Iwa ni Hana

Screenings of Japanese animation from 1924 to 1952 at La Cinémathèque Québecoise in Montreal

If you live in Montreal, do spare time to check out La Cinémathèque Québecoise's current programme of vintage Japanese anime 1924 to 1952. Here are a few that caught my eye:

'The Rose of Versailles' mascara spotted! (and anime-related goods in general)

I went to a cosmetics store the other day to replenish my stock of perfume* and guess what I spotted? None other than The Rose of Versailles mascara which I wrote about back on 30 May 2007.

I did not buy any though - I just took the picture above. (I do not use mascara because I work obscenely long ibank hours and I want to rub my tired eyes when I want to without worrying that I will look like a panda.)

Apparently, there are now The Rose of Versailles bathing powder sets as well.

So let me ask the same question that I already asked before: What is everyone's dream anime-related goods?

I still would like to see Le Chevalier D'eon shampoo and lipstick, Bakumatsu Kikansetsu Irohanihoheto disposable contact lens, Seirei no Moribito foods, Cowboy Bebop cigarettes (though I don't smoke), and a Honey and Clover clothing line. To this list, I would like to add Mononoke incense sets (see the Nue story arc), as well as Moyashimon sake and miso soup.

* Bulgari's Rose Essentialle

For how long do they maintain the official websites of anime series?

I went to check the Japanese official website of Le Chevalier D'Eon out of whim, and was surprised to learn that it was no longer maintained: http://www.chevalier.tv/

It has not even been a year since the series ended.

Could the anime industry be so short of marketing budget as to be unable to afford already dirt-cheap webhosting and domain maintenance?

In other words, if you are a fan of any particular series, for sentimental value it may be advisable to take as many screen captures of the official website while you can or (better yet) import the whole website into your harddrive. It will be a heck of a memorabilia that cannot be had for love or money. I will most certainly be doing that for Mononoke.

Kon Satoshi at JAM 2007: 'Internationalization destroys anime culture'

I wrote earlier that Kon Satoshi was to make a speech at JAM 2007 on the future of anime as he perceives it as an animator. Sure enough, he is quoted in the press. Below is my translation of a quote from him that appeared in this news article:

We do not have to aim for internationalization like Hollywood. If we produce standardized average works that anybody likes, we would be destroying anime culture with our own hands.
(ハリウッドのように世界展開を目指す必要はない。誰でもおいしく食べられるように作品を平均化するとアニメ文化を自分の手で壊すことになる)

Of course this quote may have been taken out of context. What I had trouble translating was sekai tenkai (世界展開). Taken at its literal meaning, it means 'global development,' but I think 'internationalization' is a suitable synonym.

Which begs the question: If Director Kon is merely unhappy with making anime that is liked by 'anybody,' wouldn't the right word be 'popularization'? Does he really mean by 'internationalization' that catering to the overseas market marks the downfall of anime? That anime should somehow retain its uniqueness by being of Japanese, by Japanese, for Japanese? If so, it seems odd that it is Kon Satoshi making this statement. If anything, he is one of the most 'internationalized' directors out there.

I know he may have referred to 'internationalization like Hollywood' as an example, but the title of the news story does read 'internationalization destroys anime culture' - so skeptical as I am as to the news story's faithfulness, he may have in fact said much more to that effect.

I may be reading too much into this, but this seems to be a typical way of expressing criticism of an internal problem in Japan if you don't want to make enemies: you soften the tone by laying the blame chiefly on outsiders (read: foreigners).

I wish I could find a full transcript of his speech somewhere online for clarification.

Markerting strategies of English anime ads and Japanese anime ads

I just noticed a curious thing about anime ads in English-language press - there are almost always quotations from critics.

Compare and contrast these two ads of Le Chevalier D'eon -

The English ad obviously has a few obligatory quotations from critics (though those critics do not seem to be well-known). The ad also describes the plot in the third person ('Obsessed with her murder. Possessed by her soul').

The Japanese ad, on the other hand, has a first-person voice: 'I shall offer all that I have (私はすべてを捧ぐ).'

Come to think of it, almost all English ads I have seen of anime have without exception quotation from one critic or another. Check out the ad of Howl's Moving Castle on the left.

Japanese ads, by contrast, seem to favour slogans in the first person. Check out the ad of Toki wo Kakeru Shoujo on the right, which says: 'Age of seventeen, just learned how to time leap.'

Granted, this may be accounted for by the fact that Japan has no anime critics as we know it in the English-speaking sphere.

A very interesting contrast this is.

Could this be a manifestation that English-speaking fans tend to objectify the anime-watching experience, whereas Japanese fans tend to subjectify it?

