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A Look Back At 2010 (Part IV: October to December)
Previous entries in the series: Part I, Part II, Part III
Alright, the final stretch. Good god, this December was one month that really had some crazy moments. Here’s the final part of the 2010 year-in-review: October to December 2010!
October 2010
New York Comic-Con/New York Anime Festival takes place. Anime fans become pissed that their portion becomes relegated to the basement of the Jacob Javits Convention Center. There were some great screenings & panels, but it was more NYCC than anything else. Thinking about the retrospective piece I wrote on NYAF, I’m giving Reed a chance to fix things.
Kodansha USA takes over the manga titles they previously licensed to Del Rey Manga. Much speculation occurs when they were listed as having a panel at NYAF, but the listing disappeared. Turns out Kodansha never even submitted a panel to them. Weird.
The Comics & Digital Conference at NYCC took place. A report stated that the North American manga market dropped 9% in the first half of 2010. If the trend continued, the market would have dropped 20% for the whole year. A positive sign is that the digital comic market is growing. Publishers finally getting with the times, aren’t they?
X Japan, VAMPS, Puffy AmiYumi, & Boom Boom Satellites rocked the U.S. with various performances across the country (though Puffy only did the Far East to East Showcase at NYC). I can tell you that out of those bands so far, Boom Boom Satellites is planning another American tour next year. So look for them & the American release of “TO THE LOVELESS” in 2011. X Japan as well.
Ore No Imouto Ga Konna Ni Kawaii Wake Ga Nai (Oreimo) premieres in Japan (& streamed through Anime News Network) and becomes one of the most-talked-about anime series of the year. From incestous themes to otaku commentary to bitchy tsundere girls, the show has it all. A funny incident occurs when the 2nd episode of Oreimo was leaked the day before it was suppose to premiere in Japan.
November 2010
VIZ Media announces an app where you can purchase select manga titles onto the Apple iPad. Two questions: how many manga readers have iPads & how many iPad users even read manga? Nice try though.
One Piece Volume 60 sells 2 million in 4 days. Everyone loves Sanji’s cooking, EVERYONE.
Summer Wars begins its run for an Oscar nomination. If you haven’t seen the movie yet, please do so starting at the end of this month. It’s an amazing movie.
November 15 will be known as “Overdeveloped Teen Warrior Day” happens when VIZ announced it would publish Tenjho Tenge the way it was meant to be published. Crunchyroll also picks up Ikki Tousen for its anime catalog. Let the boobies hit the floor.
K-ON! sells over 424,000 Blu-Ray discs and 81,000 DVD volumes of the 2nd TV anime series. They have also taken over the Oricon music charts with hit singles from the Hokago Tea Time Band over the course of the year as well. Now with Yen Press publishing the manga and Bandai licensing the anime, will we see K-ON! Mania in North America?
December 2010
This month marked the beginning of what could be the end of anime & manga. Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara pushes “Bill 156”, a bill that would ban any form of anime & manga that portrays sexually-related content in order to protect minors. It was originally an “anti-cartoon child porn” law which got rejected earlier this year. The bill got revised to target everything and it was officially passed by the Tokyo government a week ago. My thoughts on this whole ordeal will be coming pretty soon.
Square Enix opens up a digital manga store in North America. You can purchase a few of their hit titles for only $5.99. Will fans bite? We shall see.
Kodansha USA finally announces its lineup for Summer 2011 at Kinokuniya Bookstore NYC in front of an audience of anxious fans. Good to see them address certain issues & bring back fan-favorite titles from Del Rey.
Capcom’s Monster Hunter Portable 3rd was released for the Sony PSP. Did it do well? Quite the understatement. The game defied all expectations in terms of sales. 3.3 million copies were sold in 17 days. MonHun Portable 3rd is officially the fastest-selling PSP game of all time in Japan and also Capcom’s fastest-selling title. If the West & mature gamers weren’t so fascinated with shooting things, then maybe the PSP would have done so much better in the West.
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And that’s all she wrote for 2010! Quite the year & I hope you guys enjoyed the look-back. If you have any moments to share, please feel free to share below on the comments section! Let’s hope Japanese pop culture in 2011 becomes more awesome!
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A Look Back At 2010 (Part III: July to September)
For the previous entries on 2010: Part I, Part II.
The summer really heated up in the Japanese pop culture world. Here’s what went down from July to September 2010!
