Japan National Tourism Organization made a simple map showing the locales of some popular anime titles and the major anime retail hotspots across Japan.

While an interesting initiative, the map itself is rather light on details, so this is more of a standard tourism brochure with a twist than an actual guide for people looking for information.

Incidentally, I have been to all the areas indicated in the pink section of the map excluding Sapporo, and there seems to be a lot of marketing hyperbole involved for everything that is not in Tokyo or Nipponbashi, Osaka.

Toranoana at Otemachi, Hiroshima

Otemachi, Hiroshima is a just regular shoutengai that happens to have a few shops like Toranoana (large chain of doujinshi speciality shops) and Yellow Submarine (chain hobby store with outlets selling everything from Magic: The Gathering to anime figures to model trains) scattered across it. You can find such loose shop clusters in nearly every major Japanese city and there’s nothing remarkable about the one in Otemachi. Hiroshima is a nice city to visit though.

Yokohama Landmark Plaza has the mainstream brand-name stores for Ghibli and Shueisha that serve as a convenient focal point for the brochure, but you can find a lot more real anime stuff elsewhere scattered around the main Yokohama station, such as a decent-sized Animate and smaller Gamers (the large anime chain store whose mascot spawned the Di Gi Charat series) and Melon Books (doujinshi speciality chain store) branches hidden away inside random buildings. But ultimately, you are better off enjoying the sights and sounds of Enoshima if you find yourself in Kanagawa prefecture. Save the anime stuff for nearby Tokyo. There isn’t much in Yokohama.

The Animate branch in Nagoya stands alone behind Nagoya Station, but everything else is found in Osudenkigai

I didn’t spend much time at Nagoya’s Osudenkigai, but I thought it was about on par with Eastern Ikebukuro and Otome Road in terms of number of shops and level of activity. It’s worth checking out if you are in Nagoya, but it’s definitely not worth travelling to Nagoya for. Well, basically there is no real reason why anyone should visit Nagoya. It’s a boring place.

Classy underpass at Tenjin

The Tenjin area in Fukuoka is a major shopping area with many large vertical shopping centres. If you are in Hakata, you will definitely end up there. As Hakata is the centre of commercial activities in Kyushu/Western Japan, it has the largest regional outlets for Kinokuniya, Animate, etc. The caveat being that they are the largest in Kyushu, which is not really saying much. As far as I remember, there isn’t really any single location where the anime stores are clustered together, so you will just come across some of them as part of normal tourist shopping.

Look for the giant Melon Books sign to find Ota-road

Nipponbashi, Osaka is definitely worth visiting. It is much smaller in scale than Akihabara, but significantly larger than Ikebukuro Otome Road. The important thing to know is that the main road, where the exit for Nipponbashi subway station is located, has nothing but regular electronics stores. You need to find your way to a smaller parallel street, colloquially known as “Ota-road” to find outlets such as Gamers and Toranoana. I believe that K-Books (nationwide chain stores specializing in second-hand manga, doujinshi, goods and collectibles) is the only one with presence on the main road.

And of course, Akihabara, Otome Road and Nakano Broadway are the classics you shouldn’t miss. I find it interesting that the Akihabara blurb features the maid cafe Mai Dreamin, which seems to have materialized out of nowhere and cornered a huge share of the market with multiple outlets in Akihabara and Ikebukuro. I had always thought that @home cafe was much bigger, given that it has a longer history in Akihabara. Perhaps Mai Dreamin is more savvy at marketing. I did notice that they have an “English” version of the pre-recorded advertising blurb they play at their outlet next to Akihabara station.

When it comes to visiting real-life location of anime settings, it is important that you only do it if you enjoy sightseeing by itself. Most anime titles are set in boring, unremarkable small towns and some of them can be quite mind-boggling rural for an urban dweller. For example, Summer Wars is set in Nagano, an entirely unremarkable prefecture as can be surmised from its Japan Guide article. If you travel there just to visit the anime locations, you’d better learnt to enjoy looking at mountains and fruit farms.

On the other hand, the ones set in easy-to-access parts of Tokyo usually feature no landmarks distinguishable enough to actually visit, other that the standard tourist fare: Tokyo Tower, Shinjuku area and Shibuya scramble crossing. That said, I did enjoy how Durarara!! featured Eastern Ikebukuro — one of my favourite places in Tokyo — with many of its familiar details.

