It's been an awful summer for me so far. Two people who I respected very much have passed away. Takuji Endo-san's funeral was held in private, so no one from work was allowed to attend. That was very disappointing at the time, but when Yoshinori Kanada-san passed away two weeks later, I had to admit that it would've been a big mess if we'd all had to deal with two memorial services back-to-back. The problem is that Kanada-san lived in Katsuura, which is an approximately three-hour train ride away from the area where most of us work, so it took some effort to adjust our tight work schedules to coordinate the trip.

The vigil held the night before the memorial service occured late in the evening, and the memorial service was held the next morning. That made it very difficult for many of us to attend both services without spending the night in Katsuura. I decided not to stay over because I knew Makiko (Mrs. Kanada) wanted to spend her last night with her husband as quietly as possible. A group of artists and directors who were very close to Kanada-san (I call them "The Elite Guards") all camped out early on to attend both services and to discuss the plans for a separate memorial event for those who had been unable to travel to Katsuura.

The upcoming invitation-only memorial event will be held on Aug. 30th and was initiated by Anido, Ghibli, and Madhouse, but the Elite Guards are the driving force of the operation. The form to apply for an invitation was supposedly sent out to all the major studios, but from what I heard, many places ended up not receiving it, or for some reason decided not to let their employees know about it. As the result, there is a lot of confusion right now. I think everyone who missed the deadline is running around trying to find someone who may have some extras. Registration for fans closed just 12 minutes after the website opened. This chaos will probably continue until the day of the event.

Meanwhile, Madhouse is holding Endo-san's memorial event for those who didn't have the opportunity to say goodbye to him, which is just about everyone since he passed away while on a business trip to Korea. Although this event is not as big as Kanada-san's, it's just as chaotic in a different way. It's being held on Aug. 4th but there is no attendees list that I know of, and I just found out that Endo-san's vast collection of toys and collectibles is going to be auctioned off to help his family. So far, there's been no notice of the auction anywhere. I'm supposed to receive the items list on Aug. 3rd, but that still doesn't mean anything unless the administration office notifies the rest of the attendees. I did my share by telling my colleagues and friends about it, though. I hope that helps a bit in spreading the news through word of mouth!

I read an article mentioning that on July 10th, the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry notified 127 television broadcasters to stop "bullying" anime and music production companies that act as their contractors. This bullying includes abuse of power, such as threats to sever business relationships, demanding royalties from DVD sales in spite of not owning the copyrights to that content, changing contractual terms without consent, and unfairly cutting production funds.

Well, I really can't prove if such abuses are actually happening on daily basis, but if they are, I'm sure it's nothing new to anyone who knows how the show biz works here. Still, it makes me wonder why no one raised the issue until now. I think I found an answer to this question in another article I read: Fuji Television, who recently participated for the first time in the fifth annual China International Cartoon and Animation Festival, has announced its interest in joining forces with Chinese production companies to create anime content. Fuji has been paying "high costs" to purchase anime shows all this time, but they are now aggressively looking for a new business partner in effort to reduce costs and risks.

Okay...so if I'm understanding this correctly, the broadcasters are establishing direct partnerships with overseas contractors and eliminating the need to deal with domestic production companies, because...the Japanese companies are too costly and complain too much? Doesn't that contradict what the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry is saying? Plus, what high costs are they talking about? Didn't someone say early on that animators are underpaid? Although this is just a speculation coming from the simple mind of an artist, I imagine the anime productions in the past were bullied to keep silent no matter how much abuse they received to prevent just this kind of situation from happening. A similar thing has happened to the U.S. animation industry decades ago, when the majority of animated shows were outsourced to Japan and Korea, nearly wiping out domestic animation employment. I wonder if the Japanese anime industry is going down the same path?