I won’t bother re-iterating everything that was said at this year’s ‘State of the Anime Industry’ panel, especially since Toon Zone did such a bang-up job of summarizing it, but I would be remiss in not mentioning some of the high points.

Overall, the anime biz is not headed over a waterfall, but there is still much work to be done to re-vamp the business model in order to bring the industry back to pre-crash levels. Online access (read: ‘piracy’) has definitely had an effect, but as has been stated many times before, this level of fan interest can be harnessed to the distributor’s advantage if they’re clever and open to re-assessing old business models.

Here’s a snippet:

It’s no secret that CD and DVD sales in the United States have been dropping of late, and Kelts pointed out that anime has been especially hard-hit by the loss in sales. However, anime’s popularity has been rising, with conventions breaking attendance records almost every weekend — a fact reinforced by Sheehan, who said that 25% of the attendees of the FUNimation panel said it was their first anime convention. Kelts began the panel by asking the participants what they were doing in response to the loss of home video sales. Iyadomi pointed out that anime companies spent years developing a market for selling anime TV series on single-volume DVDs, only to be undermined when American companies started selling entire seasons of TV shows on DVD. This left them caught between a market that was rejecting single-volume discs for season sets and licensors who are still highly resistant to the idea of selling entire seasons of TV at once. Bandai has been trying to balance between price point and content that can still be profitable, like shipping 13-episode products in 2 disc sets.

Read the whole shebang here.

When Japanese publisher Yohan went belly up earlier this year, its’ passing was scarcely noted in Western media. Not that I would have expected any of them to run with the story - but Japanamerica author Roland Kelts points out that Yohan’s death is the tip of the iceberg revealing a disturbing trend towards cultural isoaltionism amongst Japanese youth.

But the demise of Yohan in the 21st century may signal something broader and even more worrying: a Japanese public turning increasingly inward, becoming more provincial and less global at a historical moment when it can ill afford to do so.

My colleagues at Tokyo University frequently complain that the English language skills of the current generation of Japanese youth pale beside those of students 10 or 20 years ago. Foreign studies departments at Japan’s major universities are now battling to keep enrollment numbers respectable.

A surge in support for nationalistic behaviors such as the compulsory singing of the national anthem and reverence for the flag at schools, combined with political leaders who sometimes dismiss well-documented evidence of wartime atrocities, has given the rest of the world a portrait of a Japan hopelessly out of touch with reality and gruesomely unhip.