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.

Ever since I got involved with ROFLcon (I attended the very first one and have been working with the team on hosting the smaller ROFLthing events since), I have had Internet culture research on my mind. Tim Hwang and I have talked over potentially writing co-writing a book on Internet memes, but recently the project has sunk below our interest in meme research, specifically that of engineering. But ever since “meme” because the Internet buzzword of our generation, I’ve constantly been at odds with the odd term. What exactly is a meme? Why are we using that specific word? And what do we learn about the Internet by studying memes, or vice versa?

If you haven’t decided to discover the term’s etymology, I’ll try to provide a basic explanation. Trying to explain the meaning of meme by looking at Wikipedia illustrates the issue of defining the word: throwing “meme” into Google provides you with both two articles on Wikipedia, the first entitled Meme and the second, Internet Meme. The discussion of meme here draws from the article Internet Meme; however, we cannot ignore the history behind the former article, especially since work around Internet memes borrows heavily from studies of memetics.

The etymology of the word meme is derived from the biological term gene. Merriam-Webster defines gene as “a specific sequence of nucleotides in DNA or RNA that is located usually on a chromosome and that is the functional unit of inheritance controlling the transmission and expression of one or more traits by specifying the structure of a particular polypeptide and especially a protein or controlling the function of other genetic material,” but I prefer Wikipedia’s simplistic explanation better: “Genes hold… information to build and maintain… cells and pass genetic traits to offspring.” Examining Wikipedia’s explanation, we can understand a gene in two ways: 1) it contains information, and 2) it transfers that information.

The term meme was coined by the biologist Richard Dawkins in his book, “The Selfish Gene,” (1976) to explain the movement of ideas and the formation of culture through the metaphor of biological processes.

To elucidate the construction of the metaphor, Susan Blackmore, in her paper Evolution and Memes: The human brain as a selective imitation device, writes, “As Darwin (1859) first pointed out, if you have creatures that vary, and if there is selection so that only some of those creatures survive, and if the survivors pass on to their offspring whatever it was that helped them survive, then those offspring must, on average, be better adapted to the environment in which that selection took place than their parents were… If you have the three requisites – variation, selection and heredity, then you must get evolution… This [evolutionary] algorithm depends on something being copied, and Dawkins calls this the replicator. A replicator can therefore be defined as any unit of information which is copied with variations or errors, and whose nature influences its own probability of replication (Dawkins 1976).” Quoting Dawkins, Blackmore names the element of transmission shared by genes and memes: they both replicate with variations. Replication with variation is then how Dawkins explains his concept of the evolution of culture, how ideas move, the meme: “The new soup is the soup of human culture. We need a name for the new replicator, a noun that conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation.”

To explain the actions of a meme, Dawkins illustrates them once again with the biological analogy: “Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperms or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation.” However, Blackmore points out the difficulty of Dawkins’ explanation, writing, “The problem is this. If memes worked like genes then we should expect to find close analogies between the two evolutionary systems. But, although both are replicators, they work quite differently and for this reason we should be very cautious of meme-gene analogies. I suggest there is no clean equivalent of the genotype/phenotype distinction in memetics because memes are a relatively new replicator and have not yet created for themselves this highly efficient kind of system. Instead there is a messy system in which information is copied all over the place by many different means. I previously gave the example of someone inventing a new recipe for pumpkin soup and passing it on to various relatives and friends (Blackmore 1999). The recipe can be passed on by demonstration, by writing the recipe on a piece of paper, by explaining over the phone, by sending a fax or e-mail, or (with difficulty) by tasting the soup and working out how it might have been cooked.” She counters, “The whole point of memes is to see them as information being copied in an evolutionary process (i.e. with variation and selection). Given the complexities of human life, information can be copied in myriad ways. We do a disservice to the basic concept of the meme if we try to restrict it to information residing only inside people’s heads.” However, I believe that Blackmore’s statement, at least in an age where the Internet is general, accessible, and popular, is fairly known and thence a bit redundant given common sense. The one element that can be gleaned by her comment, though, is that while the transfer of ideas undergoes change (“variation”), it also undergoes “selection,” meaning that people eventually weed out ideas from the initial batch. This counteracts the stereotypical marketer’s view of the meme as “viral” because of the possibility for an idea to be discarded, rather than passed on to other people.

