Cons have gone far beyond presenting academic research papers and selling sushi and Pocky. There is a con circuit that arranges appearances from special guests (mostly English voice actors, but also Japanese directors, voice artists, idol singers, or other industry representatives). Cosplay is no longer limited to a single fashion show event; some participants are in costume for the length of the con. Cons have included screening rooms, video game rooms, galleries displaying fan art, concerts by Japanese rock bands, and parlors for playing traditional Japanese board games like shogi and go.1
The names of these cons reflect the love of puns and multiple meanings found in the Japanese language. Columbus, Ohio has the Ohayocon, trading the spelling of the name of the state for the Japanese greeting meaning “Good morning.” The city of Guelph, Ontario, Canada has Con-G, a play on kanji, the word for Chinese characters in Japanese writing. The University of Chicago has a one-day gathering called UChi-Con, turning the name of the university into uchi, the Japanese word for “home.” Denver has one of the cleverest puns: Nan Desu Kan, based on the phrase “Nan desu ka”—what is that?
Do-It-Yourself
The first edition of this book was written at a time when animation software was still evolving. Given one extra year, the section would have had a very different focus. To be specific about it, I have seen the future of computer-generated anime, and its name is Makoto Shinkai.
Shinkai (born Makoto Niitsu in 1973) captured anime fan attention in 1999, at age sixteen, with a five-minute black-and-white piece titled She and Her Cat. An episodic look at a young woman through the eyes of her pet cat, the film’s narrative style was heavily influenced by the French New Wave cinema. Most important, though, was the fact that Shinkai created the anime on his home Macintosh computer. The short was widely acclaimed and, more important for Shinkai, opened the door for him to tackle larger projects. Just as dojinshi manga are used by the older established publishers to scout up-and-coming talent, She
and Her Cat enabled Shinkai to work on a larger project. Again, it was a home-produced anime, Hoshi no Koe (Voice of the Stars, known in English as Voices of a Distant Star), a twenty-five-minute short in color, with a subtle and sophisticated plot. It’s a love story between two teens, one of whom goes into the military to train for an interplanetary war. The only way the two can keep in touch is by texting; the farther apart they are, the longer between text messages. What kind of toll would that take on the relationship?
This led to a feature-length anime created in 2004 at a professional studio: Kumo no Muko, Yakusoku no Basho, literally Beyond the Clouds, the Promised Place, known in English as The Place Promised in Our Early Days. By now the hallmarks of a Shinkai anime were well established: the somewhat muted but very elaborate color palette, languid pacing, crisp lines, and an intimate natural feel even amid fantastic events. These traits control this alternate history in which postwar Japan was occupied by two sets of foreigners: the United States for most of the islands, except for the northernmost island, Hokkaido, under the control of the Soviet Union. Neither nation’s technology, however, could have built the tall cylindrical tower on the border between the two occupying armies. The principal characters make it their business to investigate this tower, by any means, at any risk. However, this is more of a science-fiction teen romance like Hoshi no Koe, and has helped give birth to similar anime by the bigger studios (such as the TV series Eureka Seven, directed by Tomoki Kyoda, and Summer Wars, directed by Mamoru Hosoda).
And yet, for his most recent feature anime, Makoto Shinkai has used the facilities of a major studio to tell a mainstream story—on his own terms—and do it very well. Titled in Japanese Hoshi o Ou Kodomo (Children who Chase a Star), its English title is Children Who Chase Lost Voices, which is a bit more accurate. A much better description would be the title Princess Mononoke, Part 2. San and Ashitaka are replaced by a student named Asuna and her substitute teacher, in a pastoral rural Japan very like the world of Tonari no Totoro or Omoide Poroporo: no computers, no modern distractions, and the highest hi-tech communications device is an old crystal-set radio. Asuna takes this out to the countryside, listening for the mysterious singing she heard one time. These trips allow her to meet strange monsters and a boy who protects her, and gain access to the Underworld.
