2012-05-27, 23:05 | Link #1 |
Knight Errant
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Dublin, Ireland
Age: 35
|
Online fandoms, comparing size, organisation and presence.
Recently I had the thought that the english language Anime and Manga fandom is unusually large and well organised. Especially when we compare it to other media fandoms. It has several news sources (ANN, several blogs), several databases witch are regularly updated (ANN encyclopedia, MyAnimeList, Bakaupdates, Anidb etc.), and a very large number of streaming websites and scanlation readers/aggregators. Suffice to say, if you're looking for new anime or manga, it's very easy to look for them, you can just browse any of the many databases using whatever criteria you like, and find what you're looking for. Even Visual Novels have decent information out there (namely VNDB). And there are hundreds of forums out there, including this one.
When I compare that to other fandoms, few others are quite as comprehensive. Games are, there are many searchable game databases and news sources/reviewers. Likewise the same goes for movies (IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes, along with hundreds of review sites, have it covered). But other prominent "fandoms" in the english speaking world don't fare so well. I know of no centralized news agregators or databases for young adult literature, "high" literature, or all the varied genre fictions. Likewise, the same goes for TV(which is basically subsumed into movie databases at the moment) and comics too, most of the comics databases I've seen have been poor at best. Considering the large volume of independent graphic novels that get published in english, there must be a centre of activity for them somewhere, but as far as I'm aware, there isn't, certainly not to the standard of IMDB, ANN or MyAnimeList. Likewise, the information on French comics is just as sketchy, strange given it's large size (it's larger then english language non-hero comics). Even compared to other asian subtitling fandoms, Anime tends to be better organized. For instance while both Anime and asian Dramas are near completely fansubtitled, the quality and organization of Drama websites and databases are much lower then their anime equivalents. In fact, a further unsual thing is that while asian shows and movies get quite widely fansubtitled, almost nothing from european television gets the same level attention. So is there any reason why you guys might think anime and manga are so well represented and organized? Especially when we consider that by most conventional metrics(like sales) the anime fandom is much smaller then most of these other fandoms? Or maybe I'm completely offbase here. |
2012-05-28, 01:00 | Link #2 |
Obey the Darkly Cute ...
Author
Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: On the whole, I'd rather be in Kyoto ...
Age: 66
|
I have to agree, the organization... the only thing that comes to mind that is close is the SCA and that's an *activities* group. Then there's the the gaming community's large amorphous mass of game data, analysis, and strategies.
Nothing I've come across in all my geek hobbies anywhere approaches the "OCD" or wide variety of skills brought to bear on this hobby. It certainly makes for a fun part of my general cultural studies But no, I"m not sure I have a good handle on what exactly makes it tick so well.
__________________
|
2012-05-28, 07:35 | Link #3 | |
Knight Errant
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Dublin, Ireland
Age: 35
|
Quote:
1. The primary demographic of anime is adolescent and young adult males. This same demographic was the first to get into computers, and generally the forefront of technology is dominated by this same demographic. So among anime fans, you're more likely to find the people capable of html coding and programming (there's the old russian joke of "how does one patch KDE2 under FreeBSD"). Compare this to Drama, which is far more dominated by younger women, who as a group are not as as "techy" as young men are. You certainly won't find great programming expertise among Twilight fans, which is dominated by young teen girls and their mothers. As a comparison, Gaming also is heavily male, and so also has a large online presence (far larger then Anime). This doesn't explain the poor presence of comics, which is also a "young male" hobby. 2. Internationally spread out: Anime is far more spread out internationally then any of the aforementioned "fandoms" except for gaming, and movies. This gives it a larger talent pool to draw from, and also makes online communication a necessity, as most anime fans will meet very few other anime fans in their local area. 3. Necessity of existence: Little organisation is required to transmit american TV to other english speaking people. By contrast, Anime requires much more effort. Raws are difficult to obtain without cooperation from someone inside Japan, and translations themselves require several people working together for several hours to assemble. This means anime fans need to look to cooperate in such a way that domestic american TV fans don't need to, American TV fans only need one guy somewhere (in their own language zone) to record the show, encode it, and then post it to Bittorrent somewhere. One person can do it in under an hour of personal effort. Many of the websites that first served as hubs for fansubtitlers later went on to be hubs of the community at large (most notably AnimeSuki, and Bakaupdates). This might also explain wy the english community is in some ways better organized then the actual native Japanese anime community. I've never seen a Japanese anime database as classy, comprehensive and well organised as ANN's or MAL's. Likewise, I've heard many Otaku download english fansubs over raws, because Fansubs are easier to find, and are better encoded. (though I'd like to learn more about the native online community). 