nope and nope
Jun. 11th, 2013 12:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
davemerrillSo this is what was being sold at Anime Next - a vendor had acquired photography of cosplayers, had the photos printed onto body-pillows, and was selling them. The actual costumers were not amused.
So there's this whole ethical and moral collapse on the part of the vendor. But this is nothing new. Vendors are always out for however they can make the fastest dollar out of the faddiest fad without any of the messy business of copyrights or permission. Fan convention vendors operate in a twilight world, halfway between the guy who sells balloons and glowsticks outside the baseball game and the flea market booth that sells puppies, knockoff handbags, and expired canned goods.
The freewheeling nature of convention dealers rooms is attractive; ideally it means a wide variety of merchandise both new and used, guaranteeing you'll find one-of-a-kind items and rare collectibles. It also means that people without ethics or responsibility will abuse the system at every opportunity.
We've dealt with bootleg anime videos for decades; before there were anime cons, there were comic-con dealers with tables full of VHS they'd copied at home and were now selling for $20 each. Their attitude was a fascinating combination of racism ("We're only ripping off the Japanese!") and a hard-scrabble, very American desire to take what's around you and monetize it, whether it's breeding puppies in the back yard or making folk art out of beer cans or making VHS bootlegs of "Iczer One".
When technology improved so did the bootleg vendors - from bootleg VHS straight to bootleg DVDs and bootleg CDs. You remember Son May CDs, that gray-market 'only in Taiwan' CD label that somehow found its way to the dealers room tables of every anime con? The acres of bootleg wall scrolls? Plenty of vendors were willing to put their ethics on hold for a chance to make money, and plenty of ignorant (or uncaring) anime fans were willing to shell out.
The internet and file-sharing has largely dealt a death blow to the bootleg video industry, but unethical fandom vendors continue to try to squeeze a dollar out of somebody else's work. The Artist Alleys are constantly dealing with plagiarism, with organized attempts to game the system and with fellows like the now-vanished "Shojo Jojo", whose artistic ability was to download other people's artwork, print it onto T-shirts, and sell it.
What this Anime Next vendor is doing with hug-pillows is I guess just an exciting new vision of unethical behavior. They claim their hug-pillows will no longer be available to the general public, and I invite fandom to keep an eye on these people. We've heard those kinds of claims before.
The other problem is that we have a convention that's ostensibly an anime convention, yet here in the vendor's room somebody is selling hug pillows with pictures of Superman on 'em. What's the matter, anime con vendor world, you can't make money off of Japanese animation merchandise any more? And yeah, that's what vendors are telling me, that they can't make money off Japanese animation merchandise.
Here's a news flash. Are you a Japanese toy company or are you licensing Japanese animation characters to toy companies? Then you probably aren't making any money off of Japanese animation. The days of unloading a panel truck full of plushies and wall scrolls onto your exhibit hall table and walking away with a fistful of cash are over. We had a recession. We have a fandom with bedrooms full of wallscrolls and plushies. We have an anime industry that has saturated the market with all the characters that can possibly inspire wallscrolls and plushies.
Does this mean that anime con dealers need to quit selling anime stuff? Enough with the DVDs, with the manga, with the cels, with the model kits, with the diecast toys, with the doujinshi, with the Revoltech figures, with the art books and the Roman Albums? Anime con dealers can't make money selling anime stuff to anime fans? That's the world we're in? I don't buy it. I don't believe anime con dealers rooms need to be filled with internet memes, funny pop-culture t-shirts, hilarious fandom joke buttons, or whatever else the slack-jawed, dead-eyed masses waste their money on, and I wish all that junk would go back to the State Fair midway it came from.
I don't believe anime cons need to sell tables to cosplay photography vendors who are unethical enough to sell body pillows featuring unauthorized American super-hero costumers. We can buy Superman junk anywhere; at the mall, at the thrift store, at the dollar store, at the Sears outlet. There's no shortage of superhero merchandise. That's not why people pay $60 to get in to your con, to buy Superman junk.
So we're dealing with unethical vendors, and we're dealing with an anime con that let them into the dealers room in the first place. Why not get some anime merchandise dealers at your anime con instead? Why are we pandering to the lowest common denominator? Why not at least make a token effort to distinguish our Japanese cartoon conventions from the Dragoncons, the Comic-Con Internationals, the Fan Expos of the world?
(and if anime con vendors can't make money selling anime stuff to anime fans, then by golly, I guess we won't have vendors rooms. We'll have a swap meet on Saturday afternoon instead, and all of us fans can sell each other the junk we bought from you in the first place, and we can spend the rest of the convention having fun instead of shopping. Fine with me.)
