A weekly look into American otaku culture

When I think about my weekend up here in Boston this year, I guess it can only be summed up into one word: different. Every little aspect of the convention experience seemed a little off this time around. It’s like having that little voice in the back of your head saying, “No, this ain’t right, something is very, very wrong here.” Was it a change in my personal situation and attitude? Possibly. But I think that it’s the change within the industry and fandom that caused this worry.

The biggest issue that I’ve been talking about all weekend is the fact that only three anime companies were present this year. If you go back to the Anime Boston of two years ago, you will see a much brighter picture. All the birds of the industry, from the tiny Synch-Point to the giant Bandai, couldn’t wait to strut their newly developed plumage to the crowd of onlookers. All the companies were snatching up titles left and right. Some of them even announced 5 titles that year! If there was a golden time for anime, that was it, and they were living it up for everything that they could squeeze out of it.

Last year, the companies returned to the stage, but many came empty handed. The pretty feathers from the year before were now dull. Everyone started to tremble as they saw sales not growing at the rate they needed to in order to survive. The only thing they could hope for at the time was to be saved by a couple of little ninjas, who were about to make their way over to the US with in a couple of months.

But the little ninjas didn’t save them. Only three companies came back north this spring, which left many to wonder what happened to the rest of the flock. One of them had died right before the journey, and the rest must have been too sick to even try. One show, no matter how popular it is, cannot save an entire industry. If that was the case, then what one show sparked the golden age of three years ago? Pokemon? Cowboy Bebop? Inu Yasha?

None of them caused the boom, it was the new, innovative ideas that sparked it. It was the fact that you could watch mature anime every Saturday night on Cartoon Network. It was the fact that you could either listen to your anime in Japanese or English all on the same disk. It was the fact that you could go to your local bookstore and discover the awesome sensation of reading something backwards.

But these changes came about 4 years ago, and nothing has changed since that time. Yes, many companies came in and joined the party, but no one brought anything new that wasn’t there before. Did the fans finally get sick of this anime thing? Did it completely die off like every other fad of the past?

Well, if fans had gotten sick of it, then why are these conventions seeing increased attendance records year after year? Anime Boston alone roughly sees a linear increase of 2,000 people every year. That means that attendance was actually the lowest during the “golden age” of anime, and is at it’s highest right now during the slump! Anime is not losing their fans. We’ve been sticking with it the whole time.

I think the problem with the industry right now is that anime is no longer a fad, it has become a part of our modern day pop-culture. That boom from four years ago was actually the point in time when that change happened. As the snobbish, college-aged anime bloggers that we are, I think that we often forget just what importance making an anime “mainstream” in the US really is. We somehow think that having something dubbed over takes away what makes anime anime. And then we use this bullshit reasoning to justify downloading “pure” fansub anime without paying a dime for it. But if it wasn’t for the work of the US anime companies making these titles mainstream, then how the hell would you ever discover anime in the first place?

The truth is that it is only us, the fansub community, that gave up on anime.

Looking at the audience at this year’s convention reminded me that “true” anime fans were still alive and living well in the world today. Since the event was held a month later then usual, most of the college “fansub” crowd had gone home for the summer, leaving only the innocent high school kids free to not be persecuted for still loving Adult Swim anime. And instead of putting up a snobbish attitude at the genre and criticizing it, they embraced it with loving admiration. We were all these fans at one point, most of us during the golden age. And so the golden age never went away, the same fans are still around. While many were lost to the evils of fan-subbing, more came up to fill their shoes.

So as more and more of these companies start to die off, many will ask “How do we make anime popular again?” However, that is impossible to answer because anime never stopped being popular. It’s just as more fans enter the mainstream, many of the previous fans enter the underground. So I think the issue that truly needs to be asked is “How do we win back the fansub community?” That is what ADV has been trying to figure out for the past year, coming up with little schemes that will hopefully lead to that break-through innovation that will win us back for good. I’ve been very opening supporting them and their efforts, and I am fully confident that they can do it.

