The article focuses on DVD sales in particular, which traditionally does quite well in Japan. It also makes some comparisons to overseas markets such as North America and briefly mentions Singapore.

Surprisingly, opinions voiced in the discussion thread at 2ch (as reported by Itai News) were actually very critical of the industry, particularly over the high cost of R2 anime DVDs. I find this interesting because 2ch is generally full of right-wing xenophobic nationalists, so I was expecting them to jump at this chance to blame foreign pirates for destroying the livelihoods of Japanese studios.

[ Anime! Anime! via Itai News ]

Some of the points covered by the original article:

• 2007 was a calm year for the anime industry with a marked absence of new IPOs and mergers and acquisitions compared to previous years.
• Anime series are making less money and prime-time slots receive lower viewership.
• The worst performing sector is DVD sales. Although as a whole it is stable, sales of individual titles have gone down.
• There is still no sense of immediate danger as compared to market collapses overseas.
• Briefly mentions Geneon USA’s collapse and the Odex Incident in Singapore.
• Attributes the problems faced overseas to the development of digital fansubbing since the turn of the millennium.
• Online file-sharing did not catch on among anime fans in Japan initially, allegedly due to their more cautious attitudes towards the net. (Yeah right.)
• However, it is gaining popularity now and Japanese fans are approaching the state of the English fansubbing community in 2000.
• Fansubs used to serve as promotion for DVDs but now foreign viewers are contented with just the digital rip.
• It is very likely that Japan’s anime DVD market will eventually go the same path as younger Japanese people grow used to file-sharing technology.
• Online distribution is an important growth area and many companies, such as Bandai and Toei, are attempting it.
• However, online distribution can only produce extra income for companies with huge collections of past works and does not earn enough to substain new on-going titles.

Oh no! Anime is doomed! Anyway the article is pretty slanted towards the traditional industry view of the whole fansub debate, a stance which Anime! Anime! has consistently maintained. Perhaps this is because they have access to insider information, or perhaps this is seen as the politically-correct interpretation. (Which is how the mainstream media do it.) Either way, there’s probably some truth in there but, as a bottom-level consumer, I can’t really say that I sympathize when industries whine about changing paradigms.

I think it’s about time people realized that anime is, and probably forever will be, a highly niche market. The projected growth is just unsustainable and the whole foreign market was one huge bubble waiting to burst in the first place. Everyone wanted a piece of the action because anime was the next coolest thing, but a lot of it turned out to be hot air.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you…

Meanwhile, here are some general comments that were expressed by 2ch posters in response to the article:

• Anime DVDs cost too much, especially when compared to regular DVDs.
• There are tons of crappy titles not worth paying for.
• HD broadcasting means that DVDs are actually of worse quality than illegal rips.
• Just switch to online distribution.
• DVDs not worth buying because anime has no rewatch value.
• Buying DVD is troublesome.
• Won’t buy without watching.

Most of it is similar to what you would find on most English forums, but I think that the most important points raised are that HD broadcasting looks better than DVD and that anime DVDs in Japan are seriously overpriced.

When you take into account of the fact that DVDs actually look worse than current TV broadcasts despite costing an exorbitant amount of yen better spent elsewhere, I think the sluggish sales can easily be seen as the slow death of a format past its prime instead of the manifesting effects of increased file-sharing. In the first place, Japanese fans have always been able to record and watch whatever they want for free, so I really don’t see how the spread of P2P can have as much effect there as compared to foreign markets such as North America, where many titles are released direct to video.

Oh well. Whatever. I don’t give a damn any more. In fact, I hope the industry will get rid of some extra baggage (GONZO in particular) and down-size.

GONZO ruined one of my favourite manga series ever. Death to the anime industry!

Image shamelessly stolen from Stippy.com

This is a particularly unpleasant development in my opinion, not because I am a strong advocate of individual privacy (I am not), but because it really brings out the uglier, nationalistic, racist and ignorant side of Japan.

As of today, all foreigners entering Japan above the age of 16 have to have their fingerprints and photos taken or face immediate deportation. The interesting thing is that fingerprinting a Japanese citizen is specifically prohibited by law unless the individual is suspected of having committed a crime.

Supposedly this is done to fight terrorism, but can you really think of any instance of a terrorist attack in Japan that was executed by foreigners? The high profile sarin gas attack was perpetuated by the Aum Shinrikyo, a Japanese cult. Japan’s infamously closed society already makes it next to impossible for any Islamic fundamentalist groups to operate there with any success, so this new measure is clearly an overkill in fighting terrorism.

Apparently, the fact that a high-ranking Japanese official claims to have friends in al-Qaeda who managed to enter Japan with various passports is enough justification for tighter immigration measures. This would have been just a really terrible joke if it were not actually true.

The reality is that all this talk about terrorism is just for the foreign media. The real reason for this measure is because foreigners are perceived as the cause of crimes and social problems in Japan. This racist attitude is so pervasive in right-leaning media outlets that it legitimizes itself and influences the thinking of people in a way that is not immediately apparent and very, very sinister. For example, magazines supposedly detailing the criminal acts of foreigners can find shelf space in regular convenient stores.

Hive of Villainy

One look at Itai News’ article on the latest fingerprinting scheme gives you a glimpse into the mindset of xenophobic Japanese who have probably never interacted with a foreigner in their lives. Most of the comments are along the lines of:

• Japan needs to maintain its good public safety records
• Most crimes are committed by foreigners
• Only criminals would complain about being fingerprinted
• America is doing it too

Itai News does coverage on the latest hot topics on 2ch, so you can say that it’s not that reflective of mainstream Japan. But still, it’s mind-boggling just how ignorant some people can get when they refuse to see beyond their immediate surroundings.

Discrimination

In Japan, foreigners can be stopped for questioning for the “crime” of riding a bike. Bicycle theft is a very common offence and foreigners are likely to be criminals, right? Police officers are also known to randomly stop foreigners to ask for identification and detaining people who do not have the proper papers with them. How do they tell that you are a foreigner? By looks of course! Permanent residents, naturalized citizens and Japan-born citizens with foreign parents are thus screwed both ways. Not only do they pay taxes, they still get treated as foreigners. Of course, there are the ever-infamous no pets no gaijin signs.

Once again, it seems that my post has become too tangential. Let’s go back to fingerprinting.

