Gadget Tsuushin (getnews.jp) has made some tongue-in-cheek predictions about what will happen now that the Tokyo Metropolitan legislation restricting sales of certain targeted manga and anime has been passed.

・漫画の電子書籍化が進む。
・裏アニメ、漫画が出回る。
・秋本治（『こち亀』の作者）が皮肉漫画を描く（本人が「両さんがæ®é€šã®ç”Ÿæ´»ã‚’送ることになる」とçºè¨€ï¼‰ã€‚
・上記に続きほかの作者も皮肉漫画を描く。
・ゲーム業界の“CERO”の様な物がアニメ、漫画にも設けられる。何故かそれを審査ãã‚‹ã®ãŒå®˜åƒšå¤©ä¸‹ã‚Šã€‚
・反対デモ運動が行われる。
・角川、集英社などが埼玉、千葉でアニメイãƒãƒ³ãƒˆã‚’開催ãã‚‹ã€‚
・ここぞとばかりに韓流コミック、アニメをゴリ押しãã‚‹å‹•ããŒå‡ºã¦ãã‚‹ã€‚
・石原慎太郎の小説が同人で漫画化。
・アニメ、コミックだけでなく一般ゲーム、アダルトゲームにまで影響が出る
・何故か小説には影響でない。
・法の抜け穴として『ロジャー・ラビット』のような実å†ã¨ã‚¢ãƒ‹ãƒ¡ã®åˆæˆä½œå“ãŒå¤šæ•°ä½œã‚‰ã‚Œã‚‹ã€‚
・出版社とçºè¡Œè€…の住所が都内じゃなくなってる。
・ネットのアニメや漫画も規制される。

Translated:

• Digitization of manga
• Distribution of underground manga and anime
• Osamu Akimoto (author of Kochikame) will write an ironic manga instead (one where according to him, “Ryou-san, the main character in Kochikame, leads an ordinary life”)
• Other manga artist will follow suit
• A new entity similar to CERO for video games will be set up for anime and manga, and for some reason it will provide amakudari jobs for retired officials
• Protest demonstrations will take place
• Kadokawa, Shueisha and the other companies will host anime events in Saitama or Chiba (prefectures near Tokyo)
• Korean comics and animation will gain in popularity
• There will be doujin adaptations of (Tokyo Governor) Shintarou Ishihara’s novels (which are said to be quite raunchy)
• The law will affect not only anime and comics but also regular and 18+ video games
• For some reason, novels are not affected
• In order to circumvent the law, there will be new hybrid productions that combine live photography with anime, similar to the movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit
• Publishers and distributors will move their offices out of Tokyo
• Online anime and manga will also be restricted

You can read the original article on getnews.jp.

Personally I am most amused by the Roger Rabbit suggestion. It may just be crazy enough to work.

Today, 15 Dec 10, the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly passed Bill 156 into law. As previously discussed, this law gives the Tokyo government additional powers to restrict the sales of manga, anime and video games based on two additional criteria: glorified or exaggerated depictions of illegal or incestuous sex acts.

According to Kadokawa’s head honcho, Shinichirou Inoue, there are unconfirmed reports that during the debate of the bill, a certain assemblyman said, “Isn’t there any way we can criminalize homosexuality?” If true, this suggests that the law, despite its expanded powers, will indeed be ineffective against yuri and yaoi titles due to the fact that homosexuality has never been criminalized in Japan.

It appears that Tokyo Anime Fair is doomed as the various companies led by Kadokawa are pledging to continue their resistance despite the setback.

The Tokyo Metropolitan Government is set to pass new legislation restricting the sales of manga depicting certain sexual acts to minors under eighteen.

Contrary to what certain easily-excitable individuals may proclaim, this is not a ban and this is not the end of the anime. But it will certainly pose a huge problem to the industry.

Background

The proposed law has been working its way around the bureaucracy for months and started off as an anti-lolicon bill. A detailed guideline to classifying paedophilic content in manga was drafted by the person in charge, but this proposal was shot down for being too vague.

In the guideline, the author attempted to justify why certain scenes of nudity featuring minors (such as Doraemon‘s Shizuka Minamoto who loves to take baths) will fall outside the definition of child porn, but this was deemed to be too arbitrary by the committee who probably possessed enough mental capacity in their old age to realize that enforcing age restrictions against drawn cartoon characters is insane. The bill failed to muster enough support.

Months later, it was resurrected and rewritten to target depiction or glorification of sex acts that are illegal (e.g. rape) or immoral (e.g. incest which is not illegal in Japan), a criterion which was deemed to be much more enforceable and objective. This has the unfortunate side effect of making the law even more draconian than its original intention.

Yesterday, the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly’s General Affairs Committee approved the bill by a large majority after a last-minute compromise between the conservative LDP (Liberal Democratic Party) proponents led by Tokyo Governor Shintarou Ishihara (who famously cracked down on Kabukichou) and the DPJ (Democratic Party of Japan, the less conservative national ruling party) assemblymen. The compromise requested by the DPJ was to include a clause giving exceptions to works that demonstrates “artistic merits”.

The LDP, DPJ and Komeito voted for the bill and only the Seikatsusha Network Mirai and the Japanese Communist Party (i.e. pretty fringe oppositions) voted against it over technical disagreements rather than principled ones. Having passed the General Affairs Committee, the bill is expected to be passed by the main assembly tomorrow, 15 Dec 10, despite uncharacteristically intense protests from the industry.

Her name is Reon Kadena

Tokyo Anime Fair

Due to Governor Ishihara’s uncompromising attitude against the anime and manga industry, he is perceived by some to be carrying out a personal vendetta by pushing for this bill.

