New York Anime Festival 2009 Wrap-up
Picture a world where people gather and interact in joy and
harmony, where groups of gaily-clad youths break into spontaneous song and
dance at regular intervals, where spontaneous conga lines of diverse peoples
stretch for blocks and wind through the market stalls, where merchants sell and
people buy with easy affability and business is brisk, where people debate the
topics of the day with great thoughtfulness and passion and the powers-that-be
listen to the people-at-large. The Twilight Zone? Are you some sort of philosopher,
or something? Well…no and yes. I just spent a weekend at my first New York
Anime Festival at the Javitz Center in Manhattan and I found myself
intermittently amused, bemused, overwhelmed, and overjoyed.
Think about it. Everyone has watched an animated something
in their lifetime, no matter how old. From Looney Tunes to Disney to
Hanna-Barbera to Pixar, we’ve experienced this media and it has been used for
everything from pure entertainment to social commentary. Much of what was seen
in America during the ‘60s and ‘70s was actually from Japan – Speed
Racer, Kimba the White Lion, Astro Boy, Gigantor, Tobor the 8th Man
– some of which are now known to a new generation only via CGI-heavy
feature films. Yet this is far from past-tense kiddie land. With the global
economy, the on-line connecting of the worlds, and all the ways we
cross-pollinate each other’s cultures, just as Americans seem to be everywhere,
so are the Japanese and the growing connections between East and West, from
McDonald’s to manga.
My professional friends, The Anime Chicks, brought me into
the anime fold only about three years ago with Rose of Versailles and The
Legend of Basara, and a wise one passed along to me the original Full Metal Alchemist (also see subbed on
hulu and other sites the new Full Metal
Alchemist: Brotherhood, now up to ep 26 in Japan, which follows the manga
more closely as anime and manga had diverged with the common delays between the
two medias), which is sometimes too great for words and, as I’ve happily
discovered, it’s consistently named in the top 5 anime ever in many fan and
professional polls. This encouraged me to explore more: Death Note, Trinity Blood
and, God help me, the never-ending Bleach,
all enabled by my colleagues, our very own Scooby Gang. This lead to Saturday all-nighters on Cartoon Network with Moribito, Ghost in the Shell: 2nd
Gig, Code Geass: LeLouche of the
Rebellion, Blood+, Big O (2nd season), and Cowboy BeBop.
Watching these shows, I can understand why the youthful fans
sing and dance, dressed-up like their fav characters, channeling the very
humanity that these characters and stories embrace, in all their messiness, especially
since the Japanese tend to tell anime stories with protagonists at their
coming-of-age points of high school/college. Even in the midst of the most
horrific of story lines, there is always that elusive, idealistic angel of
mercy – Hope! If we go by their art forms, the Japanese are an
essentially hopeful people, even when they dwell on death and conflict and
blood, as much of this media does. This is a land that’s lived through WWII
and nuclear holocaust, invasion, and the ever-present Meiji and Tokugawa eras’
warfare. Their PG-13 would be our R – we Americans are a lot more
squeamish about blood and guts and violence – we’ve never lived through
such things as they have. And yet, here comes Hope in all her glory through
what we might call cartoons. I am nourished by the aesthetic of the art,
itself – stunningly drawn landscapes with lighting and detail worthy of
Fellini and even noir, and the intro
and outro songs can become ear worms, for good or ill, causing me to study more
Japanese. My mind could appreciate and parse and marvel at the talents of the
actors and writers, animators, artists, and musicians – a veritable Wagnerian
array of all the arts in collaboration – without getting knocked out of
the very real emotions (emos) of the
story. Anime makes me feel human and, obviously, by all the singing and
dancing in our midst, it does much the same for many fans of all ages. This is
aesthetics and its twin philosophy ethics at their best.