In relation to Dawkins’ explanation, the problem for me is not that he explains the concept of the meme in terms of a biological metaphor, but that people examining memes today have latched onto the concept of biology not as a means of elucidating memes but of approaching and investigating them. Case in point would be Mike Godwin’s WIRED article about memes, in which he writes, “A “meme,” of course, is an idea that functions in a mind the same way a gene or virus functions in the body. And an infectious idea (call it a “viral meme”) may leap from mind to mind, much as viruses leap from body to body.” In terms of the definition, Dawkins’ use of “brain” immediately calls researchers of memes to focus on the way the mind works and how ideas transfer between brains. However, I think that a fundamental change must be made here, and that is to examine memes as transferred between not physical brains but nebulous minds. By this I mean not that the physical nature of the persons involved in the transmission of ideas should be emphasized but instead we should focus on the (sociological?) relations between people to understand culture.

Second, Dawkins explains the meme concept by suggesting that memes might take on an entity of their own, in that “memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain.” Unlike some members of the Free Culture movement, I do not believe that information wants to be “free.” In fact, I believe that information does not move at all, at least by its own volition. Instead, people move information. People want information to be free, so people move ideas to match a system that lets them be free. Therefore, my thesis might be stated as people move information, and out of that statement I want to understand memes as people pushing ideas to other people — not a very “biological” concept in the least.

The interesting thing about the Internet is that it is full of people. However, only in the last few years have people been recognized as a presence, though of course one still minor to the extent of information on the Web. Still, they’ve finally be noticed, particularly since the spread of the popular buzzword, Web 2.0. However, the basic theories around the movement of information through the Internet does not seem to entirely account for the presence of people. Recent publications have begun to approach it, like Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody, but I feel that the text as well as projects like the Berkman Center’s Internet and Democracy project (to use as an example, not to call it out in a negative light) only approach the human element of the Internet as an affect of the Internet rather than a fundamental part or function of it.

Tim has talked many times about Yochai Benkler‘s Layers of Communication, which illustrates the structure of the Internet and how information moves across it. However, recently at SXSW Tim presented a panel on the future of the memescape, and he had to somehow account for the emergence of memes in real life. How else to do so but apply a human layer at some point to Benkler’s equation. Of course, the human element applies all over the above graphic: people create and set up the physical layer; people code the websites and applications; people upload and submit the information. We could think of each color tab with a tiny orange piece attached that would be the “human knob.”

But I think we need to think of a human layer as integral to the structure of the Internet, specifically a human layer separate from the other three tiers. The graph would then look like this:

Thinking about the structure of the Internet this way makes sense. The physical layer provides the module on which the Internet runs and users interact (eg., through fingers on a keyboard and looking at a screen, which then travels over a wire to other fingers and eyes), the code forms what we recognize at the Internet’s visual structure (as well as the inner workings of the Web via applications), the content is the information that we want/need to see, and the human layer moves all of that information through that code over the physical elements. to other humans.

Internet futurists have already attempted to tear apart the structure that I am proposing here. I present as evidence the semantic web. Basically the semantic web is an attempt to create an Internet in which the human layer no longer needs to exist. To explain that statement further, essentially computers cannot read all of the information on the Web, because it was built by people for people. For example, proof might be Google search: although it helps us find a lot of wonderful things, it is not necessarily the best method for finding everything that we need. To combat that imperfection, the semantic web was created to provide information in a format that machines could easily read, thus helping humans find information faster. We can think of the semantic web as hacking the human layer of the web by rerouting that layer through the code layer.

