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Ariane Beldi

Special Issue CFP: Transnational Boys' Love Fan Studies (March 2013) - 2 views

journal.transformativeworks.org/...19

website online journal english html textual pdf article academic social sciences theory method fandom public reception audience studies cfp BL

shared by Ariane Beldi on 15 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • Ariane Beldi on 15 Nov 11
     
    "'BL' (Boys' Love), a genre of male homosexual narratives (consisting of manga, novels, animations, games, films, and so forth) written by and for women, has recently been acknowledged, by Japanese and non-Japanese scholars alike, as a significant component of Japanese popular culture. The aesthetic and style of Japanese BL have also been assumed, deployed and transformed by female fans transnationally. The current thrust of transnational BL practices raises a number of important issues relating to socio/cultural constructs of BL localization and globalization. Scholarly endeavors in relation to BL can be enriched by further research concerning the activities of transnational BL fans, fan communities, fandom, and the production of fan fiction. Most previous BL fan studies have remained circumscribed to Japan and North America. Therefore, in order to further develop transnational BL fan studies, we are seeking contributors who are engaged in the exploration of non-Japanese and non-North American contexts (e.g. Europe, the Asia-Pacific region, Africa, and others). Transnational BL fan studies may also be incorporated into the broader socio/political critical frameworks offered by studies in economics, gender/sexuality, race/class, and other areas. "
  • Ariane Beldi on 15 Nov 11
     
    For those who are studying fandom and Boy's Love, this might be an opportunity to share your researches!
Nele Noppe

Comic Market: How the World's Biggest Amateur Comic Fair Shaped Japanese Dōji... - 0 views

