While posting my most recent Minamicon video I realised that I hadn't posted the paper I presented at the FSN conference last year! In part this was because the sound level was so low I didn't want to post it without having some decent subtitles on it, but also just because I had a very busy end to the year with the eventual completion and submission of my thesis plus a job change, and it just slipped between the cracks unfortunately!
FSN2019 was held at the University of Portsmouth in June 2019. I took part in a panel about fandom archiving and my paper was about the motivations for and process of setting up a fandom archive, including the questions that arise in the process and about one's competing responsibilities as both an academic and a fan.
Minamicon 26 took place this past weekend, and as ever I hosted a panel that explored a facet of my research. This time I thought it would be fun to look back at the ways British people responded to Japanese art and culture from the mid-1800s, following the end of Japan's isolation from the rest of the world, and consider whether the people we call "weebs" today are really all that new a phenomenon.
I had a smaller room this year but it didn't seem to discourage anyone - the room was packed once again and all the feedback so far has been good! It was quite a fun topic both for me to present and for people to listen to, though advance warning on the video below: there are quite a few bits that are quite cringey.
Unfortunately our camera's memory ran out before the end so I don't have the full Q&A, but the rest of the material works well by itself!
With special thanks to Alistair Jacklin for providing me with extra information about early cinema screenings that filled in some more of the UK anime fandom timeline.
Minamicon has been and gone for another year, and it was a great weekend as ever. I was presenting a panel once again, and this time, rather than go through my demographic research again, I decided to look at a different aspect of UK anime fandom history - the British press, its handling of anime and manga since organised anime fandom emerged in the UK in the '90s, and how the wider culture in the UK at the time shaped UK anime fandom.
There was an unfortunate clash in the timetable and I was up against a very popular event (one which I'd have liked to have gone to myself, in fact!), but the room was still packed, the audience was responsive, and the feedback has been really good!
For the first time ever, I've had to include content warnings, which I'll replicate here: material in the presentation includes racism, sexual content, violence, horror, and abduction/murder, including that of a child. None of these are dealt with in great or unnecessary detail, but they are important features.
If you want to see more of the videos used during the "cat breaks", check out Cream Heroes on YouTube!
Slides are available here for anyone who wants them!
My most recent panel is a bit of a redux of the Minamicon panel under the same title - I knew I was in for a busy time at work in early July so my thinking was that I could just rerun the Minamicon one if I didn't get time to update it! But fortunately I did, so I restructured the data slightly for Amecon in July 2018.
I was concerned that I may have a lot of people come along who had also been to the Minamicon one so I was happy I got the time to make a new presentation, though as it turned out, almost no-one who came along had been to the Minamicon version! Another full room for this, for which I was very grateful - it was pouring with rain on the day I delivered this talk, and it clashed with the annual charity auction. It's always very encouraging to have people interested in my weird, specialist research!
The angle I went for with this was to look at how the results of my questionnaire support or dismiss the stereotypes about UK anime fandom. As someone who came into anime fandom during the '90s, when Manga Video were mainly releasing sexual and/or violent titles and the mainstream press coverage of anime bordered on a moral panic, I've been very aware of stereotypes about anime fans from the beginning so it felt like a good approach to take with this data.
The next panel I ran after FSN2017 was at Minamicon 24, in March 2018. It presents a lot of the same data as was given in the FSN paper, but expands upon it to make the most of the time slot. As with my previous Minamicon panel, this ran on Sunday morning to another packed room but with markedly fewer hungover people and me feeling a lot less sick with nerves! It's just as informal and irreverent as the previous year though!
There are subtitles on this video but after the first 20 minutes or so they revert to Youtube's automatically generated ones, which aren't the best things ever due to audience participation and my own bizarre accent. I'm in the process of updating them to be more accurate but I haven't had a lot of time recently! I'll post an update when they're ready.
The next talk I delivered relating to my research was at the Fan Studies Network Conference, held at the University of Huddersfield in June 2017. It consisted of an expanded analysis of the demographic data I got from my questionnaire, revisited Azuma's generations of otaku, and revised the proposals about anime fandom generations in the UK I made back in 2012.
No-one had any questions to ask at the Q&A panel afterwards but I did have some very interesting talks with other academics in attendance afterwards, which was fantastic!
Continuing my updates of panels and talks that I've run in the past few years is "The State of Anime Fandom in the UK", a panel I ran at Minamicon 23 in March 2017. It was the first panel I ran following the closure of my quantitative research into anime fandom in the UK - from March 2016 until February 2017, I ran an online questionnaire that was designed to give me a snapshot of UK anime fandom, looking at fan demographics, preferences, entry points into fandom, and what other aspects of Japanese culture fans were interested in.
The panel presents my results in very broad terms as I didn't have time to show a full meta-analysis, but there were some interesting results nonetheless. The tone is also very informal, as it was held on the Sunday morning of the con when many people were a bit hungover and I was feeling a bit unwell due to nerves!
Many thanks to Batale for filming the panel and putting it up online.
It's been a good few years, but since the last time I posted a link to something fan studies-related I had done, I've run a few more talks and panels, so I figured I should update with those!
First is "Fandom, Memes and Free Cake*", a not-really-related-to-my-study panel I ran at Amechibi in April 2015. I find meme culture terribly interesting and thought this would be a fun topic to cover in a con setting, combining some actual academic discussion with the kind of irreverence that is entirely appropriate for meme culture.
The room was packed, which was a great result, though I did slightly worry that there might not be enough cake to go around... yes, despite the meme that says the cake is always a lie, I double-bluffed everyone and provided cake at the end! Well, it was my birthday after all...
Many thanks to Tom at Team Neko for filming the panel and putting it up online.
Once I finish my MPhil I'm toying with the idea of revisiting this at a future con, and possibly writing a book. We shall see...!
Last month I was interviewed for an episode of HuHa 2's "Heroes of Animation" series, which was dedicated to anime and manga. Apparently I'm a superfan! The episode is on YouTube now and can be viewed here:
Finally up! The video is low quality because Youtube was unable to process the high-quality version for some reason. I may see if I can reupload it at a later date if the audio/video quality is problematic.
This is my paper as presented at the Manga Movies Project symposium, held at UEA in September 2012.
Between the discussion among anime fans at my Amecon panel, and that among my fellow academics who attended the symposium and spoke to me afterwards, I am aware that I have some expanding and exploration to do within this topic - expect that in a future blog post!
Here's a video of my panel from Amecon 2012, held at Keele University from 10-12 August 2012. the title was "The Changing Face of British Anime Fandom" and included lots of discussion from the audience!
Many thanks to Tom and Zelly at Team Neko for filming the panel and putting it up online.
