Tag Archives: america

Anime Canon Project: Or, How To Crowdsource the Anime Community to Build a Better Future for the Fandom

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I’ve been thinking about The Canon for a while. And, no, I’m not a misspelling perv. But I am a recently-graduated English major that had a large amount of books to think about over the course of four years.

Regarding the concept of a canon, I define it as the fundamental works of a type of media (books, movies, etc.), but more specifically those fundamental works with which a reader (viewer, consumer, whatever) may grasp an elementary understanding of how the media (or a subset of the media) operates as media. For example, the Bible is a critical part of the Western canon of literature not just because it remains the leading text of more than one of the world’s major religions, but also because it has a rich history of dissemination around the world, on top of some of the best (and probably influential) narrative structure in world literature. Another example, for film, would be Orson Wells’ Citizen Kane. While not the most enjoyable movie, it remains one of the foundational films on which film students build their academic careers.

To transition bluntly, a canon for Japanese animation is difficult to generate. However, the anime fandom — or what we know of it in America — has obsessed over “the best” anime for decades, even if we have no idea what we’re really talking about. There have been books detailing “the major works” of the key Japanese directors and animators of anime — such as Patrick Drazen’s Anime Explosion: The What? Why? & Wow! of Japanese Animation (even though I’m not sure why Key: The Metal Idol was ever included) and, less so about the canon but still popular (why?!) amongst academics, Susan Napier’s Anime: From Akira to Howl’s Moving Castle. Even Lawrence Eng, our forefather of academic otaku studies in America, has written about the topic too, with “A Look at the Four Revolutions of Anime.”

I won’t go into much detail about how American fandom, at least contemporary fandom, is relatively ignorant of even the major cultural works of Japanese animation (eg., the hordes who have never watched the original Gundam, given its huge impact not only on otaku but Japanese culture in general — read: Odaiba Gundam; and I won’t even go into the influences that Astro Boy lent to modern robotics). The evidence for the (passive-aggressive?) statement is, of course, the popularity of panels at conventions such as GeekNights‘ Anime You Should See; or, maybe not the popularity, but the lack of hands that immediately fly into the air when Akira is flashed onto the projector screen.

Although I could call it a problem, the fact that many anime fans today (comprised, if you step offline, walk into a convention, and talk to a bunch of random kids, of people that probably saw something quickly online, or also as common, just watched Bleach or Naruto on broadcast television) haven’t seen many fundamental anime, or just anime in general is a product of ordinary Internet-age modes of media consumption. Of course, there are many other problems that contribute, such as the proliferation of the hardcore fandom online instead of dispersed amongst strong physical/geographical communities. But, while I point out that NQ-fans (“not quite fans”) aren’t watching enough anime, not watching anime isn’t the problem.

Instead, the real problem is that the original and pivotal goal of the early American anime fandom has succeeded too well. This goal, plain and simple, was to make anime available to everyone. In the hundreds of newsletters and correspondence that I read in the Fred Patten collection, the ideal of media ubiquity held strong and pushed the dissemination of early fansubs across the United States in the 1980s and 90s, eventually culminating in the creation of the contemporary American anime industry. And, luckily for all those fans that can’t speak Japanese, there’s A LOT of anime available for fans to purchase and view. On top of the industry side, the online fansubbing community has also made thousands of titles readily available for anyone to download and view in the comfort of both their own home and own schedule.

So, what’s the problem? It seems like the anime fandom is thriving, especially with all the rumors that con attendance has been steadily rising since the early 2000s. We have all this anime, so what’s wrong?

Well, frankly, there’s too much anime for any one fan to watch. Yes, where at the point where ubiquity has become a negative trait. The current overpopulated media environment for Japanese animation means that fans don’t know what to watch. Unless they’re particularly well-connected to other fans — which the majority of fans, I would say, are not — we’re facing a situation where people don’t know what constitutes “the good stuff.” The solution seems to be what I have already mentioned: panels, websites, and educated fans that can tell fellow viewers what’s good. But even these representatives of the larger fandom can’t possibly watching everything out there, unless they want to ruin their lives by pulling a Jason Thompson. And the problem isn’t even that there’s too much anime. If we focus solely on television series, anime is bounded by time: 25 minutes per episode (conversely compared to manga, which can be read at relative speeds). The fact that a fair number of series boast more than 50 episodes, or even in some cases more than 100 episodes, means that if we want to live up to the otaku namesake, we have to spend a lot of time indoors in front of a screen.

