This year at Anime Expo in Los Angeles, CA (where I’ve recently relocated for my PhD program), I’ll be giving a handful of panel talks. Additionally, I’m also presenting during the new AX Academic Symposium. Check out my schedule below, and feel free to swing by and say Hi!

BUT before we get to the schedule, here’s an interesting bit of information regarding one of the panels I submitted called “Scans, Trans, and Fans: A Closer Look at Piracy.” It was rejected by Anime Expo, but on unique grounds: “Unfortunately we have to deny this panel because we feel that the topic of fansubbing and scanlations will not be suitable for AX. We do not endorse these activities and have a zero-tolerance policy on even the slightest advocation of such practices. We hope you understand.” Pretty unexpected response, but valid nonetheless. One of the issues I was grappling with was an ethical conflict between presenting research and insights about the culture of piracy in the anime and manga fandoms while also basically teaching people how to pirate in those explanations. (Of course, the irony is that Crunchyroll will probably make a big appearance at AX, and we all know that while Crunchyroll promotes their business practices in reaction to piracy as a market failure, the company did start off distributing pirated content.) I’m not complaining about this outcome — though I would have loved to present this topic to the AX community — but I thought I’d share because it’s an interesting lens into the inner workings of the anime industry and how conventions play a role within that industry.

P.S. — If you’re interested, here’s the description of the piracy panel I submitted: The anime industry has borne the weight of critics against fan distribution of anime and manga over a number of decades, so this panel presents a chance to look closer at the details of the (illegal) translation, sharing, and globalization of Japanese popular media. When did this all start? Did it really help popularize the titles we know and love today? We’ll look at the early history of tape trading and fansubs, the market for bootlegs, how fansubs and scanlations took off online, what’s hurting the industry today, and some new initiatives in Japan that embrace aspects of sharing free media.

Anyway, on to the schedule:

Friday July 1

Uncool Japan: The Trials & Tribulations of Japanese Pop Culture
6:30 pm in LP4
[Note: A panel I've presented before, but this time from the critical perspective of "uncool" otaku culture.]
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.

Saturday July 2

Anime Intro & Ending Themes
10:30am in LP5
[Note: The usual and polished anime theme panel I've done at Anime Boston, Otakon, and waaay back at Anime Expo 2009.]
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
[Note: This is a panel I tried out at Anime Boston 2011 for the con's musical theme, but I decided to bring it back for Anime Expo because people seemed to like it.]
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
(Academic Symposium Presentation)
TBD – sometime in the afternoon
An academic analysis of Vocaloid as a case study of peer production in the creative industries.