The Anime Almanac

Last weekend, I had the privilege of attending the east coast premier of Makoto Shinkai’s latest film, 5 Centimeters Per Second, at the New York International Children’s Film Festival. This title was originally going to be screened at the New York Anime Fest last December, but ADV pulled it out at the last minute in order to give NYICFF the honor of making it a premier at their fest.

I must say, the best things about attending the screening was getting introduced to the NYICFF. This festival promotes a huge number of independent, experimental, and, in the case of anime, foreign films that all target a younger demographic. I’m not quite sure how the kids handle these odd films, but as a mature movie buff, I found myself very interested in many of the films screening in NYC over the next few weekends.

Before the screening, they ran a slide show of all the past films that have premiered at the festival, and as it turns out, they have great taste in their selections. They were the first to bring over many of the Studio Ghibli films to the US, such as My Neighbor Totoro, Castle in the Sky, Nausicaa, and The Cat Returns. The film they premiered last year was the wonderful The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, which makes me wonder just what the hell I was doing last year that made me miss that one!

This year had two other Asian anime films premiering with 5 Centimeters that I really wanted to see, but couldn’t work it into my schedule. Summer Days with Coo is a 2007 film about a boy who finds a kappa, a mythical Japanese creature, and set out to find a new home for him. But what looked really appealing was the Korean anime film, Yobi the Five Tailed Fox, which is featured on the festival’s posters, brochure, and program cover. The film looks like a Miyazaki-inspired fantasy, filled with cute animals and images. I have never seen a Korean anime before, so I’m sure it would be interesting to compare it to its Japanese counterparts.

Now on to the film I actually was able to see. Makoto Shinkai won me over with his 25-minute masterpiece of an OVA called Voices of a Distant Star. That short told the story of two young lovers thrust into the ultimate long distance relationship – outer space. The girl is forced to go on a mission that will take her far away into the galaxy, leaving her boyfriend behind on Earth. They maintain correspondence with each other by sending cell phone text messages through space. But as they travel further apart from each other, their messages take longer to travel, providing a perfect symbol of the loneliness felt when being separated from your love for so long. Although it’s a completely fictional sci-fi story, Shinkai made it feel more realistic than any “Slice-of-Life” anime ever does, and manages to bring back many personal memories for me as well.

5 Centimeters Per Second continues on this theme but without the sci-fi backdrop. The film shows the love life of Tono Takari and his relationship to his childhood sweetheart, Shinohara Akari. The two are separated towards the end of elementary school. In act one, middle schooler Tono takes a long trip to visit Akari one last time before he is forced to move even further away from her and, in theory, will never see each other again. Act two shows Tono just about to graduate high school. A new girl has developed a crush on him and works up the courage to confess her love. And act three shows Tono in his mid-20’s. He’s a working professional and has just come off of a long-term relationship. Even ten years after act one, he’s still thinking about girl he loved as a child.

First of all, I’m glad that I was able to catch this in a movie theater rather than on DVD or screened on some cheap projector. We only get about 2 anime films with theatrical runs every year in America, and most of them are played on very limited screens. So this kind of showing is a rare event, but they picked a good one to show. There are many beautiful landscape shots that look incredible on the big screen. Most of act 2 was simply jaw dropping, like in the scene pictured below.

But despite the visual beauty, the structure of the film is very unusual. Each act ends with a simple “The End” and credits begin to role. There is a brief black screen before the next act begins. This left the audience very confused. Everyone started clapping after act one and began to leave their seats, only to rush back once the 2nd act started. When act two ended, the house lights in the theater came one, only to quickly dim again once the third act started. This was very awkward, and the audience should have been told about the film’s unique structure during the introduction by the festival’s hosts.

Another problem with the film at the children’s film festival is that this wasn’t a film for children! While the program clearly stated that this film was intended for teenagers and above, most of the audience were families that included very small children. They probably had passes to attend every film at the festival, so this was just one of many films they were seeing for the next couple of weekends. But the kids in attendance were not able to sit still for 5 Centimeter, which was understandable. The film’s slow pacing left even this 23-year-old boy fidgeting in his seat.

The biggest downfall with this film is that it has a great story to tell, but it just never seems to get around to telling it. It has a very short runtime of only 63 minutes, but it wastes 40 minutes of it doing nothing. Many static images and depictions of mundane life leaves the audience bored and begging for something to happen. The first act mostly follows Tono riding on trains all alone. With a massive snow storm coming down, his rides are delayed, forcing him to wait… and wait… and wait some more! The purpose for this is to show how worried he is that Akari would have to be waiting for him at the train station. He silently begs to himself, “Please Akari, don’t wait up for me! Just go home!”

I just think to myself, “Don’t be ridiculous! Just call her on your cell phone and let her know you’ll be late!”

… and than I realized…

I didn’t have a cell phone when I was in middle school!

And so starts the Shinkai brilliance. I realized by the 2nd act that Tono and I are around the same age and growing up in the same time frame. In the first act during middle school, Toro has to make the long journey without the help of the cell phone, which weren’t at all popular in the mid-90’s. In the second act, he plays around with simple text messages, much like I did when I got my first cell phone junior year of high school. And in the third act, Toro is constantly checking his cell phone while he’s at work in front of a computer, just like I do every day right now.

This familiarity with the character made it all too real when watching the modern day Tono in the third act. Over a decade since adolescences, he was now a young working professional. He had experience in serious relationships before, but was still unsettled and currently single. And most of all, he was anticipated that the perfect love would be coming into his life any minute now. It was all way too real to me… painfully real.

And than comes the knock out punch, a three-minute montage of Tono’s first decade of love. While a lot of the clips were already shown in the movie, most of the montage showcased all the events and images that you never saw in the film, all the stuff in between the three acts. Again, all the things that everyone experiences at that age. Even the song being played is a very popular song from 1996, a move Shinkai made to bring the audience back to ten years ago.

This montage made the movie worthwhile. While I really could have done without all the static images and boring moments of the film, I cannot deny that it had some sicking power over me at the end. I left the theater in some kind of state of shock, and I spent a long time sitting in the NYC subway trying my best to collect my memories and emotions together again.

Your mileage may very when watching a Shinkai film, but for me, he’s able to expose real human emotion and memories through his fictional characters and beautiful visuals.

 

Web comic “Anime News Nina” recently satirized a horrible trend among the American otaku community. You know the story. You walk into your local Borders or Barnes & Noble and head towards the graphic novel section. You begin your search through the shelves, looking to see if Tokyopop finally put out that latest volume of Strawberry Marshmallow. But your search ends abruptly because of the teenage fangirl sitting in the aisle with her nose buried in some volume of Saiyuki. Her body leans against the bookshelf and blocks the bottom three rows of books, which just so happens to be the location of those Marshmallow books. No problem, how about Negima? You walk over to the N-section to find some other pudgy kid blocking the shelves. He’s just sitting there reading through a stack of Naruto volumes, which are all piled up on the floor next to him.