Talking about a canon for Japanese animation, I wish to avoid speaking about the content of the canon (specific titles that stand out) and instead wish to emphase the construction of the canon. How do we choose what fans need to watch?

From here on out, I must mention that I am stealing an idea. I’ve had a lot of ideas in the past that I’ve never pursued, and I feel like stealing an idea once in a while saves others from feeling guilty that they cannot pursue their own ideas. This idea, then, is credited to Carl Li, over at Ogiue Maniax. Previously, he wrote about A Comprehensive Guide to Essential Episodes, which I would like to borrow for this article to propose a utilitarian venture to save the future of the anime fandom from complete ignorance of anime (worst case scenario: no newer fans have watched anything!). Carl proposes “a guide to… long shows… pointing out the episodes which are considered, while perhaps not “necessary” to the viewing experience, to be the apex of the show. That way, anybody who just wants to sample the show but in a meaningful way (not just watch the first episode or two and be done with it) can do so and fully understand the reasons that show is called a classic.”

I will state right off the bat that my proposal does not solve the problem of fan ignorance (not having watched enough shows, or enough of a show, to talk about them/it critically). However, it approaches a solution to the degree of good enough. I wholeheartedly believe that the future of the fandom relies not on fans having completed X number of shows, but instead depends on current fans continuing conversation between fellow fans and with potential fans. The only way to continue that conversation, then, is to make sure that fans can talk about shows they’ve watched, even if they haven’t watched all of it. As Carl points out in his article, most shows (especially those with hundreds of episodes) are drowning in a sea of filler episodes that attempt to buttress the main narrative (especially when it begins to weaken — a common occurrence in anime).

So let’s get into technical and methodological details. The goal is to gather information by crowdsourcing the anime fan community. Whether this includes 5 or 500 members, I suppose ultimately it doesn’t matter. We could argue about levels of expertise, or attention to detail, or quality assurance; but, in the end, this project just needs to be completed one way or another.

Websites are simple and inexpensive — I can host a domain and FTP. But if we’re going to go beyond a simple Wiki, I’d also need someone (or a few people) with relatively-solid coding experience to whip up a site with user accounts, along the lines of My Anime List (without all of the egotistical wanking). One page per series, with a short (under 100 words) exposition per episode, with a voting module that ranks watchability: Required or Optional. Even if only one person ranks a 100-episode series, if other fans can understand the basics of the narrative and art direction for that series by watching only 15 episodes, then The Project has succeeded.

So, there’s now a Call for Help. Let’s build the Anime Canon Project. If you’re interested in working on this venture, or at least think it’s a good idea, leave a comment at the end of this article, or email me at alexleavitt @ gmail . com. I’ll see what I can do to gauge interest and pursue some sort of operational model.

Comparative Media Studies

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Earlier this year, after returning from my semester in Kyoto, I decided to pursue the composition of a book. The idea of writing a book intrigued me, excited me, and inspired me to devote a “page” of this blog to my plans:

Otaku Movement Book

Working title:
• “Otaku Movement: The History and Fans of Anime in America”
• “Fan Tribe: The Cultural Economy of Anime in America”

“Otaku Movement: The History and Fans of Anime in America” is a future publication about the history of the anime fandom in the United States and its implications on media institutions, intellectual property, and cross-cultural reception.

I sent out a dozen emails to a number of academics and even met with Professors Ian Condry (MIT), Susan Napier (Tufts), and Henry Jenkins (MIT/UCS Annenberg) to discuss organizing research and arranging plans for graduate school.

During the spring semester, I decided to begin writing a lot about my personal interests, critiques, and analyses of anime & manga on this blog (which has previously housed the same tripartie then reserved for developments in digital media, Internet studies, etc.).

In May, I contacted the Convergence Culture Consortium, a major think tank in the Comparative Media Studies department at MIT, about potentially working there as a research assistant. Instead, and much to my surprise, I was awarded the opportunity to submit a proposal for a year-long research project of my own to pursue during the next academic year. Of course, I chose a focus on anime, manga, & fan culture.

