Courtesy of Crypton Future Media

With her trademark cyan pigtails, tomboy necktie and thigh-high boots, Miku’s faultless performances defy her youth. But then, as a hologram, it’s not her lack of faults that has garnered legions of glowstick-waving fans, it’s how very lifelike she—and the rise of digital pop stars—has become.

One of a host of digital creations from Sapporo’s Crypton Future Media, Miku’s name translates as “first sound of the future.” She was born out of Vocaloid voice synthesizer software first developed by Yamaha.

In an age of increasing consumer participation, real-life pop is allowing users to vote on the next big star via TV talent shows. With Crypton’s application this goes one step further, allowing the public to write songs and create videos for Miku; and even shape her personality and career to their own taste. Crypton decided Miku’s age, height and weight but users can determine her other traits.
Miku’s vocals are provided by just one person: 26-year-old voice actress Saki Fujita. Samples of Fujita singing are strung together to create full words and phrases, with the pitch altered by Yamaha’s Vocaloid synthesizer engine and played out via a keyboard.

With additional software called Miku Append, her voice becomes enriched with six tones: Soft (gentle, delicate voice), Sweet (young, childlike voice), Dark (mature, heartbroken voice), Vivid (bright, cheerful voice), Solid (loud, clear voice), and Light (innocent, heavenly voice).

A wide variety of Hatsune Mikus have already debuted, from the cute and child-like to sexy adult versions. Her future depends on which the fans accept.

Since her creation, the animated starlet has inspired not only fans, but artists, digital creators and even fashion trends, featuring on the cover of UK magazine Clash with a real-life model. Her first solo live show in August 2009 wowed a Tokyo audience and YouTube watchers alike, with the video for “World Is Mine” attracting millions of hits.

Miku recently stepped into the wider world in a July 2 performance at the 2011 Anime Expo in Los Angeles. Described by the LA Times as the “biggest guest,” she stole the show from real-life J-pop groups Nirgilis and Kalafina. The Times went on to say that “[Miku] perfectly embodies the fantastic creations the convention celebrates.”

3-D holographic live performances have been seen before in the shape of British unit Gorillaz, but Crypton believes the possibilities of merging music, anime and technology are far wider than Damon Albarn’s group might first have thought. While Gorillaz are actual artists, Hatsune Miku and her followers put the artistry in the hands of the masses.

Crypton thinks of it as a democracy they enjoy governing. Their most recent development is mikubook.com, a community where fans can recommend their favorite videos and develop future digital stars, some of whom have already joined Miku on stage.

The site is in English, highlighting a growing interest in Japan’s latest hi-tech cultural export. Crypton President Hiroyuki Itoh says that over 100,000 people have designed visuals and videos for Miku, and over 10,000 have written songs for her.

A computer software company managing a successful pop star is likely more of a surprise for the public than the music industry. Crypton has been selling music production software since 1995. “We create products or services for creators,” says Itoh. “We call ourselves a ‘meta creator.’”

An English version of the Hatsune Miku software is due soon, at which point the sound of the future will have fully arrived on the world stage.

Courtesy of Happy Science

Since 1997, Happy Science has produced a new animated film every three years, each loosely based on books by the group’s founder and leader, Ryuho Okawa. All have done solid business at the box office: the most recent, The Rebirth of Buddha, opened at 301 theaters last October, hitting number two in the charts during its first week and eventually being seen by an estimated 730,000 people.

Happy Science films can be watched as stand-alone works, but they’re actually part of one long story arc that reflects Okawa’s obsession with history, religion and ancient mythology. Laws of the Sun (2000) depicts the creation of the universe itself, starting with the Big Bang and then offering a glimpse of the Venusian high civilization that would eventually people other planets, including our own.

Moving forward in time, 1997’s Hermes Winds of Love recounts the story of the Ancient Greek hero’s marriage to Aphrodite, and the eventual birth of Eros. It turns out that Hermes was Thoth, King of Atlantis, in a previous life, and in an even earlier incarnation was the King of Mu. He will go on to become Shakyamuni Buddha in India—and is now, of course, a certain Mr. Okawa of Japan. All of these are emanations of El Cantare, the Eternal Buddha, who is the central deity of Happy Science.

While the films serve as religious road maps for the faithful, they can also be enjoyed as grand, and occasionally head-spinning, trips through the world’s faiths and civilizations. In this vast repository of plots, characters and settings, a purple-haired Einstein tells us from heaven, “This is the realm where past, present and future are one. I’m thinking of being born in the 30th century to create a time machine.” In The Golden Laws (2003), we then meet his daredevil granddaughter, who shaves the nose off the Great Sphinx of Giza when flying said time machine through ancient Egypt.

Helen Keller, Florence Nightingale, Mother Theresa and Thomas Edison all make cameos in Laws of Eternity (2006), but not every famous figures is depicted in a flattering light. Friedrich Nietzsche is awarded a special place in hell, where he’s joined by a scientist and academic who argues, “The freedom of religion also means the freedom of not believing in religion.”

To which Okawa says: tosh. His books, and their anime adaptations, promote a religious alternative to the secular view of the world: if you had a second or third chance or were continually reborn, how would your life be transformed? Basking in past-life nostalgia is Happy Science’s peculiar, optimistic tweaking of Buddhism—and a heroic attempt to inject religious values back into modern society.

For more information about Happy Science, see www.kofuku-no-kagaku.or.jp.

As far back as the late ’80s, Hayao Miyazaki was complaining about the tendency of some otaku to depict girls more as “pets” than as real people. It would be interesting to know what the legendary animator made of Loveplus.

Since bursting onto the scene last autumn, the Nintendo DS dating simulator (makers Konami prefer “communication game”) has become a phenomenon in the Japanese gaming and otaku communities. Despite minimal publicity, it has shifted over 200,000 copies and spawned five manga series and an iPhone game. With an updated semi-sequel out this month, helpfully called Loveplus+, it has created a legion of fans who dote over digital high-school cuties Rinko, Manaka and Nene.

Loveplus is strikingly different to other dating simulators. Where its competitors could more accurately be termed “seduction simulators,” with stories geared around wooing and ensnaring your chosen girl, Loveplus takes the confession of love as the starting point and allows the player to continue their relationship in an open-ended fashion. It’s a style of gameplay reminiscent of the tamagotchi “virtual pet” craze that swept the world in the ’90s, not to mention borrowing a number of features from another critter-centric DS title, Nintendogs.

Taisuke Endo, a Loveplus fan devoted to the bookish character Rinko, believes that the way the main section of the game runs in real time, with the heroine calling you or sending you text messages at various points through the day, is the key to its attraction. “This is new,” he explains, “because it even includes things that make you annoyed and bothered when you have an actual real-life girlfriend.”

Much of the popularity of Loveplus stems from it being able to push fans’ emotional buttons in a more direct way than anime or manga. As Endo says, “The point is that the heroine—a two-dimensional girl—can be into me, not just some guy in an anime.”

Nevertheless, some people have taken this attachment to extremes. Last year, a man calling himself “SAL9000” managed to convince a priest to marry him to his virtual date in front of his friends and family. The wedding ceremony was broadcast live on the video sharing site NicoNico Douga.

While some commentators were quick to see this as evidence of a culture that had lost its ability to distinguish reality and fantasy, Endo is more dismissive. “When people try to put on those kinds of big otaku events, we call that odotte-mita (‘I try to dance’),” he says, “It’s like posting about sex with your girlfriend on a website. People who make a big song and dance about the attraction of Loveplus are basically not serious about it.”

The game has also provoked a spate of articles on “virtual cheating,” in which real-life wives and girlfriends complain that they have been sidelined by their menfolk’s obsession with the game. (Endo, incidentally, claims to have abandoned real women in favor of the 2D variety a long time before Loveplus came along.)

