Anyway, I was contacted a few weeks later by a fan pseudo-named DocWatson, who wanted to offer some information that I wish I had discovered before giving the panel. The fact that it’s a bit difficult to find this kind of info readily in a few searches prompted me to post DocWatson’s information online (with permission) in case anybody might find it usable in the future.

Bondage Fairies was originally published in America in 1994 (issue #1 is dated March) by Antarctic Press under their then-new Venus Comix imprint, not by Eros Comix and Studio Proteus in 1999 or 2000. (Studio Proteus’ edition of The Original Bondage Fairies was a license rescue.)

More info:

http://milehighcomics.com/cgi-bin/backissue.cgi?title=12115885482
http://animemania01.tripod.com/mangaa_i.htm#B (visiting the main site here provides a treasure trove of information)

To the best of my knowledge, it is true that Bondage Fairies was the first serialized pornographic manga to be commercially published in English, but there were a number of earlier one-shots.

Catalan Communications published the graphic novel Goodbye and Other Stories by Yoshihiro Tatsumi, which to my recollection includes a story about a Japanese retiree who, feeling unappreciated by his family, spends all of his savings on a fling with a prostitute.

More info:

http://www.worldcat.org/title/good-bye-and-other-stories/oclc/18424098
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1374320.GoodBye_and_Other_Stories

Last Gasp published the erotic grotesque story “Santa and New Year’s” by Hiromi Haraguchi in Sexy Stories from the World Religions #1 (copyright 1990).

More info:

http://milehighcomics.com/cgi-bin/backissue.cgi?title=73253497318

Gainax’s General Products published Mega Comics (1991?), which I recall had at least one pin-up illustration by Hiroyuki Utatane, and possibly a story by him.

More info:

http://www.animenation.net/blog/2007/04/27/ask-john-which-japanese-anime-companies-have-failed-in-america/

http://milehighcomics.com/cgi-bin/backissue.cgi?title=52843551381

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/people.php?id=7169

The British art gallery Lowe Culture published Manga, Comic Strip Books from Japan (ISBN 1873184026) for a October-December 1991 exhibition of manga; a full description/citation here.

More info:

http://www.helenmccarthy.org/Helen%27s%20Books.html

The books contains selections from the eroguro collection National Kid (“Kokuritsu shonen”) by Suehiro Maruo, and the complete story “Paper Theater” (“Yumegeshiki: A vision of dreams”) by Mitsuhiko Yoshida, which is about a young girl’s erotic dream and menarche. The volume is also valuable for its nearly complete list of early English-translated manga.

Antarctic Press translated an erotic Dirty Pair doujinshi as H-Bomb #1 (dated May 1993).

More info:

http://milehighcomics.com/cgi-bin/backissue.cgi?title=38311924824

H-Bomb was excepted and translated from this doujinshi: http://doujinshi.mugimugi.org/book/86491/ & http://doujinshi.mugimugi.org/book/149963/

(UPDATE: The first story was taken from one or both of these: http://doujinshi.mugimugi.org/book/125743/ & http://doujinshi.mugimugi.org/book/147596/. It’s credited to Prescription 1+2, published by Yoshimasa Watanabe” (sic). I just happened to be reading this “Ask John” column, and realized that I had been partially wrong: http://www.animenation.net/blog/2009/05/15/ask-john-how-is-doujinshi-received-in-america-part-2/.)

I ran across and bought it at (IIRC) last year’s Anime Boston. It’s dated 4-12-30, which I assume is from Heisei 4 (1992), and that year’s Winter Comiket.

As a side note, Antarctic Press was followed by A.D. Vision’s short-lived imprint Graphic Visions, which published Magical Twilight #1 in May 1995, and by Fantagraphics Books’ Eros Comix and Studio Proteus, which published the first issues of Princess of Darkness and Hiroyuki Utatane’s Temptation in August 1995 (per AnimeMania and my own copies).

More info:

http://animemania01.tripod.com/mangaj_r.htm#M

http://milehighcomics.com/mcgi-bin/search.cgi?action=smpublisher&publisher=GRVS

I also wanted to point out that both Pink Sniper and the first volume of Take On Me (as Domin-8 Me!) are available in English from Eros Comix.

