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Department of Alchemy Podcast: Panels from Anime Boston 2009

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I’ve decided to flavor the blog with audio under the moniker Department of Alchemy Podcast. Occasionally, I’ll post audio from panels or discussions here, but don’t think of it as a regular podcast, à la Anime World Order.

This past weekend, I took my new audio recorder to Anime Boston 2009, and while I tried to record a number of panels, I had a few mishaps and some of them didn’t save. However, I did pick up a handful of them, so I’ll try to repair the audio a bit and upload them here.

First up is one of the five panels that I spoke at: Akiba Empire: The Otaku Influence. The convention’s booklet reads: “Otaku spending pumps over 4 billion dollars annually into Japan’s economy. Discover how nerdy anime fans went from basement dewllers to a powerful cultural, economic, and political force.” Please listen! Or download here.

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More panels from AB will be posted shortly!

To Be Continued

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The faculty over at the Department of Alchemy will be on break for the remainder of the week. We didn’t post anything since the beginning of last week, unfortunately, but we did end up switching domains on top of that, so that counts as an update, right? We’ll be at the Popular Culture Association national conference in New Orleans this week; if you’re around, come hang out or drop by the Japanese Popular Culture panel on Wednesday. It’s about anime, and Alex is demonstrating this fine presentation:

Otaku and the (Un)popular Fandom

Over the course of the past three decades, the term “otaku,” a moniker for fans of Japanese animation and its related passions, has survived a multitude of public and private appraisals. “Otaku” describes the conceptualization of a generation’s adherence to fan values, society’s opprobrium toward a targeted yet indistinct group, and the market’s generalization of an obsessive consumer.

What are the politics surrounding this categorization of loyalists to the anime fandom, in which “otaku” remains a negative classification even in the eyes of contemporary fans? What has caused Toshio Okada, theorist of the otaku culture and self-proclaimed Ota-king, to declare that otaku are dead? And in the cultural translation of the anime fandom from Japan to the United States, how have all things otaku blossomed into a mature consumer culture and an accelerated educational progression in the past decade?

From the beginnings of the “otaku movement” (Thomas Lamarre) established in the pursuits of the founders of Studio Gainax, we will examine the rise of otaku culture in the science fiction conventions of Osaka, its public disapproval stemming from media portrayals of Akihabara and hikkikomori, and the subsequent revitalization of anime fandom in the United States as the socialization of otaku proliferated in conventions, across the Internet, and eventually in local bookstores.

The actual presentation will probably not reflect most of the abstract (it was written back in December), but the paper will be uploaded to the blog come Saturday, so look out for it. Until then!