muse.jhu.edu/...5.lam.html

academic manga dojinshi fans manga_industry

shared by Nele Noppe on 26 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • the world's largest regular gathering of comic fans today is Tokyo's biannual Comic Market
  • dōjinshi phenomenon did not start with Comic Market, Comike and dōjinshi are inextricably linked, having shaped each other's history for three decades.
  • Comike convention has shaped the most important trends defining the development of dōjinshi in Japan today
  • ...29 more annotations...
  • In 1975, a woman who had made critical remarks about the Manga Taikai was excluded from that convention, and [End Page 234] subsequently a firestorm of anger among fans produced a movement against the Manga Taikai led by the famous circle Meikyū (Labyrinth), which resulted in the conception of a new alternative convention. On December 21, 1975, the first Comic Market—"a fan event from fans for fans"—was held in Tokyo.6
  • [End Page 232]
  • [End Page 233]
  • Comike's underlying vision was of an open and unrestricted dōjinshi fair, offering a marketplace without limitations on content or access.
  • With the advent of these fan-consumers (as opposed to fan-creators), dōjinshi became demand-driven publications. Greater competition gradually fostered rising standards of quality, which in turn attracted more circles and buyers. Higher sales shrank production costs and boosted profits, which could then be reinvested in the dōjinshi themselves. Small printing companies, many of which had begun in the minikomi (microcommunication) boom of the early 1970s, were able to use the profits derived from greater demand for their services to modernize their equipment, lowering production costs further and enabling them to construct their production schedules around each Comike.8 Additionally, lower printing costs freed smaller groups from the dependence on bigger groups, which often had strict rules on content and style to avoid conflict among their many members. Having lost their raison d'être, these big clubs and circles gradually faded away, leaving dōjinshi creators to produce stories they liked, in the manner they liked.9
  • [End Page 235]
  • aniparo parodied popular anime series, and in doing so, attracted a new type of fan to Comike, beyond its core group of 2000 or so attendees. These were female fans, mostly middle and high school students strongly influenced by the 1970s florescence of shōjo manga. They began to create and consume dōjinshi in which the (bishōnen or "pretty boy") male protagonists of popular anime and manga were transposed into a very particular sort of erotic story typified by the phrase: "without tension" (yama nashi), "without punchline" (ochi nashi), and "without meaning" (imi nashi)—and hence the contemporary genre title, yaoi.10
  • The eleventh Comic Market in spring 1979 saw the popularity of the cute and pure bishōjo or "pretty girl" (strongly influenced by 1970s shōjo manga) skyrocket among men's dōjinshi circles, attracting many new male participants.
  • The Comic Market was dominated by women from the beginning (90 percent of its first participants were female), but in 1981, thanks to lolicon, male participants numbered the same as female participants for the first time in Comike's history.13
  • [End Page 236]
  • Internal conflicts on the Comike planning committee underlay some of these developments: they marked the ascendancy of the faction led by Yonezawa Yoshihiro, who favored Comike's unlimited expansion.15 Though he was criticized for purportedly selling dōjinshi out to commercialism, Yonezawa couched his plans for Comike in terms of a collective organization of the convention by all participants, including staff, circles, and visitors.16 Whatever the underlying reality, these public principles remain little changed today.17
  • Faced with this loss of identity, talent, and space, every other large fan convention except Comike dissolved. Yaoi Boom But in the middle of the decade, one manga and its anime not only saved dōjinshi fandom from near extinction but was responsible for its biggest boom yet. Takahashi Yōichi's Captain Tsubasa (1981–88, Kyaputen tsubasa),
  • [End Page 237]
  • New dōjinshi conventions appeared, and manga shops began selling dōjinshi on commission. Comparatively lush, custom-made, oversized dōjinshi with more than one hundred pages became common, and popular circles could now live on their fanworks' profits
  • professional creators like Toriyama Akira of Dragonball fame participating,
  • [End Page 238]
  • Despite the self-censorship brought on by the mass media's criticism, Comike nevertheless continued to thrive. Young men tired of new, tighter restrictions on professional manga turned to Comike, and attendance once again swelled to 230,000 in the summer of 1990.23 Hardcore lolicon was now passé, and erotic dōjinshi for men had greatly changed. New genres were introduced with such aspects as fetishism and a new style of softcore eroticism enjoyed by men and women alike; in particular, yuri (lily), or lesbian stories, emerged.24Dōjinshi also became smaller and shorter due to professional publishers recruiting talented dōjinshi creators en masse: the bulk of dōjinshi were the works of the less talented creators left behind.25
  • Other factors contributing to the increased interest in dōjinshi and in fanworks were the development of fixed otaku landmarks and the spread of computers. Almost everyone could now afford to make digital dōjinshi as well as audiovisual or even interactive dōjinshi (i.e. dōjin music and dōjin games).
  • The personal technology revolution meant [End Page 239] simplification of fanworks' production processes as well as completely new possibilities for communication and new digital genres. With the growth of dōjinshi in other media, the term "dōjin products" (dōjin seihin) has gradually come into use to describe fanworks of all genres.
  • Further, the conversion of Tokyo's Akihabara "Electric Town" into a district full of shops selling otaku-related goods, as well as the nationwide expansion of otaku-goods retailers and the establishment of Internet communities and message boards in the late 1990s, enabled otaku to live out their interests and to communicate nonstop with like-minded people everywhere. Their interests and culture were easily shared, and consequently information on Comic Market and dōjin culture spread around the world.
  • The rise of the Internet also meant that Comike lost its monopoly as the center of otaku and dōjinshi culture. Nevertheless, Comike remained the most important event for Japanese fans, especially after companies with otaku-related products started to exploit it.28 Firms had been interested in Comic Market for decades as a never-ending pool of promising new talent and as a place to exploit them commercially, and they were willing to pay much money for direct access to these masses of otaku.29 Starting with NEC in the summer of 1995, companies were granted exhibition space to market or to sell their newest products. This was the birth of the dealer booth at Comike, and, as with dōjinshi circles, the number of applicant companies was much higher than that of available spaces: a self-sustaining event with such high attendance was too important for any related company to ignore.30 Companies accepted the existence of unlicensed parody dōjinshi using copyrighted material (albeit in a transformative and thus arguably fair-use manner) since they could now sell exclusive goods at Comike (Figure 3) or use it as a marketing place, attracting to the convention people who were not interested in dōjinshi.
  • In the summer of 2004, 5 percent of all circles participating in Comike were headed by a professional mangaka or illustrator, while another 10 percent had some professional experience.
  • Despite its relative newness, Higurashi became one of Japan's biggest media phenomena, and at the seventy-sixth Comic Market in summer 2009, Tōhō Project became the first dōjin title ever to receive the honor of being considered its own genre.
  • [End Page 243]
  • It seems that dōjinshi circles are not switching entirely to the Internet but rather are using it as an informational and marketing platform for themselves and their creations, spreading the knowledge of and fascination with Comic Market to new spheres.
  • With high attendance, positive media attention, and industry support, Comike's position seems invulnerable. Even the deaths of important figures such as Iwata Tsuguo in 2004 and Yonezawa Yoshihiro—who was the face of Comike for decades—in 2006 did not harm its position. But unresolved problems, such as the use of copyrighted material in parody dōjinshi and the child pornography questions inherent in lolicon and shotakon, remain.
  • Comike was neither the first nor the biggest dōjinshi fair when it was established; its main purpose was to provide the freest market possible, and that freedom has come at a price. The dream of a Comic Market open to every one and everything was never realized, as there were too many physical, financial, and legal restrictions. Even today, the Comic Market suffers from a lack of space, a lack of money, and a lack of legal security. Only two-thirds of applicant circles can participate due to constraints, since, as a small independent operator Comike's financial resources are limited and most of the work is done by volunteers.
  • s the center of attention, with its size and its links to the industry, it is undeniable that Comike possesses the power and the means to influence social, market, and even political developments. In [End Page 244]
  • recent years it has not been reluctant to use this power. Whether through conferences on copyright issues or on the establishment of a "National dōjinshi fair liaison group" (Zenkoku dōjinshi sokubaikai renrakukai) in 2000, it has taken on the responsibility of representing and of regulating Japanese dōjinshi culture.
Nele Noppe