The new Loveplus+, released on June 24, promises to blur the boundaries even further. One of the new features allows players to take a virtual trip with their date and spend a night at a hot spring or seaside resort—there is even a tie-up planned with the real-life Hotel Ohnoya in Atami. Another addition is the fitness mode, where players can do a workout and stretches together with their virtual honey.

If the popularity of the first game is anything to go by, Japan should expect to be overrun by hordes of super-fit, well-toned, and utterly love-struck otaku within a matter of months.

Loveplus+ is out now on Nintendo DS, priced ¥4,800.

©Tezuka Productions; courtesy of Ilex Press

Each year in late July, the movers and shakers of the comics industry gather for the largest and oldest convention of its kind in the US: Comic-Con International. Highlighting the event are the Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards, which celebrate the best that the art form has to offer.

This year, the Eisners have a distinctly foreign flavor. Nominated in the category of Best Comics-Related Book is an unprepossessing, 50-something Englishwoman who has written a comprehensive work on a seminal Japanese manga-ka.

Helen McCarthy’s The Art of Osamu Tezuka: God of Manga features never-before-seen images from Tezuka’s life and work and offers an exhaustive biography of the doctor and teacher who became one of the best-known pop culture figures in Japan. McCarthy, the author of several previous books on Japanese illustration and animation, was surprised to discover how little information was available in English about the subject.

“He was a gifted illustrator, designer, essayist, writer—he had so many talents,” she tells Metropolis. “And the range of his influence, far outside the arts and entertainment, makes him one of the most important figures in 20th-century Japanese popular culture. Yet in the English-speaking world, very few people knew his name, and even those who did thought of him simply as the guy who made Astro Boy… I wanted people to have some idea of the sheer magnitude of the man and his work.”

McCarthy might not fit the typical image of a manga fan, but she was smitten with the genre from day one.

“In 1981, I started going out with an illustrator who had seen manga and anime in Spain the year before and brought some toys and comics back to Britain,” she recalls. “I was just as intrigued as he was by their narrative energy and dynamic visual grammar, so we tried to get some more information. We found that there was nothing at all in English, apart from a few tiny references in animation and comics encyclopedias, and some of those were quite patronizing and dismissive. [So] I decided to write about anime and manga.”

For her work in promoting Japanese culture, the Japan Foundation honored McCarthy with a Japan Festival Award in 1997. Although the author seems a little uncomfortable with the title of “cultural ambassador,” she’d like to encourage comic-loving tourists to see more of what the country has to offer.

“I’d love to work with tour companies to develop specific anime and manga-related tours that would also take in elements of Japan’s history and culture newcomers might otherwise miss. Western fans go to Tokyo and Kyoto, but not many travel to see the beautiful Akita landscape that inspired Tsurikichi Sanpei, or visit Kyushu, where the great Machiko Hasegawa did her early works and created Sazae-san.”

When asked about the Eisner nomination, McCarthy offered words of praise to her design and editorial teams at Ilex Press and Abrams ComicArts, but also singled out Tezuka Productions, which is run by Tezuka’s son Makoto.

“They did everything they possibly could to help me and make the book valid. They never once tried to influence my writing or the approach I chose to take, but they were always there to check facts and dates and provide information, as well as those fabulous images. If every studio was as helpful and generous to writers, there would be a huge flood of books on Japan’s great artists!

“[Winning an Eisner Award] would confirm I’d done something worthy of Tezuka-sensei,” McCarthy concludes. “Of course, the other books on the nomination list are all very good indeed, so I’ll just have to keep my fingers crossed!”

Winners will be announced at Comic-Con 2010, which takes place July 22-25 in San Diego. See www.comic-con.org for details. For more information about Helen McCarthy or her books, see www.helenmccarthy.org. McCarthy blogs at helenmccarthy.wordpress.com.

Illustration by Jamie Lano

“Chouju to han’ei wo.” Or, as some of us are more used to hearing, “Live long and prosper.” Those iconic words, first spoken by Mr. Spock in the original Star Trek television series some 40 years ago, helped usher in a new era of science fiction television across the world. And Japan was no exception.

While the world of Japanese Star Trek fandom is not as readily visible as, say, goth loli or the cult of Pikachu, trekkies are lurking around nearly every corner. In particular, the series (known in Japan as Uchu Daisakusen) has had a strong influence on men now in their 30s and 40s.

“Nearly everyone watched it at least once growing up,” says Tenjin Hidetaka, 36, a mechanical designer for the popular Macross Frontier anime series. “Fans told me about Star Trek: The Next Generation, which at the time was being serialized…. From the moment I tuned in, I was hooked. It was the first time that I became completely involved in a television show.”

Star Trek debuted on Japanese TV in the ’70s, and the first unofficial fanclub, Starfleet Kyoto, formed soon after. A few years later, the fan base grew when the Japanese edition of popular sci-fi magazine Starlog began publishing special issues with interviews and behind-the-scenes photos. In 1980, an 8-bit text-based simulation game based on the series became the country’s top-selling title shortly after its debut. More new fans were beamed aboard in 1992, when The Next Generation began its long-running serialization, and then again when small publisher Japan Mix released a series of Star Trek-related fiction and guidebooks a few years later.

The series has proved enormously influential in pop culture as well. Leading game show America Oudan Ultra Quiz, which ran on Nippon TV from 1977 to 1992, used a version of the original Star Trek music as its opening theme, and the 2005 film Summer Time Machine Blues featured a character who dressed up as Commander Riker from The Next Generation. Perhaps the best-known tribute came from superstar band M-Flo, who rewrote the original Star Trek theme to coincide with the series’ 40th anniversary. Titled “Love Long and Prosper,” the track is available on the album electriCOLOR.

Although Star Trek fever broke with the cancellation of spin-off series like Voyager and Deep Space Nine, interest is heating up again thanks to last year’s big-screen release. At the December edition of Comiket, the bi-annual doujinshi event that draws tens of thousands of people to Tokyo Big Sight, visitors could find almost any type of fan-generated material imaginable. The series’ appeal to Japanese anime and manga devotees is obvious—the episodes are by turns humorous, adventuresome, romantic and yaoi.

In the pre-internet days, small-scale Star Trek clubs like Uchu Ringo, which hosted gatherings and parties for fellow fans, were the norm. Nowadays, most fans have moved to Mixi as a central rallying point, with the largest trekkie community boasting nearly 7,000 members. The Japanese version of Memory Alpha, the Star Trek wiki, hosts nearly 2,000 articles.

All of this activity has boldly led to where no Japanese has gone before: an official Japan-based Star Trek fan club, which debuted in February. Featuring members-only events and original merchandise, Starfleet Far East is the culmination of 40 years of fandom. For Japan’s keitai legions, there’s also a cellphone site where, for a monthly fee of ¥350, users can access ringtones, sound effects, animated screensavers and the latest Star Trek news.

Official fanclub: www.1701.jp. Keitai site: http://web.peex.jp/startrek/.

©許斐 剛／集英社・ＮＡＳ ・テニスの王子様プロジェクト; ©許斐 剛／集英社・マーベラスエンターテイメント・ネルケプランニング

“In order to grasp victory, we will become strong.”

And become strong they have. Although you may never have heard of them, the pretty boys that speak that line are—with their cool dance moves and immaculately groomed hair—making thousands of girls swoon all across Japan.

The story begins in Golden Week 2003, when a musical based on one of the most popular sports manga of the day, Tennis no Oujisama (“The Prince of Tennis”), made its debut. The story concerns a 12-year-old prodigy’s struggle to enter his new junior high’s sports club. The musical adaptation was simple at first, with stage time divided between mimed tennis matches, dance numbers and rousing fight songs. It had a five-day run at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Space in Ikebukuro.

Seven years later, after 23 runs and more than 100 cast members, the lights-and-music spectacular that is Musical Tennis no Oujisama, or Tenimyu, is finally reaching the end. Of its first season, that is. The “final” show, after which the series will be taken in a new direction, is being staged next month and promises to be a treat for anyone who likes sports, hot boys, Japanese comedy, the absurd, or just lively music and energetic crowds. Even if you just want to meet a cute girl, here’s your chance: the audience is almost exclusively female.

