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The Tokyo International Anime Fair 2009 kicked off Wednesday to a cheerful start, featuring a mix of both domestic and overseas companies presenting their newest products and exploring new marketing methods ranging from "anime" tourism to online broadcasting.

Reflecting the difficult economic times, however, many of the symposiums held in the first two business days had to do with future funding and marketing strategies for the industry.

Hideaki Tokutake of Japan Location Market — an organization promoting regional development through tourism, and a host of one of the symposiums — emphasized the growing potential of animation tourism.

we're looking at a definite trend of live-action anime adaptations, the first of which to hit screens being Dragonball Evolution, which also features white actors playing roles originally created, written, directed, animated, and performed by Japanese people.

According to Edward Said, one of the principles of Orientalism is a belief that Asia cannot speak for herself, and that the West must do it for her, constantly re-interpreting and clarifying the "mysteries of the Orient" for Western audiences, regurgitating the complexities of other cultures into an easily-digestible whole

There's an argument to be made that the purpose of live-action adaptations isn't to appeal to anime fans (although such adaptations doubtless intend on capitalizing on them), but rather to introduce mainstream viewers to anime via the otherwise-familiar milieu of flesh-and-blood cinema.

His writing has touched on leisure policy, the restriction of teenagers' sexual activities, counterterrorism and popular culture's impact abroad.

"The Japanese leisure industry and child pornography and prostitution are not typical objects of analysis for a political scientist," Beissinger said. "But David brilliantly uses these as windows into Japanese political culture and into the ways in which norms and identities shape behavior. His work is some of the most important on contemporary Japanese society."

And that’s really my thought; at this juncture in the manga publishing business here in the US, It’s really a battle between the Haves and Have-Nots. Large companies like Viz get dibs on the best series and titles like Bleach, Naruto, Death Note, and more. With business partnerships that create licensing choke holds and the ability to print large runs of books and keep collections in print, the Haves are squared away to weather any economic storm. The little guys may not be so lucky. Without blockbuster hits, or at least a moderately good showing on their books, publishers may have problems staying in business.

If the Japanese companies are dictating the number of books they think American companies can sell, then it’s time to grow a pair and *make* them understand that, without the barrage of advertising and the streams of distribution, their projections are as real as the worlds in their LNs.We’ve all been talking about the fansub/scanlation issue to death. LNs are not failing because of scanlations. They are failing because it is time for American companies to stop acting like beaten curs. Stop sticking your collective tails between your collective legs and state the facts as they are. The American buying audience is a few thousand strong - at best. Stop lying about it. Rework your projections and admit that you’re all working in a teeny-tiny grassroots industry. Then grow it for real, like every other company has to - through advertising, promotion and quality products. If fandom bitches that it's not good/fast/cheap/free enough, tell them to fork over money or stfu.

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

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.

the distinctive characteristics…reflect the Japanese subconscience and can be identified only by stripping away the influences of the modern history of manga as an imported style…Yet highlighting only those characteristics would slant the debate toward a closed argument…an echo of Orientalism.

Toys, animation, gaming, and western comics all show the influence of manga and anime, but evidence of this aesthetic can also be found in fashion, graphic design, industrial design, and fine art. Though initially this was considered a trend that would peak and be replaced, this movement, has steadily expanded since it emerged in the late 1980’s (in the US), and has established itself as a substantial and sustaining aesthetic, one that has transformed western design and consumer culture.

the continuing steady growth of manga and anime around the world in markets like France and Italy, which embraced manga years before the U.S. did, would appear to indicate that interest in anime and manga is not a flash-in-the-pan fad, but a trend that will continue on the upswing for some time to come. (www.icv2.com/articles/news/2953.html)

"Our old enemy 'poverty' somehow disappeared, and we can no longer find an enemy to fight against" (Miyazaki, 1988). In other words, after Japan's industrial success since the Meiji restoration in 1890s and recovery from WWII cast out poverty from the nation, people still remain possessed by an illusion of gaining a wealthy everyday life and continue living with a gap between their ideal and real life. As a result, an endless and unsatisfying cycle of production and consumption has begun destroying harmony among family and community (Harootunian, 2000).

Zizek (1989) points out that people of late capitalism are well aware that money is not magical. To obtain it, it has to be replaced through labor, and after you use it, it will just disappear, as will as any other material. Allison (1996) adds to this point: "They know money is no more than an image and yet engage in its economy where use-value has been increasingly replaced and displaced by images (one of the primary definitions of post-modernism) all the same” (p. xvi).

Related to its presentation of the loss of spiritual values, the film elaborates an extensive critique of another contemporary global issue: identity confusion. A symptom of identity loss is seen in the way that cultures today encourage people to constantly refashion their self-image, so that individuals construct their identity based on ideals presented in popular media.