Nina first worries that these poor kids are orphans, forced to take shelter in the bookstore because they have no where else to go. But she quickly learns the truth – they ain’t nothing but no good bums! They’re mooching off of the bookstore and making things more difficult for those of us actually wanting to buy a book. They don’t even notice you’re there, and if you ask them to please move over, they’ll give you attitude like it’s such an inconvenience. How dare you interrupt their reading like that!

These manga hobos are an epidemic in America, but what’s worse is…

You’re probably one of them!

So where do these vagrants come from? Why have they found their way off of the street and collect themselves in the manga section? Surely, you won’t find the unwashed masses parked in the history section. What gives American otaku the right to sit there?

The concept actually originates from Japan. Any American going into a Japanese bookstore will immediately notice one tiny bit of culture shock. Most of the store patrons will be standing in the aisles and reading. It’s a very odd sight to see. We’re so used to the idea of a kid reading a magazine at a convenient store to be yelled at by the clerk, “This is not a library. Either buy it or get it!” But in Japanese culture, everyone stands around and quietly reads right there in the store. That’s just the way it is.

It is Japanese custom to stand and read at a bookstore.

 

I’m not quite sure how this trend got imported from the Japanese bookstore to your local Borders. More than likely, some American otaku walked into a Japanese bookstore, noticed all the Japanese people standing and reading in the aisles, and decided that this must be the “authentic” way of enjoying manga. So they simply started doing it in American stores.

I can’t say I really blame them for that. Whenever I’m in the city, I go to a number of Japanese bookstores. With that “When in Rome….” mentality in mind, I usually pick up the latest issue of some manga magazine and I join the other customers in the standing-and-reading tradition.

But there are several factors that make this standing-and-reading practice very uncomfortable for me:

1. I’m the only white dude in the store doing this, so I feel stupid.
2. My American instincts tell me, “This is not a library. Go buy the damn book!”
3. I get physically exhausted from standing and reading.

That last point is the most important. In America, we are simply not used to standing and reading at the same time. The only time we stand and read is if we’re giving some kind of speech or presentation. But when comes to reading silently to ourselves, we are always sitting down.

This becomes very apparent when one stands and reads at the Japanese bookstore. And when you add in the weight of holding a very thick manga magazine, one would begin to get very exhausted very quickly. I usually attempt to lean against the shelf or something to get myself more comfortable, but it’s of no use. Within a very short time, I give up and go to the cashier to buy the book or magazine. That way, I can take it home and comfortably read it while sitting down.

This innate American laziness when it comes to reading is how the Manga Hobos got their unique (and annoying) characteristic. The otaku attempts to stand and read at Borders, just like any real Japanese person would. But after a while, he’ll get to a point of becoming uncomfortable. But he won’t just go off to the store’s cafe or any the other designated chairs around the store, oh no! Real Japanese people read their manga right there on the spot! So he just plops his lazy ass down in the middle of the aisle and continues reading. And then another otaku sees him on the floor reading and joins him. And then another, then another, then another… and so gives birth of this horrible, horrible trend.

Bums doing what they do best, blocking the aisle. Source

Manga Hobos need to be stopped. Their laziness not only annoys those other otaku who are actually there to buy the book, but it also blocks the way of non-otaku bookstore patrons who need to walk through the aisle. Can you imagine the negative image these bums are portraying to the public by doing this?

You’re in America, people, that kind of shit shouldn’t be tolerated. If you need to read a book right there in the store, then go to the cafe or one of the many chairs provided. Don’t sit in middle of the aisle and block everyone. Or if you want to be “Authentic Japanese”, then actually try to stand up and read the book. That way, you can move around more easily if someone needs to get through.

But Americans can’t stand and read like that. These vagrants are the result of Japanese culture mixing with American laziness, and it’s become a very pathetic aspect of our sub-culture.

Please feel free to kick a bum the next time he blocks you from your Negima. ^_^

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UPDATE: J in Tokyo writes in on how he deals with a similar trend that’s been starting in Japan:

I just read your blog about Manga Hobos, and have a great solution: Hip check them when you walk by.

I’ve been living in Tokyo the last 10 years, and I would definitely say that the number of people who squat in public places is on the rise, (especially high-school girls).

I was walking through the station on a Friday night (and since Shibuya is the most crowded stations in the world, I’m sure you can imagine the population density… INSANE). There were two girls hunkered down fixing their makeup right in the middle of the flow of traffic, and it is a testimony to the discipline of the Japanese, and the gun free populace that nobody killed them right there on the spot.

Anyway–as I walked by–I gently, but _forcefully_ applied just enough pressure with a hip check to send the one closest to me sprawling on her ass as I walked by. While I’m sure there was a nicer way to approach these clown girls of Shibuya (my private term for the ones who paint white around their eyes), the yelp she gave was priceless… I didn’t even turn back.

Thanks, J!

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UPDATE: Wow, who’d of thought this post would create the kind of buzz that it did! Thanks to everyone who linked to this post and to those who have voted for it on StumbleUpon.com. I really hope you enjoyed it. ^_^

The biggest criticism I’ve been getting is “well, why don’t you just ask them to move instead of being such an a-hole about it?” People, it doesn’t matter if you’ll move when we ask you to move, the fact is that we shouldn’t have to ask you in the first place! It’s not normal to sit in the aisle and read like that. Do you see it happening in any other part of the store?

(I mean, besides the children’s section… >_>)

Contrary to how it looks, this post is not just a “man, I really hate these guys” rant. I’m showing that it is a very culturally unacceptable practice and the people who do it are being rude to the other costumers in the store. There are not a lot of reasons why a non-otaku person would start hating on us, but if they continue to see manga readers showing this kind of disrespect in a public bookstore, it starts giving the community a bad name.

If you are a manga hobo yourself, please do the right thing by not sitting in the aisle. Like I said, the bookstores already cater to you by providing chairs and a cafe area, please utilized them. Please encourage your fellow otaku to get their asses off the ground and into a more suitable location.

Last week, I talked about how yaoi and boys’ love comics were not about homosexual relationships but rather a female fantasy of equality in gender roles and the gender bending experience of the female reader to the androgynous “men” in these comics. However, gender bending in manga is not just limited to girls’ comics. There has been a recent trend in comics targeted for boys in which a male protagonist turns into a female and interacts with other girls. For this post, I will focus three such titles currently available in the US: Kashimashi, Gacha Gacha: The Next Revolution, and Pretty Face.

Each one of these stories has a different setup on how the boys become girls. In Kashimashi, young Hazumo is accidentally killed by space aliens. The aliens attempt to resurrect the boy, but are only to bring him back as a female. In Gacha Gacha, a glitch in a virtual reality game causes Akira to become a girl every time he sneezes. And in Pretty Face, a plastic surgeon accidentally turns high school bad ass Rando into a girl after an auto accident leaves him disfigured. While his body is still male, he looks completely female.

Despite these different scenarios, the resulting benefit of this transformation is identical across all three series. Hazumo was rejected by the girl he loved because the girl was unable to see the face of any man. Now that Hazumo himself is also a girl, the two of them start a romantic relationship. The shy Akira was too timid to even talk to his crush. When he turns into a girl, the two of them become best gal pals. And Rando actually turns into he secretly admired. The plastic surgeon modeled Rando’s new face after a photo he kept of her in his pocket. The girl immediately accepts the new Rando as her long-lost twin sister.

