A well-written editorial detailing why anime sucks and its fans should have their reproductive rights revoked (or something) has appeared, and it’s always fun for me to read these, because the people who write them know so little about anime.

For example, this quote: “…stuff like Dragonball Z is nothing more than a glorified cartoon about trading cards.” Now, I don’t defend DBZ. I’ve always thought it was a crappy show. But “about trading cards”? There IS a DBZ TCG, but at least the anime was based on a manga that was developed on its own, as opposed to, say, a series that was developed as a toy line first. Or, you know, another one. Or another one.

Moving along…he then says that anime fans always bring up Miyazaki as a Deus Ex Machina to close down any anti-anime arguments. But you know, I wouldn’t– I’d offer up Paprika, by Satoshi Kon, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time.

The writer finishes up by chastising us for having a Miyazaki collection and a copy of Urotsukidoji: Legend of the Overfiend and encourages us to “get out of the house and meet some real, normal people with hair and eyes in proper proportion to their heads.” Like guys who waste their time trying to prove that all anime fans are “social outcast Neo-Goth types”? I don’t think so.

But you know, for a guy who talks about how gleefully he bought the Animatrix, and who has actually watched enough Dragon Ball Z to know how bad it is, and actually knows of Urotsukidoji, and seems to have seen Akira and 3×3 Eyes as well…hey, wait a sec. You’re one of us!

ONE OF US! ONE OF US! ♥

Some of you may remember that Arthur Smith, the President of GDH International (parent company of Gonzo), provided some of the kindling that has set the fansub debate on fire throughout the innernubs. And at last, Smith himself has responded to the buzz.

He has one very valid point, that a lot of people assumed based on the ActiveAnime interview that he was doing nothing about the piracy problem when in fact he has been pushing for faster releases and even subtitled episodes from JP companies for some time now. But most of the rest? Honestly, I have to say that I think he mostly answered the straw man comments (for those not in a philosophy class, the weakest arguments / weakest versions of arguments).

He addressed why it takes so long to get shows to the U.S. from Japan, some of which is valid but the rest is mostly just corporate politics and back-and-forth mucking about. If the various companies’ system of dealing with each other prevents the product from coming out when it best suits the market, perhaps a new system is in order?

He also addressed the suggestion I (and many others) made about Japanese companies jumping over the heads of U.S. ones and releasing some materials directly. His argument against that went something along these lines: the U.S. anime companies made anime big with their efforts, and now we need to pay too much money for DVDs that come out too late.

Nuh-uh, sir. I won’t deny that the U.S. companies have done a lot and spent a lot of money to help make anime as big as it is today, but we don’t owe them back pay for that or something. Anime DVDs aren’t pro-rated. If they can’t come out with the product when and how the fans want it then their sales will suffer. I’m not saying that justifies piracy, only that it seems like a pretty silly way to run a business.

He DOES make the valid point that the U.S. companies are better equipped to get anime on TV, dub it, etc. But the system I saw most suggested (and suggested myself) didn’t preclude anime being licensed to U.S. companies for dubbing and television broadcasting– only from quickie subtitling. Which they’re not doing anyway!

So, there you have it. I’m not making any personal attacks on GDH or Arthur Smith– whose attempts to push forward ideas for getting anime out faster and better I absolutely appreciate. I am, however, pointing out that much of his defenses of the industry seem to rest on “this is how the industry is,” without mention of the fact that it doesn’t HAVE to be that way (particularly on the timing front).

Wow, that was long. Oh, and I almost forgot: double question marks and exclamation points do not look professional!!??

Original source: ANN

I’ve been watching a lot of the crediting and linking on blogs and news sites lately, and it’s amazing to me what lengths some sites will go to in order to avoid linking to the competition– even ignoring the news, to the detriment of their readers.

So here’s my new manifesto on that front: if keeping readers at your website depends on you keeping them unaware of the competition, YOU ARE DOING SOMETHING WRONG WITH YOUR SITE.

Not unlike how anime companies need to proactively replace fansubs rather than sue people who make them, people who run blogs and websites need to proactively offer unique content that’s worth reading rather than try to hide the existence of competitors’ sites.

So if any of you write blogs, run sites, etc. do me a favor: credit the original source of the material (even if it’s a competitor!) and, if there is one, the site that linked you to the original source (even if THAT’S a competitor!). I’m sure I’ve failed to do this in the past, but it’s what I plan to do every post for the future.

Compete on your content, not on the ignorance of your readers.

So I’m guessing you blog nerds have probably already heard about the GameSpot incident in which a a reviewer was fired, supposedly for giving a negative review to a sponsor’s game.

In response, Newsweek has a blog post about the relationship between game publishers and what they call the “enthusiast press,” which I’ve called the “Fanarazzi” here– the fans who blog on news and review titles within their favored niche. Like yours truly.

I have heard and experienced tales– and no, I won’t share specifics –of some sneaky attempts by manga and anime publishers in the U.S. attempting to create (or control) buzz about their products, and of course at aO we always had to be rather defensive about our relationship to FUNimation (who never, to my knowledge, really exerted any control over our editorial process). So the whole thing is really pretty interesting to me.

On top of that, ComiPress now reports that Kodansha, one of the biggest manga publishers in Japan, was caught with an employee passing himself off as a college marketing student doing research and trying to get visitor information and statistics from popular blogs. Tsk tsk, slap on the wrist, etc.

The Newsweek article is really interesting, I think– it draws a parallel of video game reporting to rock reporting, where you get to know your niche’s stars and you feel like one of the “cool” kids, so y ou’re more positive and upbeat in your reporting (like in the movie Almost Famous, extensively quoted in the article).

