Apologies to anyone expecting updates just now. I’m in the process of apart from working as usual at the grindstone for Beez, finishing off a 30,000 word piece of work!  Regular service will be resumed shortly - in late August likely.

- Andrew.

However a month or two back while I was digging around for theatrical plans I came across some interesting figures.  The UK Film Council holds a special fund for creating film prints (35mm or digital) and advertising of these films in cinemas for anyone who is too small as a distributor or is releasing an arthouse film that without funding would never reach more than 1 press screening.  Now when you realize that this is a very transparent system, at least with regards to displaying what awards they have given out, one question stood out: Has Asian cinema benefited at all from this fund?

The simple answer is yes.  Below are several tables I put together in a spreadsheet while I was doing my own research into the numbers out there for the amounts gone into live action and animation over the past few years:

Anime/Western animation:

Japanese/Chinese live action:

Film	Distributor	Fund	Total Allocated
Curse of the Golden Flower	Universal Pictures International UK & Eire Ltd	National Lottery	£300,000
Lust Caution	Universal Pictures International UK & Eire Ltd	National Lottery	£200,000
Mongol	The Works UK Distribution Ltd	National Lottery	£150,000
House of Flying Daggers	Pathe Distribution Ltd	National Lottery	£100,000
2046	Tartan Film Distribution Ltd	National Lottery	£80,923
Zatoichi	Artificial Eye Film Co Ltd	National Lottery	£70,000
I'm A Cyborg	Tartan Film Distribution Ltd	National Lottery	£20,000

Both of these show no real small numbers for a campaign theatrical or otherwise for either genres in the UK.  In reality as well most advertising from these put into theatrical also greatly helps the sales of the DVDs as well however long afterwards they come out - even if it’s just down to all the adverts being basically ready to go barring changing “Out in cinemas” to “Out in shops”.

Looking at the amounts funneled into the two Anime titles fans would recognize there and cite as shining examples of anime taking the world by storm at the time, ask yourself this: Without a contribution from the UK Film Council would they truly have been as much of a success in this country?

The answer is very likely a no - if they had not been covered then at minimum the budgets would be half the amount they were.  Sure the DVD sales would probably have still been good but Spirited Away would probably have remained a title recognized as being an Oscar winner that they probably should show to their kids.  Sure the back catalog of Ghibli would be out there for people to buy from Optimum still no doubt - but whether it would get front row placing and sales figures when it comes to retail is a completely different affair.

Of course I am sure now people have noticed, there will be a host of companies lining up at the trough to try and get a piece of that feed though for any film with a vague eastern tinge that seems arthouse.  That being said if you look at in from the perspective of National Lottery funding being used to promote films that would not otherwise stand a great chance in the UK - then it is clearly doing its job.

As far as spending the income from sanctioned gambling goes, you could do a lot worse than promoting the finest elements of Eastern cinema including anime.  Though as a colleague at another company and I were discussing, one has to wonder how a film like Zaitochi managed to wrangle its way in there though (as personally it wasn’t that great a film)…

One would suspect future candidates for this fund would include from the anime world: Sword of the Stranger, Sky Crawlers and the upcoming Ponyo.  The question is - without this money do you think these shows would do half as well at reaching the audiences they do?

If the answer to that is no - then I think a big thank you to the UK Film Council is in order for making the previous and (hopefully) popular forthcoming releases from companies in the UK possible!

There’s been a lot of talk recently regarding the upcoming dive-bomb into the murky, oft shopping trolly-infested, depths of fandom that is the Manga Alliance.  This can be summarized by the work posted up here which gives a relatively objective examination of the group with comments from both sides.  Somewhere in that you can probably find my opinion summed up pretty well on the concept thus giving me leeway to look at something else.  Namely the question of: What exactly is this alliance going to achieve?

The preamble - background on the “Manga Alliance”

Summarizing its goals in a nutshell firstly - the “Manga Alliance” as their website claims:

1. To bring in events, groupings and sites that are not traditionally a part of the scene, and help them.
2. To encourage new events, sites, and groups which can only help the industry and fans in the long-term.
3. To share resources, expertise, contacts and knowledge within the alliance.
4. To help ALL events, sites, groupings and industry regardless if they join or not - in doing this we benefit us all. We will welcome everyone with open arms, whether they join us or not!
5. To give anime and manga a higher profile, and thereby to help it to break into the mainstream of UK culture.
6. To establish the UK as a respected country for anime and manga across the international scene.

