Yotsuba&!, pronounced Yotsubato (よつばと, or “Four Leaves and… !”) in Japanese to include the ampersand, is a comedy-driven comic written by Kiyohiko Azuma. It was published beginning in March 2003 and still runs in Dengeki Daioh magazine.

Yotsuba&! was made available to English-speaking audiences by ADV Manga; however, Yen Press took over the license and republished the volumes in 2009. You can buy it through the 3rd-party sellers on Amazon for pretty cheap. In fact, you should buy it.

Yotsuba&! is a comic about a young girl named Yotsuba who moves to a new neighborhood with her father. The comic follows the eccentric, everyday trivialities of Yotsuba as she interacts with her father, neighbors, and town.

It’s a fairly simple story that requires barely any explanation. It’s a comic about a girl who does stuff, akin to how Virginia Woolf’s novel Mrs. Dalloway basically boils down to a story about a lady as she goes around her daily routines. As strange as that sounds, Yotsuba&! is a comic about dealing with the hilarious things that occur in daily life (even if some of those things might be caused by a weird, little girl). With chapters titled “Yotsuba and Drawing,” “Yotsuba and the Culture Festival,” and “Yotsuba and Typhoons,” it’s really just a comic about everything and a girl. Basically, what the title says: Yotsuba & !.

There are three things that I wish this essay to achieve:

1) Explore where Yotsuba&! is situated in the Japanese comics industry and the minds of its (adult?) readers.
2) Look at how Kiyohiko Azuma has developed as an artist and how that is illustrated in Yotsuba&!.
3) Explain why Yotsuba&! (in relation to Azuma’s other works) says a lot about writing comic comics.

1

To begin, let’s look a bit more at Yotsuba&!‘s method of publication. As I said previously, Azuma’s comic is serialized in Dengeki Daioh (電撃大王, King of Electric Shocks) magazine, and has been running since March 2003. Azumanga Daioh, for which Azuma is most known, also ran in this comics magazine.

Before I continue, I feel the need to explain how magazines work in Japan. Somewhat similar to American television ratings, the Japanese comics industry targets its comics to demographics. In America, these tend to look like “Male 18-30″ or “Female 45+.” In Japan, comics demographics are similar but are categorized by name. Basically, they’re split into four categories: boys (少年, shounen), girls (少女, shoujo), young men (青年, seinen), and young women (女性, josei). Most comics are targeted to one of these four demographics, though the actual readership can vary wildly (eg., older men can read comics for girls).

So, with that in mind, Dengeki Daioh caters to a specific demographic. If you check the Wikipedia page, it notes that the magazine is aimed at boys (shonen). However, you’ll note in the History of edits that this was changed from young men (seinen) back in 2006, supposedly when the magazine shifted to a monthly schedule.

Based on the actual comics we see in Dengeki Daioh, we might posit the magazine to cater to somewhere between the shonen and seinen readerships (Zac Berteschy argues for the same interpretation in 2005). The cover images above illustrate that most of the stories found in these issues revolve around bishoujo (美少女, beautiful young girls) protagonists. The image below, which is a 2009 calendar celebrating Dengeki Daioh‘s popular female leads, highlights the same point.

I take a look at Dengeki Daioh‘s stories and readers because Yotsuba&! has been constantly criticized for being a story about a young girl in a men’s magazine, and then subsequently is defended as a suitable — and specifically innocent — comedy for guys (one good piece is by Jason Thompson on Moé: The Cult of the Child). The underlying tone in this criticism, of course, is that Yotsuba&! might be seen as a moé or bishoujo comic, which spontaneously taints it. I’m not going to argue for or against these demographic-genres, but Dengeki Daioh is certainly a magazine aimed at a younger audience than other seinen or adult magazines (such as Comic High! — which contains titles such as Chu-Bra!! and Kodomo no Jikan or Comic LO, which publishes erotic lolita titles).

Instead of situating Yotsuba&! in the context of bishoujo comics, instead I will argue that it is a comic for (young) adults. Which might be a little ironic, given that the Manga Moveable Feast is meant to shine the spotlight on comics for kids. And with the all ages rating for Yotsuba&!‘s release in the U.S., it would make sense as a satisfactory choice. However, I will argue against this notion, and instead uphold that Yotsuba&! is meant for the audience that it targets in Japan. It’s a story about a young girl, but the humor is in the relationships she maintains in an adult world. When she interacts with kids, (older teen and adult) readers laugh at the ridiculous situations, expressions, and reactions that emerge. When she interacts with adults, older readers laugh because they connect with the adults in the comic, who also see Yotsuba as pretty ridiculous. Of course, Yotsuba&! is also about “all the rest” (&!), and the short stories that we see of the adults in her world are just as funny because older readers can relate.

