Caffeinated Fan Service

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 make 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!


ThirdLast 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.


FourthZOMBOOBIES! 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.


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

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.

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. -

In Brazil; The rising Yen's effect on manga and anime

How America is still killing the anime business, but this time it's not your fault.

Ok, take a good look at this:




You see that? That’s the reason that I wasn’t too sad to leave Tokyo, but more importantly, that’s also the reason that this is the wrong time for animation producers in Japan to “see the light” in terms of using other markets as a source of revenue (and thusly, as something they’d ever care about regarding feedback and other market metrics).

For anyone who doesn’t know what that is (as if anyone at all is reading this), that is the long sad decline of the exchange rate of JPY to USD (if you don’t know what JPY and USD are, then just get off the internet... no seriously get off and go eat paste or something).

Now it has been established that domestic Japanese market conditions will (eventually) have studios and publishers poised to see the light in terms of exploiting other markets outside Japan for their IP. The various other aspects outside of the Japanese population curve however, have conspired to make this prospect for North America not only unattractive but a downright Uber Greek Tragedy. See, just in time for Japanese companies to realize that to keep revenues at current levels, they need to tap the U.S. market, U.S. money becomes essentially worthless in Japan (and the rest of the world for that matter).

So what can we do? Well what can you do...?

Coming back to America I had to just have a seizure walking around looking at how cheap all the crap in our stores is. A folding chair, which cost me $40 in Tokyo, was $7.98 at an office supply store in upstate New York; 1 table fan was $14.95 at Walmart rather than the same thing at Tokyo’s Bic Camera which sold for $70... and so on. So the only thing you can really do, is as a country, stop buying cheap Chinese crap. ...yeah, I didn’t think so. So as long as China won’t raise it’s currency, as long as the U.S. has to follow China in order to keep Wal-Mart and the other 90% of retail consumer goods in business, and as long as Japan remains insulated and protects their economy (which will keep the Yen exactly where it is)... then you, the American anime fan, have just been demoted to the same level of contribution as Brazil. Although last time I checked the USD was still about 10 JPY ahead of the Brazilian Real when you adjust for the factor of 100 (dollars vs cents). And while both are losing out to the serious currency issues which seem to never want to stop for the yen, it's not really a lot of difference when you look at it in terms of being able to contribute in the market for IP.


Personally, I think it's going to get much worse, and my own pick based on nothing other than me pulling numbers out of thin air is that it's going to go down to 72 JPY per USD before it gets better on any significant level.


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Leaving Japan

Japan; Love / Hate / Meh.

It seems as if I am destined to return to the USA and soon. Losing the all powerful otaku street-cred that comes from living it Tokyo is one of the few things I’ll miss about this place. In all honesty, I’d probably stay if I could (read; “could stay with a career and salary sufficient enough to maintain a specific standard). That shouldn’t bee too hard, and if I was more motivated I am sure I would have accomplished that already. Tokyo is nice, but the fact that I can once again no longer have my windows open because of the construction going on across the street (now in it’s 16th month) simply sends in too much noise and dust. ...at least it’s not 100 degrees out anymore.

About 10 years ago, I was in this exact same situation almost. Living in Japan, just finished a degree, and looking at returning to New York with an uncertain future, spending a few months of doing nothing until finally getting to work again at a company which was best described as an airplane that never left the gate, but the pilots kept announcing the cruising altitude anyway until we ran out of fuel. Leaving Japan then was the first of a long line of life-destroying mistakes lasting almost a decade. Now the reset button has been hit, and I am looking at the horrific and inescapable fact that the worst events I’ve gone through are about to be thoroughly repeated. A few years ago, I’d care about that, and it might have served as a great motivation to get out there and do whatever it took to stay, but those days were dead and gone long before coming to Japan in the first place.

So yeah, I’m kind of just on autopilot and need to snap out of it. Maybe being back in New York before the end of October (and it may be permanent), might get that to happen.

Naruto is a Chicken... Your argument is invalid.

Life in Japan:

So in the universe of product tie-ins that involve Japanese convenience stores and anime, Lawson is now offering fried chicken nuggets packaged with their famed chicken mascot "Karaage-kun" seemingly cosplaying as Naruto. There's nothing special about the actual contents of the package, but of course, after doing a deep dive consulting session for Lawson, I just feel too drawn to getting one. So here it is, the latest anime thing to be found at convenience stores. (this is no longer true though, since the Sunkus in the lobby just started selling limited edition Dragon Ball Z figures).





