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.
I've loved Stan Lee since making the goldmine discovery of ancient '60s Marvel comics in the shed of my grandmother Nanny Bergen's house in Richmond, Melbourne.
The titles that grabbed me then were The Avengers, Captain America, Thor, Hulk and The X-Men, and my admiration of Lee increased two-fold when I was about 12 and sent him my idea of an Aussie super hero called Southern Cross (yep, he had the Eureka flag emblazoned across his chest) - and Stan "The Man" actually wrote back to say that he liked it.
He didn't actually use it - but he said he liked it. 'Nuff said, and all that jazz.
Which brings me to a discovery I made yesterday at the first day of this year's Tokyo International Anime Fair.
We call it "TAF" for short; for reasons as-yet-unknown, the organizers drop the “I” bit, maybe because it just looks better in terms of the logo design.
Think displays by anime producers like Production I.G, Gonzo, Mad House, Toei, Studio Ghibli, Aniplex, Sunrise, and Bandai flaunting their upcoming wares, and not just the scantily clad pseudo-cosplay girls outside their booths.
TAF is also the host of the annual Tokyo Anime Awards and this year’s Animation of the Year was Mamoru Hosoda’s superb Summer Wars.
Anyway I'm digressing (as usual).
One of the best anime studios, Bones (they made Fullmetal Alchemist and Wolf's Rain) had a stall that featured this giant fellow (above) and a bunch of fliers promoting Heroman (ヒーローマン), a new series set to start screening on Japan's TV Tokyo this April.
It's billed as "Stan Lee's newest superhero" and credits him as original creator, with scripting on the show by Gyo Yamatoya (Naruto).
This year's TAF (my ninth in a row) was that kind of event - oddly surprising, occasionally invigorating, yet on the whole a wee bit lacklustre compared with its predecessors.
While the industry proved that there's still a lot of life to it there was no stand-out anime series or movie to talk up here, no Summer Wars or Ghost Hound; no new series of Fullmetal Alchemist.
One of my favourite animation companies, Studio 4°C, did however have these funky underpants retailing for ¥4,000.
There were also some interesting looking series I'll probably get round to talking up once I finish wading through the hundreds of posters and fliers you get swamped with at these events.
Live action rather than anime-wise, there was some promotion for December's big budget remake of Space Battleship Yamato (宇宙戦艦ヤマト) and Klockworx has a new movie coming out in May called Big Tits Zombies (it's subtitled Deadly DD-Cups).
No doubt we'll be reporting more on that shortly.
“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, told me about three 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.
In 2007 the event drew close to 107,713 people over four days, up 8.8% from the previous year’s attendance. If yesterday is anything to go by, we may see a dip this year - they had 13,076 visitors on the first day, albeit business-only.
Also, thanks to the success of Avatar, there's a heavy fixation this year on anime in 3D; at the Gonzo booth you can catch comparisons of 2D and 3D renderings of Last Exile and Blassreiter, and neither series - even though I dug both in their original format - looked so cool as they do with this technology.
TAF opens its doors to the general public over the weekend, and takes place at the cavernous Tokyo Big Sight - located in Koto-Ku on land reclaimed from Tokyo Bay, situated right next to the Odaiba area and Rainbow Bridge... ostensibly one of Tokyo’s most famous romantic viewing points.
Back in 2008, for Anime Insider mag, I interviewed series producer Hiroyuki Birukawa and director Masamitsu Hidaka about the title; since that mag's now defunct, I'm guessing there's no problem sharing it here since FUNimation over in the US this month released the DVD box-set of the first 12 episodes.
Ask veteran Pokémon director, Hidaka, about his involvement helming the Gonzo series, Linebarrels of Iron (鉄のラインバレル, Kurogane no Rainbareru) and his response comes across as excited as it is free-wheeling.
“The story within the original comic consisted of exciting battle scenes and the fascinating stories of each character,” he explains. “So, I’ve placed a special value on those points when creating the animation version. I’m always trying to work out how I can showcase the cool and coquettish mecha battle scenes - both by employing a sharp sense of speed and presence, and by including contemplative action scenes in the animation. And while I’m aiming high for the twin ideals of beautiful and cool, it’s still, beneath it all, cute mecha-anime! I just hope you enjoy it, and that it’s fun for fans to watch.”
In most celluloid productions it’s the director who dreams, creates the art, and has his head in the clouds. The producer is the grounded financier who stabilizes the ship, handles the organizational side of things, and sees the big picture a little clearer. They’re often also the people who see the production through - from a scrap of note-paper to the screen version.
So it seems with Linebarrels of Iron series producer, Hiroyuki Birukawa, who has been with this particular anime title since Day One.
“I know the chief editor of the monthly magazine, Champion Red, published by Akita Shoten here in Japan,” Birukawa informs me.
