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Home , 2014 in anime, American animation, Animecon (Finland), Animethon, Anime club, Anime convention

THE FORMATION OF TEMPORARY COMMUNITIES IN : A STORY OF BOTTOM-UP GLOBALIZATION ______

A Thesis

Presented to the

Faculty of

California State University, Fullerton ______

In Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements for the Degree

Master of Arts

in

Geography ______

By

Cynthia R. Davis

Thesis Committee Approval:

Mark Drayse, Department of Geography & the Environment, Chair Jonathan Taylor, Department of Geography & the Environment Zia Salim, Department of Geography & the Environment

Summer, 2017

ABSTRACT

Japanese , commonly referred to as anime, has earned a strong foothold in the American industry over the last few decades. Anime is known by many to be a more mature option for animation fans since animation has typically been sanitized to be “kid-friendly.” This thesis explores how this came to be, by exploring the following questions: (1) What were the differences in the development and perception of the animation industries in and the ? (2) Why/how did people in the United States take such interest in anime? (3) What is the role of anime conventions within the anime fandom community, both historically and in the present?

These questions were answered with a mix of historical research, mapping, and interviews that were conducted in 2015 at , North America’s largest .

This thesis concludes that anime would not have succeeded as it has in the United

States without the heavy involvement of domestic animation fans. Fans created networks, clubs, and conventions that allowed for the exchange of information on anime, before

Japanese companies started to officially release anime titles for distribution in the United

States. With the advent of the internet fans do not need to rely on conventions to access new content. conventions continue to grow and thrive due to the temporary communities that fans form at these conventions, which give them opportunities to express themselves and their love of anime that they they cannot do in everyday life.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT ...... ii

LIST OF TABLES ...... v

LIST OF FIGURES ...... vi

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...... viii

Chapter 1. INTRODUCTION ...... 1

Research Goal and Methods ...... 3 Organization...... 6

2. LITERATURE REVIEW ...... 8

Cultural Diffusion ...... 8 Cultural Economies and Production ...... 12 Conventions, Festivals, and Trade Fairs ...... 18

3. A BRIEF GLOBAL ...... 28

Era One: Animation Pre-History ...... 29 The Earliest Modern Animation ...... 32 Moral Panic ...... 33 Moral Panic and Early Animation in Japan ...... 35 Early Animation in America and the Importance of Disney ...... 44 The Disney Era ...... 49 The Rise of Japanese Anime ...... 54 Overview ...... 62

4. HOW ANIME SPREAD TO AMERICA ...... 64

Anime Finds Its Way into America ...... 64 Fansubbing ...... 68 Anime Fans and ...... 72

iii 5. MODERN ANIME CONVENTIONS...... 78

The Growth of American Fan Conventions ...... 79 The Anatomy of a Modern Anime Convention ...... 85 The Exhibit Hall (aka The Dealers Room) ...... 86 The Artist Alley ...... 86 ...... 87 The Masquerade ...... 88 Concerts ...... 89 Panels and Workshops ...... 90 AMV Contest ...... 90 Results ...... 92 Demographics and Convention Attendance ...... 93 Travel and Accommodations ...... 94 Reasons for Attending ...... 99 Social Media ...... 101 Temporary Communities ...... 103

6. CONCLUSION ...... 106

Animation: From Past to Present ...... 106 Future Directions ...... 109 Conclusion ...... 110

APPENDIX: SURVEY AND INTERVIEW QUESTIONS...... 111

BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 113

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LIST OF TABLES

Table Page

1. Estimated Convention Attendance for Selected Conventions ...... 85

2. Number of Interviewees Who Have Attended Conventions Before ...... 93

v

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure Page

1. Bowl found in ’s Boat City ...... 29

2. The Cameraman's (1912) by Ladislaw Starewicz ...... 33

3. Fantasmagorie by Winsor McCay...... 33

4. Momotaro (left) fights the lookalike (right) in Momotaro vs Mickey Mouse (1934) ...... 41

5. Animated foreign released in Japan during the Occupation Era ...... 43

6. Mickey Mouse (left) and (right). This would be the only time Disney drew the two characters together ...... 50

7. Tetsuwan Atomu, (1963) ...... 54

8. Many fans who first watched (1967) (left) and Pokémon (1997) (right) did not know that these shows were Japanese in origin, thanks to their placeless and culturally odorlessness nature ...... 57

9. Greeting card from to Carl Barks, whom Tezuka was very fond of...... 58

10. appears in an issue of Tetsuwan Atomu...... 59

11. Time special Pokémon issue, November 22, 1999 ...... 60

12. The main characters from Bebop (1998) ...... 61

13. Champloo (2004) ...... 62

14. People standing at the front of an meeting in in the mid-, explaining to the crowd what is happening on screen ...... 67

15. logo ...... 72

vi 16 Flyer advertising Yamato Con 1. It advertises its "spacious dealers room" and the showing of Space Cruiser Yamato ...... 80

17. Anime conventions in the ...... 81

18. United States Anime Conventions, 2017 ...... 82

19. Conventions in 2017 ...... 83

20. Anime Conventions in the United States Midwest, 2017 ...... 84

21. Anime Conventions in the United States Northeast, in 2017 ...... 84

22. Floorplan for the Exhibit Hall at Anime . (Anime Expo, 2017)...... 87

23. Cosplayers from Japanese game Final ...... 88

24. Cosplay at conventions are not always from anime...... 88

25. A large crowd gathers at Anime Expo for the AMV Contest ...... 91

26. Home locations of interviewees ...... 95

27. Method of travel ...... 95

28. Anime Expo Attendees from Within California ...... 96

29. Where Anime Expo attendees travelled from in the United States ...... 97

30. Hotel attendance...... 98

31. Lodging criteria ...... 99

32. Reasons for attendance ...... 101

33. Online community participation ...... 103

34. The sign seen as you leave Anime’s Exhibit Hall, reminding you to come back next year ...... 110

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

It is amazing to me that not only have I finished writing a thesis, but that I was allowed to write it on a topic that has been so important throughout my life thus far. So my first thank you must go to my advisor, Dr. Mark Drayse, who listened to me fumble my way through my beginning ideas for this thesis in the final semester of my undergrad career. He helped me mold this topic into something that is actually relevant to the study of geography. I get so excited when I get to talk about my research to people, and it is all thanks to him. I would also like to thank my committee members, Dr. Jonathan Taylor and Dr. Zia Salim, who took time out of their busy schedules to read this thesis and help me edit it to make it the best it could be.

I must also thank my friends and my family for sticking by and supporting me as I worked my way through this process. I have made wonderful friends during my time at

CSUF and I could not have done this without you guys. I hope with my all my heart that we continue to be friends long after we have graduated.

Most of all I must thank my fiancé Samuel. He helped keep me steady on this , even when I felt completely overwhelmed and stressed. He nagged me when I started to procrastinate too much, and helped me edit when the deadlines were closing in.

I literally could not have done this without him by my side.

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CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

Being an awkward, nerdy 14-year-old isn’t an easy time for most teenagers.

Couple that with the fact that you are one of the few nerdy, glasses wearing, anime

(Japanese animation) loving 14-year-olds in your small city? Life can feel rough for you, and you manage to become one of the most socially awkward in the herd of typically awkward teenagers. This was me in high school but, in the summer after my freshman year of high school, everything changed. My best friend found out about this thing called an “anime convention,” and her father was willing to take us there! To be honest, I did not know what to expect. That summer, for the first time, I got to feel what it was like to be a part of a community - to feel what it was like to be surrounded by so many people who loved the same thing that I loved. Anime Expo, the first convention I had ever attended, became the thing I looked forward to every summer. It was what got me through those rough, awkward teenage years.

Anime Expo originally started out as , which took place in 1991. In

1992 the founders of AnimeCon had several disagreements over how to run their convention, and so they split to form two different conventions. The more successful of these two groups formed the Anime Expo convention. They stayed in San Jose for a few years, and in 1994 moved their convention down to Southern California. After being held in various southern California locations, such as Anaheim, Ontario, and Long Beach,

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Anime Expo settled in in 2008. It is still held there every Fourth of July holiday weekend (Anime Expo, 2017). For many fans this might be the one time of the year that they get to connect with fellow fans. For industry professionals—and vendors— conventions such as these serve as prime time for networking, advertising, and selling.

Every year Anime Expo has experienced dramatic increases in their numbers of attendees. In the summer of 2016, Anime Expo boasted a new record high attendance count of over 100,000 unique attendees over the four-day event (Anime Expo, 2017). In

2008 the convention moved from Long Beach to the Los Angeles Convention Center in downtown Los Angeles from. This location seems to have served them well, being near several major airports and a large variety of hotels, accommodations and site-seeing opportunities for its attendees. Previous locations for Anime Expo were also nearby in

Southern California, starting in Anaheim in 1991 and moving to Long Beach for a one- year stint in 2007 (Anime Expo, 2017).

With this thesis, there are several questions I plan to explore within the realms of the global animation industry, anime fandom, and anime conventions. Animation has developed so differently in Japan compared to America. For example, anime as a medium tends to encompass a much larger breadth of than does. This has changed in recent decades, quite possibly because of the influence anime has grown to have on the American animation industry. Then after the medium had time to develop differently, became so enamored with Japanese animation that they encouraged it to undergo globalization. Japanese companies originally did not have much interest in spreading their animation to America or the rest of the world because they did not believe that this course of action could lead to financial success. As will be discussed

3 later in Chapter 4, anime’s global success was due to the dedicated actions of American animation fans, rather than from the push of major corporations. As we will come to see, fan conventions came to play a large role in this process.

In the present day, fans have more avenues of communication. What, then, is the purpose of an anime convention? I plan to explore and explain this with the concept of

“temporary communities” and how they form at conventions and within anime fandom.

Specifically, in 2015, I conducted a case study of the biggest anime convention in North

America, Anime Expo. This thesis will explore the following questions: (1) What were the differences in the development and perception of the animation industries in Japan and the United States? (2) Why/how did people in the United States take such interest in anime? (3) What is the role of anime conventions within the anime fandom community, both historically and in the present?

Research Goals and Methods

Having personally attended anime conventions for over a decade, I have seen first-hand all various types of people that travel far and wide to attend. Bonds are formed and friends can easily be made with people from all over the country, even the world, if even just for that weekend. With my research, I hope to contribute to the areas of cultural and economic geography, adding to the growing discussion of fan conventions and

“temporary communities.” Why do people feel the need to meet up with each other in person anymore? With how widespread the internet is, and with online communities for just about anything that you could imagine, why aren’t they enough? People will still travel across the country, or even the world, to personally meet with the people that they talk with online. Where do these people travel from? How far are they willing to travel

4 for a convention? What are the major factors that contribute to people deciding to spend time and money to come to these events?

My survey and interviews are limited to people who are over the age of 18. This was done because I know, from personal experience, that many teenagers attend conventions without their parents. This would have made getting parental consent impossible. I am aware that limiting my survey pool to those who are over 18 years of age may skew and affect the responses that I receive, and I will keep that in mind. Based on my personal experiences, many 18 to 25-year-olds who attend conventions like these have been attending for many years, starting when they were younger than 18. I believe that this will help counteract any possible skew.

To explore and answer these questions I use a mix of historical research, mapping, and interviews. Research was conducted using books, journal articles, documentaries, and interviews to piece together the history of the animation industries of

Japan and America.

I also created a series of maps to help visualize various aspects of anime conventions throughout the years. Data was obtained from a representative from the

Society for the Promotion of Japanese Animation (the SPJA). This data contains the home zipcode for every person who registered for Anime Expo 2015 through Anime

Expo’s website. This list did not include the information for exhibitors, artist alley participants, press, industry or staff registrations. In all, this data covers over 80,000 attendees who attended Anime Expo 2015 from 53 different countries. The maps made for this thesis show only attendees from the United States.

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A second series of maps was created to show the growth of anime conventions in the United States. These maps include both conventions that happened in the United

States throughout the 1990s and conventions that are happening this year, in 2017. This data was obtained from a list found at AnimeCons.com, which is known for keeping an extensive information database about anime conventions. The list at AnimeCons.com does not include address or latitude and longitude points but it does include the names of the venues for each convention. I used Maps to find the latitude and longitude of each of these locations so they could be plotted in ArcMap. I chose to first map the 1990s since this was the first period that anime conventions started to take off in the United

States.

For this thesis, I conducted a series of semi-structured interviews at Anime Expo in 2015. I did this to gain a greater understanding of the previously mentioned bonds, or

“temporary communities,” that appear to form at these sorts of conventions. These interviews were structured using a 10-question survey. A copy of this survey is included in the Appendix. I gave the interviewees the option to either fill it out themselves or respond to my questions orally while I filled out the form. These interviews gave me insights as to why anime fans continue to attend Anime Expo in this increasingly digital age.

Interviewees were asked questions regarding how many conventions they have attended in the past, how they chose their conventions, and what benefits they felt they got from attending conventions. The answers received to several of these questions were free-form. While compiling the free-form answers, each one was assigned to one or more groups so they could be graphed easily.

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Organization

This thesis is organized into a total of five chapters as detailed below.

Chapter 2 details the geographical background for this research. I first discuss cultural diffusion, and the methods by which media, such as , spread throughout society. It then discusses cultural economies and industries, their importance, and the ways in which they can be defined. After this is a discussion of conventions, trade fairs, and festivals, and their on culture and cultural industries.

In Chapter 3, to answer the question of how the animation industries of Japan and

America developed so differently, I look at cultural factors that affected media at the time that modern animation technology was being created and perfected. Both countries had similar concerns about how new media was affecting the morals of their children. The ways they reacted to these moral panics were very different, and caused their animation industries to take completely different turns. At the end of the chapter we will explore how Japanese animation turned into what we now know as distinctive modern anime.

Chapter 4 dives into how Americans discovered anime and why anime was so attractive to them. This led them to start the process of bottom-up globalization, where they pulled at the Japanese animation industry, essentially forcing them to realize that they had a viable market outside of Japan. This was done through obsessive fan dedication in the creation of video sharing networks, clubs, and eventually, conventions.

Chapter 5 discusses the interviews I conducted at Anime Expo 2015, and explores the reasons as to why conventions are still incredibly relevant and important to the modern anime fan community, and how they foster the creation of temporary communities.

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Chapter 6 is a summary and conclusion to the thesis.

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CHAPTER 2

LITERATURE REVIEW

The study of how a kind of media, in this case anime, came to be accepted and loved in a country other than where it originated from is inherently geographical in nature. This chapter will start with a discussion of cultural diffusion and how it has affected film distribution. This will lead into a discussion of cultural industries and economies, how they are defined, and how have they evolved. This chapter will then close out with a discussion about conventions, trade fairs, and festivals, and how these gatherings of people are important to cultural industries.

Cultural Diffusion

Put simply, cultural diffusion is when culture traits spread among people. It has been happening since the first human decided to wander off from Africa and discover the world. Culture results from a combination of beliefs, practices, social habits, behaviors and material traits that are shared among members of a social group. Culture is not static, instead it diffuses and evolves, just as humans do (Miller, 2013).

The many different kinds of cultural diffusion can be sorted into two main categories: Relocation diffusion and expansion diffusion. Relocation diffusion happens when people choose to move away to new homes and they bring their culture traits with them, exposing them to new people. These moves can vary in distance: people may move within their own countries, in which case the culture they bring with them may not be so

9 different from where they have moved to, or they may move across national borders into new countries, where their culture may seem entirely different to the locals and the movers may experience culture shock (Miller, 2013).

Expansion diffusion occurs when a culture trait spreads from one place to another, but not because of an act of migration. This may happen if a leader of a group learns of a cultural trait from a leader of a different group and decides to spread it among their people (hierarchical diffusion) (Miller, 2013). Leaders of groups benefit from cultural diffusion, especially when they are the ones who control it. By promoting their own culture across a space, they are promoting their ‘soft power,’ which helps them solidify their national culture and global relevance (Xu, Park, Kim & Park, 2016). Culture traits may also spread as a disease spreads, from one person to another (contagious diffusion).

Cultural traits sometimes evolve, as the receiving culture may adapt a foreign culture trait for their own use, creating a new, unique form of that trait (stimulus diffusion). Media and new technology also play a large role in how culture diffuses, and give cultural traits the opportunity to travel much farther, much more quickly, than they could have in the past (Miller, 2013).

It is not just culture and humans that have evolved. How diffusion takes place has also evolved with the advent of new technology, and it goes hand in hand with economic globalization. The information revolution that has occurred over the last several decades with the postal system, telephones, television, and ultimately, the internet has completely changed the way culture diffuses throughout our world. Media can now travel across the world in the blink of an eye, and allow people to relate to other, very different cultures and learn from them (Miller, 2013).