Actually, the only tie-ins that I am always guaranteed to fall for are the Lupin III ones. A while back, I had to drink 12 Roots Black Aroma cans (the big ones) over the course of 4 days to get the whole promotional set. I am watching Green vs Red as I write this, and it almost makes up for not being at Otakon. ...almost.



In the last scene of Green vs Red, they chase the new Lupin through Shinjuku down Yasukuni Avenue. I live on Yasukuni Ave in Shinjuku, and I can hear police sirens outside right now... cool.


Tokyo... Sometimes, it actually doesn't suck.


Like today.




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OTAKON 2010

Anyone going to Otakon 2010 can you pick me up a t-shirt (XL) and a program book? I am very much the opposite of happy that I am not going to be there.

Thanks for the quick reply.


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You've got red on you: Zombie Apocalypse and the anime counter-argument.

In re-reading the previous post, I was all of a sudden reminded that there's a significant example of the exact type of "solution" evolving out of the current gulf between anime markets. High School of the Dead, is airing at just about at the same time in Japan and the US, (or at least as close as reasonably possible, I mean really). Now, good on them for doing that, it's really one of the only ways that anime can circumvent the erosion of sustainability in the US market which comes from fansubs devaluing licenses. However, this is an example of the embryonic stage of that, and is in no way going to be a final template for how to do this. I'm sure that American fans have become so used to consuming fansubs, that there are pirated copies on the internet still serving the exact same people that the Anime Channel is counting on watching through their own distribution channels (either cable or online). It's going to take an ongoing pattern of this type of distribution to make a real dent in this problem, and this title is not only just the beginning, but by nature of it being first on the learning curve, it's also a weak example.

I've been doing my best to catch High School of the Dead at 2am here in Tokyo, and therein lies problem#2. I don't know when the Anime Network airs this thing (I just don't feel like looking it up), but I am fairly certain that the first siring does not happen at 2am. Now for those of you thinking that the reason for a 2am time slot is because of content, it's really not. The same cable package that gets you AT-X gets you plenty of other content in the middle of the day which makes the boobie-jiggle and brain smashing factor of HSOTD look pretty tame (though that is a portion of the explanation for 2am). Sure it's not for kids and could be on late, but there is no way this property can compete with the more valuable programming that's on at 11. So it ends up at 2am because the top of the pyramid is going to be committed enough to follow it there, and everyone else is not necessarily a group that can be counted on. So, the HSFTD pull factor might be stronger in the US than Japan, and now we come back to the cultural divide, where the top anime programs in Japan only have a few which also occupy a major spot in the US market (DragonBall, One Piece, all that).

To talk about High School of the Dead itself, it's been a long time since I've gotten into an anime series enough to stay up to 2am, but this one looks worth it. Smashing zombies is fun, oppai are fun, and the mid to high level of Japanese youth angst isn't actually the driving force of the story. I am sure it's being censored to high-heaven on American TV so I would be interested to see how the DVDs end up. I don't like to buy DVDs in Japan, because they are just much more expensive, so whenever I see a Japanese movie I like, I check to see if there's a US release first. If there is, I just add it to my list of "pick it up when I go back home" and wait for my next trip over. However, if it is censored (Kill Bill anyone?) I'll go out of my way to get the original work of art to make my own decision about it, not deal with the version destroyed by the MPAA or FCC. That being said, I think the sexualized scenes in the series are a bit overboard, but at least I can make that decision for myself.

But this series is worth checking out if you like zombie flicks(there have already been references to Shaun of the Dead and Zombie Land) and some animation that is a real step above the rest in terms of quality. The only downside, is that the series uses a lot of flashbacks of the same footage to save money. But it's still totally worth it. Also, look what I found.

WTF Japan;

So sometimes Japanese TV works a bit differently in terms of commercial breaks. They run just about the whole show commercial free, and then run a 10-15 minute block of informer-style adverts. You can't really tell from the image, but this commercial is for premium WHALE BACON. Yep, get your premium whale meat delivered right to your door for a great price. Call now. So... who wants to see a review of a whale bacon omelet? OM NOM NOM

Finally, you can hear some more ranting on the Ninja Consultant Podcast.

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Galapagos Effect in My Manga? It’s more likely than you think.

How the Margaret Barbaree situation can show us potential problems for the future.

