japanamerica

So long, 2022. You've been quite the year for anime... Anime continued its dominance in 2022 I used to get asked if anime would ever go mainstream. In 2022, the reverse happened: The mainstream came to anime. At the end of 2020, I wrote about the anime industry’s surprising resilience in the throes of the pandemic. Two years later, anime is being called the world’s most COVID-resistant entertainment medium: bankable content in disruptive and chaotic times. While Hollywood struggles to lure audiences back to theaters for anything that’s not a superhero epic or “Top Gun” sequel, anime is thriving everywhere you can find it: on cinema and TV screens, video and Blu-ray discs and streaming platforms. The industry saw record-breaking revenues in 2021, the most recent year for which statistics are available, growing 13.3% after contracting a meager 3.5% in peak-pandemic 2020, according to the Association of Japanese Animations. Today the market overseas is almost as large as the one in J...

Japan's obsession with perfection is an Olympic-sized problem  W hen clockwork does not work Japan is world-famous for its punctual and efficient customer service, and for most of the pandemic—with the country under varying states of emergency—this has been a godsend. Food deliveries arrive at your door, hot and hermetically sealed, up to 10 minutes earlier than promised. Packages sent from every corner of the country are handed to you the following morning by gloved couriers. Convenience stores really are convenient—located everywhere, well-stocked, impeccably sanitized and open 24/7, even in the smallest towns. In Tokyo, public clocks are ubiquitous. While it is true that you can set your watch to the departures and arrivals of Japan's trains, from the high-speed shinkansen to more humble commuter rails and subways, you do not really need a watch here. Yet now, when Japan does need to keep pace with global vaccinations just two months before the start of the 2020 Tokyo Olympi...

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...

Japan's anime studios fall victim to coronavirus disruptions 'Pokemon' and 'Sazae-san' are delayed as animators and voice artists work from home Nikkei Asian Review TOKYO -- Japan's anime industry has been plagued for years by adverse conditions: long hours in cramped studios, razor-thin profit margins, domestic labor shortages and a reliance on public fan gatherings and box office sales. But since the government declared a national state of emergency for Tokyo and other cities on April 16 in response to the novel coronavirus outbreak, urging citizens to work from home, those adversities have anime producers scrambling for new business models. Dozens of productions have been suspended indefinitely, including hit series like "Pokemon" and "One Piece"; theatrical releases in the popular "Doraemon" and "Detective Conan" franchises; and even "Sazae-san," the domestic drama that holds the Guinness Wor...