Fingerprinting can be good

As mentioned, I am not a huge fan of over-emphasizing on individual freedoms. I think that a nationwide fingerprint database can probably do wonders for crime-fighting, provided that the right instruments are put in place and they are properly scrutinized for potential abuse. For example, I won’t advocate such an implementation in a country suffering from rampant institutional corruption because it would just be another tool for mid-level bureaucrats to profit off.

But I think that if proper procedures are followed, there is really no harm in a central fingerprint database. It would certainly help solve a lot of serious crimes where fingerprints actually come into play. (I doubt that they get any prints to work with in the case of a bicycle theft.)

What I do have problem with is the current implementation. Why is the fingerprinting of Japanese citizens restricted by law? Clearly the existence of such a law implies that there is something unpleasant about being fingerprinted. And yet we have a bunch of racist Japanese net commentators saying “only criminals are afraid of getting fingerprinted”. Well, if that is true why not fingerprint everyone then? This is just pure discrimination, nothing more and nothing less.

We didn’t start this!

And the argument that the USA is already doing it is even more laughable. Firstly, it implies that foreigners “deserve” it for starting this whole thing. Well, newsflash! Not all foreigners are American! Moreover, I don’t think the US is that great an example to follow right now.

According to Fareed Zakaria of Newsweek, the number of Japanese tourists travelling to the US each year dropped from 5 million in 2000 to 3.6 million in 2006 and the number of Britons travelling to the US decreased by 11% but increased everywhere else.

Declines in the number of tourists since 9/11 cost the US $100 billion in spendings and taxes. Overall, global travel is experiencing continuous healthy growth, except to the US. Why? I think the possibility of being anal probed at the customs may have something to do with it!

Clearly, today’s United States of America is a shitty example to follow as far as immigration policy is concerned. I don’t think Americans are any safer today than before 9/11, just a whole lot less free (and less rich thanks to the spiralling dollar). If al-Qaeda really hated freedom (and not years of being screwed over by America’s asinine foreign policies), then they have really succeeded in a big way. But I digress again.

To conclude…

I guess that in the end, getting fingerprinted isn’t that big of a deal. But what is disgusting is how discriminating against foreigners is taken as a given by so many Japanese, and how valid concerns like security are used to manipulate public opinions for such an insidious agenda. It’s the vile combination of ignorance and protectionism that paved the way to Star of David badges more than sixty years ago.

Fingerprint everyone or fingerprint no one!

Ultimately, I just hope that I don’t have to wait for an hour to enter Japan when I fly there next month. (More details about that at a later date.)

Red Alert 2 nostalgia

I am sure you have all heard of Hayden Panettiere‘s (Claire Bennett in Heroes) recent involvement in an attempt to disrupt a dolphin hunt in Taiji, Wakayama. After failing to save the cute cuddly tuna-killers, Hayden and her friends drove their way to Osaka International Airport and fled the country before the ink on their arrest warrants dries.

Apparently, “risking” their lives (because we all know that Japanese fishing trawlers are heavily armed) is deemed a worthy sacrifice, but getting arrested for their expressed beliefs is a big no-no. What dedicated convictions! Mahatma Ghandi would’ve been so proud.

Before we go on any further, please be warned that some of the images that accompany this article may be graphic in nature.

Quoting a MSNBC report where Hayden responds to an arrest warrant issued for her in Japan.

“Obviously this issue has generated defensive behavior on the part of both the Japanese Authorities and Fishermen,” she said in the statement. “I have grown up hearing – and adhering to – this phrase: ‘condemnation without investigation dooms one to everlasting ignorance.â€

“We must unite as a world to solve our increasing international environmental crises,” her statement continued. “We can no longer hide (behind) out-dated, senseless cultural traditions and lazy, bad habits that are resulting in the annihilation of our planetâ€s resources and the extinction of our species.

Overlooking the fact that the phrase which she claims to adhere to is completely irrelevant to the situation at hand (i.e. her breaking of Japanese laws), her statement is a perfect example of everything that is wrong with our media today.

“Dolphin killing? We are doomed I tell you!”

Annihilation of our planet’s resources? Environmental crisis? Extinction of our species? Wow, I guess that must mean The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was right after all! I never knew dolphins were that important!

This kind of celebrity activism actively discredits authentic efforts to combat real and significant issues that plague our environment today. Genuine environmentalists are forced into the same group as nut cases like Ms. Panettiere’s good friends and Greenpeace.

These people claim to be “raising awareness” for a good cause, but all they are doing is to encourage regular people to associate environmental protection with crazy hippies. Such a negative association is a serious detriment to the efforts of scientists and entrepreneurs who are actually making a difference in improving our world with real concrete efforts instead of incessant whining.

I doubt that reading about Rainbow Warrior‘s latest escapades actually causes people to change their consumption habits in the slightest bit or reconsider their next SUV purchase. All it does is to give lunatics like Greenpeace bragging rights among the tree-hugging extremists.

Would you do what this guy tells you to?

If someone was serious about saving the environment, he would do best to stay as far away from these people as possible, or risk losing all credibility in the eyes of sane, reasonable people. Al Gore is a good example of a sane person who has done things infinitely more practical and beneficial than picketing a chemical factory.

Before this post gets too tangential, let’s return to dolphins. I see two general flows of argument behind those who think Ms. Panettiere’s actions actually deserve our applause.

The first is that dolphins are supposedly an endangered species (as they have been portrayed by the media for the past millennium or so) and therefore deserve protection from being eaten.

But the truth is that, as noted by James of Japan Probe, none of the variants of dolphins being hunted in Taiji are actually endangered. Moreover, there is already a quota for drive hunting set in place by the central government and hunts like this have been carried out for centuries. So let’s get it straight, the dolphins in Taiji are in no danger of becoming extinct.

Conservation of an endangered species is a valid cause that I can agree with, but the fact is that these dolphins are simply not endangered.

Poor dolphins…

Secondly, people argue that dolphins are sentient creatures that deserve to be treated with respect and dignity. I would like to agree with that in principle, except that I eat beef and I really don’t think that cows are brainless either. I’m pretty sure a machete slash feels just as painful to a cow as compared to a dolphin. The slaughtering of dolphins, while admittedly cruel, is no different from that of cows and other similar-sized mammals. I don’t know about you, but there’s no way in hell that I’m going to become a vegetarian.

