japanamerica

I kept a stack of well-thumbed issues of The Nation Magazine in my New York apartment so it was an honor to host their first-ever Japan Tour these pasts two weeks along with Pico Iyer and other accomplished Japan-based authors, journalists and scholars.   We addressed a wide range of topics, from the aging society and shrinking population to the state of Japan's economy, politics (in the middle of LDP elections, no less), environmental policy, LGBTQ legislation, burakumin culture, spirituality and folklore (yokai and yurei included) and, of course, manga and anime. The tour hit Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, Kanazawa, Koyasan, Nara and Hiroshima. It was a proverbial tour de force for a great American magazine.    

I’ve been doing a series of JAPANAMERICA-themed talks in Tokyo via the generous and uber-competent WorldStrides agency for US universities including The University of Wisconsin , Vanderbilt University and DePaul University . The discussions have been wide-ranging and fascinating (I'm learning a lot myself!) and I am grateful for the enthusiastic student-professor audiences and the sterling support from the team at WorldStrides. Highly recommended.      

Anime may be booming, but Japanese manga (comic book) sales are astronomical. I was interviewed about the explosive overseas sales of manga during the pandemic and the recent proposal by Keidanren, Japan's biggest business federation, to quadruple overseas manga sales over the next 10 years. You can read Julian Ryall's full story  here . Excerpt: "'I was stunned when I saw the figures for 2020 and 2021, which showed that year-on-year manga sales in the US were up by 171%,'  Kelts told DW. 'That's just an astonishing number, and the figures made it clear that the overall graphic novel market grew much faster than the standard market for books.' There are key differences between the Japanese and US markets, however, with sales of print manga in North America driven in recent years by anime that consumers will have seen on television, including such famous titles as 'One Piece,' 'Attack on Titan,' and 'Spy Family,' Kelts highlighted...

Belated thanks to Yuri Kageyama of the Associated Press for her story about Hollywood anime adaptations that grew out of my  FCCJ  event for the new  Blade Runner: Black Lotus book. This article was published well before the live-action  Saint Seiya movie   (called  Knights of the Zodiac , btw) dropped and disappeared, and word from the One Piece  set ain't so great either. (Original mangaka Eichiro Oda apparently has a lot of notes.) You can read Yuri's full article here . It was a particular honor for me to be featured alongside one of my former students, Nina Oiki, for whom I was happy to sign a book at the press club.  Excerpt: "The cross-pollination of Hollywood and Japan goes back for decades. References to Japan, such as the image of a geisha on a screen, are plentiful in the 1982 sci-fi movie “Blade Runner,” directed by Ridley Scott. The film, in turn, influenced anime, including the “Blade Runner: Black Lotus” anime that first aired in...

Hello everyone, I’m Fintan. I’m a high schooler in NYC and Roland was nice enough to let me make a contribution to the blog! This is a big topic and will take more than one posting, so I look forward to sharing more of my thoughts in future posts. Anime and Manga have become increasingly popular in recent years, predominantly outside of Japan. From the perspective of an American teenager, I want to write about what I think it is that makes the medium so widely consumed.  With "Chainsaw Man" having recently been adapted into its own anime, I thought it would be a good idea to talk about what makes it stand out from other shonen series. I often see people comparing "Chainsaw Man" to "Jujutsu Kaisen," as both are the most recently produced projects from MAPPA. "Chainsaw Man" has its fair share of classic shonen tropes: the main character being half human, half devil, a timid and “emo” best friend, and a sort of training arc at the beginning of the ...

  By TitleMax.com

Hello everyone, I’m Fintan. I’m a high schooler in NYC and Roland was nice enough to let me make a contribution to the blog! This is a big topic and will take more than one posting, so I look forward to sharing more of my thoughts in future posts. Anime and Manga have become increasingly popular in recent years, predominantly outside of Japan. From the perspective of an American teenager, I want to write about what I think it is that makes the medium so widely consumed.  To me, the vast majority of American media feels generic and lacks depth. The movies we see in theaters follow the same plot, as our standards for cinema hardly change. These movies seem to always lack the confidence to go outside of the invisible box they’re all made in.  It’s been a while since a movie came out that I genuinely considered a 10/10, and the most recent one I can think of is Parasite, which originates from Korea, from filmmaker Bong Joon Ho. It addressed the social pyramid in an entirely new wa...