DCAJ to license around 20 anime series to Chinese video portal 8850.com of Wangyou Media

I was skeptical when I first read this news from a Chinese anime forum, but a search on Google seems to confirm that the news may not be bogus. Here is the gist of it:

• In the trial period from September 2007 to March 2008, around 20 anime series will be licensed from DCAJ to the Chinese video portal 8850.com belonging to Wangyou Media.
• New episodes will be free within 2 hours to one week of the Japanese airing time. If you want to watch older episodes, a monthly fee membership is required.
• The videos will be DRM-protected and subtitled in Chinese. The transferring speed would be 300～500kbps.
• A report will be made to the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry at the end of this trial period.

This is intriguing news indeed. Here are some questions just from the top of my head:

• Will 8850.com block foreign IP addresses, like so many licensed Japanese video sites?

It looks to me that you have to be a customer of a Chinese internet service provider in order to have access to that site. Besides, it would make sense for them to block Japanese IP addresses if only because of direct competition with Japanese video sites they may have licensed the same series to.

• Why are they trying this out in China out of all places instead of, say, the US?

China has a great anime pirating industry, of course, and this trial is supposed to investigate the means by which anime piracy may be eliminated. However, one would have thought that in terms of disposable income and relative strength of currencies, the US would be a much more lucrative market for this model of distribution to be launched in.

• What does the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) have to do with it?

Could it be a METI-directed economic policy to promote the Japanese anime industry, just as METI and its former bodies used to direct the heavy industries in Japan? One could only wonder.

[UPDATE: 16/08/2007]

Here is a Japanese article about Wangyou Media's cooperation with GONZO. I will comment more later:

ttp://www.gdh.co.jp/news/20070815.html

The anime piracy industry in the PRC: The report from the ground

So a certain regular of my anime blogs and I raided a few Mainland Chinese bookstores together. Let's just go through the exhibits:

The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi Official Fanbook. Approximately US$5.

'The Rose of Versailles' mascara

By way of celebrating the 35th anniversy of Ikeda-sensei's The Rose of Versailles, there are now The-Rose-of-Versailles mascara on sale:

(Source: ttp://mantanweb.mainichi.co.jp/web/2007/05/35_1.html)

I wonder if this is something to go with the new movie adaptation thereof. Anyway, it's about time they start making cosmetics and other stuff and bill them as anime-related goods. I am such a gullible consumer. I for one would be interested in Le Chevalier D'eon shampoo and lipstick, Bakumatsu Kikansetsu Irohanihoheto disposable contact lens, Seirei no Moribito foods, Cowboy Bebop cigarettes (though I don't smoke). It's a good way for the anime industry to generate extra income.

So what is everyone's dream anime-related goods?

Would you rather have more or less anime series airing at the same time?

I ran into a post by a Japanese blogger proposing a new way of scheduling anime series on TV networks. Here is some background info:

• There is now an average of 100 titles of animes series made in a year.

• The number of titles has increased fivefold in the past 30 years.

The competition is fierce and viewing rate is by no means impressive, even with the anime industry diversifying to cater to a grown-up audience. In light of the above, the Japanese blogger suggests the following:

• If there is only around an average of 20 titles made in a year, then the viewing rate per title would increase fivefold.

• The anime industry should take a leaf from the book of the Korean TV drama industry: The same series should be shown twice a week instead of once a week. If there is only half of the titles showing at the same time, the average viewing rate would increase tenfold.

• This way, anime would be able to compete with other TV dramas.

There are downsides to this proposal and illogicalities which I think are obvious to all, so I won't go into details here myself. But here is an open question to you all: Would you rather have more or less anime series airing at the same time?

(Source: ttp://reviva.blog1.fc2.com/blog-entry-537.html)

Anime that they do not want foreigners to see, and anime that they do want foreigners to see

It seems that 2007 is going to be an extremely fruitful year for anime. I for one am overjoyed to see the likes of Mononoke, Paprika, Genius Party, Ani*Kuri15, Byousoku 5 Centimeter, Tekkon Kinkurito, Stranger - Mukou Hadan, Toki wo Kakeru Shoujo and Seirei no Moribito being released. As I was saying earlier, I think there is an increasing trend that the anime industry is diversifying towards two extremes:

• A: Shows that do not rely on the sale of DVDs
• B: Shows that do rely on the sale of DVDs

To this I wish to elaborate that there is another set of extremes:

• A: Shows that they do not want foreigners to see.
• B: Shows that they do want foreigners to see.

(Please note that A and B in these two sets of extremes may overlap with each other but not necessarily so.)