More info:

http://ssl.eroscomix.com/cart/ (bottom)

But then off again to Anime Expo!

Sorry for the aberrant hiatus, everyone. Been really busy in the past few weeks with:

- Open Video Conference, where I spoke about the anime fandom’s balancing act of video culture and copyright law
- Web Ecology Project: We released a white paper full of quantitative analysis about how ideas move in the discourse regarding the Iranian Election on Twitter
- Hanging out in NYC with the crew from my Kyoto study abroad group (KCJS)

I really want/need to write articles this week, so I’ll try to get a lot of content up soon. But I have a lot on my plate right now, specifically fandom research in California and drawing up grant proposals for fandom research in Boston and Tokyo.

Good news is that come Thursday I’ll be in Los Angeles, speaking at Anime Expo. I have four panels lined up, which are:

Anime and Manga in Academia
Saturday, July 04, 2009 6:00pm to 6:50pm – LP 2
Whether you have just begun studying anime and manga seriously or are already well into your studies, this panel will guide you on the path from fan to established Japanese popular culture scholar.

Introduction to Anime/Manga Studies
Friday, July 03, 2009 10:30am to 11:20am – LP 3
Ever wanted to write a school paper on religion in Naruto? Read a book on Neon Genesis Evangelion? Or even get a college degree in otaku studies? Come meet the members of the Anime/Manga Research Circle!

The Problem with Otaku
Sunday, July 05, 2009 12:00pm to 12:50pm LP 2
From 1980s science fiction geeks, the concept of otaku has wholly transformed in Japan and America. We’ll examine the history and controversies of the most crucial part of the anime fandom: the fans.

Without Watching the Anime: Opening & Ending Themes
Friday, July 03, 2009 6:00pm to 6:50pm LP 3
When we watch anime, we tend to ignore what begins and ends series. But these small clips matter too! We’ll discuss history and music, and show some of the most influential OPs & EDs out there.

The rest of my potential schedule looks like this:

Thursday
- Digital Manga Publishing Industry Panel & eManga Demonstration (will miss due to plane arrival)
- Kouga Guest Panel (may miss due to plane arrival)
- Morikawa Guest Panel (may miss due to plane arrival)
- Morning Musume Guest Panel
- Imaishi & Nishigori Guest Panel
- Right Stuf & Nozomi Entertainment Industry Panel
- eigoMANGA Industry Panel
- Japan’s Hottest Doujin Videogames
- Gainax Focus Panel
- The Making of Gurren Lagann Documentary

Friday
- Introduction to Anime/Manga Studies
- Mizushima & Kuroda Guest Panel
- Gundam: The 30 Year Anniversary
- Manga as High Art
- VIZ Media Anime & Manga Panel
- Evangelion 1.0.1 Panel (won’t have time to see the movie due to…)
- Without Watching the Anime: OPs & EDs

Saturday
- The Indecent Otaku Comedy Hour
- Nightow & Nishimura Guest Panel
- Digital Distribution of Anime & Manga
- FUNimation Industry Panel
- Anime & Manga in Academia

Sunday
- Directors Panel [or] Breaking Into Anime Journalism [or] Convention Feedback Session
- Crunchyroll Panel [or] SPJA Board of Directors Panel
- The Problem with Otaku
- Production I.G.
- Closing Ceremonies

Also, I’m still scheduled to speak on a number of panels at Otakon, so if you’re not available to fly out to California this week, I’ll see you in Baltimore!

This article is an attempt to organize thoughts around Otakon 2008′s epic opening animation as well as the recent Global Shinkai Day over at Crunchyroll.

Brief History of Fan Animation

Ever since I first started talking about anime on panels at conventions (or just telling people about it in academia), I’ve always shown the famous Gainax productions, Daicon III and Daicon IV. These short animated works were exhibited at the annual Japanese Science Fiction Convention in 1981 and 1983, respectively.

Daicon III, 1981

Daicon IV, 1983

Each video was drawn by hand by a group of friends that would later form the animation studio, Gainax. In other words, real production studios did not produce the shorts, but fans of anime who took their creative capacity to a new level. Not only did these fans produce an entirely novel creation, but they pulled from popular interests of the fandom (the fandom at that time centered in global [and highly American] science fiction and Japanese animation) and created homages in celebration of the medium (a good example for American fans is the reference to Star Wars, which is evident in Darth Vader’s appearance in Daicon IV).

