Anime’s Media Mix: Franchising Toys and Characters in Japan

5. Character, World, Consumption

Character, World, Consumption 5· 171 In the previous chapter, I noted the profound differences that separate the phenomenon of what is now called the media mix from its terminological origins in marketing discourse. I also emphasized the similarities between the de facto media mix that crystallized around anime circa 1963 and the media mix that Kadokawa is now popularly credited with having developed in the mid-1970s and after. Since the Kadokawa version is indebted to the anime media network developed in the 1960s, it is natural to suggest that we see the Kadokawa media mix as an extension of the anime system. This connection is especially important given that Kadokawa would later become a major anime media mix producer. Yet, in so emphasizing the continuity between the Atomu phenomenon and the Kadokawa media mix, there is also the risk of minimizing their differences. As a way of broaching the main concern of this chapter—the character–world relationship and its growing importance within the practice of character merchandising, the media mix, and contemporary capitalism—it is worth considering the two principal transformations undertaken in the 1970s that distinguish Kadokawa’s media mix from that developed by the anime system. The first is the expansion of the media mix logic from anime into the spheres of literature, film, and sound track. Put differently, Kadokawa’s adoption of what later became known as the media mix marked the expansion of transmedia practice from a particular context (the anime system) to the media sphere at large.1 This move inspired a plethora 172 · Character, World, Consumption of companies to adopt a media mix strategy. As Alexander Zahlten notes in his work on Kadokawa, by the 1980s, the “list of corporations practicing what Kadokawa had preached included TV and radio stations , publishing houses, toy companies and record companies; in fact barely a media related corporation in Japan stayed out of feature film production in the late 1980s.”2 Following the Kadokawa initiative in the 1970s, the media mix strategy went mainstream. The second transformation Kadokawa effectuated was the integration of multiple streams of the media mix into a single company, creating a media mix conglomerate. Whereas the earlier, de facto media mix practiced by Mushi Production and other animation studios relied on the receipt of licensing fees for the use of their anime narratives or characters, Kadokawa integrated most aspects of media production into one company. If Kadokawa has grown to be one of the largest and most representative media conglomerates in Japan,3 it is because its media integration allows it to serialize a manga in one of its many magazines, publish a collection of several episodes through its book publishing arm, develop a TV series, release a video game, and shoot a live-action film—all without leaving the fold of Kadokawa Group Holdings or the Kadokawa brand name. Even the rise of the production committee system (seisaku iinkai) model of financing does not contradict the tendency toward conglomeration but rather adopts it. The committee system is a style of financing that first arose in the 1980s but came to prominence in the late 1990s and early 2000s.4 The committee system sees a number of companies temporarily band together for the aim of producing a particular film, animation series, or media mix, with each company contributing capital and/or resources to the project. Hence the committee system adopts media integration as its model, albeit on a temporary, project-specific basis (and, for better or worse, with a distributed decision-making system that prevents complete control from being exerted by any single member).5 This committee-based media integration not only enables the diffusion of a series across a variety of media types but also allows for a synergetic cross-fertilization between texts and the integration of advertising for one media series within another. Kadokawa’s Suzumiya Haruhi series (2003–), discussed in chapter 4, is a prime example of this media integration. Lucky Star (Raki suta, 2004–) is another example that merits consideration. Originally a Character, World, Consumption · 173 manga created by Yoshimizu Kagami and serialized in Kadokawa’s gaming magazine Comptiq (Komputiiku), a monthly whose subtitle describes it as a MediaMix Game Magazine, the TV anime version of Lucky Star (2007) presents one of the characters reading Comptiq in one scene, and in another scene, the same character is engrossed in the Kadokawa novel (and contemporaneous blockbuster anime...