This is something that has been on my mind since the series Bakumatsu Kikansetsu Irohanihoheto ended. For all the show's shortcomings (such as weak writing in the later episodes), it still comes off as an above average show. I am not aware of any news of it being licensed overseas yet. But on the whole, the impression it gives me is that it is a show they do not want foreigners to see. (It was broadcast online exclusively for free but they put in a smart DRM system to block foreign IPs.) Sure, it features more than one cool-looking samurai, stylish swordfights and an epic-sounding soundtrack - even with all the footnotes that are necessary to understand the transitional time from the Bakumastu period to the Meiji period, it still ought to be able attract a foreign audience effortlessly -

Basically, the plot of Bakumatsu Kikansetsu Irohanihoheto boils down this: Samurai A stops Samurai B from conquering the entire world and succeeds in doing so. It is not clear what Samurai A and Samurai B are motivated by respectively - though good old shimei 使命 or 'destiny' is cited from time to time as the reason for their actions. In terms of the 'spirit' of the show, there is something skin to Taiyo no Mokushiroku, which may be award-winning within Japan, but is not, like Paprika, making its round in film festivals across the globe so conspicuously. I suppose I must trace that 'spirit' to political insensitivity and unnecessary smokescreening. In a way, Bakumatsu, for all its pretense to historic authencity, is an escapist revision of history. It is - if you will - self-consciously quiant.

There are two other big-budget animated films coming out in 2007 that make you wonder if the Japanese producers themselves might not have been similarly self-conscious of whether foreigners would view them as quaint:

ICE
The trailer makes it clear that this is a mecha and yuri show (and unapologetically so). The story: In 2012, the males of humankind are all wiped off the face of the earth due to unknown changes in the polluted environemnt, and only the females are left. Those who remain are divided into two camps: those have resigned to a doomed future and want to live the rest of their lives in a hedonist manner, and those who want to change their fates by means of developing new technology.
(Source: ttp://www.project-ice.com/ice_top.html)

Vexville - 2077 Sakoku -
Another mecha show in the style of Appleseed. The story: In the early 21st century, there are major advances in prolonging human life and robot technology. Japan leads the world in these technologies. However, due to the dangers inherent in these technologies, the UN demands that strict regulations should be complied with. Refusing the UN's demand, Japan decides to implement sakoku or 'close-country' policy in 2067 and cuts off all contact with the rest of the world. In 2077, an American female soldier named Vexville lands in Japan and sees for the first time a country no foreigner has seen in the past ten years, and what she finds is nothing but a wasteland...
(source: ttp://www.vexille.jp)

What is one to make of these?

In the meantime, when I first saw photographs of Genius Party's exhibition (at TAF 2007, I believe?), I thought I was looking at the centennial celebration of grand men of letters from the Meiji era at a museum or else a concert hall filled with posters of conductors conducting symphonies or something. Even the trailers of Genius Party feature footages of each director nodding and gesturing furiously at work. Its official website even has Japanese and English written side by side. The point is, they take themselves seriously, and they want the world to know that they take themselves seriously. There is no mistake that Genius Party is something that they want to world to see.   

When I said in an earlier post that there are anime that rely on DVD sales and anime that do not rely on DVD sales, I forgot to factor in a formidable shadow market in the anime industry - namely hentai or animated adult pornography. Obviously, hentai studios employ animators and the same pool of voice actors (albeit under aliases) to act out the scripts. I have been told that this is a stable source of revenue because the demand for pornography, like food, remains more or less stable over time, though the question remains as to how profitable or saturated the market is. It also provides work for up-starting voice actors who would otherwise have to supplement their income with a part-time job. It seems to me that hentai anime is not something that they would want foreigners to see.

I have always thought of anime and manga as a rich minefield of psychological complexes. It fills a psychological reality in the way that cannot be filled by the acting of real people. Even with the harem and otome shows, one could pump the depths of those psychological complexes if one knew where to look.

I have also noticed that there seems to be an inverse relationship as to how artistic a show is and how much fanart/fanfic it inspires. The shows that do not rely on DVD sales push all the right buttons that invite instinctive and emotional responses. It is for this reason that they inspire passion and madness in fans. They generate a great quantity of fanart/fanfic that shows which do rely on DVD sales cannot hope to achieve. They can also be embarassing for its fans to discuss because it is like a map to their mental composition - talking about it seriously to someone who may or may not share your enthusiasm is only a short step away from letting others read into your personal problems. I think this may be a reason why, as a commentator mentioned in an earlier post, in Japan the real otaku does not discuss anime seriously in spite of being otaku.

It seems fair to say, that in a similar fashion there the anime shows they do not want foreigners to see because these shows are only a short step away from letting foreigners (rightly or wrongly) read into Japan's problems.