This past Monday, my proposal was accepted, and I’m happy (and relieved) to announce that beginning in September, I’ll be working with the Convergence Culture Consortium, pursuing research and publications about developments surrounding and the maturation of the American anime & manga fandom. Basically, I was awarded my dream job (especially since after I applied for the graduate MA program in Comparative Media Studies in December ’08, Henry Jenkins announced his move to USC Annenberg, propelling the termination of the CMS program).

The news that I can announce right now is that this project (and any subsequent publications) will replace the book proposal (see above) that I initially hosted on this blog.

While the exact details of my project will be evolving over the coming weeks, I’ve posted my initial proposal below, in case anyone’s interested in reading it. We’ve narrowed the project down a lot from this foundation (Joshua Green, the head researcher at C3, stated that this proposal would form a solid 4-year PhD project, but was too broad for a “case study” in the Consortium).

Proposal

While Japanese popular culture has achieved relative popularity on an international level, critics have targeted fans — the loyal consuming audience of these comics and cartoons — as one potential cause of the currently faltering commercial market for anime and manga. Particularly in America, though, the relationship between audience and media has played an important role in the development of both the fandom and industry. Given the fifty-year history of this media in the United States, the developments related to the growth of the fandom and industry provide a historical context with which to analyze and assess the progress of contemporary convergence culture.

This white paper proposes a narrative of value over time in a specific fan economy. How do fans attach value to media? How does that value compete with the value imposed on fans by the industry? The American anime fandom, originating in the 1960s and coordinated in the 1970s, developed a profit-oriented market from a tradition of fan-to-fan practices. Initially, fans spread copies of taped, untranslated anime through the United States postal service to fellow viewers interested in seeing something new. Eventually, translations entered the network, first as scripts, then followed by fan-composed subtitles (fansubs). While the Japanese industry attempted to intersect this development in the 1980s, the Japanese withdrew, allowing the market to evolve independent of Japanese exportation. Once the commercial sector matured, American companies reapproached Japanese producers to import and spread media to foreign audiences, through print and broadcast. The early, pre-2000 history of this fandom presents a unique yet discordant convergence of business and fan practices, as well as an instance of cultural dissonance, that exhibits a changing landscape of fan interest in foreign entertainment.

In the past decade, the fan demographic has begun to change, and participation by a new generation of fandom, propagated and shaped by developments in broadcast and Internet technologies, has introduced both beneficial and destructive potential to commercial growth in the American market space. The proliferation of fansubbing and scanlations caught the attention of a large portion of Japanese producers, who now decry the fan activities as much as American companies. However, fans across the globe find value in free content as much as in the media they purchase. The question of how much value fans of anime and manga locate in the media they consume may provide a scope for analyzing commercial trends for the near future, particularly as Japan establishes foreign policy around cultural exportation. From NBC in 1963 to Crunchyroll.com in 2007, fan practices continue to inform theories of convergence culture and the ever-evolving nature of audiences.

Unexpectedly, given the recent trends in declining sales of comic books and DVDs, attendance numbers at anime conventions in the United States have increased. Whether this increase depends on changing fan demographics or an evolution in fan-centric values, it provokes a new realm of thought that complements the narrative: What succeeds convergence culture? This white paper aims to construct a narrative of the development of value fans derive from media alongside the value assumed by the industry. While the report primarily attempts to examine a historical period in light of recent convergence culture discourse, the continual advancements in the American anime fandom may shed light on the direction in which this specific converged culture, as well as other converging cultures, will proceed. An account of the forty-year history of the American anime fandom provides critical analysis of a previously-established intersection between producers and consumers, with implications for both Japanese and American economies.

ハチ約束の犬: The Story of Cross-Cultural Narrative

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I’ve written before about the incestuous cultural relationship Japan shares with America (for example, with Jero [here and here] and Monkey Majik [here]). This theme basically consumes my work (and might academically in the future, as I’m planning a potential track of research based around a comparison of cultural clash of consumer/popular culture for Meiji Japan and post-war Japan).

