Word: animé
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...illusion then, the mind-blowing promise of the original Matrix? The answer is no, and the proof is The Animatrix. A collection of nine anim? film shorts supervised by Matrix creators Andy and Larry Wachowski and directed by a team of anim? all-stars, The Animatrix is the Matrix concept free of the commercial pressure of an epic-movie trilogy. Sure, The Animatrix is in one sense a multimillion-dollar advertisement for the franchise, a part of the Wachowskis' plan to milk 99? out of every entertainment dollar spent this summer. But it's also a delicate, deliberate work...
...Many critics search for Murakami's essential Japaneseness in the influences expressed through the art itself?influences that include anim?, otaku figurines and mushroom clouds, to name just a few. Yet few seem to have noticed the manner in which Murakami is perhaps most Japanese: taking someone else's concept (the art factory) and pushing it to new levels of discipline, efficiency and production innovation. Spend time at Murakami's KaiKai Kiki commune and you'll quickly discover that the hippie vibe the place radiates is a front. Looking past the shabby prefab trailers and scrubby farmland they skirt...
...versions of Japanese manga to the U.S. mass market, despite the fact that the genre?characterized by its fanciful stories and earnest, teardrop-faced heroes?has been a favorite in Japan for decades. It's not that American kids are clueless. They've been exposed to Japanese animation, or anim?, for years?thanks to the success of manga-based TV cartoons like Pok?mon and Dragon Ball, and the movies of Hayao Miyazaki. Yet no one thought manga would fly off the magazine rack...
...except Seiji Horibuchi, president of San Francisco-based Viz Communications, who observed the popularity of anim? among American kids and decided the country was ready. Two years ago he approached Japanese publishing giant Shueisha about exporting its popular teen-oriented Weekly Shonen Jump (shonen means "boy" in Japanese) series to the U.S. After a year of negotiations, Horibuchi convinced Shueisha's skeptical executives that American kids were an audience waiting to happen. It may have helped that Weekly Shonen Jump's Japanese circulation has declined by half, to about 3.4 million, since the mid-1990s, and the company was looking...
...Shonen Jump is just a fad. "If it becomes a mass publication it will only be for a very limited time," says Samir Husni, author of the annual Guide to New Consumer Magazines. "The audience for these magazines comes in waves." The mangazine's publishers don't buy that. "Anim? has been in the U.S. for over 10 years now, and its popularity has been growing steadily," says Bauer. The circulation target: a million within three years, which would put it on a level with Business Week and Vanity Fair. Yugi's trouncing of Wolverine, it seems, may have just...