The DA’s Otaku Spot!
Issue Four-- “Series Fanbase Shopping!”

Wait! Miss an issue? Check them here!
Issue One: “What Anime Is, and Is Not!”-[link]
Issue Two: “Otakudom 101”-[link]
Issue Three: “Oh For the Love of Bishonen!”-[link]

This week, we will be discussing about how many anime/manga series earn their fanbases. From the mainstream marketing tactics of merchandising, advertising placement and mainstream TV spots. To the group of underground series, that does not get as much press, but acquire a loyal fanbase. To the group known as fansubbers and scanlations, and how they play a vial role in the anime community.

But first, as promised, my TWO MANGA REVIEWS for the week!

Manga Reviews of the Week:

Monster by Naori Urasawa
10 Volumes Published by Viz Media --13 Volume Series

Dr. Kenzo Tenma is a young Japanese doctor working at the Eisler Memorial Hospital in Düsseldorf, Germany during the 80s. A highly accomplished brain surgeon, he appears to have everything on his plate: a promotion in the offing; the favor of the director of the hospital, Heinemann; and Heinemann's daughter, Eva, as fiancée. However, Tenma grows increasingly dissatisfied with the political bias of the hospital for treating patients, and seizes his chance to change things after a strange massacre brings the twins Johan and Anna Liebert into his hospital.

Johan has a gunshot wound to the head and Anna keeps muttering about killing, and Tenma decides to operate on Johan instead of a prominent politician. Johan is saved, but the politician dies. Tenma loses all his social standing and Eva consequently. However, Heinemann and other doctors in Tenma's way are mysteriously murdered, and both children disappear from the hospital soon after. The police suspect Tenma, as he benefits greatly from this turn of events, but have no evidence, and so can do no more than question him.

At this point, the story advances to nine years later. Tenma is now the Chief of Surgery at Eisler Memorial Hospital. However, he is about to come face to face with a sociopath - a sociopath that he helped save. While Tenma is the main character of Monster, the story also focuses heavily on those surrounding his search for Johan, such as Inspector Lunge and Nina Fortner, and a host of other characters, minor and major, whose lives have been shaped by the deeds of the monster named 'Johan'.

Miss Red Rose’s Verdict: Just when you think, that the resolution is coming, a plot twist in the last chapter leaves you gasping at the end of every volume. That is the best and the worst thing about this series. Every page is a gigantic page-turner, leaving you wondering what will happen next to all the characters involved in the series. This series is not for children under 16 for its gore and intensity of psychological thought and character development. With only three more volumes to go, my manga club and I are extremely excited to find out the exciting conclusion of Monster in early 2008.

Line by Yue Kotegawa
Published by ADV Manga

Chiko is an average, good-looking schoolgirl with several friends and limited athletic abilities. Then she found the cell phone and everything careens out of control. She receives a call on the phone and a voice on the other end tells her that someone she has never even met has only minutes to live. The voice urges her to save them before it is too late. Chiko, along with her friend Brando, takes it upon herself to stop this string of gruesome deaths and solve the mystery behind the phone calls that precede each one.

Miss Red Rose’s Verdict: I hate to give a not so good review. But this is unfortunately one of them. While this indeed was a manga that looked like it had serious potential to be a great, the fact that an entire story that could have been four or five manga volumes was an entire story all rolled into one volume. And that was it. As a consequence, the series ability to question the main premise of suicides and death in general was just a floating random idea with no substance or staying power. Furthermore, there was almost little to no character development whatsoever. This made this series such a close call. It truly did have enough in it to be a great manga, had it been a little longer. I would not have minded a long manga in order to fully and better understand the premise behind the entire series in general.


Feature of the Issue: Series Fanbase Shopping!

Before I begin, I would like to personally apologize for the delay of this week’s issue. Usually I have it written by Friday, but since I was getting ready for AOD, I did not get to finish it. Will not happen without notification again! Promise!

While there are many places, that inspire me to write, the sales floor of my job at Dress Barn, became one of the weirdest places to be inspired for this week’s installment.

Thanks in part to the Back-To-School shopping rush, the gods of retail, decided to place a dry spell upon my store and its sales. As a result, I and all of my coworkers have not been doing well in selling merchandise. Especially not good because most of us were trying to get good sales this week to finish the month strong since many were going to be gone the last two weeks of this month. (Myself Included)

But as I was standing in my fully lined cream colored skirt-suit set burning up from the heat, the thought on how I was going to talk about this week’s topic popped into my head! Retail jobs, while it does show that the modern otaku is NOT ALWAYS a slacker, it makes a great analogy concerning the sales of many anime and manga series. How you say? Well, anime/manga retail is exactly like clothing retail and its many advertising and sales tactics in getting you to buy their clothing over another store’s collection. So in order to better understand this week’s topic of Mainstream, Underground or Straight from the Source, we are going to put it into a shopper’s analogy.