In protest of this, ten major publishing companies led by Kadokawa, including Kodansha, Shueisha, Shogakukan, have withdrawn their participation from the upcoming Tokyo Anime Fair taking place in March next year. Collectively, they own the rights to a large portion of the popular current titles. Unless this boycott is called off, Tokyo Anime Fair 2011 will likely be cancelled or at least totally lame and pointless.

When asked for his opinions regarding the boycott by a reporter, Governor Isihhara (who is technically the chairperson of the TAF organising committee but seems to be totally disinterested in it) responded angrily and effectively told the companies to fuck off and do whatever they want.

And late last night, Prime Minister Naoto Kan, who is not involved in this prefecture-level legislation, included a short postscript in his blog post describing this as an issue concerning the “Japan Brand”. He covered his base by saying that protecting the youth is important, but goes on to emphasise that promoting anime is also important as part of Japan’s soft power. He appeals for the parties involved to ensure that it will be possible for Tokyo Anime Fair to continue to thrive in Tokyo. This is interpreted by some as a warning to Ishihara not to push the issue too far.

Saaya Irie

The Law

Information on the proposed ordinance itself is scant online because Japan as a nation is terrified of the Internet and refuses to post any useful information online. If someone can find the full Japanese text of the bill, please link me. (UPDATE: Refer to the bottom of the entry for the relevant text extracted from the actual bill.)

But from what I have gleamed from Japanese new sources, the proposed law seeks to restrict sales of anime and manga titles depicting or glorifying sex acts that are illegal or immoral. The two examples given by all the newspapers were rape and incest, but presumably this is not an exhaustive list.

It is interesting that the law specifically targets anime and manga instead of generic creative works. This lends credit to the suggestions of certain conservative agenda at work. Or perhaps otaku were simply deemed to be harmless weaklings who would not be able to resist, giving an easy brownie point for the moral crusaders.

Please also note that this is a Tokyo Metropolis bill being passed by the Tokyo Metropolitan (i.e. prefecture) government and not the Japanese national government situated in Tokyo, so if passed it will affect only the Tokyo area.

Effective Ban

This ordinance does not ban anything. Hardcore pornographic manga will still be legal as they have always been, because they already comply with the proposed 18+ restrictions.

However, there are many manga titles targeted at working adults that will be affected by the proposed law. Off the top of my head, I imagine titles such as Kiss x Sis, Gantz, Berserk and various yuri/yaoi titles will be faced with a dilemma.

The problem is that being classified as “18+” is a commercial kiss of death similar to the AO games rating in the US. Book stores will either not stock the books or place them in a corner designated for pornography. This will be a huge distribution, retail and advertising disadvantage for titles that are not porn but contain select scenes that fall under the new law.

Yes, hardcore ero-manga has its lucrative niche in the market. But if Berserk has to be sold next to actual porn in a hidden corner of the shop, then how can it hope to attract the attention of its intended audience: adults looking for edgy seinen manga? In the long run, this results in a chilling effect on the creative freedom in storytelling, since publishers will be unwilling to fund such works given the risk of being branded 18+ by the Tokyo government.

There are existing retail ordinance regulating the sales of porn and 18+ materials. I am not familiar with the exact intricacies, but I suspect that restricted advertising and physical isolation are probably among the guidelines.

Additionally, there are online speculations about whether titles like Ore no Imouto ga Konna ni Kawaii Wake ga Nai and Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt will be affected, but my feeling is that it won’t be that drastic, so don’t get your panties in a bunch just yet. Yosuga no Sora on the other hand…

Aki Hoshino

Opinion — Doujinshi

The enforcement of the law will presumably entail government bureaucrats spending all day reading manga and watching anime in order to decide which titles should be 18+ restricted.

This brings into question how doujinshi, being non-commercial and unfunded in nature, will be treated by the system. If right holders must submit their works for approval for an administrative fee, then this barrier of entry may effectively prevent doujinshi from being sold in retail stores in Tokyo.

This also makes me wonder about Comiket. From my experience, Comiket tries to group works of similar nature together (i.e. smut with smut) but this is not enforced strictly and in general the individual stalls lack any indication of whether their products are 18+ in nature (at least the ones where this is not immediately obvious).

I presume that Comiket has long been in violation of some kind of Tokyo ordinance governing sales of porn and the government was just sort of turning a blind eye on it. I was actually under 18 during my first trip to Comiket and there was no age limit of any kind being enforced. If the Tokyo government chooses to tighten its enforcement, I wonder what will happen.

Certainly, it will be extremely costly and difficult for the organising committee to implement any effective screening for doujinshi sold during Comiket, especially since many of them are finalized literally days before the event. At the same time, enforcing an age limit for half a million visitors will not be any less insane.

I wonder if there exist any venues outside of Tokyo with infrastructure capable of hosting Comiket should it come to that.

Saaya Irie

Opinion — Age Limit

I am a free speech guy. In general where possible, I prefer unrestrained expression and have argued this before. However, I agree that age restrictions can be necessary and effective. In this case, the problem does not lie so much with the intention the law, but rather in the implementation.

As adults, I think we can all agree that we want a level of entertainment that exists between teenage-oriented shounen titles and hardcore pornography. The problem with a 18+ or nothing rating system is that it makes it difficult to market such a product. Market it as 18+ and be relegated to obscurity or market it as all ages and get blamed when children buy it.

This problem is not new and the industry has always tried to side-step it through its own system of genre classifications. But there is no uniform guideline that informs consumers if a seinen title is unsuitable for the youth. This problem has long been solved by movies and video games, so it puzzles me why it continues to be a problem here despite being often brought up.

I suspect that this has something to do with the industry not wishing to spend more money on working out a age classification system. But I think it’s also because such age restrictions were never deemed necessary for novels and you can easily find explicit pornographic novels prominently displayed in any major Japanese book stores with no restrictions on them.