Science fiction is full of stories of subterranean civilizations, but this one has its spiritual roots in Shinto. The biggest hint is when the substitute teacher—who is there because the regular teacher is about to have a baby—reads to the class from the Kojiki, Shinto’s—and by extension Japan’s—creation myth. He reads about how the goddess Izanami died, and how her sibling/lover Izanagi traveled to the underworld to bring her back. He could not do this, but the teacher, whose wife died while he was at war, has resolved to succeed where a god has failed.
In the end, he sees her spirit in the underworld, but the only way she can again take human form is to take over Asuna’s body, which would mean killing her. He takes this option seriously for a moment but ultimately lets it go. Asuna, who is shown conversing in an early scene with her late father through the household shrine, understood life and death as bound together.
If Princess Mononoke is Shinto 101, Children Who Chase Lost Voices is Shinto 201. The characters—and the audience—are reminded of the wisdom of Shinto out of which Japan and its culture arose, and the need to respect and cherish life so that we may be respected and cherished in return. A similar message is part of Mamoru Hosoda’s second feature, Summer Wars, with the ninetieth birthday celebration of the matriarch of a large and boisterous family contrasted with imminent Armageddon brought about by a hack into a social media program (which, in a delightfully modern gag, is presided over by two moderators: yin/yang whales named John and Yoko).
Homemade anime is obviously not for everyone, but it’s an extension of an essential part of Japanese pop culture, one which has pervaded this book: dojinshi. It’s the equivalent of the “underground comics” of the 1960s in the United States. Some were produced by amateur artists spinning off variations on already-established characters or creating whole new characters, scenes, and adventures. Others were the work of semi-professionals who chafed at the restrictions of the established syndicates and the Comics Code.
There are two important similarities between dojinshi and underground comics. The first is that popular comic characters are put into bizarre, often sexual, situations. (We’ve already seen that Japanese pop culture has a higher tolerance for sexual activity than its Western counterpart.) Second, and more important than sex, is the fact that an artist is using someone else’s characters; on both sides of the Pacific, this is illegal.
The difference between the two cultures seems to be the statement that the artist is making. In the West, where comic content has to meet the Comics Code or be declared “underground,” the non-Code artist may use a Disney character to make a statement about American society and freedom of the press, or about the vapid blandness of the Disney universe. In any event, they couldn’t be considered fans of Disney while subjecting those characters to sarcasm and mockery. Owners of such characters, or protectors of a certain image associated with those characters, tend to sue.
Japanese dojinshi artists, on the other hand, are truly fans. Even if the content is outrageous, the attitude underlying the comic is respectful and enthusiastic. There’s all the difference in the world between Western underground comic artists staging an orgy of Disney characters, and the CLAMP collective’s first dojinshi manga, which created gay pairings for the knights of the popular manga/anime Saint Seiya (known in the West as Knights of the Zodiac). They weren’t out to make a statement; they were playful, thinking “what if . . . ” and following that thought.
For this reason, dojinshi do not seem to be ripping anybody off. A few actually rise to the status of companion volumes to the original manga (the word dojin means companion). Of course, some dojinshi art is amateurish, and the “plot” is basically one joke, but it’s understood that
they’re not trying to pass themselves off as the real deal. It’s the dream of just about every budding manga artist to land a series in a major magazine, and the dream starts early when the magazines themselves encourage readers to submit their own “fan art” versions of popular characters.
Such success is easier to find in manga than in anime. After all, in the beginning, every artist starts out alone with just a pen and paper. Since most manga are no longer one-person works, an aspiring artist can join another artist’s staff, doing fill-in and clean-up artwork to perfect the craft. Animation, however, is always a corporate effort, employing a host of artists, writers, voice actors, composers, musicians, and representatives selling the product to television networks or DVD companies. There doesn’t seem to be such a thing as dojinshi anime.
But wait a minute . . .