I’m glad to see a new development along these lines, especially one that I can discuss briefly.


Trailer for Japan.

If you haven’t had a chance to check it out, the trailer for Lasse Hallström’s new movie, Hachi: A Dog’s Tale, has recently been passed around the major OMG-Japan link sites (like Japanator).

If you don’t know the story behind Hachiko, you can read up on the most loyal dog in the history of forever at Wikipedia. The tale is simple: a dog waits for his owner, a professor at the University of Tokyo, every day near Shibuya’s train station. When the owner dies, the dog keeps waiting. The story of Hachiko is infamous in Japan — the result of an article published in a national newspaper by one of the professor’s former students — and might be equivalent to, say, the story of Paul Revere (for Americans), as a piece of cultural history in the minds of the Japanese. Hachiko has even become an idiom of sorts, known primarily as 忠犬ハチ公 (loyal dog Hachiko), and the dog has an annual ceremony dedicated to him, held at his statue in Shibuya Square.


Photographed in Shibuya, October 2008

Looking at this trailer, though, the film immediately caused a bit of confusion. It’s an English-language movie based on a real Japanese story marketed first to a Japanese audience (with a later release to an American audience) with a trailer in Japanese but requiring Japanese subtitles. I can work around the lingual barriers present here, but — c’mon — it’s a bit circuitous.

On top of the linguistic clash, there’s also the problem of the movie as produced. The qualifying prerequisite to explaining said problem is to understand that a movie was already made in Japan.


Clips from the original Japanese film, 1987.

Hollywood remakes movies a lot, and while there are critics of multiple versions of the same film, we can’t outright denounce this film based on an earlier (potentially better) Japanese counterpart. However, the fact that Hachiko is filmed in America with an American cast produces the problem: the story of Hachiko is placed into an American context.


Trailer for United States.

After watching the American trailer, I hope you can understand what I mean by “American context.” This second trailer disregards the origins of the story, and I am frankly surprised that it didn’t state something along the lines of “A real story based on the popular Japanese tale.” The movie was filmed in Connecticut, and it obviously ignores the Shibuya locale (replacing it with Bedridge Station), the name of the professor, etc. From the trailer, it seems that the film ignores the Japanese side of the story altogether. It’s a remake, and poetic license like this is never discouraged. However, I wonder how many members of the American audiences will question the name of the dog, Hachiko (or, here, Hachi). It’s very Japanese sounding, plain and simple. Would the Japanese association minus the Japanese context create a barrier for a non-Japanese viewer?

In comparison, the Japanese trailer presents a much different film. I especially want to highlight the song (with Japanese lyrics) that plays in the second half of the trailer. The first words we hear are 忘れないよ、忘れないよ (don’t forget, don’t forget), which parallel Hachiko’s thoughts of his owner, but also reflect and emphasize the historical context that underlies the film (Japanese people have not and will not forget about this dog and his story). I assume that Japan will receive an early release of this movie solely because Hachiko remains such a cultural figure there, and the producers are trying to bank on the story’s popularity. However, I also wonder if the English-language and American actors will distance Japanese viewers from connecting directly and emotionally with the movie.

Going back to America, I must question the retention of the Akita dog breed, at least when presented to the American audience. Bluntly, I laud the directors for not changing the breed. However, Akitas (and Shibas, since the puppy in the film is actually a 柴犬) are so rare to see in the States that I wonder if it even makes sense to import the Hachiko story with an American context, particularly when there’s already competition with Bolt, Homeward Bound, Milo & Otis, and especially Lassie (though Hachiko’s popularity preceded Lassie’s by at least 5 years). Perhaps pet-movie obsession has fizzled out by now though, maybe even provoked by What I guess I’m trying to say in this last point is that, in Japan, Shiba dogs are EVERYWHERE, so I think Japanese will take to the dog fairly easily, while there might be some hesitance on the part of Americans.

I don’t mean to demean the movie, and I certainly hope that more Americans will take the time to look up the story of Hachiko with the film’s release. However, I don’t want people to regard this film as “the next Airbud.”

Oh, and if you check out the film’s Japanese site (there’s no English one), Richard Gere from the side looks like an authentic おじいさん (old man).