 JAPANAMERICA & TEZUKA, 2022

Here's the video of our live streamed event for Japan Society New York. My thanks to fellow panelist Julia Mechler and moderator Bill Tsutsui, and to sponsors the Government of Japan, Portland Japanese Garden, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group and Orix Corporation USA. And big thanks to the great and vivacious audience who tuned in live and chatted up a storm of insights and questions.

JAPANESE POP CULTURE IN 2022 February 15, 2022 7:00 pm Live Webinar: Free Registration HERE Part of the "Living Traditions" series Tuesday, February 15, 2022 at 7-8 pm EST (4-5 pm PST)   Japanese pop culture, symbolized by manga and anime, has become an increasingly significant part of the cultural conversation across the globe. Julia Mechler , manga creator and Content Production Group Manager at mixi, inc., and Roland Kelts , author of Japanamerica: How Japanese Pop Culture Has Invaded the U.S ., provide their insights into the current state of the industry, from pen to paper to screen, unpacking some of the latest trends and emerging technologies in Japanese pop culture. This webinar covers the historical development of manga and anime, the global influence of otaku culture, and what the future may bring inside and outside of Japan. Moderated by Bill Tsutsui , author of Japanese Popular Culture and Globalization , the fifth and final event in our five-part "Living Tr...

I'll be chatting with the Head of Content Strategy & Global Partnerships at anime streaming site Crunchyroll , Alden Mitchell Budill , this Thursday, July 8th from 2pm PST (with online access thru July 13th) at A-JAPAN — an exclusive content showcase of the hottest IP from Japan, incl. manga, TV and film. The event is hosted by Amuse Group USA, Inc. and actor-streamer Erika Ishii. Online registration is free here . A-JAPAN 2021 Teaser from Amuse Group USA on Vimeo .

Wonderful review of our panel on "Japanese Pop Culture's Successes in Covid-19" for The Japan Society and The Japan-America Society of Dallas/Fort Worth, featuring William Tsutsui, Aki Nakanishi, Seio Nakajima and me. Demon Slayer, anime vtubers, Evangelion, record-breaking sales in anime and manga, and the virtues of lockdown/isolation helped Japan's pop culture industries innovate and flourish against the odds. "The panel includes a history lesson on Japanese isolationism in the past, plenty of talk on Demon Slayer, Japanese and Western co-productions, and how the pandemic might affect Japanese entertainment in the future, among other things. At just under an hour and twenty minutes, it gives interesting insight and perspective on the issues." Thanks to Danica Davidson for the great story. Watchable here:

It would be hyperbolic to call 2020 a great year for anime. But it ended better than it began . Last April, the Japanese government’s first declaration of a state of emergency raised the specter of 2011, when the Great East Japan Earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown stopped anime studios cold, forcing many to consolidate for survival and some to close for good. The triple disasters of nine years ago disrupted the industry for at least a month and took three or more to overcome. “We almost went under in 2011,” said Joseph Chou, the CEO of computer animation studio Sola Digital Arts, when I spoke to him in early May. Work had just been abruptly suspended on major shows such as “Pokemon,” “Doraemon” and “One Piece,” and his own staff were struggling to make progress on their forthcoming series, “Blade Runner: Black Lotus,” due out in spring 2021. Chou compared interrupting the production process to halting a speeding train: “You can’t go from 100 miles per hour to zero and then ex...

I was honored to represent Japanese Pop Culture for the Asia Society's series, "Around Asia in 80 Days," a work-from-home pandemic production. This is a look back, and a look forward. Wish we could have done this on a stage in Hong Kong, as planned. Next time.  (click to play)

(click to play) Now that a U.S. politician has called  Dragonball Z "anime porn, " this interview I gave to CNN is unfortunately apt. <<"Miller condemned DBZ in a tweet on Wednesday, where he claims that 'They are now introducing a great deal of anime porn into the internet matrix,' and that 'Dragon Ball Z is one of the top issues here.' Without offering any additional context, Miller then continues his accusations of an unspecified 'they,' saying that, 'They are sexualizing cartoon characters to push a depraved agenda on our kids. What’s next? Where will it end?'">> Oh, that internet matrix. Where will it end, indeed.