Yotsuba&! is a comic for adults. Not in the sense of perversion or ecchi perspectives. Instead, it’s a comic that older readers will understand, and with which younger readers — while they might enjoy it — will have a more difficult time associating.

2 + 3

If you know anything about Kiyohiko Azuma, you should recognize his name from the cover of Azumanga Daioh, which — as I previously mentioned — also ran in Dengeki Daioh starting in February 1999. If you do a quick scan of Azuma’s Wikipedia page, though, you’ll notice that he has done other earlier work. These include:

Inma no Ranbu (1997)
Try! Try! Try! (1998–2001)
Wallaby (1998–2000)

Try! Try! Try! is actually the predecessor to Yotsuba&!, and follows pretty much the same characters with Yotsuba as the protagonist. Wallaby is a story about a girl who sews a stuffed wallaby in memory of her recently-deceased classmate, Warabi. His soul comes to inhabit the toy animal, though the girl never understands that it is her friend (because the name Wallaby in Japanese, ワラビ, is the same as わらび, the boy’s name… if that wasn’t already obvious). And Inma no Ranbu (淫魔の乱舞, The Lust Demon’s Boisterous Dance) is an adult, erotic comic about female warriors getting sexed up, illustrated by Azuma (though he published under a pseudonym, for obvious reasons).

It’s interesting to look at the spectrum of Azuma’s titles and how they define his career. The character designs are fairly set in stone if we begin with Inma no Ranbu.

The backgrounds are nonexistent (what’s the point in an erotic comic, right?), and the facial expressions are fairly plain. The art style overall is minimal with strength in the line work, though it barely varies.

Wallaby shows improvement. Definitely not in the background art, as it barely exists in this comic as well, but Wallaby represents probably the primary space where Azuma practices his facial expressions. The character designs are still a bit wonky, but they improve going into Azumanga Daioh. The background art, however, improves dramatically, as Azuma makes distinct decisions to create a world for his characters to inhabit. Almost in complete contrast to Wallaby, Yotsuba&!‘s backgrounds and peripheral images (such as objects that characters interact with) are fine-tuned and extremely detailed.

The only copy of Try! Try! Try! I could look through was a one-shot from 2001. The style mirrors that of Yotsuba&! if you compare it to the original chapters, which is a bit interesting, since it seems that Azuma’s solidified his art style by 2001.

However, Yotsuba&! is an interesting case if we want to move away from talking about just “art style” and talk about “comic style.” And to do that, we actually have two things to work out: “comic style” as in 1) comics, and 2) comedy.

Azumanga Daioh, while popular perhaps because of its anime adaptation, ran in Dengeki Daioh as a 4-frame comic (四コマ漫画, 4-koma manga). The 4-koma has a long history in Japan before World War 2 (you can read more about it at Wikipedia). All of Azuma’s other comics are in ordinary format, including Yotsuba&!. So what does it matter that Yotsuba&! is not a 4-koma?

First, let me remark on Azuma’s other comics. Comic artists in Japan constantly have to battle to find the right balance between text (the words on the page), image (the drawings of characters and place), and structure (number and arrangement of panels). Azuma’s early works, such as Inma and Wallaby, suffer from having an imbalance between these three comic elements. Azumanga Daioh‘s 4-koma structure, on the other hand, enforces a balance between the elements that Azuma masters and through which he creates hilarious situations in every column.

Yotsuba&!, though, is not a 4-koma comic. It is structured like an ordinary comic. But for reasons to be explained, it finds an excellent balance between these text, images, and structure.

From here on, I will argue that Yotsuba&! secretly hides a 4-koma-like structure in how it organizes its humor.

The 4-frame comic is organized as kishoutenketsu (起承転結, or “intro, development, turn, and conclusion”). Each of the four “stages” of the narrative development in 4-koma represents one frame of the comic, and one full joke is complete at the end of each set of four.

Again, Yotsuba&! is not a 4-koma comic. However, while each chapter is set up as a distinct plot (eg., Yotsuba plays with her dad) with its own jokes, every page in itself contains a joke or funny moment. Now, I could list off the jokes on every page, but I feel like you’ll just get the point by going out and reading the comic! But I can, at least, explain what I mean about the “secret 4-koma structure.” By working on Azumanga Daioh, Azuma adjusted the way he told jokes to fit the 4-koma format, but in doing so he perfected telling jokes by aligning one frame with another. Reading Yotsuba&! feels like reading a 4-koma with varying numbers and sizes of frames. You can read Yotsuba&! and pick out different jokes, and for the most part they fit into 4-koma-like structures. However, the continual jokes do not hinder the narrative; instead, they help with character development, and each chapter of Yotsuba&! seems like a handful of 4-koma gently woven together into a more film-like form.

