I knew of Ishiguru’s work in anime even before I knew of he, himself. Growing up with Robotech, you, sort of, had no choice in the matter. Even after discovering about Macross, and his involvement with it, I remained impressed that one man kept it all of it together. Today there are committees, companies and like for this sort of thing. Back then nobody knew about cross media opportunities, having record companies work hand in hand with anime producers to the degree Macross did. Ishiguru helmed a series that did all that.

Working on the 1980′s Astro Boy series, you can see his flair even inside this most Tezuka of Tezuka’s works and having the added pressure of working alongside the God of Manga himself. I am only now digging into the treasure that is Legend of Galactic Heroes. Such an amazing work. Oddly, I saw his latest work, Tytania, before starting into LoGH. Does this distract from his earlier space opera? Not at all, in my book.

At Otakon 2011,I had the delightful opportunity to see Mr. Ishiguru in person as he, Makoto Shinkai and Kazuya Murata were jointly holding a Producers and Directors panel (well, the producers were too scared to come up on stage, so it became a directors panel!). We heard from a variety of their recollections, most of which I struggle to recall at the moment to be honest, and then got a chance to ask questions. Unfortunately, some idiot decided to ask the inevitable Tsunami question and that ground the whole panel to a halt. As a result, a lot of us never got a chance to ask our questions. I had a few but now I think of it, there really was only one: “For Ishiguru-sempai, and the rest of the panel if they like, what do you want to be remembered for?” Sadly, I’ll never get the chance to ask that of Mr. Ishiguru, but looking back at his long body of work, his contribution to what we regard as modern anime and his great take on being an animation director, I think I’ve got the best answer possible, in my mind. Thank you, Mr. Ishiguru, for all your hard work. You have most certainly earned your rewards, whenever you are.

Go raibh maith agat.

And so, our Otakon report comes to an end. With the terrible Bandai panel, last minute dealer room runs and a resolve to highly return some day (EDIT: Elliot and Gerry are going back in 2012!) we wrap things up, nice and easy-like.

As always the links for our guests:

Elliot’s Twitter

Ani-Gamers

Uk-Anime

His Blog

_____________________________________________________________

Gerry’s Twitter

His blog

Download audio file (otakon_roundtable_part2.mp3)

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And so, another summer is gone. But not before we head out into the wild blue ether and give you part one of our two part roundtable Otakon discussion. With me are Elliot Page and Gerald Martin. Their details for contacting them again are:

Elliot’s Twitter

Ani-Gamers

Uk-Anime

His Blog

_____________________________________________________________

Gerry’s Twitter

His blog

Next up will be a break from the roundtable. It’s a good surprise, trust me!

Download audio file (otakon_roundtable_part1.mp3)

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Hi all!

I’m back from Otakon and it was great.  Saw the new Shinkai film and attended a bunch of panels. I’ll be doing some podcasts about it later this week so hopefully you’ll get to hear about it soon.

Laters!

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Download audio file (evan_minto_changing_faces_of_anime_panel_NYAF_2010.mp3)

“Licensers and copyright holders are out of control and they have to be stopped.”

Wow, that’s a crazy statement to make, right? I am a person who has always pushed for the legal availability of anime for the masses to consume since I started blogging and podcasting about it. When legal services like Crunchyroll first arose as legit operations (we’ll sweep over the site’s shadier past for now) I was more than happy. Now all the shows that were on the site could now be enjoyed by all. I could visit the site for the first time, knowing that I wasn’t helping to bring down the animation industry that I have tried for the last few years to support legally and financially. The gates to Camelot were opened for the first time for the righteous and we had nothing to be afraid of. Then I discovered something that I thought was only applied by the original Japanese licensers when they were dealing with customers in English speaking countries:

“You’re NOT our most important customer.”

