Comic Book Resources

Crazy thing I read in the first volume of Mechademia in relation to Japan’s increasing soft power. Comics are Japan’s #1 export (above even cars or electronics). That blew me away.

I can’t even imagine what American society would be like if comics even approached that kind of statistic.

Interesting, coz I’ve been reading a few articles recently about how Hong Kong is challenging Japan’s supremacy in the animation stakes, and how Japan needed to to wake up and take advantage of the huge Manga/Anime juggernaught that’s become the country’s principle export almost by accident. Looks like they’re trying to do just that.

Japan’s anime industry is having some internal issues right now stemming from the fact that despite all the foreign revenue coming in from licensing fees for anime, the salaries for the actual animators has seen no significant raise. And they were making practically nothing before, despite being expected to put in insanely long hours. That, combined with more outsourcing to Korea, has resulted in a shrinking workforce in the Japanese animation industry. Hopefully somebody will find a way to spread the wealth around a little better.

As for the Ambassador Doraemon announcement, I think it very cool. The more attention the better (speaking as an anime freak.)

The most interesting statistic to me is something like “Annual value of cultural exports,” which I’m not entirely certain how it’s defined, but includes books, movies, video, comics, and other things.

The United States is #1 by a large margin, as you would probably expect, but Japan is #2 (also, if I correctly recall the article I read, by a large margin, over #3.)

Kind of amazing, especially given how famously insular Japanese society is, that the country would do so well exporting its culture….

Kind of amazing, especially given how famously insular Japanese society is, that the country would do so well exporting its culture….

Marketing Ninjas

It’s a brillianr idea. Showing people doraemon may actually make them understand Japanese culture a bit better so they stop thinking that episode of the Simpsons is anything at all like Japan. Which is great because it means I won’t want to kick people in the face when I say I’ve lived in Japan, and they then tell me everything they know about Japan, which is that they have ‘America town’ and ‘Battling seizure robots’ and pretty much everything else that’s from that one episode of the Simpsons which seems to have have been written by people who’s closest experience to Japanese culture must have been that one time they ate a piece of sushi.

…Now if people would just start selling melon bread and yakisoba, my life would be complete.

Yeah, Mongoose, but that Simpsons episode was pretty freakin’ funny, you have to admit. I get what you’re saying, though.

Hey - anything that can potentially increase Giant Robo awareness is fine by me.

I really don’t know how promoting anime would help people learn more culturally about Japan, mainly because, nowadays, anime has very little “japan” in it. Yeah, its made in Japan, but the shows for around the last 7 years have, for the most part, been carbon-copies of whatever show turned out popular over here. For example, the last original Gundam series was Turn A Gundam. After that, every Gundam show has been a copy of Wing. I remember watching the first two eps of Seed fansubbed and the first thing that came to my mind was “this is made for Cartoon Network”, and it was. If they want to promote Japan, they should promote their live-action film industry. Anime, even when produced in Japan, is cookie-cutted for american audiences too much now to be really considered “japanese” to some degree.