Angry, angsty cartoon femme fatale in black bikini and boots. Tick. Gothic hair-do. Tick. Stupendously powerful cannon on her arm. Tick. Bleak, faintly apocalyptic plot. Tick. Drooling fans. Tick.
[size=1.2em]It is March again. It is the Tokyo International Anime Fair once more and I, like thousands of other Japanese popular culture addicts, have (temporarily) died and gone to geek heaven.
[size=1.2em]Throughout the year, hundreds of trade shows are staged in this strange vault on the edge of Tokyo — everything from cutting-edge advances in nail polish technology to the latest ship-welding equipment is showcased here. These are events designed to parade Japan at its most creative and at its most globally marketable. Few succeed and fail quite so spectacularly as the International Anime Fair.
[size=1.2em]To trawl through the maze of booths is to see Japan doing something utterly brilliant despite itself. The cartoons being previewed here today spew glorious fantasy from the screens: ninja musicians, politically active robots, samurai cybernauts, biker frogs, and schoolgirl versions of all of the above.
[size=1.2em]This is not the Japan of long, consensus-building corporate sub-committees but a Japan that will try anything and not give a hoot what you, me or anyone else thinks.
[size=1.2em]Some of the big themes this year were predictable, others less so.
[size=1.2em]Japan has been going through something of a samurai revival of late, hence the 47-Samurai themed "maid café” that opened a week ago in Tokyo’s Akihabara.
[size=1.2em]It is something to do with people finding the present day a bit depressing and seeking solace in the simpler days of the pure warrior spirit, bushido values and massive swords. Lots of the new offerings this year seemed to fit that zeitgeist.
[size=1.2em]One distinctly miserable cartoon tells the story of a child living through one of Japan’s worst mediaeval famines, which should be cheerful prime-time fare when it hits the evening TV schedules.
[size=1.2em]The cannon-armed bikini warrior mentioned above is the heroine of Black Rock Shooter — an animation that hard-core anime fans have been awaiting with fidgety impatience.
[size=1.2em]Many of the animations, or short clips, are of manga comics or novels that are being converted into cartoons for television. Mini Skirt Space Pirates neatly falls into that category, and looks superb. Well, it does to a nerd.
[size=1.2em]It is a cliché to contrast the unfettered creativity of Japan’s cartoon industry with the country’s more common, and largely accurate, image of a place that cherishes rules and lock-step promotion. It also misses the point. Japan’s animation industry is a lean, unforgiving production machine built to feed a beast of infinite hunger.[size=1.2em]In combination, Japan’s main TV channels demand about 80 hours of new animation a week. The cartoons are colourful, wacky and imaginative to the point of obsession. But they are also a commercial product manufactured in tough conditions.[size=1.2em]And, like the rest of Japanese industry, they are in trouble.[size=1.2em]Not because Japan has run out of brilliance, but because it has forgotten that the market is now global.
[size=1.2em]It is essentially the same problem experienced recently by Toyota, but without the horrors of an eight million vehicle recall.
[size=1.2em]Japanese animators, like car companies, must realise that their most important market is no longer Japan.
[size=1.2em]The geeks who fly in to the Tokyo Anime Fair from around the world are, quite rightly, here for the pizzazz of new ideas, new artists and the breaking of new boundaries. But they also stand as a blazing signal to Japan’s animation industry of its own short-sightedness.
[size=1.2em]The global anime fan base exists despite minimal promotional effort by Japanese animation companies. And in a world of YouTube and the iPhone, the universal popularity of Japanese cartoons is an opportunity which has been grotesquely squandered.
[size=1.2em]Sure, some have made it big at the cinema, and a few have been sold to European and American networks. But not in anything like the volumes they could have been if their Japanese producers cared about the non-Japanese market.
[size=1.2em]Historically, they have taken the view that once a cartoon has been produced and sold for domestic consumption, it has exhausted its potential, give or take a few DVD sales.
[size=1.2em]It is only now, when they see the nerds that have arrived — many in daft costumes — from Rio, Copenhagen, Tel Aviv or Vancouver, that they realise how catastrophically they have missed a trick.
[size=1.2em]The girl with the massive cannon on her arm is impressive. What she really needs, though, is a good translation company, a contract for per-episode delivery through iTunes and a ball-breaking Hollywood agent.
TOKYO — Yoko Komazawa had been at the Tokyo International Anime Fair for nearly six hours when she fell in love with a brown-and-white stuffed panda — a character in one of the fair's featured cartoons.
"It's so adorable and interesting," she said, staring into its gleaming pink eyes. "I want it."