Of Otakus and Fansubs - 0 views

www.law.ed.ac.uk/...hatcher.asp

academic anime copyright fans fansubbing internet

shared by Nele Noppe on 06 Dec 07 - Cached
  • hindrances in a digital world that copyright laws pose for creative works that, while technically infringing, should perhaps be valued and allowed.6 Certain features of digital technologies and the internet,7 according to Lessig, can permit greater restrictions on remix than were allowed in the past.8
  • hindrances in a digital world that copyright laws pose for creative works that, while technically infringing, should perhaps be valued and allowed.6 Certain features of digital technologies and the internet,7 according to Lessig, can permit greater restrictions on remix than were allowed in the past.8
  • Lessig and other legal scholars such as Mehra have pointed to dojinshi in Japan as an example of how permitting more “remix” can contribute to a vibrant cultural industry.
  • ...26 more annotations...
  • some artists make a living off producing dojinshi.
  • In the west, fans of anime, the term for Japanese animation, behave much like fans of Star Wars and Star Trek: they “remix” the characters and ideas from the stories they watch.
  • Trekkies or Star Wars fans do the same activities as otaku, but one practice sets anime fans apart from other avid fans: fansubs.
  • Manga also has its own form of fansubs called scanlations
  • Fansubs and scanlations don’t quite match the “traditional” forms of remix that Lessig and others mention. They do not create a “new” work in the same sense as dojinshi, fan films, or AMVs because their aim is to remain faithful to the original work.
  • Fansubs as a cultural product sit at an interesting boundary—between the dojinshi-like fan culture that authors such as Lessig want to encourage and the massive online file trading so vilified by the recording and motion picture industries.
  • examines the anime industry’s unique relationship with fansubbers in the context of the suggestion that it represents a new policy model for online copyright.
  • Section 7 concludes by stating that it is too soon to claim the anime industry as a victory for alternative business models incorporating what most would think of as widespread copyright infringement.
  • Otaku create fansubs because they love anime—in fact, most love all things Japanese.
  • Fansubs predate BitTorrent, broadband, the dotcom boom and bust, and even the World Wide Web.
  • Fansubbers distributed or traded the finished videocassette tapes to others, but because of the time and cost involved of mailing out a physical medium, distribution was limited.
  • At one time fansubs were virtually the only way that fans could watch (and understand) anime.
  • But as with the music industry, the benefits of digital technology and the internet brought problems.46 Fansubbers started to take advantage of faster computers that allowed them to subtitle anime without the need for expensive, specialized equipment.47 This made it easier for more people to fansub because of the lower cost barriers to becoming a fansubber. The internet also meant that fans could meet from around the world, thus making it more likely that fansub groups would form. Today, groups now make digital video files instead of videocassettes.
  • Fansubbed videocassettes offered a poor quality picture and sound that encouraged fans to buy the licensed product when it came out and also limited the number of copies that could be made from a single original cassette (or from 2nd and 3rd generation cassettes).49 Digisubs offer a quality comparable to official (DVD) releases and the ability to make limitless copies.
  • Fansubbers then “release” their fansubs to fans. Distribution happens through all of the regular internet channels, including p2p services (Kazaa, eMule, etc), BitTorrent, IRC, and newsgroups.
  • Lessig essentially asks the question, “Do our laws stifle creativity and sharing to the point where it harms society?”78 Some point to fansubs and anime as part of the answer to this question—when a company allows some illegal activity it actually benefits.
  • Unfortunately for fansubbers, copyright law does not condone their activities.80 International copyright treaties such as the Berne Convention, state that its signatories (such as the United States and Japan) should grant authors the exclusive right to translation.
  • copyright law construes translations as “derivative works”.82 Derivative works are any work “based upon one or more preexisting works.
  • The Japanese legal system may also, as a practical matter, discourage litigation towards fansub groups within Japan,
  • Within Japan, fansubs could potentially be within the law because the Japanese take a more relaxed attitude towards some aspects of copyright law and include private use and non-profit exceptions into their law.
  • For infringements outside of Japan, it is no small wonder that Japanese companies do not bother with the expense of enforcing a right against a group whose infringement affects a distant market with a different legal system.
  • In his article regarding selective copyright enforcement and fansubs, Kirkpatrick argues for a fair use defense under U.S. law for fansub activities based on the cross-cultural value of translations, the non-commercial nature of fansub groups, and the potential market enhancement for the original work.
  • The fact remains that fansubs may create a preferable product for otaku—thus decreasing any market enhancement arguments.
  • One wonders what could be easier than a few clicks of the mouse and a few hours (or less) wait for a file to download, for free. Many video files deliver comparable picture quality and fandubs do exist.
  • Regardless of any potential defense, the law sufficiently tilts towards copyright holders so that they can easily use the threat of suit as enforcement.
  • The sheer cost of defending a copyright suit makes for a powerful incentive for fansubbers to settle, especially since fansubbers make no money from their activities and are unlikely to have any assets.
Ariane Beldi

Australian Anime, Manga & Slash Fans May Run Afoul of Law | Dru Pagliassotti - 1 views

drupagliassotti.com/...lash-fans-may-run-afoul-of-law

blog english textual articles scholar academic Japanese audiovisual entertainment industry manga animes fanwork fanfics series dojinshi reception fans publics

shared by Ariane Beldi on 19 Jan 10 - Cached
  • However, the Australian law is very vaguely worded, and I fear it’s going to cause as much harm as it may cause good. For example, from an academic’s perspective, it’s clear that one of the problems of this legislation is that it will have a very strong chilling effect on Australian scholars interested in studying anime, manga, slash, and yaoi, or even other forms of sex/uality, because of the sheer possibility that clicking on a link, ordering a movie or manga, or even purchasing an academic book or reading a journal article on the subject might expose one to an image that could be interpreted as “child pornography” under Australian law.
  • Ariane Beldi on 20 Jan 10
     
    In 2010 the Australian Government proposes to go ahead with a mandatory ISP-level internet filtering scheme which, if passed into law, could have a massive impact on anime, manga and slash fans. Why manga and slash fans? Because the main target of the law is to prevent the circulation of 'child abuse sexual imagery' - BUT in Australia 'child abuse sexual imagery' covers even FICTIONAL representations and includes 'under age' characters in anime, manga and slash. If the law is passed, any fan site that contains or links to this material could be added to a government 'blacklist' and access denied in Australia.
  • Ariane Beldi on 20 Jan 10
     
