Anime Expo was awesome, hands down. If I have panels accepted next year, I will make an effort to return, definitely. And there are many critical comments I can make about Anime Expo, such as the relationship between industry and fans, or the large size of the convention as justification for its importance (though in my opinion it shouldn’t have to be). Today, I’m going to focus on the Anime Expo dealers’ room.

Anime Expo’s dealers’ room is gigantic. If you’ve ever been limited to East Coast conventions, I would estimate its size to be slightly bigger than that of Otakon. For illustration, it took me a half-hour to browse through one-third of the floor, and I only stopped at two booths for a maximum of three minutes each.

Because Anime Expo is an industry convention (versus a “by fans for fans” convention), the dealers’ room also somewhat resembles Japanese industry conventions, such as Tokyo Game Show. A lot of booths exist just to advertise wares, such as this Astroy Boy movie booth. Still, while a small number of booths boasted walls of gigantic placards, Anime Expo’s room is littered with ordinary booths that hawk anime, manga, and cat ears.

I’m honestly not one of those junkies who stalk out the dealers’ room on the first day of the con, constantly returning to check up on discounted prices, lurking in the shadows to pounce on that ultra rare figure that I hid in the back corner to elude the price-sniffing of others. I buy a lot of my anime and manga online. In the past, I made minimal effort to visit Tokyo Kid, the anime store in Harvard Square. Usually, I know what I want, and I go online to find it cheaply.

Of course, nowadays with the price of DVDs and books on the decline (you can find videos on RightStuf.com for $10 or less, or books on Amazon for at least 25% off), dealer’s rooms are trying to keep up. On most Sundays the dealers scream at the top of their lungs to make sure every fan becomes aware of their “Buy 1 manga, get 5 free!” bargain. Still, after paying $50+ dollars for the convention (though I haven’t done that in a few years, due to panels), I honestly don’t want to waste a few hours in the dealer’s room only to realize that they don’t have what I want to read. Once in a while, I’ll find a great deal (like all twelve volumes of Tezuka’s “Phoenix” manga for $100 at Anime Boston), but otherwise, why can’t I just find things I want online? I’m not into serendipitous buying sprees after all.

At Anime Expo, I bought only one thing in the dealers’ room (besides an omiyage poster in the Artists’ Alley): a copy of Tezuka’s “Swallowing the Earth,” published recently by Digital Manga. Truthfully, I only grabbed it because I got an in-the-last-15-minutes discount of $20. Otherwise, I looked around at every booth, but bought nothing.

However, I came home with a lot of anime-related booty. The cause? Book Off.

I wrote in an article last week about my experiences at the Book Off in New York City and how it’s easy to find manga on the cheap, usually for $1 per volume. While at Anime Expo, I had the privilege of staying with the illustrious Deb Aoki, writer and reviewer of the About.com manga section. On Saturday afternoon, she drove me and a few writers over at Japanator.com to one of the Book Offs in Los Angeles. While not as large as the NY Book Off, I still picked up a number of intriguing items (all of them in Japanese).

First, I found two not-so-expensive “Groundwork of Evangelion” art books. As you can see from the scanned images, they were Volumes 2 and 3, and I’m not so sure where I should pick up Volume 1, but (again, looking at the scans) I only spent $12.50 and $15.00 respectively. Awesome! Especially when the MSRP of these two books is ¥2500 and ¥3000 (about $25 and $30, though these would easily sell in the dealer’s room for $45+). The books are practically new — only the edges are slightly rough — and the images inside (all production sketches with a few color illustrations in the front) will make any Eva fanboy cream his pants.

The rest of the books I picked up were only $1 each. Pretty awesome finds.

