet chose to go ahead and fail anyway.

If you spent a serious portion of your life actually working on Duke Nukem Forever, this realization may cause some distress. The main nucleus of this distress, is that a negative (or at the very least lackluster) reaction of independent media, grassroots ratings, and consumer communities, creates an intense sense of loss. Loss (or even potential loss) is one of the bigger psychological factors in motivation (see; organizational behavior), and it tends to be amplified when the object of that loss is partially intangible, which leads to overestimation of what is actually the subject of such loss. But you accept that in the media business. You know that the mystical intersecting point of pleasing "all of the people all of the time" is like some quantum dimension which only exists on the pages of theoretical calculations and therefore it is unattainable. You know and accept this risk as part of what makes PR and the creative entertainment industry function.

Invasion of the finance majors:

Colleges are churning out brand new business majors even as Lehman Bros. and Bear Sterns vomit the old ones back into the job market. They have to go somewhere. When you realize that these people might be finance majors, the nonsensical behavior of PR firm The Redner Group all of a sudden becomes very clear. Thanks to "consultant addiction" all American businesses have come to see even the most skilled labor as disposable, corp. structure is constantly reformulated for short-term gains, and non-core activities are outsourced to an infinitely expanded professional service market where the "invisible hand of the market" keeps prices low, and employee turnover dangerously high. Although for all I know Redner Group is just 3 guys in a closet in Santa Monica.

Here we have a firm that does PR, and like most modern service firms, is probably dysfunctional from on over-concentration on maximizing short-term goals. The Redner Group sees their activity not as traditional PR, but as something closer to investment banking. They work hard and expend resources, and expect a positive return on that investment. They approach their task as if they were a customer, doing nothing more than buying exposure designed to increase unit sales and brand awareness (and brand equity can be monetized with the right kind of powerpoint presentation). The Redner Group spent money paying its employees and maintaining a distribution database and network for early review copies of Duke Nukem Forever. They don't see this activity as PR, subject to intangible market mechanics and the basics of journalism, but rather they see their efforts as a creation of a financial instrument, backed by a formula based on the resulting discount rate from their activities producing a specific IRR coming from expected unit sales as a function of exposure & reviews. To put it over-explicitly; In the mind of The Redner Group, they are a paying customer of video game media, and they expect specific results which further their goals.

irr can get complicated.

Sidestepping for the moment that this is the wrong way to approach PR; The Redner Group's reaction is normal for an entity with such a mind-set when confronted with such a situation. To add general context: If you went to an auto shop to have your muffler fixed, and they did a shitty job, you wouldn't go back there for an oil change - not as an act of retaliation (that's what lawyers are for), but simply because you want a certain thing and they didn't provide it when you paid them. This is how The Redner Group has approached their function as a 3rd party provider of PR for an entertainment product. This is a terrible thing to do, and it's exactly how you lose clients. Generating press doesn't work like that because game reviewers and other media are not service providers. The implied obligation to help sales of the game was simply a function of The Redner Group's imagination. The twitter threats they issued are unmistakable evidence that there was a fundamental failure to realize that. The implication of entitlement from investment is so apparent here, that it can send no other message that The Redner Group sees media entities and grassroots gaming communities as nothing more than vending machines for advertising metrics. They put in their dollar and pushed the button, but when the wrong item came out, they felt cheated... they felt a sense of loss, and reacted emotionally. The crux of the matter is not that they shouldn't have acted emotionally, it is that they should never have felt that sense of loss in the first place.

Ironically, 2K Games (the company with the most to "lose" in a situation such as this, because of the emotional connection to a lot of hard work that went into making the thing) has not fallen into such a mental trap. This is most likely because games are their business, and they are well aware of how the market works, including the things you should and should not do. I do hope 2K's decision to drop The Redner Group is a permanent one. Old dogs, new tricks, yada yada ...they won't learn. But that leaves the "outsourcing" problem to deal with. A company like 2K Games hiring a full-time PR staff is kind of wasteful when you use those "consultant addiction" formulas of figuring out how much it ends up costing per release. But when you go out and hire outside firms to promote your releases, you risk losing out on access to loyal workers who have built up substantial experience into an arsenal of tacit skills that are simply non-transferable to just anyone.

The solution is that creative companies like 2K and others, need to create the executive position of "Product-Ronin." Kind of a Product Manager on steroids that goes into total immersion at the 3rd party facility. This is one very experienced person who physically supervises and contributes to operations that are outsourced to 3rd party service providers. 1 marketing person from 2K who knows the game industry well, could have stopped this mess before it happened. 1 pro who knows the anime market in the US could have stopped many a terrible dub before it ever got made. 1 person with an alternative perspective could have pointed out that the artistic subtlety in your design goes away when you put this ad on a giant billboard outside:

Oh, no one's gonna have a problem with that image... it's so edgy.

The job of the Product Ronin, is to frequently leave the confines of the home offices and immerse themselves in whatever major 3rd party services that the company is using, and use their tacit-skill set and experience to stop stupid shit from happening. Creative media and entertainment companies need to create this position, and fill it with a trusted, long-time, well compensated employee. Smart service companies will accommodate them and benefit from the experience and knowledge they create there, which they can use to better serve their clients and manage their operations. Dumb ones will think they do a good enough job already.

On a completely different subject; the fading away of Duke Nukem can be seen as kind of a metaphor for the "old world" of male dominated misogynist type gaming dying out and a new global game world where things are quite different. Go talk about that if thinking about turning a brand equity formula into something that produces IRR gives you a headache. ...I know it does with me.

-

Housekeeping Items:
#1) New Format: As you can see, we're including pull-quotes here and that will be the standard from now on. Additionally, some older articles may be retro-fitted with them, as to lessen the tl;dr factor. If you don't know what tl;dr means, then you fail the internet.

#2) Friday is the new Monday. Posts will now go up on Fridays. Their frequency is still being decided between weekly and bi-weekly.

#3) The final post of each month will be a review of something (except this month where it will probably be July 1). The subject of the review may range from film & television, to video games, books, food & drink, or even special events and travel venues. This is open to suggestions.

#4) This blog has always been link-free and anything here can be reproduced in whole or in part in any non-commercial entity.

#5) I haz a twitter. @The_Angry_Otaku

That's all... for now.

.

Where do we go from here: Manga consumption in a paperless world.

2011-06-08T15:34:00.020-04:00

Omens, Portents, Forewarnings. Never are they understood objectively until after the fact. Such are the oddities and anomalies that are being observed in the development of the evolution of paperless media products. From novels to fine art, technology makes physical distribution a nonexistent entity in a market where consumption occurs via network service. As pointed out in a recent article in Forbes Magazine, the constraints of capital are now quick to lose almost all stature as barriers to entry into “publishing” as we know it. As with many historical examples, resistance to change by the large incumbents force younger more nimble companies to spearhead their own initiatives, making little progress in terms of effecting macro changes. A small label like Media Blasters could never hope to spearhead a new format such as Blu-Ray but could reap the benefits of such an option being available.

While a fan at the NBA Finals may feel very connected to the game as they sit in their ring-side seats, the reality is that their presence makes no difference to the outcome, because if it did, they themselves would be on the court, directly participating. Such is the case with manga in the USA. All the whining and bellyaching about how the “industry” is run by “old men” being the problem, fail to take this into account.

These new formats, as emergent technology, are currently generating dictionaries worth of new contract law terminology and changing the very structure of binding agreements in licensing. To expect Manga to take the lead in such efforts is seriously overestimating the ability of licensors and publishers like Vertical to literally lead a multi billion dollar industry by the nose with their initiatives. Impossible and foolish come to mind when thinking of it that way. Small airlines don't build their own airports, pro-golfers don't build golf courses, tire companies don't build roads. Publishing companies (smaller ones at least ) cant be expected to create dominant proprietary formats for digital media consumption... do they have a whole lab in the back that we didn't notice until now? Nor can these companies be reasonably expected to take what is a substantial risk in paying for a license of a digital format which may or may not generate revenue, while at the same time taking time and money away from their current print format (people can't work on 2 things at once).

The effect on revenue that scanlations have is devastating, and if you think it’s not, you don’t know how this works. The cost of the license itself or even (proper) localization is huge, and that license being stolen by the scanlators, who take that property and put it into the market means that recouping the staggeringly expensive process of putting out a printed manga and distributing it for sell-through revenue at net terms, becomes impossible.

Enter the Kindle or some iPad/Droid app or whatever is going to become dominant, and you have the magical cure for sell-through for struggling publishers. Retailers hate this, because they take advantage of returns to the point where they would gladly put a label out of business if it means they can gain any points in the next quarter. The accounting difference between inventory and in-process inventory is huge for a retailer. So, if publishers never had to print another page again and continue business as usual, they would see it as the best thing since Gutenberg.

There’s a snag there. Did you catch it? “Business as usual.” These formats require new legal contract terminology, half of which doesn’t exist yet, channels and accepted formats that have yet to materialize, and a new set of barriers to entry. That last one is important, since all you have to do is look at youtube, podcasts, or deviantart to realize what would happen to publishing if there were no barriers to entry. Look how hard it is to wade through the seas of truly terrible productions to find ones that have not only genuine talent behind them, but (more importantly) the resources to be consistent, on-time, and well presented. A publishing marketplace where there is no macro-flow of customers towards legitimate works means that the shittiest fanfic abominations would stand at equal level with professional works by professional writers in terms of market presence and availability. Barriers to entry in the media entertainment business keep out a vast amount of crap that would otherwise choke the channels of product awareness and necessary marketing. There's a reason FurNation Press never got it's SKUs into Barnes & Noble (or Diamond for that matter)... so do you really want to have to look at 5 deranged versions of Halo where everyone is a gay ocelot before you get to something by the next Neil Gaiman? With no financial risk what so ever, anyone can publish anything, which is not really a good thing.

In order to jump the last chasm of adoption, these new products and formats must be one thing over all else. More convenient than any alternative, including whatever is happening now. Look at the electric car: Even if electricity was free and the range was the same, the 30 minute charge time vs/ a 90 second fill-up time for a gas engine creates such a Reverse Value Ratio (yes RVR is a real formula), that people still would not adopt electric cars because... seriously, fuck 30 minutes.

There are always multiple ways around this issue. If you can’t speed up the time, electric cars could partner with every free commercial parking space around, so that the 30 min charge now happens when you’re at Wal-Mart or wherever and so you don’t notice that 30 min because it’s no longer a dedicated use of time (ie “they were gonna be parked there anyway” so no big deal). We’re close to finding the necessary “anyway” for manga.

This is a good sign:

From the Sandvine Global Internet Phenomena Report for Spring 2011 (p 6), you can see that Netflix (a single media company) is producing a bigger footprint than torrenting anything. Although the true total average difference is 1%, the fact that this even is happening is a pinhole snapshot of this tenant of Consumer Behavior ringing true. The path of least resistance is going to be a legit commercial one, and that’s going to win the day if it can continue increasing the convenience factor. Netflix is dependable, faster, easier, and an acceptable cost (they have higher than break even WTP). That’s not true for every consumer in America, but it’s true for enough people to get that company into the positive side of market equilibrium.

It shows that it's not all about getting it "for free" ...rather it's about getting it "easy" - which is not (always) the same. Additionally, with the high amount of intense social gamification behavior indicative of the manga/anime market, it's also about getting it "first." This "path of least resistance" in marketing goes for any kind of business, and the different degrees on the scale of decision making are unique to each market. The American manga market is indeed a unique mix of ingredients that make up these "tipping point" degrees between consumption via torrent or consumption via service. Those specifics will have to wait for another time.

And before anyone wants to get technical about “BitTorrent” nomenclature:

That’s on p. 12

Mobile access is another big indicator. I like to look at the Baltic States and Scandinavia for wireless usage info, but I don’t have that handy so here is South America:

Sandvine p 12

That bump in Sept 2010 is probably a result of the ruckus over the Chilean miners, but real-time entertainment and web-browsing can get mashed together when you think about marketing factors that have to do with the possibility of consuming manga (legally) via wireless device. This means that as a dominant format emerges, and non-paper manga is available at a reasonable cost to access, digital device manga will be a viable product, even if the rate of piracy through scanlation remains the same as it is now. The disappearance of physical media will drop the costs of doing business to a level where publishers will actually be able to operate properly, despite the damage done by piracy. This is currently how big publishers and big Hollywood have been able to stay around despite piracy (and terrible titles); make enough successful properties to carry the others. But that type of arbitrage activity in today’s media markets which still require manufacture and distribution of physical products (books, DVDs) requires levels of capital well out of reach for the few remaining US manga publishers.

This means the charge for digital media is going to be led by bigger players like Comcast, NCAA, WSJ, AOL-HUFFPO, Fox News, NY Times, and other companies that fart more money in a day than a company like Funimation sees in a decade. So until these channels solidify, being in the manga business in the USA isn’t exactly a peachy place to be. Despite a rosy looking future in terms of generalities, we’re still a ways away from being able to pop the cork on the Champaign. Right now, the publishing industry is about to enter a state where it will look like a lava-lamp in a paint mixer. Things are going to get shaken up and it will take a while for elements to separate and form the shapes of this segment of the new media horizon. Manga will be there. Paper won’t.

Make no mistake, from otaku demographics to creative tastes, there are still many factors that I have not addressed, but they aren't here because we're looking at the big picture of publishing as a business, to which manga is only a small part of... and you've had to read too many words already.

-

What You’re Missing: Happy Flight Review

2011-05-30T00:07:00.008-04:00

-
Welcome to a new segment where The Angry Otaku features “things Japanese” that aren’t necessarily anime. Way back when I was still a little bitty Otaku, when the internet consisted of BBSs accessed via 2400 baud, and VHS was king, I was in the early stages of anime fandom so to speak. There in those stages, there’s always a period where a fan is in the “if it’s not anime, I don’t care” mode of media consumption. Kaiju, martial arts, chambara, drama, ...you name it, if it was live action, I didn’t care.

Fortunately I was able to grow out of that, and it is in the hopes of widening the range of Japanese popular entertainment consumed by AmerOtakus, that this new monthly segment was created. Look for "What You're Missing" on the last Monday of every month here... at least until I get tired of doing it.

Happy Flight

A great “gateway” production for anime fans that are not too open to live action, Happy Flight is a 2008 comedy from director Shinobu Yaguchi, known to American Otaku audiences through titles like Water Boys and Swing Girls. The film follows the inner workings of both airplane and airport, revolving around All Nippon Airways flight 1980, a 747 going from Japan to Hawaii.

Opening with quick introductions of the various characters through a montage where we bounce around locations like a ball in a pinball machine, the film quickly sets the overall lighthearted tone through scenes featuring some intra-company rivalry between cabin crew and ground staff, as well as the trepidations our main characters feel as they enter their first day on new assignments for ANA. On board the flight, the film doubles character juxtaposition by pairing the two “fish out of water” main characters off of their supervisors, who have tough reputations and come off as strict, stoic, and humorless. First with the newly promoted pilot Kazuhiro Suzuki (Seiichi Tanabe) being evaluated on his first flight as Captain by the extremely serious and deadpan evaluator Captain Harada (Saburo Tokito), and second with the enthusiastic new flight attendant Etsuko Saito (Haruka Ayase), whose excitement soon fades after a prompt chewing out by her new boss, the notoriously strict Reiko Yamazaki (Shinobu Terajima). However their confidence and ability to work under pressure are soon put to the test, when ANA flight 1980 encounters serious problems after takeoff. Needing to return to Japan, the plane turns around only to face a vicious typhoon which stands between the now crippled plane and the safety of the runway.

Happy Flight dedicates quite a bit of itself to the people of often overlooked airport supporting functions. From trainee mechanics, to air traffic controllers, from the ticket agents, to the guy who keeps birds away from the runway, the film introduces you to each one as their humanity emerges in the course of their stressful jobs. These are that types of characters who often get a one dimensional treatment in other films, but in Happy Flight, the receive a well-deserved second dimension. Although some may argue that doing so creates the unintended consequence of making three-dimensional characters into two-dimensional ones, the film itself is not hurt by this. But unlike other movies featuring airplanes, Happy Flight doesn’t need three-dimensional characters, as it doesn’t take itself too seriously like Flight Plan, nor does it aim to be the campy schlock of Airplane. The film sits in the perfect balance between funny and still believable, and works perfectly with the character depth it reaches, because each group of characters operates within their own bubble. The pilots never interact with the mechanics, who go through a desperate search through the hangar on their own time to ensure that flight 1980 is not suffering from what could be a fatal engine problem. The airport ground staff, led by the "calm under pressure" Masaharu Takahashi (played by veteran actor Ittoku Kishibe), go through the stressful ordeal of guiding a 747 to a safe runway in the middle of a typhoon, but never even see the flight attendants who must keep the passengers safe and calm during the same ordeal. In this way, the film sets up an orbital matrix of character groups, completely separated from each other but all revolving around the same central nucleus, in this case the critically wounded ANA flight 1980.

The Japanese work ethic is very into principles of knowledge-creation management, and in this feel-good film, there are plenty of examples of how the junior staff have their confidence boosted through hands-on experience under the watchful guidance of their more seasoned supervisors. There are a lot of hidden meanings and social constructs present in Happy Flight which are nowhere to be found in American cinema, and the active knowledge creation each character goes through is the perhaps the strongest one of these.

American anime fans will quickly feel right at home watching this movie, as the cast and direction amplify the types of humor and emotional situations often reserved for comedic titles. Love, loss, goofy sidekicks, deadpan personalities in tense situations, and even a few physical gags, are all pleasantly spaced throughout this relatively short (100min) romp thought a day in the life of a Japanese airport in crisis-mode. Anime fans will also recognize some cast members like Seiichi Tanabe who has voiced characters in Tramps Like Us and Twin Spica and has played Issei Tomine in the Drops of God adaptation. Also from Japanese TV, comedian Kami Hiraiwa and actress Tomoko Tabata team up to form the very “Pinky & The Brain” style team of ANA ticket agents.

Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering?
I think so Brain, but last time we ran out of baggage claim stickers and dolphin tranquilizers way too early.

Happy Flight has been accused of being corporate propaganda since it’s about an ANA flight and ANA staff who do ANA things in a movie made by ANA (did I mention ANA?). But for an American this just isn’t as true as it seems. Yes, the airline and all the characters come in a positive light, but it is still a very imperfect human one. The trappings, foibles, and emotional nuances that make us all real and all different are not hidden from the audience for fear of “hurting the brand.” Rather, they are shown directly to the audience as a vital part of each and every character, adding a very high degree of believability to the film. The fact that such a movie would never ever be made by the likes of guitar-breaking United, dog-killing Delta, or suck in your gut Southwest, is not lost on American audiences in the least. The genuine way that ANA portrays a much higher work ethic among its staff is a great and refreshing reminder to Americans that at one time, that kind of thing was possible and just might be possible again, and leave you with a smile on your face (at least until the next time the functionally retarded high school drop out from the TSA confiscates your diet Dr. Pepper and steals your watch, while fondling your balls).

Finally, because of recent events involving US Air 1545 (The Hudson River bird-strike landing) and the unfortunate fate of Air France 447 (freezing of the pitot tubes), this film will actually be easier to follow and better appreciated, as now most audiences will be familiar with the perils that the characters in the film face, from hearing about real life examples.

Happy Flight does a great job in porting over the type of theatrical mechanics present in most anime, to a live action medium without the need for heavy visual effects a-la Cutie Honey or Scott Pilgrim. Anime Conventions: this one should be on your video schedule if it isn't already.

You can find a subtitled copy of Happy Flight on Amazon.com, although I have no idea how legit that copy is (might be the Hong Kong release). The region 2 Japanese copies tend to be very pricey, with the Blue Ray special edition topping out at 72,000 yen which at today’s crappy exchange rate is about a million dollars US. This is a movie that you don’t need on Blue Ray though (there aren't any major effects which would benefit from it). The regular region-2 editions are (somewhat) cheaper, but it should be noted that some of them do not include English Subtitles. Give Bookoff a try if you are near one of their locations and bring your “must have” list, because they will probably have other things you want as well.

Oh, and of course you can always watch it at your seat if you’re on an ANA flight.

Helpful hints: What to look for on Japanese DVD labeling:

(Now this applies to anime as well) When shopping for Japanese market DVDs, most of the time it’s on the internet, where the various subtitle info and other specs are listed in a language that you can read. However, in the event you are browsing at a store in person (Kinokunia or Book Off for example), and you turn over the DVD case only to be met with a whole bunch of Kanji you can’t read, here is what to look for: The word is “Jimaku” 字幕　（じまく）“subtitles.” Now that’s half what you need to know, with the other half being “Eigo” 英語　which is (say it with me now) “English.” The reason this is important, is that often Japanese DVDs will have Japanese subtitles only, so just looking for字幕 without determining the language, can get you a DVD with nice crisp Japanese or Chinese subtitles and a look of confused disappointment across the faces of your friends. Let’s look at some examples:

Here’s the back of the Japanese release of Kill Bill (why the Japanese version? Because it’s not censored by the MPAA like the American release is). As you can see, there’s a pictogram that indicates 2 tracks of available subtitles. Let’s have a closer look:

Ok that top line is 日本語字幕; which is “Japanese Subtitles”, and I’ll bet you can guess what that second one is; 英語字幕 “English Subtitles” indeed. This doesn’t seem weird until you realize that the movie itself is in English and so they’re subtitling what the actors are already saying.