In fact, you can see Azuma doing a special rendition of Yotsuba&! in the 4-frame comic format between chapters 27 and 28. And the great revelation is that it doesn’t feel any different from reading the comic as regularly written and drawn.

Improving on Azuma’s earlier work, Yotsuba&! also illustrates that Azuma has figured out how to create impressionable comics. What I mean, basically, is that when Azuma wants to let his characters’ personalities shine, he can give each moment an impact. Usually these impacts consist of Yotsuba becoming really surprised…

… but these moments are constantly hilarious. These quick changes in emotion — spanning across two frames — are, I believe, a direct impact of Azuma’s work with 4-koma, as you’ll usually see that kind of comedic dichotomy between the 2nd and 3rd or 3rd and 4th frames of 4-koma. Yotsuba&!‘s humor is aided by Azuma’s love of sound effects, which actually pervade and dominate all of his works (eg., see the image from Inma above). I love how he uses them in a lot of Yotsuba&!‘s early scenes, especially ones where there’s not a lot of necessary noise (like waking up in the morning or working quietly), to emphasize the personalities of his characters.

Interestingly, the hard-hitting humor that pervades a lot of Yotsuba&!‘s early chapters begins to dissipate in Azuma’s later work on the series. It’s not that the humor disappears, but we get to see a lot more humble moments shared between the characters, particularly in collected silence. In my opinion, I think the reason for the change is that Azuma realized the popularity and worth of Yotsuba&! as a comic that represents more than just “a comic for guys,” that it reflects a lot about the relationships between the characters in the world he has created. And it’s moments like these…

… that I think define what Yotsuba&!‘s all about: loving daily life and the awesome moments that humor us.

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).

Honestly, I just want to get this second episode online, because it’s taken more than a few months to do so already, so… bullet point time!

- The podcast has been officially named: DoAAA, or the Department of Alchemy Audio Archive. Fitting, since I’m probably always going to upload audio I record at conventions.
- Episode 2 features Chris Beverage from his Anime on DVD panel at Anime Boston 2009. Since there was no real industry panel on Sunday at the convention, Chris’s panel represents the pinnacle of industry discussion that happened inside the Hynes last May.
- I’m sick this week, so I didn’t want my crappy voice getting in the way of the equally-awful panel audio. Thus, I just use my laptop’s voice to host this episode.

Listen below, or use the direct download here.

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?

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!

TED.com officially announced today a project that will crowdsource translations of every TED video in more than forty of the world’s most-vocalized languages. The splash page is viewable here.

The video above is a Japanese translation of Blaise Aguera y Arcas’ demo of Photosynth, one of the more interesting yet much shorter videos available at the TED website. As you can see, the subtitles work pretty well and the timing is for the most part up to par. The only petulant remarks I can make about meticulous details would be: 1) there’s no furigana… but that only applies to Japanese anyway, and 2) the subtitles cover up the images when the projector is shown… but that’s unavoidable, and it’s not that important a matter.

The important issue to take away from TED’s audacious project is something that Ethan Zuckerman summed up quite nicely on Twitter: “TED’s approach to translating video is a first step towards translating the web.” He links to an article of his own that gives a brief background to TED’s translation project. Of course, my stance on the issue of social translation is that fansubs in the anime community have been doing it for years, so it’s not necessarily something “new.” At the same time, however, the social element has never really been an active component of fansubbing. But there was an attempt, one that might have had huge repercussions for the anime industry.

When I attended Otakon in the summer of 2008, I decided off the cuff to drop in on Crunchyroll‘s industry panel, held on Saturday from 1:00 to 2:00 pm in Workshop 1. There’s a lot of information that was passed around at Otakon 2008 in regards to fansubbing and translation — the Fansubs and Industry panel probably the most discussed (note: you can watch the panel via that link to Anime News Network) — but Vu Nguyen announced that Crunchyroll had plans to release tools for the creation of community-driven subtitles.

Keep in mind, the announcement took place before Crunchyroll went “legal.” At the time, the website still hosted anime and Asian dramas that may or may not have been licensed. Putting that aside, though, Crunchyroll provided fans a platform on which to watch subtitled anime and a community through which dialogue could take place about that anime.

