Shit like this makes it all worthwhile.

Right, I’ll try and keep this as brief as possible.

Last night, inspired by the latest ‘foreign pirates are killing anime’ outburst from the Japanese industry, I fell into one of my usual rants on Twitter:

“The anime industry avoiding the same elephant in the room as music industry did 10 yrs ago: consumers know worthless product when they see it.

My point isn’t about ‘defending piracy’ – it’s about giving it a cultural context.”

Well, I thought what I was trying to say was fairly straightforward – that like the music biz the anime industry had devalued its own product so much that it is hard to act surprised that people don’t want to pay for it. But judging from the flood of responses I got, apparently a few things need clarifying. Lets have a look:

Wow, what show are you talking about?

I’m not talking about any specific shows, I’m talking about how anime in general is – rightly or wrongly – perceived.

Your theory makes no sense, because good shows sell just as badly or worse as bad shows.

Well, for a start, that’s not my theory at all.

My point is not ‘anime doesn’t sell because it’s low quality’, it’s ‘it is seen as acceptable to steal any anime because it’s all viewed as disposable’. My argument is that this is exactly what happened to the music industry: in a desperate attempt to exploit every revenue opportunity while also reducing costs and investment it devalued its own product to the point that consumers feel little unease with obtaining it illegally.

Nah, it’s not the industry’s fault – people pirate because they are evil and immoral.

Um, maybe. I like to be a little less nihilistic than that. Besides, there are examples of people (I’m thinking Cory Doctorow and Radiohead here) in other media making a success of asking people for money while giving away their work. Perhaps what is needed is some risk taking and imaginative thinking?

OK you clever bastard, so what did the music industry do to solve all this?

Well, the industry itself did nothing really to solve it. What it mainly did was gripe and whine and bitch and demand pointless, ineffectual legal action while still taking the same attitude to the product it was churning out. Sound familiar?

In the end it wasn’t the traditional industry that tried to fix things, but Apple and iTunes that stepped in to present a different model.

WHAT? BUT iTUNES AND APPLE ARE EVIL!!??!?!!?

Yeah, OK. I know what you’re saying – iTunes has many, many issues. Sadly this is not that debate. What is interesting about iTunes is that it showed that by finding sensible price points, breaking up albums into smaller products, supporting micro-transactions and making the whole process very quick and easy it is possible to convince some consumers (in fact, a very large number of consumers) that buying legitimately is less hassle than piracy.

But the anime industry isn’t Apple! It can’t afford to start up a version of iTunes, plus the model doesn’t fit anime at all?

Sheesh, stop taking me so literally. I’m not saying an ‘Itunes for anime’ is the answer. Not at all. To be honest I don’t have a firm answer. I’m just some mouthy Brit on teh internets, its not actually my job to provide any answers. I’d like to think there are people out there in the industry who are much cleverer than me and whose job actually should be to come up with answers, and I can just go back to drinking and babbling on in an amusing chimney sweep’s accent.

But you must have some suggestions?

Well, if we can get back to what started all this: my main suggestion is that the industry stops whining about piracy and using it to deflect blame away from how it has devalued its own product. Connected with that it could stop throwing hissy fits and pulling simulcasts or not allowing foreign distributors from putting out boxsets and blurays. That would all be a good start towards calming down and trying to find a way out of this mess. Or maybe it really is too late.

So this just sounds like your usual ranting – you’re blaming the death of the industry on moe and lolicon and some shows that YOU don’t like despite being quite popular with fans.

Okay. Please – just take a deep breath and read this whole post again. Please.

But commercialization and sponsorship has been part of anime since day one, this isn’t a new thing.

Exactly – and the same is true within music – pop music has been used to sell other products etc since the 1950s. That’s not a criticism of my argument – its further evidence for it! You’d hope that after half a century of doing exactly what I’m describing here that both industries would act less surprised that consumers view their products as low value and disposable. I mean, how stupid do they really think we are?

But what is wrong with a show being disposable? I quite like some shows that I admit are disposable.

There’s nothing wrong with a show itself being disposable! There is always going to be disposable product in every entertainment industry, plus ‘disposableness’ is in itself – like quality – a subjective term.

The issue is this though: don’t whine about something being disposable if you made it that way. If you are a studio that makes shallow, disposable product then don’t act all surprised if people might enjoy watching it once, but don’t want to pay to own a handful of episodes of it on an overpriced DVD. You can’t blame them for that. Instead you need to find alternative ways of monetizing that one, single viewing. Or to price it far more realistically. Again this is how iTunes works, by charging mere pennies for products that its customers view as largely disposable. Not perfect for the artist and industry arguably, but its still a lot better than someone just stealing it.

