ANIME GOES ACADEMIC

Universities Launch Animation Courses
(February 6, 2008)

Japanese anime has avid fans the world over, a phenomenon that is sometimes known by the name Japanimation. Anime's sophisticated storylines and high level of artistic expression have for years made it an object of respect both in Japan and overseas. But until recently it was regarded only as a subcultural form and rarely as art - a situation that is now undergoing a sea change. There is a growing movement among Japanese universities and graduate schools to take an academic approach to anime and manga. Once seen as children's entertainment, these forms are coming to be viewed in an entirely new light.


The Yokohama campus of Tokyo University of the Arts. (
Studying Animation
Epitomizing these changes is the establishment in spring 2008 (the beginning of the new academic year) of the Department of Animation at the Graduate School of Film and New Media, Tokyo University of the Arts. While there have been departments and courses at private universities focusing on manga or anime, this is a first for a national university. Moreover, the birth of an animation department at one of Japan's top graduate schools in the arts effectively signifies state approval of animation as an academic subject.

The curriculum is aimed at those who have graduated from art colleges or have worked in animation production, and courses will be offered in four areas: three-dimensional animation, two-dimensional animation, project planning, and story writing. Each student will be required to complete two works during the two-year master's program. The faculty will comprise leading figures in the anime industry, including Yamamura Koji, whose anime short Atama-Yama (Mt. Head) won an Academy Award nomination. The program will aim to produce animation creators through practical training, as well as develop discourse and theory on animation as a cultural form.

Changes Extend to Vocational Colleges
Departments and courses for studying anime and manga have been around for some years at several universities, including Tokyo Polytechnic University, Osaka Electro-Communication University, and Kyoto Seika University, which set up its Faculty of Manga in 2000. Classes on manga will also be offered at Nagoya Zokei University of Art & Design and Gakushuin University - the latter at graduate level - starting in April 2008.


Vantan Career School offers a course in Cosplay.

Forays into the study of anime and manga by undergraduate and graduate schools are having an effect on vocational colleges as well. In January 2008, moreover, the Vantan Career School, which has campuses in Tokyo and Osaka, launched a Cosplayers Course for studying costume production, special makeup effects, and other aspects of the art of cosplay (dressing up as characters from manga and anime).

These developments are an indication that the subculture of manga and anime and its offshoots are coming into the mainstream at various levels of society.

WELCOME TO OTAKU TOWN

From Maid Cafes to Canned Noodles, Akihabara Is Where It's At
(January 8, 2008)



Tokyo's Akihabara district is known around the world as the center of Japan's otaku culture, which includes such phenomena as anime, manga, and "maid cafes." The term Akiba culture (Akiba is short for Akihabara) has been heard a lot recently, having been coined to describe Akihabara's pop culture in general. Here we take a look at some of the latest developments in this district that continues to send out otaku culture to the world.

Changing with the Times
With its easy access to the nation's transportation networks, Akihabara originally developed as a part of Tokyo dominated by wholesalers. The black market thrived here in the aftermath of World War II, with shops handling electrical components especially common. It was from these roots that Akihabara developed into a hub for electronics and household appliances. Until recently it was best known as a place where people who were passionate about electronics, whether it be computer geeks, audiophiles, or HAM radio operators, could be sure to find the special components they were looking for.


In recent years, though, other types of shops have sprung up to cater to the various needs of otaku (anime and manga fanatics), including outlets that handle manga fan fiction and anime character merchandise. Visitors to Akihabara will also find a unique series of canned foods, including canned oden (a winter dish featuring various foodstuffs stewed in a light broth), canned ramen, and canned udon (wheat noodles). The appearance of maid cafes, where the waitresses wear maid costumes like those often featured in manga, further cemented Akihabara's reputation for quirky pop culture. Akihabara is now closely identified with otaku culture, which has spread from this part of Tokyo to all corners of the world.