Eventually the Daicon animations influenced fans on such a global scale that this genre of “opening animation” spread to American conventions. In 1992, at Anime Expo in California (one of the earliest occurrences, though of course not the first, of anime conventions in the United States), a few fans at Running Ink Animation Productions produced the fifteen-minute Bayscape 2042.

At Anime Expo 1993, the same fans exhibited another hand-drawn, cel-to-film, short animation called Conscience.

Conscience begins with an artistic tip-of-the-hat to the entire history of space-based mecha series, with a scan of space debris followed by distant explosions and a parade of originally-designed fighter ships. The story progresses to a narrative following a young woman on the surface of a planet and her discovery of a princely man and her own fighter pilot, with which she joins the war in the sky above. Like the Daicon series, Conscience pays homage to a American history of fan interest in Japanese animation. For instance, although a bit feeble, the artists attempt an quick imitation of the classic Itano Circus about halfway through the short.

YouTube currently hosts a few other fan-created opening animations, such as that of AmeCon 2007, which was a digital production by Hel & Scott of the Makenai Team.

In contrast to the previously-mentioned shorts, the AmeCon opening animation follows the form of an anime episode, rather than adhering to what appears to be a trend of Anime Music Video-styled animations. An apparent reason might be that the video, exhibited in 2007, reflects the influences of a generation of fans immersed in a completely different fan culture: one generally removed from science fiction and the quest to obtain any importations of anime from Japan, and one now steeped in a viewership familiar with anime usually broadcast on television and conventions as a common phenomenon across the nation.

The Meta-Nature of Otakon

Last summer in 2008, I was lucky enough to attend the fifteenth anniversary of Otakon, the largest Japanese animation convention on the East Coast. The cool thing about Otakon is its meta-nature, which I illustrate by recalling its motto, “The Convention of Otaku Generation,” which evokes a parodic reference to Gainax’s 1991 film Otaku no Video, which possesses the subtitle “Graffiti of Otaku Generation.”

In the early part of the year, Otakorp released one of the major announcements leading up to Otakon 2008: Studio Madhouse would film and produce an opening animation to celebrate the conventions’ fifteenth anniversary.

(Via Otakon)

The first Otakon opening animation occurred in 2001, when a staffer produced a 3-D video about the two Otakon mascots running away from killer robots (viewable here, but scroll down to the last video entitled “Otakon 2001″). The video makes reference to Otakon and the fandom through sailor suits, samurai katana, Japanese-language marquees, and a too-good Gundam cosplayer.

The opening animation for Otakon 2008 premiered at the opening ceremonies on Friday. Anime Almanac provides a quick, succinct description of the content: The Madhouse animation for Otakon followed this theme by having the con’s red-headed mascots race towards the Baltimore Convention Center. Along the way, they encounter various “obstacles” in the form of pop cultures figures that are easily recognizable to American otaku. This included various Pokemon, Gundums [sic], Nintendo characters, and other anime-related figures. The male character, Hiroshi, transforms into Rurouni Kenshin to battle these foes, and the female, Hiroko, transforms into Sailor Moon in typical magical girl style. This all leads up to the short’s climax, where Evangelion’s Eva Unit 01 emerges from the convention center to do the final battle with our heroes. At closing ceremonies, the animation was once again shown, but the staff panelists asserted that the short would not be available online due to copyright/contract matters (no specific details were given, except that it could only be shown once per day). Extra points have to be given to Madhouse for adding in subtle references to Otakon culture and history, such as when in 2001 gases in the sewer system made the city’s manhole covers rocket up off of the street.

Otakon’s opening animation specifically made homage of the history of convention shorts (especially Otakon 2001′s original), but the animation was produced not by fans, but an actual Japanese animation studio. Two values are at stake here and I do not want to esteem one over the other. But another fan animation premiered at Otakon was overlooked by the fan media. That, of course, is the opening video for the Otakon AMV contest.