However, those subtitles were usually in English. In fact, most subtitles of anime roaming the Net are translated in English, though a good number have been written in other languages, such as French and Spanish (I’m not quite sure the balance of statistics between languages or how many languages are frequently used as goals for translation). Clearly language is a barrier to the wide dissemination of anime to potential fans around the world. Another limitation to translation is the structure of the fansub community. Basically, it takes the form of a team of translators and producers, working together toward a final result, coordinated by a central figurehead.

Social translation solves these two impediments on some level. First, there’s a better chance that more languages will be translated. A problem, of course, is that the translator needs to be bilingual (Japanese and X for anime, or English and Y for the TED talks). Second, tools are provided to take down the infrastructure of translation teams, instead putting the power into the hands of an individual.

I spoke with Vu after the Crunchyroll panel to go over a few details of the project. He first explained that the tools were easy to use. A user relied on the time codes of the English fansub to translate from Japanese to his (probably native) language. One issue that arises here is that the translator could be using the English fansubs to translate, instead of the original Japanese voice overs, but ultimately this is probably unavoidable. Still, it provides a somewhat accurate translation in a language that would otherwise probably not ever be translated. Vu also noted that the translations would be checked by some staff (he didn’t have many details, as the project was still in development) to ensure a certain level of accuracy (mainly to avoid the Nico Nico Douga effect of random text in place of actual subtitles).

I had meant to follow up with Vu in an interview for Youtomb, but then I shipped off to Japan last fall. I sent him an email to inquire further about the project, about which I could find no information this spring. He replied back in April:

As for the community subtitling project, we did launch it at some point for user uploaded content. I agree that it is one of the more ambitious projects. But Crunchyroll made a transition to fully licensed, so all of the content online has a licensing agreement in place and our challenge has been in getting the content holders to agree to allow fans to contribute subtitles. There’s IP issues (to which I think we have a good solution), quality issues (which I think content holders need to overcome), and security concerns (for new, yet to be aired content, there’s almost no way we can provide fans any work to translate prior to the air date, so we can’t use fans for simulcasts). We’re still chipping away at this, but I’m not sure how close we are to accomplishing it, and I’m hesitant to discuss too many details… until we make more progression on our side.

So, it seems that Crunchyroll is still in the process of creating some sort of social translation community around their already thriving membership. I wonder if TED’s project will further propel the CR ambitions further.

And I really hope it develops into something similar. If you didn’t read through the TED blog’s announcement, it details that each video translation will have an accompanying text transcript, in which a viewer can click on a sentence and immediately be brought to that spot in the video. If the fansub community or a CR social translation project were to pursue a similar initiative, this would have epic benefits for the anime research community. The availability of transcripts would be akin to throwing it back old school to the early days of American anime clubs, where a member would stand up at the front of the room and read a translation of the script as the Japanese-language animation played in the background. However, such a project takes that extinct practice and revamps it, providing researchers not only with a transcript but also the accompanying video, with which they can easily do a text search on the page and be transported to X point in the video clip, to examine the art relative to the speech. Of course, such a project begs all sorts of questions, particularly video hosting: is it possible to keep a database of videos that could be accessed while bypassing numerous legal and financial barriers?

The question, though, is certainly not one of fansubbing as a practice. At the recent Media in Transition conference at MIT, a Thursday night panel was hosted by the Comparative Media Studies program’s colloquium series called Global Media (the podcast can be listened to here). Most of the panelists agreed that, all over the world, fansubbing is thriving in genres from Bollywood to American bootlegs to tella novellas (to such an extent that it probably can’t be stopped). It seemed that the panelists were more concerned protecting local works and saw more benefits in the circulation of their works than in the loss of monetary content. For Japanese animation, this might mean that Japan should be focusing on their home turf. But we can’t ignore that companies in the US have been set up to distribute anime, which is the main factor that complicates the Japanese market and its profits.

Ultimately, there are only benefits for TED, who own their own videos because it is their personal content. They do not have to deal with complications with copyright or monetization. As far as the anime industry, it’s a completely different set of matters. As Vu stated, simulcasts are out of the question for fan-curated translations, and getting around questions of intellectual property is going to require some deep thought.

We’ll have to wait and see where this ends up. But if you’re interested in continuing the conversation, I’ll be at the Open Video Conference in New York on June 19 and 20 to give a talk about the the history and culture of Japanese animation in the US and its past/future implications. Come check it out, especially for the other talks (which are obviously going to be way more interesting than mine).