The success of Tenimyu is all the more surprising because the show began as a kind of experiment. Tickets to the first musical didn’t sell out, but the young female audience lined up dutifully to purchase photos of the cast members (which included topless as well as in-costume shots). Demand was so high that a set of four photos originally costing ¥600 would go on to fetch upward of ¥10,000 in secondhand shops. Just three months later, production company MMV Entertainment staged a rerun of the musical to sold-out crowds.

Subsequent musicals also played to packed theaters, despite being staged in increasingly large venues. Goods flew off the shelves, and in December 2004, the sixth installment sold out within five minutes. The demand for tickets was so great that on the final day, MMV rented a separate theater and broadcast the last two shows live.

Tennis no Oujisama follows a fairly simple story of pre-teen Ryoma Echizen’s attempt to enter the best junior high tennis club in Japan, and his team’s journey to reach—and eventually win—the national championship. Although the original manga ended its 42-volume run in March 2008, its wide cast of male characters and quirky humor solidified its popularity with female fans. A year later, Takeshi Konomi, the 39-year-old creator, began work on a sequel that brings back a majority of the characters from the original.

Brimming with the support of thousands of girls, Tenimyu has launched the careers of some of the hottest names in Japanese show business. Singers like Kimeru and actors like Yuu Shirota (Heat Island) and Kazuki Kato (Wangan Midnight) have gone on to snag numerous TV and movie roles. Watanabe Entertainment’s acting troupe D-Boys was established with members from Tenimyu. Whereas in the past, sales of idol photos were largely limited to Johnny’s stars like Smap or girl groups like Morning Musume, Tenimyu has prompted a major shift in ikemen culture.

Nowadays, the shops along Ikebukuro’s Otome road that were formerly filled with anime-related goods are brimming with men’s idol DVDs and photo books featuring Tenimyu cast members. Doujinshi, or fan-made comics that often have homosexual themes, abound. Fans have created such demand that manga-based musicals starring all-male casts have become commonplace.

And the success keeps growing. The latest show, titled Musical Tennis no Oujisama: Dream Live 7th, has 57 members in its all-male cast. If this version remains true to its predecessors, it will feature jokes, short skits, extravagantly produced song-and-dance numbers, complicated dancing, lights, confetti, fog, fire and thousands of screaming female fans. And, possibly, even tennis.

Musical The Prince of Tennis 
Adapted from the popular manga about boys in a prestigious junior high tennis club. May 20-23, various times, ¥6,000. Yokohama Arena. Tel: 0570-02-9922. For more information see www.tennimu.com (PC) or www.m-tenimyu.jp (mobile).

Photo by Aimee Major Steinberger

As her limpid blue eyes gaze up softly at you, you realize that the precious little one’s trust in you is absolute. She sits with eternal patience, waiting as you adjust her lacy gray bow so that it falls just right. At last she seems ready, and you give her a final once-over, smoothing an errant hair into place.

Then you swing closed the cover of your violin case and lock it, sealing her safely inside.

You’re not being cruel or harsh—in fact, you are protecting your little one from the discomforts of city transit before you make the long pilgrimage to Tokyo Big Sight. You’re going to attend Doll Party 23, and it’s vital that your loved one—your doll—arrives looking her best.

Welcome to the modern world of ball-jointed doll fandom. If you’re an enthusiast or just interested in getting to know what they’re all about, then Dolls Party 23 is the place to be.

Held biannually at Tokyo Big Sight, the free, one-day event attracts more than 15,000 visitors. It’s organized by popular doll company Volks and features exclusive new dolls and accessories for sale, as well as showrooms, a customized doll contest, a “tearoom” for chatting with other doll collectors, and special classes for anything from how to paint a doll face to how to properly bathe your precious.

Put simply, a ball-jointed doll (kyutai kansetsu ningyo in Japanese, or BJD for short) is any doll articulated with ball-and-socket joints which allow for a range of motion—that is, they are fully poseable. Modern dolls are cast in polyurethane resin, a type of hard plastic that warms quickly to the touch and feels a bit like porcelain. The most common height is 40cm, but BJD can be as tall as 80cm or as small as 10cm.

Yet choosing the height of your doll is just the beginning. There are any number of skin colors, eye tints and shapes, complexion, makeup, hair and, finally, clothes.

Indeed, for thousands of enthusiasts worldwide, the attraction lies in being able to create a fully personalized doll. “Some people might not get it,” says Rikka Gallas, 29, a production assistant from Chicago and the proud mother of two BJDs. “Anyone can have a particular mold of a doll, but who you are and who you want that doll to be really shines through with your choice of hair and eyes and clothing. The possibilities are endless, and when you sit back and look at or hold your doll in your arms, you know he or she is yours.”

That kind of customizability comes with a hefty price tag. The cost for a basic BJD—a naked doll without any hair, eyes, or face paint—is anywhere from ¥30,000 to ¥80,000. Special edition sets typically start at around ¥150,000, and some fan-customized models can sell in online auctions for as much as ¥500,000. Alternatively, there are relatively affordable places to buy less-popular brands online, such as Bobobie.com, where a basic doll set can be bought for as little as ¥12,000.

The current doll boom can be traced to 1998, when Akihiro Enku, a sculptor for the popular toy company Volks, created a one-off lifelike BJD for his wife. An executive director was taken with the design, and the following year, the first set of 57cm tall Super-Dollfies was released to the public. Girls especially were taken with the more realistic design and customizability, and for the first time, females became power consumers in the anime figurine market. Today, 70 percent of BJD owners are female, but male owners are steadily on the rise, and the market is quickly adapting.

Nowadays, more than 20 different companies across Asia and the US make their own molds, and hundreds of fans have created livelihoods out of painting faces, sewing clothes, and doing modifications for other enthusiasts. The mother of it all, Volks, also operates doll museums and cafes across the country. Their original museum, Tenshi no Sato (“The Angel’s Home”), is in Kyoto, but satellite branches can be found in Akihabara, Ginza, Harajuku, Ikebukuro and Shinjuku.

Dolls Party 23
Bi-annual showcase featuring new dolls plus accessories for sale. May 4, 10am, free. Tokyo Big Sight, Odaiba. Nearest stn: Kokusai Tenjijo. www.volks.co.jp/en

Courtesy of the Touhou Project

Ask guys in Akihabara what they’re into and you’ll come up with the name Touhou, a series of side-scrolling shooting games famous for its cute characters and soundtracks. Ask girls in Ikebukuro and you’ll hear Hetalia, a webcomic turned media franchise that’s populated by beautiful boy characters. The common thread is that these works were created by fans and grew in popularity online.

The Touhou Project is the name of a series of works by ZUN, a one-man team who does all his own graphics, music and programming. The 33-year-old Nagano native originally wanted to compose music for fighting games, but eventually realized that making his own games would provide a better outlet. He decided to practice programming with a group called Amusement Makers, which resulted in the first Touhou game, Highly Responsive to Prayers, released in 1996. The series developed into a shooter of the danmaku (“bullet hell”) variety. The player controls their character—a cute girl with mystical powers—who must avoid a near constant onslaught of enemy volleys.

ZUN’s fan base grew in 2002, when he went solo and released the sixth Touhou game, Embodiment of Scarlet Devil. The first in the series to appear on Windows, it had greatly superior graphics and Midi music, which showcased ZUN’s skills as a composer. He was tolerant of fan works, and even encouraged them provided they were not for unauthorized commercial distribution. Derivative works included dojinshi, music, movie clips, anime, games and character goods.