After watching the Daicon IV video linked above, you probably will see the multiple references made in the AMV contest intro animation. Since it’s an AMV, not much of the animation is drawn by the author of the video, but the transformative nature of the piece, I believe, puts it into the same category of fan-produced animation. But obviously, the author, gambitt, used the same music (Twilight, by the Electric Light Orchestra) and even made reference to the flying swords of Diacon IV, instead depicting flying Final Cut Pro icons with which many AMV animators are familiar. Gambitt describes his fanboyish dream of creating a Daicon IV look-a-like, writing, “I had been looking for the perfect opportunity to re-do or parody Daicon IV for YEARS and had actually attempted a version of this video for AWA 10. The idea wasn’t there and the technology wasn’t either for such an ambitious project, so I had to leave it alone. By the time Vic asked me to do the project I was more on the way out of doing AMVs entirely but took this project on because I knew if I could flesh out my idea more it would be the project of a lifetime. I had to use the original song, Electric Light Orchestra’s “Twilight” because of a lot of reasons. For one, the lyrics were perfect for what I wanted to show. Not using it wouldn’t have made it a great parody. Lastly, Daicon IV is made by a bunch of fans who wanted to make something amazing for their convention. I didn’t see how my scenario was any different.”

Contemporary Shape of Fan Animation

Anime fandom, especially in America, hasn’t been around for very long. When trying to historicize the medium and its following, we can generalize specific trends or generations or movements, but the fandom has only been around for about half a century, and been identified by the mass media for a little less than thirty years. To speak of “contemporary,” then, may do some area or time period injustice; however, I will do my best.

It seems to be the case that, in terms of specifically animated (as opposed to printed, such as manga and doujinshi) works, American fan production is much lower compared to Japanese fan production. I will immediately contradict this statement, though, by stating that, in Japan, the animated fan works have become major productions in the fandom, compared to the American equivalent which are multitudinous though not of as high quality.

The history of animation pre-Internet required highly specialized knowledge and skills pertaining to a professional realm of animation and its related tools. For example, before digital technologies made animation a much simpler process, Japanese anime was produced via the cel-to-film process, in which cels were drawn and painted, then photographed onto the film medium. The wonderful thing about the Internet that I love to repeat is Internet technologies have simplified processes and eliminated barriers to access those new, simple technologies. In the United States and Japan, the popularity of the Caramelldansen videos evidences this power of the Internet to simplify and distribute power.

The nature of the video is straightforward and plain. The frames are easily visible and imitable, meaning that they are easy to copy by any fan with a (free) illustration program. Once the frames are drawn and the animation pieced together, a (free) video program will sync the music and animation. (Free) file space on sites like YouTube (America) or Nico Nico Douga (Japan) will host the video, while also spreading the possibility of fan replication as the fad makes its way around the Web. Basically, the Internet and free/easy-to-use software allow for a heightened creation and distribution by fans (and of course most likely for fans, to repeat the process).

A similar trend has influenced America’s anime music video animators. Anyone with free video editing software and access to RAW video, be it via American DVD releases or Japanese recordings distributed through BitTorrent (as the appearance of subtitles in a video are regarded as sloppy craftsmanship), can create an AMV. Essentially, this raises the status of AMVs in America to that of doujinshi in Japan: both are mass produced cultural products by fans, transforming the original content.

In America, though, not many animated fan works reach a high level of distribution. Contrarily, in Japan, a number of fan works have become production of mass distribution or mass consumption. The most evident example would be Makoto Shinkai, who created his first production, 星の声 (Voices of a Distant Star), on his personal Macintosh computer, with voice acting provided by his intimate acquaintances. Shinkai may be a specialized case, though, because his work was picked up by a production studio, which propelled him into the animation industry, helping him to produce his next two works, 雲のむこう、約束の場所 (The Place Promised in Our Early Days) and 秒速５センチメートル (Five Centimeters Per Second). All three of these were recently released on Crunchyroll for a free viewing period of twenty-four hours, pushing Shinkai into the mainstream, post-broadcast era.

Another example of fan produced works reaching popularity is the Touhou Project‘s 夢想夏郷 (Summertime Countryside Dream).

(More videos available at Sankaku Complex)

The Touhou fandom originally spawned from the popularity of a game creator named ZUN’s video games. These games feature characters who have limited dialogue throughout the series, but fans appropriated the characters into doujinshi, which feature primarily at Comiket and other Touhou-specific events around Japan. In 2008, the fandom even took over Tokyo Big Site, the largest convention center in Tokyo and host to other major events like Tokyo Game Show and Tokyo International Anime Fair, with over one thousand doujinshi circles participating.