“He and I have known each other for quite a long time, and one day he showed me the latest manga they did - and it was Linebarrels of Iron. The moment I saw that sample comic, I knew that this was something I wanted to create as an animation, and asked them for the rights to create it.”
Birukawa previously dabbled with another famous Gonzo production, Last Exile, and is quite clearly the man to talk to when you want a concise explanation of the storyline behind the studio’s new series.
“The main character, Kouichi Hayase, was an ordinary kid in high school, who was constantly teased but had a dream of someday becoming a hero,” recounts Birukawa, with the heroic patience of a man perhaps used to dealing with less focused types.
“The first cool point of this anime may be how this character develops through many events, including a parting with good friends, to become a true hero. The second cool point is the mecha action. As you may have seen in the past, all 3D robot-action scenes always had a rectilinear movement, which was quite unreal. The director, Hidaka-san, and I have talked about this quite extensively - and we’ve gone back to how 2D robot-action scenes were shown, in order to include that point within our 3D robot-action scenes for Linebarrels of Iron.”
Birukawa’s fascinating lesson, which threatens to put this writer out of a job, is far from over. He has more about the new series that he’s keen to share - and enlighten us with along the way.
“If you’ve seen the series trailer, Linebarrel strikes a particular pose, before stabbing ARMA, the enemy robot. It’s like kabuki, wherein you adopt one pose before you give it movement.
"We actually call it tame in Japanese. We believe tame and kire - fast action moves after tame - are the most important points when showing cool mecha action. And Hidaka is a pro at robot action.
“Also luckily for the 3D action scenes, we have Itano-san [Ichiro Itano, the director of Blassreiter and veteran planner of The Super Dimension Fortress Macross], who is fantastic at checking these kind of scenes and translating them into action.”
Adding to the superlative mecha developments is the teamwork involved in the series structure, scripts, and ideas.
“The creative producer, Goro Taniguchi, has so many excellent ideas about the animation he wants to include, while Kiyoko Yoshimura is fantastic at including these, as well as expressing character descriptions in the story.”
Despite his professional nature and assured eye on the whole production, you can almost see Birukawa blush when it comes to talking up his favourite character in the series.
“It’s Emi Kizaki,” he admits. “She is cute, sexy, and also smart! There’s a Japanese slang word, tsundere [meaning a volatile personality that ends up being good-willed] and she has that perfect tsundere factor...”
It’s official: Midway through 2009, one in seven citizens of Japan had heard of Star Trek.
I know this, because I finished personally quizzing 60-odd people round then for an article that popped up in the late lamented Geek Monthly to coincide with the late May release of J.J. Abrams' Star Trek reboot here in Japan; these are the stats I conjured up from those loose discussions.
The margin of error was open to contention, since I interviewed people only in Tokyo, my test subjects were limited to students of English, techno DJs and musicians, or creative anime types, and the age group stretched from 18 to 72.
The one-in-seven figure is itself a stretch, since two inclusions in the ‘yes’ category confused Star Trek for Star Wars. One time when I asked the ongoing question - “Have you heard of Star Trek?” - my tipping-the-scales 72-year-old English student declared “Of course!" ...thence proceeded to enact a rather sprite air-lightsabre cut-and-thrust routine.
It isn’t as if Japanese television consumption has been limited to only jidaigeki samurai dramas, or home-grown animated sci-fi romps like Mobile Suit Gundam.
Most of the 35 to 45 age-bracket grew up on Gerry and Sylvia Anderson’s British-made futurist marionette romp, Thunderbirds, in the 1970s.
Even when I arrived in this country eight years ago, Thunderbirds was still playing on NHK at primetime Sunday evenings. The week I sneaked through Customs, it was the turn of the episode ‘Cry Wolf’, set in Australia; for about an hour after, I had to explain to my Japanese hosts precisely why someone fresh off the boat from Melbourne didn’t sound like the outback butchers of pronunciation Thunderbirds had portrayed.
Then there’s the George Lucas factor.
Given that it’s based in large part on a classic Japanese movie (Kurosawa's Kakushi-toride no san-akunin, aka The Hidden Fortress) that starred the late, great Toshiro Mifune at his formidable best, it should be no wonder that the Japanese fell in love with Star Wars when it was (finally) released in Japan, midway through 1978.
But they seem to have completely missed the boat when it comes to the various TV series of Star Trek stretching from 1966 to 2005, and don’t even tarry with the 10 cinematic offerings before this year's reboot.
We’re not talking just your Joe Average salaryman or office lady here. I also interviewed techno luminary Ken Ishii, and he was a member of the Thank-God-There’s-At-Least-One-In-Seven Party.
Even so, Ishii echoed an ongoing issue for most Japanese.