I went to this convention with a slight motive: I wanted to tell the companies, particularly ADV, on what I think is the key to winning back the fansubers. The reason why the fansub community is doing the illegal downloading are all the same reason why we all turned to Napster back at the turn of the century - it’s easy, free, and offers a much larger variety of options then what’s on store shelves. Apple realized that the satisfying these conditions and just changing the “free” to “very affordable”, they can actually turn to profit for the record industry. And so they were to win back the Napster community with their iTunes service.

I believe the same can be done with fansubbers.

And so my question to the industry was meant to get them to start thinking about this concept, “What are your plans beyond DVD? Blu-Ray? HD-DVD? Downloads?” I didn’t really care about the Blu-Ray, HD-DVD part. I was well aware that they were never going to touch that subject at all. But I was hoping that they would realize that not only were those two formats dead to them, but so was DVD. Fansubs and bittorrents killed the potential anime DVD market. The true answer in that equation was downloads. Media Blasters shunned the idea, and I’m not surprised. I have a feeling that they will soon be in the same unemployment line as CPM any day now. But ADV answered the question as if online was the next step in their plan to “come out on top”, as Dave puts it. The company has already been experimenting with bittorrent promotions and video podcasts. And at the convention, he was dropping hints that “we will soon be able to get anime to the fans a lot faster then before.”

I would keep a close eye on ADV over the next year. I have a feeling they’ll find a way to change the entire fansub community very soon.

Sunday has always been the quietest day of every convention I’ve gone to. With most of the attendees having to check out their hotels by noon, many just don’t even bother showing up. So while the options are quite limited as to what to do, I still try to do the best that I can. And it actually turned out to be quite a successful day for me.

Even though I had brought a lot of cash with me, the dealers room really didn’t have anything worth spending it on. I wanted specific brand-new releases from certain companies, particularly the new edition of the Ah My Goddess OVA series from Central Park Media, and the first volume of Kamichu from Geneon. However, none of these companies showed up this year, and in fact, I highly doubt we’ll ever see that AMG come out at this point.

So with a pocket full of cash, I attended the charity auction. This was a wonderful experiance as I was able to see very rare collectable items, and even walk away with a couple of them. I won a Paranoia Agent poster signed by the complete cast of the English version, and the art-box for Girls Bravo also signed by the it’s cast. What makes these items so interesting are the little notes written on them with one voice actor teasing the other. The whole thing totaled me $155, but they were one-of-a-kind items from two series I love. And it all went to the Multiple Sclerosis Society, so at least those insane fanboy purchases went to a good cause.

After the charity auction, I stopped by the dealers room again hoping to see the one artist I really wanted to meet this weekend. And to my luck, she was there without a crowd but ready to sign autographs. She is Svetlana Chamakova, artist and auther of Tokyopop’s domestic original series “Dramacon”. Now, I’m not really a big fan of American manga, but “Dramacon” is one of the most entertaining manga I have ever read, in both the US and Japan. Chamakona has a deep understanding of the US Otaku culture, and she works it in with her wonderful sense of humor. It’s very hard to be skilled at comedic timing in comics, but she has it.

So I am a true fan of hers, and I walked up to her table with a big smile of face. I grabbed a new copy of her book, and as she is signing it, she stops from time to time and to talk to me about many things. We talk about how her book seemed to appeal to both genders, her thoughts on shounen romance series, and how I was living my own “Dramacon” this year with my ex-girlfriend. I never really thought I would get into a deep conversation with a manga artist about romance, so that was pretty cool.

I think the one thing that you gotta give the American manga artist credit for is that they are fans just like the rest of us, and they love to take the time to talk with their fans. i highly doubt I will ever get the chance to meet my favorite Japanese manga artists, and even if I did, how well would a conversation go with them? So I suggest that anime fans shouldn’t underwrite domestic artist just because they aren’t Japanese. You’d be surprise with the kind talent they do have.

