japanamerica

Bandai & Media Blasters out; Funimation IN--latest for Yomiuri

2012-01-26T20:49:00.004-05:00

SOFT POWER HARD TRUTHS / Embattled North American anime industry seeks redemption in digital streaming

Roland Kelts / Special to The Daily Yomiuri

For anime fans in the United States, the new year picked up where the old one trailed off--with news of another veteran distributor shuttering its operations amid industry layoffs and cutbacks.

On Jan. 3, Bandai Entertainment officially announced it would no longer release new DVD or Blu-ray titles in North America after 13 years in the market, canceling all releases scheduled beyond the first week of next month and laying off the majority of its staff and contractors.

One week later, North American anime distributor Media Blasters confirmed it was downsizing its workforce, asking most of its employees to continue working only as freelancers. While the New York-based company said it would proceed with its February and March releases, the combined announcements signal the radical shift under way in the overseas anime industry: The market for physical content is dwindling, and few believe it will return.

Bandai Entertainment President and Chief Executive Officer Ken Iyadomi told the Anime News Network that the decision to curtail its North American business was made in Japan.

"The pricing range for our products kept dropping in Western countries, and people tended only to buy sets with very reasonable prices, which we understand is what fans want, but it lead us to a different strategy than what Japanese licensors wanted," he said. "So we always had a problem [with licensors and consumers having different wants]."

The diminished market for the physical distribution of anime has long been anticipated by savvy industry players, whose efforts to shift to digital are beginning to pay off.

Last year, I wrote in this column about the efforts of online anime portal Crunchyroll.com to expand digital offerings of anime and other Japan- and Asia-related content. I also noted that Texas-based anime distributor Funimaton Entertainment had entered into a licensing agreement with Japan-based online file-sharer NicoNico via its global portal.

"It's all about content windows," says Lance Heiskell, Funimation's Director of Corporate Strategy.

Heiskell points out that anime distributors now need to offer content through a diverse array of channels. "Simulcasts, DVD and Blu-ray, digital download to own, ad-supported streaming, Netflix and broadcast. It has to be a coordinated effort. Our goal is to have our content on all platforms, devices, retailers and physical media so people can easily get exposed to anime and fall in love with the shows and genres."

While still in its infancy, the Funimation-NicoNico tie-up (called "Funico") has resulted in one big recent collaboration: the broadcast of the Jan. 20 premiere in Los Angeles of Fullmetal Alchemist: The Sacred Star of Milos.

Christopher Macdonald, CEO of AnimeNewsNetwork.com, says the absence of TV broadcasting in the U.S. anime market has made digital delivery essential.

Heiskell sees TV exposure as a key difference between the Japanese and overseas markets. TV enables audiences to sample unique content, he notes, by flipping through channels without making commitments or choices, recalling the way radio used to function for pop music. In Japan, anime is broadcast throughout the day and especially late at night, when more adventurous or provocative series can get valuable airtime.

Despite what Heiskell calls "gloom and doom" reports about physical products, Funimation remains committed to its North American DVD and Blu-ray businesses. He points me to an industry report issued earlier this month mentioning a 20 percent spike in Blu-ray spending in 2011, and adds that despite the shrinking shelf space in brick-and-mortar outlets, Funimation's sales via online retailers such as Amazon and anime specialist Rightstuf.com are increasing.

"[DVD and Blu-ray] are probably 80 percent of our overall business," Heiskell says. "Our fanbase has a collector mindset. They like to collect, display and show physical ownership of the shows they love. Online streaming is actually supporting our physical sales. In our consumer survey, seeing an episode online is the number one reason fans cite for purchasing a DVD or Blu-Ray. You can't display an anime collection that's on your computer."

Still, Heiskell is hardly celebrating the latest crises at Bandai and Media Blasters. Anime industry players don't view one another as opponents, he explains.

"People don't realize that the [anime conventions] are more like summer camps. People that are supposedly competitors are more like friends. Whenever a company struggles, it's not good for the industry. We need that friendly competition."

Kelts is a visiting scholar at the University of Tokyo who divides his time between Tokyo and New York. He is the author of "Japanamerica: How Japanese Pop Culture has Invaded the U.S." (www.japanamericabook.com), and the forthcoming novel, "Access."

L'Arc's official presser--MSG tix on sale Sat., 28

2012-01-26T17:34:00.001-05:00

L’ARC-EN-CIEL MAKE NEW YORK CITY DEBUT WITH HEADLINING SHOW AT MADISON SQUARE GARDEN

BAND MAKES HISTORY BEING THE FIRST JAPANESE ARTIST TO HEADLINE THE LEGENDARY VENUE

"The biggest band you've never heard of." - Kerrang!

L'Arc-en-Ciel, one of Japan's most celebrated rock bands, will make their long overdue U.S. return on March 25th with a performance at New York’s legendary Madison Square Garden. Originally scheduled for March 23^rd at The Theater at Madison Square Garden, the show has been moved to the world famous arena due to the overwhelming demand of fans. This will mark the first time a Japanese band headlines MSG. Tickets will go on sale this Saturday, January 28^th. Visit www.larc-en-ciel.com for details.

In support of their 20th Anniversary, L'Arc-en-Ciel will bring their epic pop rock - a sound that has sold over 40 million records, scored the band back to back #1 albums and broken numerous concert records – to their most passionate US supporters for only the second time in 20 years, creating an authentic J Rock pilgrimage for fans of the genre hungry to see the real thing.

Check out this live performance of “HONEY,” one of the band’s most popular songs: http://vimeo.com/34135893

Formed in 1991 in Osaka, Japan, L'Arc-en-Ciel has mesmerized crowds since the very beginning. No matter the year, with their unique melodies and edgy sounds, the band, responding to the zeitgeist, has had a hit song to match the times. Like all great musicians, the band's music has evolved over the years and has had a lasting influence. From their early work to their most recent offerings, which ranges from Goth rock to jangly guitar pop reminiscent of The Cure's lighter moments and U2-esque stadium anthems, L'Arc-en-Ciel has continually captured audiences worldwide.

In 2004 the band made their first and only performance in the USA (Baltimore) to an audience of 10,000 people; and has since performed in China (Shanghai and Hong Kong), Korea (Seoul), Taiwan (Taipei), and France (Paris), playing to millions of fans and proving that L’Arc~en~Ciel’s sound extends across borders.

Returning in May 2011 from a three-year hiatus, the band came together for two sell-out shows in aid of Japanese Tsunami relief at Tokyo’s Ajinomoto Stadium. The performances in front of 100,000 fans reestablished the band’s position at the center of the Japanese Music scene.

L’Arc~en~Ciel will embark on their “L’Arc~en~Ciel WORLD TOUR 2012” this March visiting Hong Kong, Bangkok, Shanghai, Taipei, New York, London, and Paris, before concluding back in Japan. Tour dates below.

L'Arc-en-Ciel recently released a spectacular box set called “TWENITY” which runs the full gamut of their music. Visit www.larc-en-ciel.com for more details.