So, I think a more comprehensive gradient of age classifications will help to alleviate some of the political pressure being exerted on the industry. You can argue that children still get to play violent video games, but the point is for the industry to demonstrate that it has done its part.

Branding your own product 18+ is commercial suicide. But if a sensible classification system exists that allows adult-oriented entertainment to thrive while differentiating them from both shounen and porn titles, content owners may be more willing to classify their works properly, reducing the need for a clumsy bureaucracy to step in.

Yukie Kawamura

Opinion — Enforcement

I think one interesting food-for-thought for me personally is the enforcement process.

Manga is just drawn pictures. How do you prove that illegal or immoral acts are being portrayed or glorified? I’m sure it will be clear cut in many situations, but I can think of a lot of potential loopholes.

For example, you can prove incest in real-life through DNA test, but how will you do that in manga? What if the characters involved turn out to be not related by blood? What if they are not depicted as siblings at all, but the girl just likes to call the guy “onii-san”?

The other example used, rape, is similarly mind-boggling. How can fictional characters give consent? What constitutes manga rape? I can see plenty of room for contention if someone chooses to dispute a specific ruling.

Furthermore, are non-explicit yuri and yaoi manga “glorifying” immoral sexual behaviours? And, for that matter, will homosexuality be considered immoral? There are a lot of unanswered questions over which I cannot opine without a copy of the original legislative text. (Refer to UPDATE below for further information.)

Conclusion

This law will not be the end of manga and anime because Bleach, Naruto and One Piece will survive like how cockroaches will survive the nuclear holocaust. But it will probably make manga and anime a lot duller than they have to be, in the absence of a more sensible content classification guideline.

Given the number of manga titles being produced on a regular basis and the amount of bureaucracy that will probably be required to assess them using these highly subjective criteria, this law will inevitably add an invisible tax to an industry that is not exactly in its best days.

The most likely outcome is that future titles deemed to be pushing the vague lines drawn by the law will be canned by the publishers because of the undetermined risks involved. There will be a huge financial incentive for companies to self censor and err on the safe side. This will most probably achieve the conservatives’ intended effect of reining in the industry’s growing dependency on sexual titillation, but one wonders at what cost.

As the Papa Bear puts it, this fucking thing sucks.

P.S. I think my favourite comment on this whole situation comes from Diemeow23 in Sankaku Complex’s blog comments:

If this does get implemented then I’m glad I saw anime and manga at its most shining brilliance however perverted the light was

Update

I was linked to the legislative text in question (so Japan does do some things right :P). The relevant portion of the text that defines works targeted by the law:

第八条第一項第二号の東京都規則で定める基準　漫画、アニメーションその他の画像（実å†ã‚’é¤ãã€‚）で、刑罰法規に触れる性交若しくは性交類似行為又は婚姻を禁止されている近親者間における性交若しくは性交類似行為を、不当に賛美し又は誇張ãã‚‹ã‚ˆã†ã«ã€æå†ã—又は表現ãã‚‹ã“とにより、青少年の性に関ãã‚‹å¥å…¨ãªåˆ¤æ–­èƒ½åŠ›ã®å½¢æˆã‚’妨げ、青少年の健全な成長を阻害ãã‚‹ãŠãã‚ŒãŒã‚るもの

The criterion as defined by Rule 2, Paragraph 1, Article 8 of the Tokyo Metropolitan Law: Comics, animation and other images (excluding photographs) that improperly glorify or exaggerate, through their depiction or presentation of, acts of sexual intercourse that violate penal laws or sexual conducts or acts of sexual intercourse between close relatives who are legally prohibited from marriage, and as a result may be harmful to the wholesome development of young people and impede their ability to form healthy impressions about sex.

It appears that the law is not as far-reaching as suggested by initial reports. Since homosexuality is perfectly legal in Japan, this means that yuri and yaoi are safe for now. It’s funny how they have to propose a roundabout definition of incest since it is not actually an illegal act in Japan.

This explains why news outlets reported the law as targeting illegal and immoral sex acts — incest is technically not illegal. But it also means that other forms of “immoral” sex acts are not actually covered by the law so long as they are legal in themselves by the standards of the penal code. But it’s still amusing to have to judge the legality of actions committed by fictional drawings.

So, all in all, this issue seems to be worthy of protest and improvement but it is nowhere close to an end-game scenario for the industry, since most ecchi fanservice and softcore porn depicted in anime and manga are neither illegal (especially since the age of consent in Tokyo is 13, well below the age of most anime characters) nor incestuous.

The article focuses on DVD sales in particular, which traditionally does quite well in Japan. It also makes some comparisons to overseas markets such as North America and briefly mentions Singapore.

Surprisingly, opinions voiced in the discussion thread at 2ch (as reported by Itai News) were actually very critical of the industry, particularly over the high cost of R2 anime DVDs. I find this interesting because 2ch is generally full of right-wing xenophobic nationalists, so I was expecting them to jump at this chance to blame foreign pirates for destroying the livelihoods of Japanese studios.

[ Anime! Anime! via Itai News ]

Some of the points covered by the original article:

• 2007 was a calm year for the anime industry with a marked absence of new IPOs and mergers and acquisitions compared to previous years.
• Anime series are making less money and prime-time slots receive lower viewership.
• The worst performing sector is DVD sales. Although as a whole it is stable, sales of individual titles have gone down.
• There is still no sense of immediate danger as compared to market collapses overseas.
• Briefly mentions Geneon USA’s collapse and the Odex Incident in Singapore.
• Attributes the problems faced overseas to the development of digital fansubbing since the turn of the millennium.
• Online file-sharing did not catch on among anime fans in Japan initially, allegedly due to their more cautious attitudes towards the net. (Yeah right.)
• However, it is gaining popularity now and Japanese fans are approaching the state of the English fansubbing community in 2000.
• Fansubs used to serve as promotion for DVDs but now foreign viewers are contented with just the digital rip.
• It is very likely that Japan’s anime DVD market will eventually go the same path as younger Japanese people grow used to file-sharing technology.
• Online distribution is an important growth area and many companies, such as Bandai and Toei, are attempting it.
• However, online distribution can only produce extra income for companies with huge collections of past works and does not earn enough to substain new on-going titles.

