Anime Industry Watching Vol. 12: "Moe" and "Bishojo" ......What is the best part and "badness" of Japanese anime culture as seen from overseas?　Interview with Renato Rivera Rusca, Japanese Anime Researcher

These days, talking about Japanese anime and manga under the label of "Cool Japan" is met with a lot of smoke from loudmouth enthusiasts. How are anime culture and Japan's unique character culture viewed by foreign researchers living in Japan?　Renato Rivera Rusca, a lecturer who was born in Peru, grew up in England, and now teaches manga and anime culture to international students at Meiji University's School of Global Japanese Studies, talks about it.

The roots of Gainax and "DAICON Film" are teaching materials

--In today's lecture, we will be discussing "DAICON III" from "Ship This" and "Hibike! Euphonium" to "DAICON III," what did you teach the international students?

Renato: In previous lectures, we have summarized the impact of the anime industry on Japanese society, chronologically. Since today was the last lecture of the first semester, I would like to summarize what we have seen so far: Until the mid-1980s, anime was an advertising program for sponsors to sell their products, right? Later, animation itself became a commodity, and the sales of the discs directly became the production committee's profit. Now, however, the key disc is no longer selling. Now that discs are no longer selling, several new avenues have emerged, such as "creating works for overseas audiences," "monetizing online distribution," and "raising funds through crowd funding. At the same time, I wanted the students to understand the current situation of ......, where the quality of late-night animation is improving very much.

--The students seemed to be mostly foreigners.



--What other countries did you interview people from?

Renato: Outside of the U.S., people from Singapore, China, Myanmar, Canada, Poland, and Mexico. In all countries, there is not much difference in perception, perhaps because the younger generation watches Japanese anime through online distribution. They know that "this work is made in Japan" when they watch it, so when they think "this translation is wrong" or "I don't know this word," they immediately look it up on the Internet. As a result, young people overseas learn of the existence of DAICON films. Even in this classroom, we all watched "DAICON III" together (laughs).

Japanese people have a wonderful technique to express themselves through "pictures.

--I heard that you also spoke as a panelist at Anime Expo 2015 held in Los Angeles in July.

Renato: Yes. To give you some background, two books on anime were published in English last year and this year. Ian Condry's "The Soul of Anime: The Collaborative Creative Process" and Mark Steinberg's "Why Japan is a 'Media Mixing Nation'. What struck me when I read those two books is that the media mix of anime programming has been going wrong since the 1980s, and the toys that sponsors wanted to sell and the works that studios wanted to create no longer matched. ...... That there is almost no mention of that fact . Animation producers, not wanting to be constrained by sponsors, began to insist, "This is the kind of work we want to make! This is the work we want to make! As examples of this, "Magical Princess Minky Momo" and "The Super Dimension Fortress Macross" were featured at Anime Expo. Both of these works were works that the creators decided at the planning stage that this was the way they wanted the show to end, but the sponsors were selfish and asked for more programs to be continued, so they were pushed around. To put it another way, the anime boom created such a chaotic situation.
　However, in 1985, the number of traditional anime magazines suddenly decreased and "Newtype Monthly," a kind of gravure magazine, was launched in their place. For me, 1985 was a cultural turning point and a revolutionary year. So I announced that at Anime Expo.


-How was the reaction?

Renato: We didn't have time for a Q&A session, but I was glad to hear that people found it stimulating because they had never heard anything like it before.

--Renato, how did you become interested in Japanese anime in the first place?

Renato: I lived in Peru until I was 7 years old, and I was a TV kid, so I watched all kinds of anime. At that time, "Minky Momo" and "Messenger of the Sun: Tetsujin 28-go" were also aired in Peru, and as long as I can remember, I realized that these were foreign cartoons. I was aware that these were foreign animations since as long as I can remember, because the TV stations were airing them with the Japanese credits in kanji, probably because they didn't have money. Later, I moved to England, but there was no Japanese animation being broadcast in England. Kids around my age were watching silly cartoons and asking me, "Which soccer team do you like?" They would ask me, "Which team do you like to play soccer? I wasn't interested in soccer, I wanted to talk about anime (laughs).
　But in the 90s, maniacal anime like "Akira" and "Project Ako" came into the UK. I thought again, "I knew that Japanese anime was so interesting, that they could develop such a complex story with pictures!" I thought again. At the time, I was interested in Impressionism and Japonisme. What Van Gogh and Monet were into was Ukiyo-e, right? Whether it be ukiyoe, anime, or manga, the Japanese are wonderfully good at expressing themselves through symbolic pictures. So I decided to use my four years of college to study Japanese culture.