To elaborate: Crunchyroll had transformed from the wretched hive of scum and villiany into a safe, happy sanitised place where you could now enjoy what Japan had to offer but now you jumped to their tune. All their international customers were equal. But some are more equal than others. So if you don’t come from the approved list of countries then you out of luck there, people. When Crunchyroll was a sleazy video streaming site, you could watch anything to wanted so long as you didn’t mind ripping off the original owners. When CR went legit, you can now only watch what the original owners allow you to as long as you don’t mind being ripped off. If you don’t live in the US then your monthly subscription charge goes toward Crunchyroll continuing to license shows that you may or may not be able to watch. I’m subscribed to Crunchyroll as a Premium member which costs me $6.95 a month. And of 8 pages of indexed anime available in the US I can only access 5 of those. So I am paying over $80 a year to access 60% of the site. Wow, I can’t wait to go to my nearest Burger King and buy a Chicken Royale meal and eat the chips, drink the 7-Up and leave the actual Chicken meal itself. Now, to be fair to Crunchyroll, they always state “Sorry, this video is not available in your region due to licensing restrictions. We are trying to obtain worldwide rights for this title, please be patient.” Problem with that statement is that it somehow promotes the idea that CR will, at some point, obtain the right to more terrorities. OK, I need to hit people who believe that with a hard fact about the Japanese copyright holders: They are capitalists and capitalists want the most people to spend the most money or attention on their product as possible. In other words, if they didn’t allow your country onto the list from the get-go, they’re not very likely to do it in the future. There is now a growing problem within the anime fan community outside of the US in that, unless a local company steps up or sites like Crunchyroll pay over the odds, Japan is afraid of you getting their stuff for free or next to nothing, legally while they license their works to be consumed by customers outside Japan for free or next to nothing, legally. Until someone is prepared to go on record and explain this bizare practice (which they won’t because they are captialists and capitalists don’t give their hand away to anyone) then this sad state of affairs will continue.

“It’s Kyptonite…but good Kyptonite!”

For the last five years, we have been told that fansubs are the most dangerous thing to licensers and copyright holders ever conceived. The other being a complete collapse of the financial markets in a depressive or recessive action but what are the chances of that ever happening to us here in 2007, am I right? This is after the industry ignored the fansub scene for 5+ years in some weird attempt to use the fansub community as some kind of barometer of cool. Now that was dangerous. If I grew potatoes (well, I am Irish) in my front garden then somebody kept stealing them one at a time, passing them off as their own and handing them out to people for free, I sure as hell wouldn’t keep an eye on them in the hope of picking up marketing tips! The licensers and copyright holders are both gulity of leaving the fansub industry to its own devices. Notice I said “fansub industry” when most people will tell you it is not an industry. Well, Miriam-Webster defines industry as

“…systematic labor especially for some useful purpose or the creation of something of value.”

So in that sense fanusbbers are creating something of value to the consumer that the consumer wants and is happy to receive in a manner that they can view.

Now there is another definition to industry and I will return to it at a later point. But for now let’s concentrate on the concept of the licensers, copyright holders and the distributor. The licenser is in control of the license, defined as “a legal document giving official permission to do something”. The license is then dispensed to a third party to obtain monies which can then be sent back to licenser and copyright holder respectfully if the two are separate business entities. The licensee (distributor) is empowered to receive a proportion of the monies gathered for their own services rendered. In other words, when Aniplex licenses Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood for release in the US, Funimation purchases the license to produce a localised version for consumption. funimation then releases the DVD’s or blu ray’s and if a deal is in place they then pay for their distribution costs from the sale of the series, pockets their profits as dictated to by the contract with the client (Aniplex) and the rest goes to Aniplex and onto the original copyright holders. This above example only works under the physical media idea. Streaming has added something to the mix that goes against the more established physical media system. With streaming there are two routes to take: paid subscriptions and free to view. In an ideal world, we’d all pay for our viewing pleasures. But the problem is how do you fight against the tide of “free” anime? By giving them some content for free and then saying that the rest is available if you subscribe. This is what should happen with free to view streaming. But this is what actually happens: Company A wants to showcase that it’s the dominant force within the English speaking anime community. It licenses a series for streaming and DVD release from a licenser and then proceeds to put the entire series online for viewing for free. By putting the entire series on their site and third party legal streaming sites, the series now has as much value to the average fan as it did when it was only available through fansubs. So the licensing industry is fighting against the practice of fansub groups putting their clients works online for people to consume for free who may or may not then buy a local, legal copy of said works by paying their clients an extra amount of money to put their clients works online for people to consume for free who may or may not then buy a local, legal copy of said works. The above now feeds into another definition of industry that I alluded to earlier:

“…a distinct group of productive or profit-making enterprises.”

