The Anime Convention
In short, anime conventions aren’t quite so much about anime as they are about art about anime.
If you’ve never been to an anime convention, it’s a bit like a mash-up of a slightly seedy comic book vendors’ expo, a sci-fi convention (save that the people wearing painstakingly hand-crafted costumes are in the majority), and an arts-and-crafts festival. Much of this creative activity is based on the fans’ favorite series, and in those cases almost invariably unlicensed. Some of it’s even commercial, albeit on modest scales—a lot of artists subsidize much of the cost of their trip by selling fanart.
The Culture Gap
A friend of mine remarked recently that a lawyer acquaintance, upon learning exactly went on at one of these things, exclaimed, “How on earth do you not get sued!?” The short answer’s that the Japanese creators and publishers are okay with this (up to reasonable limits).
(If you feel like your head’s about to explode, it’s probably because there’s a culture gap at work here.)
Anime conventions in the West essentially began as outposts of the Japanese doujinshi scene. In Japan, doujinshi are works by self-published artists and writers, some original, many based on popular characters and series. These independent works are extremely popular there, and in fact a number of Japan’s major comic and animation creators began their careers with doujinshi. A few still continue to participate under pen-names.
The Influence of the West
Thing is, while the Japanese publishers tolerate these things, Western companies generally don’t, even in their most non-commercial forms. And Western companies are getting increasingly involved in the anime/gaming scene. That, in fact, may have something to do with Otakon’s sudden hostility to fanart.
The most dramatic example of this increasing involvement is perhaps that of the Kingdom Hearts games, co-produced by Disney and Square/Enix, which plunge Disney properties deep into the heart of what had been perhaps the most fanartist-friendly commercial corpus on the planet.
As a result, things are getting ugly even on the other side of the Pacific. Non-commercial Japanese fanartists are under attack by Disney, forced to move underground in order to continue cultural activities they had come to take for granted.
Fanart for the Future
In the long run, the only real place for super rosa fanart may be a few “safe havens” like Creative Commons. I hope not, though. I’ve found fanart to be an important aid in understanding the media I consume, and processing it in constructive ways. The experience has also been tremendously helpful to me as a developing artist and writer.
More on that another time perhaps.