- The Japan Times talked about the anime industry catching up to the online revolution. “Today the despised former pirates at Crunchyroll.com — a now-legal multilingual Web portal for non-Japanese anime fans — are leading an industry revolution in content delivery and distribution, and Japanese producers are following their lead. Heavyweight veterans such as Toei, Bandai, Sunrise and others are scrambling to preview and offer their titles internationally via streaming sites like YouTube, Hulu, Niconico and Netflix. A new producer-collaborative streaming anime site, Daisuki, sponsored in part by one of the world’s largest advertising agencies, Dentsu, goes live in April. And a Japan-based site for videos about Japanese pop culture called Waoryu debuted last month.”
- Stephanie Mlot claimed in PC Magazine that 2013 Is the Best Time To Be a Fangirl. Discussing the record breaking fundraising success for a Veronica Mars movie, Mlot discussed statistics. “This month’s SXSW boasted 31 Kickstarter-backed movies, and Kickstarter co-founder Yancey Strickler said this week that 10 percent of the films that debuted at Sundance raised money on the site…The letter-writing campaigns of yore have given way to Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, and Kickstarter movements, taking ‘power to the people’ to a more sophisticated, and often more effective level. Still, it’s unlikely that crowd-funded entertainment will become the new normal. Hollywood can’t, and won’t, subside on scraps from even the wealthiest of adoring fans,” in part because the costs for the typical film or television series are so high.
- Her Universe, a creator of fannish women’s apparel, has begun a Year of the Fangirl promotion, featuring women telling their fannish stories after being nominated by other fans. One of them, Tricia Barr, advised fans to find their voices. “I always believed women would come into our own in fandom. Powered by a surge of female fans coming to the fore, a female-led action movie ruled at the box office and the range of stories with strong female characters is becoming almost limitless in books, comics, movies, and television. Doors are opening for women specifically because they are fangirls…Voice your opinions, hopes, or desires about the stories that you feel passionate about. Respect that every other fan – including the ones creating those stories – brings their own unique perspective.”
If you have your own fannish history to share, write about it on Fanlore! Contributions are welcome from all fans.
We want your suggestions! If you know of an essay, video, article, podcast, or link you think we should know about, comment on the most recent OTW Fannews post. Links are welcome in all languages! Submitting a link doesn’t guarantee that it will be included in a roundup post, and inclusion of a link doesn’t mean that it is endorsed by the OTW.