tl;dr – I was accused of being a book pirate for returning a book. (Picture of email below.)

Throughout the past semester — the first in my five-year PhD program — I’ve been trying to build out my personal Internet-and-digital-media-centric book library (inspired in part by the dozens of books my mentor, danah boyd has in her massive collection at Microsoft Research). Like most academics, I prefer physical copies of what I read, for the purpose of taking notes. The process of searching-and-buying has boiled down to me coming across interesting, new titles or texts I know I need to own but don’t and then going to Amazon.com to purchase a used copy (or new, if it’s below fifteen dollars).

I’m trying to be as frugal as possible, since I’ll probably end up buying dozens and dozens of books over the next couple of years; at the same time, I prefer clean physical copies, so if the new book is too expensive, I’ll scour the Used section for “Very Good” markers, making sure to note if the text has any folds or notes or highlights.

About a month ago, I remembered that I did not own a copy of Paul du Gay’s seminal media text, Doing cultural studies: the story of the Sony Walkman. While searching around, I also happened upon another book by du Gay, entitled Production of culture/cultures of production. This jumped out at me, because I’m doing a project on “open-source culture” and the production of digital creative works (see 1 and 2), and I figured this text might be relevant.

Without any further research, I (ignorantly) purchased the book: a “Used – Like New” copy for $6.79 with $3.99 shipping from tomweberfilms (5-star, 100% rating).

Eventually Poc/cop arrived; I flipped through the pristine copy. But I realized: it’s an undergraduate textbook. Fail.

Not that these types of books are necessarily bad: they’re actually really helpful for the citations at the end of each chapter. But a textbook with the sole purpose of occupying a place on an undergraduate syllabus isn’t the kind of material I’m willing to keep on my bookshelf.

So I waited a few weeks to return the book, since I had a handful of other items to return as well (in addition to the honest fact that I was busy at the end of the semester, plus being a bit lazy going about it, since the Amazon return policy is 30 days). Usually returning items on Amazon is fairly simple: you fill out a very short form stating the reason for returning the item and then print out a shipping label. Done. For example, if you return a piece of clothing that you buy via Amazon (or an Amazon affiliate), the options are:

• Too small
• Too large
• Style not as expected
• Ordered wrong style/size/color
• Different from website description
• Damaged during shipping
• Different from what was ordered
• Defective/Does not work properly
• Arrived in addition to what was ordered
• Better price available
• Missed estimate delivery date
• Accidental order
• No longer needed/wanted

However, when you return an item to vendors that use Amazon to list and sell their items (but are not necessarily Amazon affiliates), you have to send them a message noting the reason for the return (literally “Submit for approval”) before they can endorse the transaction. When you select the reasons for a book, you get:

• Accidental order
• Better price available
• Damanged due to inappropriate packaging
• Missed estimated delivery date
• Missing parts of accessories
• Damaged during shipping
• Different from what was ordered
• Defective/Does not work properly
• Arrived in addition to what was ordered
• No longer needed/wanted
• Unauthorized purchase
• Different from website description

But none of these selections really fit the nuance of my situation: I simply realized after the purchase that I shouldn’t have ordered the book. Ultimately, I went with “No longer needed/wanted” and sent off the request for approval.

A day or two later, I received the following response:

Screenshot taken at 4:31pm PST, 18 December 2011

I got a refund… but if you didn’t catch it, let me cut out the important part:

Notes: You purchased this book three weeks ago and now you decide that you do not want/need the item. I believe you are taking advantage of the system. You had ample time to photocopy or scan the book at my expense. You may dispose of the book as you see fit.

… what? Was I just accused of being a book pirate? I was hilariously surprised, in response to this unexpected development (additionally unexpected because I still got the refund, including shipping), but also from a critical standpoint, with regard to the assumptions embedded in the response.

“I believe you are taking advantage of the system… at my expense.

Assumption: Users who purchase physical media on Amazon and return them (especially those who choose the “No longer needed/wanted” option) are clearly copying the object(s).
Assumption: The selection items in the return request accurately depict a motivation or intention of the consumer.
Assumption: The selection items over-empower the consumers and exploit the vendors.
Assumption: It takes three weeks to scan a 356-page book.

