Friday July 1

Uncool Japan: The Trials & Tribulations of Japanese Pop Culture
6:30 pm in LP4
While fans in America consider Japan a pop culture mecca, otaku remain undesirable in Japan. This panel looks at the history and current developments around otaku and the “Japan Cool”-ification of Japanese media abroad. We’ll look at the history of the fandom and today’s anime consumer culture of Comiket, moé girls, and Akihabara; the Japanese government’s attempts to regulate otaku culture at home while promoting it internationally; and the struggles of anime trying to survive abroad. The panel also uses anime and manga about otaku as a lens for understanding these cultural issues.

New:
Anime Genesis Live: Benu’s Violent Torpedo of Moé
9:00pm in LP3
I’ll be making a guest appearance on Benu’s live podcast. Come say Hi!

Saturday July 2

Anime Intro & Ending Themes
10:30am in LP5
When we watch anime, our minds glaze over the animation that begins and ends our favorite series. But anime intros and outros are more important than you think! These small clips help sell series, promote bands, summarize plots, and emphasize important details. We’ll show many of the best and worst anime intro and ending themes on the market, the trends that flow through these promotional songs, and their importance in the context of anime’s history and popularity.

Sunday July 3

Anime Tune-Up
9:00am in LP5
Animation in anime comes in many styles, and a good lens to look at them is in anime about music. This panel takes a look at the whole gamut of musical anime — Beck, Nodame Cantibile, NANA, To-Y, Gravitation, and many more — to see what musical anime reveals about animation, the importance of precise animation (and how animators tend to ignore it), the creation of “fake” bands and songs, and how music works in the adaptation of manga to anime.

“Open-Source Culture” and the Cult of Hatsune Miku
AX Anime & Manga Studies Symposium Open Session 4
10:30am in LP5 (LACC 408B)
An academic analysis of Vocaloid as a case study of peer production in the creative industries.