Poor McChickens…

Poor Big Mac…

Poor gazelle… Damn lions.

It’s regrettable that animals have to die to satisfy my taste buds. I’m sure one day we will all be eating some kind of mysterious meat grown in bio-vats thanks to the miracles of science. But until then, animals will just have to bear with it. I think that we can all accept this non-ideal reality.

So why should dolphins be any different? Why is it acceptable practice to kill cows? Is it because cows are less intelligent? (Shall we start killing stupid people for soylent green?) Or is it because cows are bred to die? (What an awful moral justification.)

If we are talking about net suffering, I think cows have it way worse than dolphins, and yet the poor bovinae often fall under the radars of teenage celebrities trying to fit in with the chocolate rainbow feel-good crowd.

An interview with Hayden Panettiere following the incident:

Dolphins are like “teddy bears in the water” (01:09), eh? I pity the cows for not being cute enough to garner the same attention. Perhaps they ought to consider hiring an image consultant and maybe work on a family movie or two with Walt Disney.

I do agree with Ms. Panettiere that “condemnation without investigation dooms one to everlasting ignorance” is an excellent doctrine. Therefore, I encourage her to conduct some investigation next time and find a real issue to use her celebrity influences on. Real issues such as America’s irrational love for SUVs and its asinine standards of automobile fuel efficiency. You know, things that are actually contributing to the annihilation of our planet and not just some feel-good fluff.

But I guess real issues that deserve serious attention seldom involve cute teddy bears. Aww… :(

That said, I don’t think eating dolphin is such a great idea either: mercury pollution is another genuine problem for Ms. Panettiere to consider tackling.

Well, I guess now people are going to accuse me of being an asshole. I really do love dolphins, though. I used to train tons of them in Red Alert 2 because their echo attacks are totally overpowered. :P

So, I was just minding my own business and hopping cheerily around a scenic garden with a group of bunny rabbits and frolicking deer, when “BAM!”, wildarmsheero launched a huge flaming fireball in my direction like one of those Undead Mages I had to fend off as a female Night Elf Rogue in World of Warcraft.

She is from the future!

He is hot and bothered mad about my choice of anime and blogging materials, particularly Gundam 00. It’s apparently because G00 is not “classic” enough for him. Although I do agree that G00 has more flaws than Michael Jackson‘s face, not being a “classic” is definitely not one of them.

Read his blog entry where he asserts that my blog “fucking sucks”, presumably because I blog about terrible shows that he hates with a zealous passion.

It’s the future!

Back in the Days…

First of all, wildarmheero makes the (bad) assumption that I am one of “those kids” who have never watched the original Gundam. This is how it always begins.

Personally, I like to think that I am pretty well acquainted with the franchise. Sure, I can’t rattle off the serial number of every bolt and nut on RX-78, but I did watch a good portion of the Gundam titles out there. I watched the original Mobile Suit Gundam and Zeta (which was supposed to be the best, or something?). I watched all the mini-series (0083, 0080, 08th, etcetera) and what not (e.g. Evolve), and I even enjoyed ∀, Wing and X.

After Zeta, I decided to give ZZ and V a pass. I’m sure they were all excellent and ground-breaking titles of their respective eras, but I can’t force myself to sit through them just to earn the right to boost about having watched every Gundam ever. Quite frankly, I thought the original Gundam was decently average but I didn’t like Zeta one bit. The mini-series are pretty awesome, though.

She’s not from the future. (But close enough.)

Again, I’m not saying that G00 is the greatest Gundam ever made. I wouldn’t even call it a “good” anime. I blog about it simply because I enjoy watching it. I love it just because it fills me with boyish glee every time it makes an allusion to real-life politics.

I don’t really give a damn about the actual Gundams at all. It’s like how I watched SEED (which wildarmsheero begrudgingly admits to have enjoyed) for the girls, and how people watch Wing (which wildarmsheero also enjoyed) for the fireworks.

Welcome to the world of tomorrow!

Selective Memory

Were things really better in the “good old days”? Do so-called “classics” really deserve the god-like status that fanboys like wildarmsheero bestow upon them? I don’t think so.

The original Mobile Suit Gundam was undeniably ahead of its time. But it is nowhere close to an Grade A anime by today’s standards. I can give it the respect that it deserves as a pioneering piece of work, but I honestly do not think that it can stand up to modern competitors. I definitely won’t recommend it to a friend. Certainly, Thomas Edison’s light bulb brought a new age upon humanity, but I prefer my compact fluorescent light, okay?

Space!

I think it’s very important to understand that the circumstances under which you first encounter a piece of work can pretty much determine how much you like it for the rest of your life. Paradigms shift; circumstances change. Medieval villagers would consider incandescent light bulbs to be witchery, 19th century folks considered them cutting edge science, and today we consider them technologically obsolete.

This is especially true for issues which are by definition subjective in nature. It’s futile to force people to see things your way when the opportunity to do so (i.e. the first impression) has long past.

I can’t wait till the future is here!

People tend to be biased about anime series from their early days as aspiring otakus. I do it too. I still hold Evangelion and Nadesico in high regards, but that doesn’t mean that I have to blog about them. (Exceptions made for remakes.) I have long come to the realization that most anime titles are pretty much shit in terms of literary value and the original Gundam certainly is no exception.

A Harmless Analogy

To put things in perspective… wildarmsheero spends an obscene amount of time talking about Kaede Fuyou, the absolute worst character (IMNSHO) from the PC-game-turn-anime SHUFFLE!. As someone who has purchased and played quite a few bishoujo games, I, DarkMirage, assert that SHUFFLE! is a terribly clichéd game and wildarmsheero “fucking sucks” for blogging about this horrible franchise which can’t hold even half a candle to the classics.

They are not from the future. (But they pwn Kaede.)

And in a similar fashion, it makes me very mad that wildarmsheero likes a messed-up character from a crappy series so much that he actually bought pillow covers of her. That’s right, it offends my sensibilities! We should all be blogging about awesome classics like Tokimeki Memorial and Sentimental Graffiti and hugging Shiori Fujisaki pillows instead! Oldies forever!!!…

…Doesn’t that sound awfully silly to you? Mr. Original Gundam Fan? ;) But that’s basically what UC purists are saying, except with less moé and more mecha.