“Of course I’ve seen Star Trek, but I never was careful with the different titles and series - so I don’t know which is which,” he admits.
“As you know if you live in Japan for a while, they tend to put a Japanese title on major Hollywood films, so we can hardly remember the original English titles, especially for the ones I watched when I was a child.”
Fellow Tokyo musician Toshiyuki Yasuda put it more frankly - “Sorry, I don't know much about Star Trek. All I can remember is a bald head” - while Tatsuya Oe, who produces under the alias of Captain Funk and is considered one of the city’s top DJs, found himself apologizing.
“Actually, I don’t have much knowledge about Star Trek, though I do like it,” he explains.
“Here in Japan, we could say that Star Trek got the short end of the stick because they lost the chance for focused TV broadcasting in the 1960s and ‘70s. Moreover, people got more familiar with the series after Star Wars fever hit Japan, so they were even misunderstood as a kind of pale imitation, at least around the time of my childhood. According to Japanese Wiki, video games of Star Trek seem to have been more popular.”
In terms of his own experience, Oe referred back to Jean-Luc Picard and crew, instead of my own favourite - James T. Kirk.
“I sometimes watched Next Generation on TV, and Geordi La Forge was very impressive and cool when I saw him first - he reminds me of ‘80s future electro-funk, like Midnight Star,” he reports.
Even so, Oe did manage to cite the influence of Classic Trek, albeit from unusual quarters: “Leonard Nimoy appeared on a certain TV commercial here in Japan.”
That was for Teijin - a textile and pharmaceutical company (teijin.co.jp).
Think the artistic types at Production I.G, the animation studio behind Ghost in the Shell, should be more in the know when it comes to matters Trek? Well, I’ll confess to that kind of inkling having crossed my own mind, but you can hit delete right about now.
“Star Trek doesn’t sound too popular here,” says Francesco Prandoni, our man at I.G, when I bounce the subject off him. “They’re all Kamen Rider freaks around me.”
Our contact at fellow anime studio, Gonzo (Afro Samurai), proved far more fruitful in this instance.
“Star Trek?” laughs Kaz Haruna, at the production company’s International Division in Tokyo. “How did you know I was such a huge Trek geek? Of course I know the movie is coming out; it may be the most anticipated one for me this year!”
30-year-old Haruna quickly shapes up as the jewel in the Trek Japan crown; the fount of Starfleet know-how that could reboot my own otherwise listless task.
“I remember watching reruns of the original series when I was a kid, but what really got me interested in the whole franchise was Next Generation, which I watched in real time,” he gushes, and it’s not long before I idolize every single word.
Thank god someone in this city knows Trek, and doesn’t believe that Kirk likes to bulls-eye womp rats.
“Although it had its moments, the start of the show was not that great,” Haruna continues with great gusto. Now I know for sure he’s seen the Next Gen series.
“I think I even stopped watching around the second season. But from the third season, it really became a high-quality show, and I was hooked. The ships and gadgetry were always something to drool over, but what really grabbed me was the balance of sci-fi, action, and drama, not to mention all the moral and human problems the crew faced. It gave a kid a lot to think about.”
When it came to favorite characters, Haruna is also quick on the uptake, like Captain Kirk with his trusty flip-communicator.
“I’d have to say Jean-Luc Picard. He’s supposed to have a French background, but Patrick Stewart is so English. So many breaks in his office with a cup of Earl Grey! Really, though, his balance of wit and bravery always got me excited. Sometimes as gung-ho and daring as Kirk, but always with an air of intelligence and class.”
Then the truth seeped out: Haruna had spent 19 of his 30 years living in America, and suddenly there’s just so much less wonder as to why he knows his Star Trek from his Star Wars.
While that piece of news may have shaded the gloss of my personal revelation just a tad, it did effectively introduce a new angle, one that I’d like to believe dawned on me in that split second, but more likely bludgeoned me about the head later on.
The angle? That Haruna has the unique cross-cultural insight a Johnny-come-lately expat like me could never hope to grasp, even after 96 months in the country.
“Having lived in both Japan and the United States,” our Gonzo rep muses, seemingly reveling in his new role, “it’s evident that Star Trek has had a much bigger cultural impact in the States. One of Star Trek’s biggest philosophical views was that there was no racism in the future. The crew of the Enterprise consisted of officers from all races, some not even human. In these terms, the way the show influenced Japan - which is not as culturally diverse as the US - was completely different, and somewhat minimal.”
Then comes the twist.
“What I think it did do is get into the minds of the sci-fi and electronics people, because you can see facets of Trek designs everywhere, from cell phones to monitor screens. Almost every bridge design for any kind of spaceship seen in Japanese anime - and that American kids are watching right now on Adult Swim, Cartoon Network, and crunchyroll.com - looks very, very familiar...”