Akira (on left in female form) gets close to the girl he likes.

In all three stories, the only way that the male protagonist is able to get near the girl he likes is to become a girl himself. All three boys have difficulty with dealing with the opposite sex. They, like most men, simply fear rejection. Hazumo confessed his feelings to his love, and was crushed when she couldn’t love him back. Akira and Rando are too timid to even try, so they just sit on the sidelines and dream about the relationship they can be having. This is a fear that many teenage otaku know all too well.

But the moment that they become girls, all the pressure and fear are gone as the crushes themselves begin to initiate a relationship. Sure, it starts off as being a platonic friendship between two girls. For Akira and Rando, their partners are not even aware of the hero’s true identity. But with the pressures of initiation out of the way, the protagonists are able to focus on building an actual romantic relationship with their new “girl friends”. The biggest obstacle, of course, is the fact that everyone is now female. The heroes work with the motive that creating a strong relationship as a girl will remain a strong relationship when they turn back into boys. Like yaoi, the story appears to be lesbian on the outside, but in reality, it is just a normal heterosexual relationship.

But despite their outward appearances, these men are still men, and they retain the same sexual urges and desires as men. This feminine kinship gives the hero, as well as the reader, a voyeuristic opportunity to catch girls off guard doing things they wouldn’t do with men around. Most of the time, this just involves nudity. As the girls change their clothes in the locker room, or bath together, the men get a front row view without ever getting in trouble or punish for it.

Kashimashi’s Hazumu putting on her first bra

Sophomoric? Maybe. Pathetic? Highly likely. However, it does provide some nice fan service. When you’re going for a romantic story aimed at young men, sex is a necessity because it is a very dominate urge for the audience. And by making the other girls completely comfortable with (though still ignorant of) being naked around the male protagonist, this somewhat lesses the shame of voyeurism.

When comparing the two genres, the biggest difference between gender bending in shounen manga and shoujo boys’ love manga is the clear visual definition of the character being female. When the boys are boys, they clearly look masculine and when the boys are girls, they are clearly feminine. There is no in between, no androgyny at all.

Akira is a large, slightly overweight male before he turns into his slender, cute, smaller female form. Rando is a clear tough guy when he was male. He was notorious for being a bully around campus. But while he’s a girl, he looks like a completely sweet and kind-hearted girl. This makes for an excellent running gag on how ridiculous she looks when her male tempter shows through.

Even though Pretty Face’s Rando still has a male body, her figure is unmistakably female.

The only character lacking a clear male form is Hazumo. She was only male for a brief moment in the beginning of the story. During that time, her features were vague and shadowed. The reader never saw her face until she became a girl. But unlike the other characters, she doesn’t hide the fact she’s a man inside. Her very masculine way of talking is a constant reminder to the reader that even though we rarely identify her as male, she’s always is one.

Even though these characters are still male inside, their outward female appearance allows the reader to fully accept them as girls at times. This presents a very unique experience for the reader that is very rarely felt with other types of comics. When the reader focuses on the hero’s motives and personality, he identifies the character as purely male. The reader relates with the hero’s desire for love and sex when being around so many beautiful women, and this creates an empathic admiration from the reader to the hero. But when the reader focuses on the character’s physical appearance, he can’t help but to identify the character as female. Not only female, but a very cute and attractive female. When this happens, the male reader actually becomes sexually attracted to the protagonist.

This switch between platonic admiration towards the boy-side and sexual attraction towards the girl-side happens very quickly when reading these stories. It could even take place while the reader’s eye goes from reading dialog in word bubble to looking at the drawing inside of that panel. This constant toggle between the two feelings eventually merges together until the reader no longer distinguishes the gender of the hero. The reader loses himself into the fantasy of manga and forms a unique feeling towards the hero for being both male and female.

Is this the same kind of unique feeling that girl get when reading yaoi? I’m not sure. But as we can see, androgyny and gender bending in anime and manga is a pretty interesting experience for both male and female otaku.

Just another example of why I love this medium so much.

The female otaku fascination with yaoi and pretty boys has been a concept I’ve had a hard time figuring out. There are several illogical factors that do not seem to have some explanation. First of all, these comics show relationship deprived of any female interaction, so I can’t see how female readers can relate. Also, the characters themselves are said to be male, but their androgynous figures make that very hard to believe. So why do the girls still go nuts over them?

I clearly cannot answer that question, so I turn to some academic essays written by some very smart people. Last time, I talked about an essay written by professor Deborah Shamoon . She suggests that attraction for androgyny comes from the pre-WWII Japanese female culture which used to promote girls forming close relationships with other girls. This created an ideal of couples having similar physical features, which eventual turned into male and female characters merging into one androgynous figure.

While this makes sense for the WWII generation and possibly even the proceeding “baby boom”generation, I find it hard to believe that modern girls would still feel this way. And even then, American girls have never had this kind of history, yet female American otaku are just as crazy about bishounen as their Japanese counterparts.

So for a more modern look at pretty boys, I turn to this essay from professors Brent Wilson and Masami Toku. With their research and suggestions, I am able to form my own logical explanations of the attraction to yaoi.

In answering the question of the female attraction to homosexual relationship, they have concluded that yoai and boys’ love comics are not actually about realistic gay relationships. There are actual “gay comics” out there made by gay men and intended for gay males. Even though they do not get into detail, and even though I have never seen such a comic before, I would imagine “real” gay comics to be a lot more about the dramatics of living an alternative lifestyle rather than the dramatics of forming a relationship. Also, I would imagine there to be much more sexual and eroticism in these comics, since both heterosexual and homosexual men love sex. 😉

Yaoi and boys’ love comics probably would not appeal homosexual men just like real homosexual comics don’t appeal to female readers. So if it’s not about homosexuality, than what is yaoi about? The answer is in the bishounen characters. When asked yaoi fans themselves on why they like boys’ love story, the answer the professors heard the most was “because two boys are better than one.” This implies that the female reader is actually attracted to the characters themselves and not necessarily the act of gay love between them.

Yaoi is a fantasy that re-imagines normal heterosexual relationships between a man and woman. Pretty boys are not actually supposed to represent real life males. Instead, they serve as an empty vessel for the female reader to fill with her own personal hopes and desires. Having two empty vessels allows more flexibility in the reader’s suspension of reality, and breaks all conventions of social hierarchy.

This hierarchy, of course, is the clear dominance of male roles over female roles in both Japan and America. By having two characters of the same gender, you eliminate one character being in a higher social class purely on gender. While some yaoi stories establish a more dominate figure (“tops” and “bottoms”) in the relationship, it is a role that the character chose for himself and was not forced into by society. Both partners are equal on this playing field.

Such same-gendered relationships would not play so well to a male audience. We enjoy our dominance in society and do not wish to give that up. In fact, this is somewhat of a fear to male readers. We attempt strengthen this dominance in our comics by portraying even the weakest male still dominating over a harem of women.