A three part series on why anime and manga stand to become less relevant to Americas, and why there’s nothing you can do about it.


Part I;

While the recent events in Florida conger up fond memories of the “good old days” when manga and anime were the spearhead of true counterculture, it is a reminder of an endemic habitual problem of cultural separation with manga (and the anime that is produced from it) across international borders.

In these “good old days” fan communities could hold a special solidarity together, one that could only come from the collective misunderstanding, cultural mistrust, and feelings of ignorant repugnancy from mainstream Middle America which was directed at those subversive perverted unchristian Japanese comics and cartoons. This kind of story is indelibly marked in any otaku who is old enough to have actually bought a VHS tape; Morally overzealous sheltering parent is appalled that a book in the library might contain a reference to something other than good ol’ 1950’s family values (sex, supernatural powers, profanity, etc) and flips her lid because the mere fact that it is a COMIC makes it deliberately aimed at 11 year olds and couldn’t possibly be geared towards another audience.

According to the story the complainant mother said her son “lost his mind” when he read the book, and “Now he’s in a home for extensive therapy.” I would have to say, that “losing your mind” isn’t exactly easy and the only singular events that can trigger such things usually involve traumatic brain injury or smoking lots of crack. The fact that he’s been put in an institutional environment (basically jail with therapists) to "repair the damage" and isolate him from the rest of the evil world leads one to believe that there is a very P.Z. Meyers explanation that can be assumed: Bible thumper mom + young sheltered son saw cartoon boobies = freak out of a Margaret Perrin GOD-WARRIOR magnitude. It reminds me of a time when at Anime Crash we got a letter from some Christian ministry in Texas admonishing us for selling the “occultist poison of Japanese animation” to young Christians. They really hated Sailor Moon for some reason.

Other facts that should tell people that the source of the problem in this case lies not with manga, but with this Margaret Barbaree person, is the fact that her unsupervised son surreptitiously removed this book from the general stacks of the library and then took it home. HE STOLE THE BOOK, he didn’t check it out. Now this woman has refused to return this stolen property and has taken to using deceptive political techniques to get people to sign petitions to “ban pornography in the library” which she then re-brands “ban all anime in the library” (yes she did call it anime). Granted the manga in question Gantz, is probably not what I would recommend for an 11 year old, but this lady has as much credibility in her anti-manga cause as if she wanted to ban Playboy because her son stole one from a news stand.

Part II;

Why the hell does this matter? Well it’s certainly not a harbinger of some sort of neocon movement where the tea-bagger birthers are going to storm the likes of Jim Hanley’s and the CBLDF and start burning things. The problem here is more abstract.

Japan is “turning Japanese,” to use the phrase. There have been political speeches, economic seminars, and countless articles written about the Galapagos Effect shaping Japan’s future. This has been recently highlighted by the article about Japan’s “Digital Homeless” concept (you can see my apartment in that photo there), where high-tech gadgetry mask a very low-tech culture and life-style. Where technological innovation and service innovation live in two separate universes are the ATM machines which can do everything from count your change to write all your transactions in your bank book for you, but that completely close when banking hours are over. Corporate offices where everyone works like crazy but then everyone takes lunch at the exact same time, bringing tasks in progress to a stand-still, and employees who are given extra medical insurance and told by their companies to get checked up to combat potential alcohol abuse, but the next day receive a memo telling them that not attending this week’s nomikai (drinking party) with the boss would be bad for their career. In Japan, there is no negative stigma to being 31 years old and living in your Mom’s basement, because if your family is rich enough to have a basement in the first place, you’re in great shape.

The Galapagos Effect is most prevalently felt in terms of the technology and development of products in Japan. Phones that do things no one but Tokyo kogals need, cars that get an extra 0.2 km per gallon but all look the same, and TV subscription services that think it’s much more important to have that extra bit-rate than to develop original programming and provide a website where subscribers can communicate with each other about why they like the shows that they like. In Japan, that’s progress, but to the rest of the world, that’s meaningless. Japan has given us extraordinary innovations like instant ramen and the air-bag, but the people who develop these things are the exception, not the rule.