Source: scion_cho on Flickr

Also, I love going to the Starbucks on the second floor of Tsutaya across the scramble crossing from Shibuya station. It was featured in an episode of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex and it just looks so iconic.

This is where Kagami and Tsukasa work as miko

Outside of Tokyo, the easiest locations to visit are probably Lucky Stars scenes set in Omiya, Saitama and Washinomiya Shrine. You can cover both in a day trip from Tokyo. Well, and there’s School Days too.

I have been to Hakone a few times, but I have somehow never made the mental connection to Evangelion. Hmm.

I don’t normally like to write about breaking news because generally I find that I have neither the first-hand expertise nor the retrospective hindsight to comment on most real-time events non-trivial. The story would be very different if the earthquake had happened three weeks later when I will be in Tokyo and perhaps Kamakura and/or Tochigi, but it didn’t.

That said, I feel compelled to write something about the largest earthquake ever recorded in Japan after spending the past two days following the continuous Twitter updates and watching NHK and TBS news streams. So here it is.

First of all, I am not very good at expressing emotions through words, so forgive me if my language does not sufficiently convey the gravity of the situation. I hope that people affected by this disaster will find the relief that they need, but I suspect that my words and opinions will make no difference either way. Thoughts and prayers do have the power to effect positive outcomes indirectly but they are not my modus operandi. I can only offer some second-hand perspectives.

I was very inspired by the manner in which the Japanese people conduct themselves in times of crisis. They are clearly well-prepared for this. There are numerous anecdotes on Twitter about the calm and efficient manner in which regular civilians conducted themselves during the pandemonium.

Tokyo (Hiro Komae/Associated Press)

Years ago, AP’s Tomoko Hosoka wrote a story about the millions of office workers who would be stranded hours away by foot from their home in the aftermath of a quake due to the massive commuting traffic in Tokyo Metropolis. This was exactly what happened two days ago when, in an unprecedented event, all trains and metro subway services in Tokyo were suspended. But surprisingly, no one died from exposure, stampede or such avoidable tragedies that one comes to expect in the midst of such chaos. The proposed plan mentioned in the article was put to good use and Google Maps was used on various social network sites to alert people to all the schools and facilities designated as disaster shelter.

In fact, not a single building collapsed and the total death toll in Tokyo is in the single digit, an impressive feat given that, though far from the epicentre, the tremors experienced in the capital would have been respectable headline-grabbing earthquakes themselves had they occurred in isolation. The effectiveness of Tokyo’s contingency plans must be applauded.

A fascinating bit of titbit I learnt in the process: many newer beverage vending machines in Japan dispense for free if you pull an emergency level. I hate to make generalizations about groups of people, but I can think of a mountain of reasons why this would never work in many other countries.

I mean Japan is a country where the yakuza routinely volunteers for disaster relief. The yakuza groups Sumiyoshi-kai and Inagawa-kai are both participating in the on-going efforts and the Sumiyoshi-kai (yes, this guy is an actual yakuza) was providing free shelter for stranded commuters in Tokyo on Friday night.

There is a level of general civility that permeates all levels of Japanese society that is difficult to explain. Perhaps it is the result of the country’s relative cultural homogeneity, a strong emphasis on collectivism and societal pressure, an educated populace or some kind of historical inheritance. Whatever the reason, it serves the nation well in times of crisis such as this.

Oh, and here’s a song Kimi de Ite Buji de Ite (Please be yourself, please be safe) composed and sung by Yoko Kanno, a Miyagi native, for the earthquake victims.

Kesennuma city, Miyagi prefecture (Keichi Nakane/Associated Press/The Yomiuri Shimbun)

The situation in Tohoku is a lot more serious than in Tokyo. One interesting piece of information I learnt from people tweeting from Japan is that many people in Tokyo chose to remain in their offices on Friday because they trust their high-rise office buildings to withstand the earthquakes more than they trust their private housings. I am guessing that the rural areas of Tohoku do not enjoy such luxuries.

UK’s The Independent ran a front-page cover with the Hinomaru flag and the words “Don’t give up, Japan. Don’t give up, Tohoku” in both English and Japanese.