Perhaps the second point is the more interesting one to muse on: as a consumer, I don’t really think much about the option I choose as a reason for the return. But apparently, for the vendor, the reason provides a level of measurement regarding motivations and other unseen processes that elude Amazon’s merchant analytics dashboard.

The issue was resolved with a quick response email:

Me: Sorry about the lag in the return time. I understand the situation you described that the delay might imply. (Do you actually have a lot of experience with book piracy through Amazon? I wouldn’t have necessarily expected that, but I guess it makes sense…) I’d still like to return the book, if that’s an option.

Vendor: You sound like a good person and I’m sure you just didn’t get around to it. Sorry for the accusing tone of my e-mail, but I’m sure it happens that people buy books, scan them or make notes from them, and then return them. If you want to ship the book back to me, that would be appreciated. Whatever the lowest cost option is.

The piracy invocation still provoked a number of questions with regard to how unintended consequences can emerge from interactions in social media:

• Does the vendor have a personal bias against media piracy?
• Does the vendor have experience with book piracy through Amazon? If not, what is the motivation behind the accusation?
• Has the vendor made these accusations to other customers in the past?
• How does is the accusation situated in relation to the 5-star, 100% Amazon rating and (lack of negative) comments?
• What does the vendor mean by “You may dispose of the book as you see fit?”

The situation, at least, provides a unique thought experiment about the role of social media — particularly socially-mediated systems, like Amazon, or more vaguely like ratings systems and response forms.

It seems like the current context of rapid and easy content circulation and the impersonal business-to-consumer relationships masquerading as social media consumer “engagement” has led to a conflux of hyperaware metrics (consumer tracking) with the uncertainty of social ingenuity (what some might call lifehacking). This is a situation that perhaps The Cluetrain Manifesto could not have predicted.

And it’s not like consumers are the only ones with the agency and power to exploit these systems. You’ve probably heard about Amazons’ $23,698,655.93 book about flies. More recently, on an episode of the GeekNights podcast, the hosts suggested that some vendors on Amazon are listing items that they don’t actually own (under the premise that they’ll buy the item for cheaper elsewhere in time to resell when the item is purchased).

Plainly, this incident is awkward, but at least it gave me a chance to sit down and think more about the role that social systems play in the coordination of communication, particularly in impersonal situations. I wonder if there have been other instances of assumptions embedded in or emergent from the use of neutral (more like “vague”) tagging systems to mediate transactions with the purpose of categorization, management, and metrics but from which materialize other unintended consequences. A cool study to do might be investigating the responses that vendors have to the types of form responses they receive — for example, do most vendors tend to have negative opinions of return requests they receive marked “no longer need/want”? How would reactions vary between the various possible drop-down responses.

It’s also interesting to weigh reactions like this against the cultural value of the ratings system. For instance, when I’m looking for a used book on Amazon, I’m mainly paying attention to the quality of the book. A difference of 100% and 90% in the stars-ratings of the store itself doesn’t necessarily faze me. Though I assume for the vendor, one negative review completely offsets their reputation within the marketplace (and I know that many eBay vendors have been particularly meticulous, even petulant, about grooming their ratings).

Oh, and of course an answer: no, I didn’t copy the book. (Though I have to admit, it’d be a pretty ingenious scheme, even if I’d probably use the library instead of Amazon.)

Edited 19 December 2011 for clarity.

Alex Leavitt is a PhD student in the Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism at the University of Southern California, where he studies the internet. While he has actually never copied an entire book (and though he frequently scans chapters from dozens), he does ideologically support projects like http://www.diybookscanner.org/ that help disseminate values of free culture. For more frequent updates, you can find him on Twitter at @alexleavitt.

But there’s been a controversy in the relationship arena. Since the feature had been implemented, a large number of users have been faced with seeing photos of their current significant others, but those pictures are old memories of when said S.O.s were photographed with ex-boyfriends and ex-girlfriends. This InsideFacebook article about the feature lists comments about how annoying and painful these photo recommendations are. A Facebook group called I HATE PHOTO MEMORIES was created to protest the implementation internally. Even my own girlfriend has complained to me about Facebook recommending her photos of me with former exes.