July 2010
CMX, the manga imprint for DC Comics, goes down for the count. Someone asked my take on it, so here it is. I first heard about CMX because of the Tenjho Tenge localization fiasco. The fact that they severely edited the content was understandable, but it just destroys the spirit of the work. Although CMX would address this & do less edits, fans still couldn’t get over it. The brand did put out some great old-school shojo titles that many readers enjoyed. But, that ONE moment involving Tenjho Tenge would haunt them forever. Also, DC Comics had the Vertigo imprint (a great line of mature comics that I enjoy). Perhaps they were trying to be “different” from Vertigo & not take on mature audiences.
Anime Expo 2010 took place with many announcements on upcoming series & other news.
The “founding mother” of shoujo manga, Moto Hagio, makes an appearance at San Diego Comic-Con 2010 and receives the Inkpot Award for her works. Fantagraphics released one of her works, “A Drunken Dream & Other Stories”. A fun fact for those who played the hit RPG game, Illusion of Gaia, for the SNES. She did the character designs for that game.
A Florida mother fights her local library for obscene manga that caused her son to go to “extensive therapy”. Her son apparently took some mature-themed manga out of the library without CHECKING THE BOOKS OUT & ANYONE NOTICING. This is parental irresponsibility at its finest. More thoughts posted here.
OneManga would finally pull all their series off the site in fear of the coalition against scanlations. Many fans become disgruntled & frustrated. I just wish there was more emphasis on copyright education, but Japan’s issues on handling intellectual property are very sketchy at best.
Otakon 2010 happened July 30-August 1. Attendance goes up once again as 29,274 people attended the three-day event. Anime still kicks butt in America. A funny incident occurs when someone pulled a fire alarm on the 2nd day of the event and everyone evacuated the convention center. Anime fans run around in confusion, not knowing how to deal with sudden sunlight & fresh air.
August 2010
Military moe manga for the win as the U.S. Military teams up with Japan to educate the country of Japan on the U.S./Japan alliance. More U.S. propaganda shoved down Japan’s throats and utter reminders of the U.S. domination of Japan after WWII? Sounds lovely.
Kuroshitsuji mangaka, Yana Toboso, tells everyone to stop pirating her work. Responses to her blog post flood the Anime News Network forums. Some fans seem to be completely unappreciative of her hard work. Don’t you just love trolls?
Utada Hikaru announced she would go on indefinite hiatus until 2011. In the meantime, bad J-Pop music & K-Pop become more relevant in Japan.
The greatest video game review ever written, courtesy of Tokyo Vice author, Jake Adelstein.
Takashi Murakami’s Versailles exhibit gets protested for being explicit. Here I thought the French love stuff that’s sexual.
Acclaimed anime director, Satoshi Kon, passes away at the age of 46. A grim reminder of how people can leave us so soon. It is also a grim reminder of the struggles the anime industry faces going forward in finding the next, great animator.
One Piece goes on a 4-week break. Even awesome ass-kickers need to stop kicking & start relaxing at some point. On a related note, One Piece Volume 59 sells 1.85 million copies in its first week. They also set a record for first printings with 3.2 million copies. The busts of Nami, Nico Robin, & Boa Hancock overwhelm the masses & smother the busts of Tsunade, Orihime, & others.
September 2010
More digital manga initiatives are pushed as manga titles are launched on Kindle, iPhone, & Nokia Ovi. Square Enix & Crunchyroll also discuss their plans involving digital manga.
Miku Hatsune would make her first U.S. performance at San Francisco’s J-Pop Summit Festival this month. Though it’s more of a digital film than a concert. Just the first step in taking over the world for Vocaloid.
All 12 volumes of the hit shoujo manga, Kimi Ni Todoke, make the Weekly Top 100 Oricon Manga Chart for the week of Sept.20-26. The live-action movie would also makes its debut in Japanese theaters as well. Question: who here thinks “Kimi ni Todoke” is the “One Piece” of shoujo manga in terms of popularity in its respective genre?
Happy 15th Birthday to the Sony PlayStation! You have to admit, the PlayStation did have a huge impact in making video gaming mainstream in the first place.
J-Rock star GACKT voices commercials promoting a new anime project involving the hit seinen manga series, Berserk.
Tokyo Game Show 2010 takes place. The Japanese gaming industry is apparently 5 years behind the West, according to Keiji Inafune. They do love their JRPGs, dating sims, & visual novels. Walls of text for the win much?
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The final part of the 2010 year-in-review is now up! Read it here!