Many foreign tourists visit Japan for the purpose of going to Akihabara. The Tourism Industry Association of Japan provides weekly free tours of the area for these foreign visitors called the Akihabara New Discovery Tour. This is a walking tour with an English-speaking guide, and it is extremely popular among overseas visitors with an interest in Japanese pop culture.


Themed Cafes Proliferate
Even more than the electronics outlets, it is original themed cafes that are flourishing in Akihabara recently, with one new place after another opening its doors. The primogenitor of this kind of business is the maid cafe, a coffee shop where visitors can enjoy kosupure (costume play), as the waitresses, all dressed in maid uniforms, roll out the red carpet and address customers as "master." For an additional fee, a customer can have a favorite "maid" sing a song for him or have her listen while he sings to her. As offshoots of this, some maid-themed businesses now provide such services as having "maids" clean customers' ears, wash their hair, or even provide reflexology. With such a wide variety of maid cafes in operation, it is almost as though maid garb is the unofficial uniform of Akihabara.

There are, naturally, similar cafes that cater to women. At these places, elegantly dressed butlers address the customers as "m'lady." A number of other variants have appeared, such as a cafe where the staff members are dressed as apprentice wizards from a role-playing game. There are also cafes where strong-willed staff members intentionally treat the customers with disdain, as well as places where the customers and staff pretend to be brothers and sisters. All these different shops enable otaku to imitate the anime and manga characters they love.

If you travel to Tokyo, be sure to make some time to explore Akihabara and experience what it has to offer. In so doing, you can play a role in the evolution of Akiba culture.

History of anime - The evolution of the artform

By ATSUKO KOHATA

Anime properties such as "Transformers," "Speed Racer" and "Avatar" (the latter announced for M. Night Shyamalan to direct) may make for obvious tentpole fodder now, but the medium took decades to gain critical mass among U.S. auds.

First introduced in the 1960s via family-oriented shows such as "Astro Boy" and "Speed Racer," Japanese anime enjoyed early popularity but limited respect among kid-driven crowds. In the following decades, sci-fi shows like "Gatchaman" and "Transformers" helped keep younger auds interested, while "Akira," "Ghost in the Shell" and other mature anime featuring violent and sexual elements earned cult standing among adults.

By the late 1990s, anime maestro Hayao Miyazaki (already viewed as the Walt Disney of the format in Japan) began to catch on with U.S. auds. By the time his "Spirited Away" won the animated feature Oscar in 2003, major Hollywood directors were at work on live-action versions of their favorite Asian toons. What follows are the benchmarks from anime's rise to prominence in the U.S.

1963
"Astro Boy" series starts in Japan, launches in the U.S. later the same year. The original manga was created by Osamu Tezuka, who is considered the father of the format.

1966
"Gigantor" series debuts in the U.S.

Another of Tezuka's creations, "Kimba the White Lion," launches.

1967
"Speed Racer" takes off in the U.S. a year after it was first broadcast in Japan, airing off and on over the years. MTV picks up the show in 1993; Cartoon Network adds it to their lineup in 1996.

In the same year, restrictions over violent content limit Americans' access to Japanese animation, including such shows as "Devilman."

1978
"Battle of the Planets" (aka Gatchaman) series debuts in the U.S.

1979
"Star Blazers" series starts in the US.

1984
"Voltron" hits U.S. shores, followed by "Transformers." Both the anime and tie-in toys become popular.

1985
"Robotech" takes off in the U.S.

1986
An animated "Transformers" feature earns more than $5 million at the box office, including a key voice performance by Orson Welles (who died before the film was released).

1989
Anime feature "Akira" opens in December, giving U.S. auds a taste of what the format can accomplish.

Hayao Miyazaki's "Castle in the Sky" receives a limited released in the U.S.

1993
Troma releases a dubbed version of Miyazaki's "My Neighbour Totoro" in the U.S. Writing for Variety, critic Leonard Klady says he doesn't get it.

Early 1990s
Many Japanese animations go directly to video, where more mature titles catch on among cult audiences.

Video rental stores start to set up Japanese anime sections.