Recently, though, Facebook solved the Photo Memories That You’d Rather Not Remember problem by implementing a change in the recommendation system, so that any recommended photographs would not include users with whom you have had a Facebook relationship. According to a second InsideFacebook article, Facebook’s photo project manager, Sam Odio, commented, “Hi All – I’d like to let you know that we’re listening to your feedback. The photo memories product no longer shows tagged photos of your friends if you were previously in a relationship with them.” So it seems like the problem has been solved.u

Not quite. Let’s take a step back and look at profiles as spaces for teen culture to see the new conflict at work with Facebook’s “solution.”

Since I’m working under danah boyd at Microsoft Research, I’m going to draw from a lot of her writing to tease out the issue.

danah’s written a lot on identity creation online, specifically within the context of teenagers: how they form relationships with friends, how those relationships manifest online, etc. Opposed to that, she’s also written a fair amount on user configurability: that is, how mediated online platforms, like Facebook, structure what a user can do with the system they’re given. For example, Facebook configures a user’s presentation of him- or herself by allowing only certain information to be placed in certain areas (Hobbies go here, Political Affiliation goes here, Jobs go here, etc.). Of course, these two issues — contextual creation versus structured configuration — are at odds with each other, and usually the former dominates the latter. And because a lot of users — especially teens — don’t want to be corralled into the limits of an egocentric social networking site’s platform, they tend to go out of their way to “hack” the profile system, either literally through code (eg., MySpace profiles) or culturally. And it is this last point that conflict with Facebook’s solution.

The cultural behavior of users crafting the visibility of their friends in their profiles is an interesting point of contention on Facebook. One of MySpace’s major features was its Top 8 list, where a user could list eight of his or her friends out of the aggregate list of hundreds. Top 8 is important particularly for younger users, whose daily lives are consumed with fashioning their identities around the fluctuating relationships they share with friends, family, coworkers, teachers, adults, etc., because in choosing eight “favorite” people, the list defines a part of who they are.

Facebook, though, does not have a Friend-parsing widget like MySpace. Some third-party apps were developed to enable those sort of options, but the low level of adoption across a social network site like Facebook — especially one that now boasts over 500 million users — means an insignificant module like that would not hold its popularity over a long period of time. So a question remains: how do teens situate themselves in relation to their friends on Facebook, when it’s not a central part of the platform?

One of the more recent behaviors in response to this question is the case of Facebook siblings and relatives. A user — most likely a teenager — will invite his or her closest friends to be a “sibling,” which means that the friend’s profile is linked on the user’s profile in a very distinct and visible position on the “Info” page. It’s a trend among a lot of high school students that wish to make their friends more a part of their Facebook identity. And more often than not — or at least it’s my assumption — teens will list their friends instead of their actual parents and siblings, to retain a barrier between their social lives familial lives.

But the ability to list relatives is a fairly recent addition to the Facebook profile. Before that, the only basic feature to show distinctly a relationship between one user and another was the Relationship Status.

And I hope by now that just by mentioning Relationship Status, you understand where I’m going with this.

When I was in college, only a couple years ago (and let’s be honest — it’s still a huge factor today with all teenagers), the Facebook Relationship Status changed youth culture radically. That you could see if an acquaintance was single or taken, or who they were dating, or who they recently broke up with, and then also comment on all those developments, was a game changer in college, and then high school, culture. But the Relationship Status wasn’t necessarily used for relationships. A good number of my friends would set themselves up “in a relationship” with a best friend. I even know a couple people that are dating others, but list a different friend in their Relationship Status. So there was and still is a significant trend in pairing yourself up with a buddy on Facebook, even if you’re not dating.

So this interesting bit of youth culture immediately conflicts with the changes that Facebook implemented to avoid current significant others to see their partners’ exes. If you’re “dating” a friend on Facebook — just so that your acquaintances will understand that you’re best friends — Facebook will never recommend a photo of your friend if you cancel that relationship.

This social media “cultural hacking” takes place on all sorts of Web platforms, in direct opposition to any sort of “user configuration” by which the platform intends each and every user to abide. For example, YouTube implemented the ability to add links to YouTube videos, but some users use those links to combat the “Recommended Videos” displayed in the right-column module, or we can even look at the change in video form that has developed from YouTube users including three different optional endings that a viewer can choose to click on. But the implications of user configuration on youth culture are even more interesting, because thousands of teens growing up with Facebook and other Web 2.0 technology are shaping their identities in part because of the social interactions and connections they maintain on these websites. And no matter the mantra that companies give to users — such as Facebook being a place where users should share everything — the users will tend to behave differently.