At Comiket 75, the doujin circle Maikaze distributed its own fan-created animation (previewed above). The animation was drawn, animated, and produced entirely by the fans in the circle. The interesting thing to note about the Touhou fandom is that the games’ creator, ZUN, has emphasized his distaste for distribution to the general populace, instead desiring the faithful community to remain a separate entity. He seems to even express a distaste for the potential of the anime to move beyond the Touhou fandom, detailed (and translated here).

Perhaps ZUN’s intentions might be regarded as focused on maintaining a market around his video games to prevent fans latching solely onto the fan works, but his remarks also highlight an inherent element of general animated fan production: it is made by fans, but also for fans. The production is targeted toward a specific audience, with no recognition of outside viewers. Such specificity allows vague references to make an impact and lend more success to the final product (ie., how Daicon IV works as a cultural product). Identification of the intended target audience, though, also lends a details to predict the potential for fan-produced animation in America. Essentially, it seems impossible for an OAV market (original animation video, also known today as direct-to-DVD productions) to appear in the United States, or possibly anywhere else in the world. Animation, basically, does not have the target audience that it does in Japan, who grew up immersed in an animation culture.

However, non-Japanese markets have pioneers. One, whom I’ve discussed before, is named Paul “Otaking” Johnson, an Englishman who created eruptions all over the Internet-centered anime fandom with his five-part, YouTube-based Fansub Documentary.

(The other four videos are Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5.)

Paul recently released a preview of his anime rendition of the Dr. Who series, in which he heavily relies on old designs for character designs and coloring schemes. He animated and (I believe) voiced the series himself.

Although Paul’s target audience should be fans of the Dr. Who series, he also bridges celebration of his work into the anime fandom. Of course, his production probably will not reach viewers beyond those two groups (unless they make a random hit on his YouTube page).

Still, I’m glad to see that non-Japanese fan production, especially high quality and detailed works, are still in the making.

When I was younger, I liked to brag a lot, until one day I realized I was gradually turning into “that kid,” which propelled me into a slow process of self-exoneration and forced-realization of the humble. But I’ll take a moment to plug two upcoming talks that I’m hosting at Connecticon in Hartford, CT, from 1-3 August, entitled “R-R-Remix! The Mashed Up Culture of Anime Fandom” and “State of the Otaku 2008.” I mention these because I have been reading through a book by one of my favorite beach-babe-turned-Harvard-professors, Chris Kelty, called Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software, for a Harvard Free Culture mini-group project, which will henceforth be known as 2B2P for short, or the Two Bits Processor Project for long. This post will be a reaction and modulation of/against/for Chapter 1, Geeks and Recursive Publics, of Part 1, The Internet. I apologize in advance for this article’s long, rambling nature. If you comment, it’ll help me to organize my thoughts for the future.

Free software… to hormone-crazed, socially-bungling Japanophiles? Where’s the segue? On one hand, I could say the Internet (the title of Part 1, hey hey, coincidence?, I think not!) and only be half right. On one foot, I could say geeks, and become a tad closer to the answer. Doing a handstand, though, if I uttered “recursive public,” I just hit the bullseye. And on the topic of recursive publics is where I will tie in my latter, Connecticon-bound presentation. I want to bring in the demographic of fans of Japanese animation (also known colloquially as otaku), unrelated to any matter in the book, as an experiment in modulation: instead of responding directly to Kelty’s content, in this post I will try to flesh out, squish, and redefine the idea of recursive publics while applying the concept to another relevant population of geeks.

To begin, let’s simplify this notion of recursive public. Kelty’s definition essentially boils down to a population that deals with a content through a form, yet the content and form are the same thing. To develop it slightly further, a recursive public works through the form to protect the content mediated by the form. Kelty uses the Internet as his example, being the form that geeks use and through which geeks mediate. Geeks want to foster the Internet by coding the Internet to their own specifications (bounded by the geek moral order). Very meta indeed. Putting a quote against my simplification, “A recursive public is a public that is constituted by a shared concern for maintaining the means of association through which they come together as a public” (Kelty 28).