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Our theories about how diffusion works are always changing. Our methods for explaining diffusion through space are typically involves large amounts of data, and often require the use of mathematical models. This mathematical view of diffusion was much too narrow and two dimensional. Diffusion is an incident of culture change, and culture is exceedingly too complex to try and explain with such simple models (Blaut, 1977).

Observing cultural diffusion is not always an easy task, especially with cultural traits and products that have not been recorded well. Luckily for us film is literally recorded for us to view, in which we can watch depictions and stories from all over the world. In the hands of different producers and cultures throughout the globe, it becomes much easier to track how different genres have cross-pollinated, creating distinct hybrid styles of film. This inherently international quality, or "transnationality," of film has led to the evolution of styles such as Spaghetti Westerns, actions films, and

Japanese movies. Cultural differences can become even more highlighted when the same movie premise is made by studios in different countries, each creating their own culturally unique version of the same story. The three main modes of diffusion throughout global film circuits are markets, festivals, and “alter-routes” (Hozic, 2014).

The first mode of diffusion is through the marketplace. The marketplace is traditionally dominated by movies, due to their benefiting from economies of scale in production, and their “cultural discount” in consumption. The “cultural discount” is the degree to which cultural and linguistic differences affect demand for cultural products in other markets (Hozic, 2014). In other words, because Hollywood makes movies in English, and much of the marketplace speaks English, like in ,

American filmmakers tend to have an easier time selling their products in those markets.

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Hollywood faces fewer barriers to selling their product than, for example, a non-English- speaking producer. Although Hollywood currently holds an enormous 63% share of the world’s box office, many producers in Hollywood are worried; with such a large market share, there is little room for domestic expansion. Instead they are starting to depend on the money they make from exporting their films. Many genres, such as animation, science and horror, do better internationally than they do domestically.

Hollywood’s next big focus is to expand their audience in , which is predicted to become the world’s next largest film market by 2020 (Hozic, 2014).

The second mode of film diffusion happens within global film festival networks.

These festivals provide a space where films can be evaluated that would not be viable or competitive in commercial settings outside of the festival venue. Festivals are known to originally be a very European sort of institution, and serve as a space for international producers to showcase their films. They specifically regard themselves to be in opposition to Hollywood, where smaller studios actually have a chance to be competitive

(Hozic, 2014).

The number of these film festivals has risen dramatically over the last several decades. Between 1,200 and 1,900 film festivals are held annually throughout the globe.

This growth is largely indebted to the revival of urban economies through cultural clustering. It is also attributed to the birth of the “Bridget Jones economy” which is fueled by single, urban professionals who can afford to be “art-savvy and culturally engaged”

(Hozic, 2014, p. 232).

The third mode of film diffusion is that of “alter-routes.” Alter-routes have become critical to the diffusion of the same kinds of movies that also benefit from

12 festivals, such as commercial non-Hollywood films—such as (Indian) or

Nollywood (Nigerian) films—that have little to no chance of spreading outside of their original countries, especially among well-established market distribution channels. Other film genres, like comedies, also rely on these alter-routes, which are traditionally only viewed as competitive and comprehensible to local audiences (Hozic, 2014).

Alter-routes consist of many different kinds of distribution channels, many of them informal. These informal circuits include being carried along by traveling exhibitors in Africa among diasporic communities, or being smuggled along with local foods and sold in small grocery stores. New alter-routes emerge as technology evolves, for example through the internet. The internet has made it so that titles that may have never left their original borders can be accessed by global audiences, making their way through vast transnational spaces (Hozic, 2014). Alter-routes depend heavily on word-of-mouth communication, whether it is people telling each other about a new video in person, or messaging it to each other over the internet. Ultimately, cultural diffusion occurs through connected social systems, and so the methods of diffusion will evolve as our technology does (Xu et al., 2016) It is these alter-routes that ultimately allowed anime to succeed in the United States, a topic we will explore further in Chapter 4.

Cultural Economies and Production

Culture is an important part of our everyday lives. It influences how we speak, how we dress, how we connect with people, and even our morals. Thus, it makes sense that cultural products and industries are significant to our lives. We put pieces of ourselves and our culture into the creation of every cultural product, and those products go out into the world and they affect other people, and influence their culture. Cultural

13 products are becoming increasingly important to our daily lives. As our daily work, in our jobs, our homes, etc. become automated, more discretionary time becomes available to us to spend as we please. We frequently devote this time to diverse cultural products

(Norcliffe & Rendace, 2003). Anime and —Japanese animation and —are deeply cultural products. As we will explore later in Chapter 3, they are truly a product of

Japanese culture, but have also been shaped heavily by Western influences.

Therefore, the sale and celebration of at conventions would sensibly fall under a cross-section of cultural and economic geography. This demands that we look at the topics of ‘cultural economies,’ ‘cultural production,’ and ‘cultural industries.’ Cultural economy, in the most simplified sense, is when culture is materialized and sold within the economy (Crang, 1997). Defining what exactly a cultural economy entails is a tough endeavor. Gibson and Kong (2005) attempt to assess and explain four different approaches to the cultural economy that have been previously defined by other authors.

The first approach to defining a cultural economy is what Gibson and Kong

(2005) call, ‘The Sectoral Approach.’ The sectoral approach is one that mostly focuses on the products that are traded and sold. These goods and services include products that are used for entertainment, communication, decoration, social positionality, and so on. In other words, it includes goods and services that are not strictly utilitarian, although some of the products may also serve utilitarian functions (Gibson & Kong, 2005). The practice of infusing design and fashion with utilitarian goods has been called the ‘economization of culture’ (Norcliffe & Rendace, 2003).

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The problem with the sectoral approach is that the list of things it includes tends to get a bit unwieldy. Items start to show up on the list that may only peripherally be involved in the arts or that in the past may have not been associated with the arts at all.

This tends to be the case with items that traditionally only serve very utilitarian purposes

(Gibson & Kong, 2005).

The second attempt at defining cultural economies is ‘The Labor Market

Approach,’ which defines cultural economies by the characteristics of workers (Gibson &

Kong, 2005). Per Scott (1997), these workers have a very flexible specialization and they typically form tight-knit communities. These workers tend to operate on an informal, part-time, and subcontracted basis; likely earning most of their income from other job sources (Gibson & Kong, 2005). For many of these workers, their participation in the cultural economy is simply a passionate hobby.

It is apparent that this approach to defining cultural economy relates to the surfboard industry. As surfing became more popular, obviously, the demand for surfboards increased. Per Warren (2014), people who were passionate about surfing were the ones to step up and try to fulfill this demand. These surfers sought legitimacy and a monetary wage within the market from something that was at one point simply their hobby. Eventually the surfboard industry became large and advanced enough that much of the work of making surfboards became automated, although creative talent is still a necessity. This is especially true for custom surfboards that have become the new niche product in the industry (Warren, 2014). This niche surfboard industry started off by fitting into the second approach to cultural industries as outlined above but as we can see,

15 that specific industry evolved, and perhaps now fits more in with the third approach to cultural industry.

The third approach to defining cultural industry is called ‘The Creative Index’ approach, which takes a different path from the first two approaches. In this approach, the activities that define the cultural economy are not a discrete set, but rather, they imply a whole new class of worker and social group that appear within already established industries. This new creative class appears in creative industries and R and D centers, across all industries. In this approach innovation and learning are central to economic growth, in all industries. This approach tends to be criticized as being too reductionist in their interpretations of culture (Gibson & Kong, 2005).

With this approach, it is tempting for researchers to create mathematically based indexes, like the gay index or the bohemian index. (2015) used this type of index to study the economic geography of talent and the factors that attract talent to certain areas. Florida hypothesizes that talent is attracted to diversity. To find areas with high diversity Florida and co. created what they call, ‘the coolness index.’ This coolness index measures the number of gay households and the number of cultural and nightlife amenities in each region of the study area (Florida, 2015). Gibson and Kong (2005), however, stress that indices like this run the risk of missing the complexities of cultural activities.

The fourth approach discusses how cultural economy appears at a of different media and industries. Companies that were historically distinct and separate have started merging and becoming allies with one another. This creates links between creators of artistic content, and the manufacturers of the information technology, or the

16 hardware, that the creative content is frequently consumed through (Gibson & Kong,

2005). In this method, the digitization of content is the starting point for analyzing cultural economies.

This last, fourth approach to defining cultural economy involves strong focus on digital content and new technologies. New technologies have the power of completely changing how an industry behaves and functions within the economy. The transformative powers of new technology have been seen across many industries, but the effects have been especially prominent in the industry (Norcliffe & Rendace, 2003).

Cultural economies traditionally thrive when they are clustered together in close geographic proximity. (Gibson & Kong, 2005). Cultural industries tend to agglomerate in large metropolitan centers such as Los Angeles (motion pictures, recording, apparel),

London (publishing, theater), (haute couture), and (shoes, ceramics). The benefit of these clusters is that they tend to set up their own self-supporting economies.

We can see an example of this in Toronto, home of the third highest ranking center for theater in the English-speaking world. The theater industry has had a huge multiplier effect on the local hotel and restaurant industries, and creates the demand for supportive industries such as set construction, sound, lighting and prompting systems

(Norcliffe & Rendace, 2003). Without the basis of the theater industry, none of these side industries would likely thrive as they do, and they might not even exist (Norcliffe &

Rendace, 2003).

Agglomeration in metropolitan areas is how the comic book industry operated prior to the 1980s. Each person involved in making a comic book (the penciler, inker, writer, producer, etc.) would work with each other under the same roof. With the advent

17 and improvement in telephone, fax, and internet technologies, the comic book industry evolved away from agglomeration. When we look at the industry we can see that it has become very geographically dispersed. Sometimes people involved in the production of the same book have never met each other face-to-face. Instead, they communicate over the internet, and mail each other materials when needed. So, while some creators still choose to live in major metropolises, especially New York and Los Angeles, they are free to move to remote, rural locations if they choose (Norcliffe & Rendace, 2003).

The internet has provided many new methods for industries to revolutionize and adapt. Personal seem to have become standard in people’s homes, and with smartphones, in their pockets as well. Crowdfunding/crowdsourcing is one of the many ways that industries have adapted to using the internet to produce and distribute goods and services. Crowdfunding/crowdsourcing is a system of collective financing that makes it possible for the creation of niche products that larger companies either cannot mass produce, or do not want to due to the belief that there is not a big enough market (Valiati,

2013).

The process of crowdfunding allows consumers to take a larger role in the creation of cultural products, without the intervention of big business. Websites such as

Kickstarter and Patreon have emerged over the last decade to facilitate crowdfunding between creators and consumers. These websites help creators have an organized platform on which to distribute their content and provides the consumers with ways to securely pay the creators and an easy way to access the content they help fund (Valiati,

2013). Kickstarter has been a huge boon for creators, allowing individual people and small groups to raise large amounts of money. In 2012 Tim Schafer used Kickstarter to

18 raise over 1 million USD in one day to fund the production of his videogame, and in 2015

Kickstarter was used to raise over 20 million USD for the Pebble smartwatch (Valiati,

2013; Zipkin, 2015).

According to Valiati (2013), crowdfunding is significant because it allows for the democratization of investment. She argues that when cultural production is carried out by large companies, individuals lose their autonomy. The cultural products are manipulated to be pleasing to the mass markets. The cultural industry tends to depersonalize creation, and it disintegrates cultural power. Valiati believes that the internet and crowdfunding is a key way we can fight this process, and give power back to the people who create the culture and its products (2013).

Gibson and Kong (2005) close out their attempts at defining cultural economy by saying that we do not need to subscribe to only one approach of defining cultural economy. We can be flexible, and use multiple approaches. It is important to understand how and why cultural economies form, because in the last several decades cultural economies have been seen to have transformative effects on the totality of economic activities of a country (Gibson & Kong, 2005).

Conventions, Festivals, and Trade Fairs

Industry and fan conventions have received relatively little attention in cultural and economic geography. Commercial industry trade fairs, like those that take place for the furniture and automobile industries, have received a bit more attention, and have been studied mostly within the realm of economic geography (Power & Jansson, 2008). Trade fairs are significant to developers and industry critics. World fairs have previously received attention for how they can transform a single city to temporarily become the

19 center of world civilization, and how a single city is temporarily broadened to encompass the “totality of cultural production” (Simmel, 1896, p. 91).

Proximity, or lack thereof, affects learning and innovation at trade fairs

(Boschma, 2004). The locations of these trade fairs and conventions are important (Scott,

1997). A show risks being inaccessible if it is not located near a major urban area, airport, or some other form of mass transit system, and this will hurt attendance numbers. Place, culture, and economy can be viewed as all highly symbiotic, and the combination of the three can form a “cultural hearth”. things all feed into each other, changing our perceptions of each. When a gathering such as a convention or a trade fair happens, especially in the context of the cultural industry, these concepts intermingle and new ideas are born that only exist because of the state of those three variables in that point in time. Unique opportunities for collaboration happen that are especially important for industries that have dispersed.

Trade fairs and conventions within an industry form temporary, cyclical clusters where important economic processes and knowledge creation happen (Bathelt & Schuldt

2008; Power & Jansson 2008). Cyclical clusters, as described by Power and Jansson

(2008), happen when a space, such as a convention center, is reproducible and is renewed over time. In other words, convention centers get set up for these events (usually on a yearly basis), and their space generally gets set up in a very similar way each time. So every year when attendees come back to that event they are met with familiar sights

(Power & Jansson, 2008). These clusters allow for communication between consumers, developers, buyers, and critics to happen, in which the meaning, value and interest in products can be assessed by consumers.

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Conventions gain extra importance for cultural industries, such as the comic book industry discussed above, that have used new technologies to disperse. These industries are no longer permanently clustered in their day-to-day activities, but they still find value in coming together from time to time. Many comic artists have regular weekly meet-ups, generally on Wednesday evenings at comic shops where they come together to peruse and discuss that week’s new releases. Some meet with fellow artists monthly at comic jams where they meet to socialize while working. The most important of these gatherings is comic conventions. At these conventions, it is not just the artists who converge, but also producers, publishers, editors, and fans. Most of their time at these conventions is devoted to social transactions and networking that otherwise cannot happen throughout the rest of the year due to how dispersed the industry has become (Norcliffe & Rendace,

2003).

Conventions have proven that they can serve as a place for independent comic book creators to try and reach a larger audience. If the creators can manage to reach a larger audience, then they have a better chance of building up a large fan bases. The proximity attained during the convention’s weekend allows creators to sell directly to the enthusiasts of their work. It can be very difficult for independent comic artists to reach large audiences due to the way the publishing of comics takes place. By being able to situate themselves in the convention circuit, and attending as many conventions as they can, independent creators are given the ability to be discovered and build their fan base up (Norcliffe & Rendace 2003).

Domosh (2002) discussed the World’s Columbian Exposition, which took place in Chicago in 1893. This exposition signaled the United States’ transition from an era of

21 nation-building to an era of empire-building. The exposition drew in attendees from overseas and attempted to them sell American products and the construct of the

‘.’ The hosts of the Exposition, taking on the voice of America itself, broadcast messages about how they wanted to bring ‘civilization’ and the American

Dream to the world, and to Native Americans (Domosh, 2002).

Here we can see how events such as these are not just local affairs, but how they are used to send out a global message. Just as these events appear to affect a single person’s construction of their personal identity (Crozat & Fournier, 2005), they seem to be able to construct, piece by piece and person by person, a national identity. These events can be used as tools to not just showcase a transition, but to cause the transition in the socio-spatial identity of a person, or a nation, at a national and global scale (Di Méo,

2001). The showcasing of these transitions and ideas helps to broadcast and perpetuate them. Through these events people become exposed to new ideas and cultures they may have never encountered otherwise. This gives them the potential to take these new ideas and create something, thus contributing to cultural industries.

In the last ten years festivals, particularly cultural festivals, have received more geographic study than conventions and expositions. Per Cudny’s (2013) definition of a festival, perhaps the biggest difference between festivals, conventions, expositions, or trade shows is that festivals are non-work related. Cudny’s other criteria for what constitutes a festival include that festivals are typically cultural events, celebrating something of significance in a local community, and that they may also be combined with related competitions (Cudny, 2013). In many ways, Anime Expo fits into Cudny’s definition. Large groups of fans of a cultural product, anime, gather to discuss, celebrate

22 and socialize over their love of it. Anime Expo also puts on many different competitions in relation to anime. So while Anime Expo may be an anime convention, it shares a lot in with festivals. This is arguably the case for many conventions where the focus is a cultural product. The line between convention and festival becomes blurred, so much of the festival-centric literature becomes relevant to these culturally-focused conventions.