4. Lack of copyright enforcement, for whatever reason, Japanese anime companies rarely bothered to enforce copyright in the fandoms formative years (and still do so haphazardly). This gave a fandom that's built implicitly around an illegal activity time to germinate. European television owners have generally been much quicker to crush copyright infringement, so communities rarely could set down roots before being crushed. Likewise, because of Anime's format, it's much easier to pirate then say, literature and books, which have to have over 300 pages scanlated with quality word recognition in order to pirate. 5. Age, Anime is by far the oldest large translation based community. It predates the internet, so when the internet first began to take hold, anime was very well placed to use it. Compare this to asian Drama, which is much more recent. Anime has always had a head start over it's younger cousin. In fact, it could be argued, that the Asian drama subbing community is an offshoot of the Anime subbing community. Some Anime subbers started to sub doramas as well, using the skills they learned while subbing anime. 6.Anime had a more favourable genre mix that spurred it's growth. Anime has a wide variety of genres, and most of them have a wide range of popularity, but Anime has always had large numbers of Sci-Fi, Action and Fantasy series. As a whole all 3 of these are not offered to an english language audience through any channel besides books (not even comics, which are almost entirely "super hero" stories and funnies). This made Anime highly appealing compared to other foreign media competitors. This might explain why European translation never took off in the same way, European TV has a similiar mix of genres to American or British shows. This is why Dramas were not the nexus of fan translation, as Dramas (at least the popular ones) are almost entirely soap operas and romcoms, things you can easily find on American TV. Once anime took off among western sci fi and fantasy fans, they became exposed to other anime genres, and so we have the medium we have today. 7 The size of Japan's population, and independent media industry. Japan is a large country (and very large economy) all using the same language. This means that it can defeat it's nearest "foreign medium" competitors in Europe by numbers alone. For instance, the French comics scene is very large, but it's very small compared to Japans, which is likely largely pure;y down to the fact that France is at least half the size of Japan. That's maybe why French people are importing manga, and Japanese people aren't importing BDs (Bande Desinée, french term for Comics). Taken together, all these factors gave anime (along with gaming) a high likelihood to succeed. There are a few anomalies though: 1. Why hasn't comics succeeded in establishing an online presence the way Gaming or movies did? Comics as a whole are still very popular. Why isn't information and databases about English language television as organized as movies? 2. Why did Asian Dramas take off while european television and film is obscure by comparison? Likewise, asian pop music dominates Europop in the online space. 3. Why is there so little scanlating of French BDs, when manga scanlating is so popular? French comics contain many of the factors that make manga popular, why are they so unpopular, at least online? Is it down to more comprehensive copyright enforcement? I'd say that it might be possible to come up with a succinct explanation of why these things are the way they are. |
|
2012-05-28, 13:03 | Link #4 | |||
Also a Lolicon
Join Date: Apr 2010
|
Quote:
Piracy is still fairly centralized. Even though torrents allow the data to be p2p, you still need a place to get torrents from and a tracker. XDCC and stuff is even more centralized. So piracy hubs appear to distribute pirated content. People visit these hubs to get their pirated content, which results in a lot of people with similar interests in one place. Then these people start talking to each other and before you know it, a community of people interested in whatever the pirated content it springs up around a place where that pirate content is distributed. This would also explain why the anime community in Japan isn't as organized as the anime community outside Japan. Anime watchers in Japan can watch anime on TV, and those who pirate either use English language piracy hubs (which means that they are unlikely to join the community around them due to the language barrier), or Japanese P2P which don't really require piracy hubs like torrents and most other piracy methods. Quote:
Quote:
|
|||
2012-05-28, 13:11 | Link #5 |
Obey the Darkly Cute ...
Author
Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: On the whole, I'd rather be in Kyoto ...
Age: 66
|
European... or rather UK live-action has access to the US via the public broadcasting. Its limited and is mostly the "best of" but fans of public broadcasting dote on them. However, there simply isn't the "community"... perhaps because its passively delivered?
