Lucky Star ~ Is Japan anime a money making business? (by Harry.F)
Posted by harry1004 on October 7, 2007
Animations, something that all of us must had watch when we were young.
Lucky Star’s logo
Today I will focus on an animation called “Lucky Star” (らきすた). It is released in the April of 2007. The story focuses on four high school female students’daily life, for example, what are their interests, what they do in their lunch time, what they do in lessons, what they see in comic shops etc. And you may ask, what is the relationship between such an animation and culture studies?
Izumi Konata
Let me tell you step by step. First and the most, one of the main characters of this animation is called Izumi Konata (いずみ こなた). She is interested in TV animations, PC Games, comics, figures etc, who can be identified as an “Otaku” (オタク) . As all of you may have heard about this term, it is totally different from “train man” (でんしゃおたく). But their differences are not the main target of this article so I am not going to discuss them.
As there are lots of anime-fans in Hong Kong, we can study their consuming culture by using this animation as an example. In the animation, Konata buys three sets of the same anime-side product, of which one is for display use and the remain two as substitutes. She also makes use of her leisure time to do part-time job in cosplay cafe, in order to earn more money to buy comics and TV Games. Spending thousands of dollars in comic festival to buy her favorite comics is nothing special to her. These situations have also been appearing on Hong Kongs’anime-fans. If you don’t believe in me, see what’s going in the annual anime festival held in Wan Chai and you will understand the situation.
At the same time, anime production companies know their consuming habit. They release different types of side-products, such as figures, models, cards etc. For example, one model can be developed into several versions, which are only different in their colours! What’s more, the fans will still buy all of them! From these examples, we can see that these anime-fans are a group of people having high consuming power and they are the main income of the production companies!
Therefore, Japan anime production is not simply a process of entertainment, but also a money making industry! We can easily find many anime side products in our daily life. Remember there are Keroro lanterns everywhere in the Mid – Autumn Festival last week? ( Although those lanterns had not get copyright from the company, I believe. ) This situation shows that they are more popular than traditional rabbits lanterns. This is simply a supply and demand theory.
“Watching animation” has been identified as childish behaviour. It seems to be a low culture when comparing to playing piano or joining painting class, which are regarded as high culture. Animations may become as grand as Shakespeare’s operas in the future, God knows…?
http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%89%E3%81%8D%E2%98%86%E3%81%99%E3%81%9F
