Behind The Nihon Review

The AnimeSuki Choice Awards frustrate the hell out of me. I definitely think it’s a worthwhile idea, which is why I cover it each and every year, as it is a good exercise to see which anime a community of its size rate highly, and Haak does a good job organizing nomination and voting stages, counting votes and announcing winners. But the problem I’ve been complaining for years about now, in this very column, seems to get worse every year. There’s too many categories, which makes the nominating and voting processes (as well as attempts to cover it comprehensively, like this one) a giant pain in the ass. The categories are hella ambiguous too, which makes the nomination process confusing (fortunately the voting process isn’t so hard, because the choices are more limited).

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Ahhh the New Year. A time of beginnings, resolutions, and rebirths. A chance for everyone, everywhere, to start over with a fresh beginning. A chance to wash away the bumps, bruises, smudges, and stains of the last three-hundred and sixty-five days so that we may try again for the better. While the Winter season is sometimes considered part of the previous year, we here at NHRV like to use it as the starting block for what will come. Last year had so many great titles that it would be unfair to compare what will come with what has been. Still, 2011 got off to a great start with epic titles like Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Level E, and Rio: Rainbow Gate so it is only appropriate that 2012 must do the same to keep up. As Stan Lee would say: “Excelsior!”. Thus, we NHRV’ers have put together our first of the first thoughts for the year How does 2012′s start look so far? Read on and find out!
Introduction by: TypicalIdiotFan

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Not many people noticed when we did this last year.

This year’s NHRV Staff Contest has now officially started. We’re looking for two new staff members to help us with writing anime and live action reviews and/or contributing to the Behind The Nihon Review blog. Applications will be open until Monday, 6 February, so if you’ve ever contemplated joining the NHRV staff, submit yours today! It will be the best opportunity you’ll have to get on board for the foreseeable future.

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Triple H Cosplay

I recently had the pleasure of meeting translator and writer Naoki Matsuyama (Twitter) from Contectures, a Japanese publishing company started by literary critic Azuma Hiroki. We sat down at a large café in Shinjuku, the heart of Tokyo, along with freelance translator Ko Ransom (Twitter), who had graciously set up the meeting for me by serving as a point of contact. The three of us talked for almost two hours, discussing topics ranging from anime to American intellectuals and pundits, but there was one overarching theme that held together all of our discussion: Japan reaching out and becoming more global. Immediately, I made the connection between what Contectures was doing and what I often did as a blogger, which was analyzing anime-related topics for a non-Japanese audience.

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Comiket. Picture from some random person's Twitter. Note that the number of people in one place is beyond China-level.

Following a brief discussion of C81 in our Three Way Action podcast from New Years, I wanted to do little bit of looking into a relatively interesting phenomenon: consignment sales of doujinshi. Sales of doujinshi via consignment involve circles producing doujinshi for comic markets in Japan contracting the sales of their goods to a store that deals in doujinshi, which in turn sell their goods for them to the general public, sometimes at an increased price depending on demand for the circle, genre, anime, and other factors. It’s an interesting business to look at, considering much of the recent hubbub about Bandai’s withdrawal from distribution in the U.S., and Funimation’s suit against several other entertainment companies. I’m no specialist on the topic, but I do hope that a little bit of research might point out something interesting.

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