Describing itself as:

Only by working together can we defeat the credit-crunch and continue to move anime forward in this country! The Manga Alliance consists of conventions, events, meet-ups, news sites, communities and groupings which will by their united efforts break anime and manga into the mainstream culture of the UK! We have secured the support of Manga Pulp, and Impact Magazine who will be heavily promoting this venture, and this will also be covered in Neo Magazine. Moving forward together we will revolutionise and change the face of anime and manga!

This post is to examine the goals of the “Manga Alliance” split over three categories (in no particular order).  Unfortunately as you will see below, the examination highlights that however well meaning (or not) this notion is, ultimately it is ineffectual as anything but a shiny hat to look more important at events.

Point 1: Re-inventing the wheel is a waste of time, as are cotton wool promises.

If you take a look at the points the Manga Alliance lists then points 1-4 seem like cotton wool just for the following reasons:

1. To bring in events, groupings and sites that are not traditionally a part of the scene, and help them.

With anime/manga seen as the next big thing - you could argue that any site that would be sympathetic to anime but not traditionally from there has either evaluated then rejected or is already adding anime/manga coverage.  I’m unsure of how exactly an alliance can help this - unless you’re going to take turns calling sports websites to persuade them Prince of Tennis is as valid as watching Wimbledon, so maybe they should cover that in a lull between games.

If you mean to bring in events like the UK Film and Comic Con as part of the Manga Alliance (or in fact really the only community element to it) Anime League’s bringing voice actors, artist alley and videogames to the event - then I ask you how do moves like this help move anime forward in the UK?

From a business perspective - UK Film and Comic Con saw the success and money that MCM London Expo have brought in with the whole Anime thing and decided they wanted in on that sweet money. Please note at this point, this is not a jab at UK FCC - I have the utmost respect for them as a Sci-Fi signing event and think that even if I am right then it’s nothing to be ashamed of. There’s just one problem with the implementation AL has offered from a common sense business perspective: Income from this new element.

How pretty much any profit event makes money from anime is selling space and advertising to the actual industry. Sure getting another 1500 anime fans or so into an event like UK FCC isn’t going to hurt the fan scene per se - but if you look at ticket cost vs cost of those two guests you have then you’re looking at little benefit to bringing anime to the event.  Certainly you are looking at no benefit with regards to making anime more mainstream nor are you moving anime forwards so what benefit is there to bringing 1500 (or so) folk who are already anime fans to it?

Cynically I’d say if the paying industry does not come in the droves to support this new venture now - then you’re at best looking at a few runs with anime before it’s dropped on its head for not being profitable.

2. To encourage new events, sites, and groups which can only help the industry and fans in the long-term.

Blatant filler goal here, as a general love of anime as cultivated by the MANY anime clubs, conventions and in fact just media available across the UK (be it DVD, manga or newspaper articles on the subject) will encourage events, sites and groups which help the industry and fans long term too.  What specifically will an alliance provide that the above would not already.

This is a classic attempt to try and re-invent a wheel that has been working very well already.  Case in point, in the last 3 years we have seen events such as Auchinawa, Kitacon, Fuyucon and others spring up without an alliance alone.  We have seen websites grow and evolve as well as internet broadcasting such as EyeonAnime.co.uk’s podcasts and Otascotia’s upcoming radio station.

Ergo unless there is some magic formula being devised, this is just an attempt to re-invent and dress the wheel up.

3. To share resources, expertise, contacts and knowledge within the alliance.

Being industry-side I may be getting confused here, but from what I have seen from the many friends who work hard for no profit within the fandom…isn’t that the point of the fan community as is?  Many conventions work together and share staff between events to name just one example.  Websites are expected to have a friendly rivalry to some extent but I have never seen them not share when they sit down to discuss it all.  How exactly will having an Alliance be of any benefit sharing contact details etc compared to the systems already in place?

At best this point is again cotton wool to fluff out an otherwise sparse list of goals.  At worst what is being implied is that you are talking about forming a clique within the community that shares its (currently unquantified) resources among its members only.  I don’t give any credit to the latter point though and wholly believe it to be another well

4. To help ALL events, sites, groupings and industry regardless if they join or not - in doing this we benefit us all. We will welcome everyone with open arms, whether they join us or not!