Some observations of the behavioural patterns of Japanese and English-speaking anime fans

Teamwork vs Non-teamwork

• If I have to describe the two fandoms through visual images, I would have them represented thus: the Japanese fans are like a classroom of pupils seated in neat rows of desks and none of the desks touches each other; the English-speaking fans are sitting in a circle with the desks pushed toward the walls of the classroom.
• There are primarily two modes of participation for Japanese fans: i) building individual fansites linked in a webring and; ii) anonymous postings at ch2 where the posters are so anonymous that they cannot even be identified by username. The former is the classroom where the pupils sit in rows - all order and discipline and doing-your-own-assignment-to-be-submitted-to-the-teacher. The later is the toilet where individuals scribble troll-ish ejaculations on the partition walls knowing that no one would ever find out who wrote what. These two modes of participation have existed for some years and are unlikely to change in the near future. You may think of them as the 'light' and 'shadow' fandoms in Japan.
• Modes of participation for English-speaking have changed over the years. Mailing lists and IRC used to be popular, now the platforms of choice seem to be blogs and community forums. Either way the innate tendency of English-speaking fans is to aggregate and interact. Fansub culture promotes team work (hence my analogy of pupils sitting in a circle). I am not aware of any separation of 'light' and 'shadow' fandoms among English-speaking fans.
• Not all Japanese fansites show up on search engines and not all fan blogs are equipped with RSS feeds. I have been told that this is because fanart and fanfic are technically infringements on copyright in Japan, which is why it is something of a taboo to link to their fansites without authorization. The point is, they tend hide away in some obscure corner of cyberspace. English-speaking fansites, by contrast, are out there to evangelize.

Logos vs Eros

• English-speaking fans tend to approach an anime series through the application of reason and logic. Japanese fans tend to approach an anime series through the application of emotion and feeling.
• Research on topics like historic background, mythical symbolism are more common with English-speaking fans. If something is unclear, the tendency among English-speaking fans is to look it up, write it up and serve it up, whereas the tendency among Japanese fans is to let it pass.
• You may call it the Rational Western Mind at work: on top of research, English-speaking fans like to take a body of details and develop theories of how these details are connected. After gathering the who, when, what, where and how, English-speaking fans want to know the why. I must say - although I frequent Japanese and Chinese fandoms as well, the most interesting analysis I have ever read all come from English-speaking fans.
• The creative genius of English-speaking fandom lies in identifying and decoding of the elements of an anime. The creative genius of the Japanese fandom lies in fanart.
• English-speaking fans are more sensitive to plot holes (ie. gaps in cause and effect), anachronisms (ie. failure to align time and space in the correct order) and supernatural intrusions into the material world (ie. the X factor that upsets the chain of causation). Many times have I seen English-speaking fans spotting obvious and not-so-obvious plot holes and anarchronisms which go unmentioned in the Japanese fandom. Also, English-speaking fans tend to react negatively towards the supernatural elements unless they see a good reason that justifies the incorporation of the supernatural. The dividing line between the supernatural and natural worlds do not seem to be as clearly marked for Japanese fans.
• Often there are Japanese fans on ch2 who say 'this show sucks' and not a word more. Sometimes the same remark, albeit worded differently, appear in over ten entries, only to be continued in ten more entries after a break. It is possible that the same person is repeating the same thing over and over again. It is also possible that several persons are there to express the same sentiment without stating why they hate it. On the other hand, the expectation in the English-speaking fandom is that if you called a show 'shitty', you had better be prepared to state your reasons. Japanese fans tend not to justify subjective likes and dislikes with objective reasons. English-speaking fans tend to justify subjective likes and dislikes with objective reasons. Granted, subjective likes and dislikes and objective reasons are closely related - it's just that there is a greater readiness among English-speaking fans to establish the link.

The above are quite desultory and I may have more to add later on. Meanwhile, please do not hesitate to agree, disagree, correct me or add to the above points.

After the vindication of otaku in 'Densha Otoko (電車男)', watch out for the next wave of vindication for fujoshi (BL fangirls)

Otaku are a formidable group of consumers, and as such, however they were much despised according to mainstream values, they are bound to come under a flattering light sooner or later. Of course I now predict the same fate for fujoshi (腐女子).

And now it is confirmed in the news: A novel called Fujoshi Kanojo 腐女子彼女 ('My BL-fangirl girlfriend') has become a hit in Japan.

I understand that the novel was originally a blog, and the gist of the plot is that a college student is in love with a pretty girl two years his senior, who just happens to be a BL fangirl. Apparently it's a hilarious work too.

Well, what else can I say - now that the book is out, wait for the video?