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since the conventional wisdom is that Japan's anime producers are being destroyed by file-sharing and downloading by overseas fans, it seems worthwhile to look more closely at the antiquated and insidiously self-destructive business model in Japan's own backyard.

The problem with Japan--and the rest of us, Japanese, half, or otherwise--is that we fear the quality that most emboldens us: change. We don't want to change. We want stasis--trains that run on time, simple ideas, dumb accounts.

SFCG’s chairman, Kenshin Ohshima, a man not known for excessive modesty, had a passion for chronicling - and clearly dramatising - his company’s rise. A long-running online manga, or cartoon, of Ohshima - and SFCG’s - corporate adventures makes the company’s website more popular than most corporate  cyber destinations in Japan.

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."

From Anime to Pokemon: Using Pop Culture to Teach About Japan

OEL creators are constrained by this same limitation, and have accordingly adapted their creative offerings to appeal to a big, young chunk of the market. Which brings us to the big, omnipresent thing that OEL titles simply don’t have at this point, and one of the domains that manga must concede to US creations: the ability to tell a distinctly American story in a manga format and have it be written by an American author.

The issue isn’t that it can’t be done, but rather, that our current market won’t allow it to be. Even if a visionary, thoughtful creator emerged and produced a visionary, groundbreaking piece of work, who would publish it? OEL is on shaky legs as it is. Ask a company to take a risk on an adult oriented, culturally serious title?

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.

The real subtext of Hoffman’s comment seems to be authenticity — OEL manga fails because it isn’t created and published in Japan. Yet authenticity is a more elusive concept than most of us are willing to admit. Most of us call something “authentic” when we think it exemplifies cultural traits that are inaccessible to outsiders.