I Want My AMV
Just as the Internet spawned global interest in and knowledge of anime, the new fans have used anime in their own ways. It’s impossible to trace the Anime Music Video (AMV) back to its source, since the Internet and home-based PCs are merely the latest ways of modifying pop culture that’s already out in the marketplace.
The name of the game is bricolage. According to the dictionary,2 bricolage is “a construction made of whatever materials are at hand; something created from a variety of available things.” Informal examples of bricolage have been popping up in all media. AMVs, however, usually involve a lot of planning and labor, especially if trying to synchronize movements to a musical beat or singing to lip-flaps that, when they were created, had nothing to do with the AMV director’s hoped-for result.
AMVs are literally beyond counting. More are created every day somewhere in the world and posted to social networking sites like YouTube or animemusicvideos.org, which, as the name suggests, is now a club with membership, rules, contests, information-exchange forums, and other features placing it somewhere between professional video editing and amateur fun and games. AMVs also vanish from time to time, as the copyright holder for music or visuals decides that their work is being used unfairly.
From the sheer number of examples, there’s no such thing as a “typical” AMV. At their best, they can be humorously ironic in the combination of audio and video from two or more different sources, and sometimes they’re only meant to be fun, or lyrical, diversions. Only very rarely does an AMV rise above the fan level. Offhand, I can think of one such moment:
The music track is the Kenny Loggins song “Footloose,” written for the movie of the same name. One verse includes the somewhat clichéd lyric “You’re burning yearning for somebody to tell you that life ain’t passing you by.” The final part of that line is illustrated with an anime clip of two young fair-haired boys speaking to someone lying in bed. Then it hits: it’s the scene from Fullmetal Alchemist in which the Elric brothers are trying to cheer up their mother. It’s no use; she’s dying, and the viewer knows, even without being able to articulate it in complete prose sentences, that her imminent death will trigger the entire plot of the series. By using the song lyrics literally, that one brief connection of words and music packs a lot of unexpected meaning into a small moment.
And there’s more to come. As of this writing, the technology has expanded, as technology—especially computer technology—tends to do. The AMV creator is no longer limited to cutting and pasting clips; the technology now exists to allow characters from various anime to exist in the same frame. One fascinating modern video incorporates characters from a host of Disney movies (including The Little Mermaid, Pocahontas, Treasure Planet, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame), as well as animation from other studios, “interacting” with each other. At this rate, there’s literally no way to tell what might happen next.
All of this can literally change tomorrow. Not too long ago, a Pentium I chip was state of the art, and a one-gigabyte home computer was the stuff of science fiction. Home desktop computers now store 500 gigabytes as a matter of course. I suspect it’s still going to be a long time before a single fan at a home computer can idly whip out an animated scene as fully realized as a scene from Toy Story or the Final Fantasy videogame series. I also know that somebody out there is busily trying to design software to give a user just such power. That software designer may have a friend who’s thinking about a game he played as a child, which he may try to turn into the next Pokémon. The day of dojinshi anime may not be too far off.
I for one can hardly wait.
1. The American interest in go, a traditional territory-capture board game, traces back entirely to 1998 and the publication of Hikaru no Go, a manga drawn by Takeshi Obata and written by Yumi Hotta, and its subsequent anime. For more on this series, see the suicide section in part 1, chapter 16.
2. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/bricolage?s=t
Websites of Anime Mentioned in This Book
Going to a link (or clicking on it if you have an electronic edition connected to the internet) will take you to what we judge a “primary” site for the corresponding film (or in some cases studio or artist), where you can find images in color, film clips, news, more links, and other information. We hope this list will allow readers to further explore all the material in this book. Internet addresses change frequently, so use your browser as needed.
ANIME TITLE WEBSITE
A Megami-sama (Oh My Goddess!) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oh_My_Goddess!