Not that I need to point out, but this effectively is filler too - as if they did not “help” all events regardless of membership they would effectively be openly trying to sabotage the work of everyone else.  Ironically though by saying this you have to ask yourself too what the benefit of joining really is then?

Of all the points that this Alliance puports to be aiming towards, the only two which are not cotton wool filler on their website are points 5 and 6.  However these are misguided points or just misinformed, which I will go into more depth about below.

Matt Damon's portrayal in Team America seems strangely fitting for this group...

Point 2: The mainstream, or raised profile, status of anime and manga in the UK.

Of the two non cotton wool goals, this is perhaps the most baffling.  Not meaning to jab pins into things here but while magazine coverage is a good idea with any initiative - acquiring it in the niche areas you are trying to raise is hardly breaking it out into the mainstream. This is admittedly not the point I would imagine of getting coverage in Neo or Impact though nor do I claim to see it as that, it’s just a point that it does nothing towards their fifth goal.  Why?  Because anime/manga is already square in the eyes of the “mainstream” and has been for some time now, it’s just not sticking.

For example if you look at media beyond Neo, Impact etc (which as great as they are focus on our industry by default) you can find articles across the popular press.  Take broadsheets for starters with examples below:

The Guardian:

Going Krazy in New York : anime, manga and the language of videogames

Japan looks to manga comics to rescue ailing economy.

A choice few triumphs keep the Lido afloat

Paprika - the stuff of dreams for filmgoers

The Times:

Outward looking Hong Kong looks to capture animation crown.

Funuke: Show some love, you losers!

Oscar-winning-film-maker brands manga-loving Japanese PM ‘an embarassment’

Karl Marx goes manga in a Kapital comics strip

One step for a robot, a giant leap for tin-mankind

The Observer:

Girl geeks find manga haven

Manga comes of age

Just a few examples of articles covering Japanese animation overtly or not so overtly covering the area over the past few years out there, there are many more less overt pieces too*. if there was more of a demand based on those you’d see more articles out there from them or other broadsheets/tabloids based on it.  Like many entertainment fields there’s only so much you can write on it, in fact you probably get as much coverage of anime as many other niche areas do so it could be worse frankly.

What do you expect from the mainstream media now relating to manga/anime - weekly coverage of the latest titles hot from Japan?  Perhaps you’d like a dedicated page for Japanese culture per week.  You can infer at least that the area is given a good deal more coverage than many areas of animation or art that aren’t western in mainstream magazines.  Do you, for example, see manghawa getting covered as frequently in the media?  Do you see lots of exhibitions coming up across the UK devoted to them?  No.  Although I digress that, as was pointed out to me by Jonathan Clements, there is an exhibition on Chinese comics (Manhua) exhibition on in Durham just now.

The answer is anime and manga are already basically in the mainstream culture now, from advertisments to editorial.  It’s just that it is and likely always will at best be a niche in the same way that Star Trek and Doctor who was for so many years.  Effectively manga and anime’s profile is already relatively high considering everything, it’s just the majority of the mainstream does not care.  Much in the same way they aren’t in works like Judge Dread or other 2000AD works but are familiar with them.

Case in point - send the Manga Alliance to the streets and ask the public how many are familiar with Japanese animation or comics.  See how many people come back with “Oh I saw Spirited Away, I *loved* it!  But I’d never watch Tentacle Molester 8 or My Little Shonen Fighter, it’s just not that interesting to me.”

In the end, it’s the individual elements of a genre that deserve a high profile, if you look how many genres do you see getting a high profile on the basis of being that genre?  You see your TV shows like Star Trek, Lost etc getting coverage in the mainstream usually but not wealths of Sci-Fi generically except in niche magaines nor do you see Crime as a genre getting masses of space but The Wire, CSI etc getting coverage.  It’s the same for anime - Ghost in the Shell, Akira, Spirited Away/Ghibli works and such are on the tips of tongues in the mainstream often.

You could of course argue that anime deserves a higher ratio of coverage and discussion in the mainstream.  This would not be entirely fair though as unless more AAA quality works come out then you can’t peddle what in the eyes of many in the mainstream is teenage junk as diamonds.