Currently, there are fears of meltdown in multiple nuclear reactors in Fukushima caused by the total failure of backup generators that were hit by tsunami waves that exceeded the planned height. This sounds terrifying because “meltdown” conjures images of atomic mushroom clouds and Chernobyl, but the facts and analysis are not that gloomy. My personal feeling is that the media is colouring the facts with a mixture of ignorance and individual bias.

Still, regardless of the final outcome of the situation, nuclear energy appears to have been dealt yet another fatal blow. Germany’s government is fighting to defend its nuclear policy while oppositions in countries considering nuclear power are jumping at this opportunity to bolster their argument.

In Singapore, The Online Citizen, a prominent alternative pro-opposition news blog, posted a rather transparent remark on Facebook saying “Singapore continues to consider nuclear power” while linking to an article about Fukushima’s reactors. It was a cheap shot and they ought to be ashamed. Of course this was immediately topped by the state media Channel News Asia‘s mass email soliciting for advertisers to buy ad spots in its upcoming intensive coverage of the Tohoku earthquake. Talk about ambulance chasing.

Japan is known as the country with the best nuclear safety standards and earthquake preparations and even it has apparently been bested, or at least that is the narrative that the major media outlets seem to have agreed upon — I suspect that the facts will in the long run demonstrate that the danger was greatly exaggerated due to hyper-sensitivity to the word “nuclear”.

Iwaki city, Fukushima prefecture. (Kyodo News/Associated Press)

As of right now, I still plan to continue with my trip to Japan at the end of this month. The scenes of destruction being constantly replayed on various news networks were taken from Tohoku, a relatively rural region in north-eastern Japan, while most of my itinerary involves western Japan. I will also be spending a week in Tokyo, but I am not too worried about it. I have great confidence in Tokyo’s ability to rapidly recover from huge disasters based on an extensive review of Godzilla- and Ultraman-related materials. Cue the omg-how-dare-you-joke-about-this righteous indignation.

On another note, I just want to say that Twitter has really made me feel like I am truly living in the future. (Relevant xkcd strip.) I follow a wide variety of people, and all of them, including members of the anime community, singers, seiyuu, titans of the English blogosphere, news professionals, politicians, real-life acquaintances, were tweeting in real-time throughout and discussing the same issues from very different perspectives including many first-hand ones.

The conversation threads on Twitter were timely, spontaneous and interlinked in a manner that transcends traditional boundaries. It is easy to dismiss social networking as a hive of egotists and exhibitionists and it has become a popular refrain to question the purpose of Twitter whenever the topic pops up in an online discussion elsewhere, but ultimately I really think that micro-blogging in general has a very important role to play in the future ahead.

I’ll just end this long thought dump here. I wish everyone in Japan the best in the days ahead. 幸運を祈る。

It seems like I’ve been going to Japan every year for the past few years due to various reasons, so I guess this should not come as a huge surprise. Yes, I am flying to Japan again. Yes, I will be there for Maaya’s “You can’t catch me” 2011 tour, specifically the one in Osaka.

Come to think of it, this trip makes my waxing lyrical last year seem a lot less meaningful. Heh.

I will be in Japan from 26 March to 16 April. As this will be my final romp in Japan for the foreseeable future, I have gone all out in an insane attempt to cover as many locations as possible in one trip.

My confirmed itinerary so far:

• Osaka
• Kyoto
• Nara
• Hiroshima
• Miyajima
• Fukuoka
• Nagasaki
• Kagoshima
• Ibusuki
• Nagoya
• Ise Shima
• Tokyo
• Kamakura
• Nikko

Still trying to squeeze a few more places in, but this more or less covers every place I want to go to in Kyushu and Kansai.

The sheer logistics of this epic journey is mind boggling. I have been spending a good portion of the past week tabbing between Hyperdia, Google Maps, Japan Guide and Hostel World in order to craft the most complicated tour itinerary the world has ever seen. And they said I was mad.

The awesome thing is that most of the transport costs are covered in a lump-sum I paid for a 14-day Japan Rail Pass. This pass allows you to take unlimited rides on any JR railways, including the Shinkansen bullet trains (but excluding Nozomi trains), for a flat 45,100 yen. This is quite cool because I will need to take the Shinkansen at least ten times to cover that many places in just two weeks and each ride can cost more than 100 USD by itself.