Oh no! Anime is doomed! Anyway the article is pretty slanted towards the traditional industry view of the whole fansub debate, a stance which Anime! Anime! has consistently maintained. Perhaps this is because they have access to insider information, or perhaps this is seen as the politically-correct interpretation. (Which is how the mainstream media do it.) Either way, there’s probably some truth in there but, as a bottom-level consumer, I can’t really say that I sympathize when industries whine about changing paradigms.

I think it’s about time people realized that anime is, and probably forever will be, a highly niche market. The projected growth is just unsustainable and the whole foreign market was one huge bubble waiting to burst in the first place. Everyone wanted a piece of the action because anime was the next coolest thing, but a lot of it turned out to be hot air.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you…

Meanwhile, here are some general comments that were expressed by 2ch posters in response to the article:

• Anime DVDs cost too much, especially when compared to regular DVDs.
• There are tons of crappy titles not worth paying for.
• HD broadcasting means that DVDs are actually of worse quality than illegal rips.
• Just switch to online distribution.
• DVDs not worth buying because anime has no rewatch value.
• Buying DVD is troublesome.
• Won’t buy without watching.

Most of it is similar to what you would find on most English forums, but I think that the most important points raised are that HD broadcasting looks better than DVD and that anime DVDs in Japan are seriously overpriced.

When you take into account of the fact that DVDs actually look worse than current TV broadcasts despite costing an exorbitant amount of yen better spent elsewhere, I think the sluggish sales can easily be seen as the slow death of a format past its prime instead of the manifesting effects of increased file-sharing. In the first place, Japanese fans have always been able to record and watch whatever they want for free, so I really don’t see how the spread of P2P can have as much effect there as compared to foreign markets such as North America, where many titles are released direct to video.

Oh well. Whatever. I don’t give a damn any more. In fact, I hope the industry will get rid of some extra baggage (GONZO in particular) and down-size.

GONZO ruined one of my favourite manga series ever. Death to the anime industry!

According to an annual research by research agency Media Create titled “The 2008 White Paper on the Otaku Industry”, the total combined size of game, anime and related goods sales amount to 186.8 billion yen (about 1.65 billion USD) for the year of 2007. This is a slight 2% increase over last year’s 182.1 billion yen.

Based on surveys conducted, Media Create determined that 31 % of otaku have been to maid cafes, 48% to doujin sales events and 49% purchased items online.

The agency divided the products into five categories: anime (DVDs and CDs), published content (manga and light novel), games, figures and goods, and doujinshi. Based on these categories, they conducted interview surveys with specialist shops and 1500 “otaku” found in those places. Doujin sales figures were obtained from event organizers and online retailers.

They also reached an interesting conclusion that there’s been an increase of so-called “light otaku”, or people who enjoy anime and games on a more casual level. This growth is attributed to the Internet, which seems to be the cause of everything nowadays, where it is easy for people to interact with others who have similar interests.

The paper also contains analysis from economist Takurou Morinaga and costs ï¿¥17,800 for 184 A4-sized pages. Probably a good read for anyone in the business. (Or thinking of starting one.) Personally I’m interested in finding out the breakdown of revenues in terms of the five defined categories.

[ Source: Yahoo! Japan News ]

Crypton, the creator of VOCALOID2 software Hatsune Miku and the upcoming Kagamine Rin/Ren, sent a cease-and-desist order to doujin circle CLOCK☆HEARTS.

The circle was taking preorders on its website fan-made dakimakura covers of Miku and Rin. (Sort of NSFW: Hatsune Miku | Kagamine Rin) In response, the circle has taken down the pictures of the covers and will be refunding all the preorders.

[ Source: 痛いニュース ]

Short commentary after the break.

Some 2ch posters are calling this the end of the VOCALOID phenomenon. Miku’s popularity online is largely viral in nature and depends a lot on the fans to continue to spread the meme and create new ones that prolong the franchise. As with all 2ch memes, becoming a part of Comiket is a natural process and indeed it is completely expected. Having doujin works based on your product is in a way a validation of its popularity and is part of promoting a lively community that creates room for the original IP to grow.

Walt Disney is well-known for its strict policies against doujinshi: you won’t find any Disney characters in Comiket. This doesn’t hurt them a bit because their fanbase doesn’t depend on the kind of grassroot support that many small Japanese studios live off. Moreover, the Comiket-going demographics and Disney’s target audience seldom overlap, so it really doesn’t make sense for Disney to risk damaging the public image of their IP by condoning doujin works with questionable content in exchange for no tangible gains.

But of course the same does not apply for Crypton. They very much depend on the tech-savvy otaku crowd for the success of VOCALOID2 and, with such a target audience, doujinshi is implicitly part of the deal. So it’s understandable why some people are upset over this.

That said, the fact that Crypton is not sending ceast-and-desist to other doujinshi circles indicates that perhaps this particular issue has more to do with the product itself rather than the 18+ content. I’m pretty sure there are quite a number of C73 publications being planned for Miku and her little sister (poor girls), and yet there doesn’t seem to be any indication that any other groups have received notices from Crypton.

If you take a look at the C73 product page of the doujin circle in question, it says that the covers come in two types of material and cost ï¿¥10,000 or ï¿¥14,000 respectively. That’s a frigging lot of money, especially when you consider that COSPA’s officially-licensed dakimakura covers cost around ï¿¥9,000 to ï¿¥10,000.