But to women, having a male and female relationship already establishes one higher role over the other. And unfortunately, girls always come out on the losing side. So they turn to yaoi to escape the sexism of real life. This kind of control also gives the female a chance for revenge against these unfair societies. They take a real human male and strip him of all his masculinity. Replace bulging muscles with slender figures. Replace facial hair with smooth silky skin. Replace the short haircuts with long flowing locks. The result is the androgynous bishounen pretty boy, a man made in the form of woman.

By making man in the form of woman, the female readers can also easily superimpose themselves into these “male” roles. I’m sure that this gender bending experience becomes the thrill of reading yaoi and can explain it’s popularity and devoted fans. By giving in to the fantasy, woman are now able to take in all the perks of being male, like moving up in social rank, while shedding off all the nuisances of being female, such as menstruation.

One particular benefit I find interesting when going from female to male is the ability to go into a relationship “with no strings attached”. Romantic stories aimed at men are often very sexual with little thought about the consequences of sex, namely pregnancy and childbirth. For women, this is something that they just cannot ignore. There is always that fear of life commitments and future hardships that may result from And so by having two “males” mating, there is absolutely no chance of pregnancy. This puts the female at ease as she imagines herself as one of the characters with no fear of the consequences of casual romance.

So the female attraction to yaoi and boys’ love comics is not about homosexuality at all. It’s about the female audience breaking free of their unfair gender roles in Japan and America. By creating relationships between two androgynous figures, they are able to create an equal playing field for romance. And since these bishounen are men created in the form of woman, they allow the reader to indulge herself into gender bending by superimposing herself into the story.

Next time, I will take a look at a recent trend of gender bending in shounen manga and how it presents a different form of excitement to it’s male readers.

UPDATE: Reader Pete sends in a link to this interesting blog post on how girls misinterpret the male anatomy in yaoi.

I must have been crazy when I decided to screen the show “Gravitation” to my anime club. It was a favorite among the few females in the club, and I thought a little boy’s-love might be good for the club. After all, we were exploring all different aspects of the medium and you’d be a fool to ignore the popularity of yaoi and other guy-on-guy material.

But in that one critical scene not too far into the show, the two lead male characters lean close to each other for a passionate kiss. It might have been a sweet and loving moment, but I couldn’t really tell. It was overshadowed by the loud, unanimous groan by all the male members of the club. To American males, the sight of two guys kissing each other is still a tough pill to swallow. Even if you are fully tolerant of homosexuality, we all grow up in a society that still looks down on it. This results in a slight homophobia that is very hard to shake off.

But I immediately came up with a solution that allowed me to comfortably watch this scene and every similar guy-on-guy moment there after:

“Just pretend it’s a girl!”

It’s really not that hard to do. These pretty boys, or “bishounen” as the ladies like say, are all essentially flat-chested female anime characters. They all sport long flowing hair, slender bodies, sparkling eyes, and other very feminine characteristics. In anime, many are even voiced by female voice actors. They are truly androgynous characters. I say it would take more effort to suspend your disbelief enough to consider them male instead of females.

And yet despite this gender ambiguity, all the girls simply go gah-gah over them.

But why is that? Why do females otaku find pleasure in one androgynous character finding love in another? To answer that question, let’s first take a quick look at the history of girls’ comics.

Notre Dame professor Deborah Shamoon writes a very interesting essay in Mechademia vol. 2 in which she looks at the history of androgynous characters in shoujo manga. She takes a look at early works of girls’ fictional prose and compares it to shoujo comics by using the androgynous (but still female) character Oscar from The Rose of Versailles as her primary example. While this particular comic is over thirty years old, her theory on androgyny in comics still applies to all the bishounen of today.

(On a side note, Mechademia is a fantastic publication that I will be talking about many more times in the future. I highly recommend it to anyone really interested in the cultural significance of the anime and manga.)

Ms. Shamoon believes the shoujo manga can trace its roots back to the girls’ fiction of pre-WWII Japan. During that time in history, girls didn’t really have male friends or boyfriends during their adolescence and teenage years. They had to save themselves for marriage, which would not happen until after graduation. So the only safe relation a girl could have was with other girls. These female friendships would become really close, so close that we would consider it completely lesbian by today’s standards. But that simply was not the case back then. With no male contact during those critical years of sexual development, this kind of relationship became a culturally accepted norm for young girls.

Cover of “Shoujo Illustrated Magazine” April, 1933. Source

Ms. Shamoon goes on to show that these homo-gendered relationships became the source of girls’ fictional stories. The cover of this magazines shows two girls depicted in a close friendship. Take note of the fact that the girls’ faces are very similar. This is probably because Japan was (and still is) a homogeneous society, and encourages unity in teenage years by making children wear identical school uniforms. Same sex, same look, same clothes… girls just eventually felt comfortable with everything being the same. And so “sameness” and familiarity became an ideal characteristic in a relationship among girls.

Ms. Shamoon claims that this pre-war desire for sameness is what’s ultimately resurrected with androgynous characters in modern manga. Oscar of Versailles is female, but she finds fame and power from her masculinity and androgynous appearance. Originally the artist had paired her with a young and very feminine girl, Rosalie Lamorlière. However, the audience ultimately rejected this pairing. It wasn’t because of the lesbian implication, it was because the manly Oscar was too different from the feminine girl. Even as same gender, their different physical appearances caused disapproval from the that young female audience.

The artist then paired Oscar up with a male, André Grandier. As the series progressed, André gradually became more and more feminine. He became so feminine that he even started to look like Oscar. These two characters, now neither male nor female, represented that desire for sameness which was still fresh in the Japanese female culture.

Needless to say, this pairing was a hit with the audience, and many would credit it as being the success of the series. But this pairing has an even deeper significance in the longterm scope of girls’ comics, and it sets the blueprint of all modern-day bishounen characters.

Next week I will take a closer look at bishounen of modern shoujo manga and why they are even a hit with American girls.

Scott finishes his series of posts from the first annual New York Anime Festival.

I am a connoisseur of entertainment, especially when it comes to television and anime. I watch it for hours every night after work, and I am easily the one to go to for all the latest on what’s on the air right now. But there is one interesting fact about my love of TV that seems shocks everyone when I mention it –

I don’t have cable, satellite, or any other service like that.

I simply don’t need it. My entertainment setup is an HDTV hooked up to a Mac Mini computer and up-converting DVD player. With my Verizon fiber-optic internet connection and a subscription to Netflix, I have access to so much programing that I’ll never be able to watch it all. I can easily download or stream the latest TV shows right onto that computer, or I can have Netflix mail me any DVD I want the next day.

That is just the world we’re living in today. The internet has made entertainment more convenient and easy to consume as ever. But the big question is now that we have all this wonderful technology, how does the entertainment industry adapt its business model?

