Anime’s Media Mix: Franchising Toys and Characters in Japan by Marc Steinberg (review)

The concept of “media mix” is often mentioned in conjunction with Japanese popular culture, particularly anime, referring to the multiple platforms used to sell characters and/or narratives: animation, manga, novels, video games, live action television and film, as well as toys, models, stickers, and “character goods” (kyara guzzu) of all kinds. Often the term is used in a casual way to refer to the synergy between anime and video games. However, until now there has been little written in English interrogating the concept and history of the media mix. Anime’s Media Mix: Franchising Toys and Characters in Japan by Marc Steinberg is a carefully researched and important addition to English-language scholarship on anime.

One of the most interesting and useful features of the book is Steinberg’s decision to forgo analysis of the anime-video game connection in favor of exploring the history of multimedia advertising in the anime industry. Throughout the book, Steinberg is interested in firsts: the first TV animation, the first use of the term “media mix,” the first media companies to employ a marketing mix strategy. This leads him to focus primarily on two companies he identifies as pivotal in the creation of the media mix strategy to market anime characters: Tezuka Osamu’s Mushi Pro and Kadokawa Books.

The book is divided into two sections, the first with three chapters on Mushi Pro, and the second with two chapters on Kadokawa Books. The focus of the book is on a much earlier period than readers might expect: the 1950s and 1960s in the case of Mushi Pro, and the 1970s with Kadokawa Books. While the connection between Tezuka’s Tetsuwan Atomu (Astro Boy) character and advertisers such as Meiji Co. Ltd. is well known in Japan, the way marketing shapes our interactions with fictional characters has not been part of the academic discourse on anime in English, which has tended until recently to focus on thematic analysis. Steinberg shows that the media mix is not a new phenomenon but in fact an integral part of TV anime since its inception. In doing so, he widens the scope of academic discourse on anime in English.

The first chapter, however, is less a discussion of anime marketing than an explanation of why character-based marketing became a central feature of the anime industry. In the case of Mushi Pro, the obvious explanation is that the fee Tezuka received from Fuji TV was less than half of his production costs, which forced him to look to advertisers like Meiji Co. Ltd. to make up the difference (p. 19). But the chapter contains a more theoretical argument as well, demonstrating that the constraints, or what Steinberg terms the “dynamic immobility” (p. 6), of limited animation demands strong characters in order to keep viewers’ attention.

Limited animation is one of the defining formal traits of anime and a central topic in current animation studies discourse. Put simply, limited animation refers to the time- and labor-saving techniques that allow TV animation to be produced quickly and cheaply, techniques such as reducing the number of frames per second, as well as looping, sectioning, and banking images. While animators everywhere use some of these techniques, still frames and low frame count are particularly striking in anime, giving it a characteristic jerkiness, which the more creative animators like Kobayashi Yoshinori have exploited to create a distinctively angular, dynamic kind of movement. Murakami Takashi referred to this style as superflat, and his 2000 art exhibition and accompanying writing helped bring the concept of superflat and limited animation into the English-language discourse.¹ More recently, The Anime Machine by Thomas LaMarre expands on the visual analysis of limited animation and the philosophical ramifications of eschewing a mimetic style of movement in favor of an idiomatic one.² Steinberg’s exploration of the link between limited animation and marketing, a...