It is therefore questionable as to whether this kind of doujin goods really embodies the spirit of fan creations. Doujinshi and fan art allow aspiring artists to showcase their works and their love for the characters. Sure, they make money off selling the books, but the measly profit that can be made from selling a few hundred books at an annual event, after weeks/months of hard work, is really not the primary motivation behind doujinshi creation. And it’s not supposed to be.

Of course, when it comes to fan-created products, it is sometimes difficult to draw a clear line between reasonable compensation and overly-commercial interest. But in this particular case, I am leaning more towards Crypton’s side of the argument.

For one thing, I believe that doujinshi and doujin games exist to answer certain needs that cannot be fulfilled by the original right holders, whether due to the nature of the topic (i.e. 18+ material) or the lack of commercial interest to do it (i.e. 99% of doujin games). That is the value which they add to the community.

But does anyone seriously think that Crypton isn’t well on its way to creating every merchandise imaginable for its still-fresh cash cow? There are already Miku T-shirts on COSPA, an official dakimakura cover can’t be that far off. There just isn’t a need for an unofficial third party to come in, especially when it concerns a huge amount of potential profits for the original right holders.

The difference between a doujin artist and a bootlegger lies in the creativity embedded in the finished product and the intention. I think that making an overpriced dakimakura cover, with predictable art designed to locate the shortest path into the wallets of Miku fanboys everywhere, crosses an important line somewhere.

P.S. Please don’t sue me for the banner. T_T

With the fall of Geneon USA‘s DVD sales department, are we looking at the beginning of the doom of all anime as we know it? Some people seem to think so. After all, Geneon is well-liked by fans and its releases receive positive reviews from most, there seems to be no reason why they should be in trouble now, having started operation half a decade before anyone in North America has even heard of Pikachu. It’s tempting to point fingers and, just like the Napsters of the music industry, it didn’t take long before fansubs are getting blamed for everything from the death of anime to Jesus Christ’s crucifixion.

I’m not very familiar with the North American scene, so I don’t know what Geneon did to get here. But surprisingly, after a quick inspection of my shelf, I don’t seem to own anything from Geneon USA at all. Perhaps I’m unconsciously an ADV fanboy. Well I did almost buy the entire set of Starship Operators once, but Rightstuf was being bitchy and asking for my credit card bill so I cancelled the order. Okay I’m digressing.

Frankly I think that the R1 companies were too eager to cash in on what they perceived to be the biggest thing since Pokemon. Everyone loves anime and Japan, right? Well, the problem with the apparent popularity of anime is that it was not built on solid foundations. The rise of broadband internet, the birth of peer-to-peer file-sharing and the digitalization of the fansubbing chain, they all coincided to suddenly propel anime into uncharted territories from niche to semi-mainstream. It seemed like a whole new market popped out of nowhere and everyone wanted in all the money to be made. But perhaps it wasn’t as easy as people thought.

There is certainly money to be made, but the way to do it is not to license every single half-baked series and flooding the market with releases. For a while, it seemed like the American companies took a leaf out of a certain movie, with a slight adaptation: “If you dub it, they will come.” Just two years back, I saw a list of monthly R1 releases and I wondered to myself, “Are there really that many American anime fans?” Well, maybe that’s why anime is “dying” in North America. Perhaps it was never really as “alive” as it appeared to be, as the companies wished it was. (Like an undead zombie masquerading as your best friend.) I don’t think that it’s actually in any danger of dying, it’s just the victim of an overheated market and false hopes. Anime will survive. It just takes a lot of trial and error to get it right in a relatively young market.

Then again, maybe I’m waaaay off the mark here. Maybe anime really is dying like Odex says. And maybe fansubbing really is killing the industry. But sometimes, you have to rethink what are the real core components of the industry and what are the things that are only there because of inertia. Just because it has always been this way doesn’t mean it will be this way forever. Natural selection will take its course.

On a side note, it’s not like Geneon USA is going out of business after this. They are just going to cease their DVD sales operation. I’m guessing they will follow Kadokawa USA’s example: license the titles and then hire other companies to do the actual work.

Wow, what a random and incoherent rant this has been. One week of cramming an entire year’s worth of topics and four days of examinations must have really fried my brain.

P.S. Team Fortress 2 is like morphine injections to the brain.

I’ve made it no secret that I think distributing media through physical means is an archaic and rapidly shrinking trade. I sincerely believe that everything that can be digitalized will eventually be digitalized, whether you want it or not. It is a destiny that all media companies have to face and it can be an enormous opportunity for those who adapt fast.

And of course, it’s no different for anime. That’s right, it’s rant time.

Evolution

The theory of evolution has frequently been summed up by the phrase “survival of the fittest”, and indeed it is the perfect phrase to describe business models in our era of rapid technological growth. The “fittest” refers not to the strongest or the best, but the ones who can adapt and evolve to survive the next big change. Many mighty creatures had, over the millennia, fallen victim to the waves of biological revolutions in our planet’s short history, and yet the small and insignificant cockroach, whose ancestors once crawled in the shadows of dinosaurs, survives to this very day.

Today, technology has brought about such sudden but wonderful changes to our world that some of our existing frameworks which have existed for hundreds of years are starting to fail us. There will always be those who do not believe that everything they have held to be sacred truths for their lives is now change, evolving and improving for the better. Every effort will be made to build a dam around this torrent of change. At first they will succeed, but no dam can hold off the force of nature that is the power of technology. Pandora’s Box cannot be closed once it has been opened.

Okay, maybe I am getting a little too abstract here. Let us move back to anime.