L'Arc-en-Ciel will release a new album “BUTTERFLY” on February 8, 2012 via iTunes. Stay tuned for more information!

www.larc-en-ciel.com
www.facebook.com/pages/LArc-en-Ciel/139185632806476
https://twitter.com/LArc_official
www.myspace.com/larcenciel

L'Arc-en-Ciel WORLD TOUR 2012 dates:

March 3^rd        Asia World Expo Arena         Hong Kong, China
March 7^th        Impact Arena                          Bangkok, Thailand
March 10^th      Mercedes-Benz Arena            Shanghai, China
March 17^th      TWTC Nangang Exhibition Hall Taipei, Taiwan
March 25^th       Madison Square Garden         New York, New York
April 11^th        indigO2                                   London, UK
April 14^th        Le Zenith                                Paris, France

May 5^th Jamsil Gymnasium Seoul, Korea
May 12^th Nissan Stadium Yokohama, Japan

May 13^th Nissan Stadium Yokohama, Japan

May 19^th Universal Studios Japan Open Air Special Stage Osaka, Japan

May 20^th Universal Studios Japan Open Air Special Stage Osaka, Japan

PEN & WNYC Global Salon pics, 1/19/2012

2012-01-24T00:00:00.001-05:00

Global Salon Japan video simulcast

2012-01-19T15:30:00.002-05:00

Tonight's PEN/WNYC Japan event--"The Global Salon: Cities in Japan"--is apparently sold out, but it will be video simulcast and archived online here.

Starts at 7 p.m. EST/4 p.m. PST/9 a.m. JST.

Updated info below.

THE GLOBAL SALON: CITIES IN JAPAN

In collaboration with PEN World Voices Festival

Thursday, January 19, 2012

7:00 PM

Sold Out

Duration: 1 hour, 30 minutes

Venue: The Greene Space

44 Charlton Street, New York, NY
(corner of Varick Street)

The Global Salon: JAPAN presents compelling stories of courage and resiliency, while the country continues to face unprecedented hardships of increased suicidal rates and unemployment, before and after the Tsunami of 2011. Host Eddie Robinson will engage the audience and esteemed guests through captivating dialogue and enchanting musical themes about the country's economic future, advances in technology, and the preservation of its remarkable culture.

Conversation and Performance with

Keiko Matsui An icon of contemporary jazz. With nearly 1.2 million units sold in the U.S. alone and packed concert halls, she is one of the most recognized artists in the genre. Her elegant piano melodies and gentle jazz grooves have enormous appeal.

Akiko Yano, Japanese pop singer, has recorded with Pat Metheny, Thomas Dolby, The Chieftains, and The Yellow Magic Orchestra. Her singing style has been compared to contemporary English singer, Kate Bush. Akiko will collaborate with jazz icon, Keiko Matsui in an exclusive duet, together for the first time!

Ian Buruma, British-Dutch writer and academic who worked as a journalist, and spent much of his early writing career travelling and reporting from all over Asia. He has written such books as "God's Dust: A Modern Asian Journey," "Behind the Mask" and "The Wages of Guilt: Memories of War in Germany and Japan."

Roland Kelts, half-Japanese American writer, editor and lecturer, lives half of each year in Tokyo and New York. He is the author of "Japanamerica: How Japanese Pop Culture has Invaded the US," writes about contemporary Japan for several publications in the US and Japan, and is a frequent commentator on Japan for National Public Radio and the BBC.

Mr Yasuhisa Kawamura, Deputy Chief of Mission at the Consulate General of Japan in New York. He began his foreign service career in Washington D.C.(1984-6), and since then served in various countries, including Geneva, Jakarta (Indonesia), Brussels. Since his arrival in New York in 2010, he has played a crucial role working as a bridge between New Yorkers and the Japanese community.

Kitty says Hello to Mr Men

2012-01-13T17:50:00.000-05:00

My chat with Hugo Macdonald of Monocle 24's 'Midori House' starts at 37:00 here.

Kitty, of course, was born in London.

Meet Akiko Naka, Japanese IT entrepreneur @ 27!

2012-01-10T14:35:00.000-05:00

Modestly hopeful profile for The Christian Science Monitor:

Thirty ideas from people under 30: The Entrepreneurs

The Monitor interviewed young artisans, politicians, educators, entrepreneurs and faith leaders. And they have trenchant suggestions on how to improve the world. We'll serve this smorgasbord in bite-size servings of 3 to 7 profiles per day. Today's lineup of entrepreneurs includes a Mexican rain man, an Indian bike rental exec, and a Japanese web business recruiter.

- Monitor staff and correspondents

1 and 8

Enlarge

Akiko Naka, founder of wantedly.com in Japan. (Yuka Yamaguchi)

Akiko Naka: Japan's high-tech recruiter

In Japan, 27-year-old Akiko Naka is a triple threat: an independent IT entrepreneur in a culture that prizes conformity, a successful young professional where status is still rooted in age-based hierarchies, and a fluently bilingual and bicultural businessperson in a mono-ethnic and largely monolingual nation.

Oh, and she's a she – a successful female in a corporate culture that remains very much a man's domain.

Ms. Naka was born in Japan but spent part of her childhood in North Carolina, where her mother was teaching at Duke University. In her mid-teens, she went to school in New Zealand for three years. She returned to Japan to study economics at Kyoto University. A stint with Goldman Sachs followed – and turned her off to the sclerotic financial industry for good.

"Lehman Brothers went bust, and so many of my colleagues left the company," she says. "I realized that I wasn't happy anyway. I wanted to do something more creative, to go from zero to 100 on my own."

Naka left Goldman and devoted six months to launching her own website, magajin.com. Then she met Taro Kodama, in charge of starting Facebook in Japan. He recognized her talent, but she wasn't ready to commit.

"We agreed that I'd spend 50 percent of my time on Facebook and 50 percent on my own site. I learned so much from Facebook about leveraging social media and financial stability."

Now she has created wantedly.com, a bilingual social recruitment service. "I believe that people are becoming free agents, working as a group on small projects, then leaving and working on other projects. My idea is to promote a new lifestyle based on projects, rather than recruit for companies. I think that's how people will start working."

– Roland Kelts, Tokyo

It's official: L'Arc storms MSG in March

2012-01-04T01:27:00.000-05:00

Sexless Japan

2011-12-28T01:24:00.001-05:00

Story for The Guardian with missing grafs:

Japan leads the way in sexless love

Are a new generation of Japanese men really losing interest in sex? And if so, what's behind the malaise?

It's not easy being a young man in Japan today. Every few months sees the release of a new set of stats and stories trumpeting the same meme: today's Japanese men are unmanly – and worse, they don't seem bothered by it.

Tagged in the domestic media over the past few years as hikikomori (socially withdrawn boys), soshoku danshi (grass-eating/herbivore men, uninterested in meat, fleshly sex and physical or workplace competition), or just generally feckless, Japan's Y-chromosomed youth today elicit shrugs of "why?", followed by sighs of disappointment from their postwar elders and members of the opposite sex. With the country's economy stagnant at best, its geopolitical foothold rapidly slipping into the crevice between China and the United States, and its northeast coastline still struggling with the aftermath of disaster and an ongoing nuclear crisis, the reaction to a failure of Japan's men to take the reins, even symbolically, has evolved from whispers of curiosity to charges of incompetence.

