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It's strange, but for some reason, when I find myself remembering each year's Sakura-Con, an annual Seattle anime and manga convention, I associate it with a dance tempo.[1] The song I associate with SC08 is The Romantics' "What I Like About You," which clocks in at about 150 beats per minute (bpm). I don't think it's just me: during Sakura-Con 2009, held April 10-12 at the Washington State Convention and Trade Center, I wandered up a music-themed aisle in the Exhibit Hall while a radio-station booth was playing Jpop, and I noticed that nearly everyone within earshot was, consciously or unconsciously, literally bouncing to the (slower) beat.[2]
With its 24-hour programming and the majority of its attendees in their teens and 20s, earlier cons had an escapist giddiness that verged on hysteria, to the point where last year rang a little hollow. For example, in 2008, I attended both the State of the Industry and the Dark Horse panels, only to leave early for lack of substance/interest. SC09's more measured pace allowed time for reflection (perhaps symbolized by guest Yoshitoshi ABe, creator of the self-published
Haibane Renmei comic). As such, I hazarded both panels again, and found that they were thoughtful, had more to offer than just project announcements[3], and addressed the economic recession and issues such as downloading fan translations head-on (although the panelists' outlooks were surprisingly optimistic, and not, necessarily, naively so – the longest line I saw was in the Exhibit Hall for the ATM, and, though individual exhibitors were scaling back, like other recent comics conventions, SC09 bucked the recessional trend with an increase in attendance. In 2008, there were an estimated 13,600 paying attendees, according to animecons.com. 2009 panel moderator Roland Kelts said he was "told that this convention is up to 20,000 attendees." At press time, when I e-mailed Director of Publicity Elmira Utz to confirm, she responded "all I know is we exceeded our expectations of 15K but we don't have it exactly sorted out by how much yet.")
State of the Industry panelists — Dark Horse editors Carl Horn (formerly of Viz) and Philip Simon, Adam Sheenan of the anime company Funimation and moderator Roland Kelts (author of
Japanamerica) — raised talking points that had implications for the broader U.S. comics market:
- Sheenan confirmed "that conventions are going up. So the fans are growing. So there is a demand for anime, younger, new fans, older fans that are coming back, you hardcores […]. Every convention I've been to in the last six months has capped out or gone almost at near the exact amount of people it could take in, and probably turned almost a thousand away at some of them, maybe even more, depending on the size of the show."
- In regards to the Direct Market, Horn said that "what we've heard from [Diamond Comic Distributors, Inc.] is that there's no evidence whatsoever that the readership for manga is declining or losing interest." However, "the troubles with the manga industry are, again, I hate to pass on to the larger economy, but that's what I'm going to do. Most manga is moved through bookstores […] and they've been having their own problems. So, any sales reduction in manga in bookstores is nothing personal against manga, it has more to do with the larger problems that bookstores have. On the other hand, we have been seeing market sales increase on Amazon."
- Writer and columnist Kelts, who spends half the year in Japan, observed that when he "talked to people in the United States, they were thrilled, they were excited, they were trying to find ways to market this stuff here in the U.S. When I talked to producers and publishers in Japan, by and large, they either had no idea what was going on in the U.S., or they had absolutely no marketing plan for anyone outside of Japan […] Again, this is the majority of the people I spoke to."
- Horn said that Dark Horse is trying to build relationships with creators directly, rather than with their publishing company (citing DH's upcoming CLAMP project, Clover, in support of this claim); Kelts explained that crunchyroll.com, a popular "fan site," went to Japan to develop partnerships with Japanese "producers" to "provide a digital strategy" for them so that they — and the creators — would get paid, and basically crunchyroll.com went legit.
- In light of this, Horn emphasized that DH is in the business of publishing books, they aren't an "entertainment delivery platform." He said "The manga boom has happened precisely along the generation that grew up with the Internet. It's the people who know how to download who are buying all of our manga." […] The problem isn't what you download: it's what you don't buy. In other words, the problem is not buying the book. When a company like Dark Horse publishes a manga, a licensed manga is basically the mechanism — and the only mechanism — by which the creator can profit by a translated version of their work."
- Sounding very much like Fantagraphics PR person (and my coworker) Eric Reynolds, Horn mourned the current lack of a structure to support shorter-length print comics in the U.S. (Although Reynolds is specifically referring to comic books, while Horn is talking about Japan's cheaply printed manga magazine anthologies, in which manga-ka create a chapter a month and every title supports the others.)
Also, there were a few tidbits of interest in the Dark Horse panel:
- According to Horn, about 10% of the U.S. manga market is Naruto
- Simon and Horn estimated that there are about 20 editors at DH who handle about two dozen projects each
In general, the con also seemed better organized and laid out this year, although the Japanese cultural events (SC is partially sponsored by the Asia Northwest Cultural Education Association (ANCEA)) recede farther into the background as time goes on (I rather miss the inflatable sumo suit wrestling). For fans, though, I would imagine that SC09 is essentially about seeing and being seen —
the majority of attendees are in costumes, and seem to spend about an equal amount of time being photographed and photographing others. Sakura-Con doesn't overwhelm the senses, as some other cons do: although it retains a relatively high energy level, most of the attendees are in the same groove.
Notes:
[1] Perhaps because it's one of the few places in Seattle where people actually, and often un-self-consciously, dance. This year (and I'm not sure if it was tied into a specific promotion or not) there was a group dancing in the street in front of the con both Friday and Sunday.
[2] For some insane reason there are four Northwest conventions that might hold interest for comics fans scheduled over three sequential April weekends this year: ECCC was the first, SC09 and Norwescon (sci-fi/fantasy) the second, and Stumptown, a minicomics festival, will be held in Portland this upcoming weekend.
[3] Although, for the record, I was the most excited about the possibility of an omnibus edition of Makoto Kobayashi's Club 9.
Kristy Valenti currently works for The Comics Journal and Fantagraphics Books, Inc.
Uncharted Territory is © Kristy Valenti, 2010