But moving on, just remember when buying Japanese DVDs, you want to look for “英語字幕” on the back, if you want to be sure you will be enjoying English subs. As for linguistic accuracy, some releases are better than others, with bigger budget larger releases more likely to offer this feature over smaller releases. Additionally, if you're looking at the back info and notice that the word "English" and "Subtitles" are spelled out just like that in Roman lettering, then there are significant chances are you are looking at a Hong Kong release.

Finally, a word on Region Coding. If you don't have a region-free player, then none of this matters to you anyway. I've owned one for so long, that when I bring DVDs to other people's houses I completely forget that they may not be able to play them. Buying a region free player is totally worth it, I have a Pioneer DV444 from codefreedvd.com, and it still works great after 10 years. The ability to watch any DVD I want, skipping the retarded FBI warning and being able to go straight to the menu without having to endure trailer after trailer is something I enjoy taking for granted, and so will you. You don't have to go for expensive options either. Chinese manufactures often spit out some no-name brands that aren't region locked and don't button-disable. Monitor some tech forums for when these hit your local Best Buy and you can pick one up for $40 or so.

Happy hunting.

-

I for one, welcome our new Chinese overlords.

2011-05-23T12:22:00.024-04:00

-
Welcome to the century of American decline.

It's not what you think... ok maybe it is.

As I have mentioned before, what little impact that the American market has on anime and manga productions in terms of creative influence has more or less evaporated with the market bubble bursting a few years ago. Now it seems that China’s emergence as a substantial market force will ensure that such influence never returns (at least not easily), by expanding its own gravitational field into the minds of the key decision makers at studios and publishers who tell the artists and writers what to do.

Case in point, Sanrio’s Hello Kitty theme park is expanding in to China, not the USA. If you think that it’s geographic proximity that is the reason for this, then you seriously need to go back to 8th grade economics. I haven’t seen the actual data and analytics that no doubt took place in abundance before an investment of this magnitude got made, but I am quite sure that I can imagine what they looked like. The (very simplified) end results being something like:

Do this equation in the USA and the answer is more of a “meh” with a higher risk assessment based on lower brand awareness, higher costs for labor and what I am sure are more stringent safety regulations. This kind of business migration has been going on for a very long time in certain segments like manufacturing and agri-business (where Brazil is making a killing). Things progressing as they are, this is going to start happening in the entertainment industry as well and that includes manga and anime, as well as games, and stuff that has yet to be invented.

Many of the responses that came in from the Galapagos Article, seemed to miss the point it made, and argued that the absence of input from the American market was a good thing. That it created a unique difference in the type of entertainment media that manga and anime develop into, and it was exclusively because of that difference that manga and anime were “good.” However, that’s a flawed argument which seemed to be lost on those readers, despite it being highlighted in the same piece with the “mayonnaise on pizza” example. The Japanese put mayo on pizza as a standard, it developed because of lack of input from the American market, and it’s very different from American commercial pizza. Yet, most Americans don’t find it particularly appealing, and that’s because this quality of “difference” by itself is no guarantee of success in other markets. There has to be more than that in the equation.

It is the “more-than-that” which is in danger of being turned in a direction wherein manga and anime may become more appealing to other markets and less appealing to Americans. This is where China will play a large role. While still regarded as the “wild west” in terms of copyright there are two major factors that will continue to make it an emerging force in commercial media: 1) The government is still trying to crack down on copyright violations because as they enter a global economy, not being able to stop IP and brand piracy makes them look bad, and 2) Size Matters; Even if your property suffers 50% piracy, that’s still the other 50% of the Chinese market that didn’t pirate it, and 50% of China is 200% of the entire USA. That’s a profitable gambit no matter how you look at it. This means that when faced with the decision of story-lines, music, translations, release schedules, operations, and marketing input, China is going get a seat at the table.

It’s no guarantee that just because there is more of a minding of Chinese market and cultural sensibilities that it will result in an evolution of manga and anime into something that becomes unwatchable by American otaku standards... but there’s no guarantee that won’t happen either. The Chinese entertainment market is still under the choke-hold of a totalitarian government, hellbent on making sure that even the most abstract negative representations of itself or anything close to it, are ruthlessly stamped out. Creative freedom does not live in China, despite the PR blitz. Many of the citizens in the PRC are ok with that, and are drinking the kool aid. When I was living in Tokyo, the PRC Chinese students I was with actually made statements like “China has never violated human rights” with a straight face. When confronted by the below photo, they actually called it a fake, as they had never seen it before and had no idea what it was, when or why it happened.

FAKE!!!!!!!!

So here you have a huge market, wearing blinders to their own government’s imposed artistic limitations, who want to see certain story lines and character archetypes that are quite unique and mostly dissimilar to the ones that the manga and anime market currently produce. Producers are actively including native Chinese speakers in development planning sessions, while native English is nowhere to be found. Size and logistics are really working against the USA in this situation, and with the American economy fucked every which way, it’s not an attractive place to be. If you don’t believe me just ask Tokyo Pop.

The reason this is a serious concern, is that this is a “pull” and not a “push” situation, and that makes for a deeper and more long-lasting set of changes. China is an attractive market and the motivation to do business there is coming from a genuine desire within foreign companies, not from China demanding this, that, or the other. There is no shortage of precedence when it comes to companies agreeing to play by Chinese rules to enter Chinese markets, but in the case of art & entertainment in particular, there have been no high-contrast external examples, until March of 2011. MGM (now Touchstone) announced that they would be changing the “bad guys” in the Red Dawn remake from the PRC to the DPRK (the DPRK is North Korea btw), and make this change retroactively all in post-production. This is the most glaring example of artistic story being bent to the will of industry executives, because those executives do not want to offend Chinese sensibilities. No Chinese bad guy for you!

The reason for this goes far beyond worrying about the Chinese box office for this one particular film. The reason this is happening is because this property is now over at Touchstone, and The Mouse wants in on China bad, and he's already plenty tied up in Chinese investments even now. To make Chinese investors angry is never a good idea, especially in his situation. With this change, he can claim he’s done something of value for the great People’s Republic by swapping them out for the Norkos (even though that makes the film itself seem pretty retarded... ok more retarded). An extreme example to be sure, but it proves the possibility of this happening not only exists, but can be brought to fruition. In order not to offend PRC investors and Government (because you can't separate those two), an American movie playing to an American audience is being significantly altered. Think about that for a minute.

This is from the movie.

I can't really get too angry about that though, as this change wasn't brought by the hand of a government agency, but rather the forces within the private sector, a field in which I operate in. Complaining about it is one thing, but condemning it is a bit too hippie for me. Since I don't own any Disney or MGM shares, the only influence I can exert is that I could either go see it or not go see it, buy the DVD or not buy it. One could also legitimately argue that other films (particularly ones form the UK) have had to make changes to be better adapted to an American audience because the studio wants in on the US Market, and this kind of thing isn't new. But this is a case of a film aimed at it's own domestic market being changed in its own domestic market for the sake of other business interests, not to make the film itself more competitive. That adds another dimension.

Back to the topic at hand; If it wasn’t already clear a few years ago, it should be very clear now, that manga and anime are drifting away from the need to even participate in the US Market. All you undergrad kiddies taking Japanese 101 and thinking you’ll be getting a job in the industry are just setting yourself up for a world of disappointment worse than the one Harold Camping is living in right now (Camping may be upset, but he’s still sitting on a pile of money, you'll have student loans to deal with).

The worst part about this situation, is that the only way the US market can increase its viability (outside of stopping scanlation and fansub piracy), is by getting Big Hollywood back into the picture. These players can shell out for massive theatrical licenses and marketing to the point where they are still the biggest kids on the block. This in turn, creates a market for a great many smaller licenses and spin-off productions which generate enough revenue to stay relevant. Unfortunately, that has been tried, and the result was...

Worse than going to the dentist.

The final curve-ball in this mess which is working against American otaku, is that the USA is still dealing with the near-fatal cultural damage caused by the CCA and the MPAA. Their many years of bully pulpit blathering, and acts of financial terrorism had firmly entrenched any works based on comic illustration (that includes all graphic novels and all animation) were viewed strictly as for kids or the “Family Segment” as modern marketing likes to call it. While it’s true that modern audiences are leaving those notions behind, and movie ratings have been exposed for the scam that they are, this mode of thinking is still much more firmly entrenched where it counts; the investment community. The lines that many audience members no longer see which restrict comics and animation to kiddy-land, are still very indelibly fixed when it comes to project funding. I once worked on a huge pitch for a *Big Toy Company that isn’t Mattel*, with a martial arts anime geared for the 8-14 boys segment. I put a lot of hours into it and was just starting when I was cut off by one of the suits, who said it wasn’t appropriate for boys because (get this) there was a female supporting character in it. Yep, the exec took a look at the crowd-shot with all the characters, noticed that one of them was a chick, and flat out stopped everything right there. When I pointed out that there were less female characters in my property than the multi billion dollar property that was Pokemon, the exec retorted that Pokemon was a “fluke” property. Not caring to ever do business with *Big Toy Company that isn’t Mattel* again (whoopsie me) I responded with “You don’t know what you’re talking about, it isn’t the 1980’s any more,” turned, and left. The mentality of firmly drawn demographic lines and age-exclusive mediums is still very much alive where it counts, and doing as much damage as it possibly can. With that mode of thinking still posing a significant barrier to audience development and engagement, China wins again, because that problem doesn’t exist there. They've got other problems to be sure, but that's not one of them.

This isn’t going to be instant, and the PRC does a great job at putting its foot in its mouth when it comes to trying to sustain an image of something other than Stalinism for the 21st Century. But business has to go where the money is, and people don’t care. If you cared, you wouldn’t have “made in China” stamped on all the crap in your house and probably the stuff your wearing right now.

To conclude, this is not a political observation. I am not Becking about some impending takeover a-la Red Dawn (it's a movie dude... empty calories for wasting the mind's time). I'm talking about rather pedestrian market forces here. These forces make certain facts a likely reality. The fact that in the future (not instantly, but within 10 years), the Chinese market will be a significant source of influence in Japan's manga and anime industry, is something that I think is quite likely. Additionally, it could mean some very good things for the industry and the type of productions that will be made, or it could mean not so good things and manga & anime it will have less of an appeal to American audiences and shrink its American footprint. It's a coin-toss. So prepare to gradually be exposed to manga and anime that are still “different,” but not the same "different" as we're used to.

I'm still gonna go see it.
-

Summer Wars: It’s the audience’s fault.

2011-05-16T00:00:00.019-04:00

-

I really hate how I can go to a forum on ANN or Kotaku, and hear all kinds of bitching about the evil “industry” and its “profit.” Profitability has become a dirty word these days, and not without just cause. Since the days of the Ford Pinto and even further back, the “profitable” bottom line has been synonymous with cold uncaring indifference to the human tolls that business operations have, and anyone who now will forever hate the letters B and P, will know what it feels like to feel that way.

But there’s another side to “profitability,” and that is one which sustains a functioning economy. Without profit, manga doesn’t get printed, anime doesn’t get animated, and Amazon.com doesn’t pay UPS to drive a DVD to your house after you click a button or two. One of the main targets of criticism that the quest for “Profitability” in entertainment media has always had, is the one painting it as a cause of a corruptible influence when an already established story is expanding into other mediums. For example, in the new “Star Trek” movie, the Engine Room looks like a friggin cornmeal warehouse and not like what every Star Trek fan knows a starship engine room should look like. Why? Because “Star Trek Fans” aren’t a large enough movie-going audience to cater to at the expense of 80% of the audience who only knows 2 things about Star Trek and they’re both “Beam me up Scotty!” Rather than make the set authentic, thereby creating alienation within most of the audience members (and making the poor Star Trek-literate guy have to deal with all the “what’s that thing?” questions whispered to him), the filmmakers went with a backdrop that would effectively convey the feeling of “Engine Room” to 99% of the audience. For the uber-fans (10% of the people in the theater), this was awful and hurtful, but for the rest of the audience (90% of the people in the theater) and to the movie studio, it was a good move to make.

So otaku-nerds, let us not react in anger at changes in continuity or blatant contradictions and anachronisms which occur to us, for in the end it is for profitability, and without such things, none of this is going to get made.

Why am I bringing any of this up? Well, I finally got around to watching Summer Wars. When I was living in Tokyo, I was in so much work up to my eyeballs and money was so tight thanks to a shitty dollar (yes, living in Tokyo and getting paid in USD. It sucked), that I didn’t have time to check it out when it opened, despite the fact I wanted to. I did manage to catch Redline there though when it opened. Sweet.

Watching Summer Wars, there were a number of things that bothered me a bit. It’s a great movie, and I love how (like almost all anime features) it doesn’t feel it needs to spell everything out to a stupid American audience which must have an IQ of 12 like Hollywood productions. Younger anime fans who have tried to watch anime films with their parents know what this can lead to. Endless interjections of “What’s that?” “Who’s that?” “Why are they doing that thing?” “What do they mean by ...?” Don’t you just sometimes want to yell at the person that you haven’t seen the movie either and you don’t have a secret set of headphones where more things are being explained to you and not them, so could they please just shut the fuck up and watch?!. Anyway, Summer Wars is nice. It makes you follow the story without spoon-feeding it to the audience, escalates emotional commitment, and pays off with a great big finish. The problem is that there are certain times when that process is interrupted and you are jerked out of the movie by something a bit too hard to accept... but only for that 10% of the audience who can see what the problem is in the first place. Everyone else is enjoying the movie, but you can only mostly enjoy it, because something’s bothering you that isn’t being addressed. Why not? For the sake of that 90% of the audience who aren’t bothered by it, that's why not.

But I'm going to list those issues here anyway.

Kenji the Herbivore: This is just an opinion more than the rest of these issues, but fucking seriously, the Herbivore Male is sending Japan to hell in a handcart faster than anything else. There’s cute ineptitude, and then there’s “I’m an a-social idiot who wouldn’t know what to do with a girl if she landed naked right on my...” let’s stop there, I’m sure you get the idea. I have to believe that the whole indecisive-male in the face of blatant girl-interest grew out of a backlash from the 1980’s “cool guy” as an otaku audience was never going to be cool enough to actually actively attract girls. Since then the “I don’t know what to do with an interested girl” character has been a staple of harem programs like Tenchi Muyo. The thing about Tenchi the character, is that he always (more or less) puts himself into a socially awkward sexual dead-possum mode to avoid hurting the feelings of the other competing girls and not because he was totally inept. It was always the notion that he’d piss one girl off by going for the other, which kept that kind of behavior at least mostly believable. When there are no competing love/humping interests, for a guy to act like that is only cute for the initial character introductions. If his balls don’t drop for the whole movie, you just want to punch him.

But this personality archetype has become so ingrained into anime, that it would actually throw audiences off if Kenji both liked math AND was good with the ladies. If that were the case, he would have seemed too perfect, or perhaps may have been hiding sinister motives.

...He's just waiting for Sasami to leave the room.

Social Media Spaces: So somehow Norad, JR, Heart Monitors, and who knows what else have all allowed OZ (the furry wet dream version of facebook) access to systems that are guarded at the highest level? WTF? I know, the intro mentioned that defense agencies, big businesses, and all kinds of other major entities have established presences on OZ, but actually causing a threat to these entities through that presence is like thinking that by hacking into www.goarmy.com you are somehow going to gain access to strategic missile command. And don’t give me that “the hacked accounts from NORAD used the same passwords for OZ as they do for their sensitive systems” bullshit, because ...really? Really? Is that so easy to believe because that kind of thing happens now all the time where people with access to defense grids can use the same password for their fucking Twitter as they can for super-secret-classified-network? No matter how bad-ass this AI is, it’s not going to gain anything special by taking over some weirdo future version of Second Life.

But “War Games” the sequel isn’t what this movie was about, that extra dimension would just be extraneous and take away from the more important character development.

“Hacking”: Ok so Kazuma is some gaming badass, and takes on a computer program in an online fighting game. They start to fight and you hear... tappity tap tap... The whole. Fucking. Time. Ever play Street Fighter? Ever play Street Fighter but ...by typing shit? What the fuck, is he writing brand new code right there for the command “kick now” or something? This is a result of lots of Hollywood dribble, where whenever anyone does anything with a computer ever, you hear keyboard typing at an inhuman pace, even though the applications where text editing would actually have any effect don’t work like that... ever. But the audience needs to know this is some very important computer stuff happening on the interwebs, so Kazuma holding a console-style controller is out, even though it would be a more accurate portrayal of what’s going on. Let’s also not forget that a vast amount of web interaction in Japan (way more than the USA) happens via hand-held mobile device, where tapping on buttons must happen for everything, so it’s not a huge deal for most Japanese audiences. Kazuma is Hacking the GPS system? Oh that’s totally normal... they have trucked in a supercomputer that is running... an online fighting game program... which is being programmed in real time by a 13 year old... it’s ok, it’s “computer stuff.”

Oh no... VISUAL BASIC!

Low Earth Orbit vs Outer Space: So the Arawashi orbital satellite (remember "orbital") is a probe that is supposed to slam into a comet or something so researchers can study it. Comets are far away, even when they show up in our neighborhood. If a comet came by earth so close as to be able to be impacted by an earth orbiting satellite (an area where there are lots and lots of other satellites doing other things), then this would be a fucking earth shattering event. We’re talking close enough to cause a serious scare that it could hit earth and cause an ELE. Now, since the film opens with normal people in their normal lives and no riots in the streets, we have to assume that whatever comet/asteroid thing that the Arawashi was supposed to hit, it was far enough away from earth as to not make the entire human race collectively wet themselves... you know... fucking outer space! ...so what is Arawashi doing hanging out in orbit? Remember Deep Impact ? (No, not the movie, the actual NASA probe. I'll give you a hint: No you don’t remember it and neither does 90% of the audience). It took 7 months to get from Earth, to where this comet was, by flying on a rocket... then the impactor itself took 5 days to hit the thing AFTER it was launched at it... FROM SPACE! This Arawashi thing should already be on a trajectory to slam into this interplanetary body very far away at uber-speeds and no amount of AI is going to be able to turn it around. Even if it could, there’s no way in hell it would be using GPS as a targeting reference because A) It’s above the GPS sats in space, and B) Why the fuck-shit-hell would a piece of space equipment designed to hit another object in space be equipped with GPS targeting sensors, OR atmospheric navigational hardware (wings & fins). These things would only be effective for hitting something on EARTH! It’s not a fucking j-dam!

But the average audience member is only going to be aware of “smart bomb video” circa Gulf War part 1, and the very scientific principle of “big thing go boom.” So taking time to explain how we get around these problems isn't worth it.

E = mc²: Ok so something the size of a school bus is heading towards the earth faster than a ballistic missile and you manage to get it to miss the mark by... what did that look like, maybe 300 feet? I don’t know what the actual mass of that thing was, but it was made to be a high velocity impact device. Let’s look at Deep Impact again, and remember that the thing that slammed into the comet weighed (on earth) 816lbs (370kg) and was traveling at 10kps. It was a little bigger than washing machine, and the explosion released energy equivalent to 5 tons of TNT. That's 5 Bunker Busters (or 5 Pepcons) going off all at once. The impactor in the movie looks considerably bigger than that. Something that size traveling at speeds like that is going make the impact entire area look like Tunguska... MOAB level power being unleashed by this thing is not a stretch by any means.

The audience has no idea what Tunguska was, is, or what it means, and they don't care, because the movie shows that they all had a close call and saved the day in the end by working together as a family in unison (Spoiler Alert; that bit you just read). So the filmmakers didn’t need to bother explaining how something that big wouldn't blast that entire mountain into dust.

Hi, it's just me, 1 ton yield here, yeah, there are 20 of us, and we all wanna come in at once.

North Koreans: There are stories of how errant weather satellites have come within a hair of starting World War 3 because they flew over the north pole when Russian missile command hadn’t had their morning coffee yet and scared the pants off of everyone there. Something falling out of the sky from space heading straight at Northern Japan is going to look like one thing: North Korean Missile Attack. I don’t care what systems are or aren’t under the control of “Love Machine,” it’s almost impossible to suspend belief that some missile shaped tungsten death-rod the size of a bus heading for Japan isn’t going to have missile bases in North Korea, South Korea, China, Russia, and any US subs that happen to be in the area, totally losing their shit over this. I honestly think this might be weighing in the back of the minds of a higher portion of the audience in Japanese theaters, more than the other points I've brought up, due to the recent scares that happened there form thsi sort of thing (during the height of the N. Korean missile tests, there were Patriot Missile launchers set up across the street from my apartment... you know, just in case).

But since this scene comes at a crescendo of such high cinematic intensity, the audience doesn't notice the problematic potential. It would be like trying to pay attention to a candle in the middle of a forest fire.

It was either this or 99 Red Balloons.