Cross-posted from the Convergence Culture Consortium.

The Japanese popular culture industry, especially for anime and manga, is an interesting case study for global fandom, but also for global industry. The comics, television, and film industry for animated popular culture in Japan has its own history, structure, and approaches, but over the past five decades, as it has reached millions of new, international viewers, new industries have risen to cater to these fans. Still, with the rise of the Internet and the economic troubles that most industries have gone through over the past decade, both the domestic and international manga and anime industries have been hurting for money, even with a surfeit of fans.

The anime and manga industry is especially volatile, because its domestic and international audiences have utilized the Internet to spread and consume the media at the expense of industrial and commercial models that cannot keep up with the audiences’ changing tastes, modes of consumption, and cultural behaviors of media consumption (sharing with friends, international online distribution, the culture of collectors versus mere viewers, etc.). The industries, both in Japan and elsewhere, must change: however, the success that anime and manga brought a decade ago have influenced the producers of these media to stick with old models that are no longer fully applicable to the current fan cultures that drive the markets.

Today, I want to discuss two very recent issues of the manga and anime industries — in Japan and in America — publicizing comments to fans in a way that might be seen by many as “giving up”: without adapting to technological, cultural, and commercial changes, the industries representatives have voiced concerns to fans by pleading with them to stop behaving as they current are — mostly by using the Internet to circumvent commercial models for their media consumption — and to think ethically about how these behaviors are affecting the respective industries.

Shueisha, a major publisher in Japan who print manga magazines and also co-own Viz (one of the top manga publishers in the United States), last week printed a letter to fans in Weekly Shonen Jump, a weekly manga magazine and one of the most popular in Japan. You can see the message (in the original Japanese) by clicking on the image below (in the bottom right), or read the translation:

To all our readers,

There are now many people unjustly posting copies of manga on the internet. These unjust copies are inconsistent with mangakas’ feelings. They are also distorting the authors’ intentions of “I want the work to be read this way”. The actions of posting these unjust copies on the net, into which the mangakas have poured their hearts, are not only hurting mangakas in real life but are also against the law, even if done in a light-hearted manner. Every time we discover such “unjust copies”, we talk to the mangaka and consider every possible countermeasure. But the number of inconsiderate people is great, and at present we cannot deal with all of them. We have a request for all our readers. The unjust internet copies are deeply hurting the manga culture, mangakas’ rights, and even mangakas’ souls. Please understand once again that all of that is against the law. Also, the mangakas and Shueisha will severely deal with any unjust copies found on the internet. We ask that our readers please continue to support us.

- Weekly Shounen Jump editorial department (translation via Devang Haven)

This is a critical development in the manga industry, not because the publishers are finally making a statement about the state of fan piracy, but also that the message comes from one of THE important players in the Japanese industry.

Now, there is some context behind this message: although here in America, a lot of talk goes around about the negative impact of scanlations (scanned and translated manga, by fans), this message is calling out specifically to a Japanese audience: fans in Japan who are uploading RAW scans of manga magazine pages to the Internet (that is, scans of the original pages: a direct copy of the book, circulated online away from the commercial market).

Now, the uploading of RAW scans in Japan is an obvious act of piracy, and direct piracy like this does hurt the industry. An interview with Ed Chavez (Vertical, Inc., a publisher of translated manga in America) explicates that copying of the primary source affects sales and loses audience members. And in response to Shueisha’s plea, a number of websites that hosted RAW manga are now closed or redirect to Shueisha’s homepage.

The issue with a message to Japanese fans is how international audiences should react to this call for fan ethics. A number of English-language sites carry RAW manga scans, for fan translators to distribute scanlations to English-speaking audiences. Although these scanlations still affect the market, they are not scans of the official translations published by companies in North America: therefore, they occupy a slightly different space. If we think philosophically about scanlations, then, English-language-only scans of manga available in Japan but not yet in America operate in a strange space: they can’t be read by Japanese fans who are looking for free Japanese-language manga, but they help spread the word about titles not currently available in English-speaking countries (at the same time, though, the consumption of scanlations may still affect the purchasing of these official copies once they are released, because some fans will have already read the scans and will not want to buy the official publication).