Festivals typically have a great impact on their surrounding spaces, and frequently bring in tourists. Cudny (2013) defines this space as ‘tourist space’ which lends itself well into the realm of tourism geography.

In tourism geography, as described by Cudny (2013), there are five main kinds of space that are analyzed in relation to festivals. The first two kinds of space are physical, which are geodesic (how an area is depicted on maps and plans) and geographic (how it played out on the Earth’s surface). The last three kinds of space are the economic space

(which is established by economic relations that are generated by human activity), socio- economic (an extension of the economic space that also includes the social element). The last space is the social space (an imagined, subjective space, which includes motivations and behaviors on the individual and group levels). The tourist space created by festivals, and similar events, involves all 5 of these kinds of spaces (Cudny, 2013).

Festivals and tourist spaces are incredibly important to cultural tourism. Cultural tourism occurs when tourists develop specific behaviors that show they have an authentic interest in a culture’s heritage. This leads them to participate in festivals and other activities that expose and help them foster a deeper understanding of the lives of people in that culture (Cudny, 2013).

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Festivals not only cultivate knowledge about cultural dynamics to an outsider, but also to people who are connected to specific cultures, whether it be from their own participation or because they have family within that culture. For example, a festival on a college campus hosted by a culturally specific club/group, may help second-generation students of South East Asian immigrant parents find a home within that university

(Brettell & Nibbs, 2009). These small, culturally specific festivals help students find and develop their own cultural identities.

To extend the previous example in another direction, the identities developed by the second-generation students were often found to be multi valent. They did not choose just one ethnic identity. The identities they developed were a blend of their parents’ backgrounds and American traditions and values. These students become free from the pressures, expectations, and limitations that their parents tend to set for them. They are free to sift and negotiate through their cultural traditions and boundaries, and discover what these traditions personally mean to them. They then not only pull from their cultural traditions, but they also collaborate and create new traditions with their peers (Brettell &

Nibbs, 2009).

These students in the previously mentioned example in turn formed new hybrid cultures that are then injected back into the traditional festivals. This serves to enrich both their own identities and foster and grow these new identities among other students

(Brettell & Nibbs, 2009). Festivals tend to represent microcosms of the cultures and societies that they are representing (Penrose, 2013). By engaging in these festivals on college campuses, one could conceive that an entirely new culture would eventually be built. This is, perhaps, negated by the fact that specific students are typically only around

24 for four years. Each school year fresh blood is introduced that has not had time to develop its own hybrid identity.

Lee (2001) conducted a qualitative study of a Korean festival that took place in

Osaka, Japan. This annual festival has allowed Koreans to express and celebrate their

Korean heritage in ways that they cannot in everyday life. Many of the Koreans who live in Ikuno, the neighborhood the festival takes place in, are descendants of Koreans who were unable to return to Korea in the 1930s-40s, during and after the fall of the Japanese

Empire. Despite the focus on Korean traditions during this festival, researchers cannot help but notice how the festivals are still in a very Japanese style and tradition (Lee,

2001). Just as the college campus festivals discussed above, this region developed a similar kind of hybrid culture.

Festivals provide space for individuals to come together and explore their identities and their culture. As we will see later in Chapter 5, anime conventions provide space for attendees in very similar ways that heritage-themed festivals did for the college students and the Korean diaspora in Japan.

The studies of festivals in geography are not always so deep and steeped in important cultural heritage and discovery of self-identity. An article by Gerlach (1994) tells the story of beer festivals along both sides of the , in both

Wisconsin and Minnesota. These festivals are typically labeled as being family events, with rides, games and food stands though most of them, without a doubt, are primarily for people to get together to drink beer. Gerlach studied how these local festivals evolved throughout the years and how they handled the common problems that happen when large amounts of people are intoxicated. In his article, he found that that Wisconsin

25 festivals accept and promote beer drinking much more than their Minnesotan counterparts. He found that this is likely because of their cultural heritage that has been closely associated with drinking (Gerlach, 1994).

When it comes to festivals, aesthetic geography has also been a point of study for geographers. Kingsbury conducted 27 interviews at an event called which takes place on a yearly basis in Vancouver, . Kingsbury focuses his attention on the act known in the community as ‘cosplay,’ which is short for costume- play. Attendees to a convention often will choose their favorite characters to dress up as and emulate during the event. Kingsbury argues that, by dressing up, attendees raise the status of the anime to a thing that they covet. After raising the status, they will then lower it as an object of desire, thus making it obtainable. Cosplayers create a safe space for themselves in conventions, with this act of ‘love-sublimation.’ Kingsbury states that they become “purified of pity and fear” (Kingsbury, 2015, p. 63) The space of the convention becomes a sacred and safe place for the cosplayers.

Itagoshi (2014) calls for more focused studies to happen at each of these anime conventions so that there can be a greater understanding of what the members in the anime fandom want to see, to drive up sales. It is my purpose to look both at the economic aspects of the anime fandom and the social aspect of the fandom and different kinds of participants in the industry, to see how they converge in the convention setting to create this “temporary community” setting that makes this industry thrive.

I wish to propose a more common use of the phrase “temporary communities” to explain the interactions and formations of fans and vendors that happen at various events, large conventions, small conventions and trade shows. This phrase has even been used to

26 describe the interactions and the immediate, yet mostly temporary friendships that form between children at campsites (Sara, 2011). The phrase is so apt for describing this phenomenon at campsites that a summer camp in Western has named themselves after it, “Temporary Community.” This campsite is designed specifically to bring people of all ages together to form a unique summer experience (Temporary

Community, n.d.). These social events and meeting places encourage bonds to be formed through common experiences and interests.

“Temporary community” has been used in reference to festivals such as the

Secret Garden Party, an annual festival of music, poetry, arts, and general revelry. It is a rather large event, drawing in 26,000 people, and their stated goal is not to make money, but for the festival to create a temporary community (Seth-Smith, 2012). This festival, and others like them, are about creating spaces that bind people together.

The bonds formed at conventions and trade fairs may not always be as temporary and fleeting as campfire friendships. There may be many people who will attend several of the conventions in their trade. Conventions are often seen as vital to an industry and its business cycle. Conventions and trade fairs momentarily become the central space for an industry to discuss new ideas, show off new products or even form new business alliances (Jannson & Power, 2008). While some relationships may be long-lasting, most of them won’t be. Also since the space of the event itself is temporary and the flow of people though the event with their different goals and motives are ever changing, the community that is formed could still be temporary.

This thesis revolves around several core geographical concepts. The first is the concept of diffusion, or how culture and media spread through populations. The second

27 core concept is that of cultural economies and industries. As we move away from the manufacturing economy, cultural goods and services start to become ever more prevalent in our daily lives. The act of spreading these culture and cultural products sometimes happens with the use of conventions and festivals. Festivals form special places where innovation, culture and self-worth are bred among its attendees. When we put these concepts together we can form the picture of how anime has spread throughout the

United States, and how anime conventions have proven themselves invaluable as places of self-expression for anime fans.

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CHAPTER 3

A BRIEF GLOBAL HISTORY OF ANIMATION

To understand how modern animation is a product of globalization, we must first stop and look at its history. As you will see by the end of this chapter, animation in any country would not be what we now know it as if it wasn’t for technology and style being shared across the world. In this history, we will be focusing on the histories of animation in the United States and Japan, but will also mention noteworthy titles and methods from all over the world.

When studying the history of animation, it is common practice to split up history into three to five different eras. These eras are typically defined by changes in technology used by , or changes in how animation was consumed by the public (Bendazzi,

2016; Cavalier, 2011; Clements, 2013). In this chapter, I will be focusing on how animation developed in different parts of the world, and will break down the history of animation as follows:

1. Animation Pre-History (Before 1900s)

2. The Earliest Modern Animation

3. Moral Panic and Early Animation in Japan

4. Early Animation in America and the Importance of Disney

5. The Rise of Japanese Anime

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Era One: Animation Pre-History

Pinpointing a single definition of animation is tricky. Because of this, it is nearly impossible to determine when or where the first work of animation happened. Generally, the most agreed upon definition of animation is, “single-frame images viewed in rapid succession by some form of mechanism, to create an illusion of movement” (Cavalier,

2011, p. 35). If this is the definition we accept, and for the purposes of this thesis it is, then animated works can be found much earlier in history than many people may think.

Examples of work that fall into this definition of animation can be found as far back as 5,200 BP, in the form of a bowl found in Iran’s Burnt City. The bowl features sequential paintings of a jumping goat along its sides. It is speculated that this bowl was designed to be spun, which would have given the goat an animated effect (Bendazzi,

2016, p. 7; Cavalier, 2011, p. 35).

Figure 1. Bowl found in Iran’s Boat City (Bendazzi, 2016, p. 7).

Another ancient example of animation came in the form of a device invented by the Chinese inventor Ting Huan around AD 180. His device involved using the heat of a lamp to float a series of sequential images. These images would appear to be moving

30 when you rotated them while floating from the hot air of the lamp. In later years, a device that worked the same way would be called the ‘’ (Cavalier, 2011). These lamps continued to be used in China for years, and they were constantly adapted and refined to create more elaborate stories (Clements, 2013).

These lanterns, at this point called ‘magic-lanterns,’ would eventually make their way into use in Japan. It is not known exactly when they started being used, but there are records showing that they were being used by at least the mid-1800s. These magic- lanterns still required the use of a lamp, but the Japanese experimented and made their own advancements in improving the lanterns. These lanterns would project images onto a wall. They would make use of several different lanterns, spinning at the same time, to make much more complex with multiple characters (Clements, 2013).

These lanterns were not only used to show fairy tales and legends, but also for various instructional purposes. Records show this happening as early as 1877. Magic- lanterns were found to be used for anatomy lectures and military events from the Sino-

Japanese War (Clements, 2013).

Magic-lantern shows, and the shows that came before them relied heavily on the use of people called ‘benshi.’ Benshi acted as a kind of master of ceremonies.

They were critical to the success of a showing of a magic-lantern show, performing multiple roles for the evening. One of their major roles is that they would interpret, narrate, and act out events happening in the magic-lantern show. They would also act as a town-crier and announce news to the crowd. The performance of a benshi could make or break the success of a show. Benshi were critical to the theater experience in Japan, up until the innovation of talking movies (‘talkies’) became widespread (Clements, 2013).

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The role of a benshi was not unique to Japanese theater. While not called benshi, there were people who filled very similar roles in theaters throughout Europe and North

America. The most famous of these types of performances in the West was the performance of the cartoonist Winsor McCay. During showings of “,”

McCay would play the part of a dinosaur tamer. He choreographed the act so he would appear to be interacting with Gertie the Dinosaur. He would get her to perform tricks, he would appear to throw her an apple, and then he would walk behind the screen and appear to enter the animation, and ride off on Gertie (Clements, 2013).

In the West, traces of modern animation can be traced back to a paper published in 1824 by Peter Roget titled, “The with Regard to Moving

Objects.” This paper discusses the theory of how a person’s retina can retain an image briefly after it has disappeared from line-of-sight. Roget found that if images are flashed in a rapid succession, then they will appear to be continuous to the human brain

(Cavalier, 2011, p. 35).

After this discovery of how the human brain interprets images, a flurry of toys and devices were invented to take advantage of this effect throughout the 1800s. The most notable of these inventions was the zoetrope in the 1860s, and the in

1877. The praxinoscope was developed into an early kind of a film projector. The problem with the praxinoscope was that it was complicated to work, and only the creator,

Emile Reynaud, could operate it (Bendazzi, 2016, p. 15). It was popular until the early

1900s, when the Lumière brothers improved upon the technology and made it useable for others to operate (Bendazzi, 2016, p. 17; Cavalier, 2011, p. 45).

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The Earliest Modern Animation

The world’s first cinemas began to open in the early 1900s. Animation, closer to what we would recognize today, started playing in the cinemas. Fantasmagorie was released in in 1908, and is widely considered to be the world’s first fully-animated film. Less than 2 minutes in length, it was drawn with lines on a white background.

As seen in Figure 3, negative exposures of these images were used in the final film, making it look as if they were white lines on a blackboard (Cavalier, 2011, p. 50). Émile

Cohl, the sole creator of Fantasmagorie, is considered by many to be the father of modern animation (Bendazzi, 2016, p. 30). Fantasmagorie, along with other early works of Émile Cohl and other foreign animators, made their way into Japanese cinemas. These foreign works were received well by Japanese audiences, frequently even more so than domestic films (Clements, 2013).

Many other notable works quickly followed Fantasmagorie. For example,

Ladislaw Starewicz, a Russian entomologist, made educational stop-motion films using both live and dead bugs for museums (see Figure 2). The previously-mentioned Gertie the Dinosaur film by Winsor McCay was released in 1914 in the United States.

The earliest animated film to be publicly screened in Japan was believed to have been Hekoten Shimokawa’s Imokawa Muzako genkan-ban no maki (Imukawa Muzako the Doorman) in 1917. None of these early films had sound yet, though they would frequently be accompanied by music on a record player, or a narrator/announcer. The use of benshi, and people with similar roles in the West, would continue to be used until sound within the film became commonplace (Clements, 2013).

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Figure 2. The Cameraman’s Revenge (1912) by Ladislaw Starewicz

Figure 3. Fantasmagorie by Emile Cohl. (Wood, 2017)

Moral Panic

At this point in the history of animation it is important that we talk about the effects that ‘moral panics’ had on the animation industry. The term ‘moral panic’ was first coined by the sociologist Stanley Cohen in 1973 to describe a society’s panic over something, usually a new technology or media (Toivonen & Imoto, 2013). According to

Cohen (2011) in his first paper on moral panic, there are typically five stages to a moral panic.

The first step in creating a moral panic, is that something, someone, or some group are defined as a threat to community interests and social norms. This supposed threat is then depicted in a simple symbol or form by the media. This symbol starts to

34 rouse public concern, which is then met with a response from authorities and policy makers. At this point, the moral panic is full-fledged and results in social changes within the community/society (Cohen, 2011).

The term ‘moral panic’ and its stages may have not been fully defined until 1973, but researchers have found evidence of them happening long before then. Perhaps the earliest example of a media-driven moral panic happened over the issue of young people reading in the 18th century. Reading was seen as a dangerous addiction to young people that afflicted fever, mania and lust upon them (Furedi, 2015). The biggest concern that helped fuel the panic to ever stronger heights surrounded the book, The Sorrows of Young

Werther, by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Concern over this book was so great since the main character of the story commits suicide, and young people all around the world were found to be imitating the suicide. They were often found with copies of the book on their person, or in their room, upon their untimely death (Furedi, 2015).

While moral panics were once an unintended outcome during the practice of journalism, they are now often seen as the goal of journalism. Moral panics are now the way that daily events are reported to the public. They frequently involve looking back to a ‘,’ when social stability and strong moral discipline acted as deterrents to disorder and delinquency. Moral panics have been studied in regard to Hollywood cinema, comic books, leisure time, homosexuality, and of course, animation (Clements,

2013; McRobbie and Thornton, 1995). When studying the history of animation globally, we can pinpoint where moral panics—unintended or not—have shifted the course of the animation industry.

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Moral Panic and Early Animation in Japan

The first moral panics in regard to the film industry can be seen in both Chicago in 1906 and Japan in 1907 (Clements, 2013). First we will go over the development of the animation and film industry in Japan, and the subsequent moral panics. The rise of animation and cinema in Japan happened concurrently with the rise of left-wing political groups, as well as pamphleteering for overhauls in labor laws, women’s rights, and even the imperial system within Japan.

Japan’s Ministry of Education saw the need to steer new media to promote good behavior among their youth, and nationalism. Foreign films were viewed as particularly problematic by the Ministry of Education, since they could not control the messages the foreign films put forth. The animated French film Zigomar was deemed to be particularly problematic, due to how it glorified larceny. Officials were horrified to hear tales of how children were re-enacting scenes from the film. Zigomar was blamed for the rise in juvenile gangs at the time. Foreign films would be frequently edited and given different subtitled “translations” to change the problematic portions of the film (Clements, 2013).

It was in 1917 that the first Japanese-made animated movie was screened to the public. Records show that Japan’s first animators began experimenting in this new medium as early as 1913, or possibly even before (Cavalier, 2011, p. 71). By the time these animated films started being released to the public, the traditional shows in Japan had been completely overtaken by animaton, since animated films were now worthy of being main attractions in theatres. Films, both live-action and animated, had increasing prevalence in the average person’s life (Clements, 2013). During this time,

Japanese animators were largely inspired by foreign films. They had no access to formal

36 instruction while learning how to animate, so they would instead get their hands on all foreign animated films that they could get to study from. Most of their first experiences came from subtitling American movies in Japanese, which gave them hands-on experience in working with film (Bendazzi, 2016, p. 83).

