Infinite fandom stopped beating its heart,
And anime series burnt away without making a sound,
Not a soul notices as fans become dislocated
and all is engulfed in the flames of the animeblogosphere.
Archive for the 'musings' Category
Infinite fandom stopped beating its heart,
And anime series burnt away without making a sound,
Not a soul notices as fans become dislocated
and all is engulfed in the flames of the animeblogosphere.
Besides being a great Ayako Kawasumi in-joke, Jason’s first pronouncement (depicted here - *Warning: possible Fate/Stay Night Spoiler - oh please let it turn out to be a spoiler!!!*) on what would give him pause to quit watching anime also got me thinking about my own Ultimate Fan Service wish. Ya know, official fan service that r0xx0r your socks off so much that one feels that it can never be surpassed and that there’s nothing left to see after that. I almost reached that point after seeing that legendary (and rumoured to official) Evangelion clip where Instrumentality = Shinji bonking Asuka, Rei, Misato and every female member of the cast with Gendou watching and commenting.
Fanfics and fanart essentially rely on that something left that isn’t officially developed in the series but is often hinted at. Or it’s just complete and utter wish fulfillment without any real basis on the canon. Sometimes I wonder if the studios and other creative talents deliberately leave this space to tease the fans (think ShizNats) and to create that buzz which outlives a series air-time on TV schedules or DVD release dates (or BT seed/tracker longevity :P).
Like Jason’s second pronouncement, my own “The End of Anime Watching: Nothing Left To See” ideas revolve around various female characters having the s3xx0r. Right now, I wouldn’t mind a SHUFFLE! OVA which takes the cast a few years into the future when Rin’s married all the girls, Shinkai-style but has now become one of those Mysteriously Absent Husbands. Asa, Kaede, Lisianthus/Kikyou, Nerine, Primula and Kareha are now (edit: sorta de facto) widows in the mould of Ama Shigure, Aki Hinata, Chigusa Sakai et al. A day in the life of the Desperate Tsuchimi Housewives, centred around a visit by a much blossomed Tsubomi while the girls try to present a facade of domestic bliss and normality amidst their intra-marital affairs and manoeuvrings. Of course, no kids yet as Rin is never around and all the girls have are each other. :D~~~
Jason’s new pronouncements may supercede past pronouncements but my own pronouncements are culmulative. Besides as wise man once say: Sky outside got sky, person above got person; one mountain still got one mountain high. (天外有天，人上有人；一山还有一山高。) Just when you thought you’ve seen everything, something comes along that makes even the most jaded fans go ZOMGWTFBBQ!!! ;)
The recent retirements of Tensai11 and Jeff Lawson as well as the long hiatus announcement over at itsumo feels like the loss of Fujiwara no Sai and Touya Kouyo Meijin in the world of Hikaru no Go to this blogger and perhaps signals the beginning of the end of an era in anime blogging. While longstanding pillars of the community, like Matthew and the Sea Slugs Team, continue to be active, others like Miwa and Momotato Daioh have gone worryingly inactive. But as with Hikaru no Go, newcomers continue to appear and infuse new blood into the community.
A common theme is burnout after the demands of anime blogging assume assume the characteristics of regular drudgery work as the passion of the hobby fades. This post, spurred by Jason Miao and Moyism (Life Line by Line)’s recent enunciations of their blogging methods, argues that while the primary motivation of anime blogging should indeed be fun and enjoyment, academic methods (which is often associated with work or homework) do have a place in helping improve quality, save time and even enhance personal satisfaction.
Continue reading ‘Exploring Methodologies in Anime Blogging: An Arts & Humanities Perspective’
After some very depressing reporting on the caustic soad/AcidFlask incident, Han presents his report and reflections on presentations by Larry Lessig and Joi Itou at the Alfred Deakin Innovation Lectures (2005-04-29 to 05-12).
I am in almost complete agreement with his agreement with Joi Itou’s point that file sharing can create “gained fans” and not “lost customers”. File sharing creates fans who might not otherwise even know about the anime. This increases the market for the anime. Hardcare fans are then likely to increase revenue and profits by purchasing the anime and its related goods, often through online merchants like cdjapan and Amazon.co.jp or even going to the Source (i.e. Jp). Hardcare core fans also tend to want to show their love and support for the anime, its characters, production studios, mangaka, seiyuu etc in the most powerful way by voting, capitalism-style (i.e. spending money to consume). Thus market, revenue and profits increase without the need to spend on advertising.
