Japan Has Otaku Studies Think Tank In The Works

Dentsu to Create Industrys 1st Think Tank to Study Otaku – News – Anime News Network.

For context, Dentsu are the parent company to anime outfit Geneon (about whom anime and J-culture expert Patrick Macias has had more than a few pithy things to say). I strongly suspect they are doing this simply as a way to find out how to market that much more efficiently to what is proving to be a dwindling or at the very least hyper-saturated fanbase.

  • http://www.stevensavage.com/ Steven Savage

    I’d say this makes sense saturated or not: it’s my culture engine theory of Japan.

    The Japanese media are aware (at various levels of depth) that the culture engine makes cash an is popular. This is kind of inevitable – I’m a little surprised it didn’t happen a few years ago.

  • Scott Delahunt

    I’m just hoping they do a tag-and-release study instead of live capture for an artificial environment.

  • Rob

    I have a funny feeling anime companies will ignore the inevitable results: the lure of the short-term cash of the Densha Otoko otaku is much easier to get than the global market, regardless of the fact that what the former wants is almost diametrically opposed to what the latter does.

    As we see here in the US courtesy of the MPAA and RIAA, fighting change is much easier than actually doing it. Thus, expect more moe pandering to the locals and blaming foreigners for not paying $60 for a two-episode DVD rather than figuring out how to make anime and manga profitable again.

    • http://genjipress.com Serdar Yegulalp

      Yes. The way to make those things profitable requires real work — e.g., building stronger alliances with overseas partners so that by the time a show is ready to be exhibited in Japan, it’s also ready to be distributed in many other markets as well. But again, that requires thinking about anime/manga as a truly exportable commodity, and not just as a grab-the-bucks-and-run enterprise.