    This is an important news for both fans and scholars of fanfictions and dojinshi.
Nele Noppe

Moe and the Potential of Fantasy in Post-Millenial Japan - 2 views

www.japanesestudies.org.uk/...Bryce.html

academic manga anime moe fans characters romance sexuality games kawaii zoomorphism affect emotion visual_language boys_love dojinshi

shared by Nele Noppe on 11 Mar 10 - Cached
  • If kawaii, or the aesthetic of cute, is the longing for the freedom and innocence of youth, manifesting in the junior and high school girl in uniform (Kinsella 1995), then moe is the longing for the purity of characters pre-person, manifesting in androgynous semi and demi human forms. This is called 'jingai,' or outside human, and examples include robots, aliens, dolls and anthropomorphized animals, all stock characters in the moe pantheon. A specific example would be nekomimi, or cat-eared characters. More generally, in order to achieve the desired affect, moe characters are reduced to tiny deformed 'little girl' images with emotive, pupil-less animal eyes
  • I argue fantasy characters offer virtual possibilities and affect
  • Moe is also used by fujoshi, zealous female fans of yaoi, a genre of manga featuring male homosexual romance. However, the word moe indicates a response to fantasy characters, not a specific style, character type or relational pattern. While some things are more likely than others to inspire moe, this paper will focus mainly on the response itself rather than the forms that inspire it.
  • ...43 more annotations...
  • Both otaku and fujoshi
  • The moe character is a 'body without organs' (Deleuze and Guattari 1987), and the response to its virtual potentials is affect.
  • Massumi argues affect is a moment of unformed and unstructured potential (Massumi 2002). The experience, what he calls an 'intensity,' is outside of logical language and conscious control. Moe provides a word to express affect, or to identify a form that resonates and can trigger an intensity.
  • It is for this reason that moe is consistently misunderstood as first and foremost images of young girls instead of a response to virtual potentials
  • In the field interacting with otaku and fujoshi, I was constantly confronted by the concept of moe, and found it necessary to engage it.
  • These are both men and their discourse centers on male otaku, but I will argue from them a more general theory, applied later in the paper to fujoshi structures of desire.
  • Honda, a youth-oriented novelist and self-styled moe critic, defines moe as 'imaginary love'
  • the salient point is his judgment that a relationship with a mediated character or material representations of it is preferable to an interpersonal relationship.
  • the moe man is feminized
  • While recognizing the conservative nature of otaku sexuality, Azuma attempts to account for the schizophrenic presence of perversion in the moe image. For Azuma, otaku are postmodern subjects with multiple personalities engendered by their environment and enthusiastic media consumption
  • To feel moe for all characters in all situations, the narrative connecting characters or moments in time is de-emphasized.
  • cat ears,
  • response is unconnected with 'reality' and thus offers new potentials to construct and express affects.
  • Separating their desire from reality allowed for a new form of affect called moe.
  • Simply stated, moe is about unbounded potential.
  • Moe is affect in response to fantasy forms that emerged from information-consumer culture in Japan in the late stages of capitalism.
  • conditioning of young girls into 'pure consumers'
  • Such a space is disconnected from social and political concerns, and exists for the preservation of the individual.
  • the media and consumption feeding into moe is a specific sort centered on affect.
  • Manga scholar Itou Gou argues that since the end of the 1980s characters in anime, manga and videogames became so appealing that fans desired them even without stories (Itou 2005). Ito dubs such character types 'kyara,' distinct from characters (kyarakutaa) embedded in narratives.
  • Proof of this can be found in the rise of 'parody' doujinshi,
  • The doll-like and semi-human Ayanami became the single most popular and influential character in the history of otaku anime; fans still isolate parts of the character to amplify and rearticulate in fan-produced works to inspire moe.
  • In works featuring these characters, the original work functions as a starting point, and the extended process of producing and consuming moe takes place among fans in online discussions and videos, fan-produced comics (doujinshi), costume roleplay (cosplay) and figures.
  • virtual potentiality
  • That the moe form, the body without organs, is outside personal and social frames is precisely why it triggers affect.
  • 'moe otaku' a superficial fixation on surfaces and accelerated consumption of disposable moe kyara, impetus for him to declare this younger generation culturally 'dead'
  • One man I spoke with said, 'Moe is a wish for compassionate human interaction. Moe is a reaction to characters that are more sincere and pure than human beings are today.' Similarly, another man described moe as 'the ultimate expression of male platonic love.' This, he said, was far more stable and rewarding than 'real' love could ever be. Manga artist Akamatsu Ken stresses that moe is the 'maternal love' (boseiai) latent in men,[xxi] and a 'pure love' (junsui na ai) unrelated to sex, the desire to be calmed when looking at a female infant (biyoujo wo mite nagomitai) (Akamatsu 2005). 'The moe target is dependent on us for security (a child, etc.) or won't betray us (a maid, etc.). Or we are raising it (like a pet)' (Akamatsu 2005). This desire to 'nurture' (ikusei) characters is extremely common among fans. Further, moe is about the moment of affect and resists changes ('betrayal') in the future, or what Akamatsu refers to as a 'moratorium' (moratoriamu). Moe media is approached as something of a sanctuary from society (Okada 2008), and as such is couched in a discourse of purity.
  • I will now demonstrate how it is further possible to reduce people to characters, or to reduce reality to fantasy in pursuit of moe.
  • Association with the two-dimensional world, and lack of depth or access in the three-dimensional world, makes a maid moe.[
  • The appeal of the maid cannot purely be sexual: As many as 35 per cent of customers are women
  • this arose in Japan in the late stages of capitalism as a result of shifts in consumer-information society
  • bias towards male fans of anim
  • aoi erases the female presence because fans say female-male or even female-female couples[xxxvi] are too 'raw' (namanamashii). Put another way, the reality of relationships is removed from yaoi to make the moe response possible.
  • the ambiguous yaoi 'male' is quite literally a body without organs
  • Many other fujoshi I spoke with dated men even as they imagined possibilities of coupling them as characters with other men.[xl] As Saitou points out, the reality of heterosexual relationships and virtual possibilities of homosexual couplings are separate and coexistent (Saitou 2007). Journalist Sugiura Yumiko explains this as the crucial difference between fujoshi and otaku, who approach fantasy as an alternative for things that they actually want but cannot realize in this world (Sugiura 2006).[xli] A fujoshi, for example, would not 'marry' a two-dimensional character the way some otaku advocate;
  • Sugiura is importantly highlighting that fantasy and reality are separate and coexistent, but this is widespread in moe culture and not solely a female quality.[xlii] As much as male otaku boast of their two-dimensional wives, they often do so with levity as a self-conscious performance
  • While it is true that men tend to feel moe for single characters that they can possess while women feel moe for relationships or character couplings, this broad difference is fast disappearing. In truth, the media popular among so-called 'moe otaku' in recent years has come to resemble yaoi aesthetics: multiple girls in a nostalgic or fantastic world with minimal male presence and heightened emphasis on relationships and emotions
  • In all cases, the database (Azuma 2009) is present. The elements that constitute and indicate a certain type of top or bottom, for example glasses or hairstyle or height, are predetermined; any given top or bottom is a construct of defined character traits and behavior.
  • One of the most recognizable features of the moe phenomenon is the anthropomorphization of objects into objects of desire. Otaku turn cats, war machines, household appliances and even men of historical significance into beautiful little girls to trigger moe. Reality is flattened, and from it emerge polymorphous forms of stimulation. Similarly, fujoshi can rearticulate anything into beautiful boys and sexualized yaoi relations. Moe characters can be based on a written description or drawn image, a physical person or even anthropomorphized animals, plants and objects.
  • The erotic fantasy effectively re-mystified their world, adding a layer of potential to the mundane (the very ground under their feet!) and making the familiar queer and exciting. Latent potential so unlocked, the three friends replayed the moe relationship across other potential players such as shampoo and conditioner, knife and spoon, salt and pepper.
  • More startling and subversive is 'moe politics' (seiji moe), where national histories, international relations and imposing world leaders are reduced to moe characters across which yaoi romance can be read.
  • It should be noted that Hetaria was written by a man, and these sorts of stories are becoming increasingly popular among young men known as 'fudanshi' (rotten boys).
  • it precisely because it is pure that it can give birth to such perverse and polymorphous possibilities.
Ariane Beldi

