Somewhat Like a Lover

What I learned from the handy English-language materials passed out at the 2006 Tokyo International Anime Fair.

Orguss: it isn't just the Final Conflict in the Space of Another Time. It's also a Great Confusion Involving Multiple Spaces.

Lupin the 3rd: he prefers someone's faith and justice to money. But from times to times, he even aims at a mint of money or a superlative treasure. His partner Jigen judges the situation clinically, and always appears as Lupin's right hand. He is a snap shooter who can aim a dust from miles away. And Fujiko? Her relation with Lupin is somewhat like a lover, sometimes it is like a rival. (As a married man, I completely sympathize.)

Panda And Friends: It's a kids' show about cute bears with a plot apparently as convoluted as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time: 17 years old Makoto Konno is a talented Time Leaper! She exerts it to satisfy her day-to-day desire. You can gobble up plenty of your favorite meal or settle tiresome troubles right away!

Comments

[Steve Harrison]

It's amazing to me, that here, 2006, the 21st Century, that the companies are *still* producing inept English promo material. I exempt the near-mandated use of English in domestic Japanese licensed product because that's a sacred tradition, but these handouts...

Yikes.

Probably doesn't help the cause in re. Lupin III to use current TV special faux celwork art for the first series, which looks not at all like that. Not that the first series was bad, I LOVE first series Lupin III and still wish Pioneer/Geneon had started with that here in the US of A.

Say, was Nishizaki at this event, pimping new Yamato and his new company?

http://www.enagio.com/yamato/

Gaaa, what an awkward name. Hasn't been updated since 2004 either, which is not a good sign....

[Matt Alt]

It really amazes me, too. Especially considering the huge number of gaijin -- excuse me, gaikokujin -- who live in Tokyo. It may have been difficult to find a compentent translator or proofreader in the '70s, but that isn't the case anymore.

The sad fact is that most companies see translation as a secretarial task or a lowest-bidder commodity rather than something that needs to be budgeted for. It's changing, slowly, though you wouldn't know it from looking at these pamphlets.

[Steve Harrison]

This might sound too deep, but I'm giving it a shot.

Matt, could the core issue be that after all this time, all these years, there's *still* a kind of...complex or something- that anime as a whole really *can't* be 'understood' if you're not Japanese, or conversely the more 'Japanese-y' a show is, naturally outsiders just couldn't possibly be interested?

I look at all the years Toei has been banging their head against America's door and never getting anywhere NEAR the acceptance that they've gotten in Europe (France and Italy in particular, cf. Goldrake as pop cultural icon), and when they finally, finally take a shot at the US home video market....

They totally punt it. Utter total failure. Acted like it was 1982 and NOBODY had put any anime on home video ever before....

And instead of doing what *any* other normal Japanese company would do- ruthlessly examine the reasons why things went bad, find people to fix it and do it right the next time- they've just basically said "eh, so what."

Maybe because they, somewhere, at some level, didn't think it could succeed anyway, because we couldn't 'get' it, so why put much effort into it in the first place?

Boggles my mind.

and I may just be an idiot. ;)

[Matt Alt]

You know, I haven't picked up a lot of that from Japanese people recently. In fact, if anything it's the opposite, because everyone over here seems so attuned to the concept of anime and other pop culture I.P. being Japan's next big moneymaking exports. These days I don't think many anime or game development teams create their content without at least some thought for foreign audiences.

Actually, if anything I think foreigners are more apt to play the "we just don't get Japan" card than the Japanese are to play it on us. I've noticed this real tendency for foreign media to over-exoticize Japan these days, perhaps because a lot of Americans never really saw the boom for J-culture coming. Case in point: Peter Carey's book _Wrong About Japan_, which portrays the themes of anime as being near impentrable to outsiders (or at least to the hapless narrarator).

[Steve Harrison]

Hmmm.

See, thats' where I see the split..naturally, I'm seeing only tiny bits, flashes..but I see a similar issue in Japan that's been killing the US for a few years now.

To wit: the power of the entrenched middle management flunky.

See, there might be CEOs who grok the 'our pop culture is now marketable! GO!' and there might be a group of Gen Y newbies who are pushing the idea of 'mainstreaming the Otaku' and the like, but there's still the beancounters, the faceless men in gray suits who somehow have the ear of the CEO and whisper "do it like this..."

and we get Doozybots and Zeta Gundam with the songs cut and Bandai starting a second video arm to release Patlabor for $90 in a market that is saying $29.99 is just too much now...

And yes, I know, there's going to be a 'regular' edition of the Patlabor movie at a 'normal' price, but Bandai has high, high hopes that $90 anime is the future....

I think there's too much 'planning to fail' going on, enabled with the same overeaching expectations that killed the market back when the bubble burst in '85/'86...I think there are middle management people who remember the huge margins back in the 250 Yen= $1 USD days and *expect* the same sales to happen...

but I'm sure someone could show me how utterly mistaken I am :)