Unfortunately, the panda wasn't for sale and Komazawa had to settle for a photo. But she walked away from the small booth impressed by the panda's creators — from China.
"Japan is certainly an amazing anime country," said the 30-something anime fan and collector of all things cute and cuddly. "China has some intriguing characters though. They're different, and that definitely catches my attention."
Komazawa's enthusiasm for something new is a small victory for China's fledgling animation industry, and could well represent a widening crack in Japan's global anime dominance. Japan may be the birthplace of anime, but China is gunning for its future as it mounts an aggressive effort to expand the country's creative prowess and reputation.
In November, the government's cultural arm established the China Animation Comic Group Co. to foster a "great leap forward" in animation production, technology and marketing. Part of the plan includes building a "China Animation Game City" in Beijing that would be a national hub.
With government subsidies, Chinese animation companies tripled their presence at this year's Tokyo anime fair even as the overall number of exhibitors declined. The four-day event through Sunday, one of the world's biggest anime-related trade shows and festivals, featured a "China-Japan Anime Summit" along with multiple China-themed lectures.
"China is a big market, and everybody is trying to get in," said Jimmy Tse, chief executive of Top Art Investment Ltd., which makes the panda Komazawa craved. "And the Chinese people, they are starting to think, 'How come I'm manufacturing for someone else?' Why are we not creating anything ourselves?'"
China's growing ambitions coincide with an ominous industrywide slump in Japan.
After peaking in 2006, the number of anime minutes made for television fell 20 percent to 108,342 in 2009, according to the Association of Japanese Animations. A survey of the group's members shows that overseas anime revenue fell 21 percent between 2006 and 2009.
Matt Alt, a Tokyo-based author, blogger and longtime observer of Japanese pop culture, blames the industry itself for losing its edge. The world's hunger for anime accelerated around 2000, with Hollywood incorporating anime scenes into films and children clamoring for Pokemon.
Since 2006, however, a trend toward adult-oriented (and often sexually explicit) niche titles have turned off the general audience. Moreover, the industry is losing young talent due to persistently low pay and poor working conditions, forcing Japanese animation companies to outsource much of their work.
"The Japanese anime industry basically gave China, Korea and all these countries the keys to the candyshop," Alt said. "By outsourcing so much work to them, they trained this work force of people who are now far more ambitious and far more hungry than a lot of Japanese animators are."
The man behind the Tokyo anime fair acknowledges the global anime boom has waned. But chief producer Hitoshi Suzuki brushes off suggestions that foreign competition poses a threat, expressing confidence that a new boom will emerge in time.
Japanese animation is rooted in a rich 60-year history that cannot be replicated elsewhere, he said, citing the work of Astro Boy creator and "godfather of anime" Osamu Tezuka.
"Everyone tries to copy the surface of Japanese animation," he said. "But real Japanese animation is different."
Different or not, the Japanese anime industry is beginning to realize that it cannot ignore China — as an emerging rival or a potentially lucrative new market. For both countries, cooperating appears to be the best option for now.
One of the most successful joint projects so far is the "Romance of Three Kingdoms," a historical animated series currently airing across China. The program, produced by Japan's Takara Tomy and a subsidiary of China Central Television, will begin airing soon in Japan and elsewhere in Asia.
Chinese startups are also actively courting Japanese content makers for their business. A representative from the online video site joy.cn, China's version of Hulu, traveled to the Tokyo anime fair to convince Japanese companies that the Internet offered an alternative to mass media — subject to tight government restrictions — and that their copyrights would be protected in the process.
"It's a time of great change right now," said Yuji Nunokawa, chairman of the Association of Japanese Animations and a veteran anime producer. "We need to determine how we can work together to foster the contents business. We've come to a point in time where both sides need to think about how we can do this."
For example, in Gundam 00, aired on Saturdaymornings on Ntv7, the protagonist’s outspoken atheism remained intactin the Bahasa Malaysia dub. And this in a country where people strivefor their kids’ religious piety?
HangPC2 Post at 6-7-2009 10:38
Yang bab ni aku setuju sesangat... sebab dalam Gundam 00 tu memang terang2 banyak unsur ateisme termasuklah pada Setsuna F. Seiei (nama asal: Soran Ibrahim) yang dah murtad dan tak beragama disebabkan pemikiran dier diracuni fahaman estremis tentang konsep "perang jihad" oleh Ali Al-Saachez. Sebenarnya moral dier mudah jer; Islam takder ajar pun bunuh orang untuk sebarkan Islam tapi sebaliknya perang jihad hanyalah bersifat defensif. Tapi malangnya bebudak kecik maner la dapat tangkap nilai moral dalam citer camtu. Sebab tu la proses alih suara dier kena ditapis untuk jaga sensitiviti agama tapi malangnya proses alih suara dier main bedal jer.