However, I don’t believe it to be that simple a solution. My assumption is that to find information, we need to find people. I can immediately dismiss my previous statement by saying that the Internet already allows that to be possible. Simply reading this article means that you have found information without having had to find me to provide you with that information. However, I will rephrase my statement to make more sense: To find the information we want, we need to find people.

It is here that my research with the anime fandom in America first coincides with my research on Internet culture. They link in two ways (the second of which I will examine later). First, in trying to find information for my research, I have had to contact multiple people, because it is essentially not on the Web. Currently, we rely on information that already exists when we search for it online. The semantic web, too, relies on the fact that the information its code provides to users of the semantic web already exists. If it does not, the code (basically, XML) must be applied to the information as it is uploaded to the Internet. One of Tim’s most recent questions has been about the potential for an Internet EPA. Basically, such an organization (?) would commit to providing relevant information of quality for users of the Web. However, to find information that does not exist on the Web yet, we need to go to people that have or will provide that information. A basic issue right now with finding relevant information of quality is that if you stumble upon a blog that you feel provides you with that information, will the author(s) of that blog continue to provide you with the same quality or relevance of information. This might be a common issue with communication in general, but especially so on the Internet because direct contact is usually not available for both communicative ends (whether or not the author is anonymous). Also, if you wanted to find a certain piece of information and it did not exist, how do you go about finding the person(s) that would provide it to you?

The aspect of connecting not with information but people is where the human layer of the Internet especially comes into play, and where I believe research on Internet memes needs to focus.

First, though, I must reexamine the concept of the meme to apply it to the Internet. As I stated before, Wikipedia draws on two concepts of meme: Meme and Internet Meme. The Wikipedia entry for Internet Meme makes a bold statement: “The term is a reference to the concept of memes, although this concept refers to a much broader category of cultural information.” The author here suggests that Internet memes do not encapsulate the entirety of cultural information that exists outside of the Internet. And, actually, I agree. To clarify my agreement, I would simply state that Internet memes deal with popular culture.

My statement requires two explications. First, to distinguish between memes and Internet memes, I suggest that we can look at the concept of the “meme” as a movement, while “Internet meme” is a manifestation of that movement. When we say meme, we mean an idea, a cultural product, but also that it moves in a certain way. When we say Internet meme, the nominative “Internet” does not denote that the movement of the meme relies on some new Internet-based form of movement; rather, the Internet relies on popular culture, and hence an Internet meme is a meme of popular culture. Second, to explain the phrase “meme of popular culture,” I must define popular culture. However, I will not define it as much as name criteria for the term’s application. Popular culture depends on access and audience. More specifically, the culture of popular culture is that which is accessible by the general populace (in that they can interact with it), and it is culture to which the audience relates. Of course, not all popular culture might be considered “popular” culture given certain contexts: for example, a movie that can be seen in a theater in the city might not be available in the countryside, but it is generally accessible nonetheless.

Now, by “meme of popular culture,” I mean that an Internet meme is a piece of popular culture that moves like a meme, in that its audience replicates it and is selective of it. Taking the Internet meme as a popular culture meme, though, helps us understand the human layer and thence the movement of communication and information online, because when we observe the production of memes, they usually derive from popular (widespread) media or popular (favored) ideas. The importance of popular culture to meme studies is that it brings attention to the audience, or basically the people moving around these bits of culture.

It is particularly important to look at the concept of audience when examining memes because the Internet warps the real-life model, in that it can easily be analyzed. Online, with the potential for anonymity, finding reliable suppliers of information proves difficult. However, when we examine sites of cultural production online, specifically for memes, one of the origins of course is the bulletin board system known as 4chan.