Transformative Works and Cultures - 1 views

journal.transformativeworks.org/...twc

online journal english html textual image pdf academic scholar articles review essay social sciences media studies cultural studies reception community fandom transnationalism theory method

shared by Ariane Beldi on 06 Sep 10 - Cached
  • Ariane Beldi on 06 Sep 10
     
    "Transformative Works and Cultures (TWC) is an international, peer-reviewed journal published by the Organization for Transformative Works. TWC publishes articles about transformative works, broadly conceived; articles about media studies; and articles about the fan community. We invite papers in all areas, including fan fiction, fan vids, film, TV, anime, comic books, fan community, video games, and machinima. We encourage a variety of critical approaches, including feminism, gender studies, queer theory, postcolonial theory, audience theory, reader-response theory, literary criticism, film studies, and posthumanism. We also encourage authors to consider writing personal essays integrated with scholarship; hyperlinked articles; or other forms that test the limits of the genre of academic writing."
  • Ariane Beldi on 06 Sep 10
     
    This online journal is opened to work on anime and manga fandom, so I thought this would be of interest to this group!
Nele Noppe

Manga on cell phones in de US - 0 views

www.activeanime.com/...58

cellphones digital_manga internet manga non-academic united_states

shared by Nele Noppe on 21 Apr 08 - Cached
  • With these new platforms, GoComics reaches every comic fan with a mobile phone, including iPhones and smart phones. Comics and manga can be read for free with ads, or they can be purchased individually using points-based subscriptions. “Our Mobile Manga is a great user experience and satisfies discriminating creators, editors and fans alike. A major reason for this is GoComics’ commitment to quality, simplicity, and an artistic adaptation that preserves the manga pacing while converting pages into a panel-by-panel format,”
  • Nele Noppe on 21 Apr 08
     
    With these new platforms, GoComics reaches every comic fan with a mobile phone, including iPhones and smart phones. Comics and manga can be read for free with ads, or they can be purchased individually using points-based subscriptions. "Our Mobile Manga is a great user experience and satisfies discriminating creators, editors and fans alike. A major reason for this is GoComics' commitment to quality, simplicity, and an artistic adaptation that preserves the manga pacing while converting pages into a panel-by-panel format,"
Nele Noppe