Conclusion

I do in fact love SHUFFLE! a lot (just take a look at my posts tagged with “shuffle”). I enjoyed it in spite of its huge and glaring flaws, the same way I enjoy Gundam 00.

People should not be forced to limit what they like to the “best” or the “classics”, neither should classics be given special treatment just for being classics. The original Gundam is terrible when viewed today without a helpful dose of nostalgia to make up for its flaws.

Please get over this irrational obsession with the past. The old days only seem better after a makeover via selective memory. Stop judging every Gundam title based on how close it is to the original (or at least stop trying to convince me that there’s any logic to it). Thank you.

BAM! Your Gundam is dead!

With the fall of Geneon USA‘s DVD sales department, are we looking at the beginning of the doom of all anime as we know it? Some people seem to think so. After all, Geneon is well-liked by fans and its releases receive positive reviews from most, there seems to be no reason why they should be in trouble now, having started operation half a decade before anyone in North America has even heard of Pikachu. It’s tempting to point fingers and, just like the Napsters of the music industry, it didn’t take long before fansubs are getting blamed for everything from the death of anime to Jesus Christ’s crucifixion.

I’m not very familiar with the North American scene, so I don’t know what Geneon did to get here. But surprisingly, after a quick inspection of my shelf, I don’t seem to own anything from Geneon USA at all. Perhaps I’m unconsciously an ADV fanboy. Well I did almost buy the entire set of Starship Operators once, but Rightstuf was being bitchy and asking for my credit card bill so I cancelled the order. Okay I’m digressing.

Frankly I think that the R1 companies were too eager to cash in on what they perceived to be the biggest thing since Pokemon. Everyone loves anime and Japan, right? Well, the problem with the apparent popularity of anime is that it was not built on solid foundations. The rise of broadband internet, the birth of peer-to-peer file-sharing and the digitalization of the fansubbing chain, they all coincided to suddenly propel anime into uncharted territories from niche to semi-mainstream. It seemed like a whole new market popped out of nowhere and everyone wanted in all the money to be made. But perhaps it wasn’t as easy as people thought.

There is certainly money to be made, but the way to do it is not to license every single half-baked series and flooding the market with releases. For a while, it seemed like the American companies took a leaf out of a certain movie, with a slight adaptation: “If you dub it, they will come.” Just two years back, I saw a list of monthly R1 releases and I wondered to myself, “Are there really that many American anime fans?” Well, maybe that’s why anime is “dying” in North America. Perhaps it was never really as “alive” as it appeared to be, as the companies wished it was. (Like an undead zombie masquerading as your best friend.) I don’t think that it’s actually in any danger of dying, it’s just the victim of an overheated market and false hopes. Anime will survive. It just takes a lot of trial and error to get it right in a relatively young market.

Then again, maybe I’m waaaay off the mark here. Maybe anime really is dying like Odex says. And maybe fansubbing really is killing the industry. But sometimes, you have to rethink what are the real core components of the industry and what are the things that are only there because of inertia. Just because it has always been this way doesn’t mean it will be this way forever. Natural selection will take its course.

On a side note, it’s not like Geneon USA is going out of business after this. They are just going to cease their DVD sales operation. I’m guessing they will follow Kadokawa USA’s example: license the titles and then hire other companies to do the actual work.

Wow, what a random and incoherent rant this has been. One week of cramming an entire year’s worth of topics and four days of examinations must have really fried my brain.

P.S. Team Fortress 2 is like morphine injections to the brain.

I’ve made it no secret that I think distributing media through physical means is an archaic and rapidly shrinking trade. I sincerely believe that everything that can be digitalized will eventually be digitalized, whether you want it or not. It is a destiny that all media companies have to face and it can be an enormous opportunity for those who adapt fast.

And of course, it’s no different for anime. That’s right, it’s rant time.

Evolution

The theory of evolution has frequently been summed up by the phrase “survival of the fittest”, and indeed it is the perfect phrase to describe business models in our era of rapid technological growth. The “fittest” refers not to the strongest or the best, but the ones who can adapt and evolve to survive the next big change. Many mighty creatures had, over the millennia, fallen victim to the waves of biological revolutions in our planet’s short history, and yet the small and insignificant cockroach, whose ancestors once crawled in the shadows of dinosaurs, survives to this very day.

Today, technology has brought about such sudden but wonderful changes to our world that some of our existing frameworks which have existed for hundreds of years are starting to fail us. There will always be those who do not believe that everything they have held to be sacred truths for their lives is now change, evolving and improving for the better. Every effort will be made to build a dam around this torrent of change. At first they will succeed, but no dam can hold off the force of nature that is the power of technology. Pandora’s Box cannot be closed once it has been opened.

Okay, maybe I am getting a little too abstract here. Let us move back to anime.

Declining DVD sales in Japan

According to this ITmedia article forwarded to me by Soulshift, Japan’s DVD sales are dropping. Heck, I will agree with those people who claim that DVD sales everywhere are on the decline, even if I have yet to see conclusive evidence of it. Because it just makes sense. I for one certainly do not think that DVDs are worth their price tags, even if I do buy them for collecting purposes. I think a lot of people in the younger generations agree with me.

This is not to say that I think all media content should be free and no one should get paid for his/her works. I don’t. But I do think that the old way of doing things will not last for much longer. It has nothing to do with wanting to get things for free. I will pay for it if I have to, but the more important point is that I want it in my way, my format and at my convenience. You can air free anime on TV 24-hours a day and I won’t give a damn because I rather watch the shows I want to watch whenever I feel like watching them. Call it unreasonable if you want, but that is the kind of mindset that young people growing up with the Internet as their main source of entertainment will have. And those are the potential customers in this business.

当社のDVDが売れない最大の理由は作品の力不足だが、業界全体でもアニメDVD販売が不振だ。その原因は1つではないだろう」とGDHの内田康史副社長は言う。HDD＆DVDレコーダーのæ®åŠã‚„、YouTubeのような動画共有サイトへの違法アップロードの影響などが、DVD不振の原因として考えられるという。

The ITmedia article interviewed GDH, the parent company of GONZO, and according to them, the main reasons why DVD sales are dropping in Japan are because of the spread of HDD and DVD recorders and the popularity of video streaming sites such as YouTube. You can whine and cry all you want, but that is not going to make technology reverse itself and uninvent things that are inconvenient for your business.