Creators and publishers of anime and manga are uniting in opposition to a proposed bill that would the sale ban publications that authorities deem “ harmful ” to youth :
Ten comics publishers, including industry powerhouses Kodansha, Shueisha, Shogakukan and Kadokawa, collectively announced on Friday that they are withdrawing from participation in the Tokyo Intl. Anime Fair, the biggest event of its kind in the toon biz.
Kadokawa earlier made an independent announcement that it was ankling the event, which is skedded for March 24-27, under the sponsorship of the Tokyo city government.
The publishers, which call themselves “ Comic Ten Companies Association, ” oppose a bill submitted to the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly on Nov. 29 that would tighten restrictions on so-called “excessive sexual depictions” in toons and comics sold to youths under the age of 18. Strongly supported by Tokyo governor Shintaro Ishihara, the bill, opponents claim, threatens freedom of expression.
“ We strongly distrust the position of Governor Ishihara and (Tokyo) municipal authorities, which lacks respect for comics and animation creators, ” the group said in a statement.
Earlier this month, Ishihara made some remarks in favor of the ban, letting everyone know that he is disgusted by the idea of allowing homosexuals to appear on TV :
“ Anyone who claims it’s not harmful to children to draw manga that features the sex life of married couples and the such are idiots. Tell them, ‘ You need to go cool your heads. ’” Ishihara responded to the Tokyo Parent Teacher Association’s December 3 petition in support of the bill by saying, “It’s not just about children. We’ve got homosexuals casually appearing even on television. Japan has become far too untamed. I’ll go forward with [this bill] with a sense of mission in heart. ”
Ishihara says he doesn’t care, but he probably should. If the bill passes assembly votes on Monday and Wednesday, the next Tokyo International Anime Fair is going to be like a ghost town.
To watch a lengthy Japanese discussion about the problems with Tokyo’s proposed bill, check out this video.
Update: The bill has passed the first round of voting. It still needs to pass a second round of voting on Wednesday, but it doesn’t look like there is much standing in the way of that.
A post by Brian Ashcraft has clarified some of the details about the bill :
But today in Tokyo, the second version of the bill went up for a vote and passed by the assembly with a final vote on Wednesday. As blogger Dan Kanemitsu points out, the ordinance is not national legislation, and is not a ban per se, but penalizes companies that produce material that is harmful to those under 18 years-old. Unlike in the U.S., companies that produce the material — and not retailers — come under fire.
The bill also does not target material that is 18-years-old and up as that material is already inaccessible to minors.
What’s also worth nothing is that the Tokyo government already has the power to dictate what, as Kanemitsu writes, is “ too sexually stimulating for minors OR too sadistic for minors OR too likely to cause criminal acts among minors OR cause suicide among minors as ‘ harmful material ’, and force such material to be treated as adult only material. ”
Regarding the new bill, the Tokyo government explains (via The Mainichi Daily News), “ only manga and animation that glorifies or exaggerates illegal sexual acts will be subject to the regulations, and freedom of expression will not be violated. ” This new bill attempts to define what is obscene — vaguely. Kanemitsu believes this is one way Tokyo is attempting to control what people read and view.
More importantly, the bill is directed at video games, anime and manga, but does not encompass novels, films, TV and photographs. Mediums that use real-life images are exempt
So, it is not a literal ban, but by punishing companies that publish material that falls within its vague definition of harmfulness, it will try to force those companies to practice self-censorship. Tokyo is a very big market, and even if the bill doesn’t cover the whole country, many companies will only be able to produce one version of a comic book or video game, so the “ censored for Tokyo ” standard could become the national standard.
Tokyo Assembly Passes Bill Restricting Sale of “ Harmful ” Manga & Anime
The Tokyo assembly has passed its vaguely worded bill aimed at protecting young people from “ harmful ” publications :
The Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly on Wednesday enacted an ordinance that vastly expands a law meant to restrict people younger than 18 from purchasing or flipping through manga depicting rape, sex crimes, incest and “ sexually explicit acts and graphic images that are not acceptable morally. ” By making previous rules broader and more clear, the Tokyo government will have the authority to deem more manga as “ unwholesome books, ” which restrict where and how they can be sold.