These films were subjugated to increasing amounts of regulation by the Ministry of Education. Regulations included gender-divided seating in the theatre, mandatory registration prior to public screening, and recognition that some films were unsuitable for

‘under-fifteens’ (Clements, 2013). The implementation of age restrictions became one of the biggest factors for change in the Japanese animation history.

By the 1920s, the number of children’s animated films in Japan had fallen drastically. The regulations that artists had to navigate were too complex for them to try and follow. They risked making a complete film—which was considerably more laborious and time consuming then than it is now—to only have it denied screening for their intended audience. This happened on several occasions, and would create a big enough loss for the studio to nearly bankrupt them. The safest films for Japanese studios to make during this period were retellings of traditional folktales (Clements, 2013).

Many film makers and animators in Japan were still interested in advancing animation technology, despite having such severe screening limitations. This forced them to move away from making entertainment films, and into the world of making educational, informative animated works. The earliest example of this in Japan is the use of animated films for public information purposes in 1917. Films about where to post your mail, or pay your taxes, were played at town halls and public meetings. The demand for films like these helped the animation industry expand, and in 1920 they developed a

37 more industrialized process for animating, which helped bring in larger profits for the animators. In 1921, Japan’s first dedicated opened (Clements, 2013).

Tragedy hit Japan in 1923 when The Great Kanto Earthquake leveled much of the

Tokyo and Yokohama region. The animation industry was hit particularly hard, since

Tokyo had been the center of production for Japan’s animation industry. The worst part was not the earthquake itself, but the fires that resulted from it. The earthquake had struck mid-day, when many cooking stoves were burning to prepare lunch. Most of the building structures in this period of history were made of wood and rice paper. So when the cooking stoves tipped over from the shaking, massive fires were created that sent most of the area up in smoke. All but one film studio was destroyed by these fires, and it took many years for the film industry to recover (Clements, 2013). These fires destroyed nearly all evidence of domestic cartoons before 1923, which makes studying Japanese animation history before this point rather difficult (Bendazzi, 2016, p. 82; Clements,

2013).

Because of the fires, the total foundation of Japan’s animation and film industry was destroyed. This allowed for a new generation of animators and producers to rise from the ashes and create new traditions and roots. Now liberated from their past, animators decided that relocation was necessary for rebuilding their industry. After animators largely relocated to the Osaka region, Tokyo would not be the center of the animation industry again until 1956, with the opening of Toei Studios (Clements, 2013).

While Japanese studios were rebuilding, Japan saw a large influx in the importing of American cartoons. These films filled up the gap that was left for Japanese consumers of entertainment, since it took a while for studios to begin producing content again. Films

38 for a children’s audience continued to be neglected by Japanese animators. Even after the fires, government contracts for animated works remained strong, and largely unaffected.

The largest amount of domestic animation was information, educational, and instructional

(Clements, 2013).

The amount of instructional and educational continued to increase throughout this period, thanks to the incentives created by the Ministry of Education in

1925. The Ministry of Education offered animators subsidies and incentives for producing educational purposes. These subsidies provided guaranteed income for animation studios if they met the government’s requirements. Many of these films tended to be more commercial than they were educational. An example of this was a production of The Hare and the Tortoise, which promoted the health benefits of milk, but more specifically the chocolate milk sold by Moringa Milk Chocolate. The actual amount of films like these that were screened is up for debate, as no records were kept of the government-contracted works. For example, in the Anime Sakuhin Jiten (Dictionary of

Animated Works), the largest book ever published about Japanese animation, there appears to be an eight-year gap where it looks like there was absolutely no animation created in Japan. In contrast to this supposed gap, it is known that Kitayama, a powerhouse of animation at the time, was completing a government-contracted piece of animation nearly every month (Clements, 2013).

During the 1920s and 30s, foreign film and animation tended to be the most popular films to be screened in Japanese theatres. A notable work imported to Japan was the 1939 short, A Language of My Own, which first aired in 1935. Betty

Boop was incredibly popular in Japan at the time, and this short was created specifically

39 for the Japanese audience. It was an unusually direct effort for the time to appeal to an international market. This was the result of the Hays Code, a code created in response to

Hollywood’s own moral panic (to be discussed further later in the chapter). Betty Boop, whose normal work was in clear violation of the Hays Code, needed to be cleaned up, and her creators needed to find a new way to make money of the series (Annett, 2011).

A Language of My Own featured Betty Boop getting in her plane to fly out to

Japan to perform for them. With her title song, she sings about how her music is so catchy that it brings people all around the world together. At one point during this song she even sings in Japanese. This film was able to deeply penetrate the Japanese market due to the previous popularity of Betty Boop, and also the fact that Paramount, the

American distributors of the film, sold the film to theatres for only half the price of works by local Japanese animators (Annett, 2011). Selling distribution rights for much less than domestic products was a common tactic employed by foreign distributors at the time.

Theatres bought it up, showing no loyalty to domestic animators. Foreign films were so much cheaper and more sophisticated looking compared to domestic productions that they were assured to make a profit. This left domestic animators floundering, and they did not have much opportunity to become stronger since there was no one investing in their work. Most Japanese animated films of the time were made at home by unsophisticated professionals (Bendazzi, 2016, p. 83). The immense popularity of foreign films proved to be distressing to both the Japanese animation industry, and the Japanese government, who would move quickly after the success of A Language of My Own to try and bolster domestic content.

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The next shake-up for the Japanese animation industry came with the impact of the 1939 Film Law. The Film Law required all cast and crew involved with a film to be licensed, and created requirements of what was to be shown at an evening of cinema.

These evenings required there to be newsreels and documentaries that served the purpose of nourishing national spirit. The law also provided the government the ability to censor films during their pre-production, rather than in the post-production as it had been before.

This strengthened the government’s control of film, and intensified the effects of the

1925 Public Security Preservation Law. This 1925 law prohibited films from questioning the power of the imperial family or the national constitution. All films now had to actively contribute to national policy (Bendazzi, 2016, p.180; Clements, 2013).

During these new laws, prohibitions on the import of foreign films were also put into place. Foreign films already being circulated ceased being screened. This was largely because they violated the new censorship rules, which included restrictions on the portrayals of women smoking, the use of foreign words, and sexual frivolity. For this first time, domestic animators did not have to compete against the more popular foreign films.

They now had a captive audience that included the children who would grow up to be the founding fathers of modern anime, most notably, Osamu Tezuka (Clements, 2013).

Nationalism and militarism exploded in Japan in the 1930s, largely because of a series of serious military actions taken by the Japanese government. The Fifteen Years

War began in 1931. In 1933 the League of Nations condemned Japanese military actions in Manchuria, and that was also the year that the Sino-Japanese War began. Finally,

Japan invaded China in 1937 and started the East Asia War. These actions forced Japan into a sort of isolationism by the world’s major powers. and animated films

41 during this period took form in pedagogical, documentary and propaganda films that were very heavy with nationalistic, imperialistic themes (Bendazzi, 2016, p. 180).

The strained relations between Japan and the United States are particularly evident in the release of Momotaro Vs. Mickey Mouse in 1934. In this film the titular character Momotaro—a popular character in traditional Japanese folktales—fights to protect a peaceful island being invaded by fanged Mickey Mouse lookalikes (see Figure

4). The natives of this island are all characters you would find in traditional Japanese folktales, while the American invaders are represented by the Mickey Mouse lookalikes, snakes, alligators and bats who spit missiles. There is even a lookalike of who tears up a treaty that represents the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922. This treaty restricted the Japanese Navy, allowing them to only be a small percentage of the

American and British naval fleets. In the end of the film the invaders are successfully repelled and the characters sing and dance to a traditional Japanese folk song (Cavalier,

2011, p. 113).

Figure 4. Momotaro (left) fights the Mickey Mouse lookalike (right) in Momotaro vs Mickey Mouse (1934).

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The focus on nationalism and militarism permeated Japanese media up through the 1950s. Children’s media focused on teaching them on how to be good citizens

(Bendazzi 2016). The largest amounts of money in the animation industry were easily spent by the Japanese government, especially during the wars. It was found that their soldiers appeared to learn how to do certain tasks, like deploying bombs from planes, when they watched an animated film that instructed them.

After the World Wars, there was an era when Japan was occupied by America.

The period between 1945 and 1952 was known as Japan’s “Occupation Era” and the animation industry was more disrupted than ever. They experienced a sudden loss of their military sponsors, which for years had been the main commissioner of animated works.

The “New Japanese Animation Company” was created in late 1945 at the direction of the Occupation authorities. This new company was now the home of most animators in Japan at the time, a strategy by the Occupation authorities so they could easily supervise the production of all animated media. Occupation authorities were distrustful of animators, and they decided to keep a close watch on them, since many them had participated in creating large amounts of anti-American propaganda during

World War II (Clements, 2013).

During this era, Japan finally saw the import of international films again. During the wars citizens only had access to domestic films. Japanese audiences were blown away with the full-length, full-color, and fully animated films that came in from overseas.

During this time domestic animation studios struggled to keep up, only officially releasing around 2 animated movies per year. Whatever films did get released (see Figure

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5), such as Gulliver’s Travels, were generally filled with heavy-handed pro-America propaganda (Clements, 2013).

Towards the end of the Occupation more animation studios started to crop up throughout Japan. Times would continue to be tough for them, as they still had to fight against the foreign films that were their competition. They also struggled heavily with unions and worker’s rights. An typically wouldn’t even earn a high enough wage to buy themselves decent food (Clements, 2013).

Figure 5. Animated foreign films released in Japan during the Occupation Era (Clements, 2013 Chapter 4).

Japanese studios continued at this time to receive plenty of animation contracts from abroad, especially from America. Japanese studios were used to animate a lot of commercials, and in-between work for American movies. This contracted animated work was not isolated to just hand-drawn animation. In 1964 the stop-motion Rudolph the Red-

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Nosed Reindeer was released in America, but it had been animated entirely in Japan. This contracted work helped boost the skills of domestic artists, and provided much needed capital for studios to work on domestic projects (Clements, 2013).

Early Animation in America and the Importance of Disney

Just as it did in Japan, moral panics related to the film industry in America happened right when the animation industry began developing. The earliest signs of moral panic regarding the animation industry in America happened in the very early

1900s in Chicago and New York. Rather than strictly being about the morality of films, the first and foremost concerns were in regard to the safety of patrons in movie theatres.

In an article in published on Christmas Day in 1908, the Mayor of

New York, Mayor McClellan, declared that all movie theatres were to shut down immediately. The reasons most prominently stated for the shut downs in this article cited safety concerns. It had been discovered that celluloid film was extremely flammable, and could burst into flame from even just the light used to project the film images onto the screen. Not only this, but the buildings themselves were not set up in a way that would allow people to easily flee in the event of a fire. Emergency exits were found to be blocked, steps and ladders used for entering the buildings were broken, and there was very poor lighting around the exits. The mayor decreed that the movie theatres would not be allowed to re-open until safety inspections had been passed (The New York Times,

1908a).

Safety was not the only goal of shutting down theatres. One of the conditions that

Mayor McClellan set for a theatre to re-open was that they had to agree not to operate or show any films on Sundays. Many then-popular genres of film, especially gangster

45 movies, were viewed as being morally reprehensible and it was thought that they should not be shown on the day many people go to church (The New York Times, 1908a).

Another article, published in the same paper on the same day, proposed a more nuanced view. The article agreed that while some movies were certainly problematic and needed to be hidden from public viewing, it was the duty of the police to act as “guardians of public morals” and provide judgment about whether a film was indecent or not. They go on to argue that just because some movies were problematic does not mean that no movies at all should be played on Sundays. They talked about how many movies were a source of “genuine diversion and educational development to countless persons of all ages who cannot afford more expensive entertainment” (The New York Times, 1908b, p.

6). It seems clear that the public did not completely agree with Mayor McClellan’s assessment of what needed to be done, but they did certainly seem to believe that some films were not decent or fit for the public.

Shortly after these events in New York various groups decided to take a step up to start evaluating the moral merit of films. In a direct reaction to Mayor McClellan’s decrees regarding movie theatres, The National Board of Censorship was founded in

1909 by The People’s Institute, which was a reform organization composed mostly of

Protestant, upper-middle class New Yorkers. This board had no legal authority, but they were generally accepted by the public to create acceptable standards of morality on the big screen, and were trusted to report these standards to movie makers around the country. While trusted at first, it quickly became apparent that the people on The National

Board of Censorship were too lenient on movie makers, and they would not come up with firm, acceptable standards for screen morality (Convares, 1992).

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After the failure of The National Board of Censorship came The Motion Picture

Producers and Distributors of America (the MPPDA). In 1922, in collaboration with

William Hays—a U.S. politician and eventual chairman of the MPPDA—the MPPDA started consulting with various civic and religious groups to create a set of rules for movies, and eventually, television shows. These sets of rules were published in 1930 and were called the Production Code, or more commonly, the Hays Code (Convares, 1992;

Maltby, 2003).

The Hays Code, created in 1930, was not actually enforceable in the film industry until 1934. The Code was largely ignored because of the start of The in

1929. The sorts of things that the Code prohibited, such as violence and sexual themes, were the sorts of themes that sold a lot of movie tickets. The film producers were desperate, like the rest of America, to make any money that they could (Maltby, 2003).

This, of course, upset religious groups and the MPPDA, who decided to join forces. In

April of 1934 The Legion of Decency was created, a powerful group who threatened to boycott Hollywood if movie producers did not start following the Hays Code in their movies. Forever worried about their profit margin, producers surrendered to these demands, and they pressured fellow producers to strictly follow the Hays Code (Maltby,

2003).

The war over the morality of film started before animation in America had a chance to take off and potentially break these moral codes. Like it originally did in Japan, animation in America started off as something primarily done by hobbyists. Refinements in animation technology by Winsor McCay in 1914 with the release of Gertie the

Dinosaur helped the animation take a big step forward in becoming a legitimate part of

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America’s film industry (Cavalier, 2011, p. 63). The first commercial animation studio opened in the Bronx in 1914. New York City would continue to be the epicenter of the

American animation industry, until Disney moved his studios to the West Coast in the

1930s (Cavalier, 2011, p. 118).

In America, and around the world, many pioneers of animation in these early days originated as newspaper comic-strip artists (Cavalier, 2011). Because of their sequential nature, comic strips lent themselves well to becoming cartoons. Early animators already were accustomed to thinking in the sequential nature that animation requires, albeit with many more drawings filling in the gaps. As history progresses, we can see overlap between comics and animation crop up time and again, something that will be discussed further in Chapter 4.

In this period of early American animation, a trick animators liked to use was to make it look like the cartoons were interacting with a real person. This was seen in both

Gertie the Dinosaur (1914) and (1924). In Gertie the Dinosaur Winsor

McCay would stand in front of the screen and appear to tell Gertie to do specific tricks. In

Koko the Clown we can see the first time the technique of was ever used. The rotoscope technique involves filming actors in live-action sequences, and then an animator uses a lightbox to trace over the filmed images. This technique tends to produce a distinct realistic look and is still used in some animated films to this day. In Koko the

Clown, Koko is animated using rotoscoping, and appears to interact with the hand that animates him (Cavalier, 2011, p. 66).

The 1920s and 30s are when several of the big animation studios that we still know the names of started to pop up, grow and compete. The most notable of these

48 studios were , Disney Studios, and Warner Bros. The previously discussed Betty Boop was originally one of the side characters in a series of animated films called Talkartoons. The character of Betty Boop was received well enough that the

Fleischer Brothers decided to have her star in her own cartoon. Betty Boop was different from other cartoon characters of the time largely because she was an adult character aimed at an adult audience. At this time in the history of animation the vast majority of films and characters were aimed at children. In contrast, Betty Boop was modeled after a kind of party girl at the time known as a “flapper.” After the implementation of the Hays

Code, Betty Boop had to be tamed down quite a bit. Her clothes had to cover more of her, and there had to be fewer references to sex and alcohol. Parents were concerned about the influence she, and other characters such as , had on their children. Born from this concern was a much more innocent, covered-up Betty Boop who travels the world to unite people with her songs, like in the previously mentioned short, A Language of My

Own (Clements, 2013).

Animation would continue to be influenced by moral panic when the Comics

Code Authority was established in 1954. Parents were concerned that graphic content, like nudity and gore, in comic books were having negative effects on their children. To prevent government intervention comic publishers created the Comics Code Authority which imposed stringent rules on creators that ensured that no one would object to a comic book for moral reasons (Shutt & Mooney, 2003, p.10). The imposition of this code on comic books, which served as source material for many animated films, ensured that cartoons would continue to be kid-friendly throughout the 1950s and 60s.