And not everything can be solved through legislation either. Sure, you can waste spend money to hire a bunch of people who sit around and do nothing but send out takedown letters to YouTube, but are you then going to lobby for a law that bans people from recording TV shows with DVD recorders too? It is just not possible. And it should be noted that P2P filesharing is not even a blip on Japan’s radar. I know very few Japanese fans who have heard of, much less utilize, BitTorrent.

Old distribution model, new market paradigm

「当社がアニメDVDを海外展開ãã‚‹å ´åˆã€å­—幕や音声、パッケージなどを海外仕様に作り変えるæ‚間が必要で、どうしても日本よりも後のçºå£²ã«ãªã£ã¦ã—まう。このタイムラグのせいでビジネスチャンスを逃している面はある」

The same GDH representative goes on to say, “When we release our products overseas, it takes time to translate, dub and repackage, so the releases always end up being slower than in Japan. This time lag often results in many business opportunities being lost.”

I think this is a clear indication that they are slowly realizing the fact that the old system is showing its age. Foreign audiences are no longer contented to get slow and outdated releases. If they cannot get the series they want legally and fast, they will turn to the Internet. Illegal or not, the Internet is there and will always be there. Deal with it. The best way to go about solving this problem is obviously to cater to the global audience right from the start, instead of trying to pretend that regional markets are still clearly defined and segregated like they were twenty years ago.

The blame game

　ただ“犯人探し”に躍起になるだけでは、次のビジネスは生まれない。「æ‚代とともにメディアは移り変わるもの。最も多くの人に視聴してもらえ、お金を払ってもらえる可能性が高いメディアを試し、ビジネスを切り開く必要がある」

The best quote: “Just searching for the ‘criminals’ is not going to do any good. It will not create any new business opportunities. Media has to change with time. There is a need for us to try out formats that bring us the greatest viewership and increase our opportunities to make money. We need to open up our business.” Exactly what I want to say. GDH has created a YouTube channel called “GONZO DOOGA” and is asking YouTube not to remove content that infringes on GONZO’s copyrights as long as they can serve as promotional material.

The same article goes on to say that illegal downloading has, ironically, proven a global demand for anime. What needs to be done is not to destroy this demand by isolating potential customers and calling them pirates. The content owners need to re-examine their business strategies and find out ways to tap into that newly-generated demand using the technology that enabled it all to happen: the Internet. Indeed, the GDH representative acknowledges the fact that illegal sites that charge users monthly fees to download anime are very popular overseas and that GDH sees it as a huge business opportunity waiting to be tapped in its quest to expand globally.

Online distribution

That brings me back to Odex. Some people think that I am against Video-On-Demand. That is not true. I am an fervent supporter of digital media distribution that actually achieves its true intention—being convenient. In fact, when I first suggested VOD to Mr. Peter Go many months ago, he was unreceptive to the idea. I am happy that a small step has now been taken in that direction, but it is really small indeed. And the way Odex has sequenced its actions certainly has not helped to bring about much enthusiasm for the minute change.

I mean, it simply makes no business sense to assume that the tech-savvy downloaders are an insignificant minority, provoke them into a frenzy, and then roll out a service that is targeted right at the very same group of people while pretending nothing happened. But of course the people at Odex know what they are doing because they did their market research, right? I sure hope they do.

Conclusions

It doesn’t matter how good DVD sales were in the past. It doesn’t matter how well the system used to work. I see only the future and I think the future will only get brighter for anime. But not for DVDs. Filesharing will not kill anything that is really important and has real purposes, it is simply a new paradigm that will serve to weed out the unevolved dinosaurs that fed on past inefficiencies in the system and profited disproportionately off the physical bottlenecks of old technology that no longer exist. It may make sense for most people to pay for movies on DVDs today, but a new system replacing it will soon emerge to reward creativity in a new and better way, just as a different incentive system used to exist before the invention of the video cassette.

The ones who get to the new winning formula first will reap the most benefits. And I’m glad to learn that the Japanese studios are at least putting some thought into this. Perhaps one day we will pay $30 a month to download and watch all the anime series we want. A guy can dream…

Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama spoke to a crowd of teenagers at a political rally and encouraged them to tell their friends to participate in the political process. (via Kotaku)

“I want you to tell them, ‘It’s time for you to turn off the TV and stop playing GameBoy,'” Obama said. “We’ve got work to do.”

GameBoy? LOL. Sure, it’s only a game console and this doesn’t make him any less of a candidate than the next guy (or gal), but little things like this really show us the kind of generation gap that exists between a generation that grew up with the Internet and feels more than comfortable being part of it and a generation that is just learning to deal with it and thinks of it as nothing more than an improved telephone network with Google.

Ah, yes. It’s rant time. ひさしぶり～

For my generation, it has been an accepted truth since forever that politicians high up the ladder just don’t understand technology. Technology to them is a scary and unpredictable wild card that has to be controlled and legislated or all hell will break loose. They all know how to Google for dirt on their political opponents and set up lunch appointments using their BlackBerry, but as far as they are concern, the Internet runs on voodoo magic and faerie dust.

Ruri for President!

In a way, this has always been true for every generation. The younger generation adapts to advancements in technology and science faster but the government has always been full of old suits. But the Internet is different the car, radio, plane, microwave oven or even television. While every new invention in the last century or two builds upon its predecessor to create something faster, better or more efficient, the Internet is almost completely new and self-advancing. A car is just a faster horse carriage. A plane allows us to delivery goods faster than ships. The television comes from the radio. They require a change in mindset for the people and the government, but on a very manageable scale. Roads need to be wider, more variety of goods can now be exported, new forms of entertainment can be produced.

But the Internet is all that and more. It is also growing a lot faster and changing a lot more than anyone had anticipated just a decade ago.

Just ten years ago, you needed to be somebody to be heard. You had to make a name for yourself before someone even gave you the chance to be published or to go on TV. And then you worried about what to say. Today, anyone with a message can post it and if it resonates with enough people, it will be heard. This kind of democratic force is hard to understand for the baby-boomer generation. To them, Internet discussion is nothing more than teenage chatrooms and trivial entertainment. That is until one of them gets brought down by blogs. As more and more people get connected, the power that a well-targeted website can have over the political process will become enormous.

