(Although it looks mostly normal and I love it to death, a bunch of people like to hate on it for no reason and others keep telling me it’s terminally ill and will drop dead at any second)

Undertaker: “Bring out your dead!” *gong*
Panicked Anime Community: “Here’s one.”
U: “Twenty-five dollars.”
American Anime Industry: “I’m not dead!”
U: “What?”
PAC: “Nothing, here’s your twenty-five dollars.”
AAI: “I’m not dead!”
U: “Ey, he says ‘e’s not dead.”
PAC: “Yes he is…well…he will be soon…because he’s charging money for anime.”
AAI: “I’m getting better!”
PAC: “No you’re not, you’ll be flamed by thousands of ‘fans’ in a moment.”
U: “Well, I can’t take him like that, that’s against regulations.”
PAC: *looks left, looks right, clubs the anime industry over the head*

(incidentally, I just realized there was a trove of better sketches here)

Monty Python aside, the American anime industry, depnding on who you ask, is going through anywhere from a small trouble spot to a complete implosion. Like the state of the U.S. economy, there is a lot of awkward coughing and forced smiles being passed around higher-up, and depending on how you look at things there might be a fair bit of slashing prices and rates to encourage purchasing.

It’s a time that’s spurred a lot of panic, flaming, sharp sarcasm, and general feeling that would warrant a sad piano track or a dramatic orchestral build, and it’s one that I can’t really ignore much longer, as an American anime fan myself.

Like most disturbingly pleasant people, there’s an inner yandere side to this blogger, one that’s getting inflammed at all the reaction to the latest – what would one call it – ‘discussion’.

Actually, the ADV implosion-or-not is the lesser concern here; death panics aren’t incredibly new, and they’re rather like trying to light a wet fuse, one that’s been doused in water too many times to be taken seriously unless someone takes a flamethower to the table.

Rather, Bandai Visual USA’s much-publicized-by-now move to quickly license, release, and ratchet up the price on current shows True Tears and Shigofumi, and its following discussion, is what really spurred a boxcutter-and-boat-filled inner monologue. It’s the can of gasoline that they left on the table; it could be used to power a car on a trip to somewhere, but right now, people are just playing chicken with it and a lit match… Read the rest of this entry »