The Rise and Fall of the Anime Boom in the US: Lessons for Global Creative Industries

Session Submission Type: Organized Panel

Abstract

From the late-1990s, the golden age of Japanese animation in the United States generated considerable economic revenues, reaching a formidable peak in 2003 with more than US$4.84 billion in sales. This is 3.2 times greater than the export value of Japanese steel production to the United States in the same year. By 2009, the numbers dropped by nearly 44 percent, mainly due to the influx of low-quality anime series, illegal downloading, and the collapse of the DVD market. While the anime boom in the US is commercially over, anime's wider impact on the American market continues. Anime television series are broadcasted regularly by American television channels, merchandise continues to be marketed and consumed, anime IPs are reproduced by US animation studios and by Hollywood, and anime-related fans' events flourish. Anime also continues to influence also American animators for whom anime styles, themes and storytelling techniques have become part of their toolkit.
The rise and fall of the anime boom in the US provides an interesting case to examine the development of global creative industries during major techno-economic paradigm shift and as part of the digitalization of media. Based on a collaborative study conducted between 2011-2015, this panel will offer three vintage perspectives to explore it: the transnational marketing networks of anime that produced the anime boom as well as its implosion, the cultural and artistic processes it incited, and the government policies and industrial strategies devised to address its global challenges.

Area of Study

• Interarea-Border Crossing

Session Organizer

• Nissim Otmazgin, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Chair

• Michal Daliot-Bul, University of Haifa

Individual Presentations

• The Normative Impact of the Anime Boom Years: Has Anime become a Transcultural Style? - Michal Daliot-Bul, University of Haifa

• The Transnational Marketing Networks of Anime - Naohiro Shichijo, National Institute for Science and Technology Policy

• Japan’s Anime Policy: Supporting the Industry or “Killing the Cool”? - Nissim Otmazgin, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Discussant

• Ian Condry, Massachusetts Institute of Technology