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Interview: Danny Choo [2011-07-13]

I haven't heard of anything like that before. Do you mind telling me what the whole Otacool book thing was about?

So I think some of the readers on ANN, who are vocal, have their own idea of what anime "should" be like. They want anime to be like "this."

The phrase "nobody's forcing you to watch" gets 22,000 Google hits; "nobody's forcing you to read" gets 36,900. I'm not too fond of the phrase. It seems to basically be a deflection of criticism, akin to "don't like, don't read" (6,590,000 hits).

No matter whether you like the guy or not (He's like Marmite in that you love or hate him), he's got a point in that certain anime fans shouldn't force their views on what anime should be on others.

Say a company in America is selling Blu-rays, they charge what they want and they only pay the company in Japan a percentage of sales.

I think that folks who don't particularly like moe anime...they don't need to watch it, right?

Also, since when is bollocks a common word to use outside the UK?

Scormio wrote:

Also, since when is bollocks a common word to use outside the UK?

Danny's from London if I remember correctly.

No matter whether you like the guy or not (He's like Marmite in that you love or hate him),

Quote:

Say a company in America is selling Blu-rays, they charge what they want and they only pay the company in Japan a percentage of sales.

I was not of the understanding that titles were acquired in R1 through deals such as this. Should costs associated with licensing be proportional to eventual sales, it would be expected that acquisitions of older or more esoteric titles would be more frequent than they are.

ANN: Last year we also talked about what is now the "Tokyo Youth Healthy Development Ordinance. " Have you seen or noticed much difference in how publishers and creators are working as a result of this? Has there been a change for consumers in Tokyo?

DC: I don't see any change at all in the content. When I go to a shop and pick up a manga, the content hasn't changed. Well, some of the content does surprise me, some of it is really graphic, people stabbing each other and eyes popping out. So I don't see anything change in terms of people producing the content.

Where I do see a change is in terms of how the content is displayed. In Japan, legally, material aimed at folks over the age of 18 has to be separate. It's very easily done; you've got a bookshelf and a card stuck up that says that anything on this other side of it is for people over 18. Apart from that, nothing has really changed.

I think one of the reasons why many people started to make a fuss about it was for Google juice, for blog comments basically. "Oh god this is the end of anime!" And they'd build comments and a buzz around their blogs. That's why I didn't write about it at all, because I knew it was bollocks really.

A good analogy would be something like this: Say you want to buy a car, but there's only one type and one color available. That means that there wouldn't be a wider choice if any at all, whereas with most things like movies, anime, manga and videogames, there is a wide choice in all kinds of genres.