First, I picked up some manga. As I mentioned in that previous article, buying manga at Book Off is a bit difficult, not only because it’s hard to find the comics by their publisher, but also if you haven’t done any research into the comics, you’re not necessarily sure with what reading level you’re challenging yourself. However, browsing through the titles, I happened upon School Rumble, a series that I’ve never read or seen, but one that has been constantly pimped to me by a number of reliable friends. After examining the content, I decided to pick up the first four volumes (there were about a dozen there, but #5 was missing).

Next, hidden among the art book section, I found Katsuhiro Otomo’s early works Anthology. The 250-page, large-size book features about a half-dozen of Otomo’s shorter stories that were never published in English (and, according to Deb, never will be, because Otomo doesn’t like his works localized, apparently). The art is amazing, and while I’ve been looking for good copies of the English translations of the Akira manga for months, it’s certainly a nice supplement.

Finally, also among the art books, I found this $1 piece of curated information on the history and development of anime in Japan. The title reads, “The New Conquering the World Japanese Culture: Japan’s Anime.” This is pretty much the book that needs to be published in America, because it’s a really interesting primer (with hundreds of large, color images!) for any type of anime fan that doesn’t know the basic history of Japanese animation. The text covers a lot of the major players, including Miyazaki, Tezuka, Otomo, Oshii, and Anno, and also provides good context for the commercial markets of kids’ anime and toys. One chapter focuses dually on the evolution of robots and cute girls in anime. The section that convinced me to purchase the book (besides the $1 price tag), though, was the end of the compilation, which provides a lot of information on the history of anime from 1917 to 2003 (the publication date), the digital creation of anime, and particularly the relationship between anime and the television studios that produced them. The last few pages present a nice timeline of anime on television starting with Astro Boy in 1963. The opportunity to look at anime history graphically really hits home the fact that, OMG, there’s a lot of anime out there.

If I have the time in the near future, I’m going to upload a LOT of scans from this book and attempt to translate what I can.

In total, I spent less than $40 at Book Off. Of course, you need to know Japanese to purchase these and actually comprehend them, but still… $40 for 5 volumes of manga and 3 rather impressive texts. And so I return to the thought imposed on the beginning of this article: Is there a future for anime and manga in convention dealers’ rooms? Basically, the answer will always be Yes. But it may be true that the stronghold that dealers’ rooms had on fans in conventions from the 1990s has almost certainly weakened today. Some of this might be attributed to fans not purchasing series after they watch fansubs or read scanlations, but also, with Netflix, Amazon, and other cheap alternatives, fans can own media for much less than in the past. No wonder the American industry is slipping. And with streaming websites that provide free episodes to fans online… Really, how many fans are going to buy the DVDs after they watch it once? Perhaps the real question might be: What kind of value are fans assigning to the media the consume? Where does the line of rewatchability exist for modern anime fans that do not possess knowledge of “anime greats,” like Oshii and Kon, like Anno and Ishiguro? And what might the breakdown be between the consumption of anime and manga versus other things, like cat ears, figurines, and other merchandise being sold in modern exhibition halls?

We at the Department of Alchemy (aka. Alex) would like to thank everyone who decided to come out for our/my panels this weekend at Anime Expo 2009. All two of our panels (as well as the two academic panels in which the Department participated) were thoroughly attended! The Problem with Otaku (photographed above) purportedly held more con-goers than the Crunchyroll panel in the previous one-hour time slot! Sorry that the panel had to be cut off; the presentation held a bit too much information. Also, after being featured in AnimeEXPOSURE (Anime Expo’s official newsletter) on Friday as a highlighted panel to attend, Without Watching the Anime: Opening & Ending Themes featured a full panel room, with a line extending around the bend in the hallway! Rumor has it that about two dozen people were even turned away, since as we neared about 400 members in the audience the fire code seemed about to be breached (though we still had a good number of people lining the back wall and even sitting on the floor in front). Unfortunately, our camera equipment wasn’t working during the panel, so we couldn’t nab a cool snapshot.

