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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anime Boston 2010

New panels for 2010!

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

Bite-Size Anime
Some anime don’t fit the film- or TV-length format, so we’ll take a look at these dwarfs: webisodes, music videos, anthologies, and all things short!

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

Revamped panels for 2010!

After Cowboy Bebop: The Works of Shinichiro Watanabe
Many fans recognize Cowboy Bebop’s director, but let’s look at his other shows, from Macross Plus to Samurai Champloo to Genius Party and more!

Introduction to Anime Intro and Ending Themes
Today, many OP and ED themes are ignored! We’ll show the best and worst anime themes from Space Battleship Yamato to Evangelion to One Piece and more!

From Antisocial Loser to Economic Hero: The History of Otakudom
From the 1980s subculture, the concept of the obsessive fan has changed in Japan & America. Come learn the history of the fandom and its obsessions!

Chains, Trains, and Happy Endings: Japan’s Underground Sex Culture
The Japanese sex industry is pretty closeted, but here’s a peephole into host clubs, no-panty bars, hentai magazines, costume play, and love hotels.

Anime in Academia
Learn about new research, which resources are available, and what’s necessary to understand the history, trends, and meanings of anime and manga.

Impact of Evangelion
Neon Genesis Evangelion is the most successful Japanese animation ever. Come learn why Eva matters, and how it had such an impact on Japanese culture.

The Department of Alchemy has started prepping for the summer convention circuit!

If you’ll be at Anime Boston this weekend, I’ll be talking at the following panels:

Genre, Music, and Shinichiro Watanabe
Friday @ 6:00 pm in Ballroom A
A chance to praise Watanabe and his musical direction! Finally!

Akiba Empire: The Influence of Otaku
Friday @ 8:00 pm in Ballroom A Constitution Ballroom
Pairing up with Nicole from Design Benign, a talk about marketing and the otaku economic force.

The Virtual Worlds of Anime
Saturday @ 1:30 pm in Back Bay Panel/Video
A survey of anime and manga about virtual spaces and how the medium helps us understand new worlds.

Chains, Trains, and Love Hotels: The Japanese Sex Industry
Saturday @ 10:00 pm in Ballroom A
A presentation on, well, sex in Japan.

The Anime That’s Not Anime: Opening and Ending Themes
Sunday @ 11:30 am in Panel Room 207
An attempt to examine and contextualize a solid number of opening and ending themes of anime.

Also, Otakon panel acceptances have just come in, and the Department of Alchemy will be making more appearances:

1. Without Watching the Anime: Opening & Ending Themes
2. Chains, Trains, and Love Hotels: The Japanese Sex Industry
3. The Real Story of Japanese Street Fashion
4. The Impact of Evangelion

With other possible talks to include (pending the waiting list and notices):

5. The Problem with Otaku
6. Japan (and Anime) Beyond the City
7. Anime in Academia

Hopefully, the Anime Boston panels will be recorded if you can’t come up to New England for the weekend, but some of these panels may also appear at Anime Expo and Anime Weekend Atlanta!

But I want to talk about animation. In Japan, アニメーション (animation) has been abbreviated, in that Japanese way of abbreviating most long foreign words, to アニメ (anime), and the abbreviation covers every sort of animated design imaginable, from flip books to what American and global fans commonly refer to as the Japanese anime style. The fan following and global exportation of Japanese animation created anime as a visual style, one part of the grand scheme that is アニメ in Japan. Basically, アニメーション is a style/genre of film, while アニメ is a style/genre of animation.

So when American fans think of anime, they call to mind アニメ style/genre of animation. Although I just stated that アニメ covers all varieties of animation in Japan, I would also argue that nowadays the Japanese think of anime in the same way as us Americans. Anime has dominated the sense of animation, so that any sort of animation beyond anime is a form limited to the realm of art school students — a negative progression, or the collapse of high art to the power of low culture, one might say. However, the domination of anime over animation substantiates the influence of popular media on cultural attitudes; when people think of “anime,” they immediately picture the anime style, rather than animation as a whole.

What I really mean to say is… although Japan took home a second Oscar, many fans of anime will overlook the victory. And it’s not a victory for Japan, per se. It’s one for アニメ（ーション).

The award for Short Film (Animated) is one of the few Oscars that foreign films can receive. This year, the trophy went to Kunio Kato, animator of 積み木の家 (La Maison en Petit Cubes, or (translated literally) Building-Block House). The plot and especially Kato’s use of color is illustrated in detail over at Nishikata Film Review. Here’s a clip of his masterpiece:

(More of Kato’s work can be seen on Youtube, such as The Diary of Tortov Roddle.)

As you can see from this brief twenty-eight seconds, Kato’s film resembles nothing of what is seen as アニメ by today’s standards. Kato develops his own style, reminiscent of, in my own eyes, a more French-style of character design and color palette (see perhaps Sylvain Chomet’s Les Triplettes de Belleville).

When an anime fan hears that a piece of animation from Japan won an Oscar, what do they think of? Probably Spirited Away, which won the Oscar for Animated Feature Film back in 2002. It also, in my opinion, pushed the anime market in America into the commercial limelight, making marketers and booksellers realize that Japanese anime was actually a popular import.

But fans will probably not think of Kato’s La Maison en Petit Cubes as something worthy of their viewing time. In terms of アニメ, it’s just アニメーション. Yet that perspective recalls a vital question repeated throughout the past decade: What is anime? From the fan’s eyes, it’s the animation from Japan in the anime style. But this simple definition does not provoke these important questions: 1) Does anime have to be from Japan? 2) Must anime be hand-drawn? 3) Does anime only identify with the anime style (or is there still an anime style)? I ask these questions because modern anime challenges the assumed answers.

