Nothing a few tentacles can't fix.

I sure hope so.

Bio-nic: The problem is that otaku, while wonderful and zany in Japan, don't translate well to other countries...

Um....

I guess the 5k-15k attendee at anime conventions like Katsucon,
Otakon, Anime West and such aren't otaku, then?

DjangoStonereaver: I guess the 5k-15k attendee at anime conventions like Katsucon,
Otakon, Anime West and such aren't otaku, then?

I've staffed anime conventions multiple times, and I don't even like anime that much. Mostly it was because when I wasn't working I got to hang out with my other friends on staff and drink (we weren't allowed to be "visibly drunk" while working) while getting into stuff for free, along with free food and a hotel room. Hangout in a hotel all weekend, with everything provided, while drinking constantly with my friends? I'm in, I don't care if its a shoe convention (but when its an anime convention it means scantily clad girls walking around all weekend, too). And for the convention I volunteered at, it counted as donated service to a non-profit.

I do like some anime. Recently I watched both seasons of Ghost in the Shell, and right now I'm working my way through Blood+. But I'd hardly call myself an otaku, and I doubt that all convention attendees necessarily would either.

Bio-nic: DjangoStonereaver: Bio-nic: The problem is that otaku, while wonderful and zany in Japan, don't translate well to other countries...

Um....

I guess the 5k-15k attendee at anime conventions like Katsucon,
Otakon, Anime West and such aren't otaku, then?

We do not actually have entire cottage industries dedicated to showing 30 - 45 year old males the wonders of anime style bed pillows, nor do we have full grown men attempting to get married to inanimate objects in america... (at least not yet) so... no, we don't have what you'd consider an Otaku culture here.

You betray your lack of attendance at anime cons: though the
majority of the attendees are in the 15-25 year old range, there
is a significant representation of precisely that demographic.

Sid_6.7: I've staffed anime conventions multiple times, and I don't even like anime that much. Mostly it was because when I wasn't working I got to hang out with my other friends on staff and drink (we weren't allowed to be "visibly drunk" while working) while getting into stuff for free, along with free food and a hotel room. Hangout in a hotel all weekend, with everything provided, while drinking constantly with my friends? I'm in, I don't care if its a shoe convention (but when its an anime convention it means scantily clad girls walking around all weekend, too). And for the convention I volunteered at, it counted as donated service to a non-profit.

I do like some anime. Recently I watched both seasons of Ghost in the Shell, and right now I'm working my way through Blood+. But I'd hardly call myself an otaku, and I doubt that all convention attendees necessarily would either.

I suspect you and I have worked some of the same cons, Sid_6.7,
given your location.

Let's remember that America and Japan have different definitions of the word "otaku", and that America's is much more watered down... so just because someone in the US calls themselves an otaku, doesn't mean it carries the same meaning.


Speaking as someone who sees the Japan side every day, the anime industry is indeed in trouble. You have "mainstream" hits like Naruto, One Piece, FMA etc that continue to bring in the average consumer dollar... but very little of the level of Satoshi Kon's work (whose death was the inspiration for this article) is being made.

Instead, the anime industry here is basically a snake eating its own tail and producing generic fanservice schlock that is focused towards the select group of lonely, moe-obsessed fanboys that are willing to pay exhorbitant prices ($60+) for DVDs/Blu-Rays and all of the assorted figures/swag/etc that comes with it. Then of course you have Gainax and their milking of Evangelion for all its worth...


On the American side, fansubbing/downloading just about crippled the industry because it took Japanese and American companies so long to set up stuff like CrunchyRoll that would get legal,downloadable anime to the masses in a fast and efficient manner. Meanwhile the potential consumers are all used to being able to torrent stuff the day after release, most anime fans live in a near-constant state of poverty (easily represented by how many rooms in the average con hotel are overfilled in violation of fire codes) because they're teens/college students and have no steady income to speak of.



Japan thought that America would save the anime industry, but that turned out to not be the case. As far as which side is more responsible for the downfall... American otaku are thieves, but Japanese otaku are really really creepy. I can't stress this enough, really really really really creepy. I'm more willing to say that the Japanese industry side deserves more blame, because they sort of set themselves up for an inward-facing firing squad several years back.


/wrote my senior thesis on otakudom in America 4 years ago
//how much has changed in so little time

Yeah, they're all doing hentai now.

Cantankerous Gnome:
Also, totally agree with this. Been to Japan three times, and the last time we had an interpreter with us. She asked one of our friends that was there how he became interested in Japan, and he said he really liked anime, and the interpreter pretty much laughed at him, but in a polite Japanese way. The rest of us that were there all watched anime, sure, but we knew enough not to mention that to normal people there.

I'm basically similar to you - huge collection, kept up with cons (still go to cons when I can make it stateside just to see my friends again), you name it, but... yeah.

I always get annoyed when my friends here talk about watching K-On and Macross and whatever, but when I talk about watching Evangelion the conversation stops and everyone's all "you watch anime?" It's quite the double-standard.

Relatively Obscure: I sure hope so.

Old enough to know better: Sad, but not really surprising. I used to be a big anime fan. But in the last few years there just haven't been any new shows that've caught my intrest. All the stardard high-school comedies, harem shows, mechs, and 'nerdy high school kid falls through a dimensional rift and has to save another world from evil monsters', shows got old a long time ago.

We really need another Trigun, Cowboy Beebop,or hell, Cardcaptor Sakura.