These are all necessary problems. What I mean by that, is that if any of them were addressed in the film, it would have been just a case of spending production money to animate needless sequences which would explain technical things that didn’t need explaining. It would take away resources that the film had put to much better use in the story telling. Fixing or addressing these issues would in no way make this movie any better, and in fact would probably detract form it. In short, fixing these issues would have actually made the film worse, not better.

Where we run into actual trouble is when American audiences get a hold of it. Am I saying Americans are smarter? Fuk no. What I am saying is that this film is going to end up being followed by a smaller niche-type audience in the US, as opposed to a wide general audience in Japan. The American audience is going to be pinhole-lense concentration of the top of pyramid fans (the ones who are really into this stuff), representing only a small fraction of movie going audiences as a whole. Further exacerbating the problem, is that this concentration that gravitates towards anime in the USA tends to contain the demographic clusters that are going to be much more literate in the types of dynamics that these problems grow out of (science, computing, etc), and so a larger portion of the audience is going to find trouble suspending disbelief to the degree that this movie is 100% enjoyable. But this movie also addresses this problem as well; by not giving a crap what non-Japanese audiences think of it (seriously, do you really think they had a strategy session where the American market came up and had any effect on the treatment, characters, or overall tone, or even the marketing of this film? ...I’ve been in meetings like this, and the answer is no). The reasons these little holes go unaddressed here, are because this film is trying to appeal to a general audience, or in other words; be profitable. Not "buy a new Bentley for every day of the week" profitable, but more along the lines of "let's pay our staff and invest in the the next movie project" kind of profitable. Fans should not have a problem with this.

The film is incredible. It’s an involving story that does what cinematic anime has often been best at, and that’s produce a strong character driven series of events peppered with elements that are just too impractical to use in live action. No matter how you slice it, to try and recreate the scenes in OZ with live action and green screen would just produce something reminiscent of a bad Next Generation episode, where we’re trapped in a character’s mind or something. The film did a great job at being genuinely entertaining, and is a perfect gateway film for anime-ignorant family members (let them watch the dub if they want...). The best part is, that any nitpicky problems you have with it, can be placed at the feet of the lesser intellects in the general audience, and are totally not a result of you and your lack of social skills. Totally.

-

Technical Difficulties and Tantanmen

2011-05-09T14:37:00.014-04:00

-
It seems like some drafts and other upcoming posts have gotten scrambled and/or lost.

You will never, succeed. Success is the fortune of only a chosen few... not you.

Long story short, next post is May 16.'

In the mean time, I guess I can lament giving up the first-mover advantage by neglecting to register "TheAngryOtaku" as a youtube.com username. Nope, some other dork got there first, and now theangryotaku channel on youtube is this crapfest. So do keep in mind that it's not me if you come across it on youtube. Such are the perils of establishing a personal brand on interweb2.0. I had wanted to make a few video posts but now I'm gonna have to use bit.tv or something like that.

Also, this weekend was Anime North in Toronto. I still am probably not allowed there anymore, ever since the disaster that was the execs at Crash (who were not me) wanting to go and do the anime convention thing, and then showing up, checking into the hotel, and then blowing the convention because it was "too nerdy" to go hang out at Tower Records in downtown Toronto, leaving me to explain things and take the fall. I stayed and had a nice time, but the con ppl were rightly pissed off. Thankfully, it was the only convention where they ever showed up. I'm sure something awesome happened there but I wasn't paying attention. Maybe I'll go to Otakuthon in Montreal. My passport needed renewing this month anyway and so now I've got a new one that's got nothing in it, so may as well get some Canada in there.

I guess I could have pulled out some old fandom stuff or scanned that Otakon 1994 program book, just to keep this anime related. Or maybe pseudo gripe about feeling a bit homesick over my old Tokyo apartment, but then realize that it was built in 1972 and in all likelihood took a serious beating in that earthquake, and then feel happy about not being there when I see the current exchange rate. Not so fab.

Sometimes it's hard to remember that many people reading this haven't had the experience of living in Tokyo (even if it was a grinding dehumanizing existence) so stuff like this is worth sharing. So let me just say this... If you find yourself in Tokyo and you're on a budget (you're reading this, so I know you will have limited funds) get over to the lower floor of the Palaceside Building at Takebashi station (that's off the Tozai subway line, but walkable from lots of places, and it's right on the moat of the Imperial Palace Park)... anyway go in there and look for a place called Shanghai somethin-or-other written all in Kanji,so it's "上海市" and then some other stuff I don't remember (it's got one of these in the logo so look for that too). It is there you can get the straight up best tantamen in the universe, and for under 1000 yen. (FYI, the best things to eat in Tokyo are in small places where literally everyone in the lunch-rush has ordered the exact same thing because it's so f-ing awesome... that's how I found this place and discovered tantanmen in the first place).

Tantanmen, although not being mentioned in Shampoo's Nekohanten Menu Song, is a big staple of lunchie-munchie noodle houses in Japan. Though the origins are Chinese, that's like saying the crap that you find over at "Great Wall Buffet" over in Peoria is authentic Chinese cuisine. No, tantanmen is one of the few Japanese dishes that are normally spicy. It's also easy to make at home as long as you can get your hands on some ground pork. If you are in the USA, it's not terribly hard to find as long as you're in NY LA or SF. If not you might be screwed.

Well, that's it for now. There will be an actual post next week. In the mean time have a drink or something. ...no seriously, check out my other blog... it's really lonely.

=

Ching Chang Chong: Racism and Not-Racism in Entertainment Media

2011-05-02T00:16:00.028-04:00

Subjective Reality continued: Today's vocab word is Butt-Hurt.

I just don't have the words for how stupid this case involving Simon Ledger and the song "Kung Fu Fighting" is. It's already over and done with, but it's still an unbelievable incident to say the least, it shows how an out of control obsession to meet an impossible standard can be a serious threat to artistic creativity, and entertainment.

I've picked on Australia previously for doing this kind of thing, but now it seems that its mommy is outdoing it and raising the bar on the stupid-standard to an inconceivable level. Yes those limey bastards have taken political correctness to a retarded extreme the likes of which make Pat Condell seem like a reasonable individual. Yeah, I know the story is from The Sun (feel lucky I didn't link to The Guardian) but if you must, here have the same story from Daily Mail or BBC.

ENEMY OF COMMON SENSE

Did I offend you by using the word "retarded"? Well fuck ya then. In the above context the word means something completely removed from mental illness or developmental disability, and it's only your ego which makes you think that somehow it has something to do with you. It doesn't. Your feelings or opinion don't matter in the grand scheme of things, they won't change the meaning of the above context, and in 8 minutes you'll be thinking about something else let alone 2 days from now. This is entertainment.

Oh, internet...

This IS entertainment. One of the pillars of entertainment is to have no sacred cows, and that goes back to court jesters and even further. Thankfully, if you're American, your right to be creative is protected (hell, your right to be a straight up racist a-hole is protected), while the rights of mental midgets not to have their feelings hurt are not written into insane laws. It would seem that it's only by the consent of the most insignificant plebeian minds and their fragile emotionality, can any media entertainment exist in the UK without being labeled a criminal enterprise.

Well, England being the country that brought us Apartheid in South Africa, the mess in Northern Ireland, India vs Pakistan, driving on the left side of the road, and this non-stop news cycle of 'who gives a fuck' royal wedding carnival of lucky moneyed trailer trash (yes I did just call the British monarchy lucky moneyed trailer trash, and what are you gonna do about it? nothing, that's what.) what can you really expect? It's such a misguided backlash from an unchecked sense of having to make amends from the past, and will most likely lead to the homogenized hell-future of Demolition Man before anyone realizes that the government has taken all the fun out of life. Que the revolution and blah blah blah. Seriously, is this retardulatastic incident really any different from the "swear meter" that fines you every time you drop the f-bomb in public in that movie? Why would a machine do that if nothing else than to "protect" the "feelings" of others from your 1st amendment exercises, no? It puts the "feelings" of others in front of your ability/right (depending on where you live) to say whatever you want.

So the potential problem is huge in terms of not only media, but quality of life in general. I might "feel" the world is flat and screw up your kid's education by demanding the school "respect my belief." Or I might "feel" that sushi is such unspeakable animal cruelty that I might throw a fit if I have to be subjected having someone eat it within my field of vision. Or I might "feel" like Hetalia is offensive to Italians (or anyone else for that matter) and demand that WH Smith not only stop selling it immediately, but also that the person who ordered it and put it on the shelf in the first place be arrested, and they hand over a list of every customer who bought it so they can send Guy Montag to your front door.

"Spaghetti" mother fucker, do you speak it?

Like in Miracle on 34th St, on one hand you can count the people who believe that Chris Kringle was Santa Claus and on the other you can count the people who believe the opposite (lol insert Jewish-joke here). This does NOT mean one group is oppressing the other, this means that such beliefs are totally fucking meaningless unless objective realities can be found to add legitimacy to one side or the other. Without objective facts you have opinions, with objective facts you have conclusions (not opinions). You can "feel" that this song is somehow racist all you want to, but it's not, so shut up. No, your feelings aren't important enough to change the fact that it's not racist. Yes it does kind of feel bad to realize that in the grand scheme of things you and your opinions are pretty much worthless. ...like I said before, deal with it.

The person making the media is the ultimate authority on its meaning.

And before anyone says something about it wasn't the song itself but the fact that the guy somehow played it at the other guy and that's what's illegal in this situation, just shut the hell up. And don't give me any of that "Isle of Wight isn't England" crap either, because that's bullshit. If you actually think that such minor perspectives are somehow significant, just head on over to Memory Alpha, because there's an argument going on over there about Captain Kirk vs Captain Picard that requires your level of intellect.

This is totally important.

So now is this and every other song that uses the "oriental riff" going to be banned from karaoke joints in WestCliffordShropsherChippingtonShireOntheThems or whatever the fuck England calls it's cities that aren't London? Are we gonna have a good old fashioned book burning where we throw The Vapors "Turning Japanese" sheet music and CDs on the funeral pyre of creative freedom? Are we going to criminalize the possession of Big Trouble in Little China on DVD in region 2 PAL? Is England gonna ban Mikado, HMS Pinafore, and Madam Butterfly while they're at it? Three Little Maids From School are we, singing this now is a fel-o-ny, nicked on the ground as you can see, three little maids in jail.

By that reasoning, you're now a on the UK no-fly list for just watching this.

I feel a kind of personal connection to this because for over a whole decade, I marketed Kung Fu Fighting on home video. No not the song, I mean actual movies where there was Kung Fu Fighting in them and all that good stuff. Michelle Yao, Gordon Liu, Wong Fei Hung, Polly Kuan, Wong Kar Wai, Sammo Hung, John Liu, the entire fucking cast of Shaw Bros, and 10 times more than that, I got their movies into stores like Best Buy and Amazon.com, then I had to make consumers want to buy them. I used shit like this to do it:

You think it's racist? Well, it's not, so fuck off. Involving police over a cover of a disco song from the 1970's can be shown to be incredibly stupid when looking at the alternative possibilities of doing the same thing: Would the police have stormed in and shut the whole place down if the song was being played over a sound system rather than by a live band? What if it was somebody's ring-tone on their cellphone and it went off? Or if this Family Guy clip was on a TV above the bar... or this one... or this one... or, well you get the idea.

Racism makes for great comedy, you know why? Because it's fucking funny, and it's fucking funny because it's fucking stupid. If racism in any media can even be criminal, and then be defined by literally anyone who feels butt-hurt over something, then Chris Rock & Eddy Murphy will be rotting in jail long after Charles Manson gets out.

I seriously don't want to ever go to England ever again because of this shit. It makes me want to find a Union Jack and piss on it. Maybe this whole thing is troll-bait like the Scopes Monkey Trial, but looking back, even the Monkey Trial was still a spectacle which puts the spotlight on how dumb certain people can be. The same is true here. The fact that "Kung Fu Fighting" gets someone arrested is so mind bogglingly 'does-not-compute', that I don't think I can actually understand what it means to live over there. Did they arrest the other musicians? They were accessories after all? They facilitated this "criminal" act, did they not? ...you got a warrant out for Carl Douglas? He wrote the thing, so he must be as bad as Pol Pot or something.

Or maybe this guy?
Bonus points if you can name this movie & actor.

It's not even a small stretch to claim the same "me Chinese me play joke, me go pee pee your coke" levels racist offense is all over the pages and and animations of Hetalia, Ranma 1/2, or just about any manga or anime if you deliberately go looking for it. Like I said before, the reason otakus should be worried about this, is that whoever made this complaint (may they die from cancer up their asshole) could easily cry foul over bruised sensibilities if you happen to be reading a copy on the bus next to him and force your arrest, and bookstores to stop selling any title that they were "offended" by. If you live in the UK or any of it's side projects, you had better worry about what you do/read/sing/fart in public, because if someone decides they don't like it or they just don't like you, then you're in for a world of pain.

Put down the anime and back away slowly! It offended someone!

I'm listening to the song right now. England had better take some time away from kissing the Queen's ass and make sure iTunes doesn't sell the thing to the commoners, otherwise the whole country will just go straight to hell! Pretty prince Willie and Kate whats-her-face are gonna break up, they'll have to start driving on the right side of the road, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria!

Common sense has not triumphed in this situation even though this matter has been more or less put to bed, as the keystone-cop police mentioned that they would be happily prepared to do this crap again if it happened. The "accuser" has not been rightfully thrown in jail and punched in the face for wasting police time, and taxpayer money either. I seriously want to know who the fucktard is who called the cops in, so that I can laugh when I hear that he committed suicide because there's video of him being anally penetrated by a Tibetan Yak all Mr. Hands style (it's ok, it's a wikipedia link). This kind of thing happening should have been a warning sign that the law is far too vague to be functional. I have lost faith in England's ability to control itself and it should be left in the corner to soil it's pants every day wondering what year it is. The door would be further open to even more ridiculous legal shenanigans based on the subjective reality of any moron's "hurt feelings" and the simply inexplicable notion that those feelings are worth a speck in the grand scheme of things. The logical progression of this kind of thing is simply terrifying:

FURSECUTION!
Oi guv'ner I'm callin' the Fuzz what with me English-ness an' all!
You bungslab that claptrap-tat right now or I'll kippleswig you in the wobbiecobbles!
(or however the fuck they talk over there).

And the moral of the story:

With apologies to Richy Jelica: Shared Psychosis of the TokyoPop aftermath

2011-04-25T06:21:00.008-04:00

- --- -- -+-

Don't get me wrong; Some people are insane, some people live in a super-intense subjective reality of such mind boggling proportions, that they can see things that apply to them and their version of reality in every every potted plant in the universe. But then there are more subtle manifestations of such things, specifically the group-think common among American anime fans. Not only are these behavioral incongruities to reality not very visible to many, of those that do easily notice them a good portion do nothing to assuage these facilities because in fact they have a vested interest in their perpetuation. For this group, the vested interest is tangible such as revenue, market share, brand equity, etc. For the fans/masses however the barriers of this group-think are much stronger, because they are a self-imposed defense mechanism, shielding their soft personality matrices against the sharp uncompromising rocks of true objective reality.

Even without going into the extreme examples; religious wackos, birthers, and Mac fanboys who will never admit that Apple has become the totally Orwellian entity it portrayed in their "1984" commercial, and still defend a non-existant brand identity created by an advertising agency, it's still easy to see these defense mechanisms of the ego in action when people are confronted by them. Unfortunately this ease in observation is almost always comes with the codicil of having to have an outside perspective to begin with ie a non-Mac fanboy will see this and utter "duh" while the mac fanboy will instantly try to legitimize this inappropriate corporate behavior as totally cool or no big deal.

Add to this equation the ignorance of youth, and you get the kind of reaction that is happening in much of the otaku community when it comes to analyzing Tokyo Pop's shut down. For those of us who are literate in not only anime fandom but also corporate governance/asset management/business in general we know the correct way to look at the situation is from a perspective of fiscal fundamentals first, and only after that can we then superimpose the various unique operational maxims of the anime/manga market as they exist in N. America. Too many people have put the cart before the horse, and simply assumed that the industry was wholly profitable in the first place, because the books cost money. In a business where sell through operates as a merciless iron fist, consistent sales do not necessarily mean a company is healthy (believe me, I've been there). As a third party entity and not an IP creator, Tpop always operated in the chasm that would have been eventually closed by vertical consolidation the likes of which is what Shonen/Viz and Kodansha Vertical currently embody the late proto-form of. Once technology and market understanding are better at a management level, these entities will be able to close the window of opportunity for scanlation piracy and publish multi language versions very close together. They could have never sold the company off, because all the "assets" (which were licenses) had an expiration date on them... so the rate of depreciation is simply too massive to be reasonable.

Don't forget there are politics involved here too. As a 3rd party content licensor, there are licensees to keep happy. When these licensees are steeped in a Japanese business mentality, it's tough to satisfy them, because there will always be an impasse in seeing eye to eye in regards to what "doing it wrong" consists of. This is the only spot where the bulk of my experience is a bit different to what Tpop was dealing with, in that the Chinese were very easy to deal with; it was wham-bam-thankyamam, you signed the deal, they cashed the check, and you never saw them again. And if we were lucky and didn't fuck up (which happened almost always) we'd make enough money to post a profit and pay taxes on it, let alone operating expenses. However, there a lots of parallels do exist in terms of distribution pillars falling down hearkening the doom of the industry (Borders for books and Musicland + Tower for DVD... even Ingram had to get into the beer distribution business since DVD and Music was such crap in terms of the bottom line).

Ego Ego Ego. Everybody thinks their shit don't stink. They think because they like "manga title A" that it "sells" and would make money for the company. They think that since Tpop announced that it was going to put manga volumes online but didn't, it's a bad business decision and maybe the license didn't even cover doing something like that, because now that content can be accessed by mobile devices. This blinds them to the presence of a monster that is always sitting in the corner, and it seems only the MBAs can see this thing (which shouldn't be the case, but for the self imposed blinders of fandom). It's name is opportunity cost, and its bite can be fatal when inflicted on small companies like Tpop with cash flows that are susceptible to things like sell-through and other ongoing variables. Just because you bought it, doesn't mean it generates revenue for the company. ...Crystal Pepsi anyone? - Without looking at Tpop's financials, it's impossible for anyone (even me) to accurately formulate a good picture of what kind of shape things were in one way or the other. That's where the pitfall of overvaluation caused by inflated self-worth (I like manga and I am a customer, so therefore the company must be doing well) comes into play. It's easy to make assumptions that anime / manga companies are some sort of profit-machines, but where does that idea really come from? Fans who don't realize that $14.95 for a DVD is of licensed 3rd party localized content is such a low price, that the company can't function like that unless the sales are close to the millions of pieces.

All in all, this was a conservative business decision that made sense on paper and had a reasonable probability of being accurate. To throw reality into sharp relief to the ANN Cast; Tokyo Pop could have NEVER stayed in business as a book publisher because the event horizon of printed manga as a loss leader has been passed. That means manga is the dog and unless you have a business sector other than manga publishing that can be your cash cow, it's the end, plain and simple. This also happened in the DVD market (Mike Toole, I'm waiting for that Crash piece so people know what I'm talking about...) prompting the departure of many home media imprints a few years ago. It is a ridiculous assumption to "hate Stu Levy" because at it's core, such a notion has to make the incorrect assumption; that Tokyo Pop could have survived as a publishing company. No, I will call it sour grapes because all you are complaining about in really, is having your fandom-feelings hurt because your value as a fan has been called into question. I've been guilty of this myself and will probably never truly be able to keep myself from feeling bits of this kind of thing in the future. It's just human nature, but it's important to step outside your own emotional sphere in cases like this. The ANNCast mentioned notions of cutting the CEO salary to retain the "best people" on staff...? But for how long? Nowhere in the future was there an indication that the profitability is going to rebound any time soon, which will allow you to stop doing that and start paying everyone normally again. The ANNCast later mentioned that such an ides makes no sense when you think about it. So rather than run out of gas in the middle of the highway, Tpop made the calculated decision to drive to the dealership and trade it in for the best deal they could get. People feel betrayed, but in all honesty, you're not that important, and neither am I... Neither is Bill Gates unless he's an investor, because if you're a wage slave or a billionaire you're still just one sale of one book (again, unless you're an investor but that's a different post altogether). You can either go crazy with the subjective reality like this guy, or just deal with it. The downside is so many fans have chosen the first option and haven't even noticed how crazy it is since they are surrounded by so many people who think the same.

NASHUA UFO? ...yes, yes it is.

Hell is Other People: Commercial media consumption in the age of fucktards

2011-04-18T00:02:00.004-04:00

There was once a time when the only thing to complain about at the movie theater was either the price of popcorn, or the movie itself. To be sure there were some theaters and certain showtime that always had a reputation of the type of place you didn't go if you actually wanted to watch the movie rather than be involved in some sort of culture-specific MST3K improv. There were always "those places" which were that on the surface.

Fast forward a few years and there was the occasional pager that went off in the respectable places. Maybe it was a brain surgeon or something, and it happened maybe once every 10 times you went to a show. Fast forward a little more, and you had cell phones going off. But this was still the era of pre-reality TV, Saved by the Bell was still making new episodes, and when AOL was a legitimate way for people to connect to the internet. The type of people who could own cell phones were mostly those who were of a respectable sort of behavioral set, knowing to turn the thing off, or having forgotten, quickly silenced it should it ring during a screening. But what was happening was an irreversable forward progression of a sad march to the situation we have today.