The music industry has already tackled this issue with supporting legal download services. iTunes and Amazon’s MP3 service are highly successful, and now record labels are throwing more support by eliminating Digital Rights Management (DRM) restriction on these songs, allowing these legal downloads to be used freely even under modern copyright laws. The television industry is also adapting by offering their content online and streaming for free. Websites like Hulu.com and Adult Swim Videos show brand new episodes right after they are broadcast, sometimes even before they are broadcast! The content is supported by the occasional advertisement, but it’s well worth it for brand new TV shows anytime that you want to watch them.

That is the great financial potential that the internet can offer to the entertainment industry. It’s so powerful, in fact, that the Writer’s Guild of America is currently on strike to insure that they get properly compensated when everyone switches from broadcast to the net.

So the reason I bring up all this background is so that I can ask the following question:

Where the hell is the anime industry during all of this?

It should be pretty obvious that the internet and the US anime industry go hand-and-hand. In the year 2000, the anime show Love Hina became the first series to become a hit in America from being widely circulated on college file-sharing networks. By penetrating that key age 18-24 male demographic, it opened up interest in anime to become something more than just the Pokémon and Dragonballs of the time. Within years there was a booming market for anime DVDs and manga in America.

But as the DVD and manga market grew, so did anime file-sharing. Broadband connections become more affordable, so even normal households had the potential to download full video files. New technologies like Bittorent and Youtube made this task even faster and more efficient. Eventually, people got used to the idea of watching videos over the internet, and people like myself went that extra step to hooking up a computer into their home television system.

Anime was always unique when it came video files. It always had to be imported from Japan and translated into English. This extra step put it at a disadvantage over domestic TV shows. While companies did their best to get the product out as quickly as possible, the cost of production and labor was often too restrictive. Most anime either never makes it to America, or they do so years after they initially air in Japan.

That is where the internet becomes the most helpful. With an unlimited supply of anime fans with free time, shows can become collected, subtitled, and than redistributed within hours of its initial airing on television. This “fansubbing” process works very quickly, and continues to work even eight years after Love Hina.

You would think that with a successful and well established process in place, the American anime industry would try its best to adapt itself to get into that market. Right?

I’ve asked this question in the past whenever I go to anime conventions, and every year, the industry reps look at me like I’m some kind of idiot. Of course they can’t make a dime off of that fansub community. Those goddamn pirates are already a lost cause. The best solution was to snatch up every title and release them all on DVD to the people who will buy them. They really thought that this was where the future of the American anime industry lived. And with booming DVD sales, who was I to doubt them?

But that was not the right solution, and it started to become painfully obvious around the time of Anime Boston 2006. The DVD market was over-saturated. Companies were starting to lose their momentum, and many of them didn’t even show up. Only a few new titles were announced. It was pretty pathetic.

I wrote a very bitter entry on this sad state. I blamed the fansub community for not supporting the industry like they should have, but I also blamed the industry for not embracing the fansub community and changing their business model. Once again, all my questions of online distribution were brushed off completely up in Boston that year.

What a difference 18 months make.

The American anime industry had a new message to say at the New York Anime Festival, and it was “Our future is on the internet.”

Well, don’t say I didn’t tell you so. 😉

It appears that now that normal TV markets have entered the online business, it is safe for anime to do so as well. Manga Entertianment, Viz Media, and Tokyopop dedicated half of their panels on the subject. Within the past year, some companies have already offered up their shows on services such as iTunes and the Xbox Live Marketplace. These companies mentioned these services, but also boasted about their own initiatives into the market.

Manga Entertainment had the biggest presentation as they debut their new website. The website contains many clips from their titles, as well as links pointing to every possible retail outlet for the show. You can tell that they put a lot of work into providing as much information as they could for the website, and they strongly encourage visitors to legally download the shows from the different services available.

Tokyopop had the most unusual online plan that even a tech-savvy guy like myself still does not understand. They are creating “interactive manga” for use on computers, cell phones, and other portable devices. They showed off some demos, which I can best describe as a series of static artwork moving around with music and voice actors. One title even had some CGI animation created for it. They showed them as if they were being played on a cell phone (pictured above) or on an iPhone / iPod Touch. When I asked how was it going to be possible for the consumer to get these videos on their devices, the spokesperson could not seem to come up with an answer.

And ADV films announced that they were going to do some big things with their new title Gurren-Lagann. We all found out the next week what that was…

I’m happy to say that my question this year wasn’t “What about going to online distribution?” but rather, “now that you’re distributing online, how do you plan to improve the service?” The way I see it, there are two major hurdles that the anime industry needs to take care of in this new market: cost and DRM restrictions.

DRM is my biggest gripe. As a Mac user, there is only one download service that I can use, iTunes. Amazon Unboxed, Netflix, and all other forms of DRM’ed videos are all based on Microsoft Windows and will not play at all on any of my computers or on my iPhone.

Manga Entertainment was my first easy target. They have video downloads for sale on Windows-only DRM services. So to promote their new website, they held a contest to win a free iPod Touch for those at the convention. Once the Q&A came around, I asked them the obvious question. “If I pay to download a video from you, how am I going to be able to play it on that iPod Touch?” Again, that DRM would prevent them from playing on any iPods.

They took the question very seriously, and said that the reason they were giving out the iPods is because they were close to striking a deal with a particular company to get their shows on it. They were implying that the company was Apple, and that means that they’re shows will soon be available on iTunes. But as of this post, they’re still not on there.

And Viz Media spent so much talking about all the differant partnerships with online download services that they didn’t even have time for a Q&A. That’s a real shame, because all of those partnerships they were talking about were all for Windows DRM’ed services, and Viz’s very own laptop has a glowing apple on it.

I would say that’s the price I pay for going with a unique operating system, but come on. You can’t ignore the fact that not only were most of the journalist were using Mac, but even the industry panelist were giving their presentations on Mac computers! The anime audience is comprised of many Mac users, and the industry should realize this and move away from Windows-only DRM.

Or better yet, take a note from the music industry and just get rid of DRM all together. Fansubs are not DRM’ed, so they are open enough for both Windows and Mac anime fans to enjoy. What are you gaining from DRM? Are you afraid that these shows will more easy to pirate if you do restrict them? How is that any different than the current situation with fansubs? If a person buys a video with his own money, he owns it. It is his property. Wouldn’t he feel more inclined to protect his own property and not have others steal it? I’ll only let my best friends “borrow” music I bought from iTunes and Amazon. Anyone else can just buy their own damn copy.

DRM on videos will eventually go away, just like it is with music. I just hope the anime industry has the sense to do it first before everyone else does.

And then comes the issue of “free” versus “paid” services. I bought a couple of FUNimation’s shows off of iTunes. Spending 40 bucks on the whole season of Tsukuyomi -Moon Phase- seemed worth it to me, but I felt like spending $2 episode-per-episode off of Xbox to be too much. Was I crazy for actually spending all that money for that show? Are people really shelling out the cash to convince these companies “this is where we should be heading?”

I asked this to FUNimation as they were giving their presentation on their download services. Were their ventures into iTunes and the Xbox Live Marketplace really that profitable?