Declining DVD sales in Japan

According to this ITmedia article forwarded to me by Soulshift, Japan’s DVD sales are dropping. Heck, I will agree with those people who claim that DVD sales everywhere are on the decline, even if I have yet to see conclusive evidence of it. Because it just makes sense. I for one certainly do not think that DVDs are worth their price tags, even if I do buy them for collecting purposes. I think a lot of people in the younger generations agree with me.

This is not to say that I think all media content should be free and no one should get paid for his/her works. I don’t. But I do think that the old way of doing things will not last for much longer. It has nothing to do with wanting to get things for free. I will pay for it if I have to, but the more important point is that I want it in my way, my format and at my convenience. You can air free anime on TV 24-hours a day and I won’t give a damn because I rather watch the shows I want to watch whenever I feel like watching them. Call it unreasonable if you want, but that is the kind of mindset that young people growing up with the Internet as their main source of entertainment will have. And those are the potential customers in this business.

当社のDVDが売れない最大の理由は作品の力不足だが、業界全体でもアニメDVD販売が不振だ。その原因は1つではないだろう」とGDHの内田康史副社長は言う。HDD＆DVDレコーダーのæ®åŠã‚„、YouTubeのような動画共有サイトへの違法アップロードの影響などが、DVD不振の原因として考えられるという。

The ITmedia article interviewed GDH, the parent company of GONZO, and according to them, the main reasons why DVD sales are dropping in Japan are because of the spread of HDD and DVD recorders and the popularity of video streaming sites such as YouTube. You can whine and cry all you want, but that is not going to make technology reverse itself and uninvent things that are inconvenient for your business.

And not everything can be solved through legislation either. Sure, you can waste spend money to hire a bunch of people who sit around and do nothing but send out takedown letters to YouTube, but are you then going to lobby for a law that bans people from recording TV shows with DVD recorders too? It is just not possible. And it should be noted that P2P filesharing is not even a blip on Japan’s radar. I know very few Japanese fans who have heard of, much less utilize, BitTorrent.

Old distribution model, new market paradigm

「当社がアニメDVDを海外展開ãã‚‹å ´åˆã€å­—幕や音声、パッケージなどを海外仕様に作り変えるæ‚間が必要で、どうしても日本よりも後のçºå£²ã«ãªã£ã¦ã—まう。このタイムラグのせいでビジネスチャンスを逃している面はある」

The same GDH representative goes on to say, “When we release our products overseas, it takes time to translate, dub and repackage, so the releases always end up being slower than in Japan. This time lag often results in many business opportunities being lost.”

I think this is a clear indication that they are slowly realizing the fact that the old system is showing its age. Foreign audiences are no longer contented to get slow and outdated releases. If they cannot get the series they want legally and fast, they will turn to the Internet. Illegal or not, the Internet is there and will always be there. Deal with it. The best way to go about solving this problem is obviously to cater to the global audience right from the start, instead of trying to pretend that regional markets are still clearly defined and segregated like they were twenty years ago.

The blame game

　ただ“犯人探し”に躍起になるだけでは、次のビジネスは生まれない。「æ‚代とともにメディアは移り変わるもの。最も多くの人に視聴してもらえ、お金を払ってもらえる可能性が高いメディアを試し、ビジネスを切り開く必要がある」

The best quote: “Just searching for the ‘criminals’ is not going to do any good. It will not create any new business opportunities. Media has to change with time. There is a need for us to try out formats that bring us the greatest viewership and increase our opportunities to make money. We need to open up our business.” Exactly what I want to say. GDH has created a YouTube channel called “GONZO DOOGA” and is asking YouTube not to remove content that infringes on GONZO’s copyrights as long as they can serve as promotional material.

The same article goes on to say that illegal downloading has, ironically, proven a global demand for anime. What needs to be done is not to destroy this demand by isolating potential customers and calling them pirates. The content owners need to re-examine their business strategies and find out ways to tap into that newly-generated demand using the technology that enabled it all to happen: the Internet. Indeed, the GDH representative acknowledges the fact that illegal sites that charge users monthly fees to download anime are very popular overseas and that GDH sees it as a huge business opportunity waiting to be tapped in its quest to expand globally.

Online distribution

That brings me back to Odex. Some people think that I am against Video-On-Demand. That is not true. I am an fervent supporter of digital media distribution that actually achieves its true intention—being convenient. In fact, when I first suggested VOD to Mr. Peter Go many months ago, he was unreceptive to the idea. I am happy that a small step has now been taken in that direction, but it is really small indeed. And the way Odex has sequenced its actions certainly has not helped to bring about much enthusiasm for the minute change.

I mean, it simply makes no business sense to assume that the tech-savvy downloaders are an insignificant minority, provoke them into a frenzy, and then roll out a service that is targeted right at the very same group of people while pretending nothing happened. But of course the people at Odex know what they are doing because they did their market research, right? I sure hope they do.

Conclusions

It doesn’t matter how good DVD sales were in the past. It doesn’t matter how well the system used to work. I see only the future and I think the future will only get brighter for anime. But not for DVDs. Filesharing will not kill anything that is really important and has real purposes, it is simply a new paradigm that will serve to weed out the unevolved dinosaurs that fed on past inefficiencies in the system and profited disproportionately off the physical bottlenecks of old technology that no longer exist. It may make sense for most people to pay for movies on DVDs today, but a new system replacing it will soon emerge to reward creativity in a new and better way, just as a different incentive system used to exist before the invention of the video cassette.

