Anime Central is a convention that takes place every spring outside of Chicago, IL (USA). It’s been an annual event for over 20 years at the time of this writing, and it’s also one of the first anime conventions I ever attended as an itty-bitty otaku (after I wet my heels at the much smaller, more intimate Anime Iowa around 2002). This year was the first time I’d been back to the con after a 5 year hiatus; I have a tumultuous relationship with “big” (over 10K attendee) cons, and so I took a break after my last venture to regroup and figure out just what I was looking for in terms of convention experiences.
I’ll write more about the convention in general in a separate post. What’s relevant to this post is the fact that I wasn’t planning to attend this year’s Anime Central either until I saw some news about the guest list – members of animation studio Kinema Citrus, including staff members who performed key production roles on two of my recent favorite series (Made in Abyss and Revue Starlight) were slated to attend and speak. Because my local medium-sized convention rarely gets Japanese guests in the first place, and because both of those anime series affected me deeply, the con suddenly went from being a distant “maybe” to an absolute must-do event.
The Kinema Citrus panel occurred on Friday afternoon, prior to the Made in Abyss: Wandering Twilight film premiere. There were team members present from each of their three recent “big” projects – Made in Abyss, Revue Starlight, and The Rising of the Shield Hero, each of which had series-specific panels and autograph-signings scheduled for later in the weekend. The team members introduced themselves, and there was a little bit of information provided about their specific roles in both the company, as well as in their specific productions. Also included in this grouping was Kevin Penkin, the Australian music composer whose work has proved iconic for both Shield Hero and Abyss. He spoke a bit about being a Westerner who’s “made it” in the sense that he’s living the weeaboo dream of working in anime production. He specifically made the transition from working on game soundtracks to anime in collaboration with Kinema Citrus (first with the series Norn9 and then with the previously mentioned titles).
The bulk of the panel was fairly light fare – the type of chatter one might expect from such an event. I’ve read a lot of translated event reports from similar happenings in both the West and Japan, and they tend to be light on really meaty information and more focused on surface-level interviews and interactions, which might be partly due to the fact that there’s a lot of translation/interpreting going on which affects the flow of the conversation a bit. One thing I found interesting was that the origin of the name “Kinema Citrus” was a bit of a secret for a long time, and was actually not the originally-proposed name of the organization. The original name was “New Crime,” which carried with it a “cool” sort of image. This was vetoed by the wife of one of the highers-up – she would not be associated with something implying criminal activity! The current title is the combination of “Kinema,” which is an old/alternate form of the word Cinema – meant to imply a classic, long-standing and enduring image for the company. The “Citrus” comes from the translation/interpretation of one of the founding members’ family names. It’s definitely a fun tidbit of info that I was happy to learn about.
Also interesting to was the origin of the Shield Hero anime production. I think most of us are familiar with the fact that anime studios don’t tend to pick most of their own projects. Instead, a production committee of various factions forms in order to pool their funds in favor of a mutually-beneficial production (usually a popular manga or light-novel title on a publisher’s slate that has the potential for other tie-ins like merch and music) and then an animation studio and staff is chosen to create the animated product. In the case of Shield Hero, it was actually Crunchyroll who approached the Japanese title-holders and proposed the anime series, since the light novels have apparently been well-received here in the West (I have very little insight into the light novel fandom world, so I can only assume this is true). While I had the vague sense that Western companies had been getting back into the anime production game lately (this was something that was starting to happen right before the anime bubble burst back in the 2008-ish time frame), it was interesting to have it confirmed. It also confirms why those of us who use Crunchyroll and follow their various social media accounts are continually pummeled by advertising for the title at every turn – Crunchyroll has some skin in the game on this one.
In what I thought was a rare bit of truthfulness or vulnerability (and also a privately uncomfortable moment for myself), one of the staff members noted that they were actually concerned about some of the content in Shield Hero when they were invited to talk about it. He specifically noted the “slavery” content, as well as the fact that the protagonist of the story experiences betrayal at the hands of various women, and they thought long and hard about those elements in the adaptation process considering the “current climate” (what I’ve taken to be a reference to “Me Too” and similar movements). When they asked if this content was a problem for Western audience members, the “tatemae” part of my psyche kept quiet – I think it would be immensely rude to say “uh, yeah, there are some of us who take a lot of issue with it and think it plays into some very shitty social problems” to someone who didn’t have a part in creating the original scenario and was at least thinking through the possible implications of the content. Of course, there was a small-but-passionate contingent of fans in attendance whose response was more along the lines of “woo! *applause* no way! It’s great!”
which, to someone of my life experience, produces an emotional reaction that’s challenging to quantify. To put it simply, it’s the feeling of suddenly realizing that you’re no longer in a place of assumed dignity and safety – because “screw your feelings.” Perhaps some of these people, loudly proclaiming their (excuse my language) lack-of-fucks toward this particular issue, were even those who felt the need to dog-pile and harass me online in the past (an experience during which I did start to feel unsafe). It’s just one of those situations that many people are (thankfully) never forced to confront, but which definitely colored my memory of this experience in a way that is otherwise difficult to describe. Kudos to my husband, who has a deep sensitivity to these sorts of matters (and a much duller sense of social shame), who I could see shaking his head out of the corner of my eye!
That said, I speak as someone with a complex personal history who also wants to respect the amount of work that goes into producing a piece of art, even one that deals with sensitive social topics in a poor way. One thing that struck me about this panel, as well as the Revue Starlight panel that I’ll cover separately, is the subtle but somewhat frequent allusions that the panelists made to the intensity of anime production work – the constricted time-frames, the late-nights, and the long hours spent trying to meet deadlines. I think as anime fans we’re all at least somewhat familiar with the amount of toil that goes into creating the entertainment we consume, and I don’t know anyone who isn’t somewhat sheepish or guilty about the sacrifices people make to produce our Japanese cartoons. While we all have our content critiques (and despite what others may say I continue to feel that mine are very personal and very valid), unless creators are actively denigrating people’s experiences or otherwise participating in the continuation of some dire social ills, I think it’s important to at least recognize the amount of work it takes to create anime even when the content of the story itself has its own issues.
Overall, the panel was an interesting, entertaining new experience for me as a fan of anime. It’s very mesmerizing to be in the presence of the people whose minds and hands helped to create imagery and music so powerful and memorable. No offense to the voice actors and ADR directors who tend to make up the bulk of the guests at my local conventions, as their work is also an integral part of the entire anime “package.” But animation production itself has always been a fascination of mine, and to meet and listen to the people who are passionate about that work is an experience that’s truly special to me as an otaku.
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