A weekly look into American otaku culture

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.

Hello everyone! It’s been a while, has it?

Well I’m back, so let’s party!

Through out its three-year life, this blog has gone through major periods of inactivity because of school work. Right after I graduated from college, I did have about a month of updates before I was hired for a full-time software engineering position in a small startup company. Coincidentally, during my job interview, my future co-workers talked about this blog because it was the first thing they saw after doing a google search of my name. Boy, did they come at a good time… ^^;

Since then, my life has been busy with the whole “moving out and living on your own” experience. Getting my own apartment, paying my own bills, pimping out my bachelor pad with an Xbox and big-screen HDTV, and adopting two very cute kittens, Tiger and Nekomimi.

Any responsible pet owner should make sure that his pet only watches the best quality anime

But I haven’t stopped being the anime fan that I was before. I’ve still been keeping up-to-date on the latest news from the industry. I’ve been watching a couple of new fansubs every season, and I’ve been buying all the best new DVDs to hit state-side. While I chug away at work everyday, my iPhone is constantly playing some sweet Mosaic.wav into my ears. And I have also been corresponding with many Japanese otaku via the website Twitter.

Apparently they find a white American otaku to be some kind of novelty… ::shrugs::

But I still feel very disconnected from the American anime community. A lot of stuff has gone down in the past month that I feel must be addressed. Sadly, most of my audience these days does not speak English, so I’ve been very limited in what I can say and express. So I’m getting back to doing what I love doing, pondering and talking about American anime fandom via the Anime Almanac. I can’t promise I’ll be around for the long haul this time, but I will try my best to pace myself well enough to at least have one post every week.

… provided I’m not prevented from typing due to uncontrollable circumstances…

For my next couple of posts, I will talk about my experiences at the New York Anime Festival last week. You can expect to hear my thoughts on the new con, graduating from being a school kid to a working adult at these events, the Manga Sutra, those assholes at Bandai entertainment, and other things.

Thanks to everyone who still has me linked on your blogroll. I will try to update my own blogroll for you all.

To my past readers, thanks for your support and I hope you’ll enjoy my rants again.

To new readers, welcome aboard. I hope you like what you see.