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The Disney Era

By far the biggest success to come out of the American animation industry was that of Studios. The animated films by Walt Disney are now regarded as classics, and have influenced animation artists throughout the whole world. Although

Walt Disney Studios is now a juggernaut in the animation and live-action industry, this was not always the case. As we will see, Walt Disney had many struggles in his early days and faced many setbacks before achieving his massive success.

Walt Disney started his adult life in 1918 by serving with the Red Cross overseas in France. During his work abroad he found pleasure in entertaining his comrades with his drawings and comic strips. He returned to the United States, when his work with the

Red Cross was complete, with the ambition to become a professional comic strip artist.

His first gig as a comic strip artist was at the Pesmen-Rubin Commercial Art Studio. This is where he would meet , a gifted young animator (Bendazzi, 2016, p. 50).

In 1922 Disney and Iwerks decided to team up and founded their own studio,

Laugh-O-Gram Films. They started by making short animations based on classic fables, such as Cinderella—a different film than the adaptation we would see later from

Disney—and Puss in . They started work on an of films telling the story of Alice in Wonderland when they ran out of money and went bankrupt in 1923.

Fortunately, their Alice in Wonderland series was picked up by in New

York. Disney and Iwerks were now back in work (Bendazzi, 2016, p. 50).

In 1927 while working for Universal Pictures, Walt Disney co-created the character Oswald the Lucky Rabbit with Iwerks. Oswald was an instant hit within

Universal Studios, and a series of animated shorts were created with him (Suddath,

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2008). While working under Universal, Disney made a total of 26 Oswald films (BBC

News, 2012). In 1928 Disney met with Universal to renew his contract, but was ultimately forced out of the studio. Universal Studios retained the rights to all of Disney’s creations and characters, including the popular Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. Universal reached out to Disney and offered another contract so he would stay with Universal

Studios and continue to work with his characters, but for a much lower salary than he had been receiving previously. In the end Disney gave up the rights to his characters to

Universal and set off to start his own company again (Suddath, 2008). Without Disney on their staff, Universal would go on to make 26 more films with Oswald the Lucky Rabbit

(BBC News, 2012). Without Disney as the creative force behind him, the popularity of

Oswald ultimately fizzled out, to become a mere obscure part of Disney’s past until his revival in the when Walt Disney Studios regained the rights to him (BBC News,

2012; Disney, 2017).

Figure 6. Mickey Mouse (left) and Oswald the Lucky Rabbit (right). This would be the only time Disney drew the two characters together (BBC News, 2012).

The only animator from Disney’s staff at Universal Studios to follow him was his friend, Ub Iwerks. Together Disney and Iwerks moved to California and set to work

51 immediately to design a replacement character for Oswald (Bendazzi, 2016, p. 51;

Suddath, 2008). Disney and Iwerks started with the design of Oswald and then shortened the ears, rounded out his middle, and then the rabbit turned into a mouse. They originally named the mouse Mortimer, but the name didn’t stick. There are many theories and tales suggesting how the name change occurred, the most popular being that Disney’s wife hated the name Mortimer, and suggested the name Mickey (Suddath, 2008).

The first couple of animated shorts with Mickey Mouse drew little attention from the public (Saddath, 2008). In fact, the lack of success nearly drove Disney and Iwerks into bankruptcy again. The production of was going to be the animated film that either saved or destroyed Disney’s dreams of being a successfully animator

(Bendazzi, 2016, p. 95).

On November 18th, 1928, Steamboat Willie premiered at the New York Colony

Theatre. By this time Disney was broke, and if Steamboat Willie failed, it would be all over for him. In fact, it wasn’t just Disney who was relying on the success of Steamboat

Willie. The animation industry was starting to wither away in America as an art form

(Bendazzi, 2016, p. 96). It’s quite possible that if Steamboat Willie did not succeed, animation as an art form and popular medium would not be nearly as popular or advanced as we see it today.

At this point films were just starting to have synchronized sound, although no one had successfully used it. Synchronized sound at the time still did not have voices to accompany the animation. Synchronized scores were composed of orchestral music and sound effects (Bendazzi, 2016, p. 97). As many people today see technology as just a fad (Smith, 2015), the same was thought of sound back in the late 1920s. To many

52 people’s surprise, Steamboat Willie was a huge success. Disney had managed to use the synchronized score perfectly, Mickey appeared to whistle and the tug boat sounds were synced perfectly. With this success, Disney was brought from the edge of financial ruin, and he could continue to work (Bendazzi, 2016).

This period of the late 1920s and 1930s was a disaster for most industries in the

United States and the rest of the world. The stock market crashed in October 1929, kickstarting the Great Depression. World War II started in 1939, a conflict in which 50 million people would ultimately die. All of this made life rather grim for the average person. Despite this, we could even say because of this, cartoons flourished. Tickets to movie theatres were incredibly cheap, and this allowed even working class workers to attend and watch a , or one or two short comedies (which were often cartoons) and a newsreel. This allowed people to escape from their daily struggles. For perhaps the first time in American history, animation was deeply affecting people and their daily lives. Animation affected their feelings, tastes, and common language

(Bendazzi, 2016).

The release of Steamboat Willie was just the start of the success for Mickey

Mouse, and the start of what many called “The Golden Age of Animation” (Bendazzi,

2016). Mickey Mouse would continue to star in 121 short films, up until 1953. He first appeared in color in 1935 in The Band Concert and the revolutionary Fantasia in 1940.

Disney found such exceptional success with his works because he put incredible amounts of work into making his various characters into individuals. This allowed for audiences to connect to the characters on a deeper level than they could with any other series of animated films (Bendazzi, 2016, pp. 98-100).

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With his success with his Mickey Mouse series, Disney became incredibly influential in the animation industry. He created new methods of animation production in

California, using a Tayloristic rationalization of labor. Animation teams specialized within each department. For example, one team was responsible for animation, another for scene design, another for special effects, etc. Walt Disney was excellent at picking out talented people that had technical skills beyond even his own and utilizing their skills to the fullest. He stepped back from animation himself, and took a role as motivator and organizer (Bendazzi, 2016, p. 100).

Snow White and the Dwarves was released by Disney in 1937 and was notable for being the first full-length animated feature to be produced by any studio. This was another one of those moments that could put Disney on the edge of ruin if the film failed. Snow White took Disney Studios three years to make, and over five times the estimated budget, totaling a final production cost of 1.5 million USD. Luckily for Disney, the film quickly made over 8 million USD (Bendazzi, 2016, p. 102).

This film set the course for Disney for decades to come. Disney became dedicated to making films that were meant for a children’s audience, which then also cemented the course for the rest of the animation industry who were trying to succeed in the same way

Disney had. The difference with Disney was that their definition of their “childhood audience” was different. Their films were aimed at ‘children from eight to eighty,’ or ‘the child which is inside all of us.’ His films were revolutionary in Western—and global— film production. Animation for children was now being made purely for the purpose of entertaining, which no underlying educational purposes. Disney became the new standard of animation, even after Walt’s death in 1966. Walt Disney did not just defeat his

54 competition, but he seemed to totally erase his competition. Disney’s animation became the definition of what animated films were (Bendazzi, 2016, p. 106).

The Rise of Japanese Anime

The is when the roots of the modern anime industry started to grow. The transformation from “Japanese animation” to “anime” was largely due to the work done by Osamu Tezuka with the release Tetsuwan Atomu (Astro Boy) on New Year’s Day of

1963 (Figure 7). It is commonly agreed upon that Osamu Tezuka is the father of contemporary anime and manga (Ito & Okabe, 2012, p. xiii). Many people look fondly on

Astro Boy as the first anime, but those who possess a more intimate knowledge of

Tezuka's impact on the Japanese animation industry often have a more critical, even scornful, view (Clements, 2013).

Osamu Tezuka’s earliest, and ongoing, problems were largely financial issues. To get around this, Tezuka was famous for using every cost-cutting measure that he could find. These cost-cutting measures were not secrets, and he has often been looked down upon for using so many.

Figure 7. Tetsuwan Atomu, 1963

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Some of his most common techniques included using only 8 drawn frames per second—the standard was 24 frames per second—and using single still frames for scenes that did not require much animation such as crowd scenes and a character gasping. These techniques, along with many others, were used heavily in Tezuka’s studio. So much so, that the animators working under Tezuka would complain that they could hardly be called real animators most of the time. Another one of Tezuka’s woes was that he had to deal with chronic understaffing, and so he had to outsource a lot of animation to other studios. This “solution” didn’t solve anything, it mostly just moved the problems away from Tezuka for someone else at another studio to deal with (Clements, 2013).

Astro Boy’s animation was not in any way as smooth as the animation from bigger, well-known companies, such as Tōei Dōga, Japan’s largest animation studio at the time and a rival to Tezuka, and Disney, who was a huge influence on Japan’s animators at the time. Tezuka was highly influenced by Disney’s movies and style, particularly when it came to the big-eyed innocent look for characters. Tezuka and other animators would do their best to emulate this style (Clements, 2013).

The main reason that Astro Boy could carry on as long as it did was that NBC

Enterprises, an American company, ordered 52 episodes to be made. These excited many people, since many people in Japan were now imagining that a Japanese show was being broadcast all over America by NBC. This was ultimately not true, but Tezuka and others who knew downplayed this fact. NBC Enterprises was in fact a small subsidiary of the

NBC network, which traded small imports to local syndication markets. The parent company never broadcast or played any real part in the production of Astro Boy. Also,

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NBC Enterprises never advertised the fact that Astro Boy was animated in Japan, as they were concerned about lingering anti-Japanese sentiment in the wake of World War II.

NBC Enterprises’ involvement in Astro Boy ultimately wound up watering down

Tezuka’s vision for his series. To be aired in America, animation had to follow a strict set of moral guidelines. Tezuka was told that he had to avoid adult themes, nudity, and ongoing storylines. Out of the first 12 episodes that were delivered to NBC Enterprises, 6 were rejected for violating these requests. An American localizer did manage to salvage three of these episodes with heavy editing, something that would become commonplace with later anime releases in America. The other three episodes simply could not be broadcast, one for having scenes involving animal vivisection, one for backgrounds that contained nude images of women, and one for a plot device that involved a message that was scratched into the eyeball of a Christ statue (Clements, 2013).

The other thing that Tezuka did, which would have repercussions to this day, was how he decided to sell Astro Boy. Just because a certain number of episodes were contracted for did not mean that the episodes were paid for. Tezuka was not paid for episodes until they were completed and ready for air, which was something not standard for the industry until Tezuka implemented it. This meant at any given time many episodes could be in production, but they wouldn’t have the cash to pay the people making them. This led to animators being paid very poor wages, something that only worsened in the with Japan’s economic downturn (Clements, 2013). The practice of giving animators very poor wages is still a problem to this day. Despite the anime industry now being a 2 trillion-yen business (about US18.2 billion), animators in Japan continue to suffer incredibly long working hours and low wages (Sherman, 2017). Since

57 this method of paying for episodes was beneficial for broadcasters, and broadcasters set the rules, they decided to stick with it (Clements, 2013).

Poor financial decisions on Tezuka’s part did not prevent Astro Boy from becoming a turning point for the anime industry. Tezuka strived for his animation to be perceived as ‘placeless’. This was a necessary attribute for works to have if they were going to succeed in overseas markets. He would create this placeless feel in his works by using foreign settings and stories. For many anime, you can simply swap out the vocal track and the Japanese origin of it could be completely hidden (Clements, 2013). Along with placelessness, anime has been called “culturally odorless.” This especially applies to anime made in the 70s and 80s. Some attribute this to the fact that anime characters do not typically look Japanese. As seen in Figure 8, anime characters in this time tended to have cream-colored skin, big blue eyes, and light brown hair (Mckevitt, 2010). Even now anime characters many anime characters tend to have a very placeless look. The advantage of being placeless and culturally odorless is something that is wholly unique to animation, and is something that could never be achieved with live-action media

(Clements, 2013).

Figure 8. Many fans who first watched Speed Racer (1967) (left) and Pokémon (1997) (right) did not know that these shows were Japanese in origin, thanks to their placeless and culturally odorlessness nature.

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The other lasting mark Tezuka had on the anime industry was the overall style that is associated with anime. Anime is notorious for having very large, expressive eyes and facial expressions. This was a style that Tezuka borrowed largely from the works of

Walt Disney. Tezuka was an avid fan of Disney comics and animation. The influence

Disney had on Tezuka is particularly evident in his early comics. Artists at Disney were also fans of Tezuka’s work, and they kept regular correspondence with each other. In

Figure 9, you can see a card that Tezuka drew for Carl Barks, of whom Tezuka was especially fond. Carl Barks’ Donald Duck even made an appearance in a Tetsuwan Atomu comic (Figure 10) (Tano, 2016).

Figure 9. Greeting card from Osamu Tezuka to Carl Barks, whom Tezuka was very fond of (Tano, 2016).

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Figure 10. Donald Duck appears in an issue of Tetsuwan Atomu (Tano, 2016).

From this point, the seed of the anime industry had been planted, and it would continue to grow. The success of in the late 1970s would prove to be a huge boon to the anime industry, convincing Japanese television networks to increase the number of timeslots for (giant ) shows. By this time the anime industry had already begun forming its close relationship with Japan’s toy industry, which had started with the release of the anime in 1972. Action figures targeted to young boys started to be produced, which provided much needed additional revenue for studios

(Condry, 2013, p. 122).

Part of anime’s original appeal in the 1980s and 90s was how different it was from Western mainstream media. However, its popularity began to grow enough that it started to slip into the mainstream. Anime began to be aired on the Sci-Fi channel, and could be spotted on the shelves of Blockbuster Video. In 1999 the popular fast-food chain

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Kentucky Fried Chicken ran a Pokémon toy giveaway, a show that had become an extremely popular children’s show in the United States. Proving how popular anime was becoming during this decade, Time magazine ran a special cover story on Pokémon, in a special section devoted to anime in general (Napier, 2005, p 6). In the tagline of the special anime issue, Time wrote, “For many kids it’s now an addiction: cards, video games, toys, a new movie. Is it bad for them?” (Figure 11) showing that moral panics regarding animation still persisted nearly a century after they started.

Figure 11. Time special Pokémon issue, November 22, 1999.

Anime as a has undergone a lot of cross-pollination, incorporating elements of foreign animation into itself and contributing its own ideas to the animation industries of other countries. One of the reasons for this is that creators of anime, for the most part, are young Japanese artists who have been exposed to Western influences since birth

(Napier, 2005, p. 22). Anime has little restriction in genre. is possibly one of the most popular genres of anime. While they may contain significant elements of

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Japanese culture, these anime often play out in placeless fantasyscapes that help retain their cultural odorlessness. One of the early titles we can witness this in is in the 1970s

Space Battleship Yamato, which both celebrates certain Japanese cultural norms and obscures its cultural heritage in space (Napier, 2005, p. 22). Anime titles are not always cultureless, but a growing number of anime like to blend different genres and cultures.

This is particularly evident in works by Shinichirō Watanabe. All of Watanabe’s works rely heavily on their musical scores to invoke certain feelings in the shows. His 1998 release, (Figure 12), a sort of neo-noir , revolves around the stories of intergalactic bounty hunters. The tone of Cowboy Bebop is set using , opera and western music. Some music, composed by , would be created for certain scenes. Quite often, though, Kanno would create a song with no direction from the director, and scenes would be created specifically for the music (DuBois, 2013).

Figure 12. The main characters from Cowboy Bebop (1998).

In 2004 Watanabe’s next work was released. (Figure 13), is firmly set in an alternate version of Edo-era Japan. Samurai Champloo uses traditional

62 themes one would expect, such as kimono and samurai, but puts a twist on it which is a heaping dose of hip-hop music. The samurai in the story incorporate break dancing in their fighting styles, and characters beat box, and in-between scenes use record- scratching sounds of a disc jockey. In my experience, it is anime such as these, that blend various cultural stereotypes and genres, that quickly become popular and are regarded as instant classics in Japan and the United States.

Figure 13. Samurai Champloo (2004).

Overview

As we have seen, moral panics that happened as the film industries in both

America and Japan were forming have had a lasting impact. This is especially true in

America, where the movie and comic codes put into place morals and guidelines that had to be followed for any kind of film to achieve success in the market. Children’s cartoons were sanitized and the perception that cartoons were a children’s medium was created.

Animation in America became a medium of entertainment purely for children.

While Japan experienced these moral panics that were fundamentally the same, the film industry decided to go in a rather different direction. Film makers largely turned

63 away from children’s cartoons, and instead focused on government-contracted work that would earn them money. Anything for children that was produced was made for educational purposes, and films were contracted by the government to help turn children into good citizens. During the 1930s and 40s many Japanese animators created propaganda that focused on nationalist militaristic themes.