There was a congruous curve of both the availability of mobile technology and the increase in permissiveness of obnoxitude as a virtue facilitated through the generation of toddlers told by Mr Rodgers that they were "special", then being exposed to reality TV when they reached the age where illicitly procured alcohol was plentiful. Combine all that with the kind of social and cultural malaise which comes from seeing your college tuition sky-rocket while the baby-boomers still get their medicare subsidized Hoverounds and boner-pills; (sorry kid, no free college for you like I had, but don't worry that crappy job you have will still get taxed to pay for my scooter and viagra, because I'm a boomer and I'm worth it),... all wrapped within the American blanket of individualism trumping the collective good, and you are going to produce a segment of people our age who are just terrible to be around. A ruined movie going experience is just one result of it.

From people answering cellphones, to dumbasses showing up late, to even dumber bumbasses all talking to their one smart friend because they can't figure out what's happening because there aren't explosions happening, to the shit bags that show up late and then just HAVE to twitter during the thing, and the breeders with the 11 kids in the rated R film that sit them all over the place and then have to run back and forth to tell each other things... going to see a movie in an actual theater is something I almost never do and deliberately avoid.

Perhaps having a summer-job as a theater usher back in college has something to to with it also. Nothing gave me more job satisfaction than to bounce a cell-talking douchebag or some human ashtray that couldn't wait to light up. The job satisfaction I had didn't come from the feeling that I was taking something from someone and kicking them out, but that I was protecting the value of the expensive movie ticket of all the other people who had paid their own damn money to see whatever the hell Hollywood crapfest that was playing. You using your iphone to checkin on foursquare, or talk to your home-girl isn't your individual right, it's you straight up stealing from the people around you who paid money to see a movie, a price tag which does not include having to deal with your obnoxious ass. This notion directly clashes with American psychology where Gordon Gekko espouses self initiated value creation at the expense of the "resources" around you, regardless of whether those happen to be the well being of others. From that experience, I learned the value of cellphone jammers. Something indispensable not only at movies, but also at meeting and job interviews, because let's face it if they're busy twittering while you're trying to have a conversation even if it's more informal -incredible rudeness aside- you might as well not be there (...right Patrick?).

Seriously, have one of these if you're going to an investor pitch meeting or interviewing for a job. You don't want their cell to ring and take time away from the 12 minutes they're going to give you anyway.

Hence, movie going in Tokyo. A different universe. Sold out theaters where I guarantee everyone has a cellphone (maybe 2), and never a beep, chirp, or ring, let alone someone actually pick up the thing. Old people who can't tell what's going on wait until the thing is over for someone to explain the thing to them, and no one leaves their trash behind. Because that would be YOU causing a loss of value to OTHERS, which is something that Japanese culture has always placed an inordinate amount of importance on. I found myself thinking that I was definately getting a better value for a $30 movie ticket in Japan, than a $12 one in New York despite the fact that the theaters were identical in quality and technology, there were still half an hour of previews before the feature, and a pack of Twizzlers or whatever was still at a 1000% markup.

Unfortunately, in the USA, there is no way to ensure a separation of asshats simply by paying more money. You go to a different theater, different price, and all you get is a different flavor of a-hole that ruins your experience. Not even subtitles are enough to guarantee a proper movie-going experience. So rather than pay in capital, I pay with time, and wait for these media products to become commercially available in a form in which I can enjoy them in an environment more controlled and free from the chance that a d-bag on a cellphone might fuck the whole thing up from across the room.

This dynamic also holds true for the differences in anime fandom between Japan and America, but going into that at this point would just give me more of a headache. Sufficed to say, I'll be covering it again once convention season starts up. Sufficed to say that this is one of the many many Japanese cultural nuances that fail to port over with the proliferation of anime, and many American otaku remained puzzled as to why they are treated like martians by other Japanese when the scream "SQUEE" on the middle of a train platform or something like that.

There are a number of films I'd like to see, but none so much as to take my chances with $20 on a roulette wheel where the entire experience is turned to shit if even one of the other people in the shared communal space we've all payed to experience, decides to be a fuckwit and make my ticket worthless by doing something that has no place in a theater. Nothing (not technology, not the widening of genres or increased number of indie productions) will hasten the end of the movie theater in favor of at-home media consumption so much as the obnoxiousness of others, and the desire to avoid it.

The $30 streaming of in-theater titles concept making the rounds at this point is the harbinger of the impending end of profitability for movie theaters. It's still a long way away, and the problem of "piracy through pooling" (a group of people pay to stream a movie once, but all watch it in the living room of the richest single guy with the best TV setup) has yet to have a conceivable solution present itself. But still, much like the progression of cars replacing horses, the death of rotary phones, or the CRT monitor, this line only moves forward, and movie theaters will become as alien to our grandchildren as floppy disks. The upside is that studios will have less middle men in between the consumers and producers, which will not make anything cheaper, but it will allow for instant international availability that can actually produce revenue. Streaming the latest Japanese, Chinese, or European films will be just as easy as streaming the latest Hollywood release, once things are in place. That's still gonna take a while.

The Prefect Drug: Why the iTunes model will not work in curtailing online manga theft.

2011-04-11T00:01:00.008-04:00

:
Looking at some of the data available for the Japanese domestic market, it’s easy to be drawn to the conclusion that manga will soon see a significant portion of general revenue generated through distribution to customers via mobile network sales, through a combination of subscription service and pay-per-download sales. A little further down the line, and that mix will reach a 50/50 split when stacked against printed distribution and digital distribution. There is a significant upward trend when you look at traditionally printed media (manga and non-manga) from 2007-2010. The data is proprietary so I’m not going to repost the original here and my own infographics are part of an ongoing project, so no freebies, sorry.

There will be trade-offs of course, there will have to be a bigger revenue split between publishers and telecom networks, but through that new relationship the cost of physical printing will be jettisoned, so revenue actually goes up. The implied decrease in WTP for a digital version of a manga vs a print version that would be present in the USA, would be much more muted in Japan; a combination of the trust that Japanese consumers can have in their mobile technology and service providers actually working better (they totally do), and the fact that manga itself has always been seen as much more disposable even when it was physical media, and so the “fear of loss” that keeps people buying actual albums instead of downloading music from online services, rears not its ugly head. The transition from printed media to a medium of both printed and mobile distribution, and finally a dominance of mobile distribution with high end printings still being sold, will happen relatively smoothly for the Japanese market. Who knows, we might even see streamlined preview and download stations in the corners of all the convenience stores that dot the Japanese landscape.

So much like iTunes, and the later proliferation of many other commercial music services has made music piracy a less viable option for many consumer groups, keeping it profitable enough to continue as an industry, can a similar distribution channel for manga be far behind, and stop the theft of manga and make it a more viable business to be in?

The problem is, this isn’t going to change very much in terms of what’s happening with manga in the USA. That’s because of a perfect storm of factors which all must be adequately addressed in order to stop people stealing manga from Japan. Let’s apply the old consultant standby of the two by two matrix:

(I don't give it away for free people).

This isn’t a standard 2x2, where the factors are counter-related, but rather a larger look at a macro whole, each segment of which is in and of itself an entire business universe of operation. Looking at these factors (hopefully) can highlight the lopsided strategy that’s being employed to combat the situation. However from the vantage point of those employing such strategies, the tactics are not lopsided... and they are correct. The tactics are not lopsided, the market or “field of battle” is itself very lopsided, and the vacuous dark abyss that seems to consume all efforts and show no progressive change. A singularity, black hole, capable of sucking off and compressing the skin of all the efforts done not only directly against it, but to other sectors thought separate from its influence. Bonus points if you already know which factor I speak of.

Mindset, has been and will always be the greatest asset and liability to the success of Japanese entertainment media in America. This quadrant, being labeled as such, wears a deceiving veil of simplicity and smallness of form, but in fact, it is an area as vast as an entire market itself, taking into account aspects of sociology, economics, cluster-demography, politics, access to wealth, and age based psychology. Try to take that all in, and you realize the immense undertaking that the strategy and follow through of public relations, is something that would require a division led by a Chief Engagement Officer. Something no company is prepared to do logistically, financially, or ideologically. It is in fact the barrier of ideology, which will prevent any company from undertaking such measures, since any positive progress in abating manga theft is beneficial to their competitors as well, making those competitors “free riders” in the eyes of management.

There is no current independent body inside America that is going to undertake this, and unless the manga and anime market increase in size by about 10,000%, there may not be one any time soon. The type of problems they are up against can be seen in the case study of the Son May music label and the grassroots anti bootleg marketing of the 1990’s. Being on the front lines of that operation, it was amazing to see emerging otaku demand anime music as cheap as it could get, and then swing to a high willingness to pay for legitimate releases once they were successfully educated as to what SM actually was and how it did actual damage to the anime industry as a whole.

The “Mindset” quadrant in and of itself can actually be understood as an operational triangle, with the 3 angular nexuses of (Cluster) Demography – Economy – and Psychology, connected by the three communication mediums of Communal Exclusivity – Gamification Behavior – and Consumer Behavior. These are in tern all operational maxims that have been established by business analysts and strategic consultants form here to Kalamazoo, with their unique operational variances. Additionally, the hard data and direct knowledge needed to correctly interpret and apply that data are all very necessary in not only understanding this previously “unwinnable” quadrant of the above Manga Matrix up there, and they are all here behind the curtain that is my hard drive. You out there in cyberspace get the simplified version, because the real deal is going somewhere important where it will be seen by important people.

Like DaVinci would mix up his designs to prevent copying, so too have some components been moved around... or have they?

Unlike the S.W.O.T. analysis which is intended to condense broad expanses or the F.O.M.I. analysis (a derivative of M.E.C.E.) designed to narrow down sources of negative cash flow (something the English language manga industry is grappling with), this method of looking at things is designed to allow us to effectively get a grasp of the size and shape of a strategy that’s going to be needed to approach the problem. To get all metaphor-like; doing this is like doing an exercise to properly know not only the size of a container needed to carry a certain volume of water, but also the proper shape it’s going to have to be to fit into a very particularly shaped spot. This is very much a “measure twice, cut once” approach to the daunting task of American otaku customer engagement. This is very important, because the world is full of examples of how much damage can be caused in failed approaches to customer engagement.

It’s also a pipe dream of sorts. For reasons that we have covered here and for other obvious factors out there, some change in the way things operate isn’t going to be happening any time soon. ...or is it? Well, I am working on something for someone regarding this after all.

-

Donations are Worthless, economic issues and the future of Japan

2011-04-03T08:10:00.008-04:00

Did I say worthless? No, I meant worth – less (2 words), so put the torches and pitchforks down.

On April 2, the “Dram for Japan” event was held in New York City’s Ward III bar and nightclub, generating a few thousand dollars (I haven’t seen the final figures yet) for the Japan Society Earthquake Relief Fund, organized by a group of very capable entities, including Teleport City’s own Keith Allison. I was happy to donate what I had available to the items that were auctioned off (give them a good home whoever you are) and I also had the chance to sample some very interesting distilled whiskey products including some selections from a distillery in New York hopefully to be featured on Pinky Mixology in a future episode.

It was a nice time and we raised money for a good cause, but this revelry occurred under a cloud so immense and so entrenched in permanence that it went almost completely unnoticed save for a passing mention by a ninja consultant. That is the monster of currency stagflation and what it’s doing to the Yen. To get a picture of it, you can look at this previous post, and since I’ve talked about it before, I won’t cover the entire matter again, but only reference it in order to point out that there now exists a serious potential to finally equalize the yen. It’s no guarantee, but at least it’s real.

At the moment, foreign currencies are quite weak against the Japanese Yen, which means that basically for every $100 you raise for earthquake relief it will basically just buy lunch for 4 guys after the exchange rate kicks in. Yet this current ratio of conversion can not stand forever, and will either be let down gradually in a controlled manner to minimize damage, or eventually progress to the point it triggers a major upheaval or worse, a collapse. It is in the potential ability to facilitate this controlled adjustment that we can (possibly) find a silver lining in the Tohoku/Sendai Earthquake, if one can call it that.

This event will serve as the impetus of action by the BOJ, to release unexpected (or at least unplanned) amounts of currency into the economy, resulting in a flood of JPY into the local and a subsequent inflation that is very desperately needed. In a perfect (aka economically balanced) world, that would be all it would take, however Japan is in a spot best described as being between a rock and a hard place. The country will release a flood of funds but have limited means to implement the programs it hopes to accomplish... leading to an influx. This influx can either be: A) workers not from Japan but willing to work and live in such a country, or B) a mythical number of Japanese which do not exist, willing to work and live in such conditions as the USA forces Mexicans to tolerate. Seriously, in Japan even whitey is an outsider, and given the sociological problems Japan is having right now, this is the literal last straw.

Will Japan lose some culture and history? No, not really. The country has let millions of non-Japanese through over the pre-Meiji era, and the culture it fears losing has been defined after such occurrences. As long as they can get enough money and public support behind the idea of what their culture is, it will never go away.

So we shall see a great acceleration in the formula that was “Japan Inc.” to all of us early otakus and academics... But now that the snow globe has been shaken up... hopefully Japan is ready for a restructuring of that level, which requires foreigners to rebuild many sections of Japan, but this time thedy will stay and there is nothing that can be done.

Soy Sauce on Ice Cream: Inserting contemperory American Christianity into anime via fandom.

2011-03-27T11:36:00.012-04:00

Putting Judeo-Christian religions and Anime together in a real-world context is like putting soy sauce on ice cream. You could do it, but you'd just ruin 2 things that should be more or less left on their own.

This piece was originally written on March 1, with a scheduled release date of March 16 (to reference the double-entendre of "3:16" as relevant to the subject matter). It has been delayed because of the recent events related to the major earthquake and tsunami that shook Japan, in order to avoid the kind of "God hates Japan" comments that have inevitably come out of ... well should anyone really be surprised at this point?

I saw a somewhat interesting series of pieces on Religion and Anime recently, from a source I probably wouldn't normally see myself reading if not for a helpful link from The Otaku Journalist. Religion, particularly religion in English speaking markets like the various flavors of Christianity, has always been something that I saw as "at odds" with anime for two reasons:

The first reason is more of my generalized interpretation of specific behaviors of the kind of demographics that usually make up anime Otaku in the USA. It's mostly made up of segments that tend to lean towards non-believers. Anime fandom concentrates the non-believers together and helps to make their position stronger in that respect, while at the same time featuring depictions of religious practices and/or super-natural elements that are specifically at odds with dominant Abrahamic principles, repelling the devout believers and causing the kids to be whisked away to special Jesus-camp when mom finds that evil ungodly manga under the bed (yes this really happened).

Reason number two is a combination of incidents I specifically experienced firsthand. I was reminded about a little piece of hate mail that Anime Crash once received around 1998. Apparently, some church group had a website that "warned" parents that anime was more or less pure Satan-juice and your kids are going to hell if they even fucking look at Pikachu. The letter was hilarious, and we actually framed it and put it on display for a while. The 15 minutes of Christian outrage visited upon Anime Crash would continue with some (what appeared to be) students from out of town wandering in, and being genuinely offended that there was a Chinese religious display in a glass case in the store. Knowing Crash, we probably would have sold the thing at the first offer, so it wasn’t like it was particularly holy. But simply the fact that it existed was enough to set them off, and it didn't take them long to start laying into everything from the Chibi Gundams to the ungodliness of Martial Arts.

Finally, I should mention that the home media business has never really had a great relationship with the kind of American Christianity that this survey seems to be a part of, much as it would not like to be. The questions seem a bit of the Chick-Tract line of thinking, which is a conclusion more a result of my own superimposition of experience rather than objective reality, so take that as you may.

The survey results cover a variety of questions, but the meat of the matter is here:

The entire survey is over at Beneath the Tangles, and it was the subject of five posts spanning an in-depth look at the subject. Reading through them, it’s kind of sad when you see what the results have done to the guy over there. The info-graphics, including this one above were made by Otaku Journalist. I am going to assume they won't mind me using them here with those citations.

After looking at the findings, the high proportion of atheist and agnostics is a result, not of anime actually increasing the number of non-believers in English speaking markets (it's not taking religious people and making them into godless atheists). But it most certainly attracts non-believers disproportionally to the average religious makeup of the U.S. This is probably due to the previously mentioned fact that the content, artwork, and subject matter are attractive to younger people in general (who tend to be less religious), and also attract those with the higher scientific literacy it requires to fully understand things like Ghost in the Shell and the more scientifically literate you are, the less likely you are to believe as fact that the earth and rest of the universe popped into existence 6,000 years ago complete with a rib-woman being tricked into eating a magical fruit by a talking snake. Additionally, some content might be a bit repellent to someone who might feel uncomfortable watching Evangelion or reading Saint Young Men (which is awesome by the way). Atheists can take the gamut of just about any anime title out there, while religious types have to be picky for fear of having their personality called into question, because if religion is taken out of the daily lives of these people, there’s not much left to them as a person.

Blasphemy or Epic Win? Blasphe-Win!

Like I said, I feel just a tiny bit sorry for the poor schlub over at Beneath The Tangles, because it’s really a losing battle over there. He seems like a nice guy, open-minded and all that, and that's the problem isn't it?; Unless that guy is willing to kill me for Jesus, he's just an Ethical Humanist with an identity crisis.

From the hate-mail that Anime Crash received way back when (it's long gone, so I can't scan it in here), to Fanime Con getting ruined by Jesus freaks, it’s clear that anime fandom and most theocratic and currently practiced religion is just incompatible. Since anime/manga is one of the few commercial entertainment productions made for an atheist populace (Japan), there are 2 ways that Christianity deals with it. #1 is to take a negative view of anime productions because they endemically lack any kind of affirming of Jesusness-ness, or #2; proceed with a kind of superimposing of some sort of expansionist Christian philosophy on top of it, cherry-picking bits and pieces of anime titles as well as biblicalities to help make themselves feel better about liking anime. Ignoring the fact that eating shrimp tempura and tako-yaki is just as bad as anything else that biblically verboten (like teh ghey secks). It’s disingenuous at best. Case in point; the painful Anime and Christianity panel of actor Vic Mignogna sadly shows not only how much shoehorning it takes these people to even bring the two together, but also how astonishingly ignorant Vic is about things Japanese (history, culture, commerce) ...remember kids, he's really just an actor.

That being said, I feel it necessary to state that I come from a far removed perspective in terms of having religion playing almost no role in any of my activities past or present, (I did not have a religious upbringing), and this makes it very hard to understand what it may be like for an anime fan in a place like Georgia-Bama-Ssippi. This kind of superimposed rationalization of bible thumping on top of manga or anime, might be the only shield that younger fans have against the general fundie population and the kind of social terrorism they have been known to engage in (yeah, remember her?).

The only thing is, that I am glad this future of a doomed America is buying anime with their money... otherwise they would be sending it to a sickening campaign to make DOMA a constitutional amendment, or tickets for the creation museum. Yes this is a sweeping generalization, ...oh no, there goes my Pulitzer.

The comments here are moderated, but it’s only to prevent the high volumes of spam (seen in this previous post) that come here. So real comments, regardless of different opinions will be published as soon as I can pick them out of the spam ocean.

-

I wasn't there: An invisible dot, on an invisible dot thinks about the Sendai Earthquake.

2011-03-20T22:03:00.001-04:00

-

Recent events in Japan can remind us that anime, manga, and everything else that goes with it still operate within the realm of the business that is human frivolity. Entertainment and escapism are "shadows and dust," when compared to the natural forces and events in this world that we humans have only recently been able to erect but a paper thin barrier between. An inescapable event like an earthquake, or a man-made disaster such as war (as equally destructive but tainted in the bitter tasting bile of the knowledge of wars being both avoidable and deliberate), serves to show us that what we have, our fandom, is in fact nothing more than a brief disruption in the natural order of things.

The notion of an individual in a completely separate socio-culture state/entity, earning relatively little money, accessing the digitized animation created by a media entertainment market literally half a planet away with a translation rubric in place at will, and can engage that activity on such a regular basis that it has become an indispensable cornerstone in the social fandom activities that youth engages is as astounding in innovation as it is newness. How many reasons can human history give us, for such a thing not to work? How many obstacles of nature, humanity, technology, and knowledge must there be, vanquished or still awaiting us, that tell us by all possible notions that this exercise should not be possible? Yet an otaku kid in Tulsa watching an episode of Panty & Stocking online at 1am, isn't an an exercise in achievement, rather it's nothing more than the activities of another potential convention attendee for A-Kon. Potentially brought to an end by a "geology."

I have a way of missing such events. I was in Osaka on 9/11, when papers from the fallen towers became lodged in-between the bars on my bedroom window. I was equally as far from my Tokyo apartment on the 12th floor of the New Hiem Sakamachi apartment building for this recent event. I am unfortunate to be so lucky. Much as the sheltered child will never get injured or sick, yet hardship is developed from looking through these protective barriers of distance and seeing others, who are active in the outside world during extraordinary events, so too have I been both spared and denied. Shared experience creates intangible knowledge from experience for a single person, but is also shared between those who experience it together, becoming an understanding of congruence of thought shared by everyone in that "place." Becoming a singularity of time and events firmly and tacitly knowable by everyone who shared that "place" and equally unknowable by those who did not.

