9 Comments

I am sad to say I may have directly contributed to Japan’s demise here! Last year a German company paid me to record me playing my conch for a Sengoku-jidai game they were making. I guess I should be more careful! (/sarcasm)

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That's actually really cool! Hope you can post details about it sometime.

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Me too actually, haven't heard back from them!

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Stellar analysis and reportage as always - but it all begs the question:

What, exactly, is your preferred cup of green tea?

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That powdered stuff at the conveyor-belt sushi place? I jest. I am nowhere near knowledgeable enough to have a preferred brand!

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Somehow, the scenario you presents resembles a lot what happened with Brazilian and Mexican telenovelas. The two countries not only dominate this marketing in Latin America, but also succeed in export their audiovisual pieces overseas, gaining a captive public in countries like Portugal, Mozambique, Turkey, China and even the URSS. But time passes and the ones who import the telenovelas from Mexico and Brazil now made their own telenovelas. Today, Turkey, Portugal and Chine not only excels in the production of that genre, but also exports for Mexico and Brazil, which current production of telenovelas pales on what used to be.

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Oct 31·edited Oct 31Author

It's only natural that when something hits, others will attempt to copy it. The manga world is going to be more "resistant" to replication due to the peculiar structure of the Japanese manga editorial system. But anime is already being copied and absorbed by foreign producers. It may well be that we see a split, with made-in-Japan productions dominating the Japanese marketplace and foreign-made Japanese-style ones proliferating abroad (as is the case with mobile gaming today.)

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Eh, I see it as another part of both the domestic and global cultural dialectic, the latter of which is getting the most attention and the former of which is far past its prime, a shadow of its old self.

And that’s fine, or at least within the logic of this version of modernity: it’s just another sociological superposition collapsing in on itself to reflect economic realism.

What concerns me is not anime’s growing popularity; it’s that the facade that is Anime Inc. doesn’t reflect the conditions on the ground, made evident by the occasional but always sad story about inhuman work environments in the industry getting reliably drowned by those that flaunt the miraculous power of the industry. Meaning, the public won’t or can’t accept the truth in the face of the spectacle.

That leaves a creative void in part of Japan’s cultural profile/portfolio/self, which will not be filled until the spectacle loses its luster and forces a new outlet to burst into existence. The same can be said of most of Japan Inc., the important thing now is to set the stage to best support those new pursuits when they begin to emerge.

Which, I think, is now just starting.

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I agree, and I think a big part of the problem is how little even hardcore anime fans know about the creative ecosystem in Japan. I hope to start addressing that in the months to come.

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