Anyone on social media or who has supported a project from CREATORVC before may have gotten the news. And if you haven’t heard about Icons of Anime, their next project, there’s not much to get excited about. Quite frankly, they are showing up late. While there are various studies about the fandom from various perspectives, to stand out really means finding something new that hasn’t been done before. Although the survey page is still active, maybe it’s not too late to contribute. Recent podcasts show they are enthusiastic, and Tim Eldred really hopes this can be made.
In the 90s, I had the good fortune to volunteer at a conference and get my education that way. Organized by the Centre for Asia-Pacific Initiatives (CAPI), New Culture for the Masses: The Universal Appeal and Global Reach of Japanese Popular Culture was considered one of the first major academic conferences of its kind focused strictly on modern Japanese pop culture. There were guest lectures examining how various aspects of Japanese media were making a significant impact in the West, and we weren’t restricted to anime.
I discovered manzai, learned more about how sumo wrestling works, and even communicated with Monkey Punch! That broader perspective matters because anime didn’t become a phenomenon here in isolation. Manga, toys, video games, music, film and television all played a role in shaping how Japanese popular culture was received.
While this company’s version will be fan-focused, it’s not too late, it seems, to have your say. The webpage is still active at the time of writing and posting, and as for what’s next, they are on radio silence.
The name of this project is telling, and the primary focus is to examine all the major titles, talk to the fans who found them, and meet the people they inspired as we explore how anime grew in the West. CREATORVC itself has described the project as a multi-decade look at anime’s explosive rise in the West. It will be broken up into chapters, which will look at specific titles and topics to paint a fuller picture. Anyone who has seen their In Search of Darkness series will know how that’ll be broken up.
When their documentaries run four to six hours, viewers will no doubt get a lot of detail. With Tim Eldred leading the charge, this work aims to look at the cultural ripple effect these particular works created. The question of which animated series was first to make an impact, that’ll depend on who you ask. Myself, the very first influential figure that caught my attention was Astro Boy (Osamu Tezuka), and afterwards Captain Harlock and Star Blazers (Leiji Matsumoto). In Japan, the latter was better known as Yamato.
In summary, not much has been announced since, as early development is just that. There’s no word when this will move into a formal funding campaign. Personally, I suspect it won’t be until mid-next year until all the legalese is sorted out. No filming schedule or slate of confirmed interviews has been announced, and CREATORVC said they want community feedback before going forward. As ambitious as this idea is, finding the right people to interview is always difficult.
But in the meantime, fans wanting to know a different side of how anime came to the West can check out Justin Sevakis and MediaOCD’s excellent YouTube show, The Anime Business. This work is very talkie, and deals with the reality that the other won’t necessarily look at. Those firsthand accounts from people who cleared customs and cut master tapes leave very little room for a glossy, crowdfunded nostalgia piece trying to gloss over the entire timeline in a single sweep.
Attempting to compress the massive, chaotic evolution of anime in the West into one longwinded documentary is an exercise in dilution. Sevakis already delivered the definitive, free-to-watch masterclass on what made it to retail. That’s the business history. Icons of Anime appears to be aiming at cultural history, using the major works and the fans who discovered them as its connective tissue. This can work for those wanting to know what the key works were that changed the animation landscape in North America. Without them, we wouldn’t have recent series like Miraculous and the magical girl genre being what it is today. Although just whether Europe is being counted is a mystery, those wanting to track this project can keep an eye out on their socials for the latest developments.
Podcast with Tim Eldred on Icons of Anime