This singular event and the millions of tangential experiences and "places" it will create will have reverberations felt in all things, including that stylized media entertainment we follow and which serves as a platform of cultural symbio-development. What that impact cause to will manifest has yet to be seen, but it will be a fundamental as it will be varied. It will come from that "place," different, yet understood without words by those who have been there. This potential gulf created by that manifestation is no barrier, but simply the product of articulating that tacit intangibility of known experience, into an explicit medium of words, speech, art, animation, or performance. As our pure thoughts remain prisoners of our mind's interior, it falls to us to make explicit mediums of communication with which we hope to facilitate the same thoughts in the inaccessible interior minds of others. Such has been the driving force behind much of human creativity, and those of us who were not there to share that "place," will certainly find value in the artistic expressions of those who were.

I wasn't there. I was watching Oedo Rocket off of the internet in Upstate New York at 1am. An invisible dot, on an invisible dot.

Shinjuku, Tokyo 2010.

_

I Carry a Badge; Anime Conventions, and why anime market in America is different from Bollywood

2011-03-13T12:31:00.015-04:00

Juxtaposing foreign media segments in the USA, illustrated with Convention Badges

There's another anime blog out there in the massive universe of anime blogs: Anime of Yesteryear, which is worth checking out. Unlike other "yesteryear" type things, this blog isn't simply a retrospective on anime that happens to be from 15 or more years ago; but rather the pieces of American fandom that existed in the proto-phases of the formation of the market as we know it today in America... guess I'll throw Canada in there too.

Oh... Canada.

This material is not only worth significant points in the social fandom system of "I'm more otaku than you," but I hope will also be useful in any case studies that get made regarding this very interesting and turbulent portion of the media industry, which has gone through the highest of highs and lowest of lows like an out of control Fu-Go in a hurricane, reaching amazing heights only to land in an abandoned tire yard in some forgotten part of Minnesota. These are early examples of the type of marketing that was done to grow and create a legitimate market for foreign entertainment media in segments outside the clusters indigenous to the source culture. You can talk about Bollywood in the USA, but who's buying it? It's almost all people from the region where it's produced. Such is not true for Japanese anime. Most of the U.S. market for Latin music was manufactured south of the border as well ("Latin music" in this context meaning productions that are specifically not made in the U.S., with a priority on their own domestic markets). But Japanese animation? That was everybody in terms of demographics (except age demos). The advantage of that is a much larger potential for expanding your market and presence in the overall entertainment industry. The disadvantage is that the "easy-come easy-go" rule applies quite a bit, since there is not a "built in" audience that is going to ipso-facto support productions because of implicit cultural understandings and familiarity induced desire, and thereby aggregating bad years in terms of sales into something fiscally survivable.

As an emerging market, anime was being featured in publications like NY Times, WSJ, Newsweek, Washington Post, and others by 1995. The reason? It was the intense visibility of the "top of the pyramid" of the anime consuming market. Some people might attribute this to The Anime Convention as the cause, but that's not entirely true. There were "conventions" long before the mid 1990's, and although they weren't the "Anime Conventions" we have become used to, the first AX, Otakon, AnimEast, or Katsucon, was not going to be the bait on the hook, in terms of getting MSM attention and then using that attention to build a legitimate face to show the market and potential investors. The true sherpa of anime to the media and business world was the specialty retail entity. A convention was something that happened once a year, and got a puff piece and then that was is, but a B&M location in a major media hub that could provide specific people, events, and information, combined with entrenching itself as a source of information/commentary for all things "Asian pop-culture" whenever a local media source needs a talking head. Combine the home media labels operating in the same place, and you've got a media cycle that mentions something about anime at least once per quarter.

A good solid year of this, led to anime = serious business and acceptance as a true entertainment commodity that could be taken seriously. Only after that, did conventions serve to show people what kind of market anime was in America, how it operated, all that good stuff.

But Conventions were a whole other story for the people who attended them. This is especially true looking at the pre-convention center state of things, where cons took up small sections of hotels, or college campuses.

College
At a certain point as conventions get larger, a connection is lost between the attendees and the convention organization. A loss of the feeling that your presence has direct value not only to the convention, but to the entity that is anime fandom in the USA. These early cons suffered form labor shortages, meaning that the potential for attendees to be called upon to assist in things was greater, and a job well done was it's own reward (most of the time). This would have been impossible if the internet was the same back then as it is now however. With the exception of some minor socializing, there's nothing a convention offers that isn't replaceable by the internet. Think about it, Dealers room, video rooms, panel discussions, news, collecting images, looking at artwork, AMV watching, geeking out and arguing about which version of Chun-li has the better outfit, all that is easier and more plentiful online. You don't need cons anymore for any of the actual activities that they offer other than autographs. So why the continued attendance?

Some of it is obviously market turnover; younger fans come in, older fans go out, and people like Bill O'Reilly get confused about miscommunications. But that's not why people keep coming back at sustainable levels. The reason conventions have grown while other areas like home media have been terrible for anime, is a sociological phenomen, mentioned at the top of this article: Points. Or intense gamification behaviour if you prefer. Otaku are always trying to out-otaku each other, and they see a lot of value in doing this in-person as opposed to online. Winning an internet argument? That's not much, ...but, like pwning some other anime fan IRL w/ ure shiznit-tastic cosplay of that obscure character and use of the word kawaii and desu in a sentence is like such OMFGWTFBBQFF7 levels of otaku-points, that you'll totally plunk down $40 (not to mention pay for transportation and hotel) to engage in dick measuring contests go to a 3 day convention, all the while complaining that a $19.95 SRP on a Summer Wars DVD that you can buy and have forever is too much. No... no one can see you buy that DVD, and thus no upward motion in the fandom stratification can be achieved through that activity. It's the high levels of visibility that gives these fan activities perceived value among attendees, and where can you be more visible to the specific group you are trying to out-fan than at a convention? Nowhere that's where. The major force at work here is called Willingness To Pay.

This kind of thing doesn't really exist in other foriegn entertainment media market segments in the US (like Bollywood films), because there's not really an "I'm more Indian than you" kind of behavior going on within the consumer market. I'm not saying there isn't some "I'm more Indian than you" contest going on somewhere out there, but it's not a driving force shaping that particular segment for the market of this consumer good. Remember when there was all this talk about Bollywood becoming the next big breakout entertainment market and all that? What happened? Lack of gamification opportunities in the general media consuming public = fizzle. That's what happened. You wanna see the PowerPoint? Then pay me, 's what I do for a living.

Getting back to the subjects of Otaku points and Anime conventions:

AnimEast 1994

AnimEast 1995 or Anime East 1995 it seems. There was never another Anime East or AnimEast, though Anime Next is like some sort of distant future descendant. See the footnotes below for more. Bonus points if you can guess which anime the image is from.

Katsucon 1995 You've already seen this...

Katsucon 1997 (Funny thing about 1996, there was this huge snow storm that closed the Jersey Turnpike and I couldn't make it. It wasn't cleared until late Saturday. I did not get a refund... or a free t-shirt... and the hotel charged my ass a fee for not showing up.

Otakon 1995. My Otakon 1994 badge exists, but isn't here, so if anyone has one send a scan and you'll be all special like!

Otakon 1996 still in the tag holder

Otakon 1997 ...I also had a dealer badge from 1997 but I have no idea what happened to it. I think I gave it to someone to get in and out and bring me pizza because there was a Pizza Hut right in the hotel where this things was and it was awesome and blah blah blah

Otakon 1998. Oh look the badges are huge now... and laminated.

Otakon 1999. First year at Baltimore Convention Center.
After this point badges are "meh" but that's ok because after this, my con badges started having "industry" written on them.

The first Anime Central (Acen) 1998. Whoever the Con Chair was that year was a total d-bag.

Anime East / AnimEast:
Anime East should by all rights have been the major East Coast anime con. It was same year as Otakon, in a much bigger market (NYC Metro), much better served in terms of transportation, had access to many dealer/retail accounts, had better PR, better funding, and they even gave out the Tezuka Award Nominations (Or something to do with the Tezuka awards... I forget exactly what, but it was a big deal).

There are 2 reasons out there as to why Anime East is no longer with us: Some say that since Anime East was where Apollo Smile was first unleashed upon the world, it was simply Karmic Retribution to have this event smited by an angry god (smited, smote..?). But then, some say that it was the dirty dealings of one man, whose "take the money and run" move ensured that the funding for 1996 went with him into the shadows, never to be seen again. This is why we can't have nice things.

Some say Martin King (pictured on the right) is that person. This was taken in 1995 at the Anime Crash offices in Manhattan and published in NY Japion. It was when we at Crash were working out sponsorship of the con. The Anime East 1995 badge has the Anime Crash logo on the flip side. There was even talk of Crash becoming a label as early as 1995 in cooperation w/ and acquiring anime with Anime East, but it fell through and we eventually went with martial arts as our first acquisitions for Crash Cinema in 1998.

This con was hard core. Best guest roster by far (New York City is like some kind of enchanted fairy land to the Japanese, and so they were on board like nobody's business), a huge cosplay, big dealers room, great location, and an open bar. They even had their own CCTV channels running on the hotel system so you could watch panels or interviews you may have missed or just check out the AMVs. Seriously. Anime East 1994 was also when I survived on nothing but con-food: Nutra-Grain bars, Candy Corns, and Dr Pepper.

Otakon:
The 1994 convention that by all accounts should have been a campus affair but wasn't, this now megalithic entity started out in a corner of the Days Inn in State College PA. It would stay in State College in 1995 but be held at a place called The Scanticon that year, which seemed like it was from the future. It was a hotel/convention center, and there was a wedding going on at the same time... the reception was nice.

I was at Otakon in 1994, but my badge being somewhere else (I won't be unpacking it any time soon so if you have one send it in or leave a link or something) will not be making an appearance. So instead enjoy the program book cover signed by the only guest who seemed to be around at the time; Robert DeJesus:

(Otakon 1994 program book)

If I get requests, I'll scan the whole thing so you can see what a con-goer from 1994 was in store for. Finally as for Otakon, there's this I made from way back:

Anime Central:
It was 1998, I flew to Chicago, got Kenichi Sonoda's autograph, and then brought him up to the control tower at O'Hare (I know people). I got work done for Crash, slept in the dealer's room, and raided the mini-bar of a convention suite after being exposed to the genuinely terrible behavior of the skeevy Con Chair (whoeverit was in 1998, I don't even remember the d-bag's name). I haven't been back to an Anime Central since.

Katsucon:
Held during the time of year that is definitely not convention season, Katsucon has always seemed the most "fun" of all the cons, and is where I've never had to actually "do" anything. Going to that con was something nice, and the hotel it was in was very cool since some rooms could look into the giant covered atrium. Ever since it split off into Katsucon and the newer Nekocon, I've felt a little split between the two. I find Nekocon a bit more relaxing because of it's size and where it is.

Nekocon 2004. Not my earliest Necko con, I don't think it's the last one I was at either, but it was the favorite year.

There are other conventions to be sure; Anime Boston, Anime Next, BACC, BAAF, NYAF, NYCC, Icon, those tings in Florida, Anime Weekend Atlanta, A-Kon, and Anime Expo. I have never been to Montreal's Otakuthon which is closer to me than AWA, so it makes sense to go.

So the experience is the perceived value, the impetus to part with cash in exchange for the ability to participate in activities that will generate a set of memories based on not only one's own activities but the interpretations of those activities by others either real or imagined. To observe being observed in a unique setting, which can only be substituted in form and not in function.

Unfortunately, until the American market itself can be satisfied with the same kind of delivery mechanism that exists in Japan (ie, anime can actually make revenue on TV because it's not pirated for a month before it airs, people have to actually pay money if they want to buy/read/download manga, and ...well you know), the convention will always mean the cake is a lie. It will just represent how strong anime is in terms of a draw for American otaku but not for doing actual business ... but for the fans to really care about not hurting anime producers by taking stolen goods? That will take something more than making it a source of Otaku peen points.

-

Tolkien-Temper-Tantrums, Katsucon Catastrophe, & Funimation vs The Congressman’s Daughter: 3 kinds of "Doing it Wrong"

2011-03-03T14:39:00.013-05:00

The Streisand Effect is something that can rarely be used as an effective marketing tool. In the times it has had demonstrable positive effects in marketing, 90% of those instances have been due to retroactive strategy changes, where the instigating party simply comes to terms with the extra attention and does what it can to take advantage of the newfound publicity, rather than continue to fight a losing PR battle. Almost never, can a marketing strategist plan and then successfully implement a Streisand Effect from the ground up. Hence;

#1 Tolkien Temper Tantrum:
Recently, there’s been an anime related blip on the Streisand Effect radar in the form of a fan-produced button with the slogan “While you were reading Tolkien, I was watching Evangelion” that was taken off of Zazzle.com at the C&D behest of the Tolkien Estate. This non-infringing product had long since exhausted its life-cycle in terms of pop-culture buzzmetrics and relevancy in general. It was just another microscopic fleck of dead skin on the pile of old-meme that was the internet from 2009 that no one cared about. Suddenly, in steps the Tolkien Estate with a behavior which violates the unwritten social standards of internet pop-culture community, and boom; it’s viral in the blogosphere. The result being that now, someone like me, who never knew about this has; A) found about it, and B) based on the behavior of Tolkien Estate I am now very motivated to make something for myself with this slogan on it and proudly display it at the next convention I go to. I think you should too.

This is news via BoingBoing.

[Added Mar. 7 2011]
Since I wrote this a while back (these posts are usually written a number of days, sometimes weeks before they're posted using Bloggers ability to schedule auto-uploads), there has been a development in this issue. That development seems to be something along the lines of the Tolkien Estate coming out and stating that they have had no involvement in this situation, and leading to the conclusion that it was Zazzle.com which pulled these things of their own accord. Something later confirmed by Zazzle.com via BoingBoing...apparently. However, in Giro.org's post containing the original Zazzle.com emails, the words "We have been contacted by The JRR Tolkien Estate" clearly appear in their correspondence dated Feb. 23 from "Mike" at Zazzle.com. There are only 3 possibilities as things stand:

1) Zazzle is lying. They were never contacted by the Tolkien Estate, and took it down themselves because someone over there has just learned what copyright infringement is and is taking it too far (see Katsucon Catastrophe below).
2) Tolkien Estste is lying, and backing off real fast to avoid a wrath of the internet type incident, either asking or leaving Zazzle to take the PR hit, with the message that it's Zazzle's doing and not Tolkien Estate, and Zazzle is complying since they... who fucking knows.
3) Giro.org is lying and this has all been concocted as some insanely ballsy method of publicity in the hopes of... who fucking knows.
4) My own opinion/desire is a combo of 1 & 2, being that Zazzle.com knows exactly how this works, and was able to explain to the Tolkien Estate how they might just become the Cook's Source of 2011 in terms of internet wrath... and so they both are back-peddling the hell out of this.

Either which way, I'm done caring about it at this point, thought I still will be wearing a home-made version of this thing to the next con I go to.

#2 Katsucon Catastrophe:
Now, when it’s really “Fair Use” like the above, I am always supportive of this kind of thing and fostering all kinds of creativity. This support usually is something I often extend even when it’s technically over the line of the copyright issue. There are many examples where it’s more beneficial to allow the activity to continue rather than to force a confrontation. Case in point; the Katsucon Artist Alley disaster of 2011. Let’s get the technicalities straight; Most artist alley transactions where people buy things from the artists/vendors are in actual violation of copyright since the character rights are clearly being infringed upon. The fact that an artist drew/painted/sculpted an existing character or a combination of original character in an existing profile, by itself isn’t infringement... until that piece is sold for money. In that case the rights holder is entitled to a portion of that sale, and if there is no existing agreement in place, they can take legal action.

That doesn’t mean shutting down the artist alley is a good idea. Unless you’re selling a hundred pieces of Naruto fan art at $10 each, the small transactions of an artist alley are not something that licensees should think are worth the customer alienation that comes with wielding the bludgeon of "enforcement." But like a college undergrad who just learned something new, Katsucon blundered into this big time due to a lack of real-world knowledge. My own notion is that some staffer (who is probably a pre-law student somewhere), realizes that there’s a technical copyright violation going on, and institutes an over-kill policy, demonstrating a serious lack of knowledge of how this works. I could be wrong, but for some reason I don't think I am. Knowledge is information + experience. Guess which part of that was missing from the thought process of this Katsucon genius... Now because this mess’s Streisand Effect brings unnecessary scrutiny to artist alley activities at conventions in general, it can only lead to problems. Best case scenario is that this just goes away by the time convention season gets into full swing.

My Katsucon 1 (1995) con badge.
Katsucon, I love ya, and I was there in the beginning, but you better not fuck this up for everyone.

#3 The Funimation vs The Congressman's Daughter
Then there are the straight up a-holes who are so steeped in gamification behavior within the fan community, that they will actually hurt the anime business to get e-peen points. While the targets of the litigation aren't the worst offenders, Funimation suing the 1337 to set a proper example of “yes, this is stealing, and this is what happens when you do it” is not surprising, and is only unfortunate in that it takes capital away from Funimation's budget that could otherwise be used to get more anime out. Anime as a commercial product has been seriously hurt by attention whores who make terrible translations and post them online before legit streaming sources make them available merely a few hours later. These lawsuits will win (if legal procedure is done properly) because the law and politics are very friendly to copyright and the billions of dollars it pumps into the economy. Here's a bit on that:

The US Government is in love with Copyright. Some relevant background (Napster case study): In 2001, Napster tried the ridiculous failure that was the “Million Fan March” on Washington DC, as a part of their platform for a complete revision of copyright law, the end goal of which was to make p2p media sharing legal under fair use, and thus clearing the way for Napster to operate on a very large scale, immune from civil actions of music labels and artists. This event, combined with the activities of the Napster D.C. lobby team of Manus Cooney and Karen Robb, was called the “Congressman’s Daughter” strategy. It was the idea that if a member of congress just had their kid show them how Napster worked, they would have some kind of awakening and Congress would make sweeping changes to Intellectual Property laws. Napaster actually put off negotiating a deal with music labels in order to further this strategy, thinking it would work, and then they wouldn't have to deal with labels at all. But the problem is, Congress had just changed I.P. laws, and not in the way Napster wanted. This was the 1998 Mickey Mouse Protection Act, extending the period between creation and entry into the public domain to well over a century in most cases. The law was further cemented into an indelible presence in American jurisprudence with the later 2002 case of Eldred v. Ashcroft. Pile on top of that the DMCA getting through the Senate unanimously in1998, and U.S.A. participation in the GATT Treaty on copyright issues, and it should have been painfully obvious to anyone that this hoped-for outcome of Napster's wasn’t going to happen. The U.S. Government has consistently realized that patents and copyrights are among the top 5 contributors to the entire U.S. economy, with the biggest players in intellectual property issues being Pharmaceutical, Agri-business, and Software entitles, along with Entertainment Media. They all have DC lobbies too... really really big ones.

"Bubble? What do you mean Bubble? Nah, this is totally gonna last forever!"

So the F-1337 don’t have the law on their side, and can only hope public opinion becomes strong enough to serve as a motivation for Funimation to back off, or see if they can sidestep on a legal technicality. And for those of us in the business, it’s very painful to see idiot fans supporting thieving activities because of some perceived entitlement - the "right" to watch anime. It’s not really 100% their fault though, there just isn’t enough information getting through to people to dissuade them that; no, your American otaku demand for HD video perfectly translated commercial-free simulcast foreign TV programs at no cost to you is actually unreasonable believe it or not. The problem is, the way we live doesn’t make that easy to realize. For example; when Verizon was advertising high-speed internet access with the tag-line “download thousands of songs,” they were really hurting things. Downloading 1,000 songs from iTunes is kind of pricey, and Verizon knows that people aren't going to be paying for all those downloads, but they are going to perpetuate the entitlement anyway. The entitlement of “well I just bought a big computer and am paying for broadband, so that’s my investment, and that’s all I should have to be out of pocket” seems to be enough to justify not actually paying for the entertainment media they consume. Again, an internet entitlement notion that only is shown to be completely absurd when applied to a real-world example; “Well I got up out of the house and paid for my subway ride here to the movie theater, so that’s enough of a reason for me to get in without a ticket.” Yes, it’s just that stupid. And no court in the land is going to have sympathy for people who buck the system that greases the wheels of politics.

In this last case, the party who’s “doing it wrong” are the fansubbers, the torrent hosts, and the people defending what they do. When you dabble in piracy, there’s a risk that they’ll nail you. The internet-rage from the ignorant otaku masses is creating a pseudo Streisand Effect in the regular channels, which is just a reminder to the rest of you to play by the rules or risk being #1338.

"...And I helped!" Manga’s contribution to the death of the CCA.

2011-02-20T10:15:00.005-05:00

-

In the wake of the recent unsurprising news that has finally made it into mainstream media, that MPAA ratings are nothing more than a corporate censorship tool used to maintain entertainment monopolies. The not-so-recent demise of the Comic Code Authority can hopefully offer some helpful insight on how to hasten the end of the for-profit disease that is the genuinely evil MPAA Rating System.