There’s also the generation gap, which is incontestably the most pronounced in all of recorded history. The “graying of Japan” will effect three things more than anything else:
1) Public spending: Get ready to see a lot more money go to retrofitting infrastructure with elevators, escalators, and resting spaces, along with policy put in place regarding any new construction.
2) Japanese pharmaceuticals: That’s the new power industry of Japan. People with macular degeneration don’t give two craps about 1080p versus 1080i. The DO care about the ability to properly give-a-crap, in the quite literal sense. Get ready to see some deregulation in the laws which govern the sale of pharmaceutical products and advertising (which here in Japan are very very tight… so tight that it is ILLEGAL for a non-pharmacy store to sell… wait for it… aspirin). FYI another company that is going to get a bump from this are the beverage companies like Asahi, Suntory, and Kirin (have Suntory and Kirin merged yet?), because the “drinkable health supplement” market is not as tight as pharma and these companies know it.
3) Advertising: Pay attention, because that's to do with Part III.

To answer the earlier question however, the basic crux of the argument is that Japan is changing as all cultures do, but unlike other cultures, there seem to be no inroads for future influence to come from outside, and the previous few sources of outside influence are long past the possibility of resuscitation. English speaking ability among students is down, the rate of students studying abroad is down, no real immigration is happening, Japan is a political joke (going through prime ministers like sticks of pockey at an anime convention), it had to bend the rules to maintain status in the G-20, and there’s a general malaise that no matter what anyone does, the rest of the world all has it’s eyes on China. It’s like the older sibling who gets demotivated when the younger one shows up and gets all the “awww how cute” attention.

The economy and culture is changing into its own unique and very disconnected introverted species.

Part III:

OK, so why the hell does THAT matter? Well that matters because if you are outside Japan, you DON’T matter. Japanese advertisers have Japanese products to sell and Japanese TV ads to buy. Ads on TV pay the bills at the end of the day for anime. These ads are now catering to this new Galapagos Effected audience, who don’t necessarily have totally different tastes (yet) than the rest of the world, but definitely a different thought process and hierarchy of priorities. UniQlo the clothing retailer and designer is one of the biggest firms in Japan and just won the Porter Prize for innovation and profitability. But you won’t see them advertise on anime (much). That company has enough money to make their own anime series if they felt like it, but they don’t. That means anime titles are going to get developed which specifically can demonstrate that they can get viewers that advertisers are going after, and those viewers are responsive to certain advertising while other types are not effective. This dynamic has become dissimilar enough from other cultural groups outside Japan, that the actual content of the anime is becoming less appealing.

For Manga, it’s still sales that pays the bills, but that doesn’t mean they will stay relevant. How manga is consumed by people in Japan is well known (daily train rides, down time, and the ever present manga-kissa). These people are all going to have lifestyle trends that move towards the more detached, and just like the Galapagos Effect is internalizing sensibilities towards technology, ways of doing business, and politics, it is internalizing tastes in entertainment media including manga. Since many anime titles are developed from manga, this trend has quite the ripple effect.

Stories and ideas that make for good reading in Japan, will continue to diverge from the kinds of subjects that international audiences can resonate with. If you’re an American otaku, chances are the kinds of titles you like, will continue to be gradually less relevant. At the moment, there’s nothing you can do about it, and the reason is simple. You. Don’t. Matter.

I’ve said this before, but every time I see a thread like this it just makes me want to scream about how ridiculously introverted it is and then send angry e-mails to people at AWO about the same thing. You may consume and really love anime. You may even understand the tip of the iceberg of Japanese culture because of anime, but you are not helping anime. As a matter of fact, you’re actually doing the opposite, and it’s insulting. By watching fansubs or reading scanlations, you are taking away any chance these works of art ever had at finding an audience in America that can support the people who work to get these made. Once that fansub is out there, the property’s freshness seal is broken for all time. No going back.

America had its chance. Japanese companies licensed properties that American companies said in good faith that the titles would resonate with American audiences and they could expect $x amount of TV ad revenue, $x amount of home media sales revenue, and $x amount of value to be added to other licenses like merchandise. Each title is different and each title got valuated accordingly. To avoid self-contradiction I will maintain that often the home media rights were inflated in the heads of the American licensees and they were seemingly willing to pay exorbitant amounts for titles that needed lots of expensive localization and overhead which was all very unrealistic to be made back in the then current state of the market. On the whole however, these numbers were actually not that big, but they did depend on a high percentage of very involved fans accessing these products (or “productions” if that makes you feel better) through the channels that licensed them in order to make revenue that would then be shared with the licensor. Japanese companies would take the proformas given to them by the American licensees and add them to their accounts receivable, which is s short term asset, and a factor in many important ratios which indicate a company’s solvency, credit rating, and things that a company needs in general.