Will Shueisha’s plea work? Sales of manga in Japan have been on a steady decline for a few years now, due in part to piracy, but also to new modes of media consumption, for example through cell phones. All in all, it appears that the most important part of this issue is that Shueisha, as a major publisher, has the capacity to send cease-and-desist notices to websites that are sharing their original content for free (an illegal activity). These endeavors may help the Japanese industry’s woes with declining sales, but I would venture a guess that it will not affect overseas fan economies.

If we jump across the Pacific to America, another rhetorical development took place, this time via a message published by the president of an imported Japanese animation production studio.

Anime News Network reports:

Eric P. Sherman, President and CEO of the anime dubbing company Bang Zoom! Entertainment, has posted an editorial on the AnimeTV blog on Saturday, urging fans to buy anime instead of watching it via fan-subbed videos.

Bang Zoom! is a North American distributor (voice dubbing, subtitling, production, etc.) of Japanese animation television series, movies, and the like. Sherman, in his blog post entitled “Anime – R.I.P.,” writes in bold, “Anime is going to die.” He reiterates what many critics have been saying for years — “If people don’t resist the urge to get their fix illegally, the entire industry is about to fizzle out.” — but readers, both fans and those in the industry, realize that his words are about a decade too late.

The issue, of course, is that Sherman argues, “Japan is already suffering and struggling to bring out quality titles. They can’t rely on everything being picked up by US distributors anymore.” The problem with his argument is two-fold: 1) the Japanese domestic market is the key contributor to the financial success of Japanese animation, not a reliance on foreign distributors, and 2) the Japanese domestic market has been deteriorating as much as the redistribution market abroad (Adrian Brown, of SBS Dateline Australia gives a good rundown of the Japanese industry’s problems in this video segment).

In terms of American redistribution, FUNimation Entertainment currently leads the market in DVD releases (both dubbed and subbed), with Crunchyroll picking up the majority of what titles are left, releasing them subtitled online in their video portal. However, to repeat, the American licensors only provide a reasonable (though still small) fee to Japanese companies to distribution their intellectual property. Basically, the Japanese producers are taking what money they can get (especially money they can use to make up for domestic piracy losses), instead of letting reasonably accessible money slip by while foreign fans share subtitled anime online. Justin Sevakis, of Anime News Network, breaks down the process below:

The cost of producing TV anime has tripled in the last decade. The Japanese DVD market is also maturing, and R1 imports back into Japan for a third of the price (or less) of R2 are a growing problem for them. Hence, if they’re going to part with their intellectual property, it has to be worth at least the amount they’re likely to lose in reverse-imports, plus the production burden relative to whatever value they’ve attached to the R1 market in relation to the rest of the world.

When an anime is licensed, is the fee paid to the Japanese companies in the form of a one-time XX dollar payment, or in the form of XX dollars or XX percent profit off of each DVD that is sold?

Sort of a combination of both. Let me preface this by saying that the following isn’t just how anime works, but pretty much every motion picture and TV license.

First, there is an up-front change of money, known as the “license fee” or “minimum guarantee”. In the case of TV or OAV, this is usually a per-episode amount (though a licensor may insist on dividing longer series up in specified chunks of episodes). There’s also likely a charge for materials duplication (as cloning master tapes is expensive).

The releasing company then produces whatever DVD product and sells it (and may also have other rights like theatrical, TV, etc…). A certain percentage of those grosses are separated into a separate fund. That fund is used for the following:
1. Recouping any production costs. This includes dubbing, DVD authoring, replication and manufacturing, etc…
Once that’s all recouped, THEN…
2. Recouping the minimum guarantee. As the “minimum guarantee” implies that this is the guaranteed amount of revenue the licensor will make from the deal, funds are withheld until that amount is actually reached.
AFTER THAT POINT…
3. That percentage is paid as royalties to the licensor.

Now, that’s a lot of money to make back before the licensor sees any residuals. You’re probably wondering how many titles actually result in residuals being paid, and the answer is “not many”. The minimum guarantee is there so that even if the release tanks, the licensor will have made enough money to call it a day, but OTOH won’t lose out if it’s an unexpected success. Likewise, since the label takes the majority of the risk, they get to keep the lion’s share of the profits, should the release do well.