Point 3: The UK’s status for anime and manga internationally.

> 6. To establish the UK as a respected country for anime and manga across the international scene.

Now I can understand the logic in this goal in a way.  Presuming “international scene” refers to the Anime community worldwide then I would say it is already there.  People across Europe and America come to UK events for starters, giving an example I know a large group of cosplayers and event organizers from AnimeFest over in the Czech Republic coming over for London Expo based on how large and good for anime it is said to be!  Does that not suggest the UK is in fact already a respected country for anime and manga across the international scene.

In fact if anything should be a goal - it should be for a significant portion of the UK fandom to retrieve it’s head from its backside that it is the only Anime community in Europe worth a damn.

This does not refer of course to the folk I know who *do* travel over Europe for conventions to see what anime conventions are like in other countries.  But there is a large segment who when I tell them France has a bigger, better market than them look at me with disbelief.  Imagine that segment’s faces if I turned round and said “Actually your fanbase is about on par with Hungary or the Czech Republic for example?

I digress for a second from the point of my post to say you want proof?  Well let’s take France for example next to the UK now.  Who does the UK have guests so far this year?  US VA’s as well as I know two events with Japanese guests lined up tentatively (to be announced shortly I imagine). Who do French conventions have coming this year?

Japan Expo alone has:

- Ai Yazawa

- CLAMP

Yes, this July they will be bringing CLAMP to Europe.  How many of you UK fans can hand on heart honestly say until you read this blog post that you knew CLAMP would be in Europe, in the next few months, until you read this?

If the UK really wants to grow to a level like France or America in its status as a “respected country” then it has a lot of work to go.  Try starting with developing a bit more comic book culture in the mainstream.  Too difficult for a small organization?  Try going abroad to these events like some UK folk I know and talking to events organizers at these events, learn how they cultivate such an amazing amount of guests and attendees.  I already know the answer to this, but giving it out here would deprive anyone serious of the hard work involved required to get the point on it.

In conclusion:

Ultimately the point I am driving at is simply this - forming a convention cabal will not rescue the UK Anime industry or fandom.  It will not bring Jesus back to life either for that matter, which would be a similarly impressive miracle given the aforementioned goals.  It is the actual distribution side and real artists, be they DVD distributors or Manga publishers who will save or consign doom to the industry.  So instead of milling around trying to send smoke signals, how about go that extra mile - form a group that lobbies for what will keep the fandom growing in the UK.  Namely ways to keep the actual industry who brings anime and manga both in touch with fans and alive.

One example would be to lobby fans and sympathetic people about what DVD release format that 10-20k people regularly would buy and are profitable (complete break down of costings would of course be helpful). Greater sales at a profitable rates would lead to more adverts in magazines as well as sponsorship for well PR’d events, helping the fandom and industry alike.

Not to your taste, perhaps you’d rather help some home-grown artists work grow appreciation for pseudomanga/manga in the UK?  Perhaps you could look into persuading more schools to make use of the Manga Shakespeare range?  If, as they claim, the Manga Alliance is for everyone whether they are a member or not) then they should have no issue with pushing non-Dimensional Entertainment/Manga’s work.  Afterall arguably on a manga front the excellent work done by the likes of Emma Vicelli, Sonia Leong, Paul Duffield, Patrick Warren, Kate Brown and Faye Yong to name but a few stand the best chance of raising an entire generation of children to be curious about the world of manga-styled art at the very least**.

Such moves above would be far more useful as an effort than effectively flapping ones hands and expecting to fly, however well intentioned it is.

Until the above happens, I suggest removing any shine to the proverbial hats being worn by the heads of the Manga Alliance are just beams of sunshine reflecting off tin-foil wrapped around cardboard.  As without the paid industry there would arguably be no Neo (no ad revenue would make it very difficult to run a profitable magazine), no easy access for anime or manga in the mainstream*** or many other events that rely on industry participation or finances to continue.

* covering perhaps points about Anime/manga within them or by writers who very much sympathize with them.

** I could go on about this for longer, as the irony is it’s pseudomanga, but if it links kids into manga itself then I think it’s acceptable. Also if pushing any work as a true figurehead of the UK pseudomanga crowd then I think Shakespeare’s works are far more fitting than a panda, who has as much relevance to the UK as I would blogging about a bunch of badgers savaging a circus midget on here.

