Anime

Christmas gifts for anime fans, 2015 edition

December 7, 20154 comments

The good side of waiting this long to put out my holiday gift guide is that I was able to glean ideas from other people’s. I loved Chic Pixel’s geeky guide, and don’t get me started on Anime News Network’s wacky picks.

It all comes down to this: the anime fan in your life already knows where to get the anime DVDs and Blu-Rays she wants, so unless she asks for it, I’d buy anime fans things other than anime itself, but which directly relate.

These are my twelve picks for the anime fan, otaku, or Japanophile on your holiday list. As always, Amazon links are affiliate links, all other links are not. Don’t see what you’re looking for? Be sure to check out my gift guides for anime fans for 2014 and 2013, too!

1. Space Case. My logo designer Ben Huber made this slick Space Dandy-inspired art for your laptop case. $20, society6.com.

2. All-Access Pass. Give a month of Crunchyroll streaming in high definition and no ads for the cost of a cup of coffee. $6.95, crunchyroll.com

3. Sushi Pouf. A massive foam sushi roll for your favorite Japanophile’s living room. Also comes in California roll style. $79.95, Sushi Style

4. Ninja Dress. Naruto, Sakura, and Sasuke never looked so cute as in this mini pattern, complete with ninja stars. $49, Lace and Lore

5. Poké-tote. Available in both Gyarados and ghost trio styles, these bags merge pop culture with traditional Japanese art styles. $28-30, Anime Trash Swag

6. Feline ‘phones. These cat-ear headphones look like something an anime character would wear, and now they can be on your head. $150, amazon.com

7. Kiki Candle. This Ghibli-inspired candle smells like “warm ocean breeze, fresh bread and a hint of sweet pastries.” Yum! $15.49, Old Glow Candles on Etsy

8. Medicine Seller Model. This Mononoke figure doesn’t come out until May, but this design is so richly elegant, it might be worth the wait. $130, amazon.com

9. Robo-Bear. My pick for anyone interested in getting into Gunpla building: a quick and easy take on Gundam’s cutest suit. In red, yellow, blue, or pink. $6, amazon.com

10. Snack Scroll. Keep all your Japanese dishes straight with this handy art poster that started as a wildly successful Kickstarter. $29, jfoodie.com

11. Cute Coloring Book. Get in on the stress-relief coloring book trend with this distinctly anime-fan oriented take, Shades of Kawaii. $7, amazon.com

12. Pocky Pack. Middle school me would have had a heart attack in a good way. Embrace the stereotype with practically every Pocky flavor. $20, amazon.com

See also:

You are the only male character in ‘Love Live’

September 23, 201510 comments

Yup, even if you’re not male. Bear with me for a moment.

All this talk about the Love Live movie premiere made me decide to finally sit down and watch Love Live: School Idol Project.* Annnnd I finished it about 48 hours later. It’s a great guilty pleasure show with a quick pace, little depth, and lots of emotional bonding. It’s about nine girls who aspire to be idols, pop stars revered for their cuteness, energy, and dedication. If they want to make a great sports anime about girls, they should look to Love Live for inspiration.

There was just one thing that was a bit odd about Love Live. Every character with a speaking role was a woman! (Nico’s adorable baby brother is the exception that proves the rule.) The only adult man in the show, Honoka’s dad, is shown only partially. It’s clearly a very intentional decision on the creators’ part to keep men’s involvement to a minimum.

Now I’m used to shows that pander to people who like guys or people who like girls, and I know that’s what Love Live is trying to do here. But there was something artificial about it. Take Free!, which certainly attempt to pander to the viewer with touchy-feely bonding, yet still includes major female characters. So on Monday, I tweeted, “It’s strange how Free!’s female characters are Very Important, but Love Live doesn’t show men at all. Are male viewers threatened?”

Click the link to see the enormous discussion that exploded from there. I love Anitwitter because everyone is always down to chat about anime (though it’s not always great for my productivity). The majority consensus seemed to be that idol culture in Japan is about female “purity” from romantic involvement with men, and that mindset has leaked into this idol-themed anime.