Unfettered by knee-jerk restrictions of 1950's moral panic, manga shows us the heights that American comics could have reached if not for one one Godwin-envoking maniac.

The final nail in the coffin often gets too much credit. It signifies the end of an era, entity, or other institution being forced into that long good night either by circumstance, attrition, or social upheaval. It doesn’t really do much though. If you were trapped in a coffin with all the nails in the lid except one, you’d probably stay trapped. No, it’s those first nails that are the truly important and often heroic ones, desperately holding down the coffin lid themselves while that which lies within struggles to break free with all its strength. These “first-nail” endeavors often have their significance muted by the passage of time and the ascendance of a subsequent generation which knows no other world than one where the effects of the “first-nail” efforts might as well have existed forever and all time. Thus, these “final-nail” efforts come to signify the entirety of a struggle in a singular, lasting, well documented, and stationary mote.

To over three (perhaps four) generations, it’s just as impossible to picture the CCA having any real power to change things in publishing, as it is to imagine a world where the color of your skin meant sitting in the back of the bus. We’ve never known a world where the McCarthy-era soaked tenets of this bully pulpit were followed by the publishing industry as absolute unbreakable law. A world where breaking from such obedience to these racist, sex-phobic, misogynistic, paranoid, hyper-puritanical whims, would mean they would put you out of business in an instant. But that was exactly the case of EC Comics:

What, Me Worry?

By the time I was born, let alone old enough to be hauling new comics home from St. Mark’s Comics every Wednesday, the CCA had already passed the event horizon of irrelevance, becoming a lame duck with the publication of Amazing Spider Man #96. The cat (more like paper-tiger) was out of the bag, and Marvel survived publishing a comic without the seal of approval, effectively telling the world that the emperor had no clothes. The CCA desperately tried to amend its code in a very retroactive “I totally meant to do that” fashion, but it was too late.

But though the CCA was shown to be worthless, it wasn’t going to go away any time soon, and they made laughable efforts to evolve. They were still around during the 1980’s, and only by perhaps just a slim margin was the CCA not revived with new strength and legitimacy during the “music scare” of the 1980’s, which brought us the PMRC organization, and first painted the RIAA as the “bad guy” when it came to opinions of pop-culture fans. Thankfully, the “Highlander-style" reinvigoration of power never happened with the CCA, and in the 1980’s, manga started creeping into the commercial comic-shop circuit, all of it sans-CCA label, with ninja-like stealth.

It was acceptable in the 80's

Things trotted along, and no one really worried about that ever shrinking CCA tag in the corner, as it no longer had any value. But the ever present nagging feeling it reinforced; “comics are for kids” and the “living in your parent’s basement” stigma if you were over the age of 14 and still buying them, still clouded the minds of comic readers and non-readers alike. The CCA stamp was a zero-sum entity. All or nothing, no shades of gray like we see in the equally destructive and more powerful MPAA ratings. This fact gave even more substance to the notions that all things published as comics were “for kids,” requiring their precious eyes to be shielded from possible destructive “adult” elements; Elements which belong in novels or films, where there is a system capable of differentiating between the many levels of age-appropriate content... anywhere but comics (think of the children!). But manga was now on the scene, providing narratives and windows into universes so much deeper than the one- dimensional dictates of American CCA approved comics. Slightly more plentiful than before, manga were chock full of CCA violating content like nudity, homosexuality, “liberated women,” successful criminals, nice guys finishing last, gambling, sword-fights, and happy drunk-drinkie time. And by that fact, they actually offered the reader a story where the ending was NOT a forgone conclusion, and therefore, genuinely entertaining.

Left: CCA Approved content
Right: Worse than Hitler (According to "Dr" Wertham)

Then the 1990’s comic bubble happened, and suddenly comics were not entertainment but a financial instrument. This produced three major environmental factors that would have lasting effects both on the CCA and manga itself.

First: Comics were being produced and sold at a record pace. Many people were buying and then selling them without a second thought to the actual content, because they never looked past the cover. A cover that they could care less if the stamp of approval from an organization based on the social values of their grandparents was on it or not.
Second: This rapid buying and selling had publishers scrambling to produce anything, regardless of the narrative or artistic quality (how else can anyone explain Rob Liefeld). This lead to seriously poor quality publications and the endless spinoffs soon generated brand fatigue (or character fatigue) in readers. This led manga being accepted as an alternative to what American comics had become, almost preserving the higher quality narratives that readers had come to expect. This helped give manga a foothold in the third factor.
Third: Extreme retail proliferation. During the boom of the 1990’s, the national comic retail footprint expanded exponentially. I remember in my neighborhood alone, the number of stores you could walk to, went from 1 up to 5 in a single year (after the bust it’s back down to 2). Comic retail was everywhere, and brought with it the “fringe” titles that included all manga, making their way onto the shelves next to the 7 different X-men spinoffs with varying chromium covers vacuum packed with a “limited edition” collectable trading card of Jubilee and 17 pages of ads for Extreme Ranch Doritos, Sega CD games, and Mountain Dew. Sure that issue of Ranma1/2 was a wallet-destroying $4.95, but next to the alternative, it was totally worth it.

Viz's first American release of Ranma 1/2 (issue #1, full color).

Point #3 is the most important here, because with such fierce competition, and the need to sustain sales as comics become a business unto themselves and not simply a product carried at stores that sell other things (drugstores, and so on). The majority of retailers and distributors did not consider the CCA seal as necessary and were happy to carry any publication that didn’t have it if it were part of a successful product offering. This meant that a book that didn’t carry the CCA stamp now had equal footing in the war for shelf space.

What's missing?

After the inevitable comic bust, the seeds planted by manga were watered by the popularity of anime (most American Otaku discovered anime first and then sought out manga, where I was an anomaly seeing manga first and then seeking out anime). From the desolation of the previous bust rose an indie comic scene to rival that of the major publishers, and not only was Japanese manga a large part of that, but after a few years American produced manga-style books starting permeating retail channels via independent labels and independent producers. The choice of appropriate content was put into the hands of the consumer, and not pre-determined by an organization which gleefully exercised its power to censor content, simply for the sake of feeling powerful.

Yes I bought this crap... give me a break, it was a different time.

This was the start of the final leg of the power drain from the CCA, which included the massive success of non-participating Dark Horse and Image Comics, and the withdrawal of Marvel Comics in 2001. Hoards of publishers weren’t even bothering with the CCA, including boatloads of Pokemon comics going out the door, all without the “seal of approval.” This was important in that it literally drained the life-blood of the CCA, and made it impossible to ever be relevant again. Their all-or-nothing way of doing things could never weather the kind of cultural transitions that happen in a country like the USA, nor could it ever weather the kind of rapid evolution in media retail in a country like the USA. The forced censorship of the MPAA and ESRB are more insidious and difficult to dislodge because they have gradient levels, but it’s only a matter of time before theaters stop giving a crap about ratings, but given what's happened with the downright criminal censorship of The King's Speech, it still may be a while before theaters stop giving a crap about MPAA ratings in favor of selling tickets. When films and games are bought and consumed exclusively by the end-users (as they soon will be via digital distribution), the MPAA and ESRB will become worthless as well. We can see that process in action at the moment with the once powerful now irrelevant PMRC, who’s “Tipper Sticker” has in effect been thoroughly murdered by P2P sharing, iTunes, and music streaming services.

This is why nobody likes you and you're going to die alone Tipper!

It only took a bit over 50 years, but this power-hungry censorship organization, the product of McCarthy era fear mongering, and predicated on a medical hoax by a misogynist doctor, has finally been rightfully buried in irrelevance. ...and manga helped.

やった！

Sip some Champaign in celebration, and keep up the good fight.

Do you have any stories from 1990's English language manga collecting? Share them with us here, share them with the internets for otaku e-points... you'll feel better.

Fools, You Know Not What You Do: How American Otakus are going to use Tanaka's RIETI Report to make themselves look stupid.

2011-02-06T19:48:00.050-05:00

As much as I love statistics and business and the like, I can’t go into the veracity of this report as much as I would like to, but rather make the following, zero-sum, blunt, inescapable point to the American Otaku out there because I know what you're thinking:
NO.

Just stop right there.

Headline: Internet Piracy Boosts Anime Sales, Study Concludes. Reality: No. Well maybe, but just in Japan. With American otaku already loading their own petards for a strong self-hoisting with the strength of all the self-righteous uninformed opinion of a birther, one can hardly expect my efforts at damage control to be of any effect. These people who hurt the anime/manga market outside Japan with fansubs and scanlations will see what they want to see, and think they do no wrong. The happily smug reaction that American Otaku (Clarissa at AWO, I'm looking at you) will feel in their misplaced vindication is no doubt to be so thick, that no light of fact or reason shall be able to cut through it, and thusly such illumination shall be felt by only a precious few (Daryl at AWO I'm looking at you). It is in the hopes that I can reach said special precious few who can further illuminate the true meaning of the RIETI report that I am writing this here.

If you don’t know what the Tanaka RIETI report on anime piracy is ... just follow the link to the story I'm not going to recap the thing here. The story itself (not the report) exemplifies the aforementioned problem. It does a great disservice by inaccurately equating this report's findings to the Funimation lawsuits, and simply garners its information from what seems to be only the English description of the report itself:

Whether or not illegal copies circulating on the internet reduce the sales of legal products has been a hot issue in the entertainment industries. Though much empirical research has been conducted on the music industry, research on the movie industry has been very limited. This paper examines the effects of the movie sharing site Youtube and file sharing program Winny on DVD sales and rentals of Japanese TV animation programs. Estimated equations of 105 anime episodes show that (1) Youtube viewing does not negatively affect DVD rentals, and it appears to help raise DVD sales; and (2) although Winny file sharing negatively affects DVD rentals, it does not affect DVD sales. Youtube’s effect of boosting DVD sales can be seen after the TV’s broadcasting of the series has concluded, which suggests that not just a few people learned about the program via a Youtube viewing. In other words YouTube can be interpreted as a promotion tool for DVD sales.

That's all some people are going on. Lots of people commenting on this can’t read the report. This is literally judging a book by its cover, and then writing book reviews as well.

Seeing this, it is easy to be drawn to the conclusion that this somehow applies to English speaking markets. It does not. This study only encompasses sales and after-market piracy within the domestic Japanese market. While it’s nice to think that English speaking markets somehow play any role which can have an effect on the producers of anime/manga in cases like this, it is because of piracy circumventing and preempting licensed distribution that they do not. So let me say this again, the report is not applicable to English speaking markets (or any markets outside Japan). However it is reasonably detailed, rather specific, and looks like this:

It asserts a specific point about anime DVD sales and rentals in Japan. Regardless of veracity, these conclusions cannot be superimposed to the USA or any other market in which the legitimate media delivery channels are preempted by people who steal the work and make it available for free in the form of fansubs and scanlations. In Japan, these properties do not have to worry about online bootlegging BEFORE the episode airs on TV. Because of this, they can make pre-agreed advertising agreements, accurately predict revenue, and start a genuine product lifecycle for a property.

This devaluing effect that anime piracy in the form of fansubs and scanlations in international markets has is very real and I have detailed it before. I have also noted that without the ability to sustain the regular needs of a business, international markets will have no input in the type of anime and manga that are produced, leading to a Galapagos effect in the type of stories that evolve. Some have argued that it is because anime/manga are “different” from American media is the reason they do like it so much, but Turkish Tapdancing is “different”... the South African Vuvuzela Philharmonic Laser Light Show is “different.” The quality of “different” is in no way the exclusive deciding factor in why people in English speaking markets like Japan's anime/manga. It is that, along with a combination of other qualities, which causes the popularity of such material and changes in what the Japanese market likes could easily change that balance to the point where although it remains “different,” fails to resonate with audiences outside Japan. That is a real possibility.

The Japanese DVD market is miniscule compared to the USA. It really is a different universe. Where as in the USA, some labels exist only as home media entities, the Japanese DVD labels don’t go through the licensing and localization dance to get a title out (for their domestic anime obviously, not for Hollywood productions). Additionally, media consumption habits (both legit and pirated) of consumers in general create a very different animal in terms of commercial markets between Japan and the USA. This difference in media consumption created a very different set of metrics and mechanics which going into detail about would simply lead to a post of biblical tl;dr proportions. So let's just call it a case of "apples and oranges."

To conclude; In Japan, anime/manga productions FIRST reach the market through a legitimate media distribution channel (TV broadcast, online/mobile download, direct to DVD, etc.) and are then pirated. In the USA anime/manga productions are pirated FIRST, and then (because of the time it takes to license and localize) released through legitimate media distribution channels. Do we understand?

Japan:-----Commercial release --> then --> Pirated.
USA:__----Pirated --> then --> Commercial Release.

That difference is the game changer. In international markets, the fact that the target audience has already consumed an anime/manga before a license can be obtained for that market, means that said license is worthless. Fansubbers and Scanlators are stealing the license that the original producers have every right to sell. The fact that they (fansubbers and scanlators) don’t charge anything means nothing, because the damage done to animators, artists, writers, assistants, and publishers is the same as if they were selling bootleg DVDs at $100 a pop. They are actually worse than for-profit bootlegers because they honestly believe they are doing nothing wrong.

It is true that Japanese production companies have constantly and incorrectly harped that if piracy just went away everything would be sunshine and smiles, which is a very Japanese thing to do. Every Japanese industry and political party does that. Additionally, half of the major entertainment execs in Japan have no idea what youtube really is, but just know it's part of that big scary internet. But in case you weren't paying attention, that's totally beside the point. This publication is going cause a problem in American fandom, by giving a moral ego boost to people who know they are hurting the business that creates the things they love, and they’ll take that boost because they want to think what they are doing is helping. And nothing said or done, will assuage their misplaced self-granted absolution.

This is no "get out of jail free card" for fansubers, scanlators, and the American Otaku that keep them around. No matter how much they want it to be.

ANN also helpfully points out that this is a paper by Tetsuo Tanaka, published by RIETI, and is not specifically all encompasing of RIETI's official platform (which is a political force to be rekoned with at times). It is also important to note that Professor Tanaka had already expressed some views to the same effect as the paper's findings, so this may be a case of some tunnel vision.

[July 17 2011]: Just in case anyone was wondering, I added that little stop-sign graphic because I was sick of the thumbnail on the top 5 posts being almost impossible to make out. This looks a little better.
-

Antarctic Press takes a gamble, steps into Sarah Palin's crosshairs?

2011-01-21T22:06:00.027-05:00

Repeating History: Antarctic Press once again fails to understand fair use.

So long time manga publisher Antarctic Press, the company that brought us Ninja High School, Gold Digger, and all kinds of furry abominations, came out with this gem:

Can "Furry Sarah Palin" be far behind?
Doing this is a bad idea because Antarctic Press seems to not have been able to learn the harsh lessons of its own past. Way back in 1994, they got nailed for publishing hentai doujinshi of characters they didn’t own the rights to (Dirty Pair) under the name H-Bomb, and like that crazy aunt that keeps betting the kids school lunch money at Bingo, they don’t seem to realize they have a serious problem. The original incident is detailed a bit more in this episode of Anime World Order by none other than MEEEEE, so go take a listen (it's 6min 50seconds in).

I can't find the H-bomb cover out there, but the hypno-butt says you don't mind.

Now it would seem as if AP is making another mistake as to where the line actually is drawn when it comes to protected parody and fair use.

I can already hear the weaboo-tards now going “nuh-uh! That’s totally protected and fair use like an AMV or fanfick and she’s a public figure and blah blah blah!” Shut the crap up. Weaboos know dick about copyright. Here’s why it’s not covered legally:

This whole thing is a for-profit commercial enterprise. You wanna play, you gotta pay.

Yes, you can draw as many pictures of Sarah Palin as you want w/o any licensing, and they can be in subject anywhere from super flattering to downright obscene. Yes you can write and or distribute these to anyone you want to... until you start making and selling merch with her likeness for profit. Then copyright comes into play.

Antarctic is looking at a potential major issue here because:

1) They are charging money for this comic and distributing it as a commercial FOR-PROFIT product. This isn’t some political cartoon in a newspaper. Sara Palin the Person/Brand is the foundation of this product, so unlike something that uses political likenesses, like the long running and painfully unfunny Doonesberry, the use of Palin's image in this isn't protected by Hustler v. Falwell as some have speculated (which was about libel anyway). Palin has no real lible case, but has a really good civil copyright angle and the fallout is just going to be about royalties. Antarctic isn't in criminal danger, but still putting themselves in very real legal danger of injunctions and expensive civil judgements.

2) They mention Sarah Palin by name. Of all the titles in the AP political releases, this is the only one that’s not far enough in the grey area (remember that pr0n changed the spelling just enough). Palin is a person and also more importantly a very powerful BRAND. She’s also a private citizen and not a politician (for the moment). There is NO DIFFERENCE between this comic and making another commercially sold comic like “THE ADVENTURES OF MICHAEL JORDON” and using his likeness and the logo of the Chicago Bulls without getting the rights to do that first. You do that and see how long it takes you to get sued. There is something like that happening now with Lebron James, but in that case, all the licensing has been done properly.

3) Palin is a media whore. The moment she’s sensed she’s been too far out of the spotlight, she’s gonna fire up the legal team and sue the crap out of Ben Dunn and the whole of Antarctic, just for the extra publicity. Win or lose, the legal nightmare alone is gonna hurt Antarctic, and it's a perfect opportunity for Palin to get back in the news withouth having to mention the word ARIZONA.

I can't bring myself to think that Antarctic Press is actually under the impression that fair use and parody are keeping them indemnified on thisk, but as I've stated, they have done this kind of thing before. I would like to think they’re just taking a gamble that the Palin camp is gonna let this one slip by. That’s not gonna happen because; see previous point #3. This thing is already being fed into the 24hr news cycle and in 5 minutes the whole world is gonna know about it. They’re already walking a dangerous line with the commercial Obama stuff, which has already become an issue from previous instances, and this Palin thing is not going to go in AP's favor if it goes to court. Antarctic would have a better chance if they just made a comic out of YOU and your wacky adventures (yes you reading this right now), since you probably have a smaller legal team.

I could be completely wrong if the Palin camp actually signed some sort of deal with Antarctic Press. I haven’t picked up my copy yet but something tells me there isn’t any agreement in place.

I did a lot of comic trading back in the buble and even once mentioned it in a previous post, so my advice is to buy this thing. Buy as many as you can and see what you can do on the short sell (meaning wait for this to get mentioned on CNN and FOX and your local news, then plaster them all up on eBay). Because the C&D letters are probably gonna start flying, and not just to AP, but to Diamond, and some of the larger retailers, which will rip them off the shelves. This thing is going to be worth at least a few bucks over cover for the novelty/controversy (probably not much more though, once the shitstorm dies down). I would actually take one to an inevitable upcoming Palin book signing/campaign stop and ask for a signature. If you do that, be prepared to not only get bounced from the event, but dollars to doughnuts says her private security will try to confiscate the thing from you as well.

So once again the Hong Kong cinema bootleg mentality has reared its head in terms of manga in America (I know it isn’t what fans would call “manga,” but AP is a company that’s done more for manga in America, more than a lot of people would care to acknowledge).

This could be the final screw up for AP though, and their final contribution to pop-culture history could very well be their actually becoming history thanks to this. Ah Antarctic Press, you were always in the room, but still we hardly knew yee.

You thought I was kidding about Furry Sarah Palin didn't you...

5 Reasons Harry Potter should be dead. A non-news pop culture post

2011-01-19T12:50:00.013-05:00

This is a joke post, and not the kind of thing I usually blog about. If this is your first visit to this blog, please read the other posts if you want serious insignt into the anime and licensing business.

I was struck with inspiration back in December and wrote this down over a few minutes. Then I noticed this video over at Cracked.com, and figured I'd throw this out there.

5 REASONS HARRY POTTER SHOULD HAVE BEEN KILLED BY NOW:

1) Hagrid is an idiot.
In the very beginning of the first film, Dumbledore clearly states that he’d “trust Hagrid with his life” basically without a second thought. Yet only a little further into the very same film, not only is Hagrid giving Harry and his friends the dirt on the Sorcerer’s Stone, its former owner, and exactly how to bypass the monster that guards it, but in the very same sentence we find out that he’s been giving out these little tidbits in darkened corners of Victorian wizard-pubs to just about anyone who buys him a drink. Need to find the secret entrance to Dumbledor’s office? It’s nothing that plopping down a magical beanie baby and a few double Jagermeisters in front of Hagrid won’t get you. Combine that cognitive deficit with the penchant he has for bringing all manner of deadly creature into exactly where he’s not supposed to, and you’ve got the living breathing reason why Hogwarts School spends more on insurance than the entire damage control budget of B.P.

With a track record like that, it’s a miracle that all of Hogwarts hasn’t been destroyed in a terrifying series of explosions involving giant spiders, unicorn blood, and the militant wing of the House Elf Liberation Front.

