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

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

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

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?

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 ... the crazy starts about 1:45 in).  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.

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

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.

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

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.





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

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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.

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Xmas in Japan

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

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. -