AnimeCon 2014, New Delhi, Day-2. There was an interesting panel discussion by Jiro Ishii san, the game designer and director of acclaimed games like 999, 428: In a Blockaded Shibuya etc.; Hiroaki Matsuura san, the President; and CEO of Sanzigen and Mihara Ryotaro san, Senior Visiting Researcher of Keio Research Institute at SFC and Lecturer of School of Global Japanese Studies at Meiji University on the future of Japanese Anime and Video Games in India.

The discussion went on for about an hour, where Matsuura san basically discussed his expectations of India and his future plans, Ishii san told about his thoughts as a Japanese and Mihara san shared his perspective on general trend of anime, manga and video games throughout the world. It was supposed to be more business related but ultimately it came to general discussion.

Key Takeaways from the discussion are as follows:

1. According to Mihara san, Internet has a huge impact over anime and manga business. Since there is a lot of piracy and all, merchandising things is one of the ways to reduce the piracy and increase business.

2. Matsuura san said that he is very open minded about business practices in various countries and understands that there would be cultural and other differences everywhere. He is also very interested in knowing the animation practices from India (I so wish I had known about it) and other countries.

3.  Matsuura san also shared that he has been in talks with US animation companies for doing collaborations in future. US companies are also investing in the Japanese anime business. He also wished that Indians would also come forward to invest in anime ventures.

4. On being asked about less popularity of visual novel games outside Japan, Jiro Ishii san mentioned the cost and difficulty in translating the text to English as the main reasons.

5. On future projects to cater western audience specifically, Ishii san told that he is always trying to level up, working hard in making the content universal. According to him, gaming is already a globalized concept. He is also of the opinion that Indian landscape is close to the landscape of Japan (Yay!) 20-30 years back (Ouch! It hurts! But it’s not incorrect either…..)

Audience was also given a chance to ask questions from the panel.

1. Jiro Ishii san was asked if the Under The Dog would be able break the recent recycling of concepts of anime. He said that this project was a deliberate effort, so that the superficial team might beat the “army”.

2. On being asked about the lack of Live Actions (Ok, I am pretty sure, the guy who asked the question, didn’t watch Japanese dramas), Jiro Ishii san stated the big success of recent Rurouni Kenshin movie. He also said that many manga and anime fans are entering the film and drama industry, so there has been an increase in live action projects in last couple of years. He also showed concerns about publishers from famous manga publishing houses and magazines like Shueisha and Shounen Jump not being very enthusiastic about live action adaptations of manga they publish.

3. On the major question of 3D animes in the future, Matsuura san said that there is lot of potential out there for 3D, but 2D and 3D are nothing more than tools. In near future, 3D might be dominating the anime industry though.

In final comments, Mihara san expressed his pleasure to be present there and he also showed curiosity about the future of anime and manga in India. Matsuura san requested everybody to buy authentic merchandise than pirated ones. He said that he would like to see if Indians are willing to buy their products and if India provides a good market for their stuff or not.

In the end Ishii san called every fan of anime, manga and video games a “Cultural Elite” (a little jokingly) because we chose to follow Japanese culture. He also said that he would work hard to take everything at global level but it’s up to us, the cultural elites as well, to help them.

In summary, they all were very positive about the future of anime, manga and video games in India, but they did show their apprehensions about people switching to buy the authentic stuff.

PS – I’ll post the pics and reviews of 2nd day in my next post. I had jotted down the key points from this talk, so I had to share this with everyone in a separate post (^_^)