Interesting Anime/Manga Radio Broadcast

[dwatts]

Some of you might be interested to hear this streamed radio broadcast.

I know basically nothing about Anime/Manga (and only after listening to this broadcast did I know the difference between the two!). For your experts it might be lame, but hey, thought I'd mention it.

[logboy]

i saw this link posted elsewhere... the show (just started playing it) should feature helen mcCarthy, ex-anime UK magazine editor (80s- mid 90s, writer of the 1999 book on miyazaki). very influential and knowledgable writer, and a big influence on me more than a decade ago...

[dwatts]

As you can see, a lot of interest here

Hope you enjoy it.

[Luna]

Interesting... I know just the person I need to pass this link on to. Thanks!

[Agent Z]

Originally Posted by dwatts

As you can see, a lot of interest here

Hope you enjoy it.

I thought as an introduction piece, it was fine. Recommended listening for those who still consider Sailor Moon and Pokemon to be the end all be all of what anime offers.

[maskull]

My computer's too slow for streaming stuff. But thanks anyway.

[dwatts]

Computer speed shouldn't matter, bandwidth now - that's a different thing.....

[maskull]

You know what I meant.

My brain is boiled. It's such a bloody hot day. Starting to miss winter.

[Deaddevilman]

Not exactly related, but this is an interesting article on the Otaku subculture, which is a direct result of to much anime/manga.

Anime, manga fuel oddball 'otaku' biz boom
Dozens of grown men from their 30s to 60s crowd around the tatami mat room in Kagetsuen, a Shizuoka Prefecture ryokan inn, and begin playing with their train sets. More than 90 percent of the inn's guests are adults who enjoy playing with toy trains.

These mature train setters have not only kept the inn afloat as others around it have fallen into oblivion, they've helped it grow in a prime example of the otaku business that's now booming throughout Japan, according to AERA (7/18).

"Thanks to trimming down our target market, we could stay in business," Eiji Misu, Kagetsuen's owner, tells AERA.

Some estimates say there's already an 88.8 billion yen market in the Moe Sangyo, literally the Budding Business but moe is the term Japan's millions of otaku have adopted to describe the warm filling they're filled with when they see something that turns them on - like a bespectacled young girl in a maid's outfit, saucer-eyed comic characters or, for the middle-aged men in Shizuoka, toy trains.

Anime, video games and manga form the basis of the Moe Sangyo, but few enterprises can boast of the successes of the Boy's Love business. Boy's Love comics and books tell stories of pretty young boys deeply in love and the otaku can't get enough of them.

Biblos, publisher of a wide array of Boy's Love books, first set up Boy's Love bible Magazine BE x Boy in 1993 and watched its circulation triple since to 100,000 with a readership spanning junior high schoolboys to middle-aged men in their 40s. Boy's Love comics have recently attracted a devoted following amongst mother and daughter readers.

"Boy's Love material has a certain underground appeal to it," Managing Editor Toshiko Maki tells AERA, adding that extra care is taken with the magazine's cover illustration because of complaints from some boys that they're too embarrassed to buy it in public.

Other otaku money making ventures are proving lucrative, such as the official test of Otaku proficiency that Biblos will carry out next month and the number of universities and colleges catering to those smitten by manga and anime.

By far the biggest sector of the Moe Sangyo, though, is the game market, which reaps annual sales of over 30 billion yen. Game conventions and markets attract thousands, hundreds of them cosplayers. Toshiro Kon, managing editor of PC News, says there are about 500 new game titles released yearly and a playing population of anywhere from 200,000 to 300,000.

Among those players are people like Sakura and Mamoru, a young couple wed in what the women's weekly calls a "Comic Marriage," not because there's anything farcical about their nuptials, but due to the fact that the self-professed otaku pair first met at a comic convention.

Sakura spends as much time as she possibly can drawing her own Boy's Love comics.

"My parents don't know that I've married an otaku," she says. "They're teachers and I seriously think they'd die of shock if they knew their daughter had married a guy she met at a comic convention."

Mamoru, meanwhile, is besotted with creating his own erotic video games. They romanced each other otaku-style.

"We traveled to Osaka together for a comic market and then stayed overnight at a cheap hotel," Sakura says.

While there, they didn't act like most other young footloose and fancy free couples, instead behaving in a manner befitting typical otaku -- Sakura drew her comics and Mamoru watched professional wrestling on TV. Barely a word was exchanged before the pair realized the sun had risen and Mamoru broke the silence by proposing.

Sakura gleefully accepted, her beau's apparent appeal lying in the fact that he is a man of few words who would let her pursue her hobby in peace. Mamoru, who is a regular salaryman during the day, wouldn't have it any other way - for the moment at least.

"Once she has a baby, she won't be able to do much drawing anymore," Mamoru tells AERA. "So I let her do as much as she can now."