Can you imagine if Taylor Swift had to sign a contract with her label stating that she wouldn’t date anybody? (What would she even write songs about then?) As bizarre as this would be, it’s totally commonplace among Japanese idols, who are marketed as bikini-clad sex symbols, but face medieval consequences for such transgressions as having a boyfriend. Perhaps you remember the Minami Minegishi “scandal,” when the 22-year-old idol was discovered to have a boyfriend and shaved her head in contrition. And yet, these extreme attempts to convey idols’ sexual availability still aren’t enough—last year at an idol autograph event, a 24-year-old man brought a chainsaw and slashed two idols’ faces, hospitalizing them. At trial, he revealed jealousy as his motivation. Jealous of whom? These girls aren’t even allowed to date!

On Monday, a gross new article came out illustrating that despite these past events, draconian idol culture hasn’t budged. A 17-year-old idol who was sued by her talent agency for having a boyfriend lost her countersuit. The judge sided with the agency, stating, “In order to obtain the support of male fans, the contract clause regarding a dating ban was necessary.” Ugh! This girl can’t live her life all so some pathetic superfans can fantasize that they have a chance.

We, the viewers, are the men of Love Live. There are no male characters so we don’t have to worry about “competition.” Joke’s on them though, because this is the Bechdel Test in overdrive. And even if they have zero male romantic options, I just ship them with each other—and I’m certain I’m not the only one. Tell me you don’t see the chemistry!

Have you watched Love Live? What did you think?

*As usual, email me if you want a Crunchyroll Premium pass!

This post originally ran as my weekly newsletter. If you subscribed to my newsletter, you would have been able to read this post ten hours ago. Your call.

Read this when you don’t feel confident about putting your work online.

September 14, 2015

When it comes to a lack of confidence, you’re not alone. Episode 23 of My Love Story! was a stellar example about how self-doubt can happen to even our favorite characters. If you haven’t watched yet, you might want to skip on this post (and if you want a premium Crunchyroll pass to watch it, email me and I’ll send you one).

In this episode, Takeo discovered he had a rival for his girlfriend Rinko’s affections. Another guy literally stops Takeo on the street and tells him that Takeo isn’t as good a fit for Rinko as he would be. And since Takeo doesn’t know anything about Rinko’s hobby, cake baking, and this guy does, he thinks maybe the guy has a point.

There’s a dramatic irony here because we audience members know that Rinko’s affections have never wavered. Takeo’s real enemy here is his own confidence. It’s a clear example of Imposter Syndrome, where Takeo doubts whether he deserves his good fortune. He thinks he’s just gotten lucky, when we know that his own actions are what make Rinko love him.

It’s easy to go, “Really Takeo? You think you’re a bad boyfriend because you can’t bake pastries?” but this is exactly how the unconfident brain attempts to rationalize. How many times have you felt unconfident about your assertions because of some anxious thought? Your story idea was rejected = you’re a terrible writer who will never hold down a job. A commenter disagrees with you = all of your opinions are terrible and wrong.

In my latest newsletter, I posed the following question to my followers: What would make you feel more confident about sharing your work online? I got some pretty legitimate concerns, and I’m going to try to address them here.

I’m worried I don’t have enough expertise.

Of all the responses I got, I relate to this one the most.

Take my work as a front-end developer. When clients are happy with my work, I assume they don’t know enough about site building to criticize my faults. Instead, I give tons of credence to commenters on the Internet, who have responded to my tutorials for building web servers and apps with stuff like, “Do you even know how to use a computer?” And that’s not even fair—I’ve had way more good comments than bad ones. I gravitate to negative comments because they reinforce the voice in my brain that is always telling me that I suck.

I use development as an example here instead of writing because I have no formal training as a developer. I constantly feel like everyone is better than me. I recently told a friend, “I bet you think my code is sloppy,” and he replied, “I wouldn’t know, you’ve been coding way longer than I have.” The point is that even though I’m always learning more, I’m already a relative expert.

It’s actually healthy to doubt yourself a little. What’s dangerous is when you’re 100% confident in your abilities, because that means you’re not considering what you don’t know. If you have enough knowledge to realize you could be doing better, you’re on the right track.

I’m worried I will be harassed.

This is an extremely legitimate concern on the Internet as it is today. There’s an environment of hostility against content creators. For example, it used to be that when there was an error in one of my stories, people would say “X is incorrect.” Now they say, “You lied about X,” assuming malice over a simple mistake.