Okay, since I have some free time at the moment, I figure I should just wrap up my day of blogging before I go off to the various hentai-themed events for the night. They’re always the most fun.

Following up how excited I am over FUNimation’s release of Negima, we all got a look at the artbox for the series. It’s a wooden box with golden outlines of the female characters on each side. The box opens from the top, and is magnetically kept closed. They said that it was supposed to be like a bentou / lunch box, but I didn’t see any connection. It was more like a jewelry box.

The boxes come with re-useable stickers featuring chibi-version of the female students and a thumb-size figurine of chibi-Asuna. They say that the rest of the volume will also feature a “Special Edition” with another chibi figure. I have a feeling I’ll be getting the box, the rest of the series, and the special edition volume with the Nodoka figure. (^_^)

So the overall impression of the con ended on a happy note today. While there were only two companies present at the event, they did make a very good impression on me.ADV seems determined to remain in the business and re-invent the way anime is teated in America. FUNimation goes through many hoops to ensure that they put out the best quality that they possibly can. So while these seem like hard times for many, there are still a handful of things that anime fans still have to look forward to in the months ahead.

FUNimation made the public announcement on FMP 2nd Raid, but that was completely overshadowed with the MAJOR SURPRISE for this fan. BECK!!! At the convention last year, rumor was leaked from other companies over this licence. However, FUNimation never made anything official the entire year. I predicted that the issue came out of the legal issues for the many songs, and I was planning to ask them about it. Well, they answered my question before I even asked it, and sure enough, that was indeed the problem. But they said that they worked out all the legal issues, so all the music and logo’s are completely worked out. This is going to be one awesome release!

I’ll write more about my thoughts on that later as well as the other news from FUNimation later.

So ADV finally got the call from legal, so here comes some major announcements. The first new title is Jinki Extend, and we were treated to a screening of the first episode. It’s the story of a normal Japanese school girl who somehow stumbles upon battling giant robots. While the main girl is pretty cute, and there were a couple of funny bits here and there, there was nothing that really set this series apart from all the other mech series out there.

They did announce a new direct order service they will be offering on their website for custom made anime t-shirt. You pick the image, size, and color, and they’ll print it and ship it to you. Cool idea. Maybe I’ll give it a try when they put it up.

The 10th Anniversary Edition of Evangelion will include a limited edition jacket with a black-on-black Eva image on the back. I guess when you hold it up to the light, it looks cool. But other then that, it just looks like a plain black jacket.

They finally got the rights for the Elfed Lied OVA episode. Since they have already put out the entire series, so they are unsure as to how to release it.

Once again, ADV is stressing the possibility of having downloadable content in the near future for them. They really think that will solve a lot of the problems with DVDs not being so profitable for most of the series that are imported here. As far as pricing goes, it would be depending on the resolution. They are currently offering downloads on cell phones for $3 / episode.

But the biggest remark came about when the CPM bankruptcy came up. Dave got really angry over the idea, and has very strongly declared “We have been spending the past two years positioning ourselves to come out on top.” I don’t doubt them for one second. I really think they are going to the company what will keep the industry alive.

One thing that Dave stressed is that the reason why ADV has been so quite lately is that they are working on some major, ground-breaking stuff. These innovated ideas like the custom made t-shirts and downloads may be hit-or-miss, but if something hits, it will create something big. So not only will they stay on top, I predict that they will the force behind whatever the next stage of anime in the USA.

So my day starts off with going to the FUNimation panel “Breakfast at Negima’s”

So they said,
“What about
Breakfast at Negima’s?”
I said, “I
Think I
Remember that show, I
Yes, I recall actually
It was disappointing.”
And they said,
“Well that’s
The license we got.”

Okay, all jokes aside, this was the world premiere of the English dub. They screen for us the first and fifth episodes of the series, so that we could get a taste for the Ermine character. The dub was fantastic. They took many liberties with adapting the script, but what they wrote worked so well with the animation that it brought a new sense of humor to the series. Fans of the manga might be really confused at to why the anime seems even more isolated from the manga, but as a huge Akamatsu fan, I feel that this dub actually does more justice then the original Japanese script did.