A group of 10 major Japanese publishers, including Kodansha Ltd., Shueisha Inc. and Kadokawa Group Publishing Co., said they will refuse to take part in the anime fair, which this year attracted more than 100,000 people, a record. The publishers said that the Tokyo government, led by Gov. Shintaro Ishihara, didn’t discuss the ordinance in advance with publishers and artists. Artists said the new rules will stifle their freedom of expression and creativity.
“ We cannot help but say it is a vicious act that [the Tokyo metropolitan assembly] enacted the ordinance without full-fledged discussions, ” said the group, which includes the Japan Magazine Publishers Association.
More info from the Telegraph :
“ Ishihara has very cleverly pushed this through at the last minute, without any input from the publishing industry and by using lots of rhetoric about the ‘ porn protectors ’ in the opposition in the chamber, ” Roland Kelts, author of “ Japanamerica : How Japanese pop culture has invaded the U.S., ” told The Daily Telegraph.
“ It’s a question of a breakdown of trust, ” said Dan Kanemitsu, a translator of movies and comic books. “ The Tokyo government already has the power to regulate anything that is deemed too sexual or likely to be harmful to youths, but this bill specifically pertains to material through the media of manga and anime.
“ Both sides should have been able to talk about this a lot sooner and then it would not have felt like a sneak attack, ” Mr Kanemitsu said.
The new law restricts comics and animated images that contain sexual images that are “unjustifiably glorified or exaggerated. ”
And a little bit more from ANN :
The assembly also approved a non-binding supplemental resolution urging newly designated harmful publications to be carefully regulated, with the work’s merits based on artistic, social, and other criteria to be taken into account in the evaluation process.
The voluntary self-regulation clauses will go into effect on April 1 of next year, and the restrictions on sales and renting will go into effect on July 1.
The image at the top of this post is from a comic strip floating around 2-channel. Ishihara is shown a military dictator calling for the destruction of dirty anime, Akihabara, and Comiket. You can view the exciting and unwholesome conclusion to the comic
Reporter Rob McBride visits Akihabara, the center of Japan’s “ manga trade ” to do some sensational reporting. They turn up at a bookstore with a camera crew and ignore signs on the door that ban the use of cameras. A shopkeeper appears and asks them not to film.
McBride concludes that it all must be part of a devious Japanese plot to hide the dark truth about dirty manga. Al Jazeera sneaks a hidden camera into the store to film what’s up, but doesn’t seem to find anything other than a few adult males browsing for comics, some of which contain 2D characters doing violent or sexual things. (Can’t find any children in the store? No sweat – just show random footage of elementary schoolers getting on a bus!)
Like many news reports about the issue, it does not report that there are already rules restricting the sale of pornographic manga and anime. Straight-up porn manga is already sold separately from the non-porn stuff, and this new restriction seems to be trying to expand the definition of “ adults only ” to include manga that might contain sexually suggestive or violent scenes.
Here’s a quote from ANN forum posting by user Cryssoberyl, someone who seems to know more about anime and manga than I do :
The people whose reaction is “this is just an age restriction, slap an 18+ sticker on and call it a day” do not understand how the distinction works in Japan and how it affects the marketability of a product.
In Japan, there is only “ general audience ” and “ adults only ”, and “ adults only ” works are, for most distributors, untouchable. Those 18+ stickers you want might as well be nuclear radiation warnings.
In Japan, “ adults only ” anime is not shown on TV. On any channel. Ever. No matter how violent or racy it may have seemed to you, no anime ever shown on Japanese television was officially designated as 18+.
In Japan, “ adults only ” manga are not sold in most book stores (both online and brick-and-mortar). As has been stated, 18+ manga works are almost always produced as magazines and anthologies, almost never as stand-alone tankoubon.
The results from this should be obvious. The marketability, and thus profitability, of “ adults only ” works are extremely limited. Publishing companies will not risk time, money, and effort on creating works that may be judged as such, and thus have their profit potential destroyed by the inaccessibility that comes with it. They will be forced to restrict themselves to works that they can safely market within the “ general audience ” sphere.
This is not an age restriction. It is censorship by way of enforceable lack of profitability – either you toe the line, or they make your stuff unsellable.
aku tengok anime skrang pun mmg kurang soul tak macam anime-manga oriented.kebanyakan anime sekarang aku tengok stail lukisannye lebih kepada karakter shoujo.aku mmg jarang layan animax sbb banyak anime shonen yang dah macam anime shoujo aku tengok.anime 80's dan 90's tetap yang terbaik bagi aku sbb jalan citer tak terlalu complicated dan mempunyai unsur2 moral yang tinggi cam doraemon.
Post time 28-3-2010 08:24 PM