My views diverge at this point. Firstly, a lot of anime series are actually advertising, very compelling advertising with plots and recurrent characters. The main point is not to making money from the anime itself (pay TV subscription and DVD sales) but from the merchandising involved (e.g. all those anime with plenty of cute girls, countless robots models or monster minions). So actually file-sharing is just an unauthorised means of it achieving its objectives. Some companies might not object to the ends (more market, revenue and profits) but worry about loss of control of means (broadcast, distribution, copyright).
Secondly, companies tend to be obsessed with opportunity cost when looking at the file-sharing issue. Not everyone who downloads an AVI file of an anime will buy the DVD, even if they enjoyed the anime immensely and have great love/support/respect for the anime, its characters, production studios, mangaka, seiyuu etc. In Jp, if you buy the DVDs you’re considered a hardcore fan since you would have already probably seen it on pay TV. (In fact, it would be extremely interesting to do some proper qualitative research on what percentage of downloaders actually buy genuine after that.) Companies who naturally salivate at the thought of all that revenue that they could have gotten if all the downloaders had to pay first and this sum probably dwarfs the sum that results from fans who pay after. Counter-argument against opportunity cost is that fans who have never seen or even heard of the anime if not for file-sharing as no file sharing, no potential sales thus actually there is opportunity cost from stopping file-sharing.
The third point is an extension of the second. A lot of the argument for file-sharing creating market share lies in the inadequate and untimely process by which an anime is licensed and then distributed in countries outside Jp (after all, this issue does not even exist in Jp!) However if licensing and distribution is timely then file-sharing becomes a fairly clear-cut case of theft. There might be arguments over the poor quality of non-fansubbed subs or whether a licensee is really the license holder in your country (at least this issue exists in the minds of many Sg’rean fans) but if it is commercially available then the fansubs should be a complement to the genuine goods rather than a substitute, even you are a poor student. Thus fansub groups sometimes stop subbing and distributing after the anime is licensed in their country. They also often add a rider in their subs to urge people to stop distribution via file-sharing after the anime is licensed. Apparently the North American market has come a long way in this respect from seven to eight years ago.
Fourthly, prices also play a factor. Piracy of VCDs and DVDs of conventional movies was extremely rampant in the late 1980s and 1990s but was eventually subdued in Sg, partly due to heavy enforcement action (supply-side) but equally important, prices came down to earth (demand-side). While I was a great fan of Ghost in the Shell: Standalone Complex, the boxed set of 13 DVDs cost JPY 78,000 (SGD 1,200) without English subs! While this might be fairly priced for the Jp, it certainly won’t wash here in Sg. (This is less of an issue now, given what I see in the shops.)
In conclusion, I think file-sharing is here to stay, in a big way, until licensing and distribution is improved and pricing done fairly and sensibly. - Zyl
Supporting material for the next post about GAINAX and its continued milking of Evangelion. Got this from an email circulated around a few years ago which, of course, I got it from my dad a few weeks ago. It’s amazing how old jokes get resurrected when our parents actually start to enjoy using email. Anyhowz the geneology of cow jokes is discussed in Wikipedia as well as a collection of jokes .
TRADITIONAL CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You sell one and buy a bull.
Your herd multiplies and the economy grows.
You sell them and retire on the income.
AN AMERICAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You sell one and force the other to produce the milk of four cows.
You are surprised when the cow drops dead.
A FRENCH CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You go on strike because you want three cows.
A JAPANESE CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk.
You then create clever cow cartoon images called “Cowkimon” and market them world-wide.
A GERMAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You re-engineer them so they live for 100 years, eat once a month,
and milk themselves.
A BRITISH CORPORATION
You have two cows.
Both are mad.
AN ITALIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows, but you don’t know where they are.
You break for lunch.
A SWISS CORPORATION
You have 5,000 cows and none of which belong to you.
You charge others for storing them.
A CHINESE CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You have 300 people milking them.
You claim full employment and high bovine productivity.
You have the newsman who reported on the numbers arrested.
AN INDIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You worship them.
A SINGAPOREAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
One cow-peh and one cow-bu.