Or, of course, you need to make a less disposable product in the first place….but lets stop there before we start going around in circles again, shall we?

Oh my days.

Okay, let’s just cut to the chase. What exactly is the Otaku: man up hashtag all about? Good question.

It’s about a few things. It’s about a flimsy, non-existent manifesto. It’s about a pointless, ill-conceived philosophy. It’s about angry, knee-jerk rational debate. But mostly it’s about BOTH shits AND giggles.

‘But wait!’ you say, ‘There’s a manifesto?’ Yes. Yes there is. A completely non-existent one:

• Real otaku men treat real women with respect. And by ‘respect’ I do not mean ‘fear’. That is not good enough. Watch all the moe and hug all the body pillows you want, but don’t hide behind them. Get out there and interact with people – both sexes – that are NOT otaku, so that when you go back to your fantasies they are just that. You’ll enjoy them even more, trust me. Perspective is amazing.
• Real otaku men do not cry like a girl if someone disagrees with them. You see, the whole point of otaku is that you are passionate about something. Passionate. Like a fucking warrior. Not a victim. You can man up and just shrug it off. Move on. Or, if you have reached the advanced stage, you can MAN THE FUCK UP and get stuck into the fight. Debate. Reason. Discuss. Don’t whine – educate.
• Real otaku men do the unexpected. Do something you don’t normally do. Get drunk. Watch a movie you wouldn’t normally watch. Smoke something you shouldn’t. Watch some TV that’s not anime. Read a book about politics. Talk to that girl.
• Real otaku men don’t give a fuck what the Otaku Elimination Game says about their blog. They also never pay any attention to retarded ‘manifestos’ on the internet.
• Real otaku men never, EVER use the excuse ‘but it’s only a cartoon’. Really. Don’t shit on the medium you are meant to be championing.

But hey – don’t listen to me. I’m just some shit-stirring, sarcastic Brit. I’m not even – by any stretch of the imagination – what you would call an otaku. What the fuck do I know about any of this stuff?

Luckily, I wasn’t the only person contributing today:

• The REAL meaning of #otakumanup: RT @wintermuted: This is perhaps controversial to some, but I love me a productive argument.
• @serial: Guys, @animealmanac couldn’t take the heat, he needs to #otakumanup
• @janaiblog: If you’re gonna criticize moe or any other large fandom, be prepared to respond to criticism. #otakumanup
• @digiwombat: PSA: @timmaughan is a fantastic cunt with a substance abuse problem. #otakumanboy
• @debaoki: being a passive whiner does not make you inexplicably irresistable to women (e.g. kimi kiss or evangelion)
• @CrusherJ: Is it to early in the course to mention that actual women can be attractive too?
• @RedConfession: Girls like geeks. Not guys who compare everything to geeky things. Show her you’ve at least heard of the real world #otakumanup
• @edsizemore: Don’t forget to have fun too. Cause it’s okay to laugh at yourself. #otakumanup
• @Sheentaku: #otakumanup Role models: Golgo 13, Lupin III, Kenshiro, Archer, Captain Kiichi Goto. You dont have to look manly to be manly.

Follow the people above. They will change – and may even save – your life.

If you are based in the US, and have even just a passing interest in anime or Ghibli films, the chances are you’ve already seen Ponyo over the weekend, it having opened nationwide on Friday. Sadly us poor Brits have got to wait until February, but even before that news broke, I had managed to get hold of a copy of the recently released Japanese DVD. The DVD has an English subtitle track, and I’ve referred to the film here with it’s full Japanese title in order to clarify that this is not a review of the Disney produced dub – it’s not just me being pretentious, for once. With some unprecedented self control I held off watching it for a few weeks, in the vain hope that we would get a theatrical release date shortly after America’s – the irony being that if I’d watched it immediately then this review could have been a little more of a scoop. As it is it’s being published the week that half the internet has been buzzing about Ponyo, it’s become a trending topic on Twitter, and every anime blogger in the world is giving their opinions on the film. In fact, the coverage has been so over-whelming these last few days that I considered skipping writing this at all – but looking back at how much coverage I had given the film since it’s first announcement it seemed wrong not to present my thoughts, even if only for little bit of personal closure.