“Of course it’s profitable!” he tells me with not hesitation. “We wouldn’t be doing this if it wasn’t. The truth is, we want to put all of our titles on these pay-per-download services, and we are currently in talks with the Japanese license holders to make that happen.”

So there you go. One company clearly sees the financial potential of the internet and is going forward with moving into that market. But even if a paid service is too much for some anime fans, going to an ad-supported streaming service will also be a profitable solution. This is ADV’s plan for the future. By putting their material for free on the internet, they are not at risk of losing even more money than they were before. Collectors will still buy the DVD, and fansubbers will still download for free. The only difference is that now you can also profit off of the fansubbers with ads. As long as you make the experience easy and convenient, you can win over that community.

However, it seemed to me that there was still one company who still didn’t see any potential in the internet. That would be our good friends at Bandai. Bandai was one of the first to launch a download service well over a year ago with Eureka Seven. After a week of being free, each episode became very expensive. I think $5 each, but I’m not sure. That is because in both cases, the episode was DRM’ed for Windows only, so I never got to see any of it. Mr. Iyadomi, who was confident about the service before, denounced it as a complete failure at NYAF. They are giving up, and have no current plans to go back into the online market.

(on a side note, I really hope Iyadomi-bashing doesn’t become a recurring theme for me)

But I have a feeling Bandai will be regretting that early forfeit very soon. If there was one clear message I got form the American anime industry at the NYAF, it was that we are at the dawn of the internet revolution. After eight years of fighting, companies are finally changing their business model to embrace the online fansub community. Some are already seeing the benefits of doing so. Others are just dipping their feet into the water. And while there are some major hurdles that still need to be overcome, they will eventually get there.

I’m just hoping it happens sooner rather than later. 😉

Scott continues his series of posts from the New York Anime Festival.

Bandai Entertainment held a panel early Sunday morning that I had to attend. The topic: the US release of Lucky Star.

When I walked around the dealers room on Friday, I felt a strange attraction to the Bandai booth. It had become a shrine to “The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya.” A whole table was dedicated to every Haruhi DVD and CD they had to offer. Haruhi posters and banners hung everywhere. And there was even a TV that played the show’s famous ending theme song on a constant loop all weekend. This ensured that a huge group of people remained in front of the booth to show off their otaku dancing ability.

But what I really was amazed to see was a huge Lucky Star banner that was hung in parallel with Haruhi’s. Bandai’s announcement of the title was so quiet that I had completely forgot it was coming to the US. I had ask the rep if anything was available yet as far as Lucky Star goes.

“No, not yet,” she tells me. “We’re holding a panel on it Sunday morning.”

Oh really? What are you going to be talking about?

“Pretty much how we’re going to do a similar release with it as we did with Haruhi.”

Lucky Star’s popularity in Japan comes from riding on the coattails of Haruhi Suzumiya, and it seemed to me like Bandai was going to try the same approach to finding success in the US. Not that this would really be a bad idea. Bandai did an amazing job with the American Haruhi release. From a great online marketing campaign to special editions DVDs that made my Japanese friends envy, I do not have any complaints on how well they treated it. So I could only imagine what they would have in store for Lucky Star. For example, something like the English voice actors doing a series of “Lucky Channel” sketches would be really funny.

I got up extra early that Sunday to catch the bus into the city. I might have got a bit too early, because I ended up waited in the panel room for close to an hour. The crowd that eventually showed up was very small. The panel was added at the last minute, so it didn’t appear in the convention’s program. Also, it was Sunday morning, so who would want to wake up that early?

Besides for me, of course, and about 20 or so other dedicated Lucky Star fans.

When the panelist arrived, they started off with a fun Karaoke contest of Haruhi’s opening theme song. Afterwards, the audience demanded to do the ending theme song. The team obliged and many people in the audience got up to dance with the song. They weren’t able to play the Lucky Star theme song, but they did follow up with a hilarious “blooper” reel of some great ad libbing for the Haruhi Suzumiya dub.

This turned out to be the high point of the whole panel…

Bandai’s big announcement on how they were going handle the release of Lucky Star was the exact same thing the rep had told me two days earlier. “We’re going to do something similar to what we did with Haruhi.” What exactly did that mean? They couldn’t say. Online video campaign? Not sure. What would be coming with the DVDs? Not sure.

I think what Bandai really thought was going to be the big news was the announcement of the dub cast. They had a guessing game of hearing the dub voices, guessing who the actress was, and then hearing the actress reveal the answer while still in character. You can tell that they had recorded these sound clips specifically for this panel, as the voice actresses made remarks about the NYAF in these clips. But the game was a disaster because no one in the small audience seemed to be able to identify or even care about American voice actors.

Disappointment was high in the crowd as they opened up the panel to Q&A. One person was able to squeeze out some useful information from Bandai when they asked the reps “On what side do you start to eat a chocolate cornet?” They laughed, but then admitted that a chocolate cornet might be included in the first DVD. I’m not sure if they meant an edible cornet or not, but it was nice for them to tell us something about the release.

Then they called on yours truly for what I thought was going to generate a real thought-provoking response.

“Shows like Haruhi and Lucky Star gain so much of there popularly in America because they were very heavily fansubbed and illegally distributed over the internet. Do you find this kind of popularity to have been more profitable in the long-run or still harmful to overall sales?”

The answer I was looking for was for them to admit that the internet was actually a great tool for anime marketing. I thought they had came to that conclusion with the video campaign they did for Haruhi. People had already seen the show and loved it, so Bandai chose to reach out to that audience and ask them to further support the show. After seeing the shrine of Haruhi at the Bandai booth, it would appear to have been a huge success for them.

Bandai’s President Ken Iyadomi got on the mic to answer my question.

“Illegal downloads are a big problem, and we are losing a lot of money because of it.”

That was it, next question. No further details. No acknowledgments on successfully reaching out to the fansub community.

And to think that I even got up extra-early for him that day! (-_-)

Mr. Iyadomi was clearly ignorant of the fact that everyone in that audience was part of the fansub community. They had all seen Lucky Star already. They already know the characters, so they don’t really care about English voice actors. They already know the jokes, so they asked the panelists that cornet joke. They already know the Lucky Star dance, so they begged Bandai to play the song so they can all do it.

But this all means that they already know that they love the series. They love it so much that they would wake up early on a Sunday morning to find out what the future holds for it. If they didn’t care about that, they wouldn’t be there. The crowd was small, but every single one of these people represented the future of Lucky Star in America. How could he ignore this?

Iyhadomi further sparked my fiery, as well as that of other bloggers, later in the day at Bandai’s official industry panel. This was a panel that many more people actually attended. They made announcements on other titles, and restated the little information they gave about Lucky Star earlier that day. But during the Q&A, one innocent question was asked about plans to go to new high-definition DVD formats. To paraphrase Mr. Iyadomi:

We are not really that enthusiastic about the new DVD formats. They are not region coded, so we foresee problems with releasing titles in both Japan and America. An anime DVD releases in Japan for $50. A year later, that same DVD releases in America for only $25. The Japanese fan will clearly wait a year to import the American DVD at a much cheaper price.