America’s morals still had impacts on Japan’s industry, particularly since by the

1960s Japan was interested in exporting their films around the world to help make money in a time of economic downturn. Even with keeping America happy by producing works that fit American morals, Japan started to turn out a large number of animated works.

These animated shows and movie were mostly based off of their comic books, which was also a common practice in America.

Since the beginning Japanese animation and anime have been substantially impacted by Western influences. In the early 1900s the biggest influences were focused on animation technology. From the 1960s onward influences came in the form of animation style. Walt Disney had a particular influence on Osamu Tezuka, the creator of the first modern anime. Tezuka had a strong affinity for the big-eyed expressive style seen in Disney movies, and adapted it for his own work, a style that is practically a trademark of anime today. Anime has become a truly transcultural medium and a global phenomenon.

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CHAPTER 4

HOW ANIME SPREAD TO AMERICA

“Audiences don’t care about what technique or technology is involved, they just want to see a good story, well told” Cavalier, The World History of Animation

Anime Finds Its Way into America

Anime had very shaky beginnings when it first entered the United States. Anime was eventually sought out by fans of animation who were caught up in the “cultural sink” of the American animation industry in the 1960s and 1970s (Leonard, 2005). During this time, American media was still feeling the effects of the Hays Code from 1934, which imposed strict Christian morals on American film and cartoons (Maltby, 2004). This combined with the work from Disney, who set the standard that cartoons were for children (Bendazzi, 2016, p. 106), meant that American animation had now become heavily sanitized. This was deemed necessary since it was thought that children were going to be attracted to all things animated, therefore everything animated needed to be made safe for them to watch (Leonard, 2005). In this chapter, I will be discussing the importance that fan networks and fan activities, such as fansubbing, have had in spreading anime throughout the United States.

It was not just American animation that got the sanitization treatment. Imported

Japanese animation received the same treatment, and was heavily edited to fit American moral codes (Clements, 2013). This was the treatment given to Astro Boy as it was first

65 picked up by NBC Enterprises. NBC Enterprises first became interested in Astro Boy with the hopes that it could emulate the success of Pinocchio in Outerspace, which had been released in 1965 in the United States (Ladd & Deneroff, 2009). Despite America’s influences in creating Astro Boy, the first modern anime, very few anime would find their way in to America, let alone find commercial success, for a couple of decades. Those anime that did find their way here were hardly known by most of the American public to be Japanese in origin.

There was a lack of serious animation aimed at adult audiences in America. This void, or “cultural sink,” needed to be filled by something else. As we have seen, animation in Japan never suffered from the notion that animation is only for children. So when adults in America went looking for serious and complex animated stories, they were quickly drawn in by what Japan was producing (Itagoshi, 2014). Fred Ladd, who wrote the English scripts for Astro Boy, noted in an interview about early anime fandom that from the start he noticed that the fan-mail he received was more from people in their

20s, than pre-teens like they had expected (Ladd & Deneroff, 2009). This was a problem for American audiences, since at the time the Japanese animation industry had little to no interest in expanding into the American marketplace. Japanese studios were largely under the assumption that there was little money to be made in the American market (Itagoshi,

2014; Leonard, 2005). Even when there was money to be made, Japanese producers did not like having to alter their works to suit American morals (Clements, 2013). This made anime a little unusual, because instead of the typical company pushing its product onto consumers, the consumers were instead pulling the product toward them (Leonard 2005).

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In the 1970s and 1980s, American anime fans had to rely on fan networks that they created themselves to find the content they desired. This started with the creation of mail networks that spread anime to fellow consumers with VHS copies of shows made from Japanese television. From there, specific groups were made and gatherings were formed to show off what individual fans had managed to acquire. Growing from these networks, eventually fan conventions started forming to try to help spread information about different anime titles. These original networks appeared to have no central point or unified point of origin that gave direction to their growth. As anime conventions became more commonplace they eventually became the central point for many of these networks

(Grabher, 2006).

Before conventions were commonplace, the most common kind of gathering of anime fans happened at anime clubs that took place in universities and other public spaces (Eng, 2012b, p.162; Pinto, 2011). Many of the first people to start forming these clubs in the early 1980s grew up in the 1960s when titles such as Astro Boy, Speed Racer, and were being broadcasted (Eng, 2012b, p. 159; Mckevitt, 2010).

In the early 1980s when these clubs started to crop up many fans did not have any way to watch anime on their own, so they had to come to a club meeting where a crowd of people would gather around one small television. Typically, someone would stand next to the video as it would play and do their best to explain what was going on to the crowd (as seen in Figure 14), since many of these early screenings had no (Pinto, 2011).

Video content would also be shared at these club meetings. Fans would chain together

VCRs together which allowed them to copy video tapes en masse (Eng, 2012b, p.162).

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Figure 14. People standing at the front of an anime club meeting in New York City in the mid-1980s, explaining to the crowd what is happening on screen. (Pinto, 2011)

The most notable of these fan clubs was the Cartoon/Fantasy Organization (the

C/FO) that started up in Los Angeles in 1977 (Ladd & Deneroff, 2009; Mckevitt, 2010).

When it first formed, C/FO members would meet monthly to watch episodes of the few anime that had been released commercially in English, and to watch videotapes of

Japanese-language anime that aired on local cable access stations (Mckivett, 2010).

Soon though, the C/FO gained the opportunity to participate in videotape exchanges with fans. There were a large number of people in

Japan who were fans of American science fiction that had little access to it. So, they started to partner up with American anime fans. The American fans would provide the

Japanese fans with videotape copies of American series such as Battlestar Galactica and

Star Trek. In return the Japanese fans provided the C/FO club members with “pure” unedited anime. This exchange helped the C/FO grow immensely, and soon they had nearly three dozen chapters of the C/FO across the country. These chapters were mostly located in big cities, such as Chicago and New York, but they also cropped up in unexpected locations in the rural Midwest and the South (Mckivett, 2010).

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The C/FO was not the only anime club during this time. There were many people who did not like the structure and organization of the C/FO, so they opted instead to create their own clubs, their way. The Rhode Island Anime Hasshin Club had over 400 members on six continents and boasted that, at the time, it was the largest international anime . The Boston Japanimation Society was also founded during this time, and they still exist, making appearances at anime conventions today across the Northeast.

Perhaps the most casual of these clubs was the A.N.I.M.E. (Animation of Inter-Mediary

Exchange) club. They hosted monthly barbeques in California where they would gather to watch anime, and they were very specifically proud to be separate from organized anime fandom (Mckivett, 2010).

These early gatherings of fans were critical for the success of anime in the United

States. During these early years, where fans experienced little interaction with any arm of the Japanese anime industry, much of their knowledge had to come through contact with other fans (Eng, 2012b, p.162). Without the networks that fans created to share material, anime may never had gained its foothold in the American entertainment industry.

Fansubbing

Another key chain in the content sharing networks was the work of fansubbers.

The name “fansubber” comes from the work of “fansubbing, which refers to the practice of fans, and fan groups, translating raw anime from Japanese broadcasts and giving them subtitles, creating “” (Condry, 2013, p. 161). These fansubs made anime suddenly more accessible and understandable for more potential anime fans, especially to those who lived in more rural areas where anime clubs were fewer. They could now receive

69 tapes through the mailing networks and finally understand the content they received without the help of someone else to translate or guess about what was going on onscreen.

The practice of fansubbing still carries on in anime fandom. Websites such as

AnimeSuki.com exist to spread links for downloading fansubbed anime, usually through peer-to-peer networks. The legality of the distribution of fansubs is something that has been questioned since this practice first began. “Ethical” fansubbers police each other, and it is an agreement among the fansubbing community that the only titles that should receive the fansubbing treatment are ones that have not been licensed in the language it is being subtitled in. If an anime has become licensed after it has been fansubbed, it is usually agreed that the needs to be pulled offline once it starts being officially distributed by the company who licensed it (Condry, 2013, p. 174).

While many fansubbers argue that their work helps the anime industry, actual anime producers in Japan refuse to comment on it. They of course do not appreciate that their work is being distributed without being paid for. Nevertheless, it is undeniable that anime would have never reached the popularity that it enjoys today in the United States without the efforts fansubbers and fellow fans went through to get ahold of material.

Anime Expo, the first to ever be officially backed by the Japanese anime industry, gained permission in their early years to subtitle and screen anime that hadn’t been translated before and all the work had been done by fansubbers (Leonard, 2005).

Anime has experienced what is called, “globalization from below” (Condry, 2013, p. 2). Anime was not pushed onto American consumers, as is the practice of many media industries. Instead anime was pulled into America by the consumers (Condry, 2013, p. 2).

This pulling was done by the fans who created the first fan networks, clubs, conventions

70 and fansubbers. Animation as we know it today would not be the same without the dedication of these early animation fans. Because these fans proved that animation was not only for children, but also for adults, the work that gets produced today in America is not always quite so child-friendly. Even the stories that air on children’s networks can have serious long-term story arcs now, which is something that used to be uncommon.

This now draws new, more mature audiences to channels, such as , who do not typically market to adults.

Fan-built networks are a perfect example of diffusion through “alter-routes” that were discussed in Chapter 2. They also display a sort of inverse hierarchical diffusion blended with contagious diffusion. Instead of someone in a traditional leader role working to spread content, it was the fans who did the work to acquire and spread the content. They had no leader in the form of a corporation or company giving them the content and had to rely on finding the content and ways of distributing it themselves.

Mainstream marketplaces are traditionally how film and media reach large global audiences (Hozic, 2014), which anime could not take advantage of in its early years. Fans created the alter-routes of fan club meetings and mailing chains along which anime travelled, and in time these alter-routes evolved into what are now formal routes for new content to travel.

The diffusion of anime has always relied heavily on new technology. Anime fans made considerable use of the first VHS players, and then the internet as those technologies developed. The internet helped fans connect more quickly over larger spaces than they could before. A notable use of the use of the internet is the development of the website Crunchyroll.

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Crunchyroll.com was established in 2006 as an immensely popular anime-video streaming website. In their first years, much of the content available to stream was unauthorized, much of it being fansubbed. Anime distributors and

Entertainment Inc. filed several cease and desists in regards to Crunchyroll’s streaming of unauthorized content ("Funimation, Bandai Entertainment Respond on Crunchyroll

(Updated)", 2008). In the beginning of 2008 Crunchyroll received a large investment from an outside company and decided to restructure how the website runs. It was announced in late 2008 that starting on January 8, 2009 that Crunchyroll now held the license to legally stream the extremely popular series Naruto and they would officially stop accepting user-submitted videos. There were now two membership levels for

Crunchyroll, paid and unpaid. Paid members of the website would receive access to watch the new English-subtitled episodes of Naruto merely one hour after they originally aired on Japanese televisions. This became, and continues to be, the fastest that anyone outside of Japan can view brand new anime content. The second level of membership, the free membership, allows members to view new English-subtitled anime episodes seven days after paid members see them. Free members also must view short advertisements while streaming content, and they cannot stream videos in HD ("TV Tokyo to Stream

Naruto via Crunchyroll Worldwide (Update 2)", 2008). Crunchyroll has grown tremendously since switching models. They now offer over 25,000 episodes and 15,000 hours of officially licensed video streaming of anime and Asian live-action dramas. They also offer translated manga, sell official merchandise, and operate a large fan discussion forum (Crunchyroll, n.d.).

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Even Crunchyroll is expanding beyond its online sphere of influence. For several years Crunchyroll has made appearances at anime conventions around the country. They typically have a display in the Dealers Room or Exhibit Hall where they promote the newest series they have gained license for. In February of 2017 Crunchyroll announced that, for the first time ever, they would be hosting their own convention. The convention is set to take place August 25-27, 2017 in Santa Clara, California (Macias, 2017). The fact that Crunchyroll is now hosting their very own convention shows that even entirely online businesses see the value in gathering fans together in one place.

Figure 15. Crunchyroll logo (Crunchyroll, n.d.)

Anime Fans and Otaku

A discussion on anime fandom can hardly be had without a discussion of anime fans vs. anime “otaku.” The use of the word otaku, and whether to call someone one, has always been a contentious issue among anime fans. Quite simply, otaku is a Japanese word that is used to describe someone who is obsessed with something, usually a hobby.

In Japanese, it is frequently used as a personal pronoun within a group of people obsessed over the same thing, and gives them a feeling of kinship when it is used (Azuma, 2012, p.

32). The most common use of otaku in modern times, in Japan and America, is in reference to anime and manga otaku, in other words, for people who are obsessed with

Japanese comics and animation (Clements, 2013; Tsuji, 2012, p. 3).

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It has been speculated that the very first otaku culture to form in Japan was that of train otaku. The first train otaku appeared in Japan in the early 1900s, as Japan strove toward the goal of Westernization. Trains represented the dreams of the youth as vehicles that could take them to far off, distant lands. They fed into this dream and desire for trains by building complex models and releasing magazines that would detail the newest trains in-depth (Tsuji, 2012, p. 6).

While otaku of various hobbies has existed for quite some time, the actual term

“otaku” did not gain popularity until the 1980’s with the publishing of a series of articles titled An Investigation of Otaku in the serial Manga Burikko, starting in June 1983. In this article the author writes that otaku are people who would normally be labeled as

“maniacs” or “fanatics,” or part of “the gloomy tribe” (Tsuji, 2012, p.16). The word otaku goes beyond the descriptors of “maniac” or “fanatic” and the word literally means

“your home” or “your family” (Azuma, 2012, p. 32). From this we can see that, while otaku may be obsessive and fanatical, or some people think that they are even mentally unstable, being an otaku is more than just that. Otaku of a certain hobby can recognize a kinship among each other; they are like family.

As stated above, the use of the word otaku among friends was a friendly, familial one. This changed dramatically in 1989 with the discovery of , or,

“The Otaku Murderer” (Clements, 2013). Miyazaki was found to have abducted, murdered, and mutilated four girls, and was captured during his attempt to abduct a fifth girl. He was also accused of vampirism and cannibalism (Eng, 2012a, p. 89; Matsutani,

2008). Photos and footages of the little girls and their gruesome treatment was found in his bedroom which was also crammed full of manga and videotapes, many of which were

74 of the Lolita-complex, pornographic variety. This gave him the nickname “The Otaku

Murderer” which gave way to a full-out moral panic concerning otaku (Eng, 2012a, p.

89). In 1995 another incident occurred, a sarin gas subway attack by the cult group called

Aum Shinrikyo. During the investigation of the attack Japanese media focused on the fact that many of these cult leaders were apocalyptic science fiction anime otaku, further dragging down the reputation of everyday otaku (Napier, 2005). After these incidents, it was now a shameful thing to be called an otaku. Some people did not even care to let anyone know that they were an otaku at all. They were concerned they would be labeled as mentally unstable and deranged.

The release of Densha Otoko (Train Man) in 2004 helped turn around the critical view of otaku in Japan. Densha Otoko started as a novel that contains the transcripts from an Internet mega forum called 2channel (2ch). In the story of Densha Otoko a male otaku finds himself acquainted with an older, beautiful woman over an incident that happened on their train ride home. He goes through various obstacles to win her heart and receives advice from the posters on 2ch. posts from 2ch have been turned into a novel, a television drama and a movie, achieving considerable success. The portrayal of the sweet, rather otaku main character helped turn around the public perception of the nature of otaku (Clements, 2013; Kitada, 2012, p . 68).

The social acceptability of being an otaku in Japan has increased over the years, so much so that Yuriko Koike, Tokyo’s newly elected , has openly admitted to being an otaku. She has been seen cosplaying—the act of dressing up in costume as an anime character—as a character from the anime Sally the Witch. She has also announced that she would like to celebrate the medium of anime, and transform Tokyo into an

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“anime land.” Koike’s acceptance and passion for anime is especially notable since previous Tokyo governor Shintaro Ishihara tried to ban the sales of certain genres of manga in 2010 (Barder, 2016).

There are many groups in Japan that are embracing Japan’s new soft power of

“cool” to become a global cultural superpower (McGray, 2009; Sone, 2014). Media such as Hello Kitty and Pokémon have made Japanese culture relevant in households worldwide, which is a huge step forward for a nation that historically has tended to be incredibly insular (McGray, 2009). The International Otaku Association (the I.O.E.A.) is a non-profit that was founded in 2015 with the goal to bring together anime otaku and otaku-related events from around the world. They do this in hopes of proving that anime and manga should have the same social standing as other staple Japanese cultural products such as sushi, kimono and kabuki. (Briscoe, 2015). Currently there are 91 anime related events from 36 countries who participate in the I.O.E.A. (I.O.E.A., 2017). If successful, the I.O.E.A. could once and for all end the stigma that otaku face in Japan and around the world.