*** The mainstream who do not know of piracy methods for anime - which is likely a higher percentage than you would think from what I have seen.

Disclaimer: This post is more centred around the actual reason for a Manga Alliance etc, I do not think any less of the people or groups involved than I did before the Alliance started so you can breath easy if you feel this is some kind of personal attack.

My visit to Brno began here.

Note: I actually originally wrote this as piece covering two points at once – Animefest 09 and what the EE anime market was like.  However in retrospect I feel such a piece, unless almost unwieldy in size would not do justice to what should be said about either.  See here for a link to the  other piece.

Each way took me longer than a flight to a remote tropical island to reach, but I’m finally back from my trip to the Eastern Europe to present Sword of the Stranger at Animefest 09.

When you mention anime in Europe, your first thoughts are normally in Central Europe – perhaps France, Germany, the UK or even Italy.  However I would tender that a growing rival to the UK at the very least for anime is the Czech Republic and surrounding countries.

Anime started to surface in the region with Akira back in the early 90s when all the films prohibited during the Communist era flooded the market.  Unfortunately for Akira and its publishers, at the time all animation in the country was assumed to be for children.  It won’t come as a huge surprise to everyone that children found this as fun as having to watch an episode of University Challenge*.

Set in the bustling University town of Brno, Animefest features a program spread over 3 days, running all 24hrs of each day.  Beez Entertainment acted as their main program partner for the event.  This meant it was my responsibility to coordinate things and represent Beez at a panel before the screening there.

In terms of convention model, this event has already outgrown several venues, finding itself now spread across 4 venues with the central one being Brno’s biggest cinema (450+ seats, used for premieres).  The event itself saw 1200 unique attendees over the weekend, making it pretty much on-par with the largest fan run events of the UK (1500, Amecon 2008).

Animefest’s organizers attendees have a number of plans to try and bring the area’s anime fans together. These include arranging a Euro-Cosplay event, bringing cosplayers from across the EU together in a competition of epic scale. Asides from that example there is a general feeling of a fandom that is growing, expanding and looking at new ways to do things constantly.
For example, not only do they attend other events across the region (including surrounding territories) but a group of organizers make the voyage over to central Europe for the likes of London Expo and beyond too.  One set plan to go for their first time this May and I find myself wondering if they will really like what they find…

One thing is for certain though - Eastern Europe’s anime scene is growing still.  The UK events better keep an eye out or they’ll be left behind really!

* If your children or yourself as a child were bright enough to enjoy University Challenge, replace this analogy with watching an episode of Hollyoaks.

The cover of the book itself, just in case you can't spot it in a book shop...

Catching up on my backlog of blog pieces on the way back from the Czech Republic, I actually read Schoolgirl Milky Crisis on the way to Japan for the Tokyo Anime Fair.  Sufficed to say short of having the man himself with you on the flight, the book is the best piece of writing on the Japanese Animation industry as well as the people who work in it that you’ll ever find.  It was also a surprisingly good primer/reminder for the what the goings-on at TAF would be like as well!

The book contains a collection of articles that forms a snapshot of the past 20 years of Mr Clements work in the industry.  If you read magazines like Manga Max and Newtype USA before their demise as well as Neo today then some of these articles will be familiar to you, but saves you sifting through a stack of magazines in the loft to read them again!

Having worked in the industry now for five years, I can safely say that the observations made in the book are very much spot-on (unfortunately at times)!  They’re told in an entertaining fashion and should leave you with a greater knowledge of facets of the anime industry (and Japan) that you never thought of before.  Everything from the dedication of the Japanese sound effects teams who make every imaginable sound for anime down to the power of a famous director or artist’s name being attached (or not) to a property.

This should form a key piece of reading for any fan who wants to understand what working in this profession is like.   Personally, I hope that we get to see a follow-up collection of works from  Mr Clement’s repertoire in the near future!

PS You know it’s a good title when the publishers ask the industry figures for quotes and then checks for any legal problems after reading the aforementioned quotes!

Available on Amazon and in all self-respecting book stores now.

Outside the Palace, Tokyo

It’s been about a little while now since I came to Japan on a mix of holiday time (visiting my sister as well as taking my girlfriend to Tokyo) and business.  Finally finding the time to blog about it, I find myself writing the very first blog posts for www.coveredinbeez.com!