Courtesy of Hidekaz Himaruya

More than just games, Touhou (top right) has developed into an internet meme among otaku. A few years ago, an amateur music group called IOSYS released a Flash animation to promote a remix of one of the character’s theme songs, “Marisa Stole the Precious Thing.” At the time, many dating simulation games were posting promotional Flash videos that featured similarly cute characters, and Touhou benefitted from (albeit mistaken) association. The music and videos were remixed over and over again on the popular Nico Nico Douga video-sharing site, and the meme grew along with the site itself. Cute character designs, a large library of music, and momentum among fans have propelled Touhou to success.

“I was first hooked on the Flash animations,” says Tomoaki Hirai, a 21-year-old university student. “What really keeps me a fan of Touhou, though, is the distinct moe sensibility that the game and culture has. I play other games too, but I’ll always come back to play Touhou’s Phantasmagoria of Flower View because it has my favorite character, Yuka.”

And moe spells success among female fans, too. Hetalia: Axis Powers (above right) is a webcomic by Hidekaz Himaruya that features 40 nations anthropomorphized as beautiful boys. Historical, cultural and political matters are reinterpreted as relationships and romance between them. The series began in 2003, and fans quickly started writing their own stories featuring favorite countries, publishing them in both digital and print formats. The fandom grew online, and in 2008, publishing company Gentosha released two volumes of manga; four audio CDs also followed. Throughout it all, fans were granted creative liberty, which helped spread interest.

In 2009, Studio Deen produced an anime version of Hetalia that was streamed online. The decision to broadcast on the web as opposed to a traditional TV outlet may have been to avoid criticism of the national stereotypes being portrayed—South Korea did, in fact, protest the show. However, the effect was to keep the series online and on the minds of fans. A highly anticipated animated feature film is scheduled for release this year.

Even as criticism mounts about the supposed lack of creativity in the Japanese contents industry, it seems that creative fans are happy to generate their own.

Courtesy of Life Is So Cruel, Ltd.

In July 2009, a Japanese toymaker released an action figure of Billy Herrington, a bisexual porn star popular in the US in the ’90s. This wasn’t because of his chiseled abs. Rather, it was because otaku were posting remixed videos of him on popular video-sharing site Nico Nico Douga (NND).

“I thought it was so creative,” says Herrington, 40, who wound up touring Japan and meeting with fans last year. “I could really appreciate the effort it took for the fans to put it together, the time it took.”

Launched in 2006, NND now has over 10 million registered users and boasts 40 million page views a day. It has 400 categories of content, mostly anime, TV programs and music and personal videos. Each category includes both original (source) and derivative (fanproduced) content.

The secret to NND ’s success is interaction among users, who post comments that appear on top of the streaming video. Comments unfold as they are written and at the tempo they are thought. It’s all quite simple and intensely exciting—the equivalent of having a room full of anonymous critics all shouting comments out as the film is still rolling. The result is often confusing, but always amusing.

Herrington, or “big brother” (aniki) to fans, is famous for soramimi (literally “empty ear”), in which lyrics or dialogue are (mis)translated based on their sound. NND users write alternative lyrics to unintelligible songs (both domestic and foreign) and share them in a sort of imaginative free-association. Some become cult classics, like the German version of Dschinghis Khan’s hit song “Moskau.” Lines from Herrington’s porn videos became a great source of soramimi, and over 4,000 videos were posted under titles such as “Wrestling Series,” “Forest Fairy” and “Philosophy.”

Some of these videos are extremely well made and get millions of hits. Indeed, there is a category on NND devoted to “wasted talent,” or works that are just too well-made to appear in this environment. They feature professional quality editing, dance routines, covers of anime songs and almost any other talent imaginable. For example, “Jason” uses a chainsaw to carve chunks of wood into statues of popular anime characters, while “Nojiri,” a science fiction author, has devised a way to make underwear fly. Some of the creativity on NND is making its way into the mainstream, thanks to outlets such as “The Net Star,” TV program on NHK hosted by popular idol Chiaki Kyan.

And then there are the international success stories like Herrington and Beckii Cruel (pictured), a 14-year-old high school student from England who in 2007 became famous on NND for cosplaying as anime characters and dancing to popular anime songs. “My videos are accessible through the internet, and anyone can watch them,” Beckii tells Metropolis. “That even one person would watch them is a great compliment!”

More than one person is watching. The response to her live performance in Akihabara last October is proof of that, and Beckii’s videos have been viewed some 6 million times on YouTube and other sites. She’s now signed to a label in the UK and heading up an idol group called Cruel Angels, which is comprised of young girls from around the world who love Japanese pop culture. Beckii released her first solo DVD in December, and Cruel Angels their first single and DVD in February.

A Billy Herrington action figure and cosplay Spice Girls for otaku, courtesy of Nico Nico Douga? The path to celebrity and its aftermath in the digital age is enough to make anyone smile.

Illustration by Julio Shiiki

Next time your girlfriend wants to go see a statue of Buddha, be aware that she might have an ideal man on her mind. No, not you. Buddha.

The Japanese media is famous for creating categories to describe people and trends, like “herbivore boys” (soshoku danshi), who are more interested in hobbies than the opposite sex. Now, we have the bosatsu danshi, or Buddha boy.

The Buddha boy is not about loving the belly. Literally, a bosatsu is a Bodhisattva, or enlightened being, which in statuary form are often rather thin and intense-looking. A bosatsu danshi likewise “has a beautiful face, smooth skin, slim body, but is not too feminine. Theirs is an attractiveness and sensuality beyond mere sex and age.”

That description is from the January 20 issue of women’s magazine An-an, which provides real-life Buddha boy examples—actors Masaya Kikawada, Go Ayano and Yoshihiko Hosoda.

The trend has become a boon for bosatsu statues and the museums displaying them. This is part of a larger fad, too. Jun Miura, the man credited with coining the phrase “my boom” in Japanese, is also known for striking up new interest in bosatsu, particularly the god of chaos known as Ashura.

Take for example “National Treasures, The Ashura Exhibition,” held at the Tokyo National Museum in Ueno last summer, where the main attraction was an Ashura statue from Nara’s renowned Kofuku-ji temple. Ashura often appears rather menacing, but this one had a benign look on his face—almost like he felt sorry for the strife of the world. Fans also noted that his body resembled that of Keita Goto, the 18-year-old winner of the inaugural “Ashura Award” in Junon magazine’s Super Boy Contest. Nearly a million people came to see the TNM show, and the lines were so long and the venue so crowded that opening hours were extended.

Not satisfied with just seeing the statue, visitors flocked to the gift shop, where the prize item was an Ashura statuette created by renowned figure maker Kaiyodo. The run was limited to 15,000, and visitors could only buy one each, but the ¥2,980 figures sold out in two weeks. They now regularly fetch over ¥10,000 in online auctions.

Buddha is also popping up in more unexpected places. The cover of Brutus magazine last April. The number five spot on Nikkei Trendy’s Best of 2009. In the Mixi Ashura Community. In something akin to a pin-up girl calendar, popular with middle-aged office ladies for its “soothing properties.”

And in manga. No, not Tezuka Osamu’s Buddha, but Buddha as a hot young man living as a poor bachelor in the suburbs of Tokyo with a Jesus Christ who thinks he looks like Johnny Depp. This is Saint Young Men, a manga by young female artist Hikaru Nakamura that has morphed from a one-shot gag into a cultural phenomenon. Volume 4, released last October, sold 321,000 copies in one week, topped the Oricon Biz comics ranking the following month, and was voted to the number one spot in This Manga is Incredible 2009. It also won the 13th Tezuka Osamu Cultural Award in the Short Story category.

Who ever thought Buddha, the guy who quit life, could be so sexy and successful?

For more info about Kaiyodo’s Ashura figure, see www.kaiyodo.co.jp/asyura.

Photo Courtesy of the Pirate Party

Photo Courtesy of the Pirate Party

In this sense, Japan offers a compelling model. Structurally, the country is a nightmare for new media. The number of new consumers is shrinking, and monopolistic publishing houses and broadcasters are fiercely resistant to digitization. This is one reason the Kindle has been so slow to enter Japan and TV shows rarely make it onto official websites.