The word "manga" enters the English language with "pop, erotic, futuristic and artistic" connotations.

1995
"Sailor Moon" airs in the U.S. Since much of the audience are young girls, it helps expand the image of anime from being a male-oriented media to something both sexes can enjoy.

Around this time, the Japanese trend of dressing up as anime characters (or "cosplay") comes to the U.S.

1996
"Ghost in the Shell" is released on video, landing many fans who will later work in Hollywood (including the Wachowski brothers). Hits No. 1 on Billboard's video charts.

"Dragonball Z" debuts on TV, with violent scenes edited out.

1998
Cartoon Network airs unedited "Dragonball Z" episodes as part of its Toonami programming block.

The "Pokemon" TV series launches, riding the popularity of the game franchise.

1999
Still largely unknown in the U.S., Miyazaki improves his profile with Miramax's release of "Princess Mononoke." Toon's PG-13 rating and limited release leads to modest box office, but draws strong reviews and attention to its creator. In Japan, it becomes the highest-grossing film of all time.

2002
Disney releases "Spirited Away," with English-language dubbing personally overseen by Pixar's John Lasseter. The film goes on to win the animated feature Oscar.

On television, "Yu-Gi-Oh" and "Inuyasha" both launch.

2005
Cartoon Network adds "Naruto" to its Toonami lineup.

Nickelodeon debuts "Avatar: The Last Airbender," a toon modeled after the style and content of Asian animation (mixing martial arts, mysticism and serial storytelling). Two years later, the show wins a primetime Emmy.

2006
Viz Media dubs manga-based toon "Bleach" for American auds. The show courts older viewers as part of Cartoon Network's Adult Swim block.

2007
Michael Bay directs a live-action version of "Transformers," hiring Peter Cullen (the lead voice on the U.S. animated series) to reprise his role as Optimus Prime.

Paramount announces plans for an "Avatar" feature (not to be confused with James Cameron's original sci-fi project) to be directed by M. Night Shyamalan.

2008
The Wachowski brothers adapt "Speed Racer" as a live-action film, using cutting-edge fx to reflect (and modernize) the style of the original show.

Check out the original Japanese version of this story at Varietyjapan.

The Anime Collective: Baka Deshi Productions

Where the otaku world and music geekdom collide

By Liz Ohanesian

published: August 14, 2008(LA WEEKLY)

Anneke knew that she hadn’t won the competition. She said this to a group of four people — a friend, a reporter and two random college students, one wearing blue plastic sunglasses and another dressed as the lead character of the vampire anime series Hellsing — while standing outside the Nokia Theatre.

Aaron Farmer

(Click to enlarge)

• Aaron Farmer

  

We were there for Anime Expo (AX), which, with 43,000 attendants, is the largest anime and manga convention in the United States. At AX’s 14th annual anime music video contest, 3,500 people had gathered to sing and scream their way through a mishmash of songs set to their favorite Japanese animated movies, TV shows and video games.

Anime music videos, known as AMVs, reside at the juncture where the otaku (anime enthusiast) world and music geekdom collide. As with its purely music-oriented cousin, the mash-up, the premise is simple: Take at least two sources and piece them together so that they make sense. Also like the mash-up, AMVs have been in existence for more than a decade, and their popularity has increased with the abundance of free or inexpensive editing software, file-sharing programs and user-generated content sites. AMVs have become a subculture phenomenon, with Web sites like AMV Hell providing video megamixes and hundreds of thousands of videos ranging from wonderfully edited footage highlighting an obscure piece of music to the far more common anime-plus-favorite-song mash-up littering YouTube. Currently, almost all of the many anime conventions in the U.S. host an AMV contest.

Anneke began creating AMVs in 2000. Her first piece was a school assignment that required syncing audio and video.

“Then I went to an anime convention and saw, oh, my gosh, they have contests for these,” she recalls. “I made it a goal that I would one day have a video good enough for that.”

Along with her friend Mie’Aga, who had previously studied computer animation, Anneke forms the core of Baka Deshi Productions. (Because of the legally nebulous nature of AMVs, both creators are using pseudonyms.)

