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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.