(Editorial Note: Because this is Deviant Art and for copyright reasons as well, I have decided to use ads for their current DeviantWear shirts as advertising props for this article. Any free gifts of DeviantWear are welcome, please just message me and let me know!)

Mainstream Series



So, you are getting ready to go back to school. And you have to have the perfect outfit in order to look perfect. And so, you go to your favorite magazine or style website and you look to see the above outfit plastered on every single advertisement saying that this “is it”. Psychologically, many shoppers base their choices by what the media says are hot. And since, the top suits you personally anyway, you proceed to buy the top regardless of cost, quality, size or whether or not it actually looks good on you.

Series shopping through mainstream outlets, are the exact same way. When you walk around anime conventions, when you watch anime DVD’s, read mangas and anime magazines, what is in all those advertisements? They are telling you to purchase a certain series, because it is hot! And TV placement is just as important. Adult Swim and Cartoon Network, are the most infamous examples. Shows like Sailor Moon, Tenchi Muyo, Naruto, Full Metal Alchemist and Bleach are series that have huge fanbases due to their placements. And if you have not already noticed, many fandoms are highly based on these shows. While many mainstream series are well known and respected, sometimes, they take away from other series that become licensed and do not get the attention that they deserved.

Underground Series



So you see the above advertisement, and you decide to get this shirt! However, no matter how hard you search, high and low, this shirt is completely sold out! So what do you do? Will you go without a new outfit for the first day of school. While many would say yeah, many people would say HELL NO! As such, they go and find another outfit somewhere close to the ad, and wear that instead! And when they wear the other piece, they love it more than the piece that they would have bought originally.

Many series, while they do not get the press than their mainstream counterparts, still come to the U.S. in the hopes of having some form of a fanbase. Now, there is a huge difference between those series that come from mainstream and those that do not. Underground series, have the most quiet, yet biggest fanbases ever. Many series, have fanbases, which do not even know they exist until they meet at a convention or other fan gathering. Furthermore, underground series have more of a lasting power than those that are mainstream. Some of the well-known ones are Evangellion, Kare Kano, Kyo Kara Maoh, Hellsing, and Noein. I still think it’s fun, to hear about series, that I have NEVER even heard of, and then find out that they are like four or five years old. I guess you can say that I am a personal underground fan. I prefer to hear what other fans like and discover it on my own.

Straight From The Source



Perhaps however, you are not the type at all to go to a store.. You my dear, prefer to go straight to the vendor who created the original shirt themselves and get the items straight from the designers themselves. And you would be very wise, because not only do you find pieces that fit your style, but sometimes the pieces you find may be ahead of their time, or not yet been picked up by any other store or distribution group. Be careful, if the item ends up being a super hit when picked up, you can forget being original.

So how many of you know about the Haruhi Suzumiya craze? If you haven’t well let me tell you, if you’ve ever seen a bunch of cosplayers doing a dance called the Hare Hare Yukai, which involves a really upbeat song, then you have witnessed a “straight from the source” at work. What many people don’t know, is that “The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya” would have never even gotten off the ground the way it did, had it not been for a thing called “Fansubs”. Fansubs, or fansubbing” as it is known as, is pretty much where a series that is all Japanese, is taken straight from the TV or internet, and translated into any language you want. Most of it is going into English however and while it has been done for almost 30 years, it is now more than ever, becoming a huger than life way to keep up with the hottest things coming from Japan.

Now here’s the thing, fan subbing, is ILLEGAL in the US, China, Japan, and most of the modernized world. But many companies turn a blind eye to the practice. Mainly because they use it as a way to see, what series would do well in another market if imported. Many recent well known series such as Code Geass, Hayate The Combat Butler, Ouran High School Host Club, Naruto Shippuden, and Romeo x Juliet, have built already huge reputations and fanbases in not only Japan, but in the US and other countries as well, and this is thanks in part to fansubbing. Companies also use this as a way to test market styles of anime as well, if one style is getting a lot of fans and one is not, then they have more power to play into the market.

(Editorial Note: That’s all I’m going to talk about now.. Tune in September 9th, when we talk about fansubbing and it’s manga counterpart scanlations, how they are good and bad for the anime/manga industry.)

Transitional Series

While many shoppers fall into one of the three above categories, many shoppers however, base their choices off a piece of jewelry or a skirt that they already have. This shirt, has caught their eye mainly because it not only fits their personal taste, but goes along with the items they already own as well.

In the anime/manga world, a transitional series, is a term used amongst otakus that is to describe a series, which is moving from just in straight Japanese, into the rest of the anime world. This usually happens, when a series has a few seasons that are licensed for foreign distribution, but a few seasons that aren’t not. Transitional series are important because they showcase not only what is hot and what is in in anime right now. But it also gives licensing companies a whack at seeing if the series will sell overseas. It’s great because not only do you get some of the good stuff in Japan, you also know that they have more coming as well!