Yet in another sense, Japan is remarkably forward-thinking. For 30 years, companies such as Kadokawa have experimented with a “media mix” model, in which popular series appear as novels, manga, anime, games, music, TV, films and merchandise. This helps explain the shift in anime to “charismatic characters” who can jump across media platforms.

In this model, the original media product serves more or less as a sales pitch for characters, which evolve in dialogue with a vibrant fan community. Japan’s largest privately operated public gathering is Comiket, a three day sales event for doujin (fan-generated) content that draws half a million people.

Indeed, seminal TV anime series Neon Genesis Evangelion was famous for releasing semi-official doujinshi featuring its insanely popular characters. The reciprocal arrangement works the other way around as well—one doujinshi by Nariko Enomoto was so good that Evangelion director Hideaki Anno included elements of it in the theatrical versions of the series.

Granted, this synergy and symbiosis only occurs in an environment where works are creative reinterpretations, not commercial rip-offs. Even the Pirate Party makes it clear that they’re not endorsing piracy. Rather, they want to see wider implementation of Lawrence Lessig’s concept of Creative Commons, by which works are made available for others to legally share and build on.

Japan seems to be on track, but Lindgren is hesitant to call the country enlightened.

“The laws in Japan are harsh against file sharing, and the creator of the program Winny was successfully prosecuted,” he cautions.

The Pirate Party is not active about expanding outside its native Sweden. Rather, it waits for people to build up movements in their own time in their respective countries. Lindgren says he’d like to see a Japanese branch of the party in the near future. Heads up, otaku: the pirate ship has arrived, and it’s time to hop aboard.

Find out how to start your own Pirate Party at www.pp-international.net or www.pp-international.net/forum/index.php.

Designer Ricky Wilson holds up a figure that looks like the creature from Alien, only with a pink color scheme and heavy metal accessories. In fact, it appears as if three different figures have been cut up and mixed together. Wilson’s creation is an example of designer vinyl, a chaotic blending of cultural references in unique art objects.

“There is definitely a certain kind of fan who gets this,” says the 26-year-old American, who lives in Japan. “These figures are a little bit underground, like low-run punk and hardcore records.”

Vinyl figures in Japan were originally low-cost, mass-produced toys for kids to play with and, in the process, destroy. Because of this, not many of them in good condition survive, especially from the ’60s, and the ones that do are usually quite expensive.

This changed in the ’90s, when companies like Medicom started to make vinyl figures based on music groups and artist designs, and toymaker Bandai (through its B-Club) released reproductions of older figures by companies like Bullmark. Other firms began producing older-style vinyl, including a lot of the minor kaiju monsters that never made it into figure form the first time around. Vinyl is cheaper than PVC, which makes it possible to do runs in the low hundreds and still break even, and the material is more durable and cheaper than resin.

The result is a kind of subculture within a subculture. Designer vinyl figures are popular with collectors who grew up on a steady diet of monster movies and creature films, and a handful of artists produce items for them based on that rarified knowledge.

“There’s a certain handcrafted feeling to vinyl that a lot of other figures are missing,” says Wilson, a fan of kaiju movies who played with Godzilla and Ultraman figures as a kid. “It’s also cool to see figures that were made just because the creator believed in the design and without a lot of consideration for marketability—which, of course, is something you can’t do with a larger company or more cash-intensive production method.”

Besides selling their products in shops and online, most designer-vinyl producers organize events at galleries and otaku-oriented gatherings. Clients run the gamut of ages and interests, but most aficionados of vintage figures tend to be SF fans, while collectors of the newer stuff also like fashion and design. That helps explain stores located in hip neighborhoods like Daikanyama.

Toy collector paradise Mandarake is still the No. 1 stop for vintage vinyl, with a range of products spanning genres and time periods. Other core locations include Ichibanboshi in Koenji, FewMany in Shinjuku, and Itabashi’s Monstock!! AP, a fantastic café run by a vinyl producer and frequented by creators.

For his part, Wilson would like to see designer vinyl have a place of its own in the center of geek culture, Akihabara.

“A lot of the guys there would really like vinyl if it was presented in a way that was accessible to them,” he says, “but unfortunately vinyl can be a little difficult to get into, both from a stylistic point of view as well as from a collecting standpoint.”

Yet vinyl, despite its cooler, edgier image, isn’t so far removed from the otaku scene. There are beautiful figures of Urusei Yatsura’s Lum-chan and Neon Genesis Evangelion’s Ayanami Rei, and even some fashion dolls by companies like Marmit that are based on anime and geared towards otaku. Last year, the girls from Touhou, a videogame franchise beloved for its cute characters, got their own vinyl figures too.

FewMany: 3-17-21 Shinjuku. Tel: 03-3353-2532. Open noon-8pm (irregular holidays). Nearest stn: Shinjuku, east exit. www.fewmany.com

Ichibanboshi: 3-37-19 Koenji-Minami, Suginami-ku. Tel: 03-3313-8025. Open Tue-Fri 2-8pm, Sat-Sun noon-8pm, closed Mon. Nearest stn: Koenji. http://1ban-boshi.com/

Mandrake has four locations in Tokyo. Akihabara branch: 3-11-12 Soto-Kanda, Chiyoda-ku. Tel: 03-3252-7007. Open daily noon-10pm. Nearest stn: Akihabara. www.mandarake.co.jp

Monstock!! AP: 6-86-10 Takinogawa, Kita-ku. Open Fri-Mon 5-11pm (gallery 5-9pm), closed Tue-Thu. Tel: 050-1183-3808. Nearest stn: Itabashi. http://monstockap.blog35.fc2.com

Courtesy of Yunmao Ayakawa

Otaku are infamous for a lot of things, but being gourmands isn’t one of them. Immersed in their hobbies, they often forget to eat, or opt for unhealthy fast food and snacks with lots of calories to fuel their maniac lifestyles. But a recent cookbook intended exclusively for fanboys seeks to change that.

“This is a cookbook for otaku, written by an otaku of otaku,” says Yunmao Ayakawa, author of Ota Meshi Cooking. “In short, this is a cookbook of ideas that I, as an otaku, want to present to my fellow otaku.”

Since Daisuke Terasawa’s Mister Ajikko, the tales of a young culinary wiz, was first published in 1986, there has been a string of popular food-themed manga and anime, including Cooking Papa, Oishinbo and Yakitate Japan. There is even a dedicated category for “gourmet manga and anime,” about young men and women struggling to become great chefs. Last year, NHK introduced a culinary show that’s become a hit with otaku, Cooking Idol Ai! Mai! Main!, which features animated segments and is hosted by an 11-year-old girl. However, otaku still seem more interested in buying drawings of food than ingredients to make a meal.

Ayakawa (pictured, with chef Junichiro Nishi), a professional cosplayer and idol, knows this from experience. She recalls that as a student she used to get caught up in otaku hobbies and spend four days without food or sleep, which “caused my bust to drop from a D-cup to a B.” After speaking with her otaku friends, she found this destructive cycle of obsession was par for the course.

“To a fault, otaku put their time, energy and soul into what they love,” she says. “But I thought that in order to have a good fantasy we first need to have good food.”

All of which makes perfect sense, but after they’ve spent all their money on anime, manga, videogames and merchandise, otaku may find that they have nothing left for food. To overcome this challenge, Ayakawa decided to introduce extremely simple recipes that can be made quickly using cheap ingredients available at convenience stores, where many otaku head late at night to read manga or pick up pre-made bento dinners.

The book employs all kinds of tricks to get otaku interested in whipping up a meal. Ayakawa introduces recipes used by famous directors, illustrators and mangaka in their homes; there is plenty of ani-meshi, or food that appears in anime, and bento becomes chara-ben, or boxed lunches featuring popular characters.

Chara-ben are already popular with prepubescent Japanese boys, and the ornate lunchboxes that mothers make for their offspring have warranted a rash of photo books over the past decade. However, Ota Meshi Cooking is unique in that Ayakawa made most of the examples herself, and chose images of beautiful girls that would appeal to her target audience.