Recursive publics are not limited to geeks or the Internet. Kelty does not provide examples of branches. One possible example: American Republicans and Democrats might be considered inclusive to the recursive public scene. Political subtleties aside, both parties exist as part of the government — the medium through which they operate and the content on which they focus their operations. Government also is the medium that allows the parties to “come into being in the first place” (28).

But there’s more to recursive publics, in fact another element entirely. Kelty discusses the concept of “layers,” regarding which he says geeks can identify and connect to create new structures to operate the form. He writes, “[Geeks] express ideas, but they also express infrastructures through which ideas can be expressed (and circulated) in new ways” (29). This second element ties in with the idea that recursive publics “argue through” their medium(s)” (29). Kelty highlights the combination of Napster and network connections to form a miniature scale of the Internet at large. The layering process then provides additional support for the population of the recursive public to develop and protect the medium.

Otaku are part of a recursive public. However, the demographic of anime and manga fans interacting with their medium fundamentally challenges Kelty’s notion of the recursive public. Why: the anime fandom’s medium is, obviously, animation. However, most anime fans do not have the technical expertise or sometimes even amateur aptitude to interact with the animated medium. For anime fans, it is easy to “express ideas” yet difficult to “express infrastructures” (29).

I’ll step away from that difficulty for a moment. First, I want to tackle the ideology of the recursive public. In a long-winded explanation, Kelty basically argues that recursive publics operate through a type of morality, one that structures the goals of the community. To reiterate, geeks of the recursive public participate in “writing and publishing and speaking and arguing” but also make software for “circulation, archiving, movement, and modifiability” of those forms of rhetorical communication. In total, arguments and the methods employed to sculpt those arguments evolve into a sense of morality which will govern future arguments and methods. It’s all very cyclical, but “the circularity is essential to the phenomenon. A public might be real and efficacious, but its reality lies in just this reflexivity by which an addressable object is conjured into being in order to enable the very discourse that gives it existence” (48).

To return to the otaku: these geeks too share a moral ideology based in the medium of animation. Examples include the cease of the distribution of fansubs (subtitles added to the original Japanese animation, distributed for foreign audiences) once an animated series is licensed by a US company, or doujinshi (comic book remixes of series) that do not copy the original series but build upon it [this latter topic is discussed in Chapter 1 of Lawrence Lessig's Free Culture]. This morality, then, continues on to affect what Kelty calls “changing relations of power and knowledge” (29). Japanese animation, particularly dealing with fans in the US, has challenged the current production market and copyright itself, particularly regarding Free Use. And although barely developed as that of the culture of free software, the power and authority in otaku culture continues to change, led by greats such as Toshio Okada and Takashi Murakami.

But I must return to and address the problem of the formulation of infrastructures when animation is the medium. Can a recursive public exist when a technical boundary is inherently set up in the public’s system? Let’s examine a possible route to the solution: topical and metatopical spaces. Kelty recognizes that geeks of free software do not congregate in topical spaces, meaning assembly in the physical arena, but instead “[knit] a plurality of spaces into one larger space of non-assembly” (39). Anime fans in the US, contrarily, began in so-called topical spaces (also known as mom’s basement), eventually immigrating to the Internet where the fandom now continues to thrive. Is it possible that because the culture of free software began online that its followers automatically shared the prowess necessary to participate fully in both argument and creation, and they shared such knowledge and capabilities between each other, while otaku might not possess these technical traits because they did not mature in the presence of the medium (layman’s terms: they weren’t animators, so should we expect them to animate?).

That’s certainly a pressing question to Toshio Okada, co-founder of Gainax (one of the original major Japanese animation production companies) and self-proclaimed Otaking. So pressing, in fact, that he has declared, “Otaku are dead.” What can he mean, when thousands of American anime fans are running around with their heads cut off at hundreds of conventions across the United States yearly. Just that: with their heads cut off, today’s fans have no direction.

In a public talk, recorded by Otaku2.com, Okada answered the following question:

You mentioned that there is a gap between fan generations, or yours and that of today. Can you elaborate on this?