At the same time, you will see also a lot of series change owners during season changes as well for many assorted reasons. Sailor Moon is well known for that, when the series changed hands almost four times in it’s history here in the US, and along with that, changed the quality as well. To the point, where many fans lost interest, and by the end of it’s run on Cartoon Network, anime licensers, decided not to ever pick up the final season of Sailor Moon as well as end it‘s run on the manga circuit as well.. One of the most current however, is the anime series One Piece. After 4Kids, stopped production dead in its tracks due to it’s huge loss in sales (mainly because it was their fault.) Funimation picked up the series and is now continuing where it last left off. This not only was great to the Japanese company that was producing it, but also to fans who were seriously dissatisfied with the 4Kids production of the work.

(Editorial Note: September 17th, we’ll be talking about censorship and editing in the anime/manga industry and how it plays a vital role in the marketing and production of a series.)

Regardless of whatever way you discover your favorite series, the essential point is that you do. And that you love it. There is no wrong or right way to find a favorite series. But as a responsible anime/manga columnist, I do have a special request:

On my recent expedition to an anime convention, I met a person who was a huge Naruto fan. And I mean HARDCORE Naruto fan, full cosplay outfit and everything. When I asked this cosplayer however, what other newer series has he checked out besides Naruto, they said NONE.. Naruto was their one and only series that they had ever been a fan over in their life! I literally stopped working on this otakus custom Naruto button, and wrote down a list of series to check out for this poor otaku who had been one for years and had never been outside of Naruto and Pokemon.

The point to this story, is please, watch more series than just what your friends are all into. Yes, Naruto is a great series and it has hooked the next generation of otakus. However, it disappoints me to see otakus love Naruto and Naruto ONLY. Loyalty to a series is a good thing, but absolute loyalty is a sad thing, because when you only stay with one series, you don’t ever expand your horizons as an otaku, and true otakus are able to have four or five series lined up from different genres and different venues of discovery as well.

(Editorial Note: I am not a Naruto hater, but it’s expansive and somewhat absolute Naruto ONLY fanbase was the best example to prove my point. I personally am a Sasuke Uchiha fan.)

So that it’s for this week’s issue! I thank all of you for reading and for all those who are discovering this newsletter, I am so excited, please tell all your friends!! PLEASE? Next week, we will be defining some important terms that every otaku, friend of an otaku, or parent of an otaku should know. As always, all requests and comments can either be left here or at my personal DA site:

See you all next week!
Miss Red Rose

(Editorial Thanks: to for the action shot of this awesome DA shirt.)

Miss an issue? Check them out here:
Issue One: “What Anime Is, and Is Not!”-[link]
Issue Two: “Otakudom 101”-[link]
Issue Three: “Oh For the Love of Bishonen!”-[link]


Upcoming Releases!-- All releases are subject to change without notice, and prices will vary on publisher, and distributor, which you buy from. So shop around okay!

Upcoming Anime Releases for 08/28/2007
Galaxy Angel Rune (Sub.DVD 2)
One Piece (Dub.DVD 10)
Rozen Maiden - War of the Rose (DVD 3)
Samurai 7 - Escape from the Merchants (DVD 2)
Samurai 7 - Search for the Seven (DVD 1)
The Story of Saiunkoku + Artbox (DVD 1)
To Heart - Love and Truth (With Limited Edition + Artbox) (DVD 4)
Tsubasa: RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE (DVD 3)
Utawarerumono - Beast Within (DVD 5)

Manga Releases for 08/28/2007
ES (G.novel 6)
Gacha Gacha: The Next Revolution (G.novel 4)
Mamotte! Lollipop (G.novel 3)
My Heavenly Hockey Club (G.novel 2)
Negima! Magister Negi Magi (G.novel 15)
Princess Resurrection (G.novel 2)
Suzuka (G.novel 5)
Gunsmith Cats Omnibus (G.novel 3)
Path of the Assassin (G.novel 8)
Apothecarius Argentum (G.novel 2)
Empty Empire (G.novel 5)
King of Cards (G.novel 1)
Musashi No. 9 (G.novel 12)
Ninin Ga Shinobuden (G.novel 3)
Omukae desu (G.novel 5)
Oyayubihime Infinity (G.novel 6)
The Devil Does Exist (G.novel 11)
Young Magician (G.novel 9)
Your Lover (G.novel 4)
AEGIS (G.novel 5)
After School Nightmare (G.novel 5)
Black Sun, Silver Moon (G.novel 3)
Emperor's Castle (G.novel 5)
In the Starlight (G.novel 3)
Land of Silver Rain (G.novel 7)
Let's Be Perverts (G.novel 4)
Neon Genesis Evangelion: Angelic Days (G.novel 6)
Night of the Beasts (G.novel 5)
Pine Kiss (G.novel 7)
Shiki Tsukai (G.novel 1)
TRAIN+TRAIN (G.novel 4)