This is how the vast majority of deals are structured, and this system has been around in the entertainment industry for as long as anyone can remember. There are some exceptions, and the minimum guarantee and back-end percentages (“points”) vary substantially. Also, sometimes production expenses are recouped before separation into royalty percentages.

Justin Sevakis, Anime News Network (via ANN Forums)

All in all, the ultimate problem facing American distributors is that the cultural modes of anime consumption in America is changing once again: instead of needing a general and mediated flow of access to Japanese animation (which was achieved via voice-dubbed distribution), fans now want 1) immediate access to content to keep up with fellow fans, with whom they discuss shows online regularly and at a quick pace; and 2) subtitled anime, because hardcore fans have lashed out about authenticity of dubbed productions, through which many American redistribution directors have taken upon themselves to “redirect” in terms of voice acting (ie., it is a novel production, recontextualized for foreign fans). Instead of needing a moderator to introduce Japanese cultural concepts, terms, etc., most contemporary fans understand (at least the basics) of Japanese lifestyles, language, and behavior.

Therefore, it seems to me that Sherman’s plea for fans to “not pirate anime” is moot, at least at the end of this decade. He states, “Do the right thing. Plain and simple. Because if you don’t, I can guarantee you that this time next year, Bang Zoom won’t be bringing you anymore English language versions of it.” However, it seems that in relation to American fans’ modes of consuming anime, English-language dubs are no longer necessary. Instead, the model provided by Crunchyroll — immediate licensing of popular series, subtitled, and only set to stream online — caters to the largest general American anime audience. Dubbed anime in America might slowly fizzle out, but that business model will be replaced by another company that can better respond to fans’ behaviors.

Has manga criticism reached new heights? Or are our manga literati still in the dark ages? Join journalists, podcasters, bloggers, industry insiders and manga academics as they reveal why manga your fandom originates and always comes back to manga!

Last weekend at Anime Boston 2010, Ed Chavez (of Verical, Inc.) held a panel with some popular Internet writers and reviewers of manga to ask them critical questions about the manga industry, manga criticism, and manga fandom. The panelists included Brigid Alverson (MangaBlog), Michael Toole (Anime Jump), Scott Green (Ain’t It Cool Anime), Clarissa Graffeo (Anime World Order), Erin Finnegan (Ninja Consultants), and Ko Ransom (welcome datacomp).

Erin also recently uploaded a recording of her own, which has slightly higher audio quality (she recorded from the stage; I recorded from the audience), but also cuts off a bit of the end. You can reference her recording here, but catch the end of the panel by listening to the DoAAA podcast.

Listen below, or use the direct download here (55 minutes 59 seconds).

Anime Boston is almost upon us! If you’re coming up to the city for a weekend at the Hynes, be sure to drop by one or more of my panels to say Hello!

Update (Thursday 18 March 11:30 pm): Time for “Hentai Manga” panel has been moved later into the night.

Update 2 (Monday 22 March 9:30 am): Location for “Anime Themes” panel changed. Also, time for “Cowboy Bebop” panel moved earlier in the afternoon.

Update 3 (Monday 29 March 11:10 pm): Time for “Intro and Ending Themes” panel has been moved earlier in the day.

Friday 12:00 pm noon (Panel 302) – Introduction to Anime Intro and Ending Themes

Friday: 5:30 pm (Panel 306) – After Cowboy Bebop: The Works of Shinichiro Watanabe

Friday/Saturday 1:30 am (Panel 202) – Chains, Trains, and Happy Endings: Japan’s Underground Sex Culture (18+)

Saturday 6:00 pm (107 Panel 6) – On the Road for Anime Pilgrimages

Saturday 10:00 pm (Panel 202) – Impact of Evangelion

Saturday/Sunday 1:30 am (Panel 202) – Hentai Manga: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (18+)

Sunday 1:00 pm (Panel 202) – From Antisocial Loser to Economic Hero: The History of Otakudom

Sunday 2:00 pm (Panel 202) – Anime in Academia

On the Road for Anime Pilgrimages
107 Panel 6 on SATURDAY
starting at 06:00:00 PM

Many anime reference real-world locations, inspiring otaku to seek out these destinations. Come discover the significance of the “anime pilgrimage”!