But perhaps the best part of the book is the inclusion of details that would only appeal to otaku. For instance, there is an interview with “Dr. Chiba,” director of the first aid station at Comiket, who explains that otaku need to maintain their health so they will have the energy to go all-out combing the stacks at the massive comic market.

Ayakawa is confident that once otaku read her book, their characteristic fastidiousness will kick in and a generation of “cooking otaku” will be born. Indeed, it has already begun: Hirono Arai of the idol group Nakano Fujoshi Sisters is renowned for her exploits in the kitchen.

“Cooking takes a lot of concentration and imagination,” says Arai, 22. “It is really easy to get deeply into it.”

Ota Meshi Cooking (Prest, 2007, 78pp, ¥1,500) is available at area bookstores.

Courtesy of Akiba Guild

On this cold winter morning, a group of young Japanese men is milling about in front of pachinko parlor Akiba Island. In the queue is Kentaro Ishizaki, a 35-year-old systems engineer. Ishizaki counts as his vices gluttony for anime and lust for busty character figures, but he does not smoke, drink or, before today, gamble.

“I’m here to play the Macross machine, which has exclusive new animation,” he says shyly. “I probably won’t win, but there’s a better chance of a return than playing a videogame. Anyway, I really just want to see the animation.”

The Japanese gambling market is the largest in the world. The legally gray pachinko industry alone is valued at ¥23 trillion per year—more than the nation’s entire automotive industry. There are more pachinko parlors than McDonald’s, and machines keep fans hooked by featuring images and sounds of favorite media and celebrities. Now, proprietors are appealing to a generation of young men who grew up watching anime and playing videogames. The stereotypical otaku makes an attractive client—an obsessive individual with money to burn and little experience at gambling.

Many popular anime series now have their own machines, including classics such as Space Battleship Yamato, Fist of the North Star and Neon Genesis Evangelion. Some, like Urusei Yatsura, are particularly clever in finding tactics to get players to keep playing. On this machine, anime sex icon Lum-chan appears onscreen to dance for and encourage players. Parlors are also finding ways to increase the value for their anime-loving clientele—2008 saw the introduction of UCC Evangelion-themed coffee cans whose distribution was limited to pachinko parlors.

Pachinko machines with anime themes are not only drawing fans; they are introducing non-otaku players to anime. So many people became newly interested in old series via pachinko that otaku created a name for the trend: the Pororoca Reverse Current Phenomenon. But not all gamblers enjoy this otaku-ization. Some say gambling is outlaw culture, enjoyed by people who used to beat up otaku in school. Others point out that gambling is serious business, not play time, and so is unsuited for those not in to win.

Indeed, Akihabara boasts a maid casino called Akiba Guild (pictured) and a cosplay mahjong parlor called Tempane, neither of which actually offers money games. Instead, winners earn points that can be used to “level up” member status and, in some cases, earn the right to take pictures with the staff. At Tempane, cards can be used to unleash special abilities during mahjong, adding a fantasy layer to game play.

“Gambling is really connected to sex,” says Ryo Mikami, 25, a programmer and self-professed otaku who dabbles in games of chance. “Men are empowered by cute girls in costumes serving their drinks, and that fits well with sexy anime characters and girls in cosplay.”

Mikami stops by Tempane at least once a week to play mahjong, but says he is “30 percent interested in winning and 70 percent interested in the atmosphere and camaraderie of the parlor.” He met most of his friends here, including his ex-girlfriend, who was a staffer and seiyuu (voice actor) who shared his interest in anime and manga.

Mahjong is commonly thought to be a part of older salaryman culture, but with at least three manga running monthly mahjong comics, and breakout anime series such as Saki, about a high school girls’ mahjong club, many an otaku is taking up the game. In fact, Mikami may soon find a friend in Ishizaki.

“I am starting to get interested in mahjong because of Saki and the Higurashi mahjong game,” he says. “I am in love with the characters.”

Akiba Island: B1F-1F Don Quijote Bldg, 4-4-3 Soto-Kanda, Chiyoda-ku. Tel: 03-5209-1300. Open daily 10am-10:45pm. Nearest stn: Akihabara. www.akiba-island.com

Akiba Guild: 8F, 3-15-7 Soto-Kanda, Chiyoda-ku. Tel: 03-3255-7155. Open Mon-Fri 3-10pm, Sat-Sun 1-10pm. Nearest stn: Suehirocho or Akihabara. http://akibacc.com

Tempane: 3F, 3-8-6 Soto-Kanda, Chiyoda-ku. Tel: 03-3255-3103. Open Mon-Fri from 1pm, Sat-Sun from 11am. Nearest stn: Suehirocho or Akihabara. www.tempane.com

There are 130 sweaty otaku men in the basement of Ikebukuro’s Live Inn Rosa venue. Most wear shirts emblazoned with bright anime designs and bandanas on their brows to wipe away excess perspiration. Some women are peppered throughout the crowd, as are cosplayers and a few almost naked lads who have overheated from crazed dancing. High-pitched female vocals screech as an impossibly upbeat, saccharine tune blasts on the sound system, courtesy of three DJs dressed in full military regalia.

Welcome to Dempa Song Night, one of the growing number of club events catering to the otaku masses.

It’s no secret that otaku like to get jiggy with it. Just ask Morning Musume, whose fans have for years danced along with their idols. This mass mimicry came to a head at a February 2003 performance by Miki Fujimoto at Yomiuri Land amusement park. Fans went into a dance fever that was filmed and broadcast across Japan.

That day was representative of otagei (a.k.a. the “otaku art”), a range of moves performed in rough unison with other fans at specified cheerleading moments in songs. These tracks tend to be of the dempa, or “electric wave,” variety: a mind-numbing candy pop that’s twice as addictive as heroin. The otagei dancing and chanting creates a synergy that invigorates the performer and her fans.

As otagei gets more elaborate and popular, otaku no longer even need the idol as an excuse to bust a move. Sure, Dear Stage in Akihabara still has daily live-idol events for some hardcore fans. But Dempa Song Night takes place sans performer in a club where otaku can get their otagei on among likeminded fans.

“This is the front line of otagei,” says organizer Takanori Yabe, 48.

Yabe owns Kamikaze Style, a venerable custom bike and shirt shop in Shimokitazawa. He got into planning dempa events in March 2008, when one of his designers and resident otaku, Himekawa, revealed he was a closet DJ. The shop had a branch in Akihabara in 2006, when otagei was all the rage on the streets, so the events seemed like a natural fit.

Sure, there were (and are) other events, like the one known as Mogura that’s held on the third Saturday of each month in Akihabara. But Dempa Song Night is the largest gathering where fans can enjoy uncut dempa songs. The all-night party also includes karaoke and performances by chika idols—“underground” performers who sing songs, provide narration and do dubbing for dating simulator games. What their cult lacks in size it makes up for in sheer intensity, as was the case when Toromi of Popotan fame took the stage at Dempa Song Night 6 in April.

Watching their display, Yabe could only shake his head and describe the crowd as dempa-chan, or supercharged and eccentric folk. He confesses to knowing little about their world, but dreams of holding Dempa Night in Paris. Yet Himekawa is afraid to fly and dempa otaku tend to, as Yabe diplomatically puts it, “hole up” in Japan. But who knows? Maybe someday the sonic boom will make it to a basement near you.

● Live Inn Rosa: B2F, 1-37-2 Nishi-Ikebukuro, Toshima-ku. Nearest stn: Ikebukuro.
www.live-inn-rosa.com

● Dear Stage: 3-10-9 Soto-Kanda, Chiyoda-ku. Tel: 03-5207-9181. Nearest stn: Akihabara.

