Naisho no Tsubomi

An article from the non-stop trashy J-news section of Mainichi Shimbun. The title of the article that starts with "Creepy Geeks" is hilarious. And if you're into trashy J-news, there are plenty of links to the rest of the site that should satisfy you.

The plane! The plane!

"Aww.. I was hoping to meet a girl in Australia"
"C'mon! African warzone! Ship of death!!"

Well, this movie, Sahara, was pretty bad. You might have noticed a recent increase in blogging activity. This is due to the increased amount of time I've spent flying recently (lots of sitting around in airports and airplane seats) combined with using the blog-by-email feature with my blackberry.

Retaining Fandom

At a recent panel at the Japan Society, Lawrence defined otaku as an anime fan who is part of a social network devoted to the subject. This network is a defining aspect of otaku and thus isolation behavior like hikikomori, which seems superficially similar, is actually quite different and distant. By this metric, I can precisely set the amount of time l have been an otaku at a few months shy of 11 years. This definition also allows me to more precisely define the people I know who have deserted their previous otaku affiliation and sets the number at somewhat larger than I originally considered. (Mostly because I'd only previously considered people who abandoned the field in college.)

I have often wondered why it is that more than a decade later, I remain a dedicated otaku whereas so many other people I know of have defected. Lawrence's definition makes the reason remarkably clear; the network is everything. It is really no surprise that as I have remained an otaku, so has my circle of otaku friends, despite passing through several major life-changing mileposts such as the transition to full time employment, marriage. and childbirth. So then the real question is, how has our otaku network from CJAS endured and maintained its intensity?

The influence of IRC is one obvious starting point. Having a kind of 24h shared living room with global reach is a powerful stabilizing force. Something very different than what can be had through one-to-one channels like phone or IM. However, the mere presence of IRC alone is not enough. There is something peculiar about the way we use this medium. We use IRC precisely like a living room, perhaps even the living room at F1 in particular. However, that is not the dominant or even normal use of the technology in the broader context of Internet usage. Our IRC is very personal with its own social customs. It is not only designed to connect people who are already connected in real life, but also to perpetuate the type of interaction they have when physically colocated.

Virtual association is also not the only factor. Organizing annual or semiannual gatherings would also be a factor. But there is also something peculiar about the way these events go. In reunion-type activities, the time is often filled with a lot of catching-up and reminiscing. Our gatherings usually entail primarily new exploration and activities and very little "relinking". More like a weekend gathering of nearby friends similar to when I do stuff with Rourke and Jen. Obviously IRC has a lot to do with it, but I am surprised and intruigued (although perhaps I shouldn't) that upon resyncing IRL, we find that our virtual windows into each others circumstances are mostly both accurate and complete.

One thing that seems to be the case is that this situation of persistent and long-lived cohesion is somewhat rare , and that I, from an insider's perspective, find it extremely valuable. It's hard to imagine living without it. I have some idea of how it came to be about and see how there was a very lucky confluence of events and personalities. Thinking about this topic leads to the question of how such enduring networks can be created. Can what was discovered by luck be re-created through skill? How important is the group's common-activity based root? What about other contexts like work or shared affilitation (like school alumni or neighborhoods)?

Beck

There seems to be a lull in really watchable new shows this season, so I've been loading up some of last season's shows that I've missed, plus Gundam Seed Destiny. GSD is actually a mixed bag, with episodes that are painful to watch about twice as frequent as those that are really satisfying, but I've already invested in the startup cost for getting into the series and this is one of those shows that I feel provides value by making me informed about the scene.

On contrast to this, although still shounen, is Beck. Beck is in the "band" genre, which means that it covers the formation and development of a musical group. While fairly well represented in manga, few of these titles are animated. Thus among its animated peers, I can only cite Kaikan Phrase (a TV series) and To-Y (a much older OVA), although there are possibly more which I do not know of. I find shows of this type interesting because it's a male-oriented genre that is less apt to get embroiled in the adolescent power and sex fantasies that are so common with this audience. Even series that I like such as Naruto and Hunter X Hunter are at their core, vehicles for boys who feel powerless to empower themselves in their imaginations. A similar motivation exists at the core girl-oriented titles like Ichigo 100% (need I spell it out for you more explicitly?). Since they strike their target audience at such a basic level, it's no surprise that these genres dominate the scene.

Beck is a refreshing change from this onslaught. The story focuses on a high school boy who meets an American-raised Japanese guy with an impressive history and future band aspirations. The main character, who has no musical experience, gets starstruck and becomes embroiled in the long and difficult process of learning to sing, play guitar, and all the stuff it takes to make a band. But really, watching Beck also makes me wonder why this genre seems to be a better vehicle for dramatic and realistic storytelling compared to other shounen genres.

One of the things that has attracted me to this genre after seeing To-Y is that shows in this kind expand the boundaries of anime awareness beyond the stereotypical robots/magic/girls definitions while at the same time presenting a different kind of storytelling and focus than female-targeted titles. And I wonder, why is this the case? One possibility is that despite being about music, manga is a silent medium and song production is fairly expensive for anime. Thus, without the ability to directly represent the core content theme, creators need to take an indirect approach and put their efforts into making the writing represent the effect that music has upon its participants.

In contrast to this, shoujo manga, which faces a similar task of indirectly representing emotions and dramatic tension, often draws upon visual cues like background changes or character deformations for indirect expression. Of course that begs the question of why band anime do not draw heavily on visual cues. Since my band anime exposure is limited to 3 titles and my manga exposure is almost nonexistant, I don't even know where to begin to answer that question.

So, what band titles should I read and watch?

Cost of Anime Production

A number of years ago, I was at a panel at FanimeCon listening to Hiroyuki Yamaga of Gainax describe the anime production process. What was striking was that he gave a number, something like $10K-$20K per episode. But after doing more research for the previous entry on the overall cost to make an episode, there is a big gap between what I remember and what I've found in articles on the topic.

Well, I recently came across two articles that might cast some light on the topic. One from the Telegraph and one from Asahi Shimbun. These two articles pin the $10K-$20K number as the cost per episode for the animation of a TV episode, further boiling the numbers down to the pitiful salary that most Japanese animators earn (as low as ~¥600,000/year or less than $6000). The Asahi one also pegs a low-end for the amount paid to an animation studio at ¥10M or less than $100K for a whole series, although not indicating if it is 13 or 26 episodes.

Assuming 13 episodes, that means <~$8K per episode, which is pretty cheap. But also doesn't include other production costs (like voice talent and sound engineering) outside of animation.

Since these figures are for bottom-of-the-barrel animation (at least that's the impression given in these articles), it would be hard to use them to determine what % of total production cost the animation is. The cheapest anime I've found so far is Pokemon at $100K/episode. But while Pokemon is no animation extravaganza, it is unlikely to be the cheapest late-night crap available (anyone remember the Eat-Man TV series which seemed to be barely animated at all with a pallete of maybe 16 colors?).

If I start making wild guesses like say, halving the cost of Pokemon to arrive at $50K/ep total for a cheap-ass show, then $8K for animation would result in 16% of the total cost. With a conservative halving and doubling range, I might be willing to place an estimate at 8-32% of cost, but you'd want to do some serious sensitivity analysis for any model you created based on this number.