Anime Nerds: Success and Vengeance, er-I mean, Failure.

Some nerds are created more equal than others. Some are excitable (and occasionally attractive) cosplayers, others are nerds who put together small businesses turning what they love into a job and some nerds are the power behind companies that they run into the ground after 20 or so years of booming success preying on the wallets of other nerds. No matter the path, Nerding used as an instrument of passion can shake the very earth.

Let's jam about some ways to be a part of the anime industry, yo!







(Apollo Smile achieved national notoriety among nerds because she can actually squeeze into a tight fitting jumpsuit. She convinced people that she can act, sing and practice martial arts. Suckers.)


Ah, smell that industry!

The combined evils that made anime a household name also unintentionally created fan owned and operated industries within our own country to imitate the swag factory of Japan.

For instance, Cosplayers, or "Costume RolePlayers", who are essentially nerds who dress up for conventions and the hell of it sometimes have trouble crafting metal or other materials into accurate props for when they strut around as anime or videogame characters, fortunately for them there's a huge industry within people's own homes as they slave over raw materials to construct accurate props, for a price.

The more charitable and generous bunch teach you to do it yourself, like BioWeapons.com They actually TEACH you how to construct a Guyver suit of armor. For a price they'll do SOME of the heavy lifting, but they give you the resources to work like the pros. That's awesome.

Most places, however, aren't so generous with their secrets, talents or ideas. In fact, most of them do their work out of eBay. I don't know any of them well enough to really endorse one, but some of my fellow nerds who actually indulge in cosplay get their stuff off of eBay and find their prop dealers that way.

Additionally, in an age color printers and high-tech widgets, the sheer volume of cheap crap that can be churned out is simply amazing! I personally can vouch for the fun of buying cheap swag ranging from knockoff zippo lighters, to posters, to wallets, lighters, handbags, keychains, etc. It's usually inexpensive and fun to show off with fellow nerds.

One such dealer I had good experiences with was a big Bleach & Persona fan who shared my obscene obsession with Mass Effect. To get a look at some reasonably priced, fan-made swag check out Fortune's Market on eBay.

Cosplay itself is something like the porn industry because people like seeing attractive people squeezed into the appropriately revealing outfits. Most people do it for the fun, but some make a bit of money off of it. The best way to make money is to be REALLY good at it enough so that people actually offer you money, room and board to come share your secrets at a convention.

The alternative option is the porn aspect. I'm not kidding! I'm also not trying to encourage porn entries, but it's a fact everyone should keep in mind, that lonely nerds pay money for this kind of thing catering to a fetish. At the moment it's a niche market, especially in the USA, but in ten years... who knows!

In the slightly less erotic market, people like Apollo Smile happen. Who is she? She's a nerd that was cute enough to be photographed, fit enough to squeeze into jumpsuits and enthusiastic enough to throw herself into places she doesn't necessarily belong.

I find her to be embarrassing as hell.

I admit she's pretty cute though, or at least she was back when she was still relevant to domestic anime culture. As she spread her wiles and influence over the hearts of nerds, Apollo Smile published CDs of her own anime-inspired songs, hosted the wildly effective Summer of Anime program on the SciFi Channel that brought millions of new eyes on hot anime titles, played around with weapons boasting martial arts training, got cameo roles in anime as a voice actress and seemed desperate for attention by blurting out typical weaboo "Japlish" jibberish mincing her awful Japanese with her spastic English. Referring to herself as a "live-action anime girl" she became a flash in a pan of the white hot anime market of the mid-nineties and has slinked out of the public eye essentially in the same way.



She didn't so much have a business model, but a lot of eyes on her wackiness that actually made some minuscule dollar amount. It's not necessarily a path to follow, but it's certainly one to take into consideration because the domestic "idol" market is so limited. Populating it would be awesome, but we're not Japan so it needs to adapt to our market accordingly and she's definitely the poster child for American anime-ish Idol stars.

I've mentioned fan-subs before, but their strange nemesis appears within this seemingly harmless cottage industry: FAN-DUBS!



What the hell's a fan dub? Well, obviously it's a domestic language dub over an anime done typically in an amateur fashion and is distributed for free until the license holder shows up with an order to cease and desist. This is usually the most toothless product in a world of intellectual product theft, but in a legal sense I can see why producing a competing product and giving it away might upset them, but... eh, whatever.

A friend gifted me with an australian fan-dub of a japanese Transformers series called Headmasters and it is so incredibly bad that I almost clawed off my ears four episodes into it. They're timing wasn't bad and the inflection was appropriate with the original tone of the Japanese voice actors, but rape of the ears is still the only unique feature it can claim. Sorry guys, there's a reason actors get paid.



Most fan-dubs are of a comedic nature, so as not to draw ire from dubbers locally. Much of them are on Youtube and totally worth a watch and a laugh. Local dubbers realized the fun these nerds were having with their stuff and decided to make their own spoof reels and outtakes. Anime Works did A LOT of these and some of them are funny as hell, such as the ones they did for Berserk and Samurai Deeper Kyo.




Humor is always its own reward.

As for becoming a part of the BIG industry, voice acting and whatnot... that's tricky. The best country of English Dub voice acting is Canada. Period. You'll be paid in peanuts, but you'll find your voice all over the damn place. Texas used to be a palace of talented anime at the church of ADV Films, but... that is no more. Funimation is your next closest chance at anime fame as well as Media Blasters. I explored this a little myself, but my allergies make long times in a booth yammering while a guy at the soundboard screams and throws coffee at me an overly challenging ordeal.

As for becoming an animator or artist, you might consider a trip to Korea where you'll be chained to a table where you'll be enjoying gruel and carpal tunnel as you're whipped to animate crap from all over the world. Some of it MIGHT be anime. Maybe. Then again, if North Korea starts a war you may just have your chance locally unless the industry moves to India along with telemarketing.

Artists that aren't Japanese don't get a lot of play in anime, unless you're Adam Warren or Fred Perry. But even then your audience is pretty much limited to the manga market with occasional guest artist shots in otherwise legitimate comics.

The best part is that I could be wrong.

I could be wrong about a lot of things in the coming years.

The fact is that the market is changing drastically and with Japan's animation market now heavily dependent on outside demand (for instance Cowboy Bebop & Trigun are vastly more popular in the USA than in Japan) as well as production drive and revenue, that means that new things will have to be considered.

For instance, why do you think anime studios have been whoring themselves out to shitty American script writers in constructing the Animatrix, Halo Legends and Batman: Gotham Knight? Because of the money, silly!

Remember the Final Fantasy movie? That scared the Japanese silly because it became abundantly clear that Squaresoft went out of their depth in many ways. Giving the man behind FF free reign was their first mistake, the second was letting him manage the film like an anime and their third was allowing him a budget of that magnitude that pissed backwards on their primary audience (IE: having nothing to do with the games that funded this travesty).

American business has a lot of control of anime now and with the power changing so drastically within the domestic anime market, anything could happen.

In the meantime, don't leave your day job, buy anime while you can find it cheap (we're in a depression, remember?) and keep your ear to the ground for new opportunity in this ever changing world of anime commerce.

Your time will come, my eager nerds. Just be ready to seize the opportunity when it presents itself. As I stumble across anything, I'll be a font of information, but as for ACTUAL news check the Anime News Network, a delightfully weird place make by delightfully weird people, but their info is top notch and fairly up-to-the-minute.

This is all stuff I'll blather about in more depth later, so check back.