What happened was that bootleggers (or fansubbers, it’s the same thing) got copies of these products, they localized them, and then they distributed them before anyone could even come up with a reasonable number of how much they were worth. This made the value of any license, $0. Companies didn’t initially notice this, and so they licensed properties that had long since started their product life cycle in the American market, and thought they could provide royalties. Fansubbers, and people who watch fansubs who think they’re not hurting the industry, you are the reason that the Japanese publishers and production companies don’t care in the least if you like what they produce or not. They owe nothing to you, and you are the reason that an entire generation of Japanese media professionals believe they lost the American market and the potential sales that could have come from that… sales that would have earned enough money so that they didn’t have to fire their friends.

So if Japanese companies couldn’t be profitable in their licensing to the American market, and if every time they did licensing something they would have to write off losses, then they are going to do the next best thing. Ignore America. Ignore you in their business, ignore your input, and ignore what stories or genres you would like to see. They have no reason to care, and so now the Galapagos Effect has worked its way into anime even stronger.

The American market has lost any chance to have significant input in the kind of anime productions that get made outside of directly investing. Get used to being on the outside looking in. And if you want to see more anime and manga covering the topics you like, and in the style you like… go make your own if you have the time and money. Or manga will eventually be as alien to Americans as mayonnaise on pizza. Still different, still uniquely Japanese, but quite unappealing. Difference in and of itself does not exclusively create appeal.

Welcome to Japan. These aren't the droids you're looking for.

SHORT VERSION OF ALL THAT:

There's always been something different about anime and manga from American sensibilities and sometimes the mainstream still pitches a hissy: That's good.

Japan is becoming more introverted and the kinds of things that appeal to the Japanese market are not that relatable to the American market no matter what. Creating fewer titles that anyone in America will like/follow: That's Bad.

The American market contributed just about nothing in terms of revenue to anime companies, so despite how many anime fans there are outside Japan, it will not effect mow many of those unrelatable manga and anime titles get produced. That's really bad.

The only way to fix that is to make the American market a source of revenue so that it can have any clout in the evolution of manga and anime: That's Impossible.

This problem goes away if it can get a foothold in China, after-all, 1% of the Chinese market is all you would ever need to stick around and stay healthy (that would be 136 million individual sales by the way).  Will companies ever think that the Chinese market will be anything other than the Wild West any time soon?  ...no probably not.   Will that get in the way of making lots of money?  ...no probably not.  So there's hope here.

To Commenters:

FYI; This blog for some reason gets lots of Japanese (and now Chinese) Spam ever since this. So the comments were moderated, BUT lots of messages still end up in the que. If your comment and it doesn't show up, it's because I didn't notice it in there during a purge.

Anger Management

Food With Thoughts.

How does one manage anger in a country so polite it makes Canada look like a nation of drunk Serbian nationalists? Well they use an international fast food chain to bring you “The Angry Whopper” from Bah-gah-kingu. That’s right BK has looked up “spicy” in the dictionary and has apparently found the word “angry” next to it.

So without further anything, here is the Angry Otaku’s look into an edible source of anger. Or is it that the burger is angry and not causing anger…? Oh right, who cares.



So there is the campaign going on. Burger King locations in Japan are apparently comfortable serving food that is emotional unstable! According to this official document on display down in the depths Shinjuku’s Keio Mall (between the JR and Toei entrances) there are some 3 different levels of angriness that you can request. As you can see, the direct translation of the levels on this sign are “meh” “watch-yo self” and “ZOMGWFT you be crayzay!"), no really that’s totally what it says, now go watch a fan-sub because you know all the Japanese you’ll ever need.

Back to the story here, being the adventurous type and loving spicy food in general, I asked for the strongest level.

As this BK didn’t have a dining area, I had no choice but to get it to go. In Japanese, “to go” is said “ore no oshiri o mitte” You should totally go say that to every Japanese person who works at a fast food place… actually just start saying it all the time that way you’ll never forget.