● Kamikaze Style: 2-25-8 Kitazawa, Setagaya-ku. Tel: 03-3481-6444. Nearest stn: Shimokitazawa.
www.kamikazestyle.com

● Mogura: B1, 3-11 Akihabara, Taito-ku. Tel: 03-6206-8338. Nearest stn: Akihabara.

● The next Dempa Song Night will be held Dec 19 at Live Inn Rosa. Doors open at 11pm and the event goes until the morning. Tickets are ¥2,500 (incl. one drink). For more info, see
www.kamikazestyle.com/newhp/denpa.htm (Japanese).

The middle-aged man has been standing for hours in a line that stretches over a block through the streets of Akihabara. What compels him on this, his only day off, is a complete box set of his favorite manga, Kinnikuman, which costs ¥105,000 and comes with special extras for the first 100 buyers.

This phenomenon is called otonagai, literally “adult buying,” the practice of wealthy otaku hobbyists and collectors purchasing expensive goods. These enthusiasts often buy multiple copies of an item based solely on its cover, and then, instead of opening it, simply display it or stash it away. In 2007, Yano Research estimated the otaku market was around ¥360 billion annually, and at the same time, the market share represented by kids is shrinking. As anime, manga and videogames increasingly target grown men, some question if adults aren’t becoming children.

“Otaku are a slightly strange breed of consumer,” says Takuro Morinaga, 52, a professor of economics at Dokkyo University. “They aren’t really sensitive about pricing. If it is something they want, they will pay any price, no matter how absurd it may be.”

The tradition of marketing to otaku has had a major impact on the evolution of Japan’s contents industry. Take, for instance, “magical girl anime,” which was originally created for young girls but has become the bread and butter of male otaku. In 1979, Hideo Azuma, a manga-ka specializing in both shojo and pornographic comics, released Cybele, the first example of lolicon media. Soon after, otaku started looking for lolicon idols in shojo anime, and studios began pandering to them in the hopes of increasing sales.

The sexualization of little girls isn’t new. Indeed, even the grand daddy of anime, Osamu Tezuka, took his turn with Marvelous Melmo (1971-1972), which concerned a 9-year-old girl who instantly becomes adult size when she eats magic candy. Of course, her clothes are the wrong size—skin-tight children’s wear on a buxom adult woman—which started the popular anime convention of panchira, or panty shots.

But Tezuka meant Melmo to be preliminary sex education for kids, not a show for otaku. Anime like Momo and others which followed in the ’80s were more explicit, and after the collapse of the Bubble, as the number of children and consumers shrank, anime studios looked for new markets. One result was that the sentai superhero team idea for boys was adapted for girls in Sailor Moon (1992-1997)—otaku were lured in by young girls who transform into beautiful soldiers in sailor-suit uniforms.

The massive male fandom became infamous when, at a Sailor Moon stage event that attracted both kids and otaku, an overly eager adult fan made a child cry. Aya Hisakawa, the mild-mannered voice actor who performed the character of Sailor Mercury, attempted to diffuse the situation by calling this fan an ookii o-tomodachi, or “big friend.” The euphemism is still used, along with the implication that otaku are adult children.

Mandrake and Liberty shops both serve collectors; otonagai sightings are frequent.

Mandrake: 3-11-12 Soto-Kanda, Chiyoda-ku. Tel: 03-3252-7007. Open daily noon-10pm. Nearest stn: Akihabara. www.mandarake.co.jp

Liberty has 13 shops in Akihabara; see www.liberty-shop.co.jp for details (Japanese).

Courtesy of afa and sozo pte ltd.

East Asia is in love with Japanese pop culture, but the feeling hasn’t always been mutual. Creators of anime and manga here often complain of piracy and copyright violations, with web-savvy South Korea in particular being a hotbed of illegal downloading. Helping to build bridges between Japan and its neighbors is Singapore, an emerging international hub that hosts Anime Festival Asia later this month.

AFA was founded last year to celebrate Japanese pop culture in Southeast Asia. Although Singapore has hosted similar events in the past—fan gatherings like EOY and Cosfest, and industry expos like the Singapore Toy, Games and Comic Convention—nothing has approached this scale.

© 2009 horipro

Ahead of the inaugural event, organizers said they hoped to replicate the success of such large-scale conventions as the Tokyo International Anime Fair and southern California’s Anime Expo. Sponsors include Singapore’s top exhibition company, I-Promo, Japanese content developer SOZO and Dentsu Singapore, plus corporations like Bandai, Sanyo and Animax. With these companies on board, AFA was able last year to invite some of the industry’s big names, including legendary “King of Anisongs” Ichiro Mizuki and pop idol May’n (left), as well as speakers like Studio 4°C co-founder Koji Morimoto and Gundam mechanical designer Kunio Okawara. Exclusive products from Bandai, Kotobukiya and Medicom Toy were on display, and an entire section of the 5,000m2 Suntec International Convention and Exhibition Center was transformed into something called Planet Mech. An industry seminar was also held to forge closer ties and expand the fan base while curtailing online piracy.

At the very least, the Japanese companies couldn’t complain about their brisk business: some 46,000 fans were in attendance at AFA 2008.

“It was a defining moment in Southeast Asian otaku history,” says Derek Teo, 33, a well-known blogger from Singapore. “I’d say this event is something that we’ve all waited a long time for.”

This year’s edition promises to be even bigger. Themed areas will include Akiba Town, Gundam Zone and the newly formed Moe Moe Kyun Maid Café and Kids Land. Other highlights are the Regional Cosplay Championship and Bandai Action Kits Universal Cup. Mizuki and May’n will make return engagements, and they’ll be joined by singer Yoshiki Fukuyama and idoru-voice actress Shoko Nakagawa. Fans can also expect a visit from Danny Choo, the famed otaku blogger who parades around Tokyo in full Stormtrooper armor.

“I am honored to be given the opportunity to be involved with AFA,” says the 37-year-old Londoner. “I have many readers in the region and look forward to meeting them.”

Choo will be discussing the potential of online communities and consumer-generated media, as well as his new book, Otacool: Worldwide Otaku Rooms, a photo album comprised of images submitted by some of his estimated 2 million users.

That is just the sort of grassroots interaction that AFA’s organizers are hoping to inspire.

“AFA is geared towards bringing together the community to celebrate all the things they love,” says executive director Shawn Chin, “and to provide a platform that will allow the regional and local anime generation direct access to very exclusive content never before available in this part of the world.”

AFA takes place November 21-22. For more details, see http://afa09.com.

Courtesy of FEG Inc

Yuichiro “Jienotsu” Nagashima is a moe otaku. When at home in rural Hyogo Prefecture, he watches anime featuring beautiful girls and surfs the internet for more information about them. He also cosplays as his favorite female characters. You’d think that this guy wearing a schoolgirl uniform would be bullied—that is, until you put some boxing gloves on the New Japan Kick-Boxing Federation’s super welterweight champion.

“My occupation is cosplaying and watching anime,” Nagashima explains to Metropolis. “I consider my appearances in K-1 matches just a way to make money, so once I enter the ring, it’s hobby time to me.”

Nagashima is an otaku who strengthens his body and steps out into society with pride. The mild-mannered 25-year-old says he doesn’t want to be seen as an example for other otaku. He just happens to fight as a hobby and isn’t out to tell people how to live.

Others see progress in otaku with a balanced interest in both the physical and virtual. Toru Honda, an otaku philosopher who advocates a “two-dimensional love revolution” in his book Moeru Otoko (“The Budding Man”), writes that otaku who can balance the physical and emotional are the next stage of human evolution. Punning on the double meaning of moe, he suggests that “moe men” have the potential to both “burn” with masculine physical vitality and “bud” with feminine emotions for characters in anime, manga and video games.

Recent visitors to Akihabara will be familiar with the spectacle of otaku in skirts dancing in public. Similarly, Nagashima says he wears cosplay into the ring to grab the attention of spectators and get them interested in his favorite series and characters.