The use of the word otaku in America sprouted from the 1988 release of Otaku no

Video in 1991, and the use of the word within American anime fan communities has been nearly as contentious as it was in Japan. had its first American screening at AnimeCon ’91 where , the studio who created Otaku no Video, was a major sponsor. AnimeCon ’91 was the first American anime fan convention that had ever received a Japanese sponsor. This video was responsible for otaku to enter American fan vocabulary (Eng, 2012, p. 90).

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Whether an American fan wanted to use the word otaku changed depending on which fan you spoke to. Many of the fans who are against the use of the word otaku, are against it because of the negative connotations about it that they hear from Japan. Many of these negative traits echo the sentiments felt by many Japanese people after The Otaku

Murders. These American fans felt that, if it was a socially unacceptable label in Japan, that is how we should use it in America. Other fans felt that so-called “American ” are the worst of the fandom. When they call people otaku, they are speaking of people that they feel are socially deficient, loud, obnoxious, and overly brazen about their hobbies and interests (Eng, 2012a, p. 92).

Other groups of American anime fans openly embrace the label of otaku. It has been incorporated into the names of several groups and publication throughout America.

One such example is the magazine/website “Otaku USA” where their slogan is, “It’s not a sickness, it’s an honor.” Otaku branding is also obvious at , the largest east-coast anime convention, whose tagline is “Convention of Otaku Generation” (Eng, 2012a, p.

93).

After fansubbed films were screened at various anime conventions, the Japanese market started to take notice that their products were being well received, and they entered the American market again after their long absence. They started with licensing and releasing many different anime that had been only fansubbed before because it was clear to them that there was at least interest in those titles (Leonard, 2005).

To this day these conventions continue to be the place where fans flock, a place where they can participate in the fan community and show their love for this medium of entertainment. They are not just a valuable experience for fans, but also for members of

77 the anime industry and vendors of related products. Convention attendance numbers grow steadily every year, but despite this it has been noted that the amount of anime video and other products have been declining steadily (Itagoshi, 2014). Conventions do more than just provide access to these fans’ chosen entertainment, conventions present these fans with the opportunity to participate in a global community (Mckevitt, 2010).

The importance that fan gatherings, clubs, and conventions had in facilitating the spread of anime into America is clear. It would have been impossible for anime to succeed as it has if fans had not gathered together to share materials and help each other understand them (Leonard, 2015). One must wonder what relevance anime clubs and conventions hold nowadays? With the internet, fans now talk to each other from all over the world from the comfort of their own homes (Condry, 2013). In this next chapter, I will first go into the elements of what a modern-day fan convention tends to consist of, largely using Anime Expo as the example. After that I will go into detail about the interviews that I conducted at Anime Expo 2015, so that we may find out directly from attendees the reasons why they attend.

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CHAPTER 5

MODERN ANIME CONVENTIONS

The oldest, and longest running, anime convention in existence is Comic Market

(commonly known as “”) held in Tokyo, Japan. It first convened in 1975 with roughly 600 attendees and is now held twice a year with roughly half a million people attending each event (Tamagawa, 2012, p. 107). Comiket is primarily a market where anime and manga fans gather together to sell fan-made comics, doujin, to their fellow fans. These doujin are typically based off manga and anime that already exist.

Fans create new storylines for well-known characters and create new characters, which are typically based on themselves. No professionally published or distributed works can be sold at Comiket, they must be self-produced and self-published (Tamagawa, 2012, p.

108).

These doujin-market events are common in Japan but are not as common in the

United States or Europe. The more common style of convention in the West is known as

“convention style” events. Convention style events are a necessity for the American market because there is not enough of a market to support doujin-market events

(Tamagawa, 2012, p. 110). While the anime and manga fanbase is on a steady rise in

America, there are not enough people in a region who would be interested in attending a big event for just fan-made comics. Convention style differs from doujin-markets in that they have a wide variety of events that happen within the one convention such as

79 autograph sessions, concerts, panels, exhibit halls and artist alleys (Tamagawa, 2012, p.

110).

The Growth of American Fan Conventions

American conventions came to be from the growth of college anime fan clubs, as discussed in Chapter 4. The majority of anime conventions in the United States are run by the fans, rather than by the anime industry. When anime fan clubs grow large enough, it is common for them to decide to host their own convention. The very first anime conventions were really just informal gatherings at science fiction conventions. Anime fans would spread the word to meet in someone’s hotel room where they would host a special meeting of their anime club. When enough people started show interest in these meetups they started to request their own meeting rooms right inside the science fiction convention. In the 1980s science fiction conventions such as Baycon in started to host formal anime screening rooms. Eventually the anime fandom started to outgrow the science fiction conventions. It became time to create the first anime conventions (Eng, 2012b, p. 173).

What counts as the first true North American anime convention varies depending on whom you ask. On Animecons.com, a globally crowdsourced database of fan conventions, conventions can be filtered based on year and geographical location.

Animecons.com lists the first convention in the U.S. as Yamatocon in Dallas, in

1983. It ran for just one day, cost two dollars to get in, and had an estimated 100 attendees ("Yamatocon 1983 Convention Information @ AnimeCons.com", n.d.).

Many people state that AnimeCon ’91 was the first real North American anime convention. AnimeCon ’91 certainly was notable for the fact that it was the first

80 international anime convention. It was the first anime convention to have guests of honor from Japan. It was also the first North American anime convention to be officially supported by a Japanese anime studio. AnimeCon only lasted one year, due to a dispute among the organizers who would then separate to create new anime conventions. One of these groups went and made Anime Expo which is now the largest anime convention in

North America (Eng, 2012b, p. 173).

The number of conventions has risen dramatically since AnimeCon ’91 took place. In Figure 17 you can see that there were only 2 anime conventions that took place in 1991. In 1995 this rose to 10 conventions and 18 in 1999. When we jump to this year in Figure 18, in 2017 we can now see that there is a staggering 209 anime conventions that are planned to take place. The conventions started out in major metropolitan areas, such as San Jose and Dallas. Staying in major metro areas was the pattern for most of the

1990s. However, in 1999 we can see that anime conventions started to crop up in more rural Midwest locations. By 2017 anime conventions have spread to nearly every state in

America.

Figure 16. Flyer advertising Yamato Con 1. It advertises its "spacious dealers room" and the showing of Space Cruiser Yamato ("Yamatocon 1983 Convention Information @ AnimeCons.com", n.d.).

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Figure 17. Anime conventions in the 1990s. Map source: author, data source: AnimeCons.com

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Figure 18. United States Anime Conventions, 2017. Map source: author, data source: AnimeCons.com

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Figure 19. California Anime Conventions in 2017. Map source: author, data source: AnimeCons.com

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Figure 20. Anime Conventions in the United States Midwest, 2017. Map source: author, data source: AnimeCons.com

Figure 21. Anime Conventions in the United States Northeast, in 2017. Map source: author, data source: AnimeCons.com

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It is not just the number of conventions that have increased over the last three decades but the number of people who attend them has also skyrocketed. As seen in

Table 1, Anime Expo started with 2,000 attendees in their inaugural year (as AnimeCon

’91) and by 2016 they reported over 100,000 attendees. Such drastic growth has not been seen by most other anime conventions, but their growth is still impressive.

Table 1. Estimated Convention Attendance for Selected Conventions

Conventio n City 1991 1995 1999 2003 2007 2011 2016 Los Anime 2,00 2,13 6,40 17,00 41,67 47,00 100,42 Angeles, Expo 0 8 0 0 1 0 0 CA 1,45 3,00 14,30 18,44 A-Kon Dallas, TX 497 7,413 32,639 0 0 9 7 Washingto 4,50 17,33 22,85 29,33 Otakon N/A 506 29,113 n D.C. 0 8 2 7 Anime Atlanta, 1,00 2,00 12,49 Weekend N/A 4,584 9,825 28,781 GA 0 0 9 Atlanta 2,70 N/A 80 4,000 4,349 5,346 8,874 AB 0

The Anatomy of a Modern Anime Convention

To aid our discussion about anime conventions and fandom, I believe it is important for the reader to understand what exactly goes on at your standard, modern anime convention. There are many terms and events that may not be common knowledge to an outsider of anime fandom, or even an anime fan that has never been to a convention. In the following section I will break down each of the main events one will commonly find at an anime convention.

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The Exhibit Hall (aka The Dealers Room)

The Exhibit Hall is one of the main attractions at an anime convention. In the

Exhibit Hall, attendees can shop for a variety of anime, manga, and general Japanese goods that are typically hard to find elsewhere in the United States. Attendees can expect to find the latest anime and manga releases and products, such as figurines, posters and model kits, relating to a wide variety of anime and manga, new and old. At Anime Expo

2015 there were nearly 400 vendors in the Exhibit Hall (Anime Expo, 2017). About 40 of those vendors paid extra to be in extra-large booths, placed prominently at the entrance to the Exhibit Hall. In 2016 there was room for 40% more vendors due to the relocation of the Artist Alley (Gaetos, 2016).

The Artist Alley

The Artist Alley is a section of the convention, commonly in the same room as the

Exhibit Hall, where amateur and semi-professional artists can set up tables to showcase their portfolios and sell their products (Anime Expo, 2017). Up through 2015, Anime

Expo held the Artist Alley in the Exhibit Hall. In 2016, Anime Expo made the decision to move the Artist Alley into a separate hall of the convention center, which allowed Anime

Expo to fit more vendors into the Exhibit Hall.

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Figure 22. Floorplan for the Exhibit Hall at Anime Expo 2015. (Anime Expo, 2017)

Cosplay

Cosplay, a Japanese contraction of the English words “costume” and “play,” is when fans dress in costume representing a character from an anime, manga or another media (see Figures 23 and 24). Cosplay shows how devoted fans are to certain characters within media. The process of transforming themselves into these characters becomes an act of personal expression for a fan. Cosplayers typically are rewarded for their work at conventions through the attention that they receive from fellow attendees (Condry, 2013, p. 25). Some have observed that cosplay helps lead the expansion of the anime fan base.

This typically happens when someone who hasn’t heard of anime sees someone in cosplay, which makes them wonder from where such an elaborate costume could have come from. Perhaps they approach the cosplayer, or do research of their own, and that leads them to watching and enjoying anime, possibly even creating cosplay of their own

(Bresler, 2004).

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Figure 23. Cosplayers from the Japanese Figure 24. Cosplay at conventions are not , X. Source: always from anime. Source: http://www.cosplay.com/photo/3095493 http://www.cosplay.com/photo/3585882/

Cosplay has become so accessible and such an entry point into fandom, that you can now buy magazines such as Cosplay Culture at your local grocery store. In the

April/May 2017 issue of Cosplay Culture, they provide many different articles for the cosplay community such as tutorials for wig making, sewing patterns and cosplay makeup. This magazine also provides community news, and information about charities that relate to cosplay. In the April/May 2017 issue they cover a charity called “Magic

Wheelchair”, a nationwide charity that creates intricate costumes for wheelchair bound children. Cosplay Culture also includes articles that detail the lives of famous,

“professional” cosplayers (people who make a living off their cosplay appearances, usually sponsored by a company).

The Masquerade

The Masquerade is where fans show off their cosplay, typically on a large main stage. Acts may be as simple as someone walking across the stage in cosplay and

89 showing off their craftsmanship, while others may work in groups to put on elaborate skits and performances (Anime Expo, 2017; Bresler, 2004). The Masquerade is a judged event with multiple awards and prizes. Categories of awards include “Best in Show,”

“Best Construction” and various other awards aimed at novice and experienced cosplayers. Prizes include cash prizes (at Anime these ranged from $500 to

$2,500) and badges for next year’s convention (Anime Expo, 2017).

Concerts

Many conventions, generally ones that are well established with resources, will bring in big-name bands from Japan to perform concerts at their event. Getting big music acts can make or break a convention. Attendance for Otakon (the biggest anime convention in the ) dropped 30% in 2015. Many people speculate that this is because of the lack of any big-name guests – musical artists, celebrity voice- actors, notable anime producers and creators - that were announced for that year

(Rathkolb, Surrat & Graffeo, 2016).

One notable convention, AM2, held its first event in 2011 and had many big- name concerts lined up for their inaugural event. AM2 was an unusual event in the fact that attendance to the convention was free. However, one had to pay a passport fee for higher-tier events, such as the concerts and certain panels. The first two years of this convention appeared to be moderately successful, boasting over eight thousand members for the first year, and fourteen thousand for the second year (Dong, 2012). However, it seems that they were unable to make enough money to run the convention on passport fees alone, despite the big-name concert lineup. It was announced after their second year

90 in 2012 that the convention was to be indefinitely postponed, with no news of when it would return (Sheehy, 2013).

Panels and Workshop

Panels and workshops are one of the biggest parts of an anime convention in the

West. They are either run by industry professionals, or by fans. The panels can include autograph sessions, question and answer sessions, announcements, academic presentations, and general fan content like “Best Anime Openings” or “My Year in

Japan.” Workshops include traditional and pop dance lessons, traditional calligraphy lessons, and demos on how to use certain artist tools. At Anime Expo I have seen up to a dozen panels and workshops going at any one time. The schedule is posted several weeks in advance of the convention, and you need it. Due to the sheer size of the convention hall and the extra long lines to get into popular panels, you can easily miss something you have been anticipating if you do not plan ahead. Those long lines to get into events can serve as a fun time. Waiting in these lines allows you the opportunity to interact with fans around you who are, for once, not rushing around to get somewhere. For me personally these line interactions have led to friendships, especially when I have been in line by myself with no one to hang out with for the day. It is no problem! Just get in a line, make a friend, and I have a new group of friends to hang out with for the rest of the day.

AMV Contest

Anime Music Videos (AMVs) are fan-made productions that use clips from anime—and sometimes American cartoons as well—and edit them together with a song.

Many of these AMVs can be found on YouTube or AnimeMusicVideo.org. On

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AnimeMusicVideo.org you can also find forums where creators share their works-in- progress and offer advice to one another (Condry, 2013, p. 24).

A staple event at an anime convention is an AMV Contest (Figure 25).

Contestants submit in their work ahead of time. During the convention, there are screening rooms where all attendees can come in and watch the AMVs as they are being judged (Condry, 2013, p. 24). These videos tend to be sorted and judged in a large number of categories. Many of these categories cover themes, such as Action/Drama,

Romance/Sentimental, and Comedy/Humor. Other categories include Best of Show and

Audience Choice (Anime Expo, 2017). Some conventions give prizes to the winners but others, such as Anime Expo, do not.

Figure 25. A large crowd gathers at Anime Expo for the AMV Contest (Anime Expo, 2017).

In 2016, Anime Expo showcased a special AMV in their opening ceremony. The

AMV was in celebration of Anime Expo’s 25th anniversary. This AMV was split into segments for each of Anime Expo’s 25 years. For each year segment showcased popular

92 anime that were released in that year, set to an American song that was also released that year (Rider4Z, 2016)

Just from describing the parts that make up an anime convention, we can start to see why they continue to be successful. Elements of these events could certainly take place online. Panels could be replicated in videos or discussion boards, people could post pictures of their cosplay, and people can buy nearly any product they want straight from

Japanese websites. However, anime conventions are more than the sum of their parts. The synergy between fans, creators, and those in the anime industry create temporary communities and experiences for all those in attendance. In the next section, I will explore how attendees describe, in their own words, their experiences with fan conventions. They describe why the various reasons why the attend conventions, how they choose the conventions they will attend, and what they personally gain from their experiences with conventions.

Results

In this section, I will present the results from the interviews I conducted with attendees at Anime Expo 2015 held in Los Angeles. Over the 4-day event I conducted a total of 37 attendee surveys and interviews. After the event was over I typed up the handwritten surveys and notes into Excel. A couple of the free-answer sections were sorted into different answer-groups so that the answers could be categorized more easily.

The sections will be broken down into “Demographics and Conventions Attendance,

Travel and Accommodations, and Reasons for Attending.

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Demographics and Convention Attendance

Out of 37 interviews, 18 of the respondents identified as Female, 17 as Male, and

2 as “Other.” The average age of respondents was 24.2, with 18 being the youngest and

60 being the oldest.

Of those interviewed, 59% had previously attended Anime Expo and 59% had previously attended other fan conventions. However, these two groups did not contain the same people. 43% had attended Anime Expo previously, and had attended other kinds of fan conventions before, these included non-anime fan conventions. For 16% of the interviewees Anime Expo 2015 was their first time attending Anime Expo, but they had attended different fan conventions in the past. When asked how old they were when they first started attending fan conventions, the youngest was 9 years old, and the oldest was

58 years old. The average age of starting to attend conventions (out of all interviewees) was 19.5 years old.