But on the other hand, fans who DON’T feel like they’re part of the “cool club” for whatever reason will absolutely devour a company that uses particularly deceptive tactics in their marketing. So companies run a rather stupid PR risk when they try it, I think.

Companies just aren’t quite sure how to deal with bloggers and the like– usually vocal tastemakers of their niche, a growing voice in news and marketing in general. But since we’re still in essence just fans, we’re completely unpredictable as a group, and there are too many of us to have an individual approach for each.

So, if anyone working in PR in manga or anime (or any industry with a heavy quotient of bloggers) is reading this, here’s my advice: be honest, and be respectful. Don’t suck up, don’t talk down, and don’t lie. That’s all, really. Individual bloggers may or may not like your decisions still, but at least we can respect you back.

(Note: Sorry this isn’t as well put together as I usually like; part of it is because I’m still at work and wrote this up in parts, and part of it is because this mac sucks and displays text boxes weirdly so it’s hard to spot and edit errors. Also, this keyboard sucks. Booo.)

Okay, this isn’t newsy at alll, but I just wanted to say that in the last couple of weeks I seem to be getting an awful lot of comments on the old “Zac Efron is Kira” articles (here and here).

It’s all rather terrifying because some of them take the idea rather seriously, and others seem to actually think that by leaving a comment at my blog they can somehow get through to Zac Efron.

So I just thought I’d break the news that I am not Zac Efron, have no connection to Zac Efron, have never spoken to Zac Efron, and will not make any attempt to forward notes on to Zac Efron.

So, like, quit it already.

I was going to write an open letter to anime fans regarding fansubs one of these days, but now I think I can convey the same information by linking Justin Sevakis’ awesome open letter and quoting a line from this response editorial:

You, the [Japanese] studios, can get the scripts into the hands of an English translator long, long before the fansub groups have ever seen them…Remember that ultimately, all a fansubber can offer is subtitles. You can one-up them. Tie something to [a] membership.

Allow me to add to this one point:

Fansubbing and downloading fansubs (or even fan-uploaded raws!) ARE ILLEGAL.

I’m not going talk about the ethics of them, and I definitely think that the anime industry needs to wake up and take positive action towards meeting the demand that fansubs meet rather than negative action towards closing down fansubbers, which is a waste of time.

But that doesn’t make fansubs legal. They are a violation of international copyright law. Stop making shit up to say that it isn’t.

So I’ve had a few people come to me (or comment, or whatever) to say that Hiromu Arakawa isn’t really the creator of Jyushin Enbu. “She’s only the character designer,” some say, or only the artist.

There IS an English-language fansite out there which talks about Arakawa’s non-FMA works, one of which includes a doujinshi called Shishi Jyushin Enbu. Although very different from the Jyushin Enbu published in 2006 (and now being developed into an anime), it is this doujinshi that eventually became the series we’re now seeing.

The site notes that the original doujinshi was created “as an accompaniment to Zhang Feilung’s novel of the same name.” I remember hearing that Zhang Feilung is probably a pen name, but can’t really find any information on it. Anime News Network gives the name differently (they spell it Jin-Zhou Huan), and they also note that if you rearrange the kanji it reads the same as Golden Week, so it seems pretty clear that Zhang Feilung is either a Japanese person or a Chinese person who knows Japanese. (I can’t help but wonder if it’s Arakawa’s herself– she’s always been into Chinese stuff.)

That site does not mention Zhang Feilung in the paragraph about the new Jyushin Enbu manga. And allow me to share another item: the Amazon.co.jp listing for the manga. There is only ONE creator listed for the manga, which is 荒川弘, Hiromu Arakawa– again, no mention of Zhang Feilung or anyone else.　Zhang Feilung is listed on the cover (in very small print under Arakawa’s), but only as the person who created the original text– not as someone actively involved in this iteration.

Some people cite the Hero Tales official website’s staff page, which lists Arakawa as the character designer, as proof that she is ONLY the character designer. However, even when an anime is based on a manga or game, there is generally someone in charge of adapting the manga’s characters into anime characters– the character designer. I’m inclined to interpret this factoid as meaning that Arakawa herself performed this particular duty. But it certainly doesn’t mean that it’s the ONLY thing she’s done.

So, given all of the above, I’m inclined to call Hiromu Arakawa the creator of Jyushin Enbu. Here, have an analogy: if Arakawa decided to create a manga loosely based on Shakespeare’s Hamlet, would we call her only the artist of the story? No, because she’d be doing the actual scripting and adapting herself, not to mention probably changing all sorts of things (oh, Japan). So, there’s my little essay on why it is perfectly fair to credit Jyushin Enbu to Arakawa.

Yeah, they published my rant. *snicker*

So I talked a bit ago about a mediocre satire on anime that appeared in the Oregon Daily Emerald recently. I didn’t think much of it after that.

But today I got a google alert and learned that not one but TWO response articles have been posted on the site, both taking the original article at face value (did they even read it?). Unsurprisingly, neither is especially well-written, though given the writing skills of your average Internet user I guess I should be impressed that they got two comprehensible responses. Without further ado: “Columnist Uninformed about Anime” and “Claims about Anime Ridiculous.”

Now, you may have picked up on this– I am a total press whore. So naturally, I’ve written my own guest commentary about all the nonsense and submitted it. We’ll see if they actually publish it, but I figured I’d go ahead and reproduce it here, just for fun. So if you’re confused about what “satire” is, hit the jump. In retrospect, I just wish I’d thrown a “SERIOUS BUSINESS!” joke in there somewhere. Like the headline. Hmm… Read the rest of this entry »

Seriously, how can no one have picked this up yet?

That’s Moyashimon, by the way. (I’m fairly confident that the actual show is regular 2d animation.) But, seriously?

Also, Neuro? Anyone? Bueller?