The ones who get to the new winning formula first will reap the most benefits. And I’m glad to learn that the Japanese studios are at least putting some thought into this. Perhaps one day we will pay $30 a month to download and watch all the anime series we want. A guy can dream…

Here is my summary of what I think of Odex’s grand scheme to dominate the local market in one daring move, and why I think they will fail terribly and spoil it for the rest of us. As some of you may or may not know, I met with Peter Go, director of Odex, twice before and had some discussions with him long before the start of the on-going fiasco (after he read my letter). At that time, I promised him that I would not reveal anything that was said during our private conversations, so I shall honour that promise. Not that I have a need to, now that Odex has shown its hand and everything has been made public. Anyway, just hoping to clear up some FUDs that have been making their rounds in every single forum thread on the topic.

Anti-Video Piracy Association of Singapore (AVPAS) is not affliated to the government.
Never was, never will be.

Odex is the sole active member of AVPAS.
Although Odex is inconspicuously in the middle of the member list of AVPAS, it is not too much a stretch to say that AVPAS is essentially Odex and not much more. Basically it’s like how music labels use RIAA to redirect the bad publicity away from their brand names, except that Odex is failing horribly at it because they were too lazy to create a letterhead for AVPAS and decided to use their own instead. Big mistake.

Odex is not, and has never been, the dominant proliferator of anime in Singapore.
They may be the one with all the licensing rights, but exponential growth of anime’s popularity seen locally was not their doing. Odex VCDs and DVDs have never received the level of acceptance and respect given to R1 DVDs by the American anime community. With or without BitTorrent.

Odex employees download fansubs.
According to various personal blogs belonging to related individuals. Or just common sense. I mean, the only reason why those people are working for Odex is because they are anime viewers. Where do almost all Singaporean fans get their anime fix from? Hint: it ain’t packaged in silver. Are their employees being issued similar letters?

Not all the AVPAS titles are licensed for local distribution.
Although Odex is the only active member of AVPAS, it does have the consent of the Japanese studios to act on behalf of them. Odex is empowered, through its own creation AVPAS, to defend the copyrights of these studios, whether or not the works in question are licensed for distribution by Odex. This can be said to be very unfair because many of the items are not legally available in Singapore except through expensive parallel importing and the actual damages done by illegal downloading to Odex’s business is therefore zero for these particular titles. Still, it appears that Odex does indeed have the right to represent the interest of those Japanese studios and thus it is within their abilities to sue for certain titles that they do not hold the distribution rights for.

The Japanese studios are not directly involved.
As far as I can tell, the Japanese studios did not initiate this. They probably do not care about what Odex does since Singapore is an insignificant market to them. From what little information is available, it appears that AVPAS was created initially to target commercial bootlegging, for example in 2004 they won a case against a local retail chain to raid their warehouse. This suggests that the Japanese studios authorized Odex to represent their interests so as to fight what they perceive to be commercial piracy. Whether or not this authorization is now being misused by Odex for their own agendas is highly questionable.

Odex did not send any warnings.
When a local blogger first mentioned in passing that Odex was going to take legal actions, they denied it and refused to comment on it. Then one day the letters started flying out of the blue and immediately started to demand money. This really makes one question Odex’s intention.

As a private entity, Odex cannot file a criminal suit.
Although they mentioned “fines of $10,000 per item and imprisonment of 5 years” in their letter, Odex can do nothing of that sort. They can launch a civil suit against you and if they win they can claim damages incurred. But they cannot force the relevant authorities to press criminal charges against you. That is up to the government to decide.

Neither can Odex prevent any criminal charges.
Even if you pay Odex their $3,000 or so, there is nothing to stop the government from pressing criminal charges against you. Copyright infringement is a criminal offence in Singapore. Odex can do nothing to interfere with that. In fact, even if they promise not to sue you themselves, there is nothing that legally prevents them from reporting you to the relevant authorities. In fact, it would be illegal for them to make such a promise.

Odex claims $3,000-$5,000 settlement is for legal and tracking fees.
With 1,000 subpoenaed IP addresses per ISP for SingNet, Starhub and PacNet, we end up with exactly 3,000 IP addresses being affected. Let’s very generously estimate that PacNet manages to appeal successfully and protect the identity of its subscribers and that 1/3 of the addresses are either duplicates (due to dynamic IP assignment) or otherwise unsuitable for Odex’s purpose (e.g. employees, friends and/or relatives). We are still left with about 1,300 or so targets. Let’s assume that everyone only has to pay, on average, $3,000. That is a total of 3.9 million dollars we are talking about, and that is the low end assumption. It can potentially be twice as much if you change a few variables.

According to this The New Paper article, Odex enlisted the help of a US company in tracking BitTorrent downloads. It doesn’t take 3.9 million dollars to run a bunch of servers to auto-scrape at regular intervals every torrent file posted on AnimeSuki and TokyoTosho using their RSS feeds. As for legal fees, Odex mailed their letter using their own letterhead and, from the accounts of people who received the letter, there is no indication that a lawyer was present during their meetings with Odex representatives. Which means that Odex only had to pay for at most legal advices, if anything at all. Certainly not worth 3.9 million dollars.

All that money has to go somewhere. I wonder where…

Odex has already paid all the necessary fees.
At least, that seems to be a logical assumption, since people don’t work for free. In other words, Odex created this elaborate scheme to instil fear, uncertainty and doubt into fansub downloaders, but they don’t want to have to pay for it themselves. So now they are asking you to pay up. They want to have your cake and eat it too. Also, what happens when they have collected enough to make back their original investment? I doubt it was anything more than $100,000, unless people really do pay millions(!?) of dollars for someone to scrape torrent trackers, in which case I shall end my rant here because I have a company to start up. After making back their investment, will Odex cease this futile fear mongering or will they earn some profits while they are at it? Have they already earned back their investment? I think there are a lot of questions in this area that need answering.