Japan, Ink: Inside the Manga Industrial Complex - 0 views

www.wired.com/...ff_manga

anime dojinshi fans fanwork manga manga_industry

shared by Nele Noppe on 05 Jan 08 - Cached
  • Europe has caught the bug, too. In the United Kingdom, the Catholic Church is using manga to recruit new priests. One British publisher, in an effort to hippify a national franchise, has begun issuing manga versions of Shakespeare's plays, including a Romeo and Juliet that reimagines the Montagues and Capulets as rival yakuza families in Tokyo.
  • Manga sales in the US have tripled in the past four years.
  • Circulation of the country's weekly comic magazines, the essential entry point for any manga series, has fallen by about half over the last decade.
  • ...23 more annotations...
  • Fans and critics complain that manga — which emerged in the years after World War II as an edgy, uniquely Japanese art form — has become as homogenized and risk-averse as the limpest Hollywood blockbuster.
  • The place is pulsing with possibility, full of inspired creators, ravenous fans, and wads of yen changing hands. It represents a dynamic force
  • future business model of music, movies, and media of every kind.
  • Nearly every aspect of cultural production — which is now Japan's most influential export — is rooted in manga.
  • Comics occupy the center, feeding the rest of the media system.
  • About 90 percent of the material for sale — how to put this — borrows liberally from existing works.
  • Japanese copyright law is just as restrictive as its American cousin, if not more so.
  • known as "circles" even if they have only one member
  • by day's end, some 300,000 books sold in cash transactions totaling more than $1 million
  • "This is something that satisfies the fans," Ichikawa said. "The publishers understand that this does not diminish the sales of the original product but may increase them.
  • As recently as a decade ago, he told me, creators of popular commercial works sometimes cracked down on their dojinshi counterparts at Super Comic City. "But these days," he said, "you don't really hear about that many publishers stopping them."
  • "unspoken, implicit agreement."
  • "The dojinshi are creating a market base, and that market base is naturally drawn to the original work," he said. Then, gesturing to the convention floor, he added, "This is where we're finding the next generation of authors.
  • They tacitly agree not to go too far — to produce work only in limited editions and to avoid selling so many copies that they risk cannibalizing the market for original works.
  • It's also a business model
  • He opened Mandarake 27 years ago, well before the dojinshi markets began growing more popular — in part to provide another sales channel for the work coming out of them. At first, publishers were none too pleased with his new venture. "You think I didn't hear from them?" he tells me in a company conference room. But in the past five years, he says, as the scale and reach of the markets has expanded, the publishers' attitude "has changed 180 degrees." It's all a matter of business, he says.
  • triangle. "You have the authors up there at this tiny little tip at the top. And at the bottom," he says, drawing a line just above the widening base of the triangle, "you have the readers. The dojin artists are the ones connecting them in the middle."
  • The dojinshi devotees are manga's fiercest fans.
  • provides publishers with extremely cheap market research
  • the manga industrial complex is ignoring a law designed to protect its own commercial interests.
  • Intellectual property laws were crafted for a read-only culture.
  • the copyright winds in the US have been blowing in the opposite direction — toward longer and stricter protections. It is hard to imagine Hollywood, Nashville, and New York agreeing to scale back legal protection in order to release the creative impulses of super-empowered fans, when the gains from doing so are for now only theoretical.
  • mutually assured destruction. What that accommodation lacks in legal clarity, it makes up for in commercial pragmatism.
Nele Noppe

Neighbors: Artist draws acclaim with 'manga' creations - 0 views

www.pressconnects.com/...article

anime dojinshi fans fanwork manga non-academic united_states

shared by Nele Noppe on 21 Apr 08 - Cached
  • That was the case when she dabbled in Fan Manga, which is a fan-drawn comic using existing characters but with newly created storylines. She had entered her work into a National Fan Manga contest that required her to use a manga called "Black Sun Silver Moon." Soon after she entered, she heard from the contest sponsors, TheOtaku.com and the go!comi publishers, that she was one of 15 finalists. Guests at the New York Anime Festival voted on their choices -- and at the ending ceremonies, she discovered her work had won."My fan manga will be published in the back of the actual manga 'Black Sun Silver Moon,' which is every manga fan's dream: to be published in a real one," she says. "I haven't gotten word which issue it will be published in but go!comi said they'd let me know."
Nele Noppe

Manga sisters, Blue Beetle, and more - 0 views

www.wordballoons.net/?p=26

dojinshi fans manga non-academic

shared by Nele Noppe on 22 Apr 08 - Cached
  • One of the most interesting things about the manga phenomenon is the way fans make it their own; even more than traditional comics, manga seems to inspire readers to go off and make their own books.
  • Nele Noppe on 22 Apr 08
     
    One of the most interesting things about the manga phenomenon is the way fans make it their own; even more than traditional comics, manga seems to inspire readers to go off and make their own books.
Nele Noppe