In order to be called an industry you have to be able to state that you are doing this for profit. But anime distributors have been touchy-feely with their fans for so long that they want to be “Hey Kids, dig my crazy new dance!” with them. So now, you have a bunch of people who are engaged in complex negotiations with Japanese companies who are trying to keep onside a group of consumers who have long since understood the sheer irrelevancy of both the Japanese companies (“We will license all of our content to you but only to some of you”) and the local distributors (“We’ll distribute some content for you but only to some of you”). And companies still continue to court fans who hold them in such contempt in the vain hope they will suddenly see the light. They really should be charities instead of companies. Then they could say they’re doing it for the public good.

“Being a non-US anime fan sucks worse than a black hole.”

I remember watching an old film when I was younger about the crew of a WWII ship trapped underwater. In it, the ship is found by the rescue fleet but they can’t figure out a way to get down to the men trapped below. So the men below have only two ways to die: the rescue attempt or slowly suffocating to death. I won’t spoil anything nor bore you with more details but the film serves to illustrate my problem and the problem of many fans outside the US and Japan. We are told to support the industry which we do by buying either local DVD/BD distributors or by buying American distributors titles. But we have no local distributors or companies streaming content so we are now suffocating. Otherwise our only option is to watch fansubs. Because relying on legal streaming from US companies is like waiting to be rescued: Some of us just won’t get picked up.

US distributors have made piecemeal efforts to help international fans watch legal streams. I have spoken before about Funimation’s PR disaster with their video service for non-US fans. And the worst part about Funimation is they’re not even consistent: I can watch some of their shows on their official Youtube channel but I can’t watch anything on their own site.

Bandai Entertainment? They are a joke. I genuinely feel sorry for the people who work there. They have two offices: one in the US and one in Europe and they might as well be on different plains of existence. I don’t care that they are controlled by different divisions of Bandai, it’s the same damned company. Alexander Graham Bell invented something called the telephone, Tim Berners-Lee invented the internet and Ray Tomlinson invented the email. Eeveryone’s got them and they all work in some form or another. You might want to talk with each other, Bandai.

Section23, Sentai FilmWorks and The Anime Network. They try. Really, they do. They’re just not big enough to have every show available to everyone.

Wow, VIZ Media has a postal address in Europe and announces from time to time that a series they own is showing in Italy. That’s nice.

Sony have Animax and has been waiting any day now since 2007 to launch a English language version of Animax in Europe. Any day now. Did I mention it was Sony?

Hulu have wanted to go into Europe for a while now but the market simply isn’t there and so they’re concentrating on their upcoming paid service instead as a source of revenue. Besides, you would still have Japanese companies calling the shots so that’s just as bad.

On the other side of the world in Australia, Madman Entertainment streams full episodes of Highschool of the Dead for Australian and New Zealand users and geo-locks out everyone else. If I want to watch a legal stream of that title, I can’t. Because in the US, the Anime Network has that series and they’ve geo-locked the streams to the US. So my only option if I want to watch it now is to download it as a fansub (I have not done this) or wait to the DVD’s come out. In three or four months time. Like it was still 2005. And Japan could still charge 2 million dollars for a series.

“Neutral parties and Home Guard actions don’t count for squat.”

So that leaves only two groups left that I can turn to. A large enough local distributor or a neutral third party, neither a streaming service nor distributor. From where I am, that means Manga Entertainment as the local distributor and Anime News Network as the third party. Let’s tackle Manga first.

Manga has changed a lot since it’s early days. When it was at it’s height, it ruled the UK/Ireland with an iron fist as nobody else really had any offices on this side of the Atlantic. These days, it sub-licenses a lot of its titles from either Funimation or Bandai. As such, it doesn’t have the presence it did back in the early 90′s. Recently they stated on their Twitter feed that they were definitely looking into getting their own streaming service going. A full two years after Crunchyroll started doing legal streams and a full year after Funimation started doing theirs. This is too slow. And if I can buy a legal copy of Manga’s DVD or BD’s here in Ireland, I expect to be able to avail of their legal streaming sites. If you can take my money one way, you should have no problem taking my money in another way. And asking one person to be the face of Manga’s PR is too much to ask. Jerome should have more people with him.