2) Ron is an idiot too.
From almost killing Harry and himself by driving a flying car into a very non-flying train in the 2nd film, to acting like a drooling idiot when Harry and Hermione disappear and then reappear almost instantly in front of him through use of a time turner in Prisoner of Azkaban (seriously Ron, you go to fucking wizard school, and you act as if that’s the first magical shit you’ve ever seen!) this ginger coat-tail rider has only helped Harry stay alive through his dumbfounding ineptitude, which causes him to inadvertently become a human shield by stepping directly into harm’s way at just the right (or wrong, depending on how you look at it) time. In a single film (Half Blood Prince), Ron shows himself to be someone who is extremely susceptible to the placebo effect, while at the same time incredibly unconcerned about eating an entire box of random mystery chocolates left for Harry, who he KNOWS has a whole hoard of dark wizards hell-bent on killing him. Let’s not forget that this was AFTER the whole Barty Crouch Jr infiltration, so there’s no excuse for not being more careful. That’s like Anthrax showing up at your sensitive government office tomorrow, and the first thing you do is sprinkle it over your donut thinking it must be powdered sugar.

So in Deathly Hallows, are you telling me that THAT Ron Weasley is gonna have the wherewithal to track down Harry and arrive just as he is drowning under the ice of a frozen pond in the middle of nowhere and heroically drag him to safety? Sorry Ron, but even with ten deluminators, the best GPS in the world, 3 Sherpas, and the transporters from The Starship Enterprise, the best you could hope for is to end up face down under the ice with Harry, dragging him down like a lanky redheaded boat anchor while your face gets frozen in that surprise-horror look you make at least once per film.

(seriously kid, you’re gonna die with that look on your face).

3) Voldimort is NOT an idiot.
Don’t get us wrong, Voldie is a slightly unbalanced evil mastermind and likes being in the driver’s seat, and likes being the center of attention, and being the one with the most power, and torturing the weak, and killing muggles, and …well you get it. But he’s not stupid, and the powerful leader of a murderous organization with the singular goal of world domination isn’t going to throw away a chance to lock in his ultimate victory through the death of his arch nemesis, just because it might be someone else who pulls the damned trigger. This guy is perfectly willing to have a child Harry’s age assassinate Dumbledore, and is constantly delegating orders of violence and mayhem to one division of his followers or another. If one of his minions (or a bad case of food poisoning for that matter) killed Harry, the only thing Voldimort would do is take slightly longer to pop the cork on the wizard champagne.

Look, Al Capone’s always associated with the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, but he wasn’t anywhere near the thing when it happened. King Xirxies didn’t personally kill and then chop the head off of Leonidas, he left that to the hired help. Even Charles Manson had other people get their hands bloody with that whole murdering thing, while he hung out back in his drug-filled naked hippie shack having a good time. History’s most badass crime bosses have always known how to delegate and be comfortable with it. The notion that Voldimort would somehow put his entire operation on hold and issue standing orders that no one else is allowed to kill the one person that he wants dead more than anything, just doesn’t make any f-ing sense. There’s no reason what so ever that an evil genius with the foresight of placing 7 "get out of death free cards" here and there (just in case he’d need them later on) would end up behaving like a retarded version of Captain Hook. In fact he doesn’t, and when Wormtail has the chance to off Harry Potter and hesitates for all of 5 seconds, that enchanted fake had of his reaches up and pulls a Luca Brasi on that tubby bastard for NOT killing HP fast enough. Voldie wants HP dead so badly, that he’s probably even willing to partner with any allies he can find if it helps to get it done.

(Even Hitler and Stalin were BFFs up until they ran out of group projects).

And these allies would even include...

4) Muggles:
Muggles outnumber magic people quite a bit, and Harry has got to spend at least half the year putzing around Little Whinging surrounded by all kinds of muggle-ness, while his only protection consists of spells which seemingly are only able to stop magical crap, and being watched over by the occasional auror. Granted, an auror isn’t someone you want to go up against if you are planning on zapping someone with blue lightning from a small wooden stick, but with the majority of wizard-world denizens unable to tell the difference between an iPod and a hand grenade, a straight up muggle style assassination seems like a slam dunk.

Why send a Dementor to attack Harry on the playground when some experienced ex KGB hitman can empty an entire AK-47 into Harry’s face before anyone even knows what’s going on? Why worry about some magic charm, when you can just have a fake delivery guy show up at the door and stab Harry through the lungs when he goes to sign for it? Even if you didn’t want to go full ninja, you could at least have a P.I. track him down the old fashioned way, which would lead you to...

5) The Dursleys:
This clan of degenerates perfectly fit the notion of an incredibly depraved English version of American Trailer Trash (whatever that may be in British... like weglyjads or hizzlegumps). The Dursleys are the kind of people you expect to see show up on the local late night news for sabotaging a rollercoaster because their kid is too fat to ride it, or setting the neighbor’s dog on fire in retribution for some imagined offense that only makes sense to them. They obviously have nothing but vicious contempt for Harry Potter and everything he stands for, and zero scruples when it comes to actually caring what happens to him. The only motivation they seem to have in tolerating him at all is a fear of Dumbledore or whoever coming along and ruining their day if anything happens to Harry.

Remember how in the wizard world, kids basically fling around solid gold Krugerrands to buy candy bars with and such, and no one even bats an eye? Well here in muggle-land that kind of mad grip will pretty much elevate you to “Saudi Prince” levels of entitlement enabled douchebaggery. Do you really think that the Dursleys aren’t the type to accept a sack full of solid gold coins in exchange for leaving the doors unlocked when going away over a long weekend so Voldie can send some enforcers in there to straight up murder the hell out of Harry’s ass with brass knuckles and a cricket bat? Carlo didn’t even get that much in exchange for getting Sonny to the tollbooth.

There... ok. Got that out of my system.

Identity Crisis, what does "Otaku" mean?

2011-01-12T23:53:00.014-05:00

The label of “Otaku” and what it means for community and industry.

For the sake of clarity let’s just stick to the strictly American definition of “Otaku.”

Long ago, there was a Ninja Consultants podcast which asked if one of the hosts, Erin, could be both a hipster and otaku at the same time. My answer was yes, but thanks to the late hour of the recording session (and totally not because of that vodka I drank), I wasn’t able to articulate why I came to that conclusion, even though I was the only one who thought so. Recently I had a little epiphany about how to correctly explain how one can be a hipster and otaku at the same time. My inspiration came from an incident about a week ago, where I was actually able to spot a purebred douchebag in the wild.

A Douchebag in the wild. Crikey!
Mmmmmm, smell that TAG Body Spray.
The train was moving, so the photo isn’t great... but still, just look at that.

From the retarded looking sunglasses in the subway, to the sneakers that are trendy enough to get into the night club, this guy had the whole d-bag gambit covered. Energy drink, hoody under a sport coat, stupid hair, giant ring, and the date-rape apology flowers, all combine to make this an amazing find so far from Jersey Shore territory.

“Hipster” is basically the same, a hollow vapid set of criteria that are the result of specific and quantifiable brand profiles and manifested marketing matrices in the deliberate choices in outward appearance and social activity of the individual. Though the Hipsters themselves will tell you the opposite and insist that they are so indie that their shirt don’t fit. They project this outward appearance and subscribe to a limited set of behaviors because the commercial media they consume has told them to. The true irony of the term “hipster,” is that it singularly describes a very specifically defined market demographic cluster.

“Otaku” is not like that. While “Hipster” and “Douchebag” define specific singular groups defined by the multiple aspects they project, “Otaku” labels a diverse group unified only by a singular activity of liking anime and manga. So “Otaku” is too diverse and too broad to be an effective target of concerted marketing efforts. This is not to say that there is no top of the pyramid within this group, just look at anime conventions. But even at these conventions, while the lion’s share of attendees do fit into a rather narrow demographic set (age and so on), if you really look at who’s there, you’ll see many different clusters which respond to very different marketing.

It is impossible for Otaku and Hipster to be mutually exclusive, because the defining activities one can engage in to be both to not conflict or cancel each other out. So although it’s very possible to be one and not the other, this is not a zero-sum situation, much in the same way that people of the same ethnicity or nationality can be different religions.

This isn’t “indefinability” or even “intangibility” that makes Otaku a valuable thing that can’t be fully penetrated by commercial marketing mechanics, but rather this quality of formlessness (yeah, I know all those words are next to each other in the Thesaurus). "Otaku" as a phenomenon is like water, in the sense that it takes the shape of whatever vessel it’s in, and so as a business, you’re marketing to that more definable vessel, not the Otaku-ness inside. This is why Apollo Smile and similar creations have failed in the past. The imagined target cluster is actually a combination of other clusters that have a more dominant role in customer behavior. This was the true source of that flavor of disingenuous which seemed to cover everything that Apollo was. Much like the buzzword new media marketers will talk about "organic brand creation," the only effective brand ambassador entities that can be called “Otaku” are ones that come from bottom-up and not top-down. Being an otaku is going to be a lot less fun if that quality is ever taken away, since the obvious logical thing it’s going to turn into is “Weaboo,” a terrifying prospect to say the least. But like the term “Hipster,” “Otaku” is sometimes intentionally used when describing one’s self, and also deliberately not used by other people, so it's got that going for it at least.

Again, all of this is prefaced on my own definition of Otaku for this particular case, which is not the Japanese definition (which is horrifying) and of which there exist English speaking examples like this freak here. (That link is dead because the nutjob who made it got all butthurt, but you can see bits of it here, he's obsessed with a jpop star he'll never ever be in the same room with). Yes that’s real and yes that’s 11 kinds of messed up. I would define “Otaku” here as a combination of media consumption habits, accumulated knowledge, and some other stuff. I hesitate to get too far into defining it with quantitative measurements, which leads to the problem I just mentioned of what happens of Otaku loses its portability between other groups. That is the strength which keeps this term out of the realm of being a commoditized managed-brand, and as much as I like business, I am happy to leave “Otaku” right where it is, an intangible product of the collective identity of fans.

See, an Otaku can have this in their office, and Hipsters don't work in offices (they write indie music while keeping the beard hairs off of their ironic ipads while being noticed by other hipsters and the occasional member of the stroller mafia at coffee houses). ...actually, I don't know what happened to this thing... it's gotta be around somewhere.

- I actually did have a much more thorough written explination with some ven diagrams based on actual data from icv2 and some Japanese sources, along with trend and perception mapping... but then I realized that that's giving it away for free. So if you want them, I'll send them your way when the check clears.

Osu.

Stupid is as Stupid Does; Japan / US relations after Wikileaks

2011-01-04T14:01:00.013-05:00

Anti-whaling shenanegans make things worse, not better.

Another circular point, but it's probably worth it to keep reading.

OK, real quick, one more time; "hey rest of the world, you can't tell Japan what to do." In the history of the world, Japan is a country that's only given into absolute ultimatums exactly once, and that case involved nuclear weapons. The retarded antics of the Sea Shep-tard are so painfully obvious as counter productive, that its South Park moment has come and gone, but much like the true power behind the one ring to rule them all, the mote that is the source of this particular stream of stupid are well hidden within cultural illiteracy.

The Not-Guilty Perspective

There is disinformation ging out on both sides, indicitive of a complete abandonment of any kind of sense of reality based compromise and have devolved into some slobbering conflict of absolutes. Neither side is going to be able to bring this to a quick end now. Anti-whaling forces would be happy if you conjoured up mental images of endangeres species being hauled up onto the deck of a boat and dismembered while their relatives are forced to look on while Cruella Deville looks on and cackles. Now, the hunding, killing, and processing of these whales isn't pretty, but two things to remember; 1) Minke are not endangered (and are also delicious), and 2) This criticism is coming from Australia. A country that spends government money encouraging people to kill and eat it's own national symbol. That's right, Australia, who doesn't like Japanese whaling and whale meat for an almost non-existant whale meat market not in Australia, is wholesale offering KANGAROO MEAT as fun for the whole family. I wonder what it looks like when they poke holes in their necks so the blood can drain out and then rip their skin off so they can bring us this:

Double Standard Alert! ...Fire up the barbie.

I'm bringing this up to show the absurdity of the notion that somehow a Whale outranks a Kangaroo in the "humans are gonna eat us" lottery, even when that animal has the status of a National Symbol goin' for it. It'd be the same as if Chick-Fill-A USA offered fried Bald Eagle and then sent idiots into Canada to tell them to stop hunting Caribu. Yes, it's exactly that stupid, and the reaction is going to be exactly what you think it is. Australia killes 2 Million Kangaroos for meat in a single year, where the number of whales killed by Japan and Korea in the same year is under 2,000. So it would seem that the life of one whale is worth like... 1,000 Kangaroos? Are we going by weight, or intangible animal souls or something?

The Guilty Perspective

Japan went through some very terrible times right after the end of WWII. Ever see the end of Grave of the Fireflies where those two kids starve to death? Yeah, that was happening a lot. In order to avoid that, the government was introduced to a great source of food that was easy to get. Whale meat. And guess which country provided the dessimated Japanese merchant navy with everything they needed to hunt those floating bento factories? Hint: it wasn't Mexico.

But does any of that really matter any more? No, not really. There's lots of other food to get, whale meat isn't popular and it's expensive, and in reality it's bad for you because of pullution in the oceans. The Japanese "scientific reasearch" excuse is such BS and everyone knows it. But like the classic Tail Spin episode where the Sea Duck was mistaken for a flamingo because of simply being labeled so, if it's labeled that, then it is that, even if it's not. That's how Japan works. Like many things Japanese the government turns a blind eye to (read this), the basic strategy was to just put aside some patient hope this issue will go off and die a quiet un-noticed death. ...and now the Discovery Channel has put this shit so far in the spotlight it's going to take 10 years for this issue to go back to where it was in 2005. It's become a high-profile, wedge issue that has entrenched itself into the Japan vs The World "Culture War" similar to the French and the battle over Foie Gras.

Kobayashi Yoshinori’s whaling manga (dead Kangaroos on the lower right).

Now, Kobayashi is a wing-nut moonbat who was probably driving one of those black van "expell the foriegner" protests that used to park outside my apartment on Yasukuni Dori (not for little old me, but because this was across the street). But his level of crazy is not the point. The point is that HIS point is powerful enough to push things to extremes on the domestic Japanese end while Paul Watson's douchebaggery is pulling the extreme on the other end. The end result is that this issue gets further and further away from a quickly feasable solution in a very Carl Rove like fashion.

The Peanut Gallery: How this relates to anime

The only reason I'm bringing any of this up, is that (I forget where I was, it might have been online) but I was involved in a conversation with an idiot otaku who said something along the lines of they were going to "stop downloading manga and anime" in protest of this Japanese whaling thing. That's right, in an effort to somehow hurt the Japanese economy, this person was going to stop STEALING from it. And this is the real problem that anime and manga face from the rest of the world. This otaku (and many others) are under the rediculous impression that their consumption, appreciation, and enjoyment of this media they acquire without paying for it, somehow in and of itself adds some sort of tangible value to the creators.

So here we have this person, who basically thinks they are taking some sort of tangible value away from a company that provided a property that they were consuming illegally. How exactly that was supposed to work, they couldn't articulate, but their head was still thick enough to resist actual logic and the realization that their fandom adds zero value and makes zero revenue to the vast commercial process of creating an anime or manga. The sense of intellectual vacancy in this kind of thing is overwhelming. This person hasn't vowed to not buy a Toyota, or pull their investments from Japanese firms... nope, just stop doing something that adds no value to the Japanese economy in the first place.

Otaku may have an emotional connection to anime, manga, and the various character goods that go with them, but you're not a customer if you're looking at scanlations, you're less than worthless to the manga artists, their assistants, and the publishing staff. You may as well be a Kangaroo, waiting to be blead to death and cut up, cooked, and served at a charity dinner to raise money to buy new equipment for the Sea Shepherd.

-

Trouble at Tokyo Anime Fair 2011; No silver lining on the publisher boycott.

2010-12-29T23:35:00.022-05:00

Kadokawa throws a hissy fit over foreign entanglements.

The upcoming 2011 Tokyo Anime Fair is now home to some controversy as 8 companies (with Kadokawa being the largest it seems) have withdrawn from the TAF in protest over the Tokyo Met. Government’s new regulations regarding manga “content” and regulating (sort of) who can buy what… in Tokyo at least.

Although this is a “city limits law” and it may sound as trivial and rediculatarded as Pennsylvania liquor laws and just as easy to get around as simply driving across the state border to buy beer the proper way, in Japan this is actually a real problem for the following reasons;

1) Political landscape: Japan literally is Tokyo at this point. It’s a major problem that had had a great effect in pushing Japanese society past the event-horizon of absolute collapse. Everything is in Tokyo, government, major company headquarters, industry, and above all it’s the source of all culture from TV fashion and technology, to traditionalist activities like publishing and Sumo. 2008 says that Japan’s population is 127.7 Million, and the Greater Tokyo Area is 39.19 Million. That’s over 30% of the population and the GDP of the area alone is $1,759,000,000,000. Yeah it’s got that many zeros and it’s bigger than Canada, the country. So, much like the disastrous Texas textbook situation, something that effects business in Tokyo is going to have a national impact. Japan really needs to spread out and separate some government operations from the private sector geographically, but that’s a whole other post in and of itself.

2) Stupid Gaijin: Like the unending trouble caused by the artards who drive the Sea Shepard, this new regulation is a result of foreign intervention in what the Japanese consider a domestic matter. Most of the uproar over the objectionable content in these manga is coming from very non-Japanese, Valerie Solanas-brained, porn-banning, artist-assassinating, breast-beating, kvetching screaming, moan mamas, ...and Unicef (yes that Unicef that was caught with real child porn), and also the U.N. That’s right, the same organization that thinks it’s a good idea to put Saudi Arabia in its Women’s Rights Agency (read that again, let it sink in) is leading the charge against naughty picture books in Japan. Granted, these are some of the nastiest pictures which I have no desire to see, and the people who get off on this crap are living breathing arguments to the favorability of implementing a style of law enforcement that is half and half “Minority Report” and “Law & Order SVU,” but they are drawings not photos, and that is not even half enough reason to really care in the grand scheme of things. I hate to have to defend the kind of freaks who like this kind of thing over at sankaku complex, but there are much more worse things happening in the world. Real genital mutilation continues in Africa and other countries, Iran is executing 16 year old rape victims for violating the dress code, and child labor picks 1 or 2 out of every 5 coffee beans in your hipster morning drink of choice (hey tea or hot choccolate drinkers, don't think you're off the hook either). Yet for some reason, people think that ignoring those problems in favor of forcing their will in assigning moral propriety upon the comic books of Japan is totally worth their time. But in reality, the complaints by white Europeans and Americans against this material being made and sold in Japan smacks of colonialism, and is as stupid as the English telling the Spanish to stop bull fighting, or PETA demanding sushi be called “sea kitten meat” because it bruises their fragile sensibilities. The more the rest of the world tells Japan what to do… the more Japan is not going to do that… and before you go dismissing that kind of thing as immature, think about what would happen in the U.S. if the rest of the world signed some resolution condemning the 2nd amendment and demanding it be abolished, after all it does far more real damage to human life than these manga could ever do. All of a sudden the “Don’t Tread on Me” banners seem totally reasonable.

3) Making it worse: Those directly involved are only exasorbating things. This is really being made worse by Kadokawa and the rest of the companies themselves, not by simply withdrawing from the TAF, but in holding a competing event (seriously guys?). This legal resolution was for “self-enforcement” more or less of the manga industry in terms of who can buy what kind content. Yes, in the Japanese way of doing things, that’s still a big deal, but it still means that if the issue stayed quiet for a bit, it would more or less just go away. But no, they’ve got to make a big deal out of this and put the government in an impossible situation; either further crack down and actually enforce what could have been ignored without notice, or risk the loss of business from other completely unrelated industries (pharma, auto, textile, IT/software, tourism) in some sort of international protest because now this mess is in the f-ing spotlight. There are really better cases to “up the anti” on in terms of publishers vs. the government. Think about this situation and look at the best case scenario for either side… yeah both suck, so why are we doing this?

If you are an American and you’ve ever read a manga, it’s impossible not to feel some sympathy for these publishing companies stepping out of the TAF, as this legal restriction would be a clear constitutional violation if done in the US. Here we have the TAF which is put on by the Tokyo Met Government, the same government agency that has just told you what you can and can’t publish based on the reactions of a bunch of foreigners who have never bought a single product your company makes, have never been affected by such products (beyond self inflicted moral outrage when informed of their existance), and couldn’t even read the damn books even if they did get their hands on them. So these publishers are wholly justified in giving the finger to this show if the money they have to pay to exhibit there goes straight into the pockets of the government organization that is telling who they can and can’t sell comic books to. Remember, this is Japan. In the USA, things are permitted unless they’re prohibited. In Germany, things are prohibited unless they’re permitted. In Japan, everything is prohibited, but anything is possible. The “self-regulation” aspect of this mess could have meant anything from “forgettable” to “do it or else.” Kadokawa has taken the repercussions of this mess from intangible to very tangible (the tangibility being the lost revenue from exhibitor fees for the TAF), which is a very dangerous thing to do in Japanese politics. Philosophically, I must support this decision and this group (honestly, I wouldn't give my money to an organization that just made it harder for me to do business as part of a sad political capitulation), but realistically, there is no way this will end well.