Before tackling the structure of 4chan, I’ll mention that here we now approach the second relation to my research on the anime fandom: the ability to compare systems. When I study anime in the United States, I must also take into account its origins in Japan, which boasts its own fan culture, which even today influences the American fan base. A similar thing happens with 4chan, whose origins were in the Japanese board system, 2channel. Over at Metagold: A Research Blog About Nico Nico Douga (the Japanese video service similar to YouTube), the author writes, “X gives me first a basic introduction into the workings of the legendary BBS (Bulletin board system) 2channel, the direct predecessor of Nico Nico Douga. 2channel is important for Nico Nico Douga in many ways. Most importantly, it has made the culture of anonymous posting popular – it might indeed be a Western misconception to see Nico Nico Douga as a form of Youtube plus BBS. More precisely, it is a BBS plus video. The BBS culture was there first, and it remains the central driving force of Nico Nico Douga… Posts on 2channel normally only appear under the IP address –. Entries are therefore not only anonymous in the sense that they are hidden under a pseudonym. Normally it is impossible to connect the many entries that one user has made. Theoretically, people can also create an identity, but this is tricky, and hardly ever done. 2channel is all about radical anonymity, and this was its great revolution.” In relation to 4chan, then, the anonymity of the users defines the structure. Essentially, a user who posts information on the anonymous board need not worry about the implications of those reading his posts. Therefore, 4chan and 2channel act as a sort of semi-human-layered system, where the system connects the users to those who want to find relevant information in real time, but without consequences to the identity of the user.

The reverse of a anonymous system like 2channel or 4chan would provide the information seeker with more information about the information provider, and thus give the information seeker more clues in determining whether the information provider is worth tracking. A system that resembles this model would be Twitter, where a user is not obligated to follow any other user unless he wants to read updates. Therefore, a user on Twitter chooses the information he wants to follow, with the ability to stop following a user as soon as that user’s ability to provide relevant information lessens. Another interesting aspect of Twitter in relation to relevant information is the limitation of characters, which usually forces users to abbreviate any URLs they post. Because of that abbreviation, users may end up clicking on links to unknown destinations, relying on trust in the user who originally posted the link. I have found myself clicking on a message with just a TinyURL link with no indication where it goes, because I believe the user to be providing me with material relevant to my interests or needs.

The interesting thing about Twitter is that it is fundamentally hackable. Two simple experiments come to mind: 1) The creation of a fake person that provides users with relevant information, and 2) The existence of a real person that bombards users with utterly irrelevant information (by means, for example, of constant @replies, which are now always picked up by the @yourname aggregator). Both of these experiments play with the idea that information is moved around by people.

However, Twitter does not necessarily deal with memetic movement, particularly with regard to Internet memes. The problem, though, is that the definition of meme is slowly changing in the popular lexicon of the Internet. danah boyd recently posted a link on Twitter, commenting, “unbelievable must-view video: http://bit.ly/TnRKo (@ethanz notes that this is the kind of video meme that makes one proud of the interwebz)”. The link’s destination, a video on YouTube, does not seem to fit the concept of the Internet meme as a piece of popular culture that has been replicated and selected. However, it certainly has been repeatedly selected as an item of interest and the link to the video has been replicated across the Internet as people share it amongst friends (or strangers).

The video on YouTube, of Susan Boyle, a recent contestant on Britain’s Got Talent, recently swept the Web and has garnered almost ten million page views as of this writing. In less than thirty minutes this afternoon, I saw it jump over one million page views. The interesting thing about the video, though, is that it mirrors another video phenomenon that hit YouTube back in 2007, where Paul Potts sang an outstanding opera audition on the same show, in a similar lifestyle situation (he was a cell phone salesman; Susan is unemployed; both singers ended up outright shocking the audience). For meme researchers, the link between these videos is key, because it’s very difficult to match similar situations of instantaneous popularity online. Just as Paul Potts had taken the Internet by storm two years ago, so have Susan Boyle’s fans set up multiple fansites for her to spread her name around, widening her viewing audience. If it’s possible to track the people who move around this information on the Web, it would be a celebration for Internet researchers. Meme researchers: pay attention here!