With a level of Japanese efficiency that makes you curse the day you have to return to the U.S., and deal with the products of a broken education system, the smartly uniformed staff had my order ready in under 3 minutes. Had I not been the only customer, they still would have had it ready that fast because I’m important dammit! Now, for an angry piece of BK broiled kick-ass, it was surprising to receive it in an unassuming BK brown paper bag, designed for the snively likes of chicken nuggets or gender-confused teriyaki burgers or any other emotion+menu item. This is an ANGRY WHOPPER and it could tear that helpless paper asunder with it’s anger-ray sesame seed eyes and tomatoes of fury! However I was assured that no chains or Kevlar were necessary as the Angry Whopper is kept in perfect hibernation until the inner wrapper is removed. Ah-so.



So let’s see what’s under there.


It did look pristine for fast food at first glance, with just one sauced up jalapeño falling out, indicating a massive amount stuffed inside. So far so good, and the sauce had that distinct smell of being spiced up deliberately with B-grade pickled chilies (hey it’s BK, not casa de awesome), all accompanied with plenty of onion. To confirm this, there needed to be some checking under the hood.

Immediately the “double tomato” or in Japanese the “futatsu no oppai” (remember to ask for this loudly if you like tomatoes, or just ad “ja-nai” if you don’t) was something that struck tones of some high quality burger-ness to follow, but alas here is where our problems start. They were so thick and slippery that they immediately started causing a loss of structural cohesion between themselves and the lettuice/onions layer. They had to go if this thing was going to still resemble a Whopper, Angry or Otherwise. Normally this isn’t an issue on the regular Whopper, but the extra peppers down there were adding to the slippery plant matter pile. There was also a mayo-like sauce on it which caused concern that it would dampen the awesome hot-ness.


After getting through about half I realized that someone here was angry, but it was most definitely me not the Angry Whopper. The spice level would be what many of my friends call “ooowwww that’s WAY too hot!” which is what I call, “getting there.” But with a little augmentation from some smuggled in Mexican awesome juice, we were back on the true angry trail.



I want to get another one of these. Although angry, it far surpasses anything McDonald's has been able to come up with, with the “Big Texas Burger” being the only thing that comes close. Wendy’s sadly is no more, and MossBurger isn’t what it used to be and has nothing new that isn't topped with a fried egg, while the Freshness Burger chain thinks it’s ok to use frozen ready to cook patties that look like they came from Topps and charge 3 times as much as everyone else. No dear readers, if you are in Japan and find yourself hungry, then the next step should be to find yourself “angry” (unless you’re a vegetarian in which case …this might not be the country for you ...ya pansy).

May 20th, 2010

You know what that means...


EVERYBODY DRAW MUTHERFUCKING MUHHAMAD (Peace Be Upon Him) DAY!!!!!!!

Are you mad? Well I can't see why. Maybe you can explain why. ...just try not to blow something up... or riot... or set someone's house on fire... or stab someone... or just make threats. Don't agitate, educate.

Now you may say that I am agitating, not educating, but I would say I am teaching a valuable lesson about American rights, human communication & learning, and the internet:
A) American Rights include the law's protection for saying things that in other places of the world would get you killed. Europe thinks they have this but they don't ever since they criminalized what they too broadly define as hate speech. Hate speech falls into two different categories... Speech that hates you, and Speech you hate. However you may not like it, BOTH kinds are protected by law in the United States. From advocating the legalization the the most ghastly of narcotic, to the reprehensible act of defending Adolf Hitler, everything between and beyond, is legally protected. It can only be killed in one place, the arena of public opinion.

B) It has long been established that reasons without explanations are not reasons but orders. Much of the time these reasons turned orders are hurled at people who see no authority in the party from which they originate. The originating party is then further frustrated by the non-compliance/non-understanding of what they believe to be logically sound reasoning. What is happening is that several steps are being skipped. One party is expecting another to fully understand the tacit knowledge they all take for granted as to why they say what they say, and the other responds with equally tacit knowledge as to why they are defensive. The missing steps are that both ideas need to pass from tacit, to explicit, and then back to tacit, before the other side can understand... think about it, have you ever truly learned anything any other way?

C) Seriously, welcome to the internet. This is where the most glorious and hideous conceptions and recitations the unfettered masses have to offer. You WILL be offended. You WILL be insulted. You WILL feel helpless against it. Take a lesson in humility that somewhere, someone is doing something that is the most insulting thing possible to you... with words, pictures, or abstract actions. And ask yourself, if your electricity went out an hour ago... would you feel the same way? The internet does not come to you. You go to it. Time is better spent on other things.

Dedicated to the cowards of Comedy Central, and the coward Molly Norris.