New book goes inside Studio Ghibli with Hayao Miyazaki Steve Alpert worked there for 15 years and knew major players Nikkei Asian Review TOKYO — Steve Alpert's book comes advertised as a business memoir, though you may find yourself grinning more often than annotating. For 15 years, starting in 1996, the American headed the international division at Studio Ghibli, Japan's most commercially and artistically successful anime company. As their first non-Japanese hire, he negotiated with clients from Asia, Europe and the U.S., supervised the English-language translations of "Princess Mononoke" and "Spirited Away," voice-acted a character in Japanese for 2013's "The Wind Rises," and accepted awards on his employer's behalf at prestigious global film festivals. He also clinched the indie studio's nascent distribution deal with Disney, a coup to bring the films of Hayao Miyazaki into living rooms worldwide on VHS and DVD — and an Os...

Anime's aging but active artists: Mamoru Oshii on his latest project, 'Vladlove' The Japan Times Writer and director Mamoru Oshii is best known for creating sci-fi thrillers that challenge orthodoxy with their philosophical musings and provocative, often nutty, imagery. His most famous film, the 1995 anime epic “Ghost in the Shell,” features a stone-cold cyborg heroine who dives nude off a skyscraper and is memorably dismembered by a tank. But at a Tokyo press conference last week to introduce his latest project, a 12-episode slapstick comedy series titled “Vladlove,” all Oshii wanted to talk about was girls. Real ones. And a vampire named Mai. “This time I wanted to take on a girl-meets-girl story,” he said. “The main characters are five schoolgirls. There won’t be any hot guys.” Oshii is the series’ creator and chief director, working with fellow anime veteran Junji Nishimura (“Ranma ½”). Financed by Ichigo Animation, a newly formed subsidiary of a rea...

Why Hollywood doesn't yet get anime The Japan Times No fewer than three big-budget Hollywood films based on Japanese originals opened this year: “Alita: Battle Angel,” “Pokemon Detective Pikachu” and “Godzilla: King of the Monsters.” While all three were still being promoted, “Gundam” and “Akira” were green-lit for production by Legendary Entertainment and Warner Bros., respectively. An adaptation of Sega’s Sonic the Hedgehog video game will be out in November, followed by Hollywood takes on Capcom’s Monster Hunter next year and Nintendo’s Super Mario in 2022. The highest grossing anime feature ever, Makoto Shinkai’s 2016 “Your Name.,” is being remade as a live-action film, produced by “Star Wars” reboot king, J.J. Abrams. Hollywood renderings of “Attack on Titan” and the iconic mascot Hello Kitty are also reportedly on the way. But so far, Hollywood’s versions of Japanese content have received mixed reviews at best, with some earning respectable but not remarkable...

On Pokemon for NPR

New 'Ultraman' anime is a family affair The Japan Times I first met anime director and mechanical designer Shinji Aramaki in Tokyo 12 years ago. He had just completed “Appleseed: Ex Machina,” the second in a trio of epic CG-animated films based on Masamune Shirow’s four-volume 1985 manga. “Ex Machina” was a global collaboration: co-produced by Hong Kong/Hollywood director John Woo, costumed by Italy’s Miuccia Prada and scored by Yellow Magic Orchestra’s Haruomi Hosono. Since then, Aramaki has become anime’s go-to guy for Japanese franchise reboots and sequels targeting international markets. As the nation’s domestic audience ages and its youth population shrinks, producers are scrambling to dust off older titles that might resonate both at home and abroad. That has them going to Aramaki a lot. Now 58 and the father of two adult daughters, he is currently working alongside screenwriter/director Kenji Kamiyama on anime adaptations of 1989’s “Ghost in the Sh...