When your building is this big and then some, your "guidelines" are more actual rules.

-

You keep on using that word... The JBPA, Apple, and Copyright

2010-12-21T17:48:00.015-05:00

I do not think it means what you think it means.

The JBPA brings up a copyright problem, but do they have a solution? Then again, why the hell should they solve Apple’s incompetence by design?

So in what’s pretty much old news by now, the JBPA and three other groups have slapped Apple with an “angry letter” regarding the apple app store and the sea of illegally available manga that resides therein. Much like in similar situations, the Japanese rights holders are angry and concerned that their commercial IP is being distributed by entities who aren’t licensed to do so, and realistically… that’s a very reasonable way to feel. They are also upset that, while it seems the Apple App Store can instantly take down an app that has fart noises or boobies, they seem to leave the copyright diligence up to the copyright holder. This kind of action of a huge company passing on expenses to smaller content providers is all over the history of the fall of the anime industry in the US, when small home media labels were bombarded by all kinds of chargebacks and “so sue me” kind of contract violations from giant retailers and national distributors. Unlike Craig’s List, or eBay, Apple’s app store is directly selling units of commercial goods to the public, and this situation would be no different from WalMart or Sears simply not checking at all to make sure that the products they sold were real and not counterfeit or stolen, instead leaving it up to the manufacturers to send people in to browse the isles and then raise a red flag if they find something wrong. Businesses just can’t do that.

Apple has a lot of growing up to do, and with Jobs at the wheel, they’re never going to do it. He’s still way too bitter about getting booted from Apple the first time, and he was never ever a nice guy. Sure, both Jobs and Gates dropped out of college and "computer genious" and blah blah blah, but while Gates seems to have left college because it wasn’t moving fast enough for his super-brain, Jobs seems to be the guy who left because he pissed everybody off in record time. Just compare the commencement speeches the two have given (look them up your damn self), and the whole personality difference starts to jump out at you. And while Gates is long gone from Microsoft and busy giving away billions of dollars to charity, Jobs is parking his $130,000 sportster with no license plate in handicapped parking spots whenever he drives down to the office to bitch about the new iWhatever being the wrong shade of off-white. He’s made the mistake of letting his company become his identity, and that never ends well.

Apple is now bigger than Microsoft. But it never learned how to really be that big, and so is still acting as if only a small portion of the market is watching what they do. They’re also still designing products for that small portion of the market, but are always first across the line with the features people never knew they wanted. Apple has the potential to remain a majority stakeholder in the emerging world of mobile devices, or pull a Sega and shrivel up again.

That will depend on many things, including how they deal with this manga issue raised by the JBPA. Apple has plenty of quantitative people who have been able to point out that doing even a minimal amount of copyright diligence on these apps (beyond the major properties like Harry Potter or Beyonce) would end up costing so much, that Jobs would fall behind in the imaginary dick measuring contest he has with the rest of the world to see who has the most money. But in reality, that’s just too f-ing bad. Let’s remember, this isn’t the “app exchange” it’s not some Mac BBS or Macworld cruise where the top of the pyramid get together and trade crap with each other. This is a formal division of Apple, the company, selling digital products made by third parties. And a large company like Apple, who is going to sell these digital products, has to do that diligence whether they like it or not. Microsoft knows stuff like this and would have crunched the numbers beforehand to see if it was worth it. Manga publishers have an existing protection under international copyright law and should not have to use their own limited resources to police another company which violates that protection, especially if it’s a company bigger than Microsoft.

It is also important to note (accordig to the Financial Times article) that the bulk of the as yet uncovered infringements are Chinese translations. American otaku will once again undoubtedly gripe when the obvious is mentioned, but if they’re unhappy about the insignificance of the American market compared to the Japanese one, they’re really not going to be happy about how small the potential Chinese market is going to make the U.S. look. What does a 10% sales figure look like in China? It looks like one third of the entire USA. The high population, close proximity to Japan, and lack of cultural hurdles in product acceptance that manga is up against in other parts of the world, makes the Chinese market the only ripe fruit on the tree at the moment. Combine all of that, with a super strong Yen and a hyper expanding wireless market in China, and you have an environment where the only strategy that’s going to get any attention is that of expansion in the Chinese market. Don’t be surprised if it turns out that the money that Japanese companies are pulling out of the U.S. operations ends up going to Shanghai and Hong Kong.

One could argue that he Japanese side of the equation is part of the problem in that they’re doing what they have always done, just bringing up piracy issues without addressing causes or coming up with a proactive solution. But it's actually not true in this case, in that the solution that they are proposing is that Apple do what any other retailer do responsibly; Make sure the stuff they sell isn’t bootleg, fake, or stolen. Apple is not “putting a buyer and seller together” or simply “providing a service” for people to buy and sell directly. They are straight up running this show, and with that comes certain obligations as a global retailer… And like a French tourist in New York who simply can’t understand why they aren’t allowed to smoke on the subway even though it’s late and it’s their birthday*, Apple can’t seem to figure out why those same obligations that apply to the “other companies” like WalMart, Amazon, Dell, or the pawn shop down the street, should also apply to them. Do I really think there’s some sort of mentality at Apple that holds a “rules don’t apply to me” stance? Sure, in Jobs’s head there’s gotta be, but there are enough smart people at Apple who actually have to run things over there that they know this is just a case of keeping costs down to keep their stock as high as it can be. So combine those two and what we’re going to have is a situation that is going to get bad enough so that the royal bean-counters eventually have to approach the king, who probably won’t want to budge on principle until he can actually see money coming out of his pockets (and then you know he'll blame someone else anyway).

Now there are some otaku and Mac fanboys (notice I didn’t say Apple there) who are so religiously into this "Apple as a whole can simply do no wrong" idea, there will be no reasoning with these people. But lots of Mac fans out there might simply notice that this is a case of Apple entering an industry and not playing by the rules which naturally help the smaller players. To see Apple shit on smaller businesses out there, in a kind of cliché Captain Planet sort of way is a sad thing to see indeed. If nothing else, to see that Apple is acting like a real life OCP, should snap a lot of people out of any idealogical daze they're in. The “…have a scale problem but not a willingness problem” (FT article) is such a non-excuse and is patently rediculous if held up to legaql standards of other businesses; “McDonalds wants to make sure the food they sell is up to federal standards, but we just don’t have the man-power, so the customers can look out for that ecoli on their own” or “Foot Locker wants to make sure that all the Nikes we sell are actually made by Nike, but that’s up to Nike to send their people in here and check, we don’t have the resources to do that” …and so on.

Perhaps I’ve been a bit redundant here, but Apple seems to get a pass all too often when it comes to entering an industry and doing it “their way.” But this is actually just the way of “I’m big and tell you what to do haha” and because this M.O. has an Apple logo on the front of it, people seem to reign in their otherwise hostile reaction. This time I am hoping that most otaku out there see that the JPBA is an organization that represents lots of publishers, small companies that all put together aren’t worth as much money as Apple farts in a day. The JBPA is the little guy in this story, and Apple is damaging their business by selling stolen goods, plain and simple.

"The Japanese have hit the shores like dead fish.
They’re just like dead fish washing up on the shores."

-Steve Jobs, 1985.

Way to see the future Stevie, those Japanese never got a foothold in the computer business did they…? Think his opinion has changed much?

Watch how many mac-boys start crying foul at that one. But at least they can have a place to go in Tokyo to pray 5 times a day to the mighty Apple.

*That French thing is based on a true story which happened at Jay St.

Xmas in Japan

2010-12-11T16:27:00.011-05:00

ahhhhh ...xmas.

It's actually starting to get to me, but there are things about Life in Japan (not just Tokyo) I miss, and the upcoming Holidays are starting to tug on the ol' nostalgia heartstrings. One thing that seems to remain the same however is Chanuka and Kwanza coming and going without anyone really noticing -snark-.

It would seem however that some Cross Cultural Christmas Creep is ...Chappening between Chapan and Camerica. (ok I'll stop with the retarded illiteration). Yes friends, there is no greater shame than someone who calls themselves an Otaku, yet remains ignorant of the connection between the beloved Colonel Sanders and Christmas in Japan. (Link. Another Link with creepy accompanying photo, and finally to bring it back to grown up land, a more reputable Link).

Yes friends, the Colonel owns Christmas in Japan, where he dawns his santa hat and provides round-eye style deep fat fried poultry to the masses for $50 per order. You'll see some refrences to this in the popular culture of the Land of the Rising Sun, but none more concentrated as the short contribution they make to Duane Johnson's very classic and skillfully made AMV (back when there was such a thing), "Dare to be Stupid."

It's somewhere in there I didn't upload the thing and only know it form other sources... Hey, I've had this thing on VHS since 1997 so ....get off my lawn!

So here I am, sitting in my jail cell of a room with a TV on, always looking for ways to make obscure connections between marketing and Japanese pop-culture (I haz MBA, I kan make teh smrt) when I notice a KFC commercial air that was obviously made for domestic U.S. audiences.

Now, while KFC has been running Holiday themed advertising for years (was it KFC that did the Lake Wolbigon spots way back when, or was that Wendy's?) the particular spot that has aired this year is different. Now the following observations may not be new, since by living in Tokyo I was not watching American TV last December, but the observation none the less is the following; That while many winter holiday advertising from KFC (and many other entities) has taken a Xmas "flavor" so to speak, this seems to be the first that I've seen to explicitly suggest purchasing and eating this KFC product on Christmas itself. The message of "saving time" is simply, don't cook, buy and eat KFC, not "it's a Kuriisumasu thing" that those gaijin celebrate.

Is this a correlation = causation instance? Um no. The reason that Japan loves KFC on Xmas is very far removed from the reasons that an advertizing agency believes that this will be effective in boosting sales, or the Yum!Brands Marketing Department believes it would be profitable to keep a significant number of KFC locations open on Christmas. Still, it's nice to see yet another creepy Christmas cross cultural commonality ....c-develop between Japan and the US, if not for this one being one of the few examples of the door swinging the other way.

So there you go, you American Otaku. Now there's no excuse not to sink your teeth into a piece of golden deep fried awesome. Whether it's to bring the family together, or to avoid them all entirely, get to a KFC, where they'll charge you 25% of the price of the same than Japan will, because America has illegal immigrant labor pick lettuce, slaughter chickens, and work in food-factories for less than minimum wage, all so you can buy 12,000 callories provided by the cheapest third party for the lowest bid price. ...Enjoy.

... I miss Tokyo, but not it's prices.

Caffeinated Fan Service

2010-12-03T14:17:00.017-05:00

This is going to cover some concepts that on their own are not substantial enough to make a post in and of themselves (that's saying a lot since this blog has previously spent an entire post detailing the subtle nuances of the Angry Whopper). Therefore they are all going to get put here, in this lovely collection of things Japan, juxtipisitions of previous assertions, and other points of interest. There will be photos of things and such.

First:
Happy 50th Birthday, Sanrio. While Hello Kitty isn’t 50 yet (she’s 36 and still single), Sanrio was founded 50 years ago on August 10. Little did they know that the pushers of a cuteness factor stronger than crack would end up creating branded booze. Still haven’t found any of this stuff around though. Someone go buy some and let me know if it sucks or not.

Second:
A while back I was on the Ninja Consultant cast of the pod, and mentioned 眠眠打破, the Japanese wake-up energy drink pronounced Min-Min Daha, and which literally translates to “don’t drink this.” Ok no not really, it actually literally breaks down to “Abolish Sleeping Sleep” or maybe "rid the sleep need" more or less, and is so powerful that if you slammed this with a shot of Makers Mark it would makes Four Loko look like baby formula. 5 Hour Energy is gecko piss compared to this stuff. But I mistakenly described the label in the show (I was actually describing the slightly cheaper competing product which is not as awesome), so here is what it actually looks like:

Now, Chuck Schumer temper-tantrums aside, the reason you’re not gonna see this stuff being hauled into the US en masse, is that many of these Japanese drink supplements contain things like: Ephedra, guarana, caffeine, alcohol, animal brain fluid, and nicotine, and can range from genuinely healthy to something like MY GOD IT’S FULL OF STARS!

Third
Last post turned into a doozy, with a plethora of different issues and directions that discourse could go into. I’m inclined to just let it die at this point, since the whole political-ness phase has already come and gone with this blog with the participation in Everybody Draw Mohammad Day.

What I do want to do though is mention the other side of the equation in regards to the notion of groups making wholly incorrect assertions and an inexplicable refusal to submit to facts, because the facts come from a source they can’t understand. Younger generations are just as (if not more) susceptible to falling into this kind of behavior, and one need only to look at the sadly abundant number of Anime Music Videos on Youtube out there that use songs wrongly attributed to Weird Al Yancovic. From “Ugly Girl” to “What if God Smoked Cannibas,” moronic teenyboppers keep labeling their crappy videos using these songs as being by Weird Al, when a mountain of evidence including Weird Al’s own press releases says otherwise. Because their illegally downloaded version of that song they got from Limewire or whatever has “Weird Al” as the artist, they are going to defend that blatant falicy with a sidestepping fervor that is rivaled only by creationists.

The difference here, is that these moronic boppers making such mistakes are more of a bottom-up dynamic, where various checks and balances are in place that prevent what little damage these notions are capable of, whereas the previous SCOTUS example is a top down dynamic, capable of sweeping and unchangeable damage to how we live.

Fourth
ZOMBOOBIES! Yes friends, the success of Walking Dead makes me hopeful for more zombie-tastic media entertainment across the board, including High School of the Dead. Before leaving Tokyo, I had to just take one more chance to go to Animate:

Interesting business model. Reminds me of... oh yeah.
After visiting 2 locations in 1 day (awesome), I ended up at the flagship location over in Ikebukuro, where I violated the no photos policy and saw this:

Want a closer look?

Just in case you aren’t sure if that is what you think it is,

Yeah totally. While I usually roll my eyes at manufactured controversy this is just awesome. In reality, as I’ve been catching every episode that has come out so far, even I am getting to the point where the T & A is becoming over gratuitous (bullet dodging boobies …seriously?) and starting to distract from the overall awesome factor of the show as a whole. So despite the presence of two huge annoyance factors that American anime fans often face; 1) Anime’s love of guns while the Japanese don’t knowing the first thing about how they actually work or how fast bullets travel etc, and 2) the unending Japanese deficiency when it comes to actually learning the difference between “R” and “L”, I am still going to keep HSOTD near the top of my “it” list. Dead Ruck? RUCK? What the Ruck kind of Rit is that?

Opinion. S.2847 and why the movie Office Space is still relevant:
Dear President of the United States;
Oh please please please sign this bill. My opinion of congress has from one of 99% worthlessness to only 95% for actually getting this through, and if you sign it I might actually forgive the fact that you've turned into a neutered sicophantic mirage of what I voted for, and I'll come out and vote for you again if I have to (but not in the rain, it will take getting rid of DADT for me to do that).

This whole commercials-louder-than-the-show thing is another prime example of business consultants run amok, looking at a short term gain while forgetting about the rest of the future. These same people who thought that was a good idea, would advise a car salesman to quit, based on the staggering savings created from not having to print any more business cards. They would advise burning the window frames and a wall or 2 in your house to keep warm in December. But what's that you say? February's cold too and now your house has gaping holes where windows used to be? Well fuck February, I'll have my consulting fee and be long gone by then so February is your problem which you can hire me back for. I'll just have you burn the chairs and beds that grandma and your kids were using, but don't worry, we outsorced them to Malaysia so they're not using them now... see you next winter.

In urban spaces this practice has actually gotten someone fined for violating a late night noise ordanance, because they were watching a quiet show, went to the can, and while they were in there the commercials came on 10x louder than anything else, and the old lady next door complained and caught it on a decible meeter (apparently she's got nothing better to do).

S. 2847, or The CALM Act, is little more than empty calories in terms of solving real problems, but comfort food has meaning... seriously, can you remember the last time you ate carrots or spinach? How about the last time you got your hands on a Chocodile or chowed down on good foie gras? Yeah, you know which one you gona remember. That's what this bill is... a worthless gesture turned into an intense memory. Teabaggers and Treehugers alike have got to put aside their differences and put the volume controll of the TVs in our own homes back in the hands of the people!

So that's that. I got my new computer finally. My old Toshiba ended up going kerplunk in August, taking all my contacts and emails and files with it, so it's nice to have something that I can configure the way I like it.

But Honestly Monica... What the Cook’s Source Magazine theft of intellectual property can tell us about Schwarzenegger v. EMA

2010-11-05T11:58:00.012-04:00

Once again, Gen X and beyond is getting screwed by the Baby Boomers.

No, I’m not talking about the recent midterm elections, in which for whatever reason, over 65 voters turned out to vote almost 2 to 1 over the under 30 crowd. Once again it looks like younger people in America have (rightfully so) given up any inkling that their voice genuinely counts in any kind of open arena or community in which the baby boomers have entrenched themselves. Some of this comes down to life-style, with younger people tending to have jobs that are much less forgiving in terms of scheduling flexibility, and tend to be in sectors that have “election day sales” where entitled boomers argue about paying too much for a 90% off made-in-China thing they don’t need on their way to vote for “family values” while muttering about how the youth of the country don’t give the boomers enough credit for the “revolution” of the 60’s or the inflation-fest of the 80’s.

From a Nov 3rd ThinkProgress article:
Breakdown of what percent of the vote was made by
the under 30 compared to the over 65 demos.

This subject is something I’ve talked about before, and anyone who likes anime or goes to a convention is used to the uber-wide social gap of understanding which is why your mother never understands your jokes or why she gets confused by the “I’m on a horse” ad and it’s various parodies.

Case in point #2, the “because I say so” self-important opinion gambit, where boomers often believe that because of their age and experience, their all too often ill-informed opinions are not only valid, but can somehow trump arguments that are in the right, just because that factually correct opposition comes from a gen-x or gen-y source. It is an insane trap of self delusion whose apex seems to be the notion that the “government is going to get involved in your Medicare.” ...yeah.

There’s a point... wait for it.

Take a recent real world example of this in media; Cook’s Source Magazine totally cluster-fucks it’s way into internet famous-ness (that’s totally a real word). Apparently, it’s not plagiarism if you and your old-media take it off that wacky internet that the kids use. TL;DR version of all that is; a food blogger Monica Gaudio posted a recipe/article for an apple pie or something on her own website. This was later found, slightly altered, and re-published by Cook’s Source Magazine with Gaudio’s name on the byline, however Gaudio was never informed or compensated. When confronted, Cook’s Source Magazine Editor Judith Griggs notes she’s got “30 years experience” in the publishing business, and then acknowledges the situation. Finally she follows it up with one of the most obtuse notions ever, that being that everything on the internet is Public Domain and perfectly usable as content in a for-profit publication. It’s a textbook example of both the baby boomer gap of understanding how new media and technology work while at the same time playing the “my opinion carries more weight than your argument simply because you’re too young to understand” or more accurately the “because I said so, child” maneuver. The belittling of importance of media, simply because it’s in a form that uses new technology that one can not understand, often leads the boomers to violate codes of behavior, and explicit laws out of a sense of self righteous ignorance, which almost always leads to the detriment to younger generations.

Another footnote in the making of “Making 'Generation Screwed;' a Baby Boomer Production” ...I just made that up.

Why is this important for an anime / Japanese pop-culture blog?

No this didn’t happen to me, my posts are simply too crunktaculatastic to be reprinted in old media. But recently, the issue of “violent video games” the replacement boogey-man that replaces Twisted Sister and the Tipper Sticker, has in fact made it to the Supreme Court of The United States of America. Scared by a medium of creativity they can’t possibly comprehend but believe they can adequately judge, the boomer generation is trying to regulate free speech by using scare tactics. Now, banning a violent game sounds as ridiculous as banning a violent book to those who can understand both of these mediums, but you have to be born after 1975 to be able to know that.

Schwarzenegger v. EMA

What should scare the crap out of everyone reading this, is that the panel of SCOTUS judges in this case has consistently demonstrated their inability to notice that it’s not the year 1970 anymore. Moronic questions demonstrating the lack of even the most basic knowledge of how email and cell phones work, the inability to correctly spell or pronounce Nunchuck, and a notion of under 18 year olds as non-citizens which do not have first amendment protection, are all things I except someone’s angry grandmother to spew forth, not something to come from the soo-preem-fuking-kort!

Yet it is this untouchable cabal of culturally and technologically illiterate bunch of boomer-mentality superiority of opinion judges, which will either strike down, or support a law which clearly violates the U.S. Constitution but for the fact it’s being applied to a medium which these people can not understand. Change out “video game” with “book” in this case, and we wouldn’t even be here.

Kotaku has put up a piece that gives a hopeful picture that the outcome won’t be retarded, but let’s not forget, if you're reading this here, you are coming into this with our own superior understanding of how this technology actually works, and how it is not bound by specific age groups (the “video games are for kids” notion). Conversly, the SCOTUS is fumbling around in the dark, putting their hands on inventions that they’ve never seen before, all while looking for the oil lamp to shed some light on the situation.

On the bright side, it seems that Kagan knew what Mortal Kombat was, although she relegated it to “something her clerks did,” thereby demoting it to a plebeian activity of the younger generation in her mind I'm sure.

This one could go either way.

-