The Anime Almanac

Note: Because I’ve been spending so much time responding to my essay from last week, I haven’t been able to finish a new post for this week. So instead of just posting nothing, I would like you all to enjoy one of my personal favorites from the Anime Almanac archives. Originally posted on September 9, 2005.

At first I was going to post a review of the live-action TV show entitled Train Man (“Densha Otoko”), but then I realized that doing so would not give this story enough justice. This simple story about a nerd turning towards the Internet for romance advice has become a phenomenon that is currently rocking the Japanese and American otaku culture. It is a representation of the geek and nerd lifestyle and where our hidden passions truly lie. I will take a look at the history of the Train Man, the kind of impact it has made in Japan, and just what makes it is so significant.

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In a darkly lit room at the AnimeNEXT convention on Saturday, English dub voice actor Greg Ayres enters to applause from a full room of otaku. “No, it’s not my final panel for this convention,” he announces to the audience, “but it’s the only one I think is important.” The topic he is going to be discussing is fansubbing and illegal downloading of anime in America.

When he asks the audience whether or not they download fansubs illegally, a majority of them raise their hand to say yes. He assures them that it’s okay to admit to doing so, but he just wants to hear their reasons. One-by-one, fans talk about why they do it, giving reasons like “I can’t afford to buy”, “the show in unlicensed over here”, or “I don’t want the show to be spoiled by all my friends who have already watched it.” Greg listens to each one, jots it on a list, and addresses each point for as long as time will allow him. But the audience is so eager to talk the most of the points will not get covered in the two hour limit.

The only stipulation he has when it comes to audience participation is that everyone treats each other with respect and hold back any unnecessary bashing and name calling. It’s a taboo subject to be speaking about so publicly like this, and it causes some very emotional and spiteful reactions from both sides when it’s being argued about. As expected, the actor is dissected, taunted, and harshly mocked by his critics on the internet in the days that follow this panel. But for the next two hours, this audience of otaku listens to the actor’s message and feel safe enough to speak out openly about their own views and doubts on the subject. And when it’s all over, most of them leave the room vowing never to download illegally again.

I got to have a interview with Ayres prior to the panel to discuss his views on illegal downloading, the people who take part in it, and the people who are damaged by it. In attending these panels and talking to the participants, I learned just why his message has such a huge impact on the community all together, in both positive and negative ways.

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While I’m still in the process of writing up my piece on voice actor Greg Ayres, I figure I’ll just share my very personal experience with the AnimeNEXT convention last weekend. I had mentioned towards the end of a previous post that I was going to be getting press badges for all the major northeast conventions this summer. AnimeNEXT was the first, and man, was it an awesome experience.

Actually, the whole thing started with me noticing a “Fan Subbing” panel in the conventions schedule being hosted by Ayres. Wait, a voice actor talking about fanssubbing? This sounded like something I would write about, and it would probably make for a good story on my site. Since the schedule didn’t list any more details on the panel, I emailed my press contact asking for more information. I said that I was considering possibly holding an interview with the voice actor if he was really there to talk about the controversial subject.

Within a couple of hours, Trisha Sebastian, AnimeNEXT’s Director of Publicity, emailed me back:

“I’ve forwarded the details of your request to our guest liaison who will ask Greg if he would like to do the interview.”

o_O! Whoa, a private interview already?!? No, no, no! I was just curious about the panel. I didn’t want to commit to anything just yet.

But Trisha responded to my doubts and reassured me that the panel was just as I thought it was going to be. She sent me a complete summary of the panel from a past convention, a link to Ayres’s MySpace blog, and a link to a post I made in my blog several years ago which she said represented the over all tone of the panel. I was very impressed. Not only did she know everything I was looking for, she even did her homework about my little site and cited something I wrote a while ago. So I agreed to have the interview.

