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| Relevant photos be damned. Have a random and very pretty Pet Girl of Sakurasou image! |
I
honestly don't finish enough anime series in a year to warrant any
sort of 'top 5 anime' list, unlike other animanga bloggers who can
polish off series on a monthly basis and have a great, diverse list.
So I'm looking back at moments in anime fandom from 2013, where industry and
otaku have come together to make everyone happy (or, in the case of moment number
one, is just an event that made all otaku happier - and safer- because it happened).
Feel free to include your own favorite moments in the comments!
5.
License Rescue Parade - Anime and Manga
Central
Park Media. Tokyopop. Geneon. ADV Films. Iron Cat. CMX Comics. Anime
and manga companies rise and fall with the years, like waves crashing
upon the shore. And with their demise, their licenses are immediately
lost, titles go out of print and become incredibly expensive, and
readers are left wondering if they will ever read the rest of their
favorite stories.
Last
year, however, continued the growing trend of North American
companies swooping in and saving licenses once thought dead to the
world, from Vertical's save of Osamu Tezuka's Adolf to Funimation
pretty much licensing every anime from Toonami's past line-ups.
Everything old is new again and much more affordable than before,
thank goodness.
(Ironically enough, Tokyopop has risen, slowly, from the dead. Its only manga at the moment is Hetalia, in a partnership with Right Stuf, and they are cranking out volumes at a snail's pace.)
4.
Kickstarter Kicks Off Animation
2013
was the year of Kickstarter for anime. For campaigns like Kick-Heart
and Little Witch Academia, the idea of crowdsourcing anime
productions led to their successes and, for Kick-Heart, gobs and gobs
of awards and screenings at film festivals (and Toonami!). Projects
about irregular, atypical stories and art styles were finding the
audience they couldn't find within the usual anime production system
in Japan - the audience and the money, since even a 12-minute
production like Kick-Heart takes serious cash.
It's
not just animation, either - comic publisher Fantagraphics took to
Kickstarter to fund their 2014 line, and projects such as a shojo
comics anthology and a print version of the Anime News Nina webcomics
have joined its ranks on KS.
Kickstarter
didn't save anime, but it did fund it.
3.
Anime Goes Streaming
Crunchyroll
isn't new - it's been on the scene for a while. But Crunchyroll last
year really kicked its simulcasting into high gear, joining several
new sites that were specifically catering to watching anime online.
It even expanded into manga, although whether or not that succeeds in
battling the ongoing fight against illegal scanlations remains to be
seen.
Then
we had the advent of Viz's Neon Alley as well as AnimeSols, which
combined streaming anime with crowdfunding into one winning business
model. With YouTube, Crackle, Viki, Hulu, Funimation Channel, and
Netflix among such legit places to watch anime streaming - in most
instances, for free
- it really is easier than ever to get into anime fandom.
2.
#ToonamisBackBitches
What
started as an April Fool's joke in 2012 has led to the revival of
Toonami. In 2013, Toonami pretty much restored hope in the idea that
anime can survive on American television and not be Pokemon or
Digimon or Yu-Gi-Oh properties. Toonami showed feature length films,
such as Rebuild of Evangelion and Summer Wars, and premiered fan favorites and titles
new to their programming block, including Sword Art Online, Soul
Eater, One Piece, Eureka Seven, and newcomer Space Dandy.
Since
2012, Toonami has been working hard to reinvent itself by staying
true to its core appeal: awesome anime worth talking about and an
entertaining robotic host who delivers quips and media reviews
between breaks. A year later, with the late night programming block
the spot to watch for American otaku yet again, it's clear that
Toonami has succeeded.
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| Doujinshi cover by dj-ka bips-m. |
1.
The "Kuroko's Basketball" Crazy Is Caught
For what seemed like an eternity, an
entire community of Japanese fans for Kuroko's Basketball were being held hostage by the actions of an
unseen assailant. Poisons were found in
Kuroko related edible products. Letters with dangerous substances
were sent across the country, including to Kuroko's author, Tadatoshi
Fujimaki. Otaku meetings with notoriously large crowds refused to house any Kuroko's Basketball-based events or fan-made media in case the mystery person harmed any attendees. The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department were looking for
someone who hated the basketball manga/anime so much as to threaten
their fans and its manga-ka.
In
the final weeks of December 2013, however, a miracle occurred. Asuspect was arrested and questioned by the police. Dangerous
chemicals as well as copies of Kuroko's Basketball were found in his
apartment. For the first time in over a year, KnB fans in Japan (as
well as the KnB manga-ka themselves and its publisher) could breathe a little easier; the man who had
irrationally targeted their beloved series was in police custody.
Some
crazy guy trying to stop Kuroko doujinshi from being made and sold by
hard-working doujin-ka? That's a pretty great way to end 2013. It's a shame we in North America still can't read the manga legally in English, though...
What great moments of anime fandom in 2013 did I miss?
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