Table 2. Number of Interviewees Who Have Attended Conventions Before

Conventions Attended Before Anime Expo 2015 # of Interviewees Have not attended Anime Expo before/ Have attended 6 other fan conventions before. Have attended Anime Expo before/ Have not attended 6 other fan conventions before. Have never attended Anime Expo before, or any other 8 fan conventions. Have attended Anime Expo before and have gone to 16 other fan conventions.

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Travel and Accommodations

As a part of my study, I wanted to see just how far attendees were willing to travel to come to Anime Expo. I also asked them questions about their accommodations, and what went into the decisions that led them into making their travel and accommodation choices.

As you can see in Figure 26 most of the interviewees travelled from within

Southern California to come to Anime Expo 2015. Out of 37 interviewees, 25 came from

Southern California, two from Central California, one from the Bay Area, seven from out-of-state and three declined to say. A similar pattern appears in Figure 28, which shows where all of the 63,000-plus North American attendees travelled from to attend

Anime Expo 2015.

Figure 29 shows that the highest number of Anime Expo attendees came from

California, and in Figure 28 we can see the highest concentration came specifically from within Southern California. In 2015, 77.5%, or, of Anime Expo’s attendees travelled 100 miles or less, and 8.9% travelled in from out-of-state. Besides California, the top 5 represented states were , , Texas, Washington and . The 5 least represented states, from least to most, were Vermont, Maine, New Hampshire, West

Virginia, and South Dakota.

When asked what kind of transportation they used to get to Anime Expo from home, the unsurprising answer was that 70% of them drove or carpooled with other attendees in cars (Figure 27). Three of the attendees lived close enough to the convention that they took a bus, two took a train, and 5 of them flew on a plane. It was surprising at first to find that one of them drove in from , but then told me she had done a road

95 trip with some friends as part of a bigger summer vacation plan, where Anime Expo was one of the stops.

Figure 26. Home locations of interviewees. Map source: Author

"What kind of transporation did you use to get to Anime Expo?" 30

25

20

15

10

# of Interviewees #of 5

0 Bus Car Plane Red Chair Train Method of Travel

Figure 27. Method of travel.

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Figure 28. Anime Expo Attendees from within California. Map source: Author

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Figure 29. Where Anime Expo attendees travelled from in the United States. Map source: Author

More than half of the interviewees did not stay at a hotel for the duration of the convention. When explaining how they decided where they wound up staying for the

98 convention, the biggest factor was cost. One interviewee stated that they were staying at a hotel purely because it was given free to them since they were working as staff for the convention, which was one of their major reasons for being able to come to Anime Expo in the first place.

Many of the interviewees who did stay at hotels booked their stay through the convention’s website, which offers discounts on hotels. This aided in their decision to stay where it was the most financially efficient. They also frequently book hotel rooms with friends. Rooming with friends aids both in keeping prices cheaper for them and, as one interviewee told me, adds to their fun at the convention.

" "Are you staying at a hotel for the duration of Anime Expo?" 25

20

15

10

5 # of Intervieweees #of 0 No Yes Response

Figure 30. Hotel attendance.

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"How did you make your decision about where to stay?" 18 16 14 12 10 8 6

# of Interviewees #of 4 2 0 AX Staff Convenience Financial Live close Out of Habit No Answer Response Category

Figure 31. Lodging criteria.

Reasons for Attending

Questions 6 and 7 in the interviews were focused on finding out what people’s reasons were for attending Anime Expo that year, and why they attend conventions in general (Figure 32).

The most common reason people cited for attending Anime Expo that year was that they wanted to meet people. Half of the interviewees explicitly stated that meeting people was a major part of why they were there. The second largest reason for attending was cosplay. They were either there to show off their own cosplay, or they came specifically to see other people in cosplay even if they themselves were not cosplaying that weekend. Other reasons for attending included curiosity, shopping, attending panels and workshops, supervising children, and simply wanting to have fun.

One answer that I was surprised by was that 6 of my interviewees were there to celebrate their birthdays. Most of them had their attendance badges paid for them as a birthday gift. One interviewee had never been to any convention before, but lived locally.

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Her parents knew that she was an anime fan and had heard of Anime Expo, so they got her a badge. In turn, she brought along her boyfriend, who had also never attended Anime

Expo before.

Another interviewee, the oldest of them, was there mainly to supervise her young teenage daughter. Just because she was there to supervise did not mean she wasn’t there to have fun. She told me about how anime has become something for her and her daughter to bond over together. She helps her daughter sew together cosplay to wear to the convention, and she enjoys walking around with her and people watching while her daughter gets photographed. She explained to me how she believes that attending conventions together has become a major highlight of their year, having attended Anime

Expo three previous times. Also, she believes that cosplay has tremendously helped her daughter’s self-confidence.

What was striking to me was how several attendees confided about how they felt that Anime Expo, and other fan conventions, allow them to freely express themselves.

One even went so far as to state that Anime Expo was the one place they could truly be themselves. Another interviewee told how amazing it was to be able to go somewhere they could meet people that were like them, and how they experienced the “joy of being around people without judgment.” Truly, it seems that Anime Expo, and similar fan conventions, allow people to express themselves in ways that they feel they cannot in normal life. They know that when they show up to the convention that everyone else that is there is for the same passion that they are, and that makes them feel safe. This fact was also observed by Kingsbury (2015) that convention attendees and cosplayers feel free to be themselves within the space of the convention.

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"Why did you decide to come to Anime Expo 2015?"

Other

See the Con

Got Free Ticket

Events

Shopping

Cosplay

Meet people/community

0 5 10 15 20 25

Figure 32. Reasons for attendance.

For my next question, I asked them specifically what factors go into deciding what fan conventions they go to. Their top factors were location, where their friends were going, special events and cost. Another important factor was what guests of honor were going to attend the convention. These guests include voice actor guests, animators, directors, and artists in the Artist Alley. Attendees are known to be willing to travel far and wide if it means that they will get to meet someone that they have long admired.

Another interviewee specifically stated that he chose to come on just a whim. He lived local and thought that it sounded fun. Another stated that they came specifically for the large Exhibit Hall to buy merchandise. Other, smaller conventions that happen in the area had too small of Exhibit Halls and Anime Expo’s was large enough they felt comfort in being able to shop around at many different vendors.

Social Media

Curious to see if the interviewees participate in fandom using the internet, I asked them if they had any online websites where they participated in fandom. 75% could name

102 websites where they participated in fandom (Figure 33). Surprisingly, many of them appeared to have a hard time coming up with any online-related fan activities. It took a couple of minutes of deliberation before they could name any specific websites they frequently use. For many of them it boiled down to “Oh yeah, well I guess I do . . .” and then they told me a website or two. The most commonly cited website used was

Facebook, followed by Tumblr and Instagram. Interviewees may have been able to rattle off these three websites due to how the survey was set up, where these three social media sites were listed for example, followed by an “Other” option. The total list of websites named can be found in Figure 33.

Anime fans have always been quick to utilize the internet to aid in their fandom, even in the fandom’s early days (Eng, 2012b, p. 167). Anime conventions themselves have gotten in on this internet socializing. Anime Expo, for example, has a rather active

Facebook page. Before the Facebook page, Anime Expo used to host their forums for attendees to gather and plan for the upcoming convention, and then after the convention they would gather at the forums to share cosplay pictures and give feedback about the event. To many attendees’ dismay, Anime Expo decided to take down their self-hosted forums in early 2015 with the implementation of their new website design. When Anime

Expo asked fans if they would want the forums to come back, many commented to say that they would love for them to come back. However, some fans did say that they would not mind the forums not coming back, since there is already a large Anime Expo group at the Cosplay.com forums (Anime Expo, 2015). Cosplay.com continues to be a major hub for fan convention attendees and cosplays to gather for event and cosplay information.

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"Do you participate in any online communities relating to anime? (A particular anime or anime in general?)

DeviantArt World of Pokeball AnimeAmino Reddit Meetup.com 4Chan FetLife TwitchTV Twitter

Website Crunchyroll Pinterest Fanfiction Instagram Tumblr Facebook None Unspecified

0 5 10 15 20 25 Number of Interviewees

Figure 33. Online community participation.

Temporary Communities

It appears that fan conventions continue to be important to fans within the anime community. While once necessary for anime to find its foothold in the American entertainment industry, they now serve simply as a place for fans to come together and celebrate what they love. Special bonds form between fans at conventions, and create a unique social setting that exists for just that weekend. For this idea, I propose the use of the phrase, “temporary community,” as described by Sara (2011) and Seth-Smith (2012).

Fans come together at conventions to socialize, express themselves, learn the latest news and shop for new products they cannot get elsewhere. My interviewees

104 described to me the special “atmosphere” and “energy” that they feel when they come to a convention. Many of these people feel that they don’t have many avenues in their normal, daily lives where they can express their love of anime. This seems to translate to them not feeling free to express other parts of themselves into their “normal” lives. One interviewee told me how he is transgender, but that he is often misgendered in normal life, and frequently does not feel safe to express who he is. However, when he attends conventions he feels comfortable in expressing who he truly feels he is. Conventions appear to create safe spaces that allow people to completely express who they are.

A thing to happen at a fan convention is the creation of temporary friends. When everyone comes to a convention for the same purpose, a person can feel safe in the fact that they likely have something in common with every single person that is in that room.

One can simply walk up to a new person, strike up a conversation, hang out for half the day, and then go their separate ways. I personally have made friends at events like these that only last for the weekend, and then I have never seen them again. Sometimes friendships last as long as the line to get into your next panel. Then at times you might run into the same people again and you carry on your conversation like old friends again.

Or maybe you pass them in the hallway and do not even recognize them again, especially if they are wearing a dramatically appearance altering cosplay.

The temporary community starts as soon as the first attendees put on their admission badges for the weekend, and ends when they are taken off at the end of the weekend. Sometimes they can linger. Maybe you see someone with a badge on as you take the same train home together. The community gets extended just a bit longer as you two chat about all the fun things you both saw that weekend.

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Sometimes, friendships stick around a little longer. As what happened with my last interviewee, maybe you follow each other on social media now, or maybe you become close and lifelong friends. In this case you make a new, more permanent connection in your life. The event that led you there though, is over. Those precise circumstances will not exist again. The same convention will run the next year, but it will never have precisely the same people, events, vendors, atmosphere and energy that created it the year before. Everyone gathers in generally the same place every year, and a new temporary community begins to form. The events themselves may be fleeting, but they carry on within everyone who was there, and energize them to help them go back into a world where, perhaps, they do not get to express themselves as freely as they do for that weekend.

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CHAPTER 6

CONCLUSION

Animation: From Past to Present

Animation technology has certainly come a long way since the days of spinning bowls to watch a goat jump. The progress of animation technology was a global effort, with the pioneers emulating what they could from their peers around the globe. Not only were they working together, whether they knew it or not, to progress the technology, they also picked up and emulated each other’s style.

Walt Disney easily became the most revered in the world of animation, especially after he gained fame with the success of Steamboat Willie. Disney created standards in the animation industry that are still being followed to this day. He perfected the industrialization of cartoon making, and was the first person to truly succeed in adding sound to animation. His studio was also the first to put real effort into making their animated characters into real, individualized characters that would become loved the world over.

Osamu Tezuka, the father of modern anime, viewed Disney as a rival and as a mentor. He picked up on many of the standards that Disney set and put them into use in his own works in Japan. Osamu Tezuka was not just a follower though, his actions have had repercussions in Japan’s animation industry that are still being felt today. The

107 policies and methods he established are not without their critics, but without him,

Japanese animation as we know it would not exist.

The state of Hollywood and American culture in the early would have lasting impacts. Because of the Hays Code of the 1930s, and the Comics Code of the

1950s, animation in America would become nearly fixed solidly in American audiences’ heads purely as a children’s mode of entertainment. This was also fixed by the work of

Disney who would proclaim that his work is for children of all ages. This overall left little room for mature, adult-oriented animation.

So the children who loved animation would grow up to find that there were no animated stories that were directed toward them anymore, no matter how much they loved the medium still. This left a cultural sink in American entertainment, one that anime could fill, if it ever actually made its way into America. This cultural sink left animation fans grasping for whatever they could find to fill it. Astro Boy provided the first evidence that something from outside America could fill the void. This led to club meetings of like-minded individuals seeking out Japanese animation, starting the process of bottom-up globalization.

After dealing with American morals during the production of Astro Boy, Tezuka and fellow Japanese producers were not all too keen to try and make their way into the

American entertainment market. It would take the work of some determined animation fans to make this eventually happen.

Anime is perhaps the biggest success story of bottom-up globalization, where economic demand was driven by the consumers, instead of being pushed by the

108 companies. This pulling by consumers has created a unique fan base, one that is used to being incredibly hands-on in regard to their media.

Fan clubs and conventions were the ultimate result of fan determination. At these conventions fans cosplay, make and sell art, host intellectual panels and create global networks among themselves, all in the interest of sharing their passion and what they love.

Temporary communities get built in these events, connecting people together to form tight, but ultimately fleeting bonds. These conventions serve as places where fans who may be isolated in their everyday lives get a chance to express themselves and breathe freely. Sometimes the bonds that form at conventions can be very intense, as some people even marry the people they have met at conventions. There are children in this world today who were only born because their parents separately decided to go to a fan convention about a thing they loved, and then found love there.

Social networks, both in person and online, have been key to the bottom-up globalization that anime has undergone. Anime fans knew what they wanted and they had the passion to do what was needed to get access to anime. Through the growth of their mail and networks and fan clubs they eventually were able to start their own fan conventions and get support from the Japanese industry.

While the internet has been a powerful tool for anime fans in organizing, networking and meeting, conventions serve as important physical spaces for anime fans.

In the setting of the convention a fan can be absolutely surrounded by people who share their passions. This space frees the average fan from any social stigma they may face in

109 their ordinary lives. The spaces these events take place in are utterly transformed into a safe place for people to connect in.

Future Directions

If I, or anyone else, were to carry this research on further there are a couple of ways I would like to go about it. I think this research could benefit from furthering the study area. Instead of just doing one case study at one convention, I also think it would be interesting to carry out interviews at a wider variety of conventions, in both content and size.

We could see if fans feel and act similarly at other kinds of fan conventions, such as comic conventions and science fiction conventions. I believe it would also be beneficial to do interviews at different sizes of anime conventions. Anime Expo is the largest anime convention in the United States. How do fans feel at smaller conventions?

How do fans feel at conventions that take place in different venues? For example, the anime club at California State University, Fullerton now carries out its own anime convention called Titan Con. Other conventions, usually bigger than student-run conventions, take place in hotels. The natural progression for a fan convention seems to be that it starts as a university student-run convention, they get big enough and start to be held independently in hotels, and eventually need to move to convention centers. This was the case for AnimeLA, which in the last few years grew enough in attendance that they moved from being hosted in the LAX Marriot, to taking over the Ontario

Convention Center.

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Conclusion

It is important we understand the temporary communities that are created in the space and time of an anime convention. Conventions are important to any industry simply for the opportunities sharing a space presents to people in business, but this goes beyond simple business deals and transfers of knowledge. I believe that it is important to understand the role that these conventions play in people’s lives, because I have seen how important these gatherings are to people. Life can be dreary, long, and hard. Passions such as these give people reason to live, and give our lives meaning. While life-long friends are nice to have, they do not normally last for life. Sometimes all you need is someone to reach out to, even if that connection is only temporary. If you are lucky the connections become more than just temporary, and can introduce you to someone who will have impact on the rest of your life. Every year as you leave the Exhibit Hall, where many spend the last hours of the convention, you see a sign over the escalators (Figure 34) reminding you that this community will reform and be waiting for you next year. So as you leave the convention hall you are already excited for next year.

Figure 34. The sign seen as you leave Anime Expo’s Exhibit Hall, reminding you to come back next year. Photo source: author.

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APPENDIX

SURVEY AND INTERVIEW QUESTIONS

1. Have you ever attended Anime Expo before? Yes No #

If so, how many times: ______

2. Have you ever attended any other fan convention before? Yes No

If yes: Fanime Comic Con WonderCon Anime LA Sakura Con

Other: ______

3. What kind of transportation did you use to get to Anime Expo? ______

4. How far did you travel? ______What zip code did you come from? ______

5. Are you staying at a hotel for the duration of Anime Expo? Yes No

If yes, one through the official hotel block? Yes No

How did you make your decision about where to stay?

6. Why did you decide to come to Anime Expo 2015? What are the benefits of coming to a fan convention?

7. Is there anything in particular that influences your decision in which convention(s) to go to? Location, special guests, events, etc.

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8. Do you participate in any online communities relating to anime? (A particular anime or anime in general?)

Facebook Tumblr Instagram Other

9. How old where you when you first started attending fan conventions?

10. What is your age now?

11. What is your gender?

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