Clearly something was going to be very different about going to an anime convention this time around…

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Okay, so my last two reviews of light novels have turned out to be a couple of big disappointments for this anime blogger. Because of that, I had decided to leave the novel reviews for the New York Times and stick with just comics and cartoons. But I became interested in Del Rey’s Maid Machinegun light novel after hearing a sample of the book being read at the “Lolita and Maid Fashion Day” event in New York City two weeks ago. The first chapter, an introductory lesson into the proper maid café etiquette, was convincing enough for me to give this book a try. It’s a good thing I did, because this novel turned out to be one of the best reads I’ve had in recent memory. It proved to me that one can come close to the manga and anime experience even through written prose.

Maid Machinegun is the diary of Aaliyah Kominami, an eighteen-year-old girl working at a maid cosplay café in Akihabara. Through out the book, she writes about the interesting characters who work at and patronize the café, her run-in with a very harsh otaku critic, her experience at Japan’s largest comic convention, and a love/hate relationship between her and a male co-worker. She has made it her personal goal to become the world’s best maid, and attempts to do so with each and every “master” and “mistress” she serves along the way.

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There’s been one company in the manga industry that has come under a lot of scrutiny from the media and otakushere lately, and that would be the mighty Tokyopop. The company first received some flack when it was revealed that the terms of the contract to their potential Original English Language (OEL) manga artists granted the company full “moral rights” to the artist’s works. The contract was immediately blasted by Fred Gallagher and Bryan Lee O’Malley, two highly successful OEL creators not on Tokyopop label, which generated an outcry from the community. Just when the buzz was starting to go down, the company then announced that it would be going through some major reconstructions, including layoffs and production cutbacks. It’s amazing how the once mighty publisher has just simply crumbled over the past few weeks.

For those of you new to the manga scene, let me give you a bit of a history lesson:

Tokyopop made the US manga industry.

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Last week, I witnessed a truly disgusting display of the entertainment industry’s war against the bittorrent peer-to-peer method of file sharing. American Internet-based TV company Revision3 was shut down over the Memorial Day weekend due to a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack to its server. The cause of the attack was the company Artistdirect and their MediaDefender service. The service, which is paid for by the movie and music industry, searches for “bittorrent tracker” sites, fills the site with fake files, and then administers the DDoS attack if the bittorret site attempts to block MediaDefender from doing its thing, which is what happened to Revision3.

MediaDefender, along with most of the entertainment industry, assumes that bittorrent can only be used for the purposes of illegal file sharing and piracy. Revision3, on the other hand, used the peer-to-peer technology as a completely legitimate and legal method of distributing their TV shows over the internet, only to be punished for doing so by the entertainment industry it is a part of.

What sickened me the most about this story was looking at the front page of the MediaDefender website and seeing our favorite medium of entertainment being very specifically targeted in their war against bittorrent.

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The Wachowski brothers’ 1999 film The Matrix was a turning point in movie special effects. The movie was inspired by the brothers’ love of anime and comics. In emulating such works as Ghost in the Shell, they produced some of the most jaw-dropping visuals ever seen at the time. The heroes of the story defied all realistic notions of physics by leaping into the air, destroying concrete sidewalks and building by hand, and slowing down time itself to dodge speeding bullets.

Not only were the brothers able to make the cartoonish antics of anime and comics into a feature film, but they were actually successful in making it look incredible instead of just looking completely stupid. The film had enough of that Hollywood shine to it to make the outlandish seem possible.

No matter how easy Hollywood makes it look, that is not something that can be done so easily.

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There will be no regular post this week because I’ve been hard at work at creating a new feature for the site – Anime Almanac the Live!

No, I’m not putting on a concert… or starting a dorama adaptation… AA the Live is a Twitter aggregate for the anime blogging community. Users can visit the site to see what the Otakusphere is thinking about right now. It’s like a smaller version of Anime Nano, or an Anime Nano Nano, if you will.

What is Twitter?
Twitter is a micro-blogging tool. The concept is simple – just post a small message that’s no more then 140 characters and it will show up on all your friend’s “Twitter feeds.” You can send updates via the website, cell phone text messages, AIM window, or any of the countless websites and applications built around the service. Its addictive simplicity has made Twitter one of the hottest new websites out there right now.