You could hear the groans pop up over this statement. One person quickly got up to the mic to pretty much ask, “Wait a minute, are you fucking kidding about all of that? Are you really going to hold back on new formats for that reason?” Chris Beveridge of AnimeOnDVD.com immediately posted a rant within minutes that indirectly berated Iyadomi on this statement. If only they had been around at the Lucky Star panel to hear his reaction on my question… (-_-)

Mr. Iyadomi clearly doesn’t get it. Because it is a niche market that comes imported overseas, the American anime industry must rely on the latest technology in order to exist. It starts with the small VHS market in the 90’s. It explodes with the bilingual DVD market at the turn of the century. And its future is in the openness of the internet and new digital media. This is already clearly evident within the underground fansub community, and if Iyadomi doesn’t wise up to this idea soon, he’s going to get left behind.

I will finish up my series from the NYAF next week with this topic and how other companies are already preparing for the internet revolution of anime in America.

EDIT:

Okay, this post is still creating a lot of buzz even weeks after I posted it. Let me just clarify a couple of misconceptions and mistakes I’ve been seeing.
Lucky Star is not ruined in the US – Just because Mr. Iyadomi doesn’t get it doesn’t mean that Bandai’s marketing department won’t pull through with an awesome release. These are the folks that did Haruhi, after all. I’m sure that we are all going to satisfied with it. My “letdown” was how little they had to say about the release at NYAF.

Dubs are not bad- Because of my poor eyesight, I don’t read subtitles when it comes to watching anime. My Japanese is far from perfect, so I do end up losing a lot of the story when I watch in Japanese. So if there is a dub track, I’ll easily switch over to it so that I don’t have to worry about translating. I watched Haruhi in Japanese back when it was fansubbed, and I watched it again in English on DVD. I intend to do the same with Lucky Star. But just because I don’t mind dubs doesn’t mean I give a damn about American voice actors. 😉

A paraphrase is a paraphrase- I don’t recall exactly what he said, but that was clearly the point he made with that statement. The link to Chris’s retort will verify this. However, I did simplify some facts to convey the message more easily:

Blu Ray is region code- But Japan and the US fall into the same region, so it doesn’t really matter.

A release in America after one year is not common- But Bandai’s US release of Haruhi, Lucky Star, and the Girl Who Jumped Through Time are close to a year after the Japanese release. It looks like they turning to faster US releases these days.

I also changed the formating of the quote to better show that it is my paraphrase and not a direct quote.

Scott continues his series of posts from the New York Anime Festival.

“So you mean to tell me that I can only find this book on Amazon?” I ask Tokyopop’s marketing person. The book in question was Manga Sutra, originally called Futari H in Japan, and it is a title I have great interest in.

“Well no. You can also buy it at sex shops,” she tells me as if it was no big deal.

“Yeah… well…” I give a slight blush over this idea. I picture a darkly lit shop with various phallic objects, leather straps, and tubes of lubrication. “I don’t think I’ll be going to any of those anytime soon…”

“Really?” asks an older female journalist as she joined in the conversation, “You really should. It’s a real groovy time.” The two girls then broke into that “Oh! You’re so bad!” giggle, leaving me to blush some more and move on to my next question.

However, this was a very important point that I don’t think should be brushed over quite so easily as that. When Tokyopop announced that they were going to be releasing the series in America, I was happy but very skeptical on how they were going to treat it. The story takes a somewhat realistic look on sex, taking away the fantasy elements you’d find in pornography and instead focusing on the difficulties one would find in the act. It’s this unique approach to the subject that has made this series the huge success that it is in Japan.

But sex is still a very taboo subject in America, especially in a time when the government focuses on abstinence programs and when the whole nation goes into shock if a bare breast is exposed on national TV. I had my doubts that a successful company like Tokyopop would risk their reputation on bringing such a mainstream sexual comic so casually into our market. And sure enough, I was correct.

Manga Sutra will not be sold in bookstores like Borders or Barnes & Noble. Instead, the only way you could find it is by going online or, as the rep very causally told me, going to a sex shop. True, they say that normal book stores would never sell such a book, but the impression I’m getting is the publisher didn’t even try to put any pressure on the stores.

This makes me wonder to Tokyopop:

Who the hell is going to be your target audience with this series?

In Japan, manga is mainstream enough that you can sell this book to a non-otaku market. For example, take a young college girl who just so happens to overhear her girlfriends talking about the series. This girl probably hasn’t picked up manga since her shoujo days, but the curiosity and allure of sexual performance makes her stroll into the “young men” section of her regular book store and check out a volume. Maybe if she’s too embarrassed to do that, she’d pick up the two exclusive “For Ladies” volumes in the female section of the store. There’s nothing that unusual about this, and I’m sure that’s how this book has sold as well as it did in that country.

But in America, only a manga fan would ever consider reading this in a comic form. A college girl who is not a manga fan would never start because of the subject. One company very clearly said at the convention, “You can’t convince people to start liking manga. They have to fall into becoming fans themselves, and then you can start to appeal to them after that.”

But manga fans are clearly not the market that Tokyopop is going for. By not fighting for it to be in the same area as their other works, they are sheltering all exposure of the title to their biggest potential audience. Manga fans who are not already familiar with the title will never have a chance to see it, and fans who already like the title (like myself) are going to have a hard time finding it.

Instead, they are trying to appeal to the a “sex shop” audience, which is a subculture all its own that sure as hell is not made up of many geeky manga fans. These people are very outgoing exhibitionist, even by the mere fact that they would be seen in a sex shop. They might be curious about the book, but they will quickly realize it’s not for them.

The sex shop audience are already very familiar with intercourse, and probably have already read the many sex guides already available. There is nothing in Manga Sutra that they don’t already know. In fact, they might even consider it boring and completely inaccurate in most cases. Manga Sutra was not made for highly sexual people. It was made for people unfamiliar with it or are still trying to get used to it. So I will be shocked if this book manages to find a market in American sex shops.

So who should Tokyopop be targeting with this title? First of all, the obvious answer is manga fans. You should never try to go outside that demographic with any comic. But along with the college-age audience that it was originally intended for, I think that Tokyopop should also go for the American teenage audience.

There is a big problem with hiding teenage sexuality in this country, and many teens have no choice but to turn to pornography on the internet to find answers and to satisfy their needs. But Manga Sutra could serve as a good alternative to this. It provides a story that is entertaining, funny, and very erotic, which should appeal to any teenager. It also portrays the lead characters as being in a healthy, loving, and most importantly, monogamous marriage. This is something you will never find in pornography but serves as a role model for proper relationships. Since safe-sex and condom usage is not nearly as common placed in the US as it is in Japan, more information would have to be added in the US version on this. But all in all, this would be a very positive book about sex that teens will actually want to read.

But this is all just a liberal fantasy from an otaku wishing that one of his favorite series finds success in America. Ms. Tokyopop Marketing had an advance copy of vol. 1 at the convention, and she generously allowed me to look through it. Each volume of the book in the US is comprised of two volumes of the Japanese version, so it was quite large for a comic. After years of reading the series in Japanese, it was nice to finally see it in English, and in very nice quality as well.