Gripes did some with the voices, though. Ayres was casted for the lead with this one, but I would really doubt you could tell it’s him. He seriously changes his voice for this role, and not in a good way. When Negi is speaking in a normal voice, Ayres weak British accent is decent. But then Negi becomes timid, which happens very often, Ayres squeaks way too much, and often becomes inaudible. I also felt that Nodoka’s English voice wasn’t timid enough for her role.

But the ermine character steals the show.. They make him a very hard, tough, and perverted individual. This brings back some of the edge and raunchiness that went missing when the anime was originally made.

So you heard it here, folks, not only did I find this dub to be pretty good, I think it might actually be better then the original Japanese version! It still seems very different then the manga, but when you try to turn shit into gold, you gotta make those kinds of sacrifices. Great job, FUNimation!

Following the ADV panel, I finished off my evening with the dub premiere of the very disappointing “Speed Grapher” and the screening of the Anime Music Video contest. I call “Grapher” disappointing because FUNimation built it up to be a completely sick show. We had to be over 18 just to get into the show, and I got in a large argument with the security person because my school ID did not have my birthday on it (if I am a senior in college and I was still under 18, I must have been some kind of genius, right? -_-). But I eventually was able to find my driver’s license, and got in to see a pathetic attempt at some gothic Cowboy Bebop wannabe. As the voice actors on stage raved about how sick it was to be working on this show, I was scratching my head waiting for some guilty pleasure material to be splattered across the screen. It never came.

I guess after Elfen Lied, it’s going to be pretty hard for an anime to shock me, huh?

But this was the first time I attended the AMV contest, and I was quite entertained with it. Which brings me to my main point for Day 1 of Anime Boston this year. This is the first convention I ever went to without a cosplaying girlfriend. And today I actually found out that my experience here at the convention is even better when I fly solo. My day was PACKED with going to the kind of panels that I really was interested in going to. I did not even have enough free time to go to the dealer’s room today, that’s how occupied I was. This whole new approach to convention going with a refreshing change for this blogger. I’m able to be a lot more social with the many other anime fans here. All these people are very friendly once you get to talk to them. We all seem to have a nice respect for each other since we’re all into the same kind of things. I was surprised at how often a simple conversation would break out between myself and the person next to me. We typically talk about convention experiences, but sometimes it even a little deeper and personal then that. I gues otaku are very interesting people once you get to know them.

But moving on to the next point, it really seems like the presence of the industry is really shrinking this year. In fact, the two very shocking bits of information did come from the convention today, but from AnimeOnDVD.com. FUNimation got the license to the 2nd Full Metal Panic season, and it looks Central Park Media is heading towards bankruptcy. But while the internet was buzzing with this news, we were all in a blissful ignorance over here in Boston. In fact, we were even talking about FMP at the ADV panel today and wondered why ADV had not announced when they were going to release it. And I was wondering where CPM was, cause I really wanted to get some stuff from them.

Hopefully that ignorance changes tomorrow with most of the companies start holding their industry panels. If the industry is going through turmoil right now, you better believe that this blogger will try to figure out all he can from all sources.

But that’s enough for one day. Thanks for everyone who have been following these posts today. I will be up bright and early again tomorrow for the world premiere of the Negima dub! (^_^)

ADV’s “Sneak Peak” panel starts off with a little tease from the man himself, David Williams, on the announcements that he was planning on making to us tonight, but he just had to get the clearance from legal to do so. So he was hoping to get the phone call sometime by the end of the panel. I hope does too, because I wanna hear announcements! (>_< )

The first release that they showed up to us was, Nanaka 6/17, which just melts my moe-loving heart. It’s the story of a 17-year-old girl who’s memory gets regressed back to when she was 6-years-old. Cheesy shoreline and lines aside, it really have cute characters and designs. However, there was some serious lip-syncing issues with the dub that the audience picked up on and laughed at. Not a good thing, ADV.