Being a philosopher and theologian with foci in the ancient
and mediaeval worlds, classic Japanese literature and thus anime and manga
tropes such as good and evil spirits, death gods (shinigami), institutional intrigue, clan conflicts, and warriors
called upon often too-young in loss and grief to grow stronger in order to
protect those they love and the things they believe in against all odds,
foreign and domestic – they have always existed in my reality. Being
from a traditional Italian-Sicilian family, the very Japanese themes of respect
for elders and superiors and the closeness of brothers and family and the
conflicts between sons and fathers are also very real. Am there, doing that. And
working as a professional musician since my teens, I am always thinking about
art. As I walked around and chatted with strangers who were sometimes more
than passing strange but, most often, not strange at all, it seems that they,
too, had gotten something more than just fun from anime and manga and its
community. This is not just the Island of Misfit Toys. Twenty-five hundred
years ago Plato in his Republic and
Aristotle in his Nicomachean Ethics
spoke of how to build the best society with the best people. It’s all
relational. And it’s all about perfecting everything in life, elevating it to
an art, which includes the physical – so swordplay (think the gymnasium),
men bonding together for the greater good at all ages, women of beauty and
grace, all part of the picture. True, I’m speaking of this world at its best.
But that’s what philosophers do and that’s what I saw as I roamed the streets
of NYAF land for the weekend and if it can happen there, the seeds are always
there. Hope.
But even as a native New Yorker and a genre pro for 20 years,
sometimes I felt very much like I was in my natural habitat and yet very much
like Alexandra David-Neel in Tibet about a century ago. Friday was a very
good, energetic, but calm intro. But Saturday’s crowd was daunting in the
confined space of the Javitz Center’s windowless lower level, entombed in
concrete with that horrible tungsten lighting that just sucks the life out of
everything, despite the great, happy energy. Some peace returned on a grey,
rainy Sunday to close things out. The bulk of the fans were in their teens and
20s and even most of the pros were 30-somethings, at most, though there were
intergenerational groups and some solo intrepid adults with that same
young-at-heart enthusiasm that I saw from the main crowd. And I’m told that
the gender mix – now more females than males – was unheard of only
a few years ago and that the range of ages in the field are widening on both
ends even though the golden core is still the 18-34 market.
Programming ran nominally from 1-7 on
Friday, 11-7 on Sat., and 11-5 on Sunday, with some special events in the eves
on-site and at other venues, plus there was hanging at the bar at the main
hotel, the refurbished classic Ramada New Yorker, once Rev. Moon’s New York
headquarters. The convention was very accommodating to press, so we avoided
the endless lines that the more popular events had to contend with. But it was
always hard to tell what was going on with Javitz’s inherently bad lighting,
bad acoustics, and the fact that no panelists ever had any name plates up on
the dais or badges when you met them – so you were often clueless
throughout panels as to who was who, though the picture profiles in the
official program and on-line did help with this very necessary Sherlocking
– but even they were incomplete and so some of my reporting lacks names
accordingly. Despite any technical issues, the panelists, themselves, were of
the community type: present, enthusiastic, accessible, and knowledgeable,
whether from Japan or the States, and very eager to share the love of what they
do and very interested in what the fans think and want.
There are morality plays everywhere in this culture, not
just in the story lines and characters. Life imitates art and vice-versa. We
had panels on and discussions in other panels about what it might take to
address the issue of copyright. How do we get the Japanese product in DVDs and
CDs and new media legally to the States in a timely manner and still protect
copyright and still make an honest profit whilst not pricing things beyond what
the public can reasonably pay? What about the hardworking and utterly talented
voice actors who are paid the lowest scale in the business? What about dealers
who sell edged weapons to minors and let them walk out with them unbound vs.
those who sell and pack with the utmost integrity blades of artisan quality
such as Dragon Song Weapons of St. Petersburg, FL? The dilemmas are there but
the discussions are happening and, in that, there is Hope. This is beyond bi-partisan
‘cause, after all, we’re all of the Anime party, whatever our political
leanings at home. For many, gatherings of this sort are home. It’s not
escapism. It’s a forum, a town square gathering. Festival is, indeed, the
right word.
The Friday panel on J-music in America had some heavy
hitters on it – a Japanese DJ from www.samuraibeatradio.com, Keiko
Shibata (SONY, NY), David Ho (Drama Fever), and promoter Hayden Relton
(Superglorious). They traced the advent of Japanese music in the States from
“Sukiyaki” in ’63 ‘til now. A big problem is that the promoters of the great
bands who’re doing very well in Japan don’t want to interrupt their schedules
to have their artists mount an expensive and time-consuming tour here, so the
Indie bands are our best hope to hear what the trends are in Japan within a
reasonable delivery time, legally – as well as being exposed via anime
soundtracks and Cartoon Network, though then there’s always the problem of getting
a legal import CD that can easily cost $30 at Kinokuniya. It’s much about
perceptions and language barriers and each of us learning and growing more
patient with each other’s cultures in order to share this art and thrive.