Lastly, Anime News Network. This is the one organisation that I just can’t understand why it is set up the way it is. Anime News Network’s Justin Sevakis, a person I respect as a person who seems to understand what it’s like to a global fan of Japanese animation, once wrote an open letter to the anime industry calling for streaming services to combat the “me” generation attitude to wanting anime right now and for companies to take a more forceful approach to fansubbers. In his letter he stated on the subject of streaming services and I quote:

…There are myriad ways of supporting such a venture. A low subscription price. Advertising. But it has to exist, and it has to be easier to use than bittorrent. It has to show new anime DAYS after it airs in Japan. It has to be available to most of the world. It can’t lock out Mac or Linux users. All of these are reasons people will use to justify continued piracy.

I paid particular attention to the sentence “It has to be available to most of the world.” The Japanese companies and US companies started to take heed to the points raised by Mr. Sevakis so why didn’t they notice this one? When you’re practically giving your content away, for free in some cases, why is the US top of your list? If the customers are under no obligation to buy your products why discriminate about who your customers are? While US companies are sometimes restricted in where they can distribute their content, Japanese companies have no such hindrance. This brings me to the ANN. Recently they started to stream full anime episodes on their site for users and visitors to come and watch. But it’s only for the US and/or Canada. Now, I know that ANN is based in US/Canada so they may be hindered by agreements with the Japanese companies they deal with but the rest of the site is open to all users. To use a simple analogy, it would be like going in a HMV and wanting to buy a blu ray with cash only to told the blu ray’s are for credit card customers alone. Why is my physical money not good enough? Why does ANN allow it’s users to access all the site if a proportion can’t visit certain parts? I am my mother’s son, in that I see the world in black and white as she does. If you can’t offer the whole site to everyone then close all of it off to non-US users. I didn’t see the name of the site change to the “American Anime News Network” any time recently so that must mean that they treat anime as a global subject matter, with fans able to connect and understand the medium’s strengths and limitations even if they themselves are not Japanese and therefore are equal in each others eyes. That the fact that Mr. Sevakis is the person in charge of the video streaming services on ANN and he’s the one who advocated that the majority of non-Japanese fans should have access to anime saddens me. I fully understand that neither Justin Sevakis not any of the other ANN staff need to make my ability to watch anime on their site, their life’s mission, it’s just that I don’t understand why I don’t have someone,fighting for me and others like me, in my corner. The vast majority of ANN users from the US/Canada didn’t know that the site would one day stream free video so why was there no consideration given to non-US fans?

“Is it the end of fandom history?”

I want to state that I understand that there are certain market realities that prevent me from getting what I want from my anime wish list. I also understand that for the companies I’ve mentioned, it’s nothing personal on their part. I know they’re not plotting to ruin my day by taking my anime and throwing me out of the sandbox. What I need them to understand is that I’m tired of playing by the rules like everyone else and getting nothing for my loyalty. I could be like a lot of other people and just pirate away but that would make me just as bad. What I want to know is why is my opinion so undervalued? Why does my ZIP code mean I’m a second class fan of anime? Why is my interest in this medium not good enough? And when did where you come from dictate what you were able access on something as vast and open as the World Wide Web? I’ve been told that unless we all work together then the enemy at the gates (illegal fansub streaming and BT sites) will destroy it all. But me and everyone in the non-US squad are being put out to be machine gunned down with no covering fire.

I think what it boils down to is this: with the passing of the older models of anime distribution in the West, we are seeing the end of one generation of fans for whom there were no barriers. If old school tape traders or US anime companies had access to anime then everyone who’d listen to them had access to it, whether you lived in their local country or not. Just because your address was in Islington or New York or Calais didn’t mean you were left out. If you loved anime enough, you found a way. And if you couldn’t find a way then there was a network of people who could help you.

