 |
 |
Anime |
 |
||
 |
CREATING A MONSTER: Cartoons No Longer a Kid-Sized Industry February 27, 1998 In December 1997, children across the nation suffered seizures and other severe reactions thought to have been triggered by bright flashes in an episode of the animated television series "Pokemon" (Pocket Monsters). The ensuing rumpus, which saw the show temporarily discontinued, served to highlight the popularity of this cartoon; among those affected in the fallout were makers of video games, food products, and toys. The total Pocket Monster market, based on character goods, is said to be worth 400 billion yen (3.2 billion U.S. dollars at 125 yen to the dollar). It has become standard practice for advertising agencies and production companies to "scout" characters likely to become a hit and develop them through several different media. With holders of copyrights on hit products expanding their activities overseas, Japanese cartoons, or anime, appear to have entered their golden age. Marketing on Two Fronts Pocket Monsters debuted in a computer game created by a famous Japanese video-game hardware company and two software makers. In the game, 151 tiny monster characters ranging from bugs to mythical beasts have to be tracked down, captured, and then cared for. Simultaneously with the monsters' video-game debut, their comic strip also began to appear in the supplement of a popular comic book aimed at upper-grade elementary school children, a group that forms a core market for computer games. This strategy of spinning the story-line across separate media greatly boosted their appeal, and after six months the Pocket Monsters migrated from the supplement to the main comic book. That move pushed the book's monthly circulation from 1.2 million to 2 million copies. Of the 23 serialized strips carried by the comic book, 5 are tied in with video games in the same way. The video game software is also doing very well, clocking up shipments of over 7.5 million copies in a market where 500,000 copies is enough to make a product a major hit. Over 30 related publications have come out, many of them "strategy books" explaining how to corral the beasties; also available are over 100 kinds of merchandise including stuffed toys, confectionery, and albums of the theme music. By the time it was pulled from the air following the mass seizures apparently resulting from an exciting scene in an episode aired in December 1997, the TV program had picked up ratings of over 15% of all households, although it had just debuted in April of that year. With every new market, the Pocket Monster craze fed on itself and grew bigger. Anime Go International The beneficiaries in such successes are not only an anime's direct progenitors, but also outside agents such as advertising agencies, and the companies that spur sales by acquiring the rights to commercialize the characters after becoming sponsors of popular programs. But insiders say that few creations generate a spin-off market big enough to make TV-show sponsorship a financially attractive option, and that the risks are as great as the spoils. Creators of computer games and anime rack their brains to find ways of persuading the media that matter to buy their products, and advertising agencies struggle to sniff out promising projects early on with which to do business. The anime industry is now expanding overseas. As Japan is a major importer of entertainment, it continues to pay enormous sums in distribution fees to Hollywood and other foreign suppliers of music and movies. Anime, however, is the one entertainment field in which Japan is internationally competitive and maintains an export surplus. "The Dog of Flanders," an anime made by a major production company and screened on the Fuji Television Network, has been shown in some 60 countries. Foreign, mainly European, big-name media organizations were falling over themselves for the rights; recently, more purchases have been made by TV channels in Asian countries including Hong Kong, Malaysia, South Korea, and Thailand. Now, half of production company income derives from overseas sales of broadcasting and character-merchandising rights.
Laying Down the Copyright Law Other factors have been working recently to bring anime and similar program content to a far wider audience: the proliferation of channels thanks to cable TV and satellite broadcasting, and advances in multimedia technology. Before, producers of such programming had only broadcast and video rights to worry about. Now, they must deal with a complex mesh of separate ancillary copyright issues. Among those now squabbling over secondary usage rights to programming content are TV channels, production companies, trading houses, and advertising agencies; signs are emerging of a splintering of copyrights among these groups. The upshot is that the overseas sale and multipurpose use of large numbers of new titles has become effectively impossible. In the 1980s, pirate publication of comics was rampant, especially in parts of Asia. The tide finally began to recede after intellectual-property rights protection became a hot-button issue and attitudes hardened in the United States, and Taiwan in 1992 revised its copyright legislation. But the development of multimedia technology and other factors are scrambling the copyright picture anew, and a new system of rules is urgently needed.
|
|
|||||||
 
    |
|||||||||