After Cowboy Bebop: The Works of Shinichiro Watanabe
306 Panel 2 on FRIDAY
starting at 08:30:00 PM

Many fans recognize Cowboy Bebop’s director, but let’s look at his other shows, from Macross Plus to Samurai Champloo to Genius Party and more!

Hentai Manga: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
107 Panel 6 on SATURDAY
starting at 12:00:00 AM

What makes a good ero-manga? We’ll show and support some of the funniest & more artistic adult comics (and hilariously bad, “imaginative” ones too).

Chains, Trains, and Happy Endings: Japan’s Underground Sex Culture
202 Panel 5 on FRIDAY
starting at 01:00:00 AM

The Japanese sex industry is pretty closeted, but here’s a peephole into host clubs, no-panty bars, hentai magazines, costume play, and love hotels.

Apparently I have good word that a number of my other panels will proceed past “wait list” status, so I’ll keep everyone updated here! (You can view the rest of my panels by clicking here.)

Today is the deadline for panel submissions, and last night I sent in three presentations that will hopefully make it onto the schedule in a few months. Check them out below!

1) Memes, Microcultures, and 2D Chicks: Our Future in the Otaku Gamer

A singing idol who doesn’t exist. Perverted text adventures boasting dozens of female prizes. And a popular, anime-tized evolution of the classic Space Invaders shooter that has spawned a global fandom. Japan’s subcultural players are obsessed with games that, well, aren’t actually about the gaming. Alex Leavitt (Comparative Media Studies, MIT) explains how a new generation of entertainment is succeeding in a market which chooses to de-emphasize the games in favor of the characters. And as the Japanese fans influence the industry through their own amateur initiatives, what will the future of American gaming hold when online fandoms adopt similar appetites?

2) Exploring International Geek Cultures Through Games

Even in the era of Internet forums and online gaming communities, our understanding of how and why geeks come together through games is pretty pathetic. From Europe to Asia to America, this panel takes a look at the technological environment in which gamers grew up and the transnational space in which geeks play today. Join Alex Leavitt (Comparative Media Studies, MIT) as he moderates a discussion between Philip Tan (Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab), Prof. Mia Consalvo (Visiting Professor, MIT), and Dr. Clara Fernández-Vara (GAMBIT) on the modern convergence and recurrent differences of the national geek factions that make up the global gaming ecosystem.

3) Trolling the Tubes: Culture Hacking Through Online Gaming

Thousands of Internet users cultivate pixelated gardens in Farmville, raise cyber-chickens in Second Life, and earn livings on Mechanical Turk without realizing that they are changing the face of online culture. From FreeRice to OKCupid, from gold miners in China to 4chan-ers in America, Alex Leavitt (Comparative Media Studies, MIT) takes a look at how online communities are redefining our friends, reorganizing our lives, and restructuring our society into a gaming culture. What will the future of the Internet look like when social networking might mean a social battleground of bots, trolls, and colorful flamewars?

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.

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.

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).

Been pretty busy this week (as evidenced by the lack of updates). Right now, I’m done in New York, prepping for the Open Video Conference, being held at NYU Law.

I’ll be presenting a talk on Saturday at 5:00 pm called “Online Video Culture: The Case of Fansubs, Anime Music Videos, and Copyright.” What I’m “supposed” to talk about:

The first fansubs (episodes of Japanese animation subtitled by fans, for fans) and AMVs (anime music videos, in which Japanese animation is timed to music) were produced in the United States in the 1980s in fans’ homes on VCR players. Twenty years later, these pieces of videography have proliferated across the Internet, creating an online video culture that has clashed with commercial forces as new issues of distribution and copyright have arisen. Alex Leavitt, a researcher of anime & manga studies and an analyst on the YouTomb project, will discuss the involvement of these fan groups with “illegal” production and file sharing; the videos’ ramifications on copyright law and discussions of free use; and the cultural flow of these fan-produced videos in contention with the new commercial and legal models of streaming sites (Crunchyroll, FUNimation, & Hulu) and sharing hubs (YouTube & Nico Nico Douga).

If you’re interested in awesome talks and interesting people, check out the Open Video Conference website starting on Friday at 10:00 am, because all of the talks will be streaming online for your viewing pleasure. Also, if you can’t take the time out this weekend, all of the talks will be recorded and made available to the world. Check out all the details here.