In the most recent government study, published at the end of last month, the percentage of unmarried men spiked 9.2 points from five years ago. More telling: 61% of those unwed men reported not having a girlfriend, and 45% said they couldn't care less about finding one.

What gives? As anyone who has watched Japanese or Korean pop videos knows, the popular image of men in Asia, seen from a western perspective, is more effeminate than macho, rife with makeup, stylised hairdos and choreographed dance steps. Even so-called punks in Japan lean more to Vivienne Westwood than Malcolm McLaren – more familiar with fashion spreads than the spitting in the street.

And yet Japan was rebuilt from the ashes of the second world war into an economic and technological powerhouse with historically unprecedented speed on the backs of labourers, mainly men, laying the rails of the nation's astonishing bullet train, for example.

Why the generational malaise and indifference to sex?

Theories abound. The most provocative to me, a Japanese-American and longtime Tokyo resident, is that Japanese women have become stronger socially and economically at the very same time that Japanese men have become more mole-ish and fully absorbed in virtual worlds, satiated by the very technological wizardry their fore bears foisted upon them, and even preferring it to reality.

"I don't like real women," one bloke superciliously sniffed on Japan's 2channel, the world's largest and most active internet bulletin board site. "They're too picky nowadays. I'd much rather have a virtual girlfriend."

Virtual girlfriends became a sensation last summer, when Japanese game-maker Konami released its second-generation of its popular Love Plus, called, aptly, Love Plus +, for the Nintendo DS gaming system. Konami skillfully arranged for an otherwise deadbeat beach resort town called Atami to host a Love Plus + holiday weekend. Players were invited to tote their virtual girlfriends, via the gaming console, to the actual resort town to cavort for a weekend in romantic bliss. The promotion was absurdly successful, with local resort operators reporting that it was their best weekend in decades.

I tried to explain the phenomenon via a TV interview for a US cable station: the men who spent their yen on a weekend of romance with a digital lover were a subset of a subculture many times removed from mainstream Japan. They are known as otaku, or hyper-obsessive and often asocial men who seek solace in imaginary worlds (not unlike many artists and writers, I should add). Nevertheless, these were clearly young Japanese men of a generation that found the imperfect or just unexpected demands of real-world relationships with women less enticing than the lure of the virtual libido. You can't have sex with a digital graphic, but you can get sexually excited, and maybe satisfied, by one.

Of course, the insertion of the male libido into virtual domains is neither new nor strictly Japanese.

In 2004, American feminist writer Naomi Wolf wrote in New York magazine that “the onslaught of [Internet] porn is responsible for deadening male libido in relation to real women, and leading men to see fewer and fewer women as ‘porn-worthy.’” Earlier this year, the same magazine, in a story titled, “He’s Just Not That Into Anyone,” voiced the concerns of a young American man who discovered that he was faking orgasms with real women, largely because they were less satisfying than online offerings.

And earlier this month, the tanking marriage rate in the US cast the entire institution into question--especially for men with receding incentives.

The phrase "herbivore men" was coined by a female Japanese journalist in 2006. By 2009, the Japanese male's lack of ambition, sexual or otherwise, had become a media meme. With the latest reports in Japan, of men who can't get it up for real women who won't get married or have kids, the mutual gender-chill phenomenon has become mainstream. It may be the future, but is it really Japanese?

"Maybe we're just advanced human beings," says a Japanese friend of mine who won't let me use her real name over dinner last week in Tokyo. She is an attractive, 40-something editor at one of Japan's premier fashion magazines, and she is still single. "Maybe," she adds, "we've learned how to service ourselves."

L'Arc~en~Ciel go global in 2012--via anime

2011-12-22T19:39:00.000-05:00

Last column for the Yomiuri in 2011:

SOFT POWER HARD TRUTHS / L'Arc-en-Ciel blaze a global anime music trail

Roland Kelts / Special to The Daily Yomiuri

On my way into Kyocera Osaka Dome earlier this month, I passed a handful of young people of both sexes sporting dreadlocks, blousy shirts and kabuki-style white makeup. They were cosplaying as hyde, the coy lead singer of L'Arc~en~Ciel, the Japanese rock superstars who were about to go onstage.

I felt like I might have been at an anime convention in the United States--there were also a few women dressed as maids--but this was a rock concert first and a cosplay blowout second.

L'Arc~en~Ciel are now entering their 20th year of record-busting CD sales and sold-out concerts. I watched them perform two shows, with 40,000 seats both nights going at 9,000 yen a pop. The events were expertly paced and ludicrously high-tech--what you'd expect from a Japanese production that mixes carefully planned moments of seeming candor with expert efficiency.

Vocalist hyde live in Osaka

"In the beginning, L'Arc's music was associated with anime," manager Masahiro Oishi told me in a backstage interview. "But through experiencing their music directly, fans in several countries gradually came to recognize the band's worth based on its music alone. They have become genuine fans of L'Arc's music, whether or not they like anime."

J-pop and J-rock's connection to anime has long been both a burden and an opportunity. In the 1970s and 80s, anime soundtracks were heavily localized to attract American viewers, just as the anime narratives were butchered to fit expectations shaped by Hollywood and television.

But in the late 90s and early 2000s, the Internet connected global fans to Japanese creators with an immediacy that transcended distance. An edited Pokemon or Naruto episode was no longer acceptable. And original songs, written and sung by Japanese artists, were prized as a sign of authenticity.

American fans who knew no Japanese could still sing along with songs written and sung by Japanese bands like L'Arc.

L'Arc saw an opportunity in 2004 and had themselves booked at Otakon, the largest anime convention on the East Coast, for a live show at Baltimore's 1st Mariner Arena. The venue's 12,000 seats sold fast. Enthusiasm for the pairing of Japanese rock and anime was infectious.

"Nobody had tried anything like this [in the United States] before, certainly not on that scale," Otakon director Jim Vowles said. "But the announcement triggered a weeklong wave of Internet buzz, including buzz in Japan. And the show itself was fantastic and over-the-top, a real once-in-a-lifetime event. The reaction was overwhelmingly positive. People are still talking about that gig, almost a decade later."

Meanwhile, Japan's pop culture industries are facing an unpleasant but unavoidable truth: Growth at home is no longer possible. A chronically low birthrate and unstable economy guarantee that. And competition from South Korea and China is making Japanese pop culture producers increasingly antsy about their futures.

"Even before the global media started picking up on the band," Oishi noted, "the number of our visitors on YouTube went over several million, and the Facebook fansites of each region grew bigger. We are now receiving numerous requests for live concerts directly from foreign fans. There is no way for us to not do it now."