For those who attended the OP/ED panel, the list of videos shown is listed below. Thanks again for coming to see us! Remember, we’ll be speaking again at Otakon in two weeks! Check out our three panels:

1) Without Watching the Anime: Opening and Ending Themes – Sunday at 10:15 am in Panel 3
2) The Impact of Evangelion – Saturday at 9:00 am in Panel 1
3) Anime & Manga Studies – Saturday at 11:30 am in Panel 1

So, on to that list:

- Astro Boy 1963, English & Japanese versions [opening]
- Space Battleship Yamato, Japanese [opening]
- Mazinger Z, Japanese & English [opening]
- Big O, Japanese [opening]
- Serial Experiments Lain, Japanese [opening]
- Cutie Honey 1973, Japanese [opening]
- Cutie Honey: Flash, Japanese [opening]
- RE: Cutie Honey, Japanese [opening]
- Honey & Clover, Japanese [ending]
- Mobile Suit Gundam 0083, Japanese [opening]
- Lucky Star, Japanese [ending, episode 14]
- Neon Genesis Evangelion, Japanese [opening & opening during end of episode 26]
- Daicon 4, Japanese
- The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Japanese [opening & dancing to the opening in Akihabara]
- NANA, Japanese [ad promoting opening/ending music]
- Cowboy Bebop, English [opening]
- Gurren Lagann, Japanese [opening, episode 4 & 24]
- Macross: Do You Remember Love, Japanese [ending]
- One Piece, Japanese & English [opening]
- Honey & Clover, Japanese [opening]
- Nodame Cantabile, Japanese [opening]
- Eden of the East, Japanese [closing & opening]

I should be writing about the 27 Bits blog project (or reading for that matter), but I had to compose this article tonight out of a pure buzz for 1) blogging and 2) magnificent content.

If you know anything about the history of Japanese animation, it should be that anyone can easily trace its origins back to the United States and Walt Disney. Osamu Tezuka (most famous for Astro Boy) was inspired by Disney’s work, but of course moved well beyond the scope of serious content that the Disney Corp. would ever attempt to consider. The ironic thing about contemporary broadcast American animation (the stuff on Cartoon Network targeted at the ordinary youth demographic) is, of course, the influence of Japanese animation (see, for example, the art style of Teen Titans).

But I don’t want to blabber on about anime, even if I can be a real geek about it. That’s for later (aka. YouTomb blog post I’ve been meaning to compose for a while). What I do want to introduce, though, is a strange yet fascinating instance of secondary cross culturalization, but one that has to do with music.

This evening in my weekly Japanese class, 雨水先生, before we started our lesson, wrote on the board a popular singer’s name, ジェロ, and mentioned something about J-Pop, all of which went for the most part over my head. The name, though, transliterates to Jero. I assumed, after a syllabic translation, that she had been talking about J-Lo. 日本語-fail.

Actually, Jero, the pseudonym for Jerome White, of Pittsburg, PA, is a black American kid, now five years out of college, who sings enka. Yes, 演歌, the twentieth century Japanese music genre. But not regular enka, oh no. Enka, remixed with hiphop.

Why is this cool? Well, let me quote from Wikipedia for a terse explanation on what enka is: “Modern enka (演歌 — from 演 en performance, entertainment, and 歌 ka song) came into being in the postwar years of the Shōwa period. It was the first style to synthesize the Japanese pentatonic scale with Western harmonies. Enka lyrics, as in Portuguese Fado, usually are about the themes of love and loss, loneliness, enduring hardships, and persevering in the face of difficulties, even suicide or death. Enka suggests a more traditional, idealized, or romanticized aspect of Japanese culture and attitudes, comparable to American country and western music.” Essentially, enka is already a blend of multiple genres of remix: Performance and song. Modern/postwar and traditional. Japanese scale and Western harmony. Nippon country culture and American country music. I find the last one the most unusual, because the country melodies sound particularly corny.

Who’d have thought that you could remix this music any more? Well, apparently Jero, and I now brand him as officially badass.