The basic theory of this article states that a new layer of the Internet structure must be analyzed: the human element of the Web that moves information around. I believe that studies like meme research will become a new aspect of fan studies research, and I hope to begin research into that area as I continue my research into the American anime fandom this summer.

On top of the initial reactions in pure text (such as the video’s 2000+ comments as of the publication of this article), even Anime News Network’s Chicks on Anime picked up on the fandom’s backlash.

As much as anyone would like it, I’m not here to discuss the fandom or whatnot. Instead, my interest lies in a connection to a project that I’m helping out on and blogged about before: YouTomb, a project through the Students for Free Culture group at MIT where we look at the takedowns on YouTube.

The tale I will relate has already been told numerous times across the blogosphere. Little Kuriboh, a video producer on Yu-Gi-Oh!: The Abridged Series. He, as well as many other creators on YouTube, made spin-off productions of the Sakura-con commercial. The commercial seems to have caused quite a ruckus over at 4chan and even made it into the Encyclopedia Dramatica, which catalogues most of the memes and miscellaneous “creativity” that occurs on the 4chan boards. On top of the multiple mashups available on YouTube, LK decided to post his own version of the commercial, entitled GUHROOGAMESH!!!1, onto the video site, which parodied the commercial’s audio using clips from the Yu-Gi-Oh animated series. Eventually, the video was removed by YouTube.

Recently, a new version has popped up on YouTube:

However, if this is also eventually removed, Omonomono has indexed links to the video, one available on Nico Nico Douga (ニコニコ動画, known as the Japanese equivalent of YouTube) and another on MegaUpload (if you don’t have an account for the former).

Questioning why the video was taken down, YouTomb has named the cause (which of course can also be discovered when visiting LK’s video’s original page on YouTube, above): a copyright claim by Asia Northwest Cultural Education Association. On 25 March 2009, the video was taken down, a mere week after it was uploaded (18 March 2009).

The association’s website states: “The Asia Northwest Cultural Education Association (ANCEA) is a registered non-profit corporation. Every year, ANCEA participates in various cultural and educational events. Sakura-Con is ANCEA’s main event and realization of the ANCEA mission to educate about Asian Culture, with a focus on Japanese Animation.” Clearly the Sakura-con commercial, produced by voice actor Vic Mignogna (most famous for his American dubbing of Edward Elric from Full Metal Alchemist), is an attempt to gather people to the convention; however, it seems that LK saw it as a “miseducation” about Asian Culture, hence an inspiration for the parody.

As previously stated, the video was removed from YouTube via a DMCA claim. LK created an alternative video in reaction to the takedown, which he titled “1!!!HSEMAGOORHUG,” and uploaded it to YouTube. However, he later removed it, according to the video’s YouTube data, on his own terms. Ravegrl, over at WordPress, neatly records a set of screenshots of the second video, complete with the edits that LK made to the video to avoid re-censorship by the ANCEA. This second video clearly parodies even the first, such as one instance of subtitling: “This joke is no longer available due to copyright claim by Asia Northwest Cultural Education Association.” Some of the audio was muted to avoid a potential Content-ID check, replaced with different lines to continue the parody-of-a-parody, referencing the YouTube Poop genre of comedic (or random, given your taste) video mashups.

There are two critical points at which we must approach copyright for Little Kuriboh’s video parody.

Point 1: Parody versus Satire

Not well known is the distinction between parody and satire.

Merriam-Webster Online defines parody as “a literary or musical work in which the style of an author or work is closely imitated for comic effect or in ridicule” and satire as “a literary work holding up human vices and follies to ridicule or scorn.” Basically, the difference comes down to satire as criticism of something outside the original work (generally the human condition), while parody merely criticizes the original work (criticism, here, may be positive or negative, though in the case of satire it is usually the latter).