Okada: I think there is a big difference that is clear in what is popular. Take manga, which is selling in the mainstream, and series popular with maniacs, which are not selling. “Clover and Honey” is a good example. Some people just buy it, some are fans and only a few are maniacs who really dive into the series, so it fails to move the masses. The manga becomes nothing but a topic of discussion among older men who compete on who read it more properly. When with others, these tangents don’t go well and a discussion never takes off. The media can’t talk about otaku as one anymore because we aren’t. There is no core literature or readership. I don’t think I can explain this well enought to convince you, but anyway.

Okada is famously known for his participation on the infamous otaku commentary, Otaku no Video, a major yet sardonic commentary on the state of otaku in Japan. As a producer, though, Okada exemplifies the paragon leader of the otaku recursive public: one who comments on and comments through the form. He sees, though, a major change in generations of otaku, which leads to his harsh declaration. Describing his own generation of anime fans, Okada said at MIT in 2003: “These were fans who were so passionate and enthusiastic about anime that they became vocal and informed critics.” Speaking of the modern anime fanatic, he stated, “Unfortunately… the latest generation of anime viewers in Japan are not true Otaku. They may be anime fans, but they lack the deep, passionate connection to the medium, and many of them seem to have taken up anime fandom because it’s cool or “fashionable.” Rather than being active critics of anime, they are content to be customers, or consumers.” Okada is right about many viewers even five years later, today, as teenagers attend anime conventions with nothing short of shoutouts to Naruto and Bleach. Still, there are some fans that put their critical eye to work to uphold the name of otaku, but cannot argue for anime through the infrastructure of animation. How should they be considered in a culture that began as a recursive public yet has in recent times reverted to a mere consumer culture? A younger Okada, seeing no good animation after the end of the original Gundam series way back when, participated in the creation of two original animated shorts, Daicon III and Diacon IV (the latter of which, if you watch it quickly, contains a homage to Star Wars of all things). The importance of these novelties remains the fact that the recursive public protects the content by arguing through the form. Okada’s message to young fans rings with Keltyism: “Just make your own anime, in English, by yourself.”

I’m not depressed. The phrase “All is not lost” is too drastic to use, yet it would encompass a little bit of the situation. But only a little, because the situation is improving. Paul “Otaking” Johnson recently published on YouTube a criticism of the online fansubbing community, a five-part video series which begins here. It’s just one example of the recursive public finally taking a stand once again. In an interview not too long ago, he stated, “If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well. My video was free and I got paid nothing, but it didn’t stop me researching translation theory for a year or hand drawing and animating the cut scenes just to grab people’s attention (they certainly wouldn’t stick around for my voice, that’s for sure!),” which exemplifies exactly what Okada wanted out of the new otaku generation. Other models include Makoto Shinkai, who animated his own story, Voices of a Distant Star and went on to produce a number of other anime, or even the father of Japanese animation, Osamu Tezuka, who copied Disney’s style to form the foundation of what would compose anime fandom today, who animated for entertainment yet still included his own acute commentary on post-war Japan.

Back to the issue, though: What happens when a fan simply can’t do this sort of high-caliber work?

Layers. The second element in Kelty’s concept. What does Japanese animation become when applied to new intrastructural models? Doujinshi. Anime music videos. Cosplay. Fansubs. Remixed comic books. Reworked animation set to music. Dressing up as characters. Subtitling original show material. All these examples are miniature structures of the animation scene at large, yet do not require the ultimate technical expertise vital to the production of genuine animation. But Kelty does not approach the potential for layers to avoid manifestation as the actual infrastructure (eg. Internet) and instead form new forms of the infrastructure. Unfortunately, for free software in relation to the Internet, no new form of the infrastructure exists, because there is only one Internet. For anime, though, animation exists as media with many offsets. Anime fans congregate in topical and metatopical spaces. Otaku participate as much as possible as the true nature of the recursive public has begun to resurface over the last decade. Hopefully as technology advances fans will be provided a more accessible platform to evolve the recursive public and resurrect the name of otaku.

Please comment on this second post in the Two Bits Processor Project, and please visit the blogs of my friends who are participating with me on this most excellent project:

Tim Hwang, blogging at The U.S. Bureau of Fabulous Bitches
Christina Xu, blogging at ComPromise
yours truly, blogging at DianaKimball.com
Mike Wolfe, blogging at Machinations
And me, Alex Leavitt, blogging here