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A Look Back At 2010 (Part II: April to June)
Did you enjoy Part I of the 2010 year-in-review? Here’s what noteworthy Japanese pop culture events occurred during April 2010 to June 2010!
April 2010
Japan decides to set a 10 billion yen fund to promote Japanese entertainment overseas (including anime & manga). Fans still don’t care as they still try to find ways to download anime & manga illegally. On a related note, Shueisha asks fans to stop reading manga scans online.
Lucky Star gets serialized in the Saitama Shimbun newspaper in Japan on a monthly basis. The champions of moe rejoice in having one of their hits featured in a real newspaper read by real people.
Author Manabu Miyazaki sues the Fukuoka police for removing yakuza-related material from convenience stores. Miyazki says the police are suppressing free speech. Police say they were trying to lower the influence of yakuza around the area. Legal matters get so complicated, don’t they?
Super Street Fighter IV & Monster Hunter Tri get unleashed in the States. Juri brings the evil, greedy, & psychotic Korean girl to video games. Horny male nerds drool while Asian stereotypes are reinforced. Monster Hunter Tri would cause people to actually use their Wii for more than 1.5-2 hours.
A group made a manga app for iPhone, iPad, and other Apple products to download manga scanlations to it. Cue “ASKING FOR IT” line.
R.I.P. Carl Macek, Amy Forsyth
May 2010
Japan decides to invest more money (about 214.5 billion yen) in training the next generation of animators. Honestly, do something about their wages & working conditions. If you care so much about anime now, you should be more empathetic towards animators’ needs. I know there’s a lot of factors & issues involved regarding the state of the industry, but the point is to provide a great sense of motivation & accomplishment.
Death Note makes the news again when a proposed ban of the manga in Albuquerque, New Mexico gets rejected. I actually posted my thoughts about this, which you can read here.
Sports manga rocked the 34th Annual Kodansha Manga Awards. Will sports manga ever take off in the West?
Construction of a giant, life-size Neon Genesis Evangelion bust began at a Mount Fuji theme park. The next step will be to have the most psychologically draining & religiously controversial wedding ever conducted underneath that EVA-01 Unit. This will be recorded as 20 times more epic than the Gundam wedding.
The first-ever “boys-love” bar opens up in Akihabara, Tokyo, Japan, under the name of “MiraclejumP”. I’m sure female otaku love the place & vibe, but the guys don’t seem to be that great-looking. Maybe it’s just me. At least, there won’t be any dirty diseases running around.
VIZ Media lays off 40% of their workforce & closes down their New York office, which only consisted of 5 people. Somewhere in a corner, I cry over the fact that I won’t have a chance to work for a manga publisher here in New York.
June 2010
The adventures of Edward & Alphonse Elric finally end as Fullmetal Alchemist had its last chapter published in the June issue of Shonen Gangan. FMA will always be one of my favorite series ever and I thought the ending was great (You can read my thoughts about FMA here). I never thought I would see the end of a major popular shonen series so soon. Looking forward to the North American releases of Volumes 24-27 from VIZ soon.
BLEACH gets simulcasted on Crunchyroll. Took them long enough to put it there.
U.S. & Japanese publishers form a coalition to stop manga scanlations. MangaHelpers would create OpenManga in response. Other sites would start legal online manga initiatives. One site full of scanlations, MangaFox, removes 350 of their titles (even though they eventually return). This generates a lot of debate regarding the future of manga. I think there should be a summit meeting to settle things properly.
Anime News Network starts streaming anime from their website. Good to see ANN get in on the act.
A 14-year old Japanese middle-school student is arrested for uploading manga through YouTube. The kid even made money off of his blog which promoted his activities. Even better, he announced his leaks on Twitter. I hate to say this, but you never know who is watching you when you’re using social media.
R.I.P. Robert O. Smith
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Part III is now up and can be read here.
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A Look Back At 2010 (Part I: January to March)
This week, I’m going to start a 4-part series of articles focusing on interesting happenings involving Japanese pop culture in 2010. A lot of things happened in from moe to scanlation wars to Japanese bands performing in America. You name it, it happened.
So, let’s take a look back, shall we? Here’s Part I detailing January 2010 to March 2010!
January 2010
The year started off with a wide variety of announcements. Crunchyroll & FUNimation made a variety of announcements regarding new anime series they acquired & are planning to simulcast. Winners of the 55th Annual Shogakukan Awards were announced. Kenta Shinohara’s Sket Dance (published in Weekly Shonen JUMP) took the award for best shonen manga. I always wanted to check out Sket Dance, since I been hearing about it a lot and I think the series would work well in America. Come on, VIZ Media. Bring the series here!