I'd kill someone for a Until Death Do Us Part anime. Well one that was done with all the blood and violence still thrown in.

That's usually my problem with anime. It's full of filler, takes the plot in completely different directions than the manga, or just whitewashes over the good parts. Don't get me started on when they turn manga into a live action movie.

Pandar: dokool, you wouldn't happen to have a link to that thesis, would you?

/loves academic papers
//grew up in Japan
///does not get why American kids go so ape over anime

I, too, wouldn't mind reading dokool's thesis. I've always
been interested in the history of fandom.

As to why American's go ape for it: I think its partially because
it is (or can be) a different type of storytelling from what you
get in other more traditional media.

I was exposed to it in the initial mid 80s stateside explosion,
which was conducted through SF fandom, so naturally anime for me
was synoymous with science fiction and fantasy. The themes they
dealt with (the effects of mechanization on the human condition,
largely, but not solely) were novel at the time, the visuals
were nothing short of astounding and the characterizations seemed
to go places where western SF just didn't go.

But, I also watched enough to realize that, just as with any form,
there were tropes and archetypes that persisted, and that in the
end almost every anime I watched ended up being so repetitive that
none of what I watched really stood out (except for LAPUTA, which
I first saw undubbed and was able to follow about 80% of the
story, which is damn impressive). That repetitiveness kept me
from going over the edge into full anime fanboi-hood.

What I think has kept young people intrigued by it is, ultimately,
the visuals, not the stories they tell. The preponderance of
hall costuming and amateur artistic expression I've seen at anime
cons attests to this, but I think it also explains why the overall
age at those cons is under 25: without a unifying ethos (such as
you get with other forms of SF fandom), the shiny stuff and the
bouncing animated boobies only keep the attention for so long.

For better or worse, anime is where US-based SF fandom has gone,
but rather than reviving it, it has only postponed the death of it
since anime fans grow out of their obsession. What is a niche to
one generation becomes the mainstream to the next, and thanks to
the broad-spectrum success of SF in the mainstream (and the death
of SF literature, which spawned the original world of SF fandom
that STAR TREK took advantage of), there isn't anything for the
next wave to break over.

(Heck: I think all of modern pop culture was prefigured by STAR
TREK fandom in the 70s, but that's fodder for another discussion.)

a4matte: Not going to lie, though-- thirty bucks for a four-episode DVD is obscene.

It would help if the official dubs didn't end up as horrible re-writes a lot of times as well. Great example is Card Captor Sakura's dub as "Cardcaptors" they turned a show that was mainly about a girl into a show that was more gender neutral, cut out a ton of episodes and re-wrote it horribly. And didn't they pretty much tie that One Piece show up and beat it with a crowbar? (Never watched it, just heard a LOT of people complaining)

People watch anime based on a manga for a reason and it's not to see it taken in a completely opposite direction. I own a ton of manga and I would own more anime if a it wasn't $30 for a 4 episode DVD and most of it doing the things I complained about above.

I used to host a buy, sell, and trade anime and manga site back in the 1990's and I feel like a old coot sometimes talking about the good old days.

Relatively Obscure: I sure hope so.

Word. Nothing good has come of anime.

Pandar: dokool, you wouldn't happen to have a link to that thesis, would you?

/loves academic papers
//grew up in Japan
///does not get why American kids go so ape over anime

DjangoStonereaver:

I, too, wouldn't mind reading dokool's thesis. I've always
been interested in the history of fandom.

I don't remember if I have EIP, but put my username behind @gmail.com and I'll send you a copy. Please be gentle, this was 4+ years ago and all that =P I recently re-read it for the first time in a while and I'd like to think that it was a good snapshot of the scene as it was... now that I've moved to Japan and kinda fallen out of otakudom, I kinda regret that I can't immediately dive back in and do a "5 years later, where are we now?" piece.


Cubicle Jockey: Correct me if I am wrong, but this is because the studios purchase airtime from the TV channels, and then sell the abovementioned merch to recoup their costs. They don't get any money from advertising or pay channel subscriptions.

I'm actually not sure about this but they do get major corporations to sponsor production on a regular basis (if you watch fansubs, that's what the little messages after OPs are. "This series is brought to you by the following companies...").


I also think a lot of it is "this is how it's always been." If you look at VHS boxes in used video stores, they're priced at 10,000 yen (now well over $100. Back then, not so much, but still pretty expensive.) Domestic DVDs are usually in the 4000-5000 yen range and CDs rarely dip below 2000 yen. (Today's exchange rate is $1=¥84.5 for context). Japanese media is slow to adapt.

a4matte: It would help if the official dubs didn't end up as horrible re-writes a lot of times as well. Great example is Card Captor Sakura's dub as "Cardcaptors" they turned a show that was mainly about a girl into a show that was more gender neutral, cut out a ton of episodes and re-wrote it horribly. And didn't they pretty much tie that One Piece show up and beat it with a crowbar? (Never watched it, just heard a LOT of people complaining)

This is a bit of a strawman in two ways: one is that dubbing has, for all its detractors, gotten a HELLUVA lot better since the early days of mass-market anime production. The fans have demanded more and the companies have responded in kind. Same thing happened with manga with more accurate translations, better cultural notes, right-to-left instead of left-to-right ,etc. One Piece was a fiasco because it was a FoxBox dub, but now IIRC Funimation has the license and has righted that particular ship.