L'Arc~en~Ciel backstage at Kyocera Osaka Dome, Dec. 4

L'Arc released two singles this fall and winter, the hard-driving "Chase" and the infectious "X X X (Kiss Kiss Kiss)," and they are currently finishing a new studio album. Next year, they will embark on their first world tour, with stops in Europe, the United States and Asia.

Their song "Good Luck My Way" is featured on the soundtrack of the latest Fullmetal Alchemist anime film, "The Sacred Star of Milos," which will be screened across North America courtesy of veteran US distributor Funimation next month.

"We don't make any distinction between our otaku fans and our rock fans," hyde tells me. "We want them both, and we want to make them happy. I love Evangelion, but I also love Depeche Mode and Duran Duran."

Other band members cite Pink Floyd, Jeff Buckley and Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee as critical influences. In short, they offer a smorgasbord of Western influences, served up Japanese-style, with genuine spasms of talent.

But is that enough to tie together the West's rock and anime audiences in competitive markets like New York and London? We'll likely learn in 2012. Bassist tetsuya, a founding member, thinks the band has something unique to offer.

"We do the best show we can each time out, whether the venue is in Japan or elsewhere. We may not be able to do the same show with the same resources in the U.S. and Europe, but performance-wise, we'll make every show special."

And Otakon's Vowles believes that Japanese bands can succeed overseas--especially if they honor anime fans.

"Ever since that show in 2004, the bar has been raised considerably for fandom, and while there have been some awesome moments since, it remains a high point in our history," he says. "For Otakon, it made music a major element in our event going forward, and that had ripple effects throughout the anime convention world."

===

Kelts, a visiting scholar at the University of Tokyo, is the author of Japanamerica: How Japanese Pop Culture has Invaded the U.S. and the forthcoming novel, "Access."

the Original original--Love Reign O'er Me

2011-12-20T11:25:00.000-05:00

Another England

2011-12-19T06:39:00.002-05:00

Heading 'home' to another England--new and old.

Season's Greets.

On US Anime Cons for JP Foundation's WOCHI KOCHI

2011-12-17T07:47:00.000-05:00

Yumiko Sakuma nails the scene:

進化するコスプレ、マンガとアニメが世界を席巻する

ローランド・ケルツ
トマ・シルデ
マーク・ペレス
福岡俊弘

　今、海外のアニメ・コンベンションが、猛烈な勢いで人気を増している。
アメリカでは年間に200以上のコンベンションが開催され、ヨーロッパでも2000年にパリで初めて開催された＜ジャパン・エキスポ＞を筆頭に、東西南北に広がりを見せている。最初の年に3200人が参加した＜ジャパン・エキスポ＞の2011年の入場者数が19万2000人だったといえば、その勢いの凄まじさをわかっていただけるだろうか。欧米だけではない。ブラジルでは年に２度＜アニメ・フレンズ＞が開催されている。インドでは2011年に＜インド・アニメ・コンベンション＞が幕を開け、2万人の入場者を集めた。中国では、2011年11月に日中両政府の共催で＜日本アニメ・フェスティバル＞が開幕したが、来年は国交正常化40周年とあって、さらなる盛り上がりが期待できそうだ。東南アジアでも、2007年にはじまったベトナムの＜アクティブ・エクスポ＞など、コスプレを中心に徐々にイベントの数が増えている。

＜ジャパン・エキスポ＞フランス・パリ

＜アクティブ・エクスポ＞ベトナム・ハノイ

　日本のポップカルチャーに詳しく、「ジャパナメリカ　日本発ポップカルチャー革命」の著者であるローランド・ケルツ氏が解説する。

「フランスで最初に火がつき、アメリカが後を追った。その後ろに、南米、スペイン、イギリスなどがついてきているという印象です」
　90年代にはステレオタイプ化することができた海外のアニメファンだが、2000年代中盤から一気に多様化した。たとえばアメリカの「アニメファン」といえば、アジア系アメリカ人や白人の男性が中心で、日本でいうところの「オタク」のイメージに近い若者が主流だった。
「今＜ニューヨーク・アニメ・フェスティバル＞では、アフリカ系アメリカ人、ヒスパニック、ヨーロッパ人が優勢で、むしろアメリカの白人は少数派になっています（ケルツ氏）」

＜ニューヨーク・アニメ・フェスティバル＞アメリカ・ニューヨーク

　アメリカ最大のコンベンション、ロサンゼルスの＜アニメ・エキスポ＞を運営するソサイエティ・フォー・ザ・プロモーション・オブ・ジャパニーズ・アニメーション（SPJA）のCEOであるマーク・ペレス氏によると、西海岸では、2000年頃には圧倒的に多かった男性客の割合が、入場者の増加とともにどんどん低下し、今ではやや女性客のほうが多くなった。2011年には、過去最高の12万人を動員した。
「白人、ヒスパニックやネイティブ・アメリカンが多く、アジア系アメリカンが占める割合が低下しています（ペレス氏）」

＜アニメ・エキスポ＞アメリカ・ロサンジェルス

　女性客が増えているのは、パリの＜ジャパン・エキスポ＞でも同様だ。創立者のひとりであるトマ・シルデ氏が語る。
「オープン当初は、参加者のほとんどが男性だった。2006年頃から音楽やファッションを通じて日本文化を発見した女性たちが急激に増え、今では少女漫画が小さなブームになりつつあります」

＜ジャパン・エキスポ＞フランス・パリ

海外のアニメ・コンベンションが急速に広がっている理由に、若者たちの間でコスプレが圧倒的に支持されていること、そしてコスプレファンの間で、出会いの場、コミュニティが集まる場として機能していることがある。「アメリカの田舎では、インターネットでアニメと出会った若者たちが、地元で仲間を探し、車を共同で借りて、アニメ・コンベンションに出かけていく。彼らが求めているのは、日常生活からの逃避です。コンベンションの開催期間中は、コスプレでキャラクターに扮することで、自分自身になることができる。そこには自分と同じことに興味をもった人たちで形成されるコミュニティがあって、理解しあうことができるのです（ケルツ氏）」
　週間アスキーの元総副編集長で、＜Tokyo Kawaii Magazine＞の編集長、福岡俊弘氏は2009年に初めてパリの＜ジャパン・エキスポ＞を訪れて以来、バルセロナ、マルセイユ、ニューヨーク、バルチモア、ロサンゼルスなど数々のコンベンションに足を運んできた。
「コスチュームに身を包んだ人々が電車に乗ってコンベンションに向かい、会場にはいたるところで撮影隊が写真を撮っている。日本のアニメ文化がこれだけ受け入れられていること、そしてその自由な雰囲気に驚きました」

日本のイベントといえば、コミックマーケット（コミケ）が代表的で、３日間で60万人を動員するが、同人誌販売が中心で、コスプレがメインではないのが大きな違い。海外のコンベンションでは、たとえば＜アニメ・エクスポ＞では参加者の75％が少なくとも1日はコスプレに参加するというくらい、コスプレ文化が浸透している。　海外でのコスプレブームに呼応する形で、日本でもコスプレ専門のイベントがある。2003年から名古屋で行われている＜世界コスプレサミット＞だ。ブラジルには＜ワールド・コスプレ・サミット＞という予選が行われているし、各地のコンベンションで予選を行うこともある。昨年は＜世界コスプレサミット＞の優勝者がベトナムを訪れたり、コスプレを通じた国際交流も盛んになってきた。