Next up was “This Ugly Yet Beautiful World.” Action, romance, fanservice, monsters, mystery, moe - this was a complete wet dream for me. I am hooked, I am really really hooked on this one. The main female character is also really pretty, and feels like she was taken from a Key visual novel (”Kanon”, “Air”).

Without a clearance from legal, the panel turns into an industry Q&A. They said that they are working on something “that will get anime to the fans a lot faster,” Hmmm… downloads…? When I asked the question, Dave did bring up a very interesting point that in the format wars, if the Japanese companies align with one side of the other, they will not allow it to go to the US if it’s not on that particular format. But as far as downloads go, he is very interested in it. Very interested. Dave ran off for a second, voice actor Greg Ayres took over the mic, bullshitting answers to questions like “Where do babies come from?”

Someone did bring up to me that Geneon is not on the schedule for the convention this year. That is really sad, since they always put out all my favorite shows. Maybe they will be in the dealers room.

The people who were going to run the visual novel panel did not show up, but that might not have been a bad thing. It was going to be run by one of the only US companies that import the games, so it probably would have been just a big commercial to sell their product.

But the panel that followed it was wonderful. It was a lecture by the Japan Consulate in Boston on how he feels that the “Father Knows Best”-style American TV shows of the 50’s completely changed the way the Japanese perceived family life. I gotta take some time to wrap my head around this idea, but I am absolutely fascinated with this kind of stuff.

That was followed by representatives from JET, who basically just confirmed all the things that I have learned about the program. I am even more confident that I am the kind of person they’re looking for, so I’m even more excited about the program.

The Media Blasters rep didn’t even know that he had a panel to go to! They had to drag him out of the deal’s room. He did announce a new version of Kite, which I thought at first, “What? Like a Super-Extra-Deluxe-Dirrectors-Cut version?” But no, it’s actually a sequel… or more exactly a follow-up… to the original OVA. As far as my question on the next step in media, they are not going to deal with Blu-Ray or HD-DVD as of yet, and neither are thy planning on downloads.

I believe that at this point, none of these anime companies will ever comment on the physical media side of content distribution. After all, that is a topic that even major Hollywood studios are unsure of. This rep completely agreed with my view that the general public will not adapt to the new formats while DVD is still going strong. But I personally believe that downloading anime will be the future of the industry, and you can very easily use the fansub community and bittorrent as a model on how to do it. So while Media Blasters is still one of the smallest companies attending this thing, it’s no sunrise that they aren’t doing anything about it. However, I’m hoping that bigger companies will mention something about it.

An interesting observation this year: the program features a full page guide on “How to Tip”, describing exactly how much extra money you much appropriately pay for the services you receive. One thing that I can completely understand is that these young anime fans are working with a very, very tight budget. In fact, it’s very common to see a double bed hotel room to be housing perhaps a dozen convention goers. So if we’re willing to be treated like sardines just to save a few bucks, I’m pretty sure that we are not so generous when it comes to leaving the tip. I can only imagine what a nuisance this is to the local hotel and restaurants

The theme for the convection this year is Colonial New England. The male mascot, A-chan, is sporting a Paul Revere look while his female counterpart, B-chan, is giving off a Betsy Ross vibe. This is a little bit on the weird side. I don’t think anime and American history mix very well.

Of course, right after I wrote that, they began their opening ceremony with the question, “What does anime have to do with the American revolution?” They answered it with a hilarious fake documentary explaining how the war was started because of a disagreement between the British and Colonist over the pronunciation of “Naruto”. Really funny stuff.

The ceremonies continue with introducing all the guests. As much flack that English voice actors get, they are very entertaining people that know how to work a crowd. I’m very exciting to see my favorite English voice actor, Steve Blum. That guy has been in everything. I will defiantly be attending his Q&A tomorrow.

So now that things have finally began, I’m feeling a lot better about the convention this year. Now time to hit those panels! (^_^)