__________________
|
2012-05-28, 13:12 | Link #6 |
廉頗
Join Date: Feb 2004
Location: Massachusetts
Age: 34
|
I'd agree with Random32 above me on the piracy issue and also add that the popularity of anime has been closely linked to its internet subculture for quite some time now. Shows like Dragonball Z spiked popularity in anime internationally just as internet speeds were reaching the level for pirating the shows online. You had a disparate international audience with few options for watching up-to-date anime shows other than the internet. Unlike with books, TV, and movies, for most there was/is no physical counterpart to the internet for watching and discussing anime. By necessity the fans were forced to congregate online, and are much more centralized because of it. There weren't any other options.
|
2012-05-28, 14:16 | Link #7 | |||||
Knight Errant
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Dublin, Ireland
Age: 35
|
Quote:
Also, games is just as well organized (if not more so) then Anime, and, of course, is not really built on piracy at all. So clearly it's possible to build a strong online presence without Piracy. Another factor with piracy, and somewhat ironic, is the sheer insularity of the Japanese entertainment industry. It's a bit ironic, but the fact that Japanese producers paid no attention whatsoever to tertiary markets (IE us), meant that illicit distribution was able to spread without them ever really caring (at least at the beginning). By contrast, European media companies have always been trying to make it big in the english speaking world, and perhaps crushed any nascent piracy (thinking it will cut into their profits). The interesting thing is that the legal distribution of Anime was spearheaded by American companies and licensors, with Japanese companies taking a relatively bemused backseat (what, these guys are interested? Weird foreigners...), at least initially. The Japanese have played a fairly passive role in spreading awareness of Anime. It's a "Laissez Faire" fandom. Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
An interesting question is if any equivalent "translation" fandoms exist in other languages. I know there are fairly organised french and Spanish anime fandoms. Has translation of American TV similiarly taken off? With similiar hubs of activity as Anime? Also, when comparing Japanese and English Anime fandom, the Japanese fandom is still fairly well organized as fandoms go. I do not know of any English language fandom that produces the level of fanfiction ("doujin") of such a high quality as the Japanese fan community. I know of no real equivalent for the Japanese Comiket. |
|||||
2012-05-28, 14:32 | Link #8 |
The Interstellar Medium
Author
Join Date: May 2008
Location: [SWE]
Age: 34
|
Let me just chime in with a thought here; it might be because of the sheer amount of media with sci-fi themes currently existing. As I have no experience, sort of, of pre-Net fandoms, I am merely guessing, but sci-fi in the past did not have the 'variety' it does today, similar to other media, seeing how much the industry, or industries, has grown in the past decades. So, as you say, it isn't centralized, but might have split into, sometimes very large, fractional pieces.
__________________
|
2012-05-28, 14:46 | Link #9 |
Obey the Darkly Cute ...
Author
Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: On the whole, I'd rather be in Kyoto ...
Age: 66
|
I used to be an avid sci-fi fan... but I've stopped even visiting the sci-fi section of the bookstore... why? The meaning has been so diluted I can't tell it from any other book section.
__________________
|
2012-05-28, 15:14 | Link #10 | |
Also a Lolicon
Join Date: Apr 2010
|
Let's expand my piracy theory a bit.
to have an active discussion community on the internet, you need to have a sufficient number of people, that have similar interests, are willing to talk to each other, and on the internet. I would say its very hard to meet those requirements if you set out to meet them. You need a certain number of people for a community to be active, and its hard to get people to join an empty community. So its a loop that results in no active community. Thus there needs to be something that breaks to loop and gets enough people for an active community. Piracy hubs are one way to get enough people in one place, with similar interests, interested in discussion, and on the internet. Anime is the only one that truly requires large hubs for piracy like Asuki was, but I find that a lot of my conversations about movies happen on private tracker forums. Where do non-pirating movie fans have their discussions? For gaming, maybe the thing that got enough people together was mmo's. The dev's website where one downloaded the mmo/read update news/etc would meet the requirements to start an active community, thus forum, thus community. Quote:
|
|
2012-05-28, 15:23 | Link #11 | |||
Senior Member
Author
|
Quote:
Prior to becoming an anime fan, I was a big comic book fan. There are comic book message boards I've been (and am) a member of that easily rival Anime Suki and ANN's Forums when it comes to sheer amount and volume of activity (one of those two comic book boards also has a fair bit of news and reviews on it). Those sites focus on individual comic books (Action Comics #6, say) the same way we here focus on individual anime episodes (Hyouka Episode 5, say). However, the online comic book fandom is probably not quite as organized (especially when it comes to things like categorization) as the online anime fandom is, because the online comic book fandom has more internal divisions. Most of us anime fans have some variations in taste with one another, but the overlap is substantive. Very few anime fans are just Haruhi fans, or just Shana fans, or just Monogatari series fans. But there are loads of comic book fans that are just Superman fans, or just Batman fans, or just Spiderman fans. Comic book fans that are only into a particular character or two aren't always concerned about the medium as a whole. They have their favorites and that's that. Even amongst the comic book fans that like a wide range of characters and titles, you still have the DC/Marvel division. Loads of comic book fans only like Marvel, or only like DC, so they're not necessarily making a point to catalogue the full collection of "the other guy's" titles. So I think that there's a larger percentage of people within the anime fandom that's really into the medium as a whole (and wants all of it carefully catalogued online) then the percentage of people within the comic book fandom that's really into the medium as a whole (and wants it all carefully catalogued online). Quote:
Quote:
I'm hardly well-versed on European television or Europop, but from what little I've heard/seen of it, I've rarely seen a big difference between a lot of Europe's most popular pop artists and North America's. But J-Pop does have a bit of distinctive feel, imo. Edit: Also, on the piracy point. I think that anime is better-suited to digital distribution in general than comic books are. Part of the charm of comic books, at least for a lot of older, established fans like myself, is actually holding that physical comic book in your hands, and flicking through it, and collecting stacks of comics. Reading comic books online isn't quite the same, and I'd say that applies to me as well. But whether you watch anime from a computer screen (after DLing online) or watch it from a DVD/Blu-Ray you pop in the DVD/Blu-Ray player, doesn't have that big of a difference in "feel", imo. Quality difference might be there, but the overall experience is much the same.
__________________
|
|||
2012-05-28, 17:54 | Link #12 | ||||
Knight Errant
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Dublin, Ireland
Age: 35
|
@Sci-fi Fandom: I think it's correct to say that Sci Fi fandom has fractured into several large chunks. Off the top of my head: Star Wars, Star Trek, Horror, Alien/Predator, old school, cyberpunk etc.
The unified fandom that typified the "golden age" of Scifi, does not really exist anymore. Not only that, the "core" titles that made up Scifi (titles like Foundation, Dune, Enders Game, etc.) are no longer being written. Instead you have a dozen smaller fandoms, each too small to gain a substantive presence and organisation online. It would be interesting to know what the fandom of English language Sci-Fi is like in other countries, because Sci-Fi is probably one of our biggest cultural "inventions". Few foreign authors match up in popularity to Asimov, Herbert, etc. Quote:
In fact, the titles within Anime/Manga fandom that are most "comic" like, tend to have similiar behaviour to your comic book fans. This is most easily seen with Naruto fans and Bleach fans, who are very large and active, but rarely go beyond that, and rarely interact with each other (there's a Naruto/Bleach rivalry, though not nearly as intense as DC/Marvel), or with the anime community at large. Gundam might show a similiar behaviour if releases were more frequent, and if Sunrise stuck to one timeline, without ever ending a story. The style of anime (short novel sized series) means that fans are more open to new series, and look for better resources for trying new things. Of course, the same logic doesn't really hold for the "indie" graphic novel scene, which does have short series. That it's easier to find new indie manga/doujinshi scans to read then to find new indie comics, is somewhat ironic. Webcomics are doing fine, but most of those are "funnies" strip type comics, and not long form and plot based. Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
As for Anime, I'd say a download is superior to a DVD. No messing with disks, and the image is the exact same (and no ugly yellow subtitles!) |
||||
2012-05-29, 07:00 | Link #13 | |
Also a Lolicon
Join Date: Apr 2010
|
Quote:
Even though manga isn't very suitable for piracy, scans are easier and more convenient than learning Japanese and importing. |
|
2012-05-29, 07:34 | Link #14 | |
Senior Member
Join Date: Jan 2009
|
Quote:
Also Euro-pop is fairly irrelevant compared to the European dance and trance scene. The latter do have a strong global online presence. I think anime on TV had a lot to do with making manga popular in English speaking markets. There is no equivalent French animation industry to do the same for BD. BD are popular amongst American comic artists and a small part of the comic fans (probably due to Heavy Metal magazine) but not in the mainstream. I've seen some manga scan-lators branch out a bit, maybe it is only a matter of time. |
|
2012-05-29, 20:17 | Link #19 | |
Obey the Darkly Cute ...
Author
Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: On the whole, I'd rather be in Kyoto ...
Age: 66
|
Quote:
The FurryMUCK was a great place for all levels of interest (textual MMO you could help construct the world in). And there are pile of fan art archives (both SFW and very very NSFW o.O). There are also publications and comics (e.g. Wild Life, Sabrina, etc).
__________________
|
|
|
|