So there's this whole ethical and moral collapse on the part of the vendor. But this is nothing new. Vendors are always out for however they can make the fastest dollar out of the faddiest fad without any of the messy business of copyrights or permission. Fan convention vendors operate in a twilight world, halfway between the guy who sells balloons and glowsticks outside the baseball game and the flea market booth that sells puppies, knockoff handbags, and expired canned goods.
The freewheeling nature of convention dealers rooms is attractive; ideally it means a wide variety of merchandise both new and used, guaranteeing you'll find one-of-a-kind items and rare collectibles. It also means that people without ethics or responsibility will abuse the system at every opportunity.
We've dealt with bootleg anime videos for decades; before there were anime cons, there were comic-con dealers with tables full of VHS they'd copied at home and were now selling for $20 each. Their attitude was a fascinating combination of racism ("We're only ripping off the Japanese!") and a hard-scrabble, very American desire to take what's around you and monetize it, whether it's breeding puppies in the back yard or making folk art out of beer cans or making VHS bootlegs of "Iczer One".
When technology improved so did the bootleg vendors - from bootleg VHS straight to bootleg DVDs and bootleg CDs. You remember Son May CDs, that gray-market 'only in Taiwan' CD label that somehow found its way to the dealers room tables of every anime con? The acres of bootleg wall scrolls? Plenty of vendors were willing to put their ethics on hold for a chance to make money, and plenty of ignorant (or uncaring) anime fans were willing to shell out.
The internet and file-sharing has largely dealt a death blow to the bootleg video industry, but unethical fandom vendors continue to try to squeeze a dollar out of somebody else's work. The Artist Alleys are constantly dealing with plagiarism, with organized attempts to game the system and with fellows like the now-vanished "Shojo Jojo", whose artistic ability was to download other people's artwork, print it onto T-shirts, and sell it.
What this Anime Next vendor is doing with hug-pillows is I guess just an exciting new vision of unethical behavior. They claim their hug-pillows will no longer be available to the general public, and I invite fandom to keep an eye on these people. We've heard those kinds of claims before.
The other problem is that we have a convention that's ostensibly an anime convention, yet here in the vendor's room somebody is selling hug pillows with pictures of Superman on 'em. What's the matter, anime con vendor world, you can't make money off of Japanese animation merchandise any more? And yeah, that's what vendors are telling me, that they can't make money off Japanese animation merchandise.
Here's a news flash. Are you a Japanese toy company or are you licensing Japanese animation characters to toy companies? Then you probably aren't making any money off of Japanese animation. The days of unloading a panel truck full of plushies and wall scrolls onto your exhibit hall table and walking away with a fistful of cash are over. We had a recession. We have a fandom with bedrooms full of wallscrolls and plushies. We have an anime industry that has saturated the market with all the characters that can possibly inspire wallscrolls and plushies.
Does this mean that anime con dealers need to quit selling anime stuff? Enough with the DVDs, with the manga, with the cels, with the model kits, with the diecast toys, with the doujinshi, with the Revoltech figures, with the art books and the Roman Albums? Anime con dealers can't make money selling anime stuff to anime fans? That's the world we're in? I don't buy it. I don't believe anime con dealers rooms need to be filled with internet memes, funny pop-culture t-shirts, hilarious fandom joke buttons, or whatever else the slack-jawed, dead-eyed masses waste their money on, and I wish all that junk would go back to the State Fair midway it came from.
I don't believe anime cons need to sell tables to cosplay photography vendors who are unethical enough to sell body pillows featuring unauthorized American super-hero costumers. We can buy Superman junk anywhere; at the mall, at the thrift store, at the dollar store, at the Sears outlet. There's no shortage of superhero merchandise. That's not why people pay $60 to get in to your con, to buy Superman junk.
So we're dealing with unethical vendors, and we're dealing with an anime con that let them into the dealers room in the first place. Why not get some anime merchandise dealers at your anime con instead? Why are we pandering to the lowest common denominator? Why not at least make a token effort to distinguish our Japanese cartoon conventions from the Dragoncons, the Comic-Con Internationals, the Fan Expos of the world?
(and if anime con vendors can't make money selling anime stuff to anime fans, then by golly, I guess we won't have vendors rooms. We'll have a swap meet on Saturday afternoon instead, and all of us fans can sell each other the junk we bought from you in the first place, and we can spend the rest of the convention having fun instead of shopping. Fine with me.)