For Miyazaki Ponyo marks – in many ways – a return to earlier roots. His last two features – Spirited Away and Howl’s Moving Castle – not only dealt with far more complicated plots and a wider roster of characters, but were aimed at an older, more mature primary audience. Ponyo, as a simple fairy tale or fable, harks back to his older works such as My Neighbour Totoro or Kiki’s Delivery Service, and as such has no pretensions to be anything more than a children’s film. It tells the tale of five year old boy Sosuke, who one day finds a small goldfish swept in from sea, whom he decides to take home and name Ponyo. But, of course, this isn’t any normal goldfish – Ponyo is in fact the daughter of an eccentric wizard and an aquatic goddess, so her disappearance doesn’t go unnoticed, and her irate father finds her and brings her back home. Ponyo, so enchanted with Sosuke and the human world, escapes again and uses her magic to transform herself into a little girl, but while doing so unwittingly unleashes destructive powers that threaten the very existence of the world.

It’s not just the plot, however, that sees Miyazaki-san returning to simpler times – as frequently mentioned in the pre-release hype Ponyo was completely hand drawn, marking the closing of Ghibli’s short lived computer graphics department. Let’s get the obvious stuff out of the way first – Ponyo is a Ghibli movie, and as such is never less than stunning visually. The character work is, as always, immaculate. The background art – again featuring the masterful work of Kazuo Oga – is breathtaking at times. From the very first scenes the screen is teaming with life and detail, so much so that it feels that no number of repeat viewings will let you absorb everything that is happening on screen. But above all there is one element of the film’s animation that everyone will be talking about – and quite rightly so – the depiction of water and and the ocean. In Ponyo’s world it appears that all water has an inherent magical power, and as storms rage and the sea levels rise it seems to be able to simultaneously take many forms – from strange amorphous blob-like creatures to huge powerful fish – whilst always somehow retaining the distinctive motion and qualities that define it as water. Animating the sea realistically is a famously hard task, but here the Ghibli team do it in a way that seems not only effortless, but both natural and fantastical at the same time. Most surprising to me was the constant references to traditional Japanese Ukiyo-e art – every time we see a wave on screen we make out the lines and feel the energy of Hokusai’s great wave, every time the water takes a fish form it feels like, for maybe just a split second, that we are looking at an ancient wood block print of huge yet graceful carp. It’s as if Miyazaki is aiming to make a point about his rejection of technology by taking us back to anime and manga’s true visual roots. Elsewhere he references his own works, most notably when Sosuke’s mother’s tiny car hurtles along perilous cliff edges it is impossible to not be reminded of the famous, exhilarting car chase from The Castle of Cagliostro, and when the same car disappears over the hilly horizon at night, projecting headlights into the sky, it is a distinct visual nod to Totoro’s Catbus doing the very same. Miyazaki has always had cinematic riffs and effects that he has used as unmistakable signatures, but it is hard to feel here that with Ponyo he is making a more deliberate point; a desire, perhaps, that he wishes to return to simpler times.

Whiile there has been unfaltering praise for Ponyo’s art, the discussions across Twitter and the anime blogging community have thrown up a few doubts and questions about the films plot and narrative. Miyazaki’s decision to go with a simple, child friendly fairy tale of a story has raised some concerns that the film lacks his usual thematic depth or sub-text, but after the luxury of a second viewing this criticism seems, to me at least, more than a little unfair. Ponyo on a Cliff is teaming with ideas, from it’s more obvious environmental message through to reflections on Miyazaki’s own personal views and experiences of family life.

While the uniting of Ponyo and Sosuke is clearly meant to illustrate a need for mankind to get back in touch with nature – a common and recurring them in Miyazaki’s works – it also seems to be part of an almost Aesop style fable about how love can conquer over physical and cultural differences. This perhaps best shown in the scenes where Ponyo’s power wanes and she finds herself regressing into strange, almost grotesque, simple looking half-fish/half-human form. Even as we see her flopping around with strange, almost deformed looking limbs – quite literally like a fish out of water – this alien appearance is never enough to stop the devotion of the innocent Sosuke, whose pure love sees past her scales-deep appearances. In another scene we see Ponyo encountering a couple with a small baby who are stranded in a boat by the rising floods – Ponyo attmpts to give the baby food, and instead the mother explains that the infant can’t eat the ham she has given them, but that the mother can eat it to produce breast milk. It is a scene that has resulted in some commentators claiming it is a bizarre or unsuitable inclusion for a children’s film, but it is in Ponyo’s brilliantly rendered reaction to the infant and mother that the scene’s real purpose is conveyed. In some of the best character expression work seen in anime for years, we see how Ponyo finds herself – even in her human form – to be wholly different from the humans she yearns to live amongst – staring at the baby child she sees something she has never been and will never experience, but is common and natural to all other humans. While certainly an unusual scene at first, it’s an exquisitely drawn and assembled piece of emotion laden animation, and a pivotal moment in the film’s thematic narrative.