Agent Aika en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_Aika
Ai Yori Aoshi en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ai_Yori_Aoshi
Akira en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akira_(film)
Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves bakabt.me/155716-ali-baba-and-the-40-thieves-alibaba’s-revenge-alibaba-to-yonjubiki-notozoku.html
All Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku Nuku en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Purpose_Cultural_Cat_Girl_Nuku_Nuku
Angel of Darkness en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angel_of_Darkness
Angelic Layer en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angelic_Layer
Anne of Green Gables en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_of_Green_Gables_(anime)
Appleseed (1988) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appleseed_(OVA)
Appleseed (2004) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appleseed_(film)
Appleseed Ex Machina en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appleseed_Ex_Machina
Arcadia of My Youth en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcadia_of_My_Youth
Ayashi no Ceres (Ceres, Celestial Legend) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayashi_no_ceres
Azumanga Daioh en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azumanga_Daioh
Big O, The en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_O
Birdy the Mighty en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birdy_the_Mighty
Bishojo Senshi Sailor Moon (Sailor Moon) sailormoon.wikia.com/wiki/Sailor_Moon_Wiki
Black Jack en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Jack_(manga)
Blue Submarine No. 6 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Submarine_No._6
Boku no Chikyu o Mamotte (Please Save My Earth) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Please_Save_My_Earth
Brain Powerd en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_Powerd
Bubblegum Crisis en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubblegum_Crisis
Bubblegum Crisis Tokyo 2040 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubblegum_Crisis_Tokyo_2040
Cardcaptor Sakura ccs.wikia.com
Chibi Maruko-chan en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chibi_Maruko-chan
Chibi Vampire en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chibi_Vampire
Chirality en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chirality_(manga)
Cho Hatsumei Boy Kanipan en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cho_Hatsumei_Boy_Kanipan
Chobits en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chobits
Clamp School Detectives en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clamp_School_Detectives
Clover en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clover_(manga)
Cockpit, The en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cockpit_(OVA)
Cowboy Bebop cowboybebop.wikia.com/wiki/Cowboy_Bebop_Wiki
Cowboy Bebop the Movie: Knockin‘ on Heaven’s Door en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowboy_Bebop:_The_Movie
Cream Lemon en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cream_Lemon
Crying Freeman en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crying_Freeman
Cutey Honey en.wikipedia.org/wik
i/Cutey_Honey
Cyber City Oedo 808 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyber_City_Oedo_808
Den‘ei Shojo (Video Girl Ai) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Girl_Ai
Devil Hunter Yohko en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil_Hunter_Yohko
Di Gi Charat en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Di_Gi_Charat
Digimon digimon.wikia.com/wiki/digimon
Doomed Megalopolis en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomed_Megalopolis
Dragon Ball (Dragon Ball Z) dragonball.wikia.com
Dragon Half en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Half
E.Y.E.S. of Mars www.absoluteanime.com/eyes_of_mars
Earthian en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthian
El-Hazard en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El-Hazard
Elven Bride en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elven_Bride
Enchanted Journey en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enchanted_Journey
Erufu wo karu mono-tachi (Those Who Hunt Elves) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Those_Who_Hunt_Elves
Eureka Seven eurekaseven.wikia.com/wiki/Eureka_Seven
F3 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F3_(manga)
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Final_Fantasy:_The_Spirits_Within
Fist of the North Star en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fist_of_the_north_star
Fruits Basket en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruits_Basket
Full Moon o Sagashite en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_Moon_o_Sagashite
Fullmetal Alchemist en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fullmetal_Alchemist
Fullmetal Alchemist: Conqueror of Shamballa en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fullmetal_Alchemist:_Conqueror_of_Shambala
Fushigi no Umi no Nadia (Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadia:_The_Secret_of_Blue_Water
Fushigi Yugi en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fushigi_Yugi
Futari wa Pretty Cure prettycure.wikia.com/wiki/Futari_wa_Pretty_Cure
Futari wa Pretty Cure Splash Star prettycure.wikia.com/wiki/Futari_wa_Pretty_Cure_Splash_Star
Gake no Ue no Ponyo (Ponyo on a Cliff by the Sea) nausicaa.net/wiki/Ponyo
Anime Explosion! Page 46
