Was watching this video clip this morning after tweaking my Twitter settings.

Even though this video was many months old (timestamped on 9th July 2009), I still find it relevant on the fact that Japanese subculture is gaining traction (steadily) in many places around the world, even including Australia and New Zealand. I’ve seen a few around in Auckland for the past few years despite our incredible low ratio of 3000:1.

Have a look and you’ll be amazed. Especially how the otaku specialist said something about otaku gained a bad image after a psychopath killer went on a rampage to kidnap young girls. And then killed and dumped them into a river. The killer was an otaku fanatic…. 0.0.

Also, check out the massive Gundam cosplay video at 5:19!!^o^

Source: Youtube

Less than 12 days ago, I recently subscribed one of the best anime/blogs on the planet (DannyChoo.com). This young Malaysian man by the name of Danny Choo (who is also the son of the world’s infamous women’s shoemaker, Jimmy Choo, would you believe it??) is really amazing. His portal is the gateway to everything about Japan from its food, culture, music, figurines and novelty festivities and he knows how to astound people outside Japan so many incredible facts and stories in Japan, especially in anime since he’s a full time otaku.

And one of his great stories he’s shared with the community recently is that there’s 1/1 scale of an actual Gundam model which was erected in a park named Odaiba, situated in Tokyo.  From Danny’s link,  he’s gotten the amazing footage of the 18-m foot giant robot standing so tall, looking across the horizon of Tokyo City and the normal citizens of Tokyo city looking at it with great awe. (see below)

I must admit that this really blew me away, swept my legs off the floor as soon as I flicked his blogging pages. The designs, the precise measurements, the exact match of the colours vs the classic Gundam model in 70s TV show, the Gundam head etc etc. Everything! Top to bottom! No mistake about it.

Sad thing about this project (codenamed Green G Project) is they’re planning to take it down part by part by the end of August 09. But why, oh, why, or why??? Why took so much effort and crazy man hours to construct such an incredible feat to show the rest of the world, and only to put it on display for a measley 10 weeks? Come on! Don’t take it down! In my humble opinion (which I stand), this is supposed to be one of Japanese’s treasured landmark figures just as the USA with their Status of Liberty. At least they got something to compete with them now, even though its historical influence does not have as much significant bearings as the States’, ie socio-political or economic impact etc etc.

Nevertheless, the drive, the passion and the ambition that the project team had clearly turned the ‘impossible’ into a reality and its success warrants the recognition by the public that Japan’s got something to showcase for the tourism industry to see. If only longer than the 31 August deadline, that is….

For more photos from Danny’s amazing capture on his travel to Odaiba, here’s the link.

http://www.dannychoo.com/adp/eng/1717/Gundam+Odaiba.html

Source: DannyChoo.com, TheWesterworld.net, Zuco.org

With much of  the world’s financial markets entering into what we now know as the worst recession since the Great Depression, many businesses from all walks of  sectors are getting hurt deeply.  You hear echoes of bad news all too familiar.  Costs-cutting, redundancies, lost working hours, higher unemployment rates etc etc.

And anime business is no different either.  Many forums I come across read things about the doom and gloom of the industry, particularly in Japan where the pool of hiring talented animators and artists is rapidly shrinking with animation agencies are simply lining up to join liquidation queues. Agencies forced to cut down so much adversting costs and sponsorships all over the country, it’s little wonder that aspiring talented animators will be less motivated to stay on in making a living in this profession.

You can find more news on this story:

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20090304f1.html

Though, some even suggests that this occured even way far earlier before the financial crisis in 2008 due to the growing presence of ‘fansubbing’, a new term to describe anime fans get to watch free anime online, legitly, using a very popular video-streaming site, Crunchyroll.com.  In this report from AnimeNewsNetwork.com, it states

” Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO) cites unauthorized net distribution, including fan-subtitled videos on streaming and file-sharing sites, as one reason for the decline in DVD sales. In January, TV Tokyo began streaming popular anime on the Crunchyroll video site to paid subscribers on the same day as their Japanese airings, with free streams available seven days later. Yukio Kawasakii, TV Tokyo’s animation business manager, said that the company curbed illegal distribution and responded to the needs of fans who do not want to wait to watch anime.”

Even a few companies are taking legal action against such firm in order to stop the fim from continuing this infringed business practices.  This is a real worry indeed.  I learned from another source that salary earnings for a ordinary animator in Japan are one third less than the American counterparts (base salary of US $17,000 vs US $31,000 respectively)*. I could not fathom after reading this link from AnimeNewsNetwork, animation didn’t sound like a very lucrative career path for many anime enthusiasts out there wanting to achieve their goals of producing their own animation.  News like these is very discouraging and we never realise how much we have ‘exploited’ the internet media stream to get free anime when the animators are the very same people who worked hard to produce great anime shows.  I feel that we’re downright putting their countless hours of animation work in vain and we make things worse and worse for having the company studios suffering low sales, cannot distribute profit to its employees, all because in the internet community we involuntarily decide to watch streamed anime shows for a penny-less.  How selfish can we be, as harsh as it sounds.

Even though, where I stand in my personal blog on robot anime only and they are not that many that falls in this subgenre as far as I can see, I still want to express that anime was never to be a ‘free substance’ just like goods or services you buy for your enjoyment.  Now after learning the not-so-great truth of animator’s earning potential, I feel it’s not right to watch streamed anime such as the ever growing presence of fansub community like Crunchyroll.com.  The animation industry could be saved (or at least gradually spared) if we played our part responsibly as well ie not support downloads of anime videos, regardless they’re legit or not. Unless there’s a proven commercial method that suggests anime downloads benefit both the industry and fansub community through branding or marketing (which I’ve yet to see), then we oughta keep our right-mouse clicks stay away from hitting the ‘Download’ button.

After reading this blog’s article (www.altjapan.com) on the dire state of anime industry in Japan, it made me wonder the amount of guilt I built when watching free new anime for countless hours on Youtube for the past couple of years…