The first thing to be addressed is the following: If you come here as a tourist expecting a magical land where everyone is smiley, happy and the land twinkles with magic dust that turns everything into an anime, I’d cancel your travel plans.  Like any city you’re going to get your fair share of interesting and beautiful things - you’ve got shrines and beautiful green spaces where the cherry blossoms fall gently in the breeze - but for every one of those you have a grounding of reality juxtaposed next to it.  Besides your shrine you’ll find the rubble of a building that recently got demolished, your park will be filled with hobos snoozing next to their favourite stray cats or raiding the recycling bins.

One particularly memorable example is round the corner from the shining example of consumerism that is the Grand Hyatt Tokyo in Roppongi, after dropping off my baggage I walked round the corner to find a homeless person with his trousers down trying to take a quick dump in the flower bed.  If ever there was an unfortunately shining example of juxtaposition as discussed above then that would be it…

No matter how hard you squint at it - Tokyo is no utopian city where the streets are paved with gold, spirits leap out of every urinal or where every corner is lined with anime-like occurances or paraphanalia.  There are at least 101 books on Japan from travellers from the insightful all the way along to benign (I’m sure if you look hard enough you’ll find a book on what Japan is like for a one-eyed, mentally challenged mongoose…) but whatever view of Japan you subscribe to there’s one unalterable truth: It’s just another city.

Don’t get me wrong, from the above you would assume I am less than enamoured by the city but that couldn’t be further from the truth, I had an amazing time while there, but like any city it has it’s negative points.  It is after all more fun to talk about negatives when there are screeds of easily available tourist guides extolling the virtues of the city (as well as a few fibs…hordes of cosplayers, excluding foreign visiting ones, do not usually swarm the bridge at Meiji Jingu no matter what Lonely Planet may tell you for example).

On the positive side it has a lot of good things going for it as well.  For example if we go with the grabby materialistic stuff - there’s almost literally something for everyone here, be it shiny music, clothes, accessories, kitchenware, toys - you name it and they have it.  This is balanced by the fact much like cities such as Edinburgh they have a good amount of green spaces - however the difference being Tokyo is many times larger of course so relatively speaking it probably has proportionally just enough greenery to not make it a completely grey landscape all across the city.

I think it’s worth underlining strongly here that these are just the views of someone who has had the equivelant of a blink in but one city in Japan though.  Also that in that blink of an eye I’d heartily recommend visiting and seeing the place for yourself and form your own conclusions about the city.  I certainly loved my visit (I really would like to go again) just go there with eyes open and you’ll have a fantastic time when there!

After these initial blog posts are done you’ll find more talk about what’s going on in the industry and interesting snippets of the life of someone working in marketing for the entertainment industry in general.   You’ll also get more of an insight into the  more interesting personal happenings in my life such as travel observations etc.  Feel free to leave comments, discuss or generally grumble about anything said here…

© SOTSU • SUNRISE • MBS

Although this post will likely, as it should, disappear back into the dark recesses of my website very quickly - it’s important to get a couple of professional courtesies out of the way first.  So without further ado (or too much boring stuff) here we go:

Number 1: All contents of this website reflect my own personal opinion.

While a lot of my articles here will be covering facets of the Japanese animation industry both in the UK and Europe that fans may not always get to see, never mistake opinions offered as those of my employers lines.  This is a blog about my profession written from a personal perspective so don’t expect a hate-fest or piles of company secrets spewing from my mouth like some kind of faulty septic tank.

You can however expect topics about Anime and cinemas around the UK, how everyone in the UK/EU Anime industry hit the credit crunch a year before it really became trendy, any amusing tales that may crop up in my working life that are OK to share as well as an assortment of topics in related fields about products that have caught my eye for example.

Number 2: How often do you plan to update your website?

As I’m guiltily aware - updating personal websites and such takes a lot of dedication and effort out of working hours.  Given my life is extra busy as I effectively do the equivalent of two jobs at once it’d be ridiculous to suggest every day of the week I update right now.

It’s intended to read a bit like a magazine and consequently I’ll aim to have several items of varying size uploaded bi-monthly, at least during the very busy next 3 months of my life.   If possible and time allowing I’ll at least drop something interesting on far more frequently for people to have a look at as well.