The above video is a profile of Jero and how he got into enka as a child. Just the fact that he learned from his grandmother makes him awesome. And traditional. Traditionally awesome. The Japanese are raving about this guy, too. One interviewee says, “He sings enka, but he looks like a hiphop guy.” This is kind of important, since in Japan physical looks do carry some social weight. I’m sure that a lot of press he receives revolves solely around the fact that he’s an African American who can speak fluent Japanese. But with hiphop rising in popularity, the authenticity of his image in a society foreign to something so culturally American compels Japanese viewers, especially younger ones, to pay more attention.

Here’s another video profile, this time from Reuteurs. The phrase I pulled from the audio is “bridging the generation gap.” Of course, Reuters is directly referencing the multiple issues that the older generation in Japan has had with the younger demographic over the years. However, the phrase also suggests the remix culture that seems to be ever more associated with the Millennial generation. The fact that remix is acting as a bridging agent is beneficial for distinctly traditional societies ordinarily hostile to change. The title of the video also highlights an unexpected element in the enka-hiphop relationship: the “blues” allusion. Blues, in American society, refers to a specific genre of the jazz movement. Plugging blues into YouTube’s search bar yields a B.B. King video heavy on the improvisational nature of American jazz.

Let’s take a quick look at the jam session. First, the audience’s cheers beat down the guitar in the first few seconds of the video; important, because jazz is “social music”, according to Miles Davis. Though, although the audience participates, the spotlight remains affixed to King and his guitar. Second, watch King’s face. Emotional. A bit self-aware. Pretty funny too. The musical performance becomes theatrical in its presentation. Third, if you listen closely, you’ll notice that he reuses melody patterns to remix on the third or fourth repetition — a common and yet necessary component of jazz. Blues, then, is communal, dramatic, and blended.

Above is a generic enka song that I found, sung by Itsuki Hiroshi. Compared with B.B. King’s video, Itsuki’s song shares a number of ingredients though the music remains different. The singer of enka appears to depict him/herself more emotionally even than the blues’ singer. Antithetically, enka seems to focus more on the individual performer than the communal experience, though this reflects the nature of personal storytelling present in common American country music. The spotlight here also stays with the performer. Enka might even be associated with the theatrical monologue: one performer, alone, telling the story from his/her perspective. This again applies to blues, without or with a vocalist such as Bessie Smith. The remixed measures in the enka melodies are subtle, yet the meld between traditional, archaic instrumentation (the koto on the right side of the camera view at the start of the clip) and sung/played notes stands out easily.

This is the final Jero-related video that I’ll reference, but I wanted to throw up a sample of one of his music videos to analyze its aesthetic qualities. The clash between antiquated instrument (shamisen) and modern hiphop moves (yet these are also mashed together with fluid movements which I would refer to as strangely relevant to Japanese seasonal culture and, here in the video clip, the lyrics). Jero’s vocals I find utterly eerie, both in their texture and the fact that they’re too indistinguishable from an ordinary enka singer’s tonality. The video itself should even be viewed as a new style of remix. American hiphop music videos focus on the performer and assistant dancers, yet Jero’s video incorporates the addition of the acoustic instruments, borrowed from pre-hiphop visual styles. I like the more modern instrumentation of this video, because Jero strives for similar sounds those he updates to electric guitar and synth keyboard.

Jero’s remix of the hiphop and enka genres gives birth to nothing seen like this before in Japan, or around the world using these styles. I mentioned before the term secondary cross culturalization which, applied to Jero, relates to the adoption in Japan of American hiphop and Jero’s subsequent return to traditional enka. Basically, as hiphop was remixed in Japan stylistically and culturally, Jero re-remixed the hiphop genre and culture through enka’s respective genre and culture. I hope that people will look at Jero’s work with a critical eye, because it’s interesting to discover what camouflaged nuances you can discover by looking at your own culture through a different variety of window.