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no subject
Date: 2013-06-11 05:56 pm (UTC)And it goes to depth of pocket as well. Were I a dealer I'd buy really heavy on key things that would ALWAYS sell. There's a new Figurarts Sailor Moon figure due in August, I'd buy the F**K out of that, cases and cases, because you can pretty much always sell Sailor Moon. But what's going to happen is dealers are going to buy 3 or 4, mark them up to insane prices, sell some and the others will sit on eBay at $400 with no bidders. Come Sept. you will not be able to find it at retail price anywhere.
Figma Cobra? Sold out the moment it went up for pre-order. Ultra-Act Ultraman and Ultra Seven? Same thing. *poof* gone. That says there's demand for those things and shame on the companies for not making more.
So, supply, demand, ignorance, overpricing. Gee, I think I know why anime doesn't sell. :)
What was that company that used to be really big on the 'game center' toys? Based in Ohio. Anime Palace. Them's the guys. They used to have all KINDS of cool junk, I remember getting a cool Lupin III Fiat 500 and upon seeing it Mike Toole ran over and grabbing the matching Japanese Police Car (with Zenigata) and having just all kinds of fun with it. Now about all Anime Palace does is sell the exact same Japanese candies and lamune that just about everyone else has. Mind, I do enjoy a nice strawberry lamune but man, that's not what I want.
And I'm not going to pay $100 for an old mook that some dude bought for $3 at Bookoff.
no subject
Date: 2013-06-11 06:18 pm (UTC)Oh, man, see, that sort of makes my point!
See, the point of the 'hug pillow', at least every single one I've ever seen, is having a picture that has some erotic or fetish in the design. Such as:
http://www.hlj.com/product/CSP50703/Fun (warning, might be considered NSFW in some cases but there's no overt nudity).
Just taking a picture of a cosplayer and slapping it on a pillowcase is kind of missing the idea. Defending oneself by saying "they signed a release!!" is just Tokyopop level skeeze.
This IS wrong on many levels, no question about it and man it's a sheer joy reading that dude backpedal like mad as more internet ire is expressed. Stupid thing is? If the person involved contacted some of the cosplayers out there that do a little soft-core tease and got permission to do hugpillows of them he'd have a couple less problems (but still be skanky) but he'd also have to share the money and I strongly suspect that's not on his agenda, ya?
no subject
Date: 2013-06-11 08:14 pm (UTC)And the Beguiling does this, and makes money. Makes money in a giant dealers room full of people selling internet catch-phrase T-shirts and Angry Birds plushies and My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic tampon purses and t-shirts where the Tardis is being sat upon by the Game Of Thrones throne on top of Grumpy Cat and a dancing baby.
So you can make money selling anime and manga to anime and manga fans. I've seen it happen. It might take a little work, knowing your audience, establishing relationships in Japan, being smart in your buying. And a lot of dealers don't want to do that - because they could give a crap about Japanese animation or Japan or animation, they got into it because in 2001 they could sell DVDs and wallscrolls at 100% markup.
no subject
Date: 2013-06-12 08:35 pm (UTC)I personally think there's an adequate selection of contemporary anime and manga goods at most Japanese fan cons I visit, but I agree that you have to be vigilant to avoid mission creep. We may sometimes think of things like mooks and Roman Albums as books of past lore, but there's a surprising number of them still being produced. I should also note that at Hama-Con I saw 90s artbooks from series such as Tokyo Babylon or Fushigi Yuugi selling in a box for $5 each, so while the dude who never marks down his prices is a reality, sometimes there are surprising bargains to be had.
--Carl
"In 1986/All I want to do is fly."
--Spacemen 3, "Come Down Easy"
no subject
Date: 2013-06-12 11:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-06-13 01:54 am (UTC)I've had, over the long years, various people making trips to Japan do the "hey, want me to look for something for you?" thing and usually I end up saying "no, it's cool, thanks" because either what I want is so super obscure or expensive I just can't ask that favor, but more importantly...
It's not about the stuff I know about. It's about the stuff I have no idea exists.