I’m not going to insult your intelligence by assuming you mistake legitimate critique (error corrections and differing opinions) for harassment (threatening language, personal attacks). The former is not only unavoidable, but it will make you a better reporter. This sort of interaction can be intimidating at first, but learning to deal with it will help you develop a healthy thicker skin.

Meanwhile, harassment is completely uncalled for and you never deserve it. While it’s true that the only way to avoid harassment (in the form of unsolicited emails, tweets, and phone calls) is to not post anything at all, there are ways to make yourself less of a target. Use evidence to back up any assertions or opinions you post. I believe it’s good to make your audience emotional, but don’t make them angry for no good reason, especially if that’s not your intention. Share an article with friends before posting to look for any red flags.

If you do incite attention, check that you’re using strong passwords and two-factor identification to lock down your Internet presence. Most importantly, do not try to justify yourself by replying to any harassing messages. They’re just looking to get a reaction out of you.

I’m worried nobody will care.

Here’s a concern on the opposite side of the spectrum—that you’ll put something out there and nobody will read it at all! Actually, that was my reality for the first couple months of this blog. My only commenter was my husband. Look and see.

Success doesn’t happen overnight. The internet is a big place and chances are that if it’s your first attempt at putting up a blog, it’ll take a while for your readers to find it. You can help them along by posting your articles on social media. Don’t spam them, but sometimes I find that people don’t see my link the first time, so I usually link to my posts twice in a couple days. Definitely send your posts to me, too, so I can consider them for Otaku Links!

Think about it this way: is anybody going to care about your work if you keep it to yourself? Didn’t think so. Sharing can be scary, but it’s the only way to take that first step.

Thanks to everyone who replied to my newsletter and was brave enough to share one of their fears with me. My newsletter community is awesome, and we’d love to have you there, too.

Screenshot via My love story!

How to get paid to watch anime

July 28, 20159 comments

Here it is, the topic I’ve been asked to write about more times than anything else!

Ever since I wrote Meet the girl who gets paid to watch anime, I’ve gotten questions nearly every day from readers who’d like to do the same.

The short answer is that you can’t. If you read the above profile of Victoria, you’ll see that yes, she gets to watch anime on the job, but she also works evenings and weekends almost every week of the year. In 2013, Victoria went to 42 conventions around the country. Could you?

If you want to get paid to watch anime, you can’t just passively watch anime and expect money to roll in. You have to put in the work. This can take long hours, constant honing of your skills, developing a thick skin to face commenter feedback, and constant promotion.

Furthermore: while it can be very difficult to make your entire income this way, it is much simpler than people realize to earn some money this way. These suggestions will get you paid for watching anime, but it’s much more realistic to shoot for a couple hundred a month at the start than a couple thousand.

Still interested? Here are my suggestions for hard workers only:

Work For A Review Site

This is one of the ways I personally make money watching anime. I am one of ten weekly streaming reviewers at Anime News Network. Every season, I am assigned three shows to watch and I write up 500 words or more on each episode I review. That totals to about 1500 words a week, and about 5 hours of my time.

Working for ANN means I don’t always get to review my three favorite shows of the season—or else all ten of us might be reviewing the same shows! Also, even if I start to dislike a show over time, we don’t drop them. This isn’t just a hobby I do when I feel like it—it’s work.

On the other hand, it offers a sense of security in the way that ANN pays me a consistent salary no matter how many views my articles get, which means I don’t have to worry about writing a controversial review if that’s how I really feel. ANN has also given me a built-in audience and exposure to my work that may have taken years to build up if I did it all on my own.

Be An Anime Site Affiliate

Of course, the elephant in the room when it comes to working for a review site is that you need to apply for a position and actually get it. That’s why, when it comes to beginning writers, I am much more likely to recommend that you start your own blog and monetize it.

The first monetization strategy for a personal anime blog is becoming an affiliate—somebody who puts links to a business on their site and makes a small commission when readers click those links and buy products. This is the entire business model for my site Gunpla 101, which brings in dollars when readers click links and buy Gundam kits of their own.

Gunpla 101 links to Amazon, but you can try any place that has an affiliate marketing program like J-list or Play Asia. However, this comes with a huge warning—if you simply spam your readers with links and offer no valuable content, nobody is going to visit your site.