“I didn’t really get into anime in a lot of detail and a lot of interest until I came to live out here and started playing with Anneke’s selection,” says Mie’Aga (who did not submit a video to AX’s contest). “It’s one of those things where you start watching it and you start getting ideas and it continues.”

Anneke and Mie’Aga don’t collaborate on videos, but they do critique each other’s work. Between the two, who are based in the L.A. area, they churn out six to 10 videos a year, with each piece taking from a few hours to several months to produce. Collectively, they have entered more than 60 competitions and won 25 awards, including eight major ones, such as Judges’ Choice and Best of Show. Most recently, Anneke took prizes for both Audience and Judges’ Choice in the comedy category at Fanime, a Northern California–based convention considered one of the most competitive, while Mie’Aga earned the Best Overall Award at Anime L.A. last January.

The most prolific creators tend to know each other through online forums and conventions. They have their own code of conduct — (only use footage from DVDs and CDs you own, a practical choice based on higher-quality audio and video as well as an ethical one; never include subtitles; and don’t enter in a smaller competition a video that has won a major — as well as their own jargon and gossip. They compete with each other, mostly for pride and sometimes for an actual trophy, but in a friendly way. This competitive element adds an air of professionalism to something that remains a legally dubious hobbyists’ realm.

“AMVs are kind of a gray zone,” says Michael Underwood, AX’s AMV contest coordinator.

While creators aren’t profiting from their creations, they are putting themselves in a precarious position by manipulating (typically) copyrighted work. Unofficially, the anime industry has chosen to leave the issue alone, at least for now.

“We’re not authorizing people to do it by any means,” says Evan Flournoy, coordinator of Brand Enforcement and Rights Enforcement for FUNimation, a major anime firm. “We just tend not to enforce our rights to take it down.”

Record labels, though, have occasionally issued cease-and-desist orders for AMVs. And as the use of “digital fingerprinting” technology, which aborts the upload of copyrighted material by a non-copyright holder, expands, AMV creators may find it more difficult to show off their work outside their community.

Despite the copyright issues, AMVs are, perhaps unintentionally, promoting both anime and music. Underwood, who notes that much of his music collection is based on what he has heard in AMVs, says that the judges’ ballots at AX ask if the video has prompted them to check out the original anime. While he acknowledges that many factors are involved in popularizing an anime, AMVs do help raise awareness, particularly of programs that have yet to be released in the U.S., such as convention favorite Ouran High School Host Club.

L.A.-based manga company TOKYOPOP has taken note of the promotional aspect of AMVs and adapted elements to fit the needs of its audience. “I think that we’re at a watershed time, where people who would, at one point, not be able to express themselves visually suddenly have an entirely new palette that wasn’t accessible [before],” says TOKYOPOP producer Steven Calcote.

TOKYOPOP, which sponsored the AX contest, has recently entered the AMV world by combining colorized panels from its manga titles with music provided by up-and-coming artists. Last spring, the company held its first Manga Mash-Up Video Contest, where art from Riding Shotgunand one track from L.A. band Far East Movement were made available for remixing purposes.

“It’s really apparent that manga and anime fans have put a lot of heart and enthusiasm into creating essentially a new type of storytelling,” Calcote adds. “The idea that once a story is told, it’s not finished.”

At AX, Anneke screened “Amnesia,” which combines footage from Revolutionary Girl Utena: The Movie with “Amnesia,” featured on former Bronski Beat singer Jimmy Somerville’s little-heard 2005 solo album Home Again. She had stumbled upon her source song, which pairs Somerville’s soaring vocals with an electronic backdrop offering hints of drum ’n’ bass, online. She fell for it immediately, purchased a copy and let it guide the AMV.

“I quickly thought of Utena because Utena is abstract, and the lyrics in the song really suit it,” she explains.