＜世界コスプレサミット＞日本・名古屋

　海外でちょっとしたブームを巻き起こしているコスプレだが、国や地域によって、アプローチが微妙に違うのも興味深い。
「メリーランド州バルチモアで行われる＜オタコン＞では『鋼の錬金術師』のマスタング大佐が死ぬシーンを、電話ボックス付きのコスプレで表現している人が拍手喝采を浴びていた。パフォーマンス性が高いアメリカのファンに対し、パリのファンは、原作に対するリスペクトから、キャラクターに忠実であることをよしとする。パリとアメリカの間には、競争心のようなものもあるようですよ（福岡氏）」

＜オタコン＞アメリカ・ニューヨーク

　お国柄が現れるのはコスプレだけではない。
「スペインでは2010年の書籍のベストセラー・ランキングの1位が村上春樹だったほどの日本ブームが起きている。アニメでは『クレヨンしんちゃん』が老若男女問わず知名度が高い。マルセイユでは、カラオケ大会がメインのイベントで、来場者たちがポケモンの主題歌を日本語で合唱する姿を目撃しました。また海外で最初に初音ミクの存在を感知したのは、ハワイの＜カワイイコン＞だったんです（福岡氏）」
　ニューヨークの＜アニメ・フェスティバル＞が、都会の日常のなかでふらりと出かける気楽なイベントである一方で、ロスの＜アニメ・エクスポ＞は、年に一度、気合を入れたコスプレイヤーたちが全米やカナダからやってくる巨大なお祭り。シアトルでは、若者から中年まで様々な世代がコスプレを楽しむ。パリでは＜NARUTO-ナルト＞や＜ONE PIECE＞、ロスでは＜BLEACH＞、＜Axis Powers　ヘタリア＞というように、人気の作品も微妙に異なる。福岡氏のコメントからもわかるように、スペインの＜サロン・デル・マンガ＞では、「クレヨンしんちゃん」や「うる星やつら」など、懐かしいアニメのコスプレをしたスペイン人と会えるという。

＜サロン・デル・マンガ＞スペイン・バルセロナ

　海外のファンたちは、漫画やアニメの情報をどうやって得ているのだろうか？
＜ジャパン・エキスポ＞のシルデ氏によると、フランスでは漫画作品が流行するためには、フランス語の翻訳版が出版される必要がある。一方、アメリカでは、合法な過程で流通に乗らなくても、インターネットを介して情報がやり取りされ、正式に英語化される前に火がつくこともある。
「アニメを視聴する人口は増えていますが、そのぶん、違法のメディアを無料で視聴する層も増えている。これはひとつの課題です（ペレス氏）」
「インターネットの力は大きい。オンラインのコミュニティが存在して、アニメがインターネットにアップされると、1日、2日という時間で字幕がつく。メジャーな流通に乗っていないからこそ、ソーシャルの力が働きやすいのかもしれません（福岡氏）」
　今のところ、前述したメジャー作品の人気が圧倒的とはいえ、現在日本で支持を集める「進撃の巨人」や「君に届け」などがアメリカでブレイクする日も遠くないのかもしれない。
　日本のアニメがこれだけ受け入れられる理由はなんなのだろうか。福岡氏は＜オタコン＞を訪れた際に、「NANA」の大ファンだというアフリカ系アメリカ人の女性に話を聞いた。
「聞いてみると、女性がはまれるエンターテイメントはアメリカには意外と少ないというんです。『NANA』は日本の物語ですが、田舎から都会に出る女性の成功物語であり、女性同士の友情や恋愛といったユニバーサルな要素がたくさんある」
「日本の漫画やアニメは、大人にも子供にもアピールする点を併せ持っている。アニメーションの側面が子供を惹きつけ、大人が楽しむためのストーリー性やアクションがある。アメコミとの最大の違いはそこです（ペレス氏）」。

アニメ・コンベンションの関係者たちは、将来をどう見通しているのだろうか。
「今後想像できるのは、日本のアニメに気がついたアメリカの映画スタジオが、たとえば宮崎駿氏のような日本のアニメのクリエーターとタッグを組むこと。日米共同の作品が見られるかもしれません（ケルツ氏）」
「クオリティの伴った拡大を目指しています。参加者が安心して楽しめると同時に、企業にもアピールするコンベンションとして成長していきたい（ペレス氏）」
　ファッション、音楽、食など、多岐にわたるプログラムで他のコンベンションと違う＜ジャパン・エキスポ＞のシルデ氏はこう語る。
「＜ジャパン・エキスポ＞の入場者の大半はアニメファンですが、アニメを通じて日本文化と出会い、日本のことをもっと知りたいと望むファンも多い。アニメ以外の文化に興味を持ってもらうことがひとつの目標です」

ローランド・ケルツ
アメリカ人の父親と日本人の母親の間に生まれ、アメリカと日本で育つ。オーバリン大学、コロンビア大学を卒業後、ニューヨーク大学、ラトガーズ大学、バーナード大学などの教壇に立つ。アメリカでは「プレイボーイ」「サロン」「ヴィレッジ・ヴォイス」「コスモポリタン」「ヴォーグ」などの雑誌や新聞に寄稿する。現在は東京とニューヨークを数ヶ月ずつ行ったり来たりしている。著書に「ジャパナメリカ　日本発ポップカルチャー革命」がある。http://japanamerica.blogspot.com/

トマ・シルデ
1979年フランス生まれ。ビジネス・スクールを卒業後、音楽系出版社勤務を経て、複数のパートナーとともに＜ジャパン・エクスポ＞の創設にかかわり、2000年の第一回開催に尽力する。2004年には漫画の出版社＜Taïfu Comics＞を、2009年にはポップ・カルチャーのイベント＜コミック・コン・パリ＞を創立するなど精力的に活動する。現在は＜ジャパン・エクスポ＞のバイス・プレジデントを務める。http://www.japan-expo.com/

マーク・ペレス
大学時代に友人の誘いでアニメのクラブに参加して＜カウボーイビバップ＞と出会ってアニメに興味を持ち、2002年から＜アニメ・エクスポ＞にボランティアとして参加。2004年からスタッフに加わり、2007年には＜アニメ・エクスポ＞を運営するソサイエティ・フォー・ザ・プロモーション・オブ・ジャパニーズ・アニメーション（SPJA）の役員会に迎えられ、2009年にCEOに就任。2010年に一度CEO職を退いたが、2011年に復職した。http://www.spja.org/

福岡俊弘
1957年生まれ。1989年アスキー（現：アスキー・メディアワークス）入社。 92 年よりパソコン情報誌「 EYE ・ COM 」編集長。 97年から『週刊アスキー』編集長を務めたほか、ふたつの雑誌の創刊にも携わる。2003年からは同誌編集人。現在はiPhoneで読む海外向けの雑誌アプリ＜Tokyo Kawaii Magazine＞の編集長を務める。

Yer Lotus?