Another story is a record 450,000 people visiting the Washinoyima Shrine in Tokyo, Japan on New Year’s Day. Yes, the same shrine focused in the series, Lucky Star, where the Hiiragi sisters work as miko (maidens). Got to love those otaku and their lolicon tendencies.
The 9th Annual Japan Otaku Awards took place as well. Here’s a list of the winners.
Anime culture took over the U.S. when American Idol had a crazy otaku girl named Mere Doyle audition for the competition. I still remember her scary weeaboo-ish behavior & the part where she shows off her Naruto jacket just made me sigh. The Emmy award-winning comedy series, 30 Rock, had an episode featuring James Franco dating an anime body pillow. TV series, Archer & Scrubs, made references to cosplay & anime pornography respectively.
Durarara!! premieres on Japanese TV (& Crunchyroll) and takes the anime world by storm. Hey, Japan can have an anime series that is smart & doesn’t focus on little girls! Fujoshi (female otaku) are happy there’s another series with hot guys they can pair up for amusement.
One Piece Volume 56 sells 2 million copies in 6 weeks. Pirates seriously trump ninjas & Shinigami.
February 2010
The Japan Foundation announced a website that teaches people how to speak & read Japanese through anime & manga. It’s nothing really special. The site just teaches you what phrases certain Japanese archetypes (ninja, samurai, school students, etc.) say. Though the fact that it’s interactive and visual means it’s more fun to learn the language. An idea I hope the site should incorporate is teaching the Japanese alphabet. It’s important people understand the alphabet of a language before going further.
Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood would make its way to U.S. television shores amidst huge fanfare. EdxAl fangirls squeal in unison.
Nick Simmons’ comic book series, BLEA…I mean, Incarnate, had its production & distribution halted. Tite Kubo comments on how he’s more worried about Nick being a mangaka. Somewhere, Gene Simmons is proud that his son is on his way to being a bigger douchebag than he is.
Christopher Handley, the Iowa man who pleaded guilty to having a variety of obscene manga involving children being sexually abused, was sentenced to prison for 6 months. Apparently, he might have some psychological issues that he hasn’t fully disclosed. Why would you order books of that nature and have them shipped through the United States Postal Service? Can we blame the government for not being clear about certain laws? Then again, sex is “evil” in America, even more evil than violence. For a great analysis of the case & other related cases, please read Lawrence A. Stanley’s entry on the problems of the U.S. government & its views on censoring art.
March 2010
Japanese girl rock band, Chatmonchy, hit the U.S. and wins fans (& media publications) over with their catchy tunes & energy. For those who don’t know, they did the song “Daidai”, which was an ending theme to BLEACH. I got a chance to interview the group when they were here in New York. An amazing group to listen to.
Yen Press publishes Twilight: The Graphic Novel, which is what it sounds like. Cue rabid bishonen-vampire fangirls running to stores to get the book, which actually happened. 66,000 copies were sold in the first week, despite receiving many bad reviews. This book broke records in terms of first printing copies (350,000) and copies sold in the first week. I can see why Hollywood macho men are complaining about movies these days.
Final Fantasy XIII finally hit American and European shores for both the PlayStation 3 & Xbox 360. While the battle system was praised, the game was heavily criticized for being extremely linear for a majority of the game. Some Final Fantasy fans proclaim their hate for the 360. Most Final Fantasy fans don’t care as they are happy to find new & pretty characters to cosplay. (I played FFIV-XII and never bothered to play FFXIII. Atlus stole my heart away with Persona 3 & 4.)
Anime gets mentioned in U.S. culture again, in the form of insensitive comment stupidity, when New Hampshire Democratic State Representative Nickolas Levasseur wrote on his Facebook page, “Anime is a prime example of why two nukes wasn’t enough….”. He later apologized for what he said. Was he watching a lot of moe anime one drunken night? Who knows. Also, why is it when “famous people” have Facebook and/or Twitter accounts, they tend to self-destruct their reputations & lives in the process? The Internet could be secretly Satan in disguise.
One Piece Volume 57 sells 2 million copies in 2 weeks. Gum Gum Fruit > Sage Mode > Tensa Zangetsu. That is all.
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If you have any other interesting Japanese pop culture moments from the first three months of 2010 to share, feel free to comment on the comments section below!
Part II: April to June can be read here.