The video, which came in third at Anime L.A. this past winter, works on several levels, first with the song’s hypnotic quality enhancing a surreal drama told in brilliant shades of red, purple and green. Lyrically, “Amnesia” draws attention to the memory lapses of Anthy, the Rose Bride. Meanwhile, Somerville’s gender-bending falsetto highlights the fact that Anthy’s proverbial Prince Charming is actually a tomboyish girl, Utena. This all culminates when Somerville sings, “We disconnect from all reality” precisely as Utena turns into a car, thus giving Anthy a means of escape from a life of abuse.

It was a stunning and unusual video. But Anneke was right. She didn’t win.

“I didn’t make it to win,” Anneke had said several weeks before the competition. “I made it because I really felt that the music and the anime went together.”

Winner or not, “Amnesia” served its purpose, introducing people to the world of Utena and the sound of Jimmy Somerville’s should-have-been hit in a compelling fashion. (Soon after, I ordered copies of both.) That Anneke was able to do this on a large screen in a major concert hall with impeccable sound made the event a little sweeter.

CHARMING TATEYAMA-KUROBE

Alpine Route Ranked One of Japan's Top Tourist Spots

The Kurobe Dam.

The "Snow Corridor."

The Tateyama Kurobe Alpine Route runs from the Japan Sea coast of Toyama Prefecture to Nagano Prefecture in central Japan. Tateyama Kurobe is one of the most popular mountain tourist spots in the world and was rated third by foreign tourists who were asked which sites they would recommend to other visitors in a Japan National Tourist Organization survey.

Cable Cars, Buses, and Ropeways
Almost the entire Tateyama Kurobe Alpine Route between Tateyama Station in Tateyama, Toyama Prefecture and Ogisawa Station in Omachi, Nagano Prefecture runs through the Chubu Sangaku National Park. The Alpine Route is less than 25 kilometers long as the crow flies, but it goes up and down with the mountains: the highest point is about 1,975 meters above the lowest point.

The different modes of transport used to travel along the route, a result of the severe climate and environment, offer spectacularly varied views. First you take a cable car from the starting point Tateyama Station, built on a mountainside, up 500 meters along slopes as steep as 29 degrees to Bijodaira. From there, the Highland Bus takes you to Japan's highest railway station, Murodo - a journey that in the spring guides you through a "snow corridor"of 20-meter-high walls of snow.

From Murodo Station, you take a trolley bus through a tunnel to Daikanbo, where you will find the Alpine Route's only observation deck. The ropeway from Daikanbo to Kurobedaira, however, offers such panoramic 360-degree views that it is often called a "revolving observation deck."From Kurobedaira, you take Japan's only underground cable car to Kurobeko Station, on Lake Kurobe. A walk along a dike takes you to Kurobe Dam Station.

One of the attractions of the Alpine Route is the unique experience of going up a mountainslope, then underground, and then over ground.

Dynamic Scenery
Mount Tateyama has been revered as a sacred mountain for over thirteen centuries and is one of Japan's "three holy mountains," along with Mounts Fuji and Haku. Tateyama Murodo, halfway through the Alpine Route, is Japan's oldest surviving mountain hut and has been designated a national treasure.

The Alpine Route was opened through this inhospitable terrain in 1971, following the opening of the Kurobe Dam, a symbol of Japan's economic growth and technological prowess. The difficult process of building the Kurobe Dam was even turned into a movie. First a road to transport construction materials for the Kurobe Dam was built, followed by the arduous construction of the Tateyama Tunnel, which enabled the Alpine Route to turn the region into a tourist attraction.

Mikuriga Tarn.

The Kurobe Dam, one of the world's largest hydroelectric dams, is today one of the Alpine Route's highlights. The water discharges between June and October are an impressive sight for visitors.

The Alpine Route offers a variety of attractions and courses. Although heavy snow closes the Alpine Route between December and March, from April to November outdoor enthusiasts can hike, walk, or trek while enjoying the dynamic views offered by the Northern Alps' 3,000-meter peaks and the steep Kurobe Valley. (July 2008)

Tateyama Ropeway.