2011-12-10T11:24:00.001-05:00

Tokyo Drift
Meet Japanese anime voice actor Junichi Suwabe—the kind of man who drives the city for pleasure.
By Roland Kelts | Photographs by Sebastian Mayer

Some nights after work, Junichi Suwabe likes to take the long way home, adding an hour or so to his commute through Tokyo just for the pleasure of driving. He courses over the elevated expressways encircling the world’s most populous city in his carbon grey Lotus Evora — one of only 50 such models in the entirety of Japan — and takes in the view. Tokyo at night is a luminous jumble of skyscrapers, flashing and streaming neons, and flickering four-storey video screens stretching in all directions, seemingly borderless. Seen via satellite, Tokyo is the brightest city on earth.

“There are many places in Tokyo that are beautifully lit at night,” Suwabe says, gesturing broadly toward the park and skyscrapers outside his recording studio office. “And driving my Lotus is a real mood-changer. Driving it past all those lights can really make me feel much better.”

Suwabe is something of a celebrity in his homeland, famous on sound if not on sight. A seasoned voice actor and popular radio talk show host, his rich, edgy baritone can be heard frequently throughout Japan on television and movie voiceovers and in internationally renowned anime series like Bleach, Gundam, and Vampire Knight — not to mention such global video game megahits as Final Fantasy and Street Fighter. He is also an active blogger and deejay, mixing overseas tracks with Japanese sounds to produce infectious hybrid recordings available on CDs and through his Internet radio show.

“I use my voice to express things,” Suwabe says, shrugging in modesty. “That’s the work I do.”

This slim, diminutive, and very intense man has been focusing on my questions during our conversation like a seasoned interviewee accustomed to public probing. Intensely protective of his privacy, he politely asks me not to print the location of his home even as he cultivates his fans with obvious affection. In a nation riddled with carbon-copy salarymen, Suwabe is an original. His sartorial ensemble is strictly cool casual: open-necked cotton shirt, dark plaid vest, tapered slacks, and chic sneakers. This is what he wears to work after walking his pet chihuahua, a lean and bright-eyed fellow aptly named Zero.

“I’ve always been drawn to the casual coolness of the Lotus design,” he says when asked about what drove him to seek out this particular model. “You can immediately see that it’s a classic sports car, but it’s not overly garish or flashy; it’s subtle, no matter which model. I really love sports cars, and the Elise and other models are definitely sports cars first, and that’s good. But my Evora is even more subtle.”

In many respects, Japan is a nation of restraint. Politeness, subtlety, and etiquette are critical to interactions, and it is often too intricate for foreigners to decipher. The Japanese language is, by Western standards, indirect, vague, and characterised more by nuance than necessity.

“I chose a subtle colour and design deliberately,” he says as we walk along an adjacent park beneath the bright yellow leaves of ginkgo trees. “I wanted to express the fact that I was more settled down in my 30s. Outside, it’s a calm car, and a lot of the calmer colours match the design of the Evora perfectly. But the interior is paprika, a reddish colour.” He smiles. “There’s some real passion inside, you see.”

Suwabe’s passion for cars, and for the Lotus in particular, emerged early in his life and was rooted in popular culture, the very domain that would eventually become his discipline. Japan’s post-World War II economic juggernaut hit its stride in the 1970s, when a supercar boom swept the nation. As a boy, Suwabe regularly encountered Ferraris, Lamborghinis, and Porsches, and as the F1 bug bit into his nation’s deeper passions, he became enamoured with the Lotus racing team.

“I’ll never forget the John Player Special colours sported by Lotus,” he says. “I loved that.”

But it was narrative — the stories of popular culture from both home and overseas — that hooked Suwabe on the distinctive appeal of Lotus design and style. While he always loved cars, the now-infamous appearance of a Lotus in The Spy Who Loved Me in 1977 made a marked impression. “I saw the movie and the Esprit submarine car and thought to myself, ‘Wow, so that’s it,’” he says. “Very cool.”

"It's very hard to put into words the experience of the Lotus. It's about the senses. Just by driving it, I feel a surge in myself."

At roughly the same time, a Japanese manga [graphic novel] series revolving around cars and car-racing hit the shelves. One in particular, The Circuit Wolf, was aimed at a young male audience and featured a memorable car as the weapon of choice on the racetrack.

“The main character drove a Lotus Europa,” Suwabe says, as if explaining the obvious. “I loved the story, and I loved the car. As an adult, after trying many different kinds of cars, I had to learn about the history of the Lotus. And it really inspired me. After that, it was the only car I ever wanted to drive.”

Youthful passion often gives way to pragmatism, of course. But here’s where Lotus’s attributes have come to suit the 30-something Suwabe to a T. “Lotus makes lightweight sports cars,” he says, running his hand across his Evora’s hood to demonstrate, “and they make the best cars I’ve ever driven. This is especially critical when you consider Japan. The traffic situations we have here are brutal; there’s not much room.

Large engines, large encasements, and heavy cars — there’s just not enough space here to manoeuvre that kind of vehicle. We don’t have many places where you can use a car like that to its fullest. Instead, you need a car where you can enjoy the handling and savour the joy of driving even when you have to drive rather slow.”

Suwabe sighs and eases back into the arms of his reclining chair. “After comparing lots of different types of cars, I concluded that Lotus was the very best.”

Minimalism, restraint, and pragmatism are three characteristics that have typified Japanese culture and aesthetics for centuries. It’s no accident, after all, that the nation which invented the Walkman has also produced the haiku poem and the ikebana art of flower arrangement — all forms of expression that speak to the essence of their materials.

“It’s very hard to put into words the experience of the Lotus,” Suwabe concedes. “It’s about the senses. Compared to other cars, the Lotus gives you more of the feel that you’re in control, that you’re really there. This may sound spiritual, but I feel myself being one with the car. I really feel that strongly. Just by driving it I feel a surge in myself. I feel uplifted.”

In a city of 30 million people, experiencing the sensation of being an individual — let alone an individual connected to the car you’re driving — is no small feat. It’s important, also, to note that Suwabe is not your typical working stiff in the Tokyo megalopolis; his fame and creativity as an entertainer and artist mean that he can work on what the Japanese call “flex-time” — flexible hours independent of the rush-hour madness.

Still, he needs to commute — and he needs to commune with the masses.

“When I’m stopped at a traffic signal in downtown Tokyo, the reaction is incredible,” he says. “Pedestrians at the crosswalk just start staring at my Lotus, then stare at me, then back at the car. I actually worry that they might bump into someone. And it’s then that I know they’re real car lovers.”

Would he define himself similarly?

“Oh, yes,” he says. “I read magazines, of course, and check out information on cars on all sorts of web sites, too. I also attend every Tokyo Motor Show. Recently there has been a decreasing number of foreign makers, but that’s supposed to change next year, which is good news.