The problem with parody and satire is that the law distinctly distinguishes between the two. In their paper entitled The Satire/Parody Distinction in Copyright and Trademark Law — Can Satire Ever Be a Fair Use?, Juli Wilson Marshall and Nicholas J. Siciliano state, “The Court creates a fair use dichotomy between parody and satire. After concluding that parody could be considered fair use, the Court quickly qualified its holding: if the new work “has no critical bearing on the substance or style of the original composition, which the alleged infringer merely uses to get attention or to avoid the drudgery in working up something fresh,” the work is less transformative, and other fair use factors, such as whether the new work was sold commercially, loom larger. Id. at 580.”

Clearly LK’s “GUHROOGAMESH!!!1″ is a parody. It mimics the original audio while adding new audio clips and utilizes a new video style. The issue with the Sakura-con commercial, however, is that the video can be taken as a satire of the anime fandom in America. Therefore, LK’s parody video may be construed as a continuation of the assumed satire. Thus, a judge in the court could twist the DMCA claim to support the ANCEA, justifying the YouTube removal.

Point 2: Copyright versus Protection

In an email exchange between me and LK, he writes, “The truth is, they WERE out of line taking my video down in the first place for bogus reasons, but they later contacted me and explained the situation – that their site was being flooded with pornographic spam as an inadvertant result of my video’s content. They have told me that they liked the video, and if I made certain alterations, they would have no problem letting me put it back up. Being a reasonable person, I agreed to those conditions.”

As LK recounts, the issue of the takedown does not revolve around copyright, but instead a problem with “pornographic spam.” Although the audio content of the parody video and the associations with 4chan may have caused the spam, the fundamental matter in question of the YouTube removal revolves around the ANCEA’s use of a DMCA-related takedown when it clearly does not ultimately apply. I might argue that ANCEA had the right to file the claim, since LK did use Vic Mignogna’s voice-over at the end of his video, but eventually the work would be held up as a parody in a DMCA counter claim. Even LK shared my take on the issue: “I think if there’s a lesson here, it’s that a simple message explaining why the video was a problem was a LOT more effective than having the video deleted for silly reasons that don’t really apply.”

The concern for me, and probably the rest of the YouTomb team, is that a copyright claim can be used to remove a video from YouTube without an actual copyright violation. Currently YouTube allows for three methods of removal:
1) Terms of Service Violation
2) Content-ID Removal
3) DMCA Takedown Notice
(via the Electronic Frontier Foundation)

Avoiding of course the possibility that anime music videos and related media may violate copyright (Lawrence Lessig would argue no, given certain stipulations)… While we have ruled out #3 and stated the possbility of #2, why did YouTube not remove the video by quoting method #1? Taking a look at the transcript of LK’s first parody video (via Yu-Gi-Oh! Wikia), it might be argued that his material is not suitable for YouTube’s general user base. YouTube’s Community Guidelines reads, “YouTube is not for pornography or sexually explicit content. If this describes your video, even if it’s a video of yourself, don’t post it on YouTube. Also, be advised that we work closely with law enforcement and we report child exploitation. Please read our Safety Tips and stay safe on YouTube.” These guidelines reflect the law written in the Children’s Internet Protection Act (following the Communications Decency Act and the Child Online Protection Act), which was signed into law in 2000 and upheld by the Supreme Court in 2003. Clearly the statement is aimed at video and audio of pornographic situations to protect minors (in the sense of minors viewing and/or being recorded in the material), but it may be applied to the GUHROOGAMESH!!!1 video all the same. The real question remains: Why, or really how, does YouTube allow someone to claim copyright with a purpose not related to copyright? And how many other instances have there been?

It seems that for now the whole affair has died down, even over at 4chan (which Encyclopedia Dramatica describes as a joke thoroughly killed and buried). But this is one instance of a strange use of “the law” as YouTube sees it and, really, dictates it.

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.