Motoko for President!

Of course, I’m not deluding myself; we are still a long way off from that. Right now, we are at a transitional phase between the old and the new, and this is where it gets really frustrating for a lot of people and confusing for the others.

Take file-sharing and DRM issues for example. The politicians, the judges, the CEOs and the self-proclaimed legal experts: an overwhelming majority of them are old and male. There is nothing ambiguous about digital copyrights in their minds: file-sharing is bootlegging which is like fake Chinese products which is really stealing money. And naturally, they take steps to legislate and suppress file-sharing. But what they don’t realize is that file-sharing is a very different thing from traditional piracy which is mostly profit-oriented and organized. File-sharing is completely unrestricted and the tools are available to anyone and everyone. It’s an inherent part of the Internet that will never go away. It’s impossible to stamp out file-sharing without destroying the freedom and democratic forces at work that make the Internet what it is today. File-sharing is a Pandora’s Box that cannot be unopened and trying only makes you look like a huge joke.

Tama-nee for President!

Instead of trying to legislate the Internet into oblivion, maybe it’s time for the people and the legislature to re-examine the relevance of our concepts of creator rights and the centuries-old system that fails to account for present-day realities.

Instead of whining about how digital piracy has destroyed company profits and trying to sue the world back to its 1990s status quo, maybe it’s time for the entertainment industry to open its eyes, rethink its revenue model and reinvent itself to stay relevant in the new paradigm.

But of course that is all wishful thinking. The reality is that the people who matter in the grand scheme today did not grow up with the Internet. I doubt Mr. Bush even knows how to load songs into his own iPod without his personal aide doing it for him. People fear what they do not understand and decisions made on irrational fear are often bad ones. Just take a look at Jack Thompson. Now, I’m not blaming them or looking down on them; it’s just a sad, sad reality that cannot be helped. Politicians may hire tech consultants to keep themselves “updated” on the latest web crazes but it’s a completely different thing to learn about something than to know about something.

Yuki for Vice President (under Haruhi)!

Judges and politicians are, in theory, selected from smart and capable people who can make sound moral decisions. But even if assuming that was true, can they make the correct decision about things like DRM and net neutrality if they aren’t even sure what those things mean? Maybe. But it can be a lot better.

Some cynics might say that this phenomenon will always be true, that the government and the influential will always be nothing but greying heads who lag behind technology. I agree to a small extent, but I personally think that the current difference is a lot more pronounced because the birth and growth of the Internet was too sudden for its level of impact on society. I think when the day comes when a new generation of leaders born after the Internet takes over, we will have a much less polarized society and a much smaller gap between our generation and the next. Because somehow, I just don’t think that it’s very likely for those of us who grew up with the Internet with all its limitless information at our fingertips to one day stop keeping up with its progress. At least I personally don’t intend to ever stop reading Slashdot (and its eventual successors) until I get Alzheimer’s or drop dead.

Perhaps I’m just being overly optimistic and perhaps political technophobia will continue well into our own generation when neutral interconnects are perfected and full virtual reality takes over the keyboard and LCD, making our generation look as outdated and irrelevant to the next as Hillary Clinton is to us today. (Damn it, I want a cyberbrain.)

Whatever the case is, I will bet that within 10 years, digital copyright laws will have to be radically revamped. I will bet 100 USD which, at the current rate of inflation and US currency devaluation, should be just enough for a can of Pepsi by then. :P

It’s a wonder how I drifted so far off-topic to come up with this rant just from reading a single line mentioning GameBoys in Obama’s speech. The unpredictable power of association that drives our logical mind.

Four million smiles

This is an entry about Singapore. Please do not read on if non-anime entries bore you.

So anyway, I was in a certain shopping centre, located in a certain HDB district starting with the letter “B”, near my school, looking at some HD-enabled LCD TV and feeling sad and poor. I stood there for a few minutes to ogle at the power of High Definition and decided that those TVs were way overpriced. I’d rather have a 24″ LCD monitor from Dell for less. I walked to a DVD store nearby and found out that they had removed their entire anime selection, mostly bootlegs. Looks like they finally realized that selling bootleg DVDs with cheap-looking packaging for exorbitant prices just doesn’t work.

But that’s not what I want to talk about today.

On the way down to the first floor, a woman and an elderly man had stopped in front of the escalator. They didn’t look local and, I know I’m stereotyping, appeared to be foreigners who are in Singapore either looking for jobs or relatives.

The reason why they stopped was because they were afraid of stepping onto the escalator. The woman tried to take a step forward but retreated before her foot touched the moving steps. The man held on to her hands as the both of them looked down, uncertain with hesitation and a trace of fear.

I happened to be behind them and I stopped to wait because they were blocking the way down. I could sympathize with them. I used to have a fear of escalators too. I rolled down one when I was five. (Yeah, the whole way down.) It’s really quite difficult to get the timing right if you aren’t used to it, especially since that particular escalator was on the fast end of the speed scale in terms of escalators.

Of course, it only took a few seconds before a mini line formed behind the man and the woman. And it only took slightly longer before the ugly Singaporeans reared their empty heads. In this case, it was a bunch of school girls.

“Who’s blocking the way?”
“Why (sic) so scared one?”
“Ahahahahaha!”
“Lame.”

These were not five-year-old girls. These were teenagers who looked old enough to know when to keep their mouths shut. The man and the woman in front knew they were causing trouble for everyone else and they tried their best and finally got onto the escalator with half a jump. The pack of bitches behind continued with their mocking the whole way down. The man and the woman looked visibly distressed.

In my 10 years of citizenship, I have never felt more ashamed to be a Singaporean.

Are the girls so stupid that despite all the subsidized education they receive, they cannot tell the difference between right and wrong? Or do they do it despite knowing that it’s wrong? I really don’t know which possibility is scarier.

Stupid kids.

Zipang, or Zipangu, or Jipangu, or however you think it should be spelt, is the ancient European name for Japan. It was believed by foreigners to be a land of immense wealth and the name carries a somewhat mythical association.

Zipang the anime is about Mirai, an AEGIS class cruiser belonging to the Maritime Self Defense Force (de facto Navy of modern Japan), travelling 60 years into the past by accident while in the middle of a joint military exercise in the Pacific. The ship found itself right in the middle of Japan’s attack on Midway in the Pacific theatre of WW2.