Elsewhere the film examines modern family life, and in particular seems to focus on the directors own personal experiences. Apparently an open and conscious aim of Miyazaki’s script (although Miyazaki has recently denied this, the film deals with his relation with his son and reluctant Tales of Earthsea director Goro. Both father and son have openly talked and written about how their relationship has been strained, primarily due to Hayao not spending much time at home during Goro’s childhood, and the same situation is true for Sosuke and his father. The latter works out at sea, and in one of the films most memorable and subtly beautiful scenes we see father, via morse code light flashes, that yet again he won’t be home for dinner. Even then, the real message of the scene seems to be less one of regret, and more of understanding – and intended less for Goro but for Miyazaki’s long suffering wife Akime. As we watch Sosuke’s mother freak out and vent her frustrations at being left alone again, it is clear that Miyazaki is nodding in his wife’s direction, recognising the sacrifice she made – she once also had a career as a promising animator – to stay at home and raise their children. It is perhaps the longest running contradiction of Miyazaki’s frequent use of strong, female leads – and here Lisa’s character seems to reflect some of his guilt for that, showing that a housewife can easily be just as gutsy, strong-headed and dynamic as any of his previous, adventurous protagonists.

A recent discussion with Scott Green also raised some concern’s with me about Miyazaki’s dealing with family life; Scott suggesting that the director’s values may clash with that of modern parents in certain fundamental ways. One of the things that nearly all Miyazki’s films have emphasized over the decades – the best examples being perhaps Kiki’s Delivery Service and Spirited Away – is his belief that children should take on sometimes quite arduous responsibilities at a relatively early age. Ponyo takes this to another extreme, not only putting the safety of the Earth on a five-year-old’s shoulders (something, that in itself, is not necessarily that unusual in a child’s fantasy-adventure story), but having him do so by making what appears to be a lifetime romantic commitment. It’s certainly a jarring idea for most modern parents, and I can’t help but think that perhaps Miyazaki’s real intention was this act to be something more innocent, again similar to a fairy tale or fable ending. If it fails to communicate this adequately then the script and direction are certainly to blame, but it also highlights another, ironic, problem that Miyazaki’s work often faces. It is probably an issue unique to western audiences, and it’s a strange thing to write, but sometimes Ghibli animation is sometimes too good, the motion too realistic, and the attention to detail too perfect. To un-Japanese viewers, who largely still associate animated features with Disney, a Ghibli film is perhaps confusing in the way it combines realism with the fairy tale. While mainstream audiences are used to watching realistically portrayed Hollywood fantasy and science fiction, when they think of true fairy and folk tales they associate it with stylised, cartoon-like animation, and even that seems to be a dying trend in America. Maybe, due to their unfamiliar production values and blend of the fantastic and realistic, Miyazaki-san’s films send a confused message to the mainstream US public? Or is blaming this on the old cliche of ‘cultural differences’ a cop out answer? Hopefully, Ponyo will be seen by enough people that wider reaction can be gauged, and we can see if this is really an issue at all.

Not that any of this distracts from the honest truth: Ponyo is a breathtaking, compelling and massively enjoyable film. It is easily his strongest work since Spirited Away, and easily but sadly puts his son’s misfiring Tales of Earthsea to shame. Being able to watch it on repeatedly at home is fantastic, but right now I’m more eager than ever to see it on the big screen. Partly because I’m intrigued and excited to see what sort of job Disney have done with the big-name dub – and I know some tiny little people that can’t read subtitles yet that will enjoy the hell out of it – but mainly because this is a movie that demands to be viewed on the biggest screen possible. If you are lucky enough to be living somewhere where Ponyo is playing, then turn off the computer and go now. Go, not just to show your support for anime theatrical releases, but also to have one hell of a time. You won’t regret it.

Special thanks to everyone on Twitter that’s discussed this movie with me, and in particular Scott Green of Aint it Cool Anime and Scott VonShilling of Anime Almanac.

Yeah. After resisting for years, I’ve finally folded to the demands from some readers and set up a Twitter account. As if I needed anything else to distract me from getting some writing done. Anyway, the link’s below so go ahead and add me (or ‘follow me’ or whatever the correct terminology is for this one, I lose track) and find out what I’m thinking about/doing. A lot of it will be about anime. Some of it won’t. Some of it might even be interesting. Ahhh, the suspense…

twitter.com/timmaughan