The Japan Rail Pass is so awesome that permanent residents and Japanese citizens are actually banned from purchasing and using it because JR would go bankrupt in a matter of days otherwise. You have to purchase it from JTB or a tour agency in your home country.

Japan Rail Pass purchased from JTB

A tip I picked up from booking my accommodations is that in many parts of Japan it is actually possible to find private single-room business hotels that are similar in price or even cheaper than backpacker hostels in the same area. The catch is that these business hotels are mostly used by locals and bookings are done online in Japanese.

But 2,900 yen a night for a private room with proper facilities does make spending 2,500 yen to squeeze with 5-9 other people in the same dorm room seem like a scam.

Of course, the trade off is that you don’t get the interesting mix of characters one finds in a backpacker hostel nor the tourist-friendly English-speaking counter staff. My own itinerary includes both foreigner-centric hostels and Japanese-centric business hotels. It’s nice to mix things up a bit.

Really looking forward to setting foot on Gunkanjima. It’s like the Disneyland of urban exploration. Already booked my 4000-yen guided ferry tour.

Also hoping to crash a lecture or two at Toudai before I leave. Preferably political science or sociology. I blame too much Tokyo Daigaku Monogatari.

Do drop me a PM on Twitter or an email if you happen to be in Japan around that time and want to meet up for tea. I will be in Tokyo from 9 April to 16 April and Kyushu/Kansai before that. I can show you around Akihabara/Asakusa, which, sad/happy to say, I know like the back of my hand.

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 three-day long holy celebration of otakuism that is the Winter Comic Market came to a close yesterday. This is my second Comiket, and probably the last one in a long time. I am still in Japan right now, so I may not have time to blog about the last three days in greater details until I get back, but here are the cosplay photos for now.

I did not take any pictures of the event other than the cosplay this time. However, since Comiket mostly consists of the same old huge crowds and long queues, you can take a look at last year’s pictures for that purpose.

I have to say that with the freshness gone, Comiket is basically one huge shopping experience — extremely chaotic and yet simultaneously subtle compared to a real anime convention loaded with constant entertainment and shiny objects. That said, the cosplay never gets old.

The good thing about Winter Comiket is that the stench of bodily fluids is minimal and queuing for two to three hours to get your hands on a few pages of hardcore pornography is probably a whole lot more bearable than in summer (or so I imagine). The bad thing is that cosplay pictures look like crap because the sun is always at an inconvenient angle.

Of course I could easily solve this problem by investing in a proper external flash for my DSLR, but I prefer to blame the climate and planetary alignments when things go wrong. (Also, solar flares wiped my hard disk.)

Since whining doesn’t solve my problem, mostly due to the unsympathetic laws of physics, you guys will just have to deal with the unfortunate fact that a great number of cosplayers appearing in this post have empty voids of pitch darkness in place of their eyes.

Like

This

And as a bonus, sometimes the entire face is black (not being racist)

I’m sure you are terribly annoyed by my constant monologue interrupting the flow of pictures, so I shall stop. Enjoy.

Actually it’s quite amazing how Japanese girls seem to be immune to the winter chill. Oh right, sorry. I’ll shut up now.

The next post will be out some time next year. In the mean time, you can check out my C73 coverage from last year. It’s about the same.

On another note, during the time it took for me to queue for various reasons during three days of Comiket, I collected all eleven Crystals in Dissidia. Japan is the undisputed global leader when it comes to forming and managing long queues.

Because Japanese are completely asinine about getting their photos taken, and because the Comiket committee has my URL and I don’t want to get blacklisted, I went through the trouble of mosaicking all the faces.

The Queues

Queuing is Japan’s national pastime. In fact, you can say that going to Disneyland in Japan is about the same as going to Comiket. It all boils down to about two hours of queuing for a few seconds of gratification. Unless you go for the rides that no one wants to touch with a 10-metre pole, like “It’s a Small World”.

End of the line for T2 Art Works

Almost there!

The queues for popular booths are so long that the end of the line is generally in a totally different part of Japan from the actual location of the booth. This makes it a huge challenge for people who are rushing to queue for goods that are limited in numbers. Finding the booth itself is easy if you follow the maps, but by the time you get there the queue is already in Hokkaido. You have to anticipate where the queue will be by the time you arrive and head for the queue instead of the booth.