Why Should the Otakusphere use Twitter and AA the Live?

Because it’s makes it easy to get your word out onto the internets!

There are times that you might need to say something, but don’t want to write an entire post on it. It doesn’t take more than 140 characters to say, “This week’s ToLOVEる freaking rocks!” every week, does it? Twitter allows you to say the little things without having to clutter your blog and RSS feeds with it, and AA the Live allows you to see everyone’s Twitter feed in one place.

Another major benefit of Twitter is that it’s live and constantly updating. When there’s an event going on, like an anime convention, you know exactly what’s going on the moment that it happens. I used Twitter to send in live updates and photos from the NYCC last month via my iPhone. When Gia couldn’t get wifi in the panel rooms at ACEN last weekend, she sent in updates to her Twitter account with cell phone text messages.

It’s my goal to have every anime blogger going to Otakon this year to have a Twitter account and to post their thoughts, reactions, and photos live from the convention floor. Thanks to Twitter and AA the Live, you won’t have to carry around a laptop to do live con coverage.

How do I sign up for AA the Live?

First, sign up for Twitter. If you want to upload pictures to your feed, sign up for an account at TwitPic. Then go to this page to submit your twitter user name, customize your feed appearance on AA the Live, and you’re all set. Just Twitter away and it will show up on the page. (^_^)

So hopefully Twitter and AA the Live will be just as addictive to you as it has been to myself in the past week. I’m already planning on adding some new features over the next few weeks, but first we need more feeds and more people updating. Twitter has always had a huge Japanese-speaking otaku community, so let’s get the English-speaking otaku community onto there as well.

Okay, so I’ve talked a lot about Lucky Star over the past few weeks, but that’s because it is a highly anticipated title that has acquired a huge fanbase in America via the fansub community. That community, my dear readers, includes mostly every one of you out there. Rest assured that if I was continuously blogging like this in the months leading up to the US release of Haruhi Suzumiya, I would have given that series plenty coverage as well (instead of only writing one post on it). However, I promise to you all that this will be the last time I ever focus on Lucky Star on this site, so please just bear with me one more week.

It is not a surprise that my rant last week struck some nerves with a couple of readers. Owen over at Cruel Angel Theses wrote the most in-depth dissection I have seen of any of my posts. I don’t think my English teacher even took so much time to criticize my writing! But the point that Owen and many others got wrong with the post was that I do not actually hate the show. In fact, I became a major fanboy for the Tsukasa character and the Lucky Channel segments, which I did mention in the post. But the show was overall very dull and I have very rarely seen anyone really enjoy the show whenever I have seen it screened or shown to friends. Lucky Star, as a show, is neither bad nor all that good. It’s just mediocre.

The point I was trying to make with last week’s post was that despite Lucky Star’s mediocrity, it has gained an insanely huge cult following based only the promise of it was the second coming of Haruhi Suzumiya. I showed this connection happening in Japan with the magazine Comp H and in America with Bandai’s teaser trailer. There was even further news of it last week when ANN reported on an Akiba shop giving away Haruhi / Lucky Star mash-up telephone cards. It is this kind of artificially created hype machine that I was pissed off about, and if you don’t see the connect then you must be living under a rock.

The day after the post went up, I received my package from Amazon, and it did completely change my view and outlook on the series. So this week, I’d like to take a look at the impressive Lucky Star box set that Bandai Entertainment released in the US last week.

Which – and I’m sure this is completely coincidental – is almost exactly like Bandai’s release of that other show a year ago… (>_>)

Some hot “Lucky Star on Haruhi” action

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Okay, so I might have said some controversial things on this blog before. I’ve lashed out against the fansub community, criticized major anime news organizations, and advocated the right to lolicon. But I don’t think I have ever said anything so blasphemous against the otaku community as what I have to get off my chest this week.

Are you ready? Here we go…

(Takes in a deep breath)

Lucky Star is not the second coming of Christ.

It’s not even a particularly good show.

(Ducks for cover)

Okay, still with me? Good.

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