it ain't just me

Sometimes I wonder when I complain about the way anime cons are creeping away from actual Japanese anime programming, that maybe I'm just a whiny pedantic complainer looking for something to complain about. And maybe I am. But I'm not alone.

Sean O'Mara went to Fanime and was disturbed by the lack of anime at Fanime.
http://www.otakuusamagazine.com/Events/News1/FANIME_2010_3170.aspx

And hell, I make a throwaway comment in a Let's Anime post and I get the following in response: I miss the days when anime fandom was actually about anime rather than fashion, music, and other stupid pop culture shit that I couldn't care less about.

Is there a fermenting groundswell of frustration fulminating in fury, fighting to express their earnest desires to see actual Japanese cartoons at their Japanese cartoon festivals? Is grassroots back-to-the-toons activism on the rise in America's towns and villages? What's been firing up the base here? What kind of programming are America's biggest anime conventions offering anime fans?

A-Kon, America's oldest continuously operating "anime convention", was last weekend. Here's what kind of programming they had to offer.

roller derby panel with the girls of Assassination City Roller Derby
j-pop / j-rock room
para para workshop
SF writers panel room
gaia online
how to talk to girls
steampunk tea social
kimonos of japan
nero is the larp for you
local gaming scene
story driven webcomics
state of the gaming industry
rocky horror picture show
how to break into the gaming industry
earthsong q&a
From Babylon 5 to Avatar - The Evolution of Visual Effects for TV & Film
witches, wise women, tramps and queens
goddesses of SF&F
How To Write For Anime With Lord Zed
nerdcore comedy night
misfits of comedy
repo the genetic opera
new tek computer panel
independent filmmaking
do anime conventions have a future?

A-Kon had 34 listed guests. 8 of those guests were in some way related to the field of Japanese animation. None were actual Japanese animators, directors, writers, or voice talent. Now of course A-kon is the big fan convention in Dallas, so there's a real push for non-anime programming at that show. But they still identify themselves as an "anime con".

Anime Central was in Chicago last month. What kind of events did they host? Way more anime panels than A-Kon, but still some notable non-anime standouts:

90 Day Delinquents performing a Shadowcast of Repo! the Genetic Opera
Aural Vampire contest
Khaotic Koture fashion show
Settlers of Catan Gencon Pre-Qualifier Tournament
shrek in comics
dj panel: the music and you
batman in comics
steampunk mythbusters
let's play oregon trail
zombie survival 101

Let's face it. The bloom is off the rose for a lot of people running these shows. Japanese animation isn't hip, isn't trendy, isn't the hot new entertainment fad. It's hard to keep people excited about the same thing. Many of these fans got into anime because it was 2002 and anime was this new exciting thing that people took seriously. Eight years later, they have seen all the anime they ever want to see, and Japan isn't producing the neat stuff they used to, and it's a lot harder to get attention with boring old Japanese cartoons. They're so 2002!

So when you move your show in the direction fandom is moving - into a dozen or so different areas loosely termed "geek culture" - you can appeal to everybody, you can keep your staff interested, you can keep your attendance growing. And that's great, if that's what you want to do.

I guess I fail at "geek". I could care less about anybody else's obsessions, and if anime cons went back to being only about anime - and lost fifty percent of their attendance as a result - I would think that was just fine.

Actually it looks to me like we're going back to where we were pre-1990 - Japanese animation being shunted off into a video room and maybe a few panels, a small part of your generic "Name Of City Fantasy Con" convention. The field of anime being just another "genre" of "fandom" right alongside Star Trek and The Hobbit. This is of course exactly the opposite of what anime fans were trying to do - but when the people running the anime cons are the same people promoting this goal, what is there to do? Discuss.