It’s like that Space Invaders episode in Futurama: shoot where he is going to be instead of where he was.

At the end of every queue is a guy holding a sign with the booth number that says 最後尾 to tell you that it’s the end of the line for that circle. Usually the guy holding it is the last person in the queue, so it’s common courtesy for you to take over by saying “mochimasu” if you join the queue.

The Booths

Did I mention how asinine Japanese are about photos? I did? Well I’m going to say it again: Japanese are completely asinine about photos. Despite having a press pass, I have to ask permission from every single booth that I want to take pictures of. This quickly bored me, so I ended up taking very few pictures. I don’t even know why they bother to give out press passes.

Interestingly, most people are more willing to have their pictures taken if you tell them that you are from overseas. According to the two cosplayers above, it’s because they don’t want to be recognized by their friends.

This appears to be some 3D game with characters from CLANNAD, D.C. and SHUFFLE!

Nice boat.

The 0verflow guys asked me for my website before letting me take a picture. I gave them my name card. Woot. 0verflow has my name card now! Anyway their C73 stuff wasn’t very interesting so I didn’t buy anything.

You can find more pictures of the commercial booths over at Danny Choo’s C73 coverage.

The Crowd

For some reason, I took a ton of picture of random crowds. I guess it’s because I was always rushing to my next destination and there wasn’t much else to take on the way.

The Location

See the orange cones? That’s where the Type-Moon queue was

The Cosplay

Canon 400D’s internal flash can only sync at a maximum shutter speed of 1/200, making it way too slow to take anything in direct sunlight without serious overexposure, so I had to make do without flash. The resulting pictures are terrible due to the shadows casted by the the setting sun. Oh well.

Thanks to the uneven lighting, everything is either overexposed or underexposed. I really need to get a proper flash.

You can find much better cosplay pictures from C73 on Moeyo!.

The Misc

The press gets a pink armband; Comiket staff gets a red one

Please rise for the Welsh anthem

It’s Shingo!

A bunch of Australians who were holding Shingo’s book

There were fewer Caucasian foreigners at Comiket than I had expected. I counted three or four groups in total after wandering around for the entire day. I bumped into a group from a Canadian radio station and talked to them for a bit. I think they were quite freaked out by a random Asian boy walking up to them and interrogating them in English. Ops.

There were plenty of Chinese around, in fact, quite a number of doujin circles were Chinese. But since we Asians pretty much look the same it’s kind of hard to keep count.

The Conclusion

Comiket was pretty fun, but I think all that queuing took a few years off my life span. I think I’m going to need a long rest…

This Comiket coverage was made possible by Danny Choo and Akihabara News.

I spent less than expected at Comiket, probably because I already bought a ton of random doujinshi from specialty stores. Some pictures are NSFW. (Basically the T2 Art Works stuff.)

T2 Art Works, the famous Tony Taka’s (aka Takayuki Tanaka) doujin circle, was selling goodie bags for ï¿¥3000. It contains a clear file, a calendar and a pencil board.

I also bought four copies of his latest release, Kiteru yo! Takeuchi-kun. (Based on Bamboo Blade.)

Kyoto Animation was selling some goodie bags from their current flagship titles. I will be reselling one Haruhi bag (I have extra) and one Clannad bag (I don’t like it that much).

They both come with a 2008 calendar and a phone card each. In addition, the Haruhi one comes with a A3 clear poster and the Clannad one comes with three bookmarks that are kind of lame when compared to Haruhi’s terrific poster. I will probably be selling them through KKnM, so you will need to be in Singapore to buy them.

This is a bag made by some booth that was selling Miku doujinshi. The doujinshi is pretty bad but the bag is cool. I think it was the only reason why so many people were queuing for that booth.

I got this for ï¿¥3500. It’s a 100% hand-drawn fan art of Yuki. It’s quite awesome, but I would’ve preferred Haruhi. The artist also drew Tomoyo and Kotomi (from Clannad) and Tsukasa and Kagami (from Lucky Star) in the same style, but I decided to pass.