New university library puts focus on the fans - 0 views

search.japantimes.co.jp/...fl20090614x2.html

non-academic libraries fans akihabara comiket_ibento museums

shared by Nele Noppe on 16 Jun 09 - Cached
  • At last count, there were more than 20 manga museums in its home country, including The Kyoto International Manga Museum, and now there is talk of creating a National Center for Media Arts to include manga and anime. Bound for glory: Manga being readied for Tokyo's upcoming Yoshihiro Yonezawa Memorial Library of Manga and Subcultures. YOSHIHIRO YONEZAWA MEMORIAL LIBRARY OF MANGA AND SUBCULTURES window.google_render_ad(); But as the national government swings belatedly into action, some experts are saying it is time to shift the focus from manga itself onto the fans' subculture that has fed its success.
  • In another indication of the new library's focus on the fan subculture surrounding manga, it will be the first facility of its kind in Japan to house a substantial collection of doujinshi,
Nele Noppe

Otaku2 - Doujinshi and Law - 0 views

www.otaku2.com/articleView.php

non-academic dojinshi manga manga_industry

shared by Nele Noppe on 20 Apr 09 - Cached
  • An increasingly popular outlet for manga enthusiasts is doujinshi, meaning both fan-produced manga and the “circles” that create them. They flout copyright law and rearticulate the characters they love, and their numbers are many—the largest public get-together in Japan is not a World Cup or Olympic gathering, but rather a doujinshi market called Comike.
  • Legally, fans can produce whatever they want insofar as it’s not blatantly for profit or obscene.
  • Researcher Gunnar Hempel, 27, a Sophia University MA who wrote his thesis on the phenomenon, estimates there are 8,000 Japanese living off doujinshi, but stresses the number could be greater thanks to digital publishing. A “professional doujinshi” artist scrapes by on some 12,000 yen a month, but can gross 32,000 yen from large sales events.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • that allowing fans to produce keeps them interested, provides free market research, and cultivates new talent.
  • This year, Kadokawa made a landmark deal allowing “mad movies” of their "Suzumiya Haruhi" anime as long as fans marked posts on YouTube and Nico Nico Douga with Kadokawa logos. Haruhi remains their flagship series, in part because of internet support.
Nele Noppe

Youth Brigade: Clearing up the Tokyo Youth Ordinance Bill - 0 views

www.animenewsnetwork.com/...2010-12-21

non-academic manga law censorship sexual_content children

shared by Nele Noppe on 21 Dec 10 - No Cached
  • This bill is not good for the Japanese anime and manga industry as a whole; it is not good for publishers, and it is not good for the creators. As anime and manga fans, we are constantly fighting against the preconceived notion that such entertainment is just for kids. Unfortunately, if this law remains on the books and creators cannot make the daring works they wish, anime and manga may indeed turn into unquestioning, lobotomized entertainment for little kiddies from here on out.
  • Bill 156 is not an across the board muzzling of creativity and critical art in Japan. However, it is potentially a hollowing out of two of Japan's most noteworthy art forms.
  • novels and films are not affected by this law
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • At the very least, for the time being there is going to be a chilling effect on anime and manga creators. They will constantly have to stop and assess their works against the law, or what the lawyers in the company interpret the law to be. Publishers will be forced to become more conservative with their stories, potentially sidestepping any criticism or commentary on major social issues.
  • As Simon Jones of Icarus Publishing pointed out in a blog post in June celebrating the defeat of the “Nonexistent Youth Bill” (possibly NSFW content), the anime and manga industries are “predominantly female” and any legislation restricting creativity in these industries would have a disproportionate effect on the female workforce. I think this is even more of a concern with Bill 156. I don't think the majority of shounen series will experience much fallout from the bill. However, an emphasis on sex and relationships is more frequently seen in shoujo, josei, and yaoi manga, where both the creators and consumers are largely female. Although it seems gender-neutral on the surface, it could be women who feel the brunt of the enforcement of Bill 156.
  • Many Japanese publishers are against this bill for many of the same reasons they were against the first “nonexistent youths” bill – it unevenly restricts freedom of speech and is so vaguely worded that they are unsure if the manga or anime they are putting out would be in violation.
  • The bill also doesn't mention doujinshi and other works created by fans. Of course, a lot of doujinshi with sexual content are already for adults only, so it would have little effect even if the law applied to such fan creations. Also, the main punishment for breaking the law is removal of access to distribution and retail, which wouldn't really impact artists who may make more of their sales directly to fans at Comiket.
  • the bill has nothing to say about any manga or anime that's currently considered adult. All of those titles that are currently for sale only to people over the age of eighteen won't be directly impacted by this. I've seen a number of people saying that they might be in favor of this bill because it would get rid of some of the horribly violent manga that feature sex with underage characters. However, this bill has absolutely nothing to say to anime or manga like that – they would still be able to be sold to adult consumers.
  • The bill puts an emphasis on self-regulation, with the expectation that publishers will begin policing themselves. (However, this may be hard to do since the bill is still vaguely worded.) If a publisher runs afoul of the bill too many times, then they may face what is in essence a blacklist, with no distributors or retailers able to carry their products.
  • The bill goes into effect in April 2011, and it's presumed that materials that were published before this date won't be affected. However, new editions of previously published anime and manga will presumably fall under this law.
  • Since Dan Kanemitsu has been writing frequently about this bill, I'll just quote his summary of the relevant portion of it, which will restrict “any manga, anime and video games that feature any sexual acts that would violate criminal codes or Tokyo ordinances OR sexual depictions between close relatives who could not legally get married to be treated as adult material IF they are presented in [an] ‘unjustifiably glorified or exaggerated manner.’” In some ways the language of the bill clarifies things, since we no longer have to try to figure out if a character meets the qualifications of being a “youth” in order for the restrictions in the bill to apply. However, by taking out the language regarding youth, it actually means that Bill 156 could have a potentially wider reach than the one that was defeated earlier in the year. Additionally, the part about presenting such scenes in an “unjustifiably glorified or exaggerated manner” is open to a wide variety of interpretations.
Ariane Beldi