I should enjoy it while I still can. Tokyopop says that they only plan to sell five volumes in America (which are volumes 1-10 in Japan), and then they will decided what to do with the rest of the series after that. I have a feeling we’ll be lucky if the series even makes it that point…

Volume one comes out next week. I’ve already reserved my copy on Amazon since I don’t find myself looking for it at a sex shop anytime soon.

Tokyopop is really screwing up with this one. They are keeping the lid on this series to the manga fans while marketing it to an audience that will never buy it. It could have had some potential, but not like this. Manga Sutra is doomed in America, and that’s a real damn shame.

This is a first in series of posts focused on my experiences and thoughts on the first annual New York Anime Festival, which took place on Dec 7-9, 2007.

It happened to me at the MangaNext convention a couple of months ago. It was a small convention compared to Otakon or the NYAF, so I decided not to take a vacation day from work and only go to the Saturday events.As I walked through the narrow hallways of the hotel, I felt very uneasy. I was becomeing very annoyed with the other attendees, and I knew it wasn’t because of all the ugly, poorly-made Naruto costumes.

They were loud, screaming to each other in the small hallway. They were annoying, complaining on-and-on about how one anime character was not nearly as cool as another. They were rowdy, running in the hallways and “glomping” complete strangers. I felt like just telling them all to calm-the-f***-down!

But then I realized they were otaku kids. That’s what they do. This was their chance to be away from school and just goof off with their buddies, blow off that teenage angst and whatnot. I remember what it was like to be like that.

But if I can realize this and still be annoyed by their wild behavior, then that must mean… that must mean…

I’m getting too old for this!

orz

Sure, I’m only 23, but half-a-year of the post-graduation life has put me way beyond the level of these kids. I’m doing a 9-to-5, paying rent, and I simply do not have the same energy I did before. Not that there’s really anything wrong with that. There’s no way in hell I would ever go back to the life of studying and exams. But looking around at my fellow convention attendees, I felt that there was no way I could ever consider them “peers” of mine.

Am I past my prime when it comes to going to anime conventions? Was I starting to become one of those guys?

I have always been fully aware of the creepy older people that would show up to these events. They were typically male, over weight, and balding with grey hair. Most of them would be carrying a tripod and camera, and snapping off shots of the underaged girls in sexy cosplay. How completely sick and pathetic! There they were, sticking out so much among the youth. l just can’t help but to be disgusted by them.

Was I turning into one of those guys? Was my presence at these cons starting to become creepy?

This realization really put a damper on my MangaNext experience, and it was a real fear I had going into the NYAF.

I did take a vacation day for the NYAF and attended the convention when it opened on Friday. My friend was not going to be able to come with me that day because she was still in college and had an exam to take. In a way, this should have been a good indication of things to come.

Even though it was a much larger convention, I didn’t feel nearly as overwhelmed as I did at MangaNext. I was able to walk around the entire floor with no problems. There was no running, no screaming, no glomping, just a peaceful and enjoyable experience. And I know just why that was:

There were no kids!

It was a Friday, a school day. All the kids were still at school! The attendees that were able to show up were all adults like me. Most of them were professional journalist, writing for the Anime News Network or Publishers Weekly. But others were just hobbiest, taking in the panels and discussions without the flood of attention craving youngsters. I ended up having some serious discussions with the other attendees.

The kids came on Saturday and Sunday, but I knew to stay away from the general hallway and stick with the professional media at the panels. This is where I felt more in my place. I loved this audience. These were finally the folks that I could call my peers.

With the social awkwardness that you often find in otaku, you can see how easily one would lose sight of what’s appropriate and not-appropriate for their age. There’s not a more pathetic scene than the balding overweight man being surrounded by hyperactive teenagers. But there is still a place for adult anime fan in the convention scene without it being creepy. Stick with the professionals as the discussion panels. They actually do talk about very interesting things that will keep away the ADD youngster.

And please, never ever go around taking photos of underaged girls in sexy cosplay… that’s still very wrong on so many levels.

::shutters in horror::

I’ve had a running theme with this blog over how disgusted I am with anime fans who only watch illegal downloads, and how I wish anime companies would look for a more creative way of reaching out to this market. So when ADV quietly announced their new Anime Network online streaming video service, I thought it was best news to come from the industry since the launch of the Tokyopop’s “Authentic Manga” line.

I’ve been enjoying the service for about a month now, and last week sent out an honest email to ADV on how I think the company can improve on it:

Great service you’re offering. Since I do not have cable service at my house, and since I only use a Mac computer, my choices are very limited when it comes to viewing TV content legally over the internet. I rely heavily on NBC’s Hulu.com and the Adult Swim Fix streaming service. As a devoted anime fan, I can’t tell you how thrilled I am that you’re offering a similar service.

Based on my experience with these other services, here are the things I notice are missing from your service. I feel that these are huge problems that can dissatisfy the user and drive him away forever. They should be fixed ASAP.

1) You need a full screen mode. Keep all the ads in, but if you’re going for a market of people used to watching anime on their computer, no one wants to be restricted to such a small part of their screen.

2) Episode needs to auto-play after commercial break. The user starts the episode and then sits back to enjoy it. Can you imagine how annoyed they get when they have to get up half-way through the episode to click on the “play” button again? Makes us even more pissed off about ads… (-_-)…

Now here is the long-term fix that you should implement on the next version of your player:

3) Dub and subtitle support! Like a DVD, your flash animation should incorporate a video stream, two language tracks (English and Japanese), and a subtitle overlay. This would put you far above what normal fansubs can offer, and win over so much more of the market you’re aiming for.

Again, I love the service you are offering, and I think it could be highly successful if you fix these problems I’ve noticed with it.

Days after I sent this email, ADV makes a huge announcement of a relaunch of the service with the promise to make brand-new shows available for free. They’re using the newest Studio Gainax show, Gurren-Lagann, as their flagship title.

So how much does this relaunch improve on the first iteration of the service? Well, in my email, I suggested two easy fixes and one slightly more difficult fix. Did they fix them?

Easy fix #1 – Nope, there is still no full screen mode.
Easy fix #2- Nope, you still gotta manually press “play” again
Difficult fix #3- Actually, yes! Sort of…

Gurren-Lagann is subtitled, but the crazy thing is that it’s soft-subtitle! That means that the user has the option of turning the subtitles on or off via a button in the control panel. This is a unique function that you don’t normally find in flash video players or even in most fansubs. But this is the kind of innovation that can pursued the illegal download to switch over to legit methods.

There is currently no dual-audio support for Lagann, but I’m sure that is because it has not been fully dubbed yet. The subtitling proves that someone over at ADV has the ability to create a flash video player that’s not just another Youtube clone. I can only hope that we start seeing some dual audio content pop up on the service very soon.

So kudos to ADV for sticking to their streaming service and finally bringing some innovation to the industry. There are still some easy fixes that should be made as soon as possible, but they are still on the right path to success anyway. I hope to anime fans embrace this new service so that more advancements can be to this wonderful medium.