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?

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.

Fansubs: fan-produced subtitles added to original footage of foreign television programs or films.

Most commonly a practice by fans of Japanese animation, fansubs have, since the 1980s in America, allowed fans of anime to view the Japanese-language media and share it amongst friends. While technically illegal [1] in terms of copyright law, fansubbing in the Internet age has proliferated to a point that 1) fans rely on fansubbing groups to keep up with the latest series, and 2) the animation industry has felt the need to form a conversation around protecting their intellectual property [2]. By the end of 2008, the demand for English-language fansubs reached such a critical point that major Japanese animation companies teamed up with the (previously illegal) Crunchyroll.com to distribute fansubs streaming online in a timely manner (read: one hour after television broadcast in Japan) for a fee or after a longer period (one week) for free [3].

In the summer of 2008, I traveled down to Baltimore, MD for Otakon, the largest East-coast anime convention, and attended the Fansubber & Industry Discussion panel (viewable online [4]). After the panel ended, I snagged Interactii, one of the members of the popular fansubbing group Dattebayo Fansubs, LLC [5], for a quarter-hour to ask a few questions, reprinted below:

Q: Can you comment on the fact that Dattebayo, while fansubbing is technically illegal, [is] asking YouTube to follow through with legal actions…

Interactii: Yeah, the reason that we do that is because we believe that having some level of control over the material is very important. So if it is asked of us to stop, we can try to stop as best as possible. And YouTube is so uncontrolled in its methods of distribution and it’s so accessible — it’s accessibly accessible — by my viewpoint. And so our goal is just to reduce that. And it’s also kind of to protect the interest of the show, because it’s not good for that to be on YouTube. Anime companies don’t want it, fansubbers and fansubbing groups don’t want it… we’re all working towards that same kind of goal.

Q: Where do you think the intellectual property lies? Is it just in the fansubs themselves? Or is it in the link between the fansub and the video…

Interactii: From our standpoint?

Q: From the company’s standpoint, because technically the entire use of the episode is not under free use.

Interactii: It’s murky for sure, but we went through the process with YouTube, and we got the approval to do it. We do it on the basis of the translations and the styling of the translations as a thing that’s copyrightable, which is technically under the DMCA, which is something that we can take down. That’s kind of our approach to it, and it hasn’t been challenged by anyone so far. So we’re continuing to operate under it.

Q: What material do you submit to them so that they can track the takedowns?

Interactii: Actually, it’s not tracked by them. We have someone on our staff who has the authorization to take down the videos.

Q: If the Japanese company were to go to YouTube and try to find some parallel between your takedowns and their takedowns, do you think there would be some kind of conflict there?

Interactii: Probably, yes. But I don’t see how our take-downs would possibly be non-beneficial to them. We only remove our content. We don’t remove all Naruto. We remove Naruto with our subs on them; we remove Bleach with our subs on them. It’s only those things that we’re removing, so we’re not removing anything that they might be contributing. So there’s really no negative effect in my mind.

Q: Have you guys taken any legal action against people who try to distribute these videos?

Interactii: We really have no grounds to. We’ve asked places who do that to stop, and we’ve sent people other requests — Please stop doing this. And that’s basically the same course we did with YouTube, and by being persistent about it they gave us the access to do that.

Dattebayo Fansubs, who subtitle the trendy anime Naruto Shippuuden and Bleach, currently rests at the sixth position for most copyright-related take-downs of the videos tracked by the Youtomb project (excluding those removed by “a third party”). TV Tokyo Corporation, the Japanese distributors of Naruto and Bleach, occupies the third position [6].

The conflict between the fansubber and the owner of the animation certainly evokes new questions regarding copyright, particularly because the subtitles remain a translucent layer of intellectual property draped over the original media. Is it legal, therefore, for Dattebayo to claim partial property or legality to a complete (“whole,” “unified”; not “entire”) cultural production? Free use, unfortunately, does not apply in this case. Or, in a more general sense, is it legal to make a claim of copyright where a more legitimate layer of copyright exists? Either way, it is illegal to upload the original animation, with or without fansubs, according to the YouTube Terms of Service, Section 6D and 6E [7]:

D. In connection with User Submissions, you further agree that you will not submit material that is copyrighted, protected by trade secret or otherwise subject to third party proprietary rights, including privacy and publicity rights, unless you are the owner of such rights or have permission from their rightful owner to post the material and to grant YouTube all of the license rights granted herein.

E. You further agree that you will not, in connection with User Submissions, submit material that is contrary to the YouTube Community Guidelines, found at http://www.youtube.com/t/community_guidelines, which may be updated from time to time, or contrary to applicable local, national, and international laws and regulations.

In the contemporary agenda of YouTube copyright, my personal interest lies in a parallel between fansubbed material and Youtube’s trend of music-related takedowns. It may not (but should) be common knowledge that Youtube utilizes its Content Identification system [8] to target videos that contain copyrighted music. My curiosity (and concern) is whether animation studios will submit the original audio of anime episodes (audio that comprises music, actors’ voices, sound effects, etc.) to track more quickly any uploaded content. I wonder too whether groups like Dattebayo could do the same and do it legally. Although they do not own rights to the original footage and audio, could fansubbing groups also use the original audio to track when fansubs are uploaded?

[1] http://www.law.ed.ac.uk/ahrc/SCRIPT-ed/vol2-4/hatcher.asp#legal
[2] http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2008-03-29/tokyo-anime-center-posts-stop-fan-subtitle-notice
[3] http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2008-11-17/tv-tokyo-to-also-stream-naruto-through-crunchyroll
[4] http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/convention/2008/fansubs-and-industry-panel
[5] http://dattebayo.com/
[6] http://youtomb.mit.edu/statistics
[7] http://www.youtube.com/t/terms
[8] http://www.youtube.com/t/contentid