Be A YouTube Reviewer

This seems to be the next big wave in anime reviewing. As our Internet connections get faster, people can watch video more easily, and on every mobile device they have. So some people might not want to read reviews at all when watching them is a possibility. If you’re the kind of person who loves to be in the spotlight, this might be your best bet.

As a YouTube reviewer, you’ll have the opportunity to put ads on your videos and you’ll get paid by the view. That means it’s really important to amass a wide audience. You can increase your chances of more hits—or blessing and curse, going viral—by creating smooth, easy-to-watch video; sharing divisive opinions; and cultivating a bombastic personality.

I’d suggest checking out what Top X calls the “top ten anime reviewers and critics” on YouTube and seeing what they do in order to build their audiences and stay popular.

Start A Patreon

If you’ve been reviewing for a while and already have an audience, you can consider opening up an account on Patreon, a crowdfunding platform for creators. I can name several anime bloggers who have launched Patreons: Bobduh, Guardian Enzo, and Serdar come to mind.

With a Patreon, you can encourage your readers to give you a small monthly donation in exchange from some control over your work. For example, Serdar allows patrons to choose which anime he’s going to review next.

On the other hand, you might not appreciate being told what to do. The con of this is that people aren’t going to donate if you don’t offer a benefit, and you might resent having to review anime you don’t like much, for example. But that’s something you’ll discover that, no matter which monetization strategy you choose, most reviewers occasionally have to do.

Want more suggestions? I list many more in Build Your Anime Blog, my ebook about building a successful anime blog with loyal readers, surging traffic, and an income stream.

Interested in more ways to merge your writing career with your geeky hobbies? I’m working on a new course about taking geekdom to the next level. Sign up for my mailing list to be the first to know about it. You’ll also get my free course.

Lead image via Danny Choo.

Baby Steps and my Real Life Sports Anime

June 1, 20155 comments

In March, I started watching Baby Steps, the story of a high school student who abruptly decides to take up tennis. This weekend, I bought my first tennis racket.

I have never played tennis in my life. I didn’t even know how to hold the racket. But I have watched a lot of sports anime, so that should count for something, right?

Of course not. I could barely hit the ball. I spent more than three hours practicing tennis this weekend, and all I have to show for it is a nasty blister on my thumb. Even so, I’ll be back at it tomorrow. I owe Baby Steps for that.

I think that sometimes, in the interest of entertainment, sports anime sometimes gives us the wrong message about sports. Onoda is a nerd who’s never considered road racing—until he becomes a major challenger in Yowamushi Pedal. On Haikyuu, Kageyama is a volleyball genius. The boys of Kuroko’s Basketball each were born with innate supernatural abilities. I’ve now watched 110 episodes of the Prince of Tennis, and Ryoma has lost just once—and very recently at that. For me this says, if you’re not immediately good at something, you probably just weren’t meant to do it. It’s a comfortable mindset, and one that kept me dreading gym class for my entire school career. I only engage in my one physical activity, running, because even I can move one foot in front of the other without worrying about being bad at it.

Baby Steps is unique among sports anime because it doesn’t star a prodigy. Ei-chan has never played tennis before high school, and it shows. He loses all the time! At one point in the first season, he lost in the very first round of an important tournament, going against the standard narrative for sports anime. Ei-chan doesn’t get better overnight, either. We get tired and stressed and frustrated right along with him. Usually, the protagonist doesn’t have to practice so hard and for so long to get results. But in real life, that’s exactly what athletes have to do in order to get to the top—even if they were born with physical advantages.

One of the things I like best about sports anime is watching people who are really good at what they do show off their skills. But until Baby Steps, there wasn’t a sports anime that truly conveyed how they got to that point. I’m awful at tennis, but all I can think about is how fun it is, and how much I want to keep trying to improve.

I always figured that by the time I was pushing thirty, I’d spend my time doing things I was actually good at. Instead, here I am, stumbling through Japanese and now tennis (coincidentally both hobbies I took up thanks to anime). Baby Steps contains the not-so-subtle message “believe in yourself,” repeated every opening sequence. I guess it’s rubbing off.

On Twitter and Instagram, I am noting my forays into athleticism with the hashtag #irlsportsanime. If you’re also an anime fan with fitness goals, it’d be awesome if you used it, too.

Category: Anime