Today fans who grew up in the shadow of the early tape trading days, and even further back than that, can be divided into three camps: the ones who, by accident of citizenship, live in a country that things like Hulu, Crunchyroll and so on are taken for granted; the ones who, by accident of birth, live in a country that their own local distributors, US and Japanese companies consider to be unimportant enough to ignore; and the ones for whom the fact that they need only press a button and cares of legalities fly away. For the record, I’m in the second camp.

Today the people who lead the industry have only their own local concerns to think of and don’t seem to care that anime fandom doesn’t stop at their back doors. Unless global audiences are taken into account when concepts like free/subscription streaming services are decided, then the selfish fandom the industry wishes so hard to change will morph into two groups, neither of them much good. There will be the ones who stole everything or stood idly by or tried to play it straight and got rewarded by having the latest shows given to them for next to nothing. And then there will be the ones who did much the same things but won’t get anything simply because they lived in the next town over.

Will all of this stop me from doing the right and keep on buying my anime and paying subscriptions? No, but it’ll just mean that the person next to me in the same area as me is less likely to want to support the industry simply by the way they’re treated.

Finally, to the Japanese companies I have this to say: We are here. We are very small in numbers but if you would just stop ignoring us you would notice that among all the Spanish, French or German fans in Europe, there is a small colony of English speaking fans who would happily go with your plans. You just have to notice us.

To everyone who reads this: tweet this, share it on Buzz, Bing, Facebook, whatever it takes. Send it to any anime companies you know of. Even if you’re not in a country that gets affected like this, pass it on. I’m tired of feeling like I’m alone out here.

(Please note that I’m not a business major nor do I have any insider information by which to base these ideas. Therefore all ideas expressed herein should be treated as mere opinion and stronger research is advised.)

A great man, a visionary director and a masterful storyteller. He showed us at Eeeper’s Choice that you could mess with an audiences head, entertain them, get your point across and STILL not talk down to them or treat them like imbeciles. Myself and Oni are saddened by the world’s loss of Kon-senpai and wish to take this opportunity to extend our condolences and sympathies to his wife, family, friends, work colleagues and, indeed, his fans wherever they are right now.

We were going to tackle some of his works on the show, always with a “we’ll get round to it soon” attitude, but now instead of just celebrating his works, we’ll be celebrating him as a filmmaker and person as well. We hope when these shows DO come out, that we’ll do Kon-senpai justice. I will not be posting any links regarding his death or any of his works as I know the people who already know about him don’t need them and for the ones who have never encountered his works, go discover them for yourself. They’re all good, all of them.

I know that some of our friends on Twitter and in the blogging and podcasting realm are hurting right now at his loss, especially the ones who actually had the privilege and honour of meeting him (God, how I envy you), so I can only sign off with these words of Percy Shelley, speaking of the death of his friend and fellow poet, John Keats. Given the nature of Satoshi Kon’s works, I thought it appropriate.

“Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep –
He hath awakened from the dream of life…”

Download audio file (ECP_Season_2_Official_01.mp3)

Direct Download

Hope you guys enjoy the show. We’re finally back having fun with the show and not treating it like work or a college assignment. Please note this uses explicit language

Promos played:
The Speakeasy Podcast (A great podcast run The Reverse Thieves, NarutakiRT and HisuiRT, if you can figure out who’s who )
Weeaboobies(Come on, girls! Release another show!)
Dave and Joel(They invoked Vernon Wells on their latest show. Yep, Vernon Wells)

Oh, and don’t bother asking about the post title. I’m not telling you.

Guest podcast appearance on anime3000. I’ll post the link later today.You can find it here It was good hanging out with Michael from Anime Diet and Gia from Anime Vice with Sean Russell from Anime3000 moderating the madness. Check out the links in the sidebar for the addresses.

Helen is an absolute goldmine of information and anyone with an interest in Japanese pop culture or anime should really attend.

The weekend runs from Sat March 28th-Sun March 29th.

Direct Download

Download audio file (ECP_Helen_McCarthy_interview.mp3)

This audio pertains to:

Daryl Surat: Prophet or Doom-Lord?

God

God Mark II

Extra links:

Helen’s website