Quick Anime/Manga resources for YA librarians.

Especially perhaps to you new YA librarians who don't know much about Manga/Anime and who don't have teenage children to tell you, there are a couple of Podcasts out there that I find enhance my enjoyment as an otaku of these art forms.

First and foremost, you definitely want to familiarize yourself with Anime News Network, and their related podcast ANNcast. Chock full of valuable news and opinion about new and even classic anime. These guys definitely know their stuff. I don't always agree with them but I do respect their vast knowledge and well informed opinions.

A bit more edgy and controversial than ANNCast is the Anime World Order podcast, hosted by OtakuUSA magazine contributor Daryl Surat and others.

Speaking of, as many of you know, Shonen Jump is no longer in print and has gone 100% digital subscription. I know serials area pain in the arse in library land, I really do get that. But your patrons will love you forever if you are willing to spend the coin and replace or augment your Shonen Jump subscription with a print subscription to OtakuUSA. Trust me, the kids still want the physical media for this. Good ol' OtakuUSA is the last man standing, the last English language print serial publication devoted to Anime and Manga in North America. You are doing your YA patrons a disservice if you fail to subscribe to this periodical.

If you have an iPhone, you may want to download the Ani.me "app", which is a mobile application affiliated with the main Anim.me news website...you can browse new news articles daily via your iPhone at lunch, say. Always good to get breaking news on new releases, new licensing agreements, voice cast announcements, etc.

If you really like the English dubs and want to know more about the voice actors behind the shows, there's no better place to look than the "That Anime Show" podcast hosted by voice actor (and sometime ADR director and script writer) J. Michael Tatum and ADR director (and sometime voice actress) Terri Doty. About once a month, they interview their fellow English language voice actors, mostly FUNImation regulars but on occasion actors up from Houston that record more often with Sentai Filmworks. It's fun to listen to all the behind-the-scenes banter and backstory, and it's nice to know that many of the voice actors involved are also close personal friends in real life, with funny, sometimes embarrassing stories and always interesting opinions on life, culture, art, and sometimes politics as well. I finally got caught up on all the back episodes of TAS and I can say they definitely made my morning and evening commutes to and from my library workplace all the more livelier and interesting...there are many, many laugh-out-loud moments listening to this show. Not unlike the same reason I love the Rooster Teeth Podcast (aka "The Drunk Tank"), I feel like I'm back in High School or College staying up really late with my best friends cracking jokes and telling stories when I listen to this show.

Rooster Teeth are the geniuses behind the hit "Red versus Blue" action / comedy animation series based on pre-gen animation using the HALO game system on the XBOX. They also do comedic shorts, game reviews, etc. But I especially love their weekly podcast and the hilarious interaction between all the hosts, who are also all the voice actors for the principle characters of the RvB series. While these guys only touch on Anime/Manga tangentially, they are a good source for general gamer nerd culture, and there is indeed some cross-over. Their podcast so often makes me LOL and ROFL and ROFLMAO.

Lastly, Meetup.com; There is probably a local Anime/Manga meetup or club in your area, and if you are a YA librarian, it might behoove you to attend, to get a feel for the vibe and pulse of local Anime/Manga otaku culture. Get to know your patrons and potential patrons. Get the lowdown on what's hot, what's not, etc.

In other news, stepping down from PLG-CC

As a passing note, I made the decision to step down from my seat on the Coordinating Committee of the Progressive Librarians Guild and revert back to being just a general member. I sat on the CC for nearly 10 years, contributed to discussion, made some important votes on some resolutions, etc. It was fun, but my heart is just not into it anymore. The list activity really spiked in recent months and it was kind of like sensory overload for me and I backed out and shut down...violating a CC bylaw in the process. Rather than haggle over it or argue or seek to make amends by stepping up and redoubling my efforts, I just decided to make it easy on everyone and formally submit my resignation. It's hard to imagine the ultimatum coming at a worse time for me in my personal life, either.

I won't go into detail, but something came to light recently that I was much happier not knowing about, but now that I do know, I see how to go forward into the future acting as I had in the past transforms me from unwitting enabler to a co-conspirator with full knowledge, and that I refuse. I've decided to act on that front by doing nothing. Pulling back and withdrawing my material support. It sucks because the people involved were good friends and my decision to stick to what seems right and proper for myself on an ethical level will probably cost me those friendships and destroy one of my social support networks along with it.

Like I said, really shitty timing. Luckily, I've got other activities I put on the back burner that I can now move to the front, like the Houston Anime Meetup, or the local branch of the Houston Atheist Meetup for Sugar Land/Stafford area. My RPG buds are unable to play in April, but I look forward to resuming in May and especially look forward to summer when we will have extra players returning to us and maybe even pick up a new member, depending.

I look forward to just being a general PLG member again, hadn't realized I had dropped off the general mailing list either. Listservs just feel like such Web 1.0 tech...honestly I pay way more attention to Facebook than traditional email these days...as much as I love PLG, and as much as I'm sometimes a skeptical Luddite myself, sometimes change genuinely is good, sometimes the positives do outweigh the negatives, etc. I was totally wrong about blogs and happy to be wrong about them. I thought they were a silly idea, why wouldn't you just update a static website instead? *bonk* Because blogs are easier and user-friendlier, silly. Because the world isn't static, it's dynamic. Just how utterly wrong I was about the nature of blogs and blogging is just jaw-dropping. I appreciate Rory Litwin's early critique about early Library blog Culture; I think he was spot-on with that criticism, actually; but even Library Juice eventually transitioned to a blog format. There's something just kind of relentless about it. Blogs just structurally make so much sense and have been so powerful and transformative in our contemporary world since they made their debut. A local favorite progressive political site in my corner of the greater Houston Area, Juanita Jean's, still defiantly calls itself "not a blog", but it so painfully obviously is. Again, that reaction is actually in rebellion to early blog culture and less so about the nature of blogs themselves.

I'm also not blind to the highly problematic nature of Facebook. Yes, it makes social organizing incredibly easy and greatly facilitates communication compared to traditional mass email lists...but it also makes intelligence gathering incredibly easier for the alphabet soup agencies...NSA, FBI, CIA, DHS, et. al. Very much easier to map out social networks and the interconnections between people, all willingly supplied online by the participants themselves...lots of raw data for the most advanced AI software to munch on and build algorithms and formulae to parse out who is a threat to the National Security State...I still hope my file reads "Mostly harmless".

I miss having an active, intellectual life of the mind, where I read all the time, socialized when *I* wanted to, not when others expected me to...was able to keep contact and interaction with the parents to a basic minimum...back when I thought I really had some promise as a public intellectual. I'm a fop, and intellectual lightweight and a dandy. I like artsy movies, I listen to NPR and KPFT...as well as some engaging podcasts.

But I've also lightened up. I'm very very much into Anime and even Manga these days. Yesterday I read Vols. 1-2 of the manga series Bakuman, about two teen boys who resolve to become manga creators...one is the writer, the ideas man, while the other is the artist. I know there is already an anime out there of this series, don't recall if there's an English dub for it as well but I think so? Anyway, reading the manga, I imagined the characters speaking in different of my favorite voice actor's voices...In my head I cast Johnny Yong Bosch for Mashiro, and Chris Ayers for Tagaki. Still undecided on the female cast, but I kept reading Miho's friend who's into Tagaki with Brittney Karbowski's voice in my head and it kinda worked. I read Miho's voice sometimes with Luci Christian's voice in mind, other times with Monica Rial...also tested out Carrie Savage...with mixed results...that would be a much more difficult casting decision.

What's interesting is that I know actual FUNImation script writers like J. Michael Tatum actually do sometimes do their writing with a particular voice actor in mind. And sometimes the casting director picks up on that vibe and makes a casting decision that is in harmony with the writer's idea. Tatum tells of a time when he wrote a part with fellow actor Chris Ayers in mind; Director Chris Sabat picked up on that and gave the nod to Chris Ayres. As I recall, Ayres later approached Tatum, very enthusiastically, and said words to the effect of: "I feel like this was written just for me...!! I totally get this character!!", and I think Tatum told Ayres his guess was correct. I love hearing these little back stories on the That Anime Podcast Show.

Anyway, let me wrap this up for now as I'm wandering far afield and a fresh post is called for.