While the setting sounds horribly like a sorry excuse for nationalistic right-wing propaganda (id est, Raimuiro Senikitan), it really isn’t. Instead of joining the Imperial Japanese Navy and pwning the hell out of the Americans like you would expect, Mirai maintains its neutrality while trying its best to preserve the paths of history and find a way back to the future.

Though Mirai has a crew of 240, the story mainly revolves around a few key characters and how they, as the generation that has never witnessed war, deal with the realities of the most brutal war man has ever fought.

If you are looking for adrenaline-filled WW2 battles, you’ll not find any here. Even Midway, the turning point of the whole Pacific War, is only given a cursory coverage. What you will get instead is a modern but distinctively Japanese perspective of WW2 and Japan’s great imperialist ambition. Indeed, Zipang is a WW2 show that has way more talking than shooting.

Zipang tries to humanize both the Japanese and American sides, though it does it better for the Japanese side (well duh). The show tries to create a more authentic feel by introducing real historical characters, although the way they are portrayed is probably far from reality.

The important decision makers on the Japanese side are divided into two main factions: those who instigated and advocate war and those who oppose war but comply out of loyalty to the nation. Zipang carries a clear anti-war message that depicts the former as irrational, self-serving and not truly doing things for the sake country like they claim to be, while the latter is portrayed as far-sighted and wise.

The unwilling participants of war, such as Admiral Yamamoto, welcome Mirai as a sign of Japan’s recovery. They know that the war has long been lost but yet they cannot disobey orders. They take comfort in that fact that Japan’s defeat will ultimately serve as the starting point of a much more powerful and rich nation than Imperial Japan ever was. They want peace but they, honour-bound as soldiers of the Empire, can do nothing but fight on.

The war hawks believe that they can win the war, despite the odds against Japan. They see Mirai as a threat to the war effort because it embodies the defeat of Imperial Japan. They are more or less portrayed as the antagonists in the show.

I think that as a whole, Zipang does a great job avoiding the traps of conventional WW2 films. It does not seek to glorify war by colouring the world in black and white, neither does it go into the other extreme and be anti-war for the sake of it by showering you with deaths and violence. Instead, Zipang utilizes the personalities of its main characters to present to you the various Japanese perspectives of WW2 and also how the main characters who have been brought up in peacetime respond to the ugly realities of a war.

I think the three scenes that left the deepest impressions are:

• Yosuke, the XO of Mirai, is forced to kill an American marine in melee combat in order to save his own life.
• Masayuki, the pacifist Gunnery Officer who didn’t want to enlist in the MSDF, ends up being the one to propose using a Tomahawk missile to destroy USS Wasp.
• Mitsumasa Yonai, former Navy Minister, tells the captain of Mirai that Japan has to lose the war for its own good.

It’s quite a thoughtful show and I would recommend you to give it a chance. That ends the pseudo-review section of this entry, now for the rantage.

Modern Japan and WW2

Zipang is a perfect example of what is often misunderstood about modern Japan’s perspective of WW2. With all the media’s attention focused on the Prime Minister’s visits to Yasukuni shrine, the censorship of history textbooks and the general portrayal of Japan in Asian WW2 films, many Asians today believe that Japan’s refusal to face its ugly past is a dangerous step towards a new wave of Japanese militarism and nationalism.

The truth is that, most Japanese people are starkly anti-war, probably even more so than USA and China. Japan in WW2 was a brutal and inhuman oppressor in the eyes of most of East Asia, but those atrocities only represent a very tiny portion of WW2 as a whole, at least from the Japanese perspective. A Japanese is more likely to remember WW2 for Hiroshima, the intense fire-bombing of Tokyo or the heavy losses incurred by both sides during the island-by-island attrition warfare in the South Pacific.

The Japanese are anti-war because of their own sufferings in WW2. They too have learnt first-hand the horrors of war and the insanity of those who advocate it. When Americans landed in Okinawa, civilians killed their own families and committed suicide in other to escape torture at the hands of the Americans, because they were fed lies by the military government. Young boys were brainwashed into blood-thirsty soldiers who were told to fight to the death for a war that Japan had clearly no hope of winning since Pearl Harbor. Nearly half of Tokyo was razed in the fire-bombing campaign in the final months of WW2. Japan also became the first and only victim of the atomic bomb.

Indeed, Japan today is one of the most anti-war nation on the planet. There are plenty of right-wing extremists of course, but the nation of Japan as a whole is unlikely to be of any threat to the rest of Asia again. Just look at how long it and how much effort it took for the government to justify SDF’s involvement in Iraq’s reconstruction, and even then most Japanese are still strongly against SDF’s presence in a foreign nation.

Paradoxically, the very thing that makes the Japanese people love peace is also what’s causing the anti-Japanese sentiments in China and South Korea. The Japanese view of WW2 is too neutral and too morally irresponsible.

The ugly roles of that Hitler and fascism played during WW2 have been driven into the German national identify from the ground up. The German people gain their respect for peace by understanding both their own sufferings, such as in Dresden, and the sufferings of those who were victimized by the German war machine, such as the Holocaust. Both sides belong to the same coin and Germans learn about WW2 in its entirety and thus gain a respect for peace.

Japan on the other hand, has grossly overlooked the flip side of the coin. Japan’s own suffering during WW2 is overly-emphasised and the rest of Asia is all but forgotten. Japan’s starch anti-war sentiments come not from a balanced understanding of the horrors of war but from its own sufferings. Imagine if a German history textbook on WW2 talks about the carpet bombing of Dresden in great details but skims over the Holocaust. The reader will no doubt still conclude that war is a terrible thing, but it would be due to an entirely different reason. That is what is happening in Japan now.

The Japanese people are peace-loving and reasonable people just like everyone else, but the moderates in power clearly need to get themselves a stronger voice and a backbone. If they continue to fail to do so, what the rest of Asia perceives of Japan will be represented by the the right-wing extremists who threatened the Japanese publisher of The Rape of Nanking, the colourful military history of Japan as told by the war museum in Yasukuni shrine, and the history textbooks that refer to South-east Asia as nothing more than a resource node in a war game.

