Tokyo International Anime Fair 2012

Well, it's been one week to the day since I popped in to this year's Tokyo International Anime Fair (東京国際アニメフェア), held as always at Tokyo Big Sight.

When I say always, however, I lie. The event was called off last year (for the first time in a decade), since it was scheduled a couple of weeks after the big Tōhoku earthquake.

It's nice to see it back.

We call this "TAF" for short; for reasons as-yet-unknown, the organizers drop the “I” bit, maybe because it just looks better in terms of logo concepts.

Think displays by anime producers like Production I.G, Gonzo, Madhouse, Toei, Studio Ghibli, Aniplex, Sunrise, Bones and Bandai flaunting their upcoming wares, and not just via the scantily clad pseudo-cosplay girls outside their booths.

Here's my overview of the last serving, back in 2010. You might even find I nicked some of the editorial there for this piece, since time is previous right now - I'm in the middle of finishing off my next novel, One Hundred Years of Vicissitude, and in fact was editing the bugger on the sidelines of TAF.

“TAF is the Mecca for anime fans around the world,” Makoto Tsumita - the former marketing manager for the international division of essential anime production house Gonzo - mentioned to me about five years ago.


At that time, Japan produced almost two thirds of the animation watched around the globe “and 70 percent of this is produced in Tokyo,” a spokesperson for the TAF Executive Committee Secretariat told me in article that year for the now defunct Geek Monthly, making the argument that this city was the natural setting for the hugely successful anime trade affair.

“It’s the best place for foreign buyers to find everything under the same roof,” reported Stephane-Enric Beaulieu, a spokesperson for the Canadian Embassy in Tokyo.

According to the organizers, TAF2012 attracted 98,923 visitors during the four days of the Fair - less than that of the previous Fair in 2010, but the number of visitors on the Business Days were about the same, with an increase in foreign reps.

This year, the best displays were devoted to perennial favourites Lupin III, Smile PreCure!, and the zany merchandise for Hayao Miyazaki's old 1972 classic Panda! Go, Panda! (パンダ・コパンダ).

And I think that's half the problem: the things that excited me most this year are, well, three ageing franchises.

When I first started going to TAF events here in March, from 2002 on, there was a helluva lot of excitement about the brand new, innovative TV shows and feature films that would be unveiled for the first time.

Ten years on, with the changes in the anime/media industry and after the cancellation last year, things have changed.


While the pomp and ceremony, and definitely the professionalism, is still there - it all feels a little jaded and lacking oomph. Just a little. It takes more than cute poster girls, anime character suitcases, and flash cars to keep this wunderbar industry alive.

I know several of these companies, including I.G, Gonzo, Madhouse and Bones, will be working to rectify the problem - so here's to supporting them in these endeavours.

TAF2013 will be held from March 21 to March 24th next year.

Perc Trax vs. Blank Records

Wunderbar news, this.

Two of my favourite Japanese DJ cum producers are getting together with a certain UK industrial/techno enfant terrible named Ali Wells - better known as Perc - here in Tokyo at Module on 24 June.

Ali runs the appropriately-named Perc Trax, which has been one of my preferred labels over the past few years, and I recently interviewed him for the Techno How? site.

The two Japanese guys are Jin Hiyama and his brother Go. Jin is a good mate of mine (he played at my book launch in March), and I interviewed Go a couple of months ago here.

This should be an absolutely brilliant gig; shame is that it shapes up I may not be in town to actually appreciate it...

Address: 150-0042東京都渋谷区宇田川町34-6M&IビルB1F/B2F
Cost: ¥3,000 on the door.

Meiji Shrine: 明治神宮

It's located conveniently close by the massive Yoyogi Park as well as the Harajuku shopping precinct in central Tokyo, just minutes from Shibuya.

Meiji Jingū (明治神宮) is the Shinto shrine dedicated to the divine soul of Emperor Meiji, the second son of Emperor Komei, and the royal instigator of the much-touted Meiji Restoration - which brought Japan out of 300 years of feudal isolation.

When he passed away in 1912, the emperor was in fact buried in the Fushimi Momoyama Ryo in Kyoto, but his soul was enshrined in Meiji Jingu here in Tokyo once the shrine was constructed on November 1, 1920.

Surrounding the huge shrine complex is a 700,000 square-meter evergreen forest of some 120,000 trees, boasting 365 different varieties.

Literally millions, jammed together, visit over the first few days of each New Year, and seijinsai (the coming-of-age ceremony for girls) is celebrated here, just as it is at other shrines in Japan, in January.

People get wedding pictures here, and kids celebrate shichi-go-san (traditional rites of passage for three- and seven-year-old girls and three- and five-year-old boys). We took our daughter here for her third birthday.

But there are some more vital events held in Meiji Jingu.


During the Spring Grand Festival at the end of April, bugaku (a traditional form of ceremonial dance and music), noh (traditional theatre), sankyoku and hogaku (traditional music), hobu (traditional dance), and kyudo (a Japanese variant on archery) are performed.

During the Autumn Grand Festival in early November, in addition to the same events as the Spring Grand Festival, yabusame (horseback archery), budo (martial arts), and aikido are also showcased.

My only complaint is that it's a long stroll across gravel surfaces from Harajuku Station.

REVIEW: Panda! Go, Panda! (1972)

You have to rear-vision yourself way back to 1972 to see where it all really began, 27 years ago with the anime crafted by a young Hayao Miyazaki (then aged 31) and his mentor, director Isao Takahata.

Thirteen years later the duo would found Studio Ghibli (just after releasing their landmark epic, Kaze no Tani no Naushika, or Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, in 1984), and later still change the way we perceive animation with the release of Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi (Spirited Away) in 2001.

But if you really want to look at the heritage behind the most recent Studio Ghibli offering Gake no Ue no Ponyo (Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea, which has finally hit the Western world through its English dub) along with next year's Karigurashi no Arrietty (The Borrower Arrietty, directed by Ghibli animator Hiromasa Yonebayashi), you need to channel your attentions back beyond Spirited Away and further in time to the early '70s, back to a little show called Panda! Go Panda! and then wonder... Is this the most insane anime ever made?


Well, perhaps not; there was a sequel (Panda! Go Panda!: Rainy Day Circus), released the following year. And, really, you have to watch them both back-to-back for the real lunacy to sink in.

The original press release from distributors Toho was clue enough. “Mimiko lives with her grandmother beside a bamboo grove,” it reported in suitably stilted English. “One day Mimiko's grandmother goes away for a while, leaving Mimiko to herself. A baby panda appears in the garden along with its father, Papa Panda. Mimiko asks if Mr. Panda could be her father too, and he agrees.”

And that’s it. No further warning. Nothing.

In truth, after one viewing you’ll come away convinced that Mimiko is better described as Pippi Longstocking after having sucked up too much caffeine, while Papa Panda is a psychotic prototype-critter for Miyazaki’s later cherished title character from Tonari no Totoro (My Neighbour Totoro, 1988).

Even so, it’s also absolutely brilliant.