Odex does not have a foolproof case in court.
There is little precedence to work with, but there are many holes in their argument. The only evidence they have of your infringement is the IP address, which may not be enough. Various people have also reported that they were turned away when they went to talk to Odex with a lawyer, which is an indication that Odex is uncertain about the validity of its claims. At least one person was advised by his lawyer to ignore the letter and delete all the things he downloaded. So far Odex has not taken any actions against him. If more people refuse to pay up, Odex may be forced to either sue someone to make an example of him or to give up on this whole endeavour. If they do sue, there is no guarantee of victory and it is very hard to guess how much damages the court will award even if they win. It may even be less than $3,000-$5,000.

You are not guilty until proven so in court.
You are not obligated to show anything to Odex just because they send you a letter. You do not have to admit to anything and you should not incriminate yourself. Ask them for all the evidence they have against you. Ask them to explain clearly how each piece of evidence proves their claims. Ask them for a breakdown of the payment and why the amount varies from person to person, especially since they claim that it is supposed to be for the fees they have incurred. Do not sign anything. Seek legal advice if possible.

Odex is attempting to launch a Video-On-Demand service.
Prevent people from downloading and then launch their own service. It seemed like the perfect plan. Unfortunately, it was delayed (perhaps indefinitely), leaving people with nothing but an empty “under construction” page. Also, consider the next point…

The Odex brand is permanently tainted.
Who is going to utilize a VOD service if Odex does manage to get it up eventually? The same teenage anime fans that are defacing pictures of Stephen Sing, the other director of Odex, on HWZ now? Somehow, I don’t think so. Mr. Peter Go also mentioned in the TNP article that Odex sales fell 50% in 2006. Well, who’s taking bets for 2007? In the unlikelihood that sales actually improve, it can only be attributed to market demands generated by certain pyrotechnic displays. Seriously, I have bought Odex VCDs before and now I won’t ever again. How exactly was this supposed to be a response to poor sales again?

My General Paper teacher read about this in the papers and he thinks that Odex is just being greedy.
This is the first time my teacher has heard of Odex. His opinion is that if Odex was really working for the public good, they should have given sufficient prior warnings. It’s very sad when such an unpleasant undertaking becomes your company’s sole source of publicity for most of the population who has, until now, been completely oblivious to your existence. Contrary to the popular old saying, there is such a thing as bad publicity, especially when you are trying to sell something.

Most other forms of downloading are not affected.
HTTP, FTP, IRC, video streaming sites and a whole lot more. BitTorrent just so happens to be easily monitored due to every torrent file having its own tracker and swarm. But no US company is going to be able to log your HTTP downloads without violating some much more serious laws. While P2P file-sharing networks are vulnerable, they are much less so than BitTorrent due to the different nature in file distribution. Ultimately, this crackdown will only serve to increase the popularity of crunchyroll and similar video streaming sites, which is indeed a terrible prospect for those of us who somewhat value video quality, but does nothing for Odex’s stated goal of fighting illegal downloads.

Well, that’s a lot of typing. Maybe I’ll update this when I think of more things.

WTF zOMG H4X!

BTW the organization mentioned in the letter AVPAS (Anti-Piracy Association of Singapore) is similar to the RIAA/RIAS except that Odex appears to be the sole active member. The organization has obtained authorizations from various Japanese studios to represent their rights for all their copyrighted works, even those that are not licensed by Odex for distribution in Singapore. The full list of titles can be found on their website.

Read on for my thoughts.

That said, I am very, very curious as to how Odex, a private entity, managed to obtain personal data from the ISPs based on purely circumstantial evidences. As far as I can see from the AVPAS member list, there is zero indication that it is anything but a private organization. It is related to neither the police nor the relevant government agencies. Therefore, it is the anime equivalent of the RIAA.

However, RIAA, as mighty and powerful as it appears to be, is not able to obtain any personal information from American ISPs directly. It has to do it through the court. That means that it has to first start the legal procedures before the court issues a subpoena that forces the ISP to reveal the identity of the defender and summons the person to court. The defenders in these lawsuits are given the generic name “John Doe” because their names are undisclosed by their ISPs until after the court subpoena. In such cases, the first letter received by the poor sob should be from his own ISP informing him of the existence of such a subpoena for his identity.

The above letter is addressed to the person himself and was sent directly by Odex. This means that Odex, without first going through any legal proceedings, is able to obtain personal information directly from the ISPs using only the IP address. That is insane if you consider the amount of invasive power that has been put into the hands of private company and the potential for abuse by individuals with their personal agendas.

You know, there’s a certain someone whom I really hate on a certain forum. I will fake produce a record of his IP address illegally torrenting a picture that I once drew during a particularly boring physics lecture. I shall then e-mail this “proof” to Singnet and ask for this person’s home address. And if that doesn’t work, I’ll go spend a few bucks to register a company to make the request seem more legitimate…

Of course Odex is a legitimate company that is trying to protect its rights under the current intellectual property rights law (flawed as it may be). But my point is that if a private entity can obtain such information without the prior knowledge of the people involved and without the authority of the court, then what exactly in our legal system is protecting our privacy from abuse by some unscrupulous characters? And if such protection of personal privacy does indeed exist, what exactly allows Odex to bypass it?

Then again, I’m not well-versed with the local legal system. Maybe our privacy laws are really that screwed up. Oh well.

Read this excellent explanation of the “RIAA vs. John Doe” lawsuits, particularly the sections on “How the RIAA identifies the people they sue” and “The Lawsuit Begins”, and compare it to what Odex is apparently authorized to do. Doesn’t RIAA look like the better alternative?

So what are your remaining options for your weekly anime fix?

1. Direct download sites
2. Obscure Chinese Bittorrent trackers
3. XDCC bots on IRC
4. Download raws off Winny/Share
5. Move to Japan
6. Find a job at Odex

Alternatively, find a safer hobby like playing pirated computer games or serial jaywalking.