There really is no viable Japanese competitor in the sports car market. Europe still dominates, and Lotus is at the top.”

Suwabe adds that the conventional appeal of the sports car is about speed, but that’s not so helpful in crowded, space-saving urban Japan. There’s nothing comparable to the autobahn here — nor are there straight, horizonless freeways, given that the Japanese archipelago is just slightly smaller than the state of California.

“I can only go 60 kilometres per hour, according to the law,” he says. “Late at night when the traffic is light…” He pauses. “Look, please just say I go the legal speed. Maybe on a straight stretch I can get up to 100, and I’m not saying I never do that, but even going the legal speed limit, the Evora is so low to the ground and handles so well, it feels like you’re going faster. It really does.”

Suwabe has owned both the Lotus Elise and the Exige, and since the Evora is his third, it’s safe to say he’s drunk the Kool-Aid. “You can really feel [Lotus founder Colin] Chapman’s original principles in the Lotus car of today,” Suwabe says. “His belief in the power of brilliant handling and a direct connection to the driver. No other car drives like the Lotus.”

Japanamerica returns to NYC w/PEN & WNYC, Jan 19

2011-12-09T12:53:00.001-05:00

The Global Salon: Cities in Japan

In collaboration with PEN World Voices Festival

Buy Passport to all Global Salon Events

Thursday, January 19, 2012

at 7:00 PM
Duration: 1 hour, 30 minutes
Tickets: $25.00
Buy Tickets
The Global Salon: JAPAN presents compelling stories of courage and resiliency, while the country continues to face unprecedented hardships of increased suicidal rates and unemployment, before and after the Tsunami of 2011. Host Eddie Robinson will engage the audience and esteemed guests through captivating dialogue and enchanting musical themes about the country's economic future, advances in technology, and the preservation of its remarkable culture.

Conversation and Performance with

Keiko Matsui An icon of contemporary jazz. With nearly 1.2 million units sold in the U.S. alone and packed concert halls, she is one of the most recognized artists in the genre. Her elegant piano melodies and gentle jazz grooves have enormous appeal.

Akiko Yano, Japanese pop singer, has recorded with Pat Metheny, Thomas Dolby, The Chieftains, and The Yellow Magic Orchestra. Her singing style has been compared to contemporary English singer, Kate Bush. Akiko will collaborate with jazz icon, Keiko Matsui in an exclusive duet, together for the first time!

Ian Buruma, British-Dutch writer and academic who worked as a journalist, and spent much of his early writing career travelling and reporting from all over Asia. He has written such books as "God's Dust: A Modern Asian Journey," "Behind the Mask" and "The Wages of Guilt: Memories of War in Germany and Japan."

Roland Kelts, half-Japanese American writer, editor and lecturer, lives half of each year in Tokyo and New York. He is the author of "Japanamerica: How Japanese Pop Culture has Invaded the US," writes about contemporary Japan for several publications in the US and Japan, and is a frequent commentator on Japan for National Public Radio and the BBC.

Hosted by:

Eddie Robinson

Evening includes a complimentary glass of wine or beer and snacks that honor the country of exploration.

London w/Mum for Paper Sky (JP)

2011-12-07T10:41:00.001-05:00

My travel column for Japan's Paper Sky magazine on trekking back home to London with my mother, Kaori, who hadn't been in 40 years.

"Redline" screening now in LA; NYC in Jan.

2011-12-06T07:30:00.000-05:00

Wrote about Madhouse's phantasmagoric Redline and interviewed creators Koike and Ishii two years ago for stories in the US (here), Japan and Malaysia (here). Now it's finally screening in the US ahead of DVD and Blu Ray releases next month.

via crunchyroll news:

"Redline" Anime Film to Screen in LA and New York

Scott Green

In celebration of its 20th Anniversary, Manga Entertainment is set to release Takeshi Koike's much praised Redline and Studio 4ºC/Russian co-production First Squad: The Moment Of Truth on Blu-ray and DVD January 17th. Ahead of this video release, Redline will also have a limited theatrical run in Los Angeles starting December 2nd and in NYC starting on January 6th.

Redline—created by studio Madhouse (Paprika, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, Summer Wars)—is about the biggest and most deadly racing tournament in the universe. Only held once every five years, everyone wants to stake their claim to fame, including JP, a reckless dare-devil driver oblivious to speed limits with his ultra-customized car—all the while, organized crime and militaristic governments want to leverage the race to their own ends. Amongst the other elite rival drivers in the tournament, JP falls for the alluring Sonoshee—but will she prove his undoing, or can a high speed romance survive a mass destruction race?

Backstage Lark w/L'Arc-En-Ciel

2011-12-05T07:09:00.001-05:00

newhalfu life in tokyo

2011-12-02T08:19:00.001-05:00

w/Chris McDonald of Anime News Network @ FCCJ Tokyo

2011-12-02T07:58:00.001-05:00

Want to help Japan cheap? Buy the Cosplay Calendar

2011-11-30T07:41:00.001-05:00

Online HERE

Cosplay for a Cause 2012 Cosplay Calendar is a must have for any fan of cosplay. Rarely has something been done before with such a wide assortment of cosplayers, and who knows when you will see all these beautiful cosplayers together again. This calendar is full of high quality, never before seen photos, specifically done for this project. Each month will also come with a small illustration done by one of the 4 professional comic book artists involved in the project.
At full size the calendar will open to 11x22, allowing each beautiful image to be displayed at 11x17. The staples in the middle can be easily removed when the year is done so you can save your favorite photo!
So, here is your chance to help raise money and awareness for disaster relief in Japan while supporting your love of Cosplay! Do your part and help get the word out! And get your calendar while supplies last.
Thank you to everyone who has donated their time and energy to aiding the country that has brought us so much joy and inspiration over the years. Domo arigatou gozaimasu!

Tokyo's back--says New York mag

2011-11-30T07:16:00.001-05:00

The Urbanist’s Tokyo

A city that has turned itself back on again.

Add Comment

By Daniel Krieger
Published Nov 20, 2011

Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden.

(Photo: Iwan Baan)

This spring, the Tokyo Sky Tree, the world’s tallest broadcast tower (with restaurant, of course; this is Tokyo), is set to open: an apt symbol of the capital getting back on its feet after the gravity-altering March earthquake. But following two decades of economic malaise and a revolving door of prime ministers—six in the past five years—it’ll take a lot more than a 2,000-foot tower to set things right. Still, economic growth is up for the first time since the quake (alas, for visiting Americans, the yen is high too; at press time it was at 77 to the dollar), and there is a sense that things are finally starting to get back to normal—even as, notes one salaryman, TV network “NHK has been broadcasting a radiation map of Tokyo every day.” (There are, according to monitors, no dangerous levels of airborne radiation.) Meanwhile, one of the most noticeable changes in daily life is a heightened awareness of energy use, which some Tokyoites feel was long overdue anyway. You can see this in more use of natural light, real-time display readings of power consumption, and spirited anti-nuke marches, unheard of in the pre-Fukushima era. Besides that, the mood in the city is a bit more subdued, which may not be such a bad thing, says Roland Kelts, author ofJapanamerica: How Japanese Pop Culture Has Invaded the U.S. “To some extent, a slightly calmer Tokyo is more pleasant.”