Commerce has always been a cultural meeting place, more than the political.
They’re working on ways to get things here sooner, in both English and
Japanese, give the listeners value in a tough economy, and learn what marketing
works in the States and how it differs from what they’ve been doing in Japan.
Building bridges, global community. They’re listening to the fans, the
consumers, as well as the bottom line. How many places can we say that about,
especially lately? Hope.
There was a 3-day workshop (one panel daily) lead by New
York City’s very own voice actors who have worked on everything from Pokemon to Utena (Veronica Taylor as Ash, Rachel Lillis as Utena, Jamie
McGonnigal as Barry, and Tom Wayland as director/producer). Here are people
who are actors, first, who dedicate large chunks of their lives for years to
shows and still have to keep day jobs in order to survive and yet are still
cheerful. Day 1 just talked about the basics, what it is, what they do, what
do they like, what do they hear from the fans, etc. Day 2 was an actual vocal
workout for a room jam-packed with fans, and Sunday continued that. Across the
hall in another packed room was Kyle Hebert (Aizen in Bleach, Kiba in Naruto,
and Falman in Full Metal Alchemist)
actually taking on fan volunteers to do mock anime voice auditions and
critiquing and directing them like pros (and some did very well, indeed!).
This is the artistic and ethical action of paying forward so that the arts live
on and we build good relationships in the process. It has been shown that for
every $1 spent on the arts in a community it pays the community back in savings
on other social programs (e.g., less juvenile delinquency, domestic violence,
gangs, etc.) of about $10. Pretty good pay-offs for comics and cartoons, huh?
Sunday’s state of the Anime and Manga industry panel also had
the heavy hitters with reps from Viz, Funimation, Vertical, Del Rey, and
Bandai. They were relentlessly optimistic, despite economic woes on both sides
of the world. They continue to work closely with authors and licensers since,
in Japan, authors have a say in how their works are adapted (“Moral Clause”),
protecting not only money, but the integrity of the artists’ work –
capitalism and ethics at their best. Yes, that means that it takes a longer
time for approvals, but we deal with that endlessly with intellectual
properties from places like Paramount and yet they have thrived, so none of
them saw maintaining their ethics as an undue burden. The price of doing
business well.
Saturday evening was the ultimate show of collaborative arts
– the masquerade. Here you have graphics, textiles, music, acting,
dancing, stage craft (tech), and a bunch of people doing things for love (and
sometimes money – like a free trip to Japan!). As usual at such shows,
things ranged from the lame to the joyously silly (What L does on his day off…refer to Death
Note) to the utterly, Hollywood, pro-level amazing (a full Bumblebee Transformer who then proceeded to
dance!). People watch because they’re fascinated by the craft and they cheer
for the triumphs and the sharing of their characters come to life, the sheer
joy of being together.
The cosplay in the hallways was relentless, the most popular
items being Ed and other State Alchemists (Full
Metal Alchemist), Soul Reapers and Arrancars (Bleach), Anthe and friends (Utena),
Naruto and company (think Harry Potter for ninjas), and Gothic
Lolitas. The odd thing is that, quite often, they seemed to take more joy in
playing the bad guys than the good guys. But, then again, as one costumer
colleague of mine often points out – the clothes are always better on the
dark side! No joke! Here are people bringing to life alter-egos, interesting
personalities, conflict and power, in a safe and supportive environment, acting
instead of acting-out. Catharsis a la Aristotle vs. what Plato negatively
said about acting and poetry (it’s all lies and too much emotion!). And even
from those playing the baddest of the badasses, I saw very little, if any, bad
behaviour. It was freakin’ Woodstock for anime and manga geeks! Who’da thunk
it? Building good will one shinigami
at a time.
So the next time someone says to you that this is a waste of
time and money, that it’s only cartoons and comics, childish obsessions, too
much mindless violence, that it has nothing to do with real life and from which
we learn nothing…well…just show them. Hope. As an alien-hunting character
once said of his mashed potatoes, “This is important. This means something,”
and look how that turned out!
"Simba the White Lion"Wry commentary or Freudian slip?
Well…hardly Freudian but, yes indeed, a slip. The White Lion's name is Kimba, not Simba. My apologies.