Not everyone is happy with this “crossplay.” In Akihabara, the police responded by increasing their patrols to curb public disturbance, and thugs thinking otaku had become easy targets started to converge on the area.

An older school of otaku also disapprove. Toshio Okada, 51, an anime producer and critic dubbed the “king of otaku,” is so repulsed by those interested in moe that he declared them to be “culturally dead.”

After otaku hunters, or otaku-gari, took to ganging up on moe men, local hobby enthusiasts started arming themselves. This drew even more negative attention from the police, who began searching the bags of passersby. Otaku are turning to new ways of fighting back, including group shopping and martial arts training.

K-1 and professional wrestling have been a consistent source of inspiration for fanboys, and the fighters themselves are getting increasingly more otaku. Josh Barnett, 32, an MMA fighter from Seattle, is popularly known as the “strongest otaku in the world.” He idolizes the character Kenshiro from ultra-macho series Fist of the North Star and uses its theme tune when he enters the ring.

For his part, Nagashima was inspired by prolific voice actress Megumi Hayashibara. While he isn’t interested in telling anyone how to live, he does have a message for would-be predators.

“I want to say, ‘You think that people who watch anime can’t do anything and are weak, but there are people like me out there. Don’t underestimate us.’ Otaku can be strong.”

Meet Yuki Terai. This model, tarento and singer just turned 19, but rattles off her measurements with a practiced ease: 166cm tall, 86cm bust, 59cm waist, 85cm hips. She was born in Chiba. Oh, and she’s also a time traveler from the year 2017.

Terai is a virtual idol, a media personality who isn’t a person at all. As in William Gibson’s sci-fi description of idoru, these stars are quite literally produced. Terai was designed by Kenichi Kutsugi for his manga Libido in 1997, and became a huge success after appearing on his website in three-dimensional, computer-generated form. By 2000, she had released a CD with Avex and starred in a TV commercial with actor Yoshihiko Hakamada. She appeared in four DVDs between 2000 and 2001.

Terai wasn’t the first of her kind; that honor goes to Hori Pro’s Kyoko Date back in 1996. Codenamed “DK-96,” or Digital Kid 1996, Date was brought to life by Visual Science Laboratory, which made use of “full motion capture,” now widely employed in videogame and film production, to give her realistic movements. Date’s first CD single was “Love Communication,” with a music video that showed her walking the streets of Tokyo and New York. This paved the way for a virtual idol boom in the 2000s, with Fuji TV’s involvement in the Virtual Idol Project, CG unit Super Honey Bee and, of course, Terai.

By now, these figures are deeply embedded in the fabric of otaku media. Take, for example, The Idolm@ster, an arcade and console rhythm game released by Namco in 2005. The player takes the role of Producer, choosing one to three idols and trying to win fans by teaching them song and dance routines. The combination of realistic movements and a wide cast of cute characters to control made this a mega hit franchise that continues to this day.

The newest examples of virtual idols are Vocaloids, a term used to describe a synthesizer program developed by Yamaha in 2003, and the characters developed by third parties to run on the program. The user inputs lyrics and pitches, and the program synthesizes them into something like singing. The “voice” differs depending on which character is warbling the pitches.

The most popular Vocaloid is Crypton Future Media’s Miku Hatsune, who sports green pigtails and wields a leek baton. Hatsune debuted in summer 2007, and technologically savvy otaku quickly fell in love with her imperfect tone, which is said to resemble the “non-ability” that contributes to idols’ popularity. Everyone else fell for the character’s design. Fans started making music videos of Hatsune and posting them on Nico Nico Douga, including such innovations as her singing Finnish polka. She began to appear in fan-produced CDs, manga, cosplay outfits and, finally, licensed character merchandise. Such is Hatsune’s popularity that she was a headliner at the anime industry’s Animelo Summer Live concert this year. Her image onscreen and recorded voice constitutes a “live” performance worth an ¥8,500 ticket.

Sure enough, mainstream bands are beginning to learn from the success of their virtual counterparts. The most famous to date is Perfume, a three-girl “techno” unit. The group formed in Hiroshima in 2001, when the members were aged 11-12, and moved to Tokyo a couple of years later. They found some success on the live-house circuit thanks to their unbridled energy, and after uploading their songs onto Nico Nico Douga, the trio gained renown in the virtual world. With their layered and synthesized voices, synchronized movements, and 8-bit accompaniments, Perfume fits right in with robotic and doll-like virtual idols.

The group’s music videos were seen alongside videos of The Idolm@aster girls and Miku, both of which often covered Perfume songs. Even as the band found commercial success with the national recycling campaign anthem, “Polyrhythm” (2007), and shattered records with a No. 1 single on the Oricon charts in July 2008, otaku continued to see them as virtual idols. At the Otaku Awards 2008, Perfume was voted one of the most important phenomena of the year. It seems like these and other “near-future idol” bands are virtually guaranteed to succeed.

Courtesy of Intermixi

As it struggles through its worst economic crisis of the postwar era, Japan has seen a drastic decline in the number of travelers arriving from overseas. But the downturn hasn’t dampened enthusiasm for “otaku tours,” which are consistently booked solid.

“Customers have the same drive and determination that the early Japanese otaku had,” says Isaac “Aka-san” Lew, 28, founder of LA-based Intermixi Tours. “They save up and buy on a ‘need’ that most would define as a ‘want.’ They’ve watched the anime, read the manga, played the games, and seen some J-drama, and now they need to experience the land that birthed the media they have enjoyed so much.”

Lew notes that some visitors make several journeys to Japan, the “anime holy land.” And who can blame them? The majority of animation shown in the world is Japanese, and the country boasts some 230 studios and 23 museums related to anime, manga and their creators.

In addition to pre-arranged tours, fans have been creating itineraries that suit their own interests. Popular destinations include otaku meccas like Osu in Nagoya, Nipponbashi in Osaka and, in Tokyo, Akihabara Electric Town, Nakano Broadway and Ikebukuro’s “Otome Road.” And then there are the actual locations featured in anime, like Tokyo Tower and Shibuya 109.

“People tend to want to see the places they recognize from their favorite works,” agrees Jacob Navok, 27, author of 2005’s Warriors of Legend, a book detailing the real-life locales featured in the smash-hit anime series Sailor Moon.

It’s no secret that fans in Japan and abroad tend to approach their anime with a certain amount of religiosity. For decades, otaku have been making pilgrimages, or seichi junrei, to the locations featured in their favorite series.
“Seichi junrei is a part of otaku culture,” says Yutaka Yamamoto, 35, an anime director at the Ordet studio who helped popularize the pilgrimages in works such as The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi and Lucky Star. “I myself did it as a student, going to Higashi-Koganei in search of Ghibli.

True to its name, Intermixi offers a mix of all things Japanese. Lew got his start building connections for the pioneering Pop Travel Japan in 2001. He founded his own company in 2007, and over the years has discovered that his customers, usually in their mid-20s, are as interested in Japan the country as they are in its pop culture.
“I once had a tourist say he wanted to smell Japan’s trees to feel all the differences and similarities,” says Lew with a smile. “I designed our schedule to respect the culture first, and then the pop culture. Animation is really watched best when you understand more about Japan.”

Intermixi tours range from Osaka to Hokkaido, and include visits to famous studios (Madhouse, Production IG, Gonzo, etc.), shopping excursions, dining events, and expos such as the Tokyo International Anime Fair. Lew says one of the appeals is traveling with fellow otaku, sharing experiences and making lifelong friends.

“Joining a tour like Intermixi’s is like joining the Scouts or an exclusive clan,” he says. “There’s an almost instant bonding of peers that tends to happen and continues onto our active forums afterwards.”

In collaboration with the Japan Travel Bureau, Intermixi runs weeklong tours, including three major excursions per year—in February for the Sapporo Snow Festival, late March for hanami and September for the Tokyo Game Show. The company has completed 19 tours to date and is looking forward to a bright future.

For more info about Intermixi, see www.intermixi.com or email tours@intermixi.com.