I mean, art books /mooks. I have no clue what's been produced. Often when I find out about something it's OOP and gone. I JUST learned there was a super cool mook on Giant Robo The Animation produced in 2007:
http://www.amazon.co.jp/%E3%82%B8%E3%83%A3%E3%82%A4%E3%82%A2%E3%83%B3%E3%83%88%E3%83%BB%E3%83%AD%E3%83%9C-THE-ANIMATION--%E5%9C%B0%E7%90%83%E3%81%8C%E9%9D%99%E6%AD%A2%E3%81%99%E3%82%8B%E6%97%A5-%E5%AE%8C%E5%85%A8%E8%A8%AD%E5%AE%9A%E8%B3%87%E6%96%99%E9%9B%86/dp/4758010862/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1369962639&sr=1-1&keywords=%E3%82%B8%E3%83%A3%E3%82%A4%E3%82%A2%E3%83%B3%E3%83%88%E3%83%AD%E3%83%9C+THE+ANIMATION+~+%E5%9C%B0%E7%90%83%E3%81%8C%E9%9D%99%E6%AD%A2%E3%81%99%E3%82%8B%E6%97%A5
(amazon japan link)
Where the hell did THAT come from?! I dunno, but I can't get it, because I don't have the money to keep an agent on retainer to buy junk.
And there were similar books published for Dirty Pair and Xabungle and so on.
ARRGGHH.
See, there needs to be something like CD Japan and Hobbylink Japan for books. A place that doesn't get just the skimmed off the top stuff but EVERYTHING. It would be the perfect thing for Books Nippan, ahh, Nippon Shuppan Hanbai K.K. that is, to do, but they'd have to get over the 'we're gonna mark it up 200% for best profit' thinking they had.
no subject
Date: 2013-06-13 10:03 pm (UTC)Realistically, they can't all make it--printed goods are, as they said in Battle of the Planets, heaaaa-vy. It was beyond me how the short-lived Mandarake operation in California made any money, but I was certainly grateful for them while they were around. You mentioned the 2007 book on Giant Robo, but more recently I was surprised to see three different lavish mooks and artbooks on Eden of the East I hadn't known existed. I also remember that nice Dirty Pair book that came out in the last decade, although I didn't pick it up myself.
--Carl
no subject
Date: 2013-06-14 06:36 am (UTC)It was my first Project A-kon, was that #3? Met Dave, Bruce, Ed et al. I'm getting an 'early in' look at the Dealer's room because of my connection with Meri, being a guest, blah blah. I'm seeing stuff and more stuff but, there was one guy, didn't have that much out yet, this odd looking Yamato hardcover with a silver dustjacket. I picked it up before Tim saw it and holy freaking crap it was a book all about Yamato The New Journey published by Academy/West Cape!
Understand, I had thought I knew EVERYTHING that Academy had published. The Silver 3-volume set on Original Yamato, the smaller HC for Arrivederci Yamato, the big book of Be Forever Yamato and the bigger book of Final Yamato. Complacent I was. Smug even. And here was a damn HC on my favorite Yamato movie out of the blue! Best $20 I ever spent. Awesome book. Probably be even more so if I had any skill at reading Japanese. :)
(and an aside, Nishizaki! You went and did this wonderful book of New Journey but you couldn't bother to make books for Yamato 2 and Yamato III? *Pfagh*)
Of course, now that Tim has been doing his man's job of learning EVERYTHING about Yamato there's been a number of "where did THAT come from?!" books discovered and someday I'll own them all. But I'll always treasure that New Journey book.
I've always wondered how big the gaps in my Lupin III book collection are. Futabasha was really on a tear in the '80s, those mooks on First and Second Series Lupin III are pretty good, but they only did one on Part III that I know of and that only covered like...hurm...only the first 13 episodes! Quite incomplete. They'd have had to do at least 2 more for the full run, 3 more (for a total of 4) would have been nice and symmetrical. I suspect this didn't happen.
And those lovely little 'anime comics'. I bought the hell out of those.
I really really miss Yuji and Books Nippan.
no subject
Date: 2013-06-15 05:53 am (UTC)There are three different ani-comics versions of Cagliostro to my knowledge: the original 4-volume set, a later 3-volume set, and a (I believe 6-volume) set that used a different approach: instead of panels with word balloons, each page was a landscape-oriented still from the film, with the dialogue at the bottom. Futabasha also tried this approach (the landscape-style picture book) for a few of the Part III episodes. I don't *think* they ever did any more of the Part III mooks...I gather the series wasn't a success (I love how in the mid-80s you could make 50 episodes of a series and have it not be considered a success ^_^). There is also a complete ani-comics version of the First Series, in multiple volumes (maybe 10 or 12). It came out in the early '90s.
You probably know this, but Ben Ettinger at Anipages has put the same kind of research into Lupin that Tim has into Yamato. It makes me look at episodes I first saw decades ago with new eyes!
--Carl