Occupy Wall Street?

2011-11-28T09:34:00.001-05:00

Kalle Lasn spends most nights shuffling clippings into a binder of plastic sleeves, each of which represents one page of an issue of Adbusters, a bimonthly magazine that he founded and edits. It is a tactile process, like making a collage, and occasionally Lasn will run a page with his own looped cursive scrawl on it. From this absorbing work, Lasn acquired the habit of avoiding the news after dark. So it was not until the morning of Tuesday, November 15th, that he learned that hundreds of police officers had massed in lower Manhattan at 1 A.M. and cleared the camp at Zuccotti Park. If anyone could claim responsibility for the Zuccotti situation, it was Lasn: Adbusters had come up with the idea of an encampment, the date the initial occupation would start, and the name of the protest—Occupy Wall Street. Now the epicenter of the movement had been raided. Lasn began thinking of reasons that this might be a good thing.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/28/business/media/the-branding-of-the-occupy-movement.html?

Crunchyroll, Funico and streaming anime - latest @ Yomiuri

2011-11-24T01:32:00.001-05:00

SOFT POWER HARD TRUTHS / Overseas anime market online only

Roland Kelts / Special to The Daily Yomiuri

The paradox at the heart of the North American anime market is common knowledge to industry insiders: Plummeting DVD sales and shrinking TV exposure coincide with record-breaking attendance figures at anime events across the continent and surging activity online.

At least the knowledge is common to insiders who are actually in North America. Here in Japan, it's still being treated like news--often unwelcome news.

Anime fans outside of Japan turned to the Internet long ago to feed and fuel their habit, and the prospect of them returning to overpriced, hard-to-find and long-delayed DVD releases is not in anyone's rational vision of anime's future. But try telling that to the folks who make the content.

"Our biggest challenge has always been educating Japanese companies," concedes Kun Gao, cofounder and chief executive officer of Crunchyroll.com, the largest and longest-running online portal for anime and related content outside of Japan. "The biggest hurdle is convincing the licensors to give us the rights to their content. Not every company [here] is progressive."

I sat down with the diplomatic Gao in Crunchyroll's Tokyo office last week during his brief trip from company headquarters in San Francisco.

Gao knows his hurdles. Five years ago, he founded Crunchyroll as a fansite with four American friends, all of whom were driven by their passion to moonlight as Internet anime pirates. As the site's popularity skyrocketed, he quit his day job to manage it full-time.

Other fansites proliferated, while anime producers in Japan saw DVD profits dwindle. Crunchyroll and its founders, operating the most popular pirate portal, realized they were choking off the very roots of their own growth. As I wrote three years ago in this column, they bit the bullet in 2008, officially going legitimate (i.e. legal) on New Year's Eve 2009--but not until they'd spent a full year trekking across Tokyo obtaining licenses to Holy Grail titles like Naruto and Bleach.

"It's always about the risk," Gao says. "The conventional way of watching anime in Japan is still on TV. There's no platform like ours in Japan.

"The producers and licensors are not thinking, 'Can I do something that's a little risky and get benefit?' It's more like: 'If this thing has a little bit of risk, it will only hurt my business. It can't help.' And I think that's the environment in Japan. It's easier not to take a risk than to do so."

Running any business risk-free is impossible, of course, and changes within the Japanese market are fast rendering it unaffordable, too.

Gao points to the diminishing domestic youth audience for anime in Japan as a key pressure point in Crunchyroll's efforts to motivate licensors who are hesitant to leap online. There's no way you'll have growth at home, he tells them, so you better go global now.

"As entrepreneurs, our goal is to minimize risk and maximize opportunity. One of their fears is that a title will be leaked online before its domestic TV broadcast. That has never happened with us, and we're the only company who can say that. We try to get [licensors] to understand," Gao says.

The past couple of years have been tumultuous for North American purveyors of Japanese pop culture. Bankruptcies and fire sales have become routine.

Earlier this year, TokyoPop--a pioneer in the overseas manga and anime markets that introduced millions to the seminal Sailor Moon series--closed its remaining office in Los Angeles.

The abrupt liquidation of Borders, one of the largest bookstore chains in the United States, was "the last straw," according to TokyoPop founder and CEO Stu Levy. "They owed us close to a million dollars," he says, "and represented about one-third of our total sales."

The industry response has been equally swift, focused on streaming video and online simulcasts of Japanese TV programming. Last month at the New York Anime festival, DVD distributor Funimation announced a tie-up with Japan's NicoNico, the video file sharing site whose global portal, NicoNico.com, launched in April with a party at Seattle's Sakura-Con.

Christopher Macdonald, CEO of AnimeNewsNetwork.com, the largest online anime news Web site outside Japan, wrote that the partnership, called Funico, was "more important than many people may realize," adding that he hoped more joint ventures between distributors and streaming sites would follow.

"The thing about anime is that it has to focus on online," he says now. "It can't wait for TV. The quantity [of anime programs] on TV has diminished. Young networks that carried anime in the past, like Cartoon Network, have realized that it's more profitable to own a franchise than to license it.

"In North America, the industry forced people for years to buy anime they hadn't actually seen," he says.

With piracy and streaming options, he adds, that's a luxury no longer available. But here's the hitch: Both Gao and Macdonald worry about the quality of anime currently being produced in Japan. In a tight market, content producers cling to the "tried and true," says Gao.

This often means so-called moe narratives, featuring cute--and sometimes eroticized--young-looking female characters. The genre has a dedicated following in Japan, but is unlikely to find an export market.

"Moe [and other niche genres] are a safe bet for making money over one season," says Macdonald, "but the problem is that they don't grow the audience."

"Quality is actually more important to us than quantity," adds Gao. "In Japan, this is not the golden age of anime."

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Kelts is a visiting scholar at the University of Tokyo who divides his time between Tokyo and New York. He is the author of Japanamerica: How Japanese Pop Culture has Invaded the U.S. and the forthcoming novel, Access.
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Yokai @ Yokohama

2011-11-23T09:43:00.001-05:00

Idols and Celebrity in Japan--Dec. 10

2011-11-22T05:01:00.001-05:00

Pal Patrick Galbraith, author of The Otaku Encyclopedia, tells me of this upcoming Todai conference on 'idoru' culture and its relationship to celebrity:

Idols are first among equals in the Japanese entertainment industry. They organize the market into fan communities that allow for predictable patterns of viewership and consumption. The purpose of focusing on idols specifically, and celebrity more generally, is to understand the Japanese mass media by focusing on its most prominent characteristic. By situating the study of idols within the framework of media and cultural studies, this conference aims to bring the Japanese mass media into productive dialogue with scholarship and theoretical debates beyond Japan. Each presenter will illuminate a different dimension of the phenomenon of idols and celebrity in Japanese media culture.