First, anime is a modern global phenomenon, not just in terms of its fandom, but also in production. Anime is no longer “from Japan” if we consider that a lot of anime is exported to foreign countries to be animated, with the prospects of lower costs. Anime is no longer “from Japan” when you look at Tekkon Kinkreet, produced in Japan but by an American director. Anime is no longer “from Japan” when we see its influences in American productions, such as Teen Titans, The Boondocks, or Avatar: The Last Airbender.

Second, modern anime series rely on computers, for animation and 3D effects. It is rare for a fully hand-drawn anime to be produced, especially via cel production. We think of anime as distinct from American animation, because the era of hand-drawn Disney characters has been replaced by Pixar and its related studios. The first Academy award for Animated Feature Film was presented in 2001; however, since then, the only hand-drawn animated film to win was Spirited Away, which wasn’t entirely hand-drawn in itself (the other winners have been Shrek [2001], Finding Nemo [2003], The Incredibles [2004], Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit [2005], Happy Feet [2006], Ratatouille [2007], and WALL-E [2008]). I really like Kato’s acceptance speech, because he said “Thank you, my pencil,” an ode to the hand-drawn form of animation. (Important note: the Oscar’s website bastardized his words, changing it to “my producer,” even though it’s obvious that it should have been pencil, because Kato even laughs at his own joke.)

Third, anime caters to an audience looking for the anime style, but it has slowly begun to move beyond that. One of my favorite examples is Shinichiro Watanabe’s “Kid’s Story” (viewable here), one of the eight sequences from The Animatrix. The characters and designs blur during the chase sequence, destroying any concept that an anime style existed. Looking back at Osamu Tezuka’s work, even Astro Boy does not resemble the contemporary anime style, sans perhaps the large eyes, reminiscent of Disney’s character designs. Finally, looking at Kato’s La Maison en Petit Cubes, can we say that this is truly アニメ, or must we dismiss it as アニメーション to appease the fans?

I really hope that fans, anime bloggers, or everyone celebrates this wonderful victory for Japanese animation (Anime News Network certainly did). The ANN forums are certainly talking about it; go check out the conversation.

I picked up my badge on Thursday night — luckily. The nametag appeared in my hand after only about an hour’s wait, unlike those unfortunate souls that had to retrieve theirs on Friday. Walking along the con, I ran into a line stretching from one end of the center to the other. Thinking it was simply a popular autograph signing, I followed it down to the front, only to find that it led into the registration room. I heard a few rumors that people who hadn’t preregistered waited for up to nine hours (and a few were turned away from registering even after standing in line). Quite a bit of failure there, but I expect the AB staff will be on top of that issue next year.

Since I wasn’t on site for most of the convention, I didn’t attend many events, but I did get a chance to attend the newly-annual formal ball. This year exceeded my expectations compared to last year (AB 2007), and the ticketing system certainly helped speed up the line that kept a lot of people out of 2007′s dance. Not sure if many people realized that MC Frontalot was on stage DJing the event, but there he was (and seemed a bit lonely too). There weren’t as many people dancing this year, and I wonder how the dance staff will try to ameliorate that next year (I think 2007 excelled in terms of people on the dance floor, but maybe that’s because attendees were just psyched for it).

I got to walk around the Artists’ Alley for about an hour and, although I definitely didn’t spend as much on schwag compared to 2007, I picked up one $10 print. It’s such an arresting picture, though, so when I glanced it the drawing stopped me in my tracks, mesmerized for a good fifteen minutes before I decided to purchase it. The artist is Peter Chan (of Toronto, Canada), and you can see a glimpse of the print here. I love the anachronistic quality (which reminds me of the blend that Shinichiro Watanabe makes in Samurai Champloo.

Most of my other time was spent on panels. I was given permission to host three panels, but I only decided to go through with two of them (Learning Japanese Through Anime was cancelled). Kent, Alicia, and I hosted one panel called Trescaflowgun on Saturday night, at which we did a comparison-contrast of Trigun with Escaflowne, focusing on art designs, narrative styles, and plot devices. I guess you could call it a Comparative Literature take on anime. Overall, we had a surprisingly medium turnout, since we were slotted against the Masquerade, but there were a number of people that came in thinking we were going to present a fan parody. Ultimately, I view this first panel of ours as a practice round for the success that would be Sunday’s panel.

On Sunday afternoon, I presented a talk (again, with Kent and Alicia) entitled Globalization, Technology, and the American Otaku to an audience of about forty people. Borrowing and applying ideas from Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat and a number of the blogs, scholarly articles, and podcasts ingested from MIT’s Comparative Media Studies program, I discussed the past, current, and future state of the Japanese animation culture in America and primarily how it has been influenced by the Internet and international convergence and collaboration. Thanks to Alicia and Kent who provided some good commentary on club fandom, the Cosplay.com community, and particularly the reception of texts while access is easy and the diversity large. The panel lasted only an hour, and we spent a good amount of time fielding solid questions from the audience, so I had to omit a few items due to the time constraints. We actually had a pretty good write-up of the panel over at Pop Culture Shock, so check it out. It’s a good thumbs-up for anyone interested in attending my panels next year, hint hint!

Definitely going to plan to 1) be at the convention for the entire weekend next year, 2) submit more panels and hopefully present them, and 3) try to go for a Press Pass, because I’d like to snag a few interviews and conduct a bit of formal research, which I might be able to get funded by my university. But I still have Otakon and Connecticon on the list for this summer, so let’s get to those first!