Digital Manga Publishing Detail New Venture to Launch Over 1,000 Manga Online // Silico... - 2 views

www.siliconera.com/...-launch-over-1000-manga-online

blog english html textual image public fan user e-manga e-books transnationalism fandom scanlation copyrights digital publishing non-academic manga digital publishing

shared by Ariane Beldi on 20 Jun 10 - Cached
  • Ariane Beldi on 20 Jun 10
     
    Hikaru Sasahara, president of Digital Manga Publishing (Berserk), revealed, this week, to Anime News Network, a new venture his company is planning, by which fans will be able to provide their scanlations online, and these would then be distributed legally with the permission of the original copyright holders.
Nele Noppe

How doujinshi will take over the world (or not) - 0 views

www.icaruscomics.com/wp_web

dojinshi fan_fiction fanart fans fanwork manga_industry non-academic united_states

shared by Nele Noppe on 16 Apr 08 - Cached
  • First, doujinshi are not commercial products, and this is one of the most important distinctions that allows its very existence. 
  • Many doujinshi conventions (Comiket included) require doujin circles to provide print run information, and enforces a cap.  Quite simply, there aren’t enough books to export en mass. 
  • This is also why doujinshi has continued to grow while other media like manga, anime, and music have suffered with the advent of peer to peer trading on the internet…the doujinshi market is a collector’s market, where the physical book itself is highly valued
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • that’s not to say that doujinshi isn’t profitable…a few artists never “go pro” because they make quite a healthy living on their doujinshi,
  • The much better road for the American manga industry and fans to take is not to import doujinshi, but to import the doujinshi ideal and ethics, and foster a domestic doujinshi community of our own.  This road is beset by its own share of hurdles, though, and they have very deep roots.
  • While fanzines and fanfiction have been around in the U.S., we have nothing even close to the doujinshi scene in Japan, because of American corporate mentality which values “perpetual properties” instead of new creations, and these properties are guarded visciously.
  • in America properties are created and owned by the corporation.
  • They simply have no reason to support budding artists in such a way, when their raison detre are still characters created decades ago.  Fan comics are not seen as extending the life of a property, but as competition. 
  • The truth is a significant portion of Japanese doujinshi are erotic works, many based on children’s shows.  It isn’t hard to imagine the kind of moral outrage most doujinshi would illicit. 
  • American manga companies need to take a hard look at doujinshi in Japan and understand its benefits, and readers and artists should take a stand because this is an opportunity for the status of the creator to take precedence over the corporation.
Nele Noppe

Comic Book Resources > Problems with the non-Japanese manga industry - 0 views

www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=17875

academic anime comics film international manga manga_industry

shared by Nele Noppe on 28 Aug 08 - Cached
  • As I mentioned, people tend to forget that manga struggled for decades to get a foothold, but what really put manga over was anime. When anime - SAILOR MOON, DRAGONBALL Z and YU-GI-OH, mainly, with NARUTO firming up the rear - got regular spots on American TV, in syndication and on basic cable channels like Cartoon Network, they created fans, the fans sought out the manga, and because stores began giving manga its own section, it became easy to for those fans to check out other manga, word spread, sales rose, and "suddenly" manga was cool, and being read by lots of people, especially teenagers, who had never even thought of opening an American comic. That's what propelled manga. Prior to that, Viz and other manga publishers had followed the traditional route - dump their product in the American comics stream and hope for the best - and made only a little inroad. Manga's content hadn't changed, but the manga experience had. So any foreigners eyeing the American comics market, seeing manga's success, and figuring this means American comics readers are now hungry for foreign material are in for painful, especially financially painful, disappointment. (American publishers who make the same leap of faith will too.) All manga proves is that you can crack the American market, now that it's likely. And you'd better be in it for the long haul.
Nele Noppe

Live Action Anime? Only at MIT! - 0 views

www.henryjenkins.org/...post_5.html

anime cosplay dubbing fans theatre visual_language

shared by Nele Noppe on 18 Dec 07 - Cached
  • the many ways that anime crosses over from the "virtual" to the "real." The most obvious example is cosplay and the many forms of licensed merchandise, such as toys and models, that in effect bring anime through the screen and into people's hands. When fans take anime and manga characters, and use them to create their own fanzine manga (dôjinshi), a similar kind of translation effect is underway, that is, taking imagined characters, re-imagining through our own minds, and the creating something new in the world.
  • Anime creators always struggle with challenge of bringing the "real" into the "virtual" space of animation.
  • Anime fans have long debated whether Anime is best understood as a genre (or perhaps a set of related genres), as an aesthetic style, as a mode of production, or as a transmedia phenomenon.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Cyberpunk has long been a vehicle for authors and animators to reflect upon the influence of media on contemporary culture
  • captured the anime aesthetic
  • The performers developed their 'signature poses' and we worked from those to generate a language of motion. In the end, it was much harder than I thought it might be, to go through the entire piece in this sort of 'physical karaoke' but without ever speaking a word. It helped us reconsider the importance of breath and sound as components of human expression, because in the live action anime, working with the pre-recorded soundtracks, the performers never got to make a sound.
  • creating phrases with our bodies.
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