Category Archives: musings

Courage, Wife and Downloading

I wanted to write about an NGO’s report that filesharers buy more media stuff than non-filesharers but the initial Slashdot post was a bit thin and the report is only available in Dutch. Today another post on the same report … Continue reading

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CIO-KCL research seminar on Japan’s manga and anime industries

Got wind of this seminar, organized by the Creative Industries Observatory, via Anime Infatuation, and popped by Strand Poly yesterday. A quick rundown of my main takeaways and reflections on the presentations.

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Anime piracy as a demand creation and sales generation phenomenon

Dr Nissim Kadosh Otmazgin, Kyoto University, recently published an article ‘Contesting soft power: Japanese popular culture in East and Southeast Asia’, International Relations of the Asia Pacific, Vol.8 No.1 (2007) which examines the relationship between Japanese cultural products and Japanese … Continue reading

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On the consideration of the similarities and dissimilarities between the Malus and Citrus genera

Cory of Renegade Anime Blog poses the interesting question of whether anime blog aggregators operating on ‘closed garden’ (blogsuki) versus ‘open acceptance’ (animenano) principles result in less episode summary/reviews and more editorial posts being showcased. Based on the data presented, … Continue reading

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Female revolt in male cultural imagination in contemporary Japan

Sharon Kinsella, currently Visiting Professor at MIT’s Dept of Foreign Languages and Literature, delivered the 4th Chino Kaori lecture on the above-mentioned title at my alma mater, SOAS, on 2006-10-20. Among Kinsella’s published work, her most famous to date is … Continue reading

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Anti-Americanism in Anime

In Anime Podcast #10, JP Meyer gave a pithy response, along the lines of "not really", to a comment and question by Thor about whether increased anti-US sentiment in anime will affect anime sales in the US. I shared Thor’s … Continue reading

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The End of Animeblogelion

From time to time, anime bloggers have halted their quests for anime instrumentality – common reasons include "No time!", "Hobby has become like work!", "Nothing worth to blog about…", "Does anyone even read what I write?", "I’ve been arrested by … Continue reading

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