I also bought Arisa Mizuhara’s latest cosplay collection CD-ROM. If you have never heard of her before, you need to check out her gallery. She’s basically my all-time favourite cosplayer.

The best part is that I met her in person at her booth! I managed to get a picture too by waving my press pass around. Huge thanks to Danny Choo and Akihabara News for the pass.

The CD-ROM is somewhat expensive at ï¿¥2000 for eight galleries of photos, but it’s extremely awesome. You can find a list of all her past releases on her website. There was actually a Singaporean trading company selling her photo collections at Cosfest, but I forgot its name.

On hindsight, I should have gotten her to autograph my copy of the CD-ROM… Damn.

I managed to obtain one of the forty copies of Cradle’s Re:frain that were on sale. The press has a seperate queue that is super short and located right beside the entrance to East Hall 1, so I got in quite early. I met and spoke with the duo behind Cradle, but unfortunately they were camera shy and declined my request for a picture. :(

KEI is the artist behind the official art for Crypton’s VOCALOID2 software series. I bought four copies of his new VOCALOID illustration compilation and one copy of his second artwork collection (which I sold to my friend).

I didn’t really bother to queue for any commercial booths, but HOOK’s HoneyComing merchandises looked pretty, so I spent about one hour queuing to get Asahi’s phone card set and Clarissa’s microfibre towel set (not pictured above). I seem to be the only person that I personally know who actually liked this game, but oh well.

My personal favourite purchase is Hiro Suzuhira’s latest HEART-WORK release. She is one of my favourite illustrators ever because of her works in the SHUFFLE! bishoujo game franchise (SHUFFLE!, Tick! Tack! and Really? Really!), specifically Nerine, Asa and Sage.

It has Hiro’s trademark design and Miku. What more can one ask for?

HEART-WORK’s booth was also selling a very beautiful Hatsune Miku and Kagamine Lin phone card set and a HEART-WORK collaboration calendar.

I queued over two hours for HEART-WORK’s booth. It was worth it. T_T <– Tears of joy.

I’ll talk more about the entire event itself in a later post. Really tired now. And, uh, an early Happy New Year! 明けましておめでとうございまãï¼ I’m watching Kouhaku on NHK right now.

It’s the fourth day of our little adventure in Tokyo and we took a trip to neighbouring Saitama prefecture to visit Konata’s favourite Gamers and Animate branches. Long story short: Saitama isn’t a very exciting place.

JR Ueno Station

The location is JR Oomiya Station West Exit (大宮駅西口), about five (long) stops away from JR Ueno via the Utsunomiya Line (宇都宮線) or the Takasaki Line (高崎線). The journey takes around 30 minutes and cost 450 yen on an express train. You can also pay 1280 yen for a one-stop ride on the Shinkansen.

JR Oomiya Station

Immediately outside the exit, face left and you will find this:

Head towards the McDonalds and into the streets behind it to find the old location of Animate’s Oomiya Branch.

The branch has since moved to a bigger location about 10 metres away.

In fact, it even has a second storefront just next door selling character goods. (There’s also a Melon Books above it.)

And a few hundred metres away from Animate lies Gamers. It’s kind of hard to describe its location. In fact, I had to ask a guy in Sofmap for it. Then I asked for the directions to Animate from a Gamers employee. It seems that they do hire real otaku in such places.

The East Exit of the station also happens to be one of the setting locations for School Days, specifically Sakakino-chou (榊野町).

Well that’s about it. We didn’t wander too far from the station because it was already getting dark (at 4pm). We split up and I ended up wandering around some familiar places in Ikebukuro to take pictures and busk in nostalgia.

And by popular demand, here’s a soapland:

And here’s Odex:

Most of the other pictures suck, so I’m not going to bother posting them here. Go look at today’s gallery for more.

By the way, today’s doujinshi haul is as follows:

• Yousei Mangasha – Kaiketsu Ma-ryan (okay)
• Arestica – Sweet Folk Music
• Essentia – Giga Drill Break
• CRIMsON – CRIMsON plus (awesome)
• Rei’s Room & Spread-Pink – Double Again (decent)
• Amekazesyokudou – Clannad (nice cover)
• Arestica – Baby talk (nice)
• Matsumoto Drill Ladoratory – Tamakin (interesting…)

One more day till Comiket.