Japanese Animation Catching on in U.S. (NYT take on the subject)

[Khephra]

TOKYO (AP) -- Animation in America once meant Mickey Mouse, Snow White and Winnie the Pooh. These days, it's just as likely to mean Japanese fighting cyborgs, doe-eyed schoolgirls and sinister monsters -- thanks in large part to people like John Ledford.

The 36-year-old American is one of the top foreign distributors of Japanese ``manga'' comics and animation, known as ``anime,'' building his fortune on a genre that is rapidly changing from a niche market to a mass phenomenon.


Ledford, who's so busy his dubbing studio in Houston runs 24 hours a day, says the key to the success of Japanese manga and anime in the United States is their widely varied, cutting-edge subject matter.

``We're kind of like the anti-Disney,'' Ledford, a bespectacled, fast-talking man with a friendly smile, said during a recent visit to Tokyo. ``Disney is very family type. We are appealing to the video-game, PlayStation, Generation X, Generation Y kind of crowd in America.''

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/arts/AP-Japan-Selling-Animation.html

[BigMcLargehuge]

1. good article, I read it last night

it's nice to see the cultural shift

[Khephra]

2. The shift has been going on for almost a decade now..maybe two

But it's really taken off in the last few years.

It amazes me that I can walk in any book chain and walk into a manga section that's bigger than the American graphic novels section. They carry books now that I've never even heard of! I'm not the biggest anime fanatic (or at least I wasn't until the Reality TV crazy/RW news shift occured), but I still has a fair knowledge of the field. Now it's totally impossible to see/read it all. There's just too damn much! (but that's a good thing, of course...)

[Chovexani]

3. NYT is a day late and a dollar short as usual

But on the plus side, the proliferation of anime in mainstream venues is helping to erase the ignorant preconception that anime is all about huge boobs and tentacle porn. And a lot of people who may not necessarily understand what it's about are at least respectful of it. When I went to Otakon this year, downtown Baltimore was pretty much taken over by dorks like me running the streets in full costume. I got nothing but positive vibes from folks, who mostly asked me what was going on that weekend (seeing as the Inner Harbor resembled the Downtown district in The Sims). A surprising (to me, at least) number of people were really wowed by the work I put into my costume, asking me how I made it, etc. It was a far cry from years ago when people made fun of me in junior high for reading manga during lunch. ("wtf are you reading those black and white Chinese comics for? Are you retarded or something?")

Of course the cynical part of me is also more than a little bitter that those same people who made fun are now sporting things like bootleg Rurouni Kenshin (oh, excuse me, "Samurai X") t-shirts because it's "cool".

[FarLeftRage]

4. For Kheph

:cry: