Emboding creative industries: the anime mediamix – Reading Alban and Stevie Suan

 

I ended my previous post in this series (« balade “médiagraphique” » preceded by « géopolitique “médiagraphique” ») by quoting two papers studying the same object: the anime mediamix. To go further, I would now like to take part in an exercise I’m that fond of: wonder about a possible scientific conversation between two texts, with all the precautions that this implies. My intention is not to write on the behalf of the authors but to read their works as the author of a future paper. And my desire is not to say who is right or wrong, but to question the possible articulation of two different perspectives, both illuminating the same phenomenon: a production and circulation mode of graphic objects.

 

Geography: what mediagraphic reality?

Floorplan of the 2022 Anime Festival Asia in Singapore (Suntec, 25-27 of november).

Figure 1. URL : https://2022.animefestival.asia/exhibition (seen January 15, 2024). © Anime Festival Asia (AFA)

 

In the articles I’ve mentioned, Alban adopts a « spatial » approach by choosing to study what I could call the « added value of a district » (more precisely, an otaku sanctuary). The “local” level acquires a true meaning: Ikebukoro is presented as (my interpretation) an “arrangement” allowing the possibility of a “mediation” and a “dialogue” (Alban, 2020, p.142) between “industrial” and “amateur” productions, “official” and “recycling” structures. A certain type of shop plays a central role in that perspective: one that cultivates a geographical and artistic proximity to a given audience, and willingly turns its back on the “brand” model that project itself beyond territories and nations.

 

Otaku sanctuaries: recycling as a reason for buying ?

Bag in organic recycled fabric, designed by Flying.

Figure 2. URL : https://www.spreadshirt.fr/shop/design/otaku+lifestyle+sac+en+tissu+bio-D5d26bf7a22250920da06b8c7?sellable=m4Qz0vdAzvTMwnO5ExE8-563-33 (seen  January 16, 2024). © Flying

 

Adopting a very different perspective, Stevie Suan highlights the fundamentally transnational organization of the anime production methods that interest these otakus. The example of Shirobako is eloquent in this respect: produced “by the Japanese studio P.A. Works and Warner Entertainment Japan (a subsidiary of the U.S. company)” (Suan, p.12), the series “finishing animation (usually the coloring)” (Idem) takes place in South Korea and in the Philippines, while certain “backgrounds” (Idem) are produced in Vietnam… “It is difficult to place exactly where the labor took place” (Ibid.¸p.13): the “local”, or even the location, no longer makes sense in the face of the multiplicity of the actors involved.

 

The anime world?

Worldwide distribution of the most popular Internet searches for anime using the Google engine.

Figure 3. Google Trends data and Generic Map graphics. © Google and Generic Map

 

Local/transnational: is there an antinomy here between two scientific approaches focusing on the same subject (anime)? I might rather think of them as two complementary perspectives, dealing with two different objects (reception and production, audiences and graphic designers), and inviting us to think according Bruno Latour’s “counter-copernician revolution” (1996, p.378). The reference to the French thinker recurs indeed in both papers (and in a more structuring way in Alban’s PhD) and may indeed seem obvious at first glance : “Instead of having to choose between the local and the global view, the notion of network allows us to think as a global entity – a highly connected one – which nevertheless remains continuously local… ” (Ibid., p.371).

 

 

Networks: mediagraphical spaces?

Screenshot of the digital book home page Paris. Invisible city.

Figure 4. Latour, Bruno. Hernant, Emilie (collab.). Paris Invisible City. Paris : Les Empêcheurs de penser en rond & Le Seuil, 2009. Online overview. URL : http://www.bruno-latour.fr/virtual/index.html (seen January 17, 2024). © Les Empêcheurs de penser en rond, Le Seuil and the authors.

 

In fact, precautions must be taken, even if (and to stick to this object) the Ikebukoro presented by Alban seems to have, a priori, all the characteristics of Latour’s “global entity”. “Pedestrians” keen on all sorts of sources of information (on and offline) frequent stores with merchandise constantly renewed by producers linked to authors, publishers (in the case of adaptations from and to print, video games, or even design) and a whole cascade of graphic workers employed by subcontractors… Not to mention the distributors (digital platforms or more “gravity” logistics arrangements) and commercial interfaces (digital or not) that provide access to their productions…

 

Animation : countless actors ?

Promotional video for the city of Angoulême (France): a panorama of the city’s animation studios.

Figure 5. Magelis, Pôle Image. « La Charente s’anime ». Magelis TV, Youtube, 2020. URL : https://youtu.be/uexryktXWFU?si=paPUKGfIw1ks7SWz (seen January 17, 2024). © Magelis

 

Division of labour, structuring of skills, definition of a “value chain”: if there is a “global entity” here, it undoubtedly takes the form of a “creative economy” (a term advocated by Emma Casey and Dave O’Brien) in which relationships certainly take a contractual turn (from employee to employer, from client to subcontractor, from subcontractor to studio or freelance…) that Stevie Suan’s paper sketch out. With this in mind, I propose to question the meaning of the anime viewers production studied by Alban and Stevie Suan: what role does it play in this system? Or, to put it in more scholarly terms: don’t audiences act as a link between these different players? Aren’t they trying to embody Bruno Latour’s Actor Network Theory?

 

The “animator’s labor” (Suan, p.2): North Korean report

In Pyonyang, the character of Guy Delisle (the author) travels to North Korea to work with an animation studio. Wondering about the career path of one of the employees (“There’s no doubt that he was allowed to move to Pyonyang because of his artistic abilities”), he concludes: “That’s probably the only good thing about this whole system of subcontracting in Asia”.

Figure 6. Guy Delisle, Pyonyang. Paris : L’Association, 2003, p. 67. © L’Association

 

This can be seen in the work done by the “sakuga fans” mentioned by Susie Suan: producing “videos where they discuss specific animators, showing certain segments, often estranged from their context in the narrative, detailing the production history of that work and/or describing the history of the animators and their work” (p.14). Identifying all the contributors and questioning the nature of their contributions: those initiatives aims at conferring identity, and “authority” (in the sense of authorship), to actors operating within a production system that is nevertheless organised around a form of anonymity. And no doubt the same signification can be given to the spatial “dialectic”, the pedestrians circulations organising traffic between “official” and “amateur” shops that Alban evokes.

 

Bibliography

ALBAN, Edmond Ernest dit, 2019. « Les aventures urbaines du media mix de l’animation télévisuelle japonaise ». Revue française des sciences de l’information et de la communication, 18. URL http://journals.openedition.org/rfsic/8194 (consulté le 29 novembre 2023) ; DOI <https://doi.org/10.4000/rfsic.8194>

ALBAN, Edmond Ernest dit, 2020. « Pedestrian Media Mix: The Birth of Otaku Sanctuaries in Tokyo ». Mechademia: Second Arc, Vol. 12, No. 2, « Asian Materialities », spring 2020, pp. 140-163. USA: University of Minnesota Press. Disponible sur le portail JSTOR. Stable URL <https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5749/mech.12.2.0140> (consulté le 3 janvier 2024).

ALBAN, Edmond Ernest dit, 2019. Le recyclage comme moteur de la fabrique de l’espace social (et piéton) du sanctuaire féminin otaku d’Otome-Road à Ikebukuro, Tokyo. Recycling Media Becoming Pedestrian: producing Women’s Social Space in the otaku sanctuary of Otome-Road (Ikebukuro, Tokyo). Phd: AZEMARD, Ghislaine and STEINBERG, Marc, supervisors. Paris and Montreal: universities Paris 8 and Concordia. URL : https://www.theses.fr/257739491 (accessed January 17, 2024).

CASEY, Emma. O’Brien, Dave, 2020. “Sociology, Sociology and the Cultural and Creative Industries.” Sociology, vol. 54, no. 3, pp. 443–59. Available on JSTOR. URL : https://www.jstor.org/stable/26972385 (accessed January 17, 2024).

LATOUR, Bruno, 1996. “On Actor-Network Theory: A Few Clarifications.” Soziale Welt, vol. 47, no. 4, pp. 369–81. Available on JSTOR. URL : http://www.jstor.org/stable/40878163 (accessed January 17, 2024)

SUAN, Stevie, 2018. « Consuming Production: Anime’s layers of transnationality and dispersal of agency as seen in Shirobako and Sakuga-Fan practices ». Arts 7, no. 3, p.27. Stable URL https://doi.org/10.3390/arts7030027  (accessed January, 3, 2024).

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