In America, you can find publications that slam the Vietnam War and documentary films that talk about the My Lai massacre. In German, children learn about the horrors of Holocaust in school. Where are you now, Japan? Where indeed.

Dear Japan, please stop letting the right-wing nutcases do the talking if you want to be heard by the rest of Asia.

On the other hand, as I have said early, Japan today is clearly not a military threat to anyone, neither does its people have the intention of repeating WW2 again. Chinese and Korean right-wing nutcases need to chill out and tone down the anti-Japanese rhetorics that are only going to help the Japanese nationalists gain more power and influence over their moderate counterparts.

Gah… too sleepy to rant anymore.

It seems like Bandai has been getting a lot of, to misuse tj han’s term, “negative energy” recently for the whole Solid State Society fiasco. Some people see my latest rant on the Long Tail phenomenon as an indirect attack on Bandai.

The truth is, as hypocrite as this may sound considering my rant on the Wind incident, I support Bandai in its business decision to protect its profits. Bandai exists not to spread the love for anime but to make money. Popularizing anime is one of the ways through which Bandai can make money but the difference between an end and a mean to an end must be made clear.

It does not serve Bandai’s purpose as a company responsible to its investors to continue to turn a blind eye on fansubbers, especially for its most popular franchises.

It’s illegal. GASP!

First thing first, fansubs are illegal. There is no possible defence. Most of the world belongs to the Berne Convention that establishes the shared international laws of copyright. All rights of all works of any value, monetary or otherwise, belong to their creators unless the creator explicitly releases it to public domain or a set time period has elapsed since the creator’s death.

These rights include the right to translate the work, the right to distribute the work and the right to make derivative works based on it. Fair Use is a clause to grants very limited rights to people to use very limited portions of a copyrighted material for special purposes such as education. You can quote a line from a novel in your school essay without seeking permission from the author. You can watch a DVD with your friends without buying a copy for every one of them. If you translate a movie for your friends and families, then it can probably be considered Fair Use. But once you start distributing the translation online in great numbers, good luck trying to convince the judge/jury (depending on your country).

Fansubbing has nothing to do with Fair Use. Fansubbing is illegal in all countries except certain African states and Pacific islands that you are most likely not living in if you are reading this entry. There is no “grey” area with regards to copyright laws and fansubbing.

That said…

However, fansubbing does have (or did have, if you ask certain experts on the subject) a very special difference from bootlegging and piracy in general.

Fansubs are created for people who fall outside the target audience. As mentioned in my arguments on Wind, fansubs serve to create new markets where there were none. This should always be the main purpose of fansubbing: to induce more fans into the hobby.

The purpose of fansubbing was never to let you “try before you buy” or get things for free if you don’t think they deserve your money. When you think that way, you are basically admitting the fact that those things are available in your local market and they are being sold with you as the target audience. That means that fansubbing, by that stage, has already lost its original meaning: to give us access to shows that have excluded us from their target audience. Because now we ARE the target audience and yet we choose to download pirated copies citing the same reasons that I have heard a million times before in the warez scene long before digital fansubbing took off in the Love Hina era.

It’s more convenient for us to download a fansub than to buy a physical DVD, I agree. That is a limitation of traditional distribution that has to be re-examined by the industry soon. But that does not grant us the god-given right to download and watch fansubs faster than the companies can bring them over to the English-speaking world.

The state of fansubbing

The truth is that fansubbing in America today plays a terribly minute role in promoting new anime series. It probably does a better job at promoting piracy.

Unlike the underground anime fandom of the last century and the ren’ai game community of now, anime has already achieved the amount of success needed to guarantee its continued survival and growth in North America. Fansubbing will occasionally create success stories of an obscure anime title being brought to fame by the internet, but that’s simply insignificant when you compare it to the market that Bandai, ADV and Geneon are enjoying right now. They don’t NEED fansubs.

Pulling statistics out of my ass (actually I think I read this somewhere before), only a very tiny portion of American fans was introduced to anime by fansubs. The anime on TV, the HUUUUUUUUGE variety of anime DVDs and manga you get in stores and the various major anime conventions held in America, those things do a LOT MORE to help promote anime than fansubs are doing now. Clearly, fansubs, at least for the anime market, are losing their original purpose of promoting anime. Without that purpose, fansubs are no different from bootlegs of Hollywood movies.

And indeed, Ghost in the Shell, along with most of Bandai’s portfolio, DO NOT need fansubs. Bandai is well-established in North America and Ghost in the Shell is already very popular there due to the previous titles in the franchise. The very same titles that you can just waltz into a store and purchase, i.e. they are marketed at you! GASP!

Bandai doesn’t need fansubs!

What can Bandai hope to ever gain if it allows fansubs for a series that was created with the obvious intention of being brought over to North America? NOTHING! So what if it appeased a few “fans” who absolutely must watch the series within two days of its Japanese release? There’s no guarantee that the fansubs will reach a bigger North American audience than what the series is already reaching. The only guarantee is that there is now a free and easily-available bootleg copy of the series before it has even been released in the North American market.

If you want to “try before you buy”? Go watch it on cable TV! I bet it’ll be there. You Americans have it all so good but yet you demand for more. There are anime that were created with YOU in mind. Just look for those sponsored by Geneon.

“I want my anime now!” Well it’s not YOURS, it’s BANDAI’S. Shut the fuck up and wait for it.

If you plan to download Solid State Society like I will be doing, please at least admit that you are a pirate. I download pirated games and movies all the time too. But it just sounds terribly silly if you start calling foul when the company tells you to stop pirating. :) Stop pretending to be fighting the good fight, it’s not the 1990s any more.

Repeat after me:

We are just selfish bastards who want to watch anime for free and we have no right to whine if Bandai chooses to do something about it.
We are just selfish bastards who want to watch anime for free and we have no right to whine if Bandai chooses to do something about it.
We are just selfish bastards who want to watch anime for free and we have no right to whine if Bandai chooses to do something about it.

In conclusion

There is a huge difference between fansubbing an obscure eroge-based anime that would never have had a 1/100000 chance of being released for the North American market and fansubbing a series that is pre-licensed and obviously made with the North American market in mind.

Doing the former produces the occasional success stories like KimiNozo (aka Rumbling Hearts).

Doing the latter pisses off the hand that feeds you.

Just some thoughts from a disillusioned ex-fansubber.