Before I begin, I should state right away that the reason I heard about OUP’s bibliography project is that I wrote one as did another Mind here on the site, Matt. So there’s some transparency on that.

Oxford sees the Internet as a jungle: rich, dense, dangerous, and easy to get lost in. The bibliographies are meant to be the path through that jungle. Their basic form is extremely traditional: they are annotated bibliographies of about 100 entries. Each entry is broken down into sections. Each section is introduced by a short paragraph which contextualizes the entries, and then the entries themselves have an annotation which describes their central argument or finding. Pretty straightforward.

The goal of the bibliographies, however, is to be selective, so each section can only have a half-dozen or so entries. As a result, readers really only get the genuinely useful and important entries on a topic. Writing my bibliography, I was struck by the amount of conceptual work it required. These highly curated bibliographies are not just lists of ‘top rated’ articles, but carefully-structured narratives. I’ve been impressed by the quality of the bibliographies on the site, and by Oxford’s selection of authors.

Of course, annotated bibliographies are not new. What is new is the way Oxford is publishing them. These pieces are born digital and live digitally on the website. Unlike an encyclopedia or other reference work, there will be no second or third edition to purchase — institutions will just subscribe to a bibliography site that is being constantly updated. PLUS Oxford pipes each individual bibliography out to Amazon and other vendors so you can purchase individual bibliographies.

Do you see the genius of this system? It’s a paywall’d, cherry picked version of Wikipedia. And unlike a lot of embarrassing ‘next-gen’ reference works pushed by publishers, this one is actually really good. It’s simultaneously fantastic and scary.

It matters that this comes from OUP. There’s a big difference between, say, McGill-Queens University Press and Elsevier. One of them is a small press which really is in it for the love of publishing good books. The other is part of a massive corporation whose idea of demonstrating corporate responsibility is cutting its connections to the weapons industry. OUP is its own sort of beast. I think of it less as a university press and more as the last remaining political institution of the British Empire. In fact I think of it as that empire. This is a company that provides school books to the world, and carefully shepherds intellectual property across centuries. It will be interesting to see how they price this work, and how much of it they make accessible. Clearly they are looking to expand beyond textbooks and small runs of British Academy Monographs and move into the higher ed market more broadly.

So next week enjoy reading (and downloading) OUP’s offering for library week, and give the bibliographies a look. Open Access advocates will have to take a look at what OUP’s done and see how a similar OA project might work.

Condry describes the efforts of dedicated artists and producers working in a “crucible” atmosphere of “collaborative creativity.” Their collective social energy is the “soul” of their shared engagement with the project. Therefore this study offers something other than a follow-the-money investigation, anime as Japanese national culture, or an interpretation of the content of anime, reading the text. Rather Condry seeks to follow-the-activity and commitment of small groups of people (mostly men) as they exercise creativity. It is the dynamic social relations, the connections between people in a working group that shine through here. Anime is emergent from the social practice of creativity and the collective values of that group as they define the importance of their own actions within a context.

Anime makes for a fascinating case study because, in the United States at least, it is known as an entertainment genre defined by its difference and passionate fan base. Although it is wildly popular in global markets, anime is not insanely lucrative. Further, there is SO much of it! All of this can conspire to make anime seem intimidating to the uninitiated. What makes anime so different? And why do people care so much about it?

Condry describes anime as a “platform” which makes the genre more world-centered and less story-centered. In his observations and interviews with creators and producers, he finds that their approach privileges character, premise, and world over story and plot. This is especially important for anime’s transmedia potential, flowing from books to TV to movies to video games to toys and back. Transmedia is about allowing each medium to do what it does best. The benefit of platforms, from the creator’s point of view, is that they generate and define. They give structure to creativity.

From the birth of an idea to committee meetings and deadlines Condry looks at the creative process behind anime, what the people involved value and why. The “soul” of creativity is the tension between collaborative social networks and the media objects they fashion. Condry thinks small and local, focuses on working groups, the act of creativity within the context of the group, and the influence of relationships within that social network. Collaborative creativity defines the social network in terms of what it accomplishes, which makes this markedly different than a study of group identity.

For Condry, “social energy” derives from people who care. It emerges from the shared interest and commitment among group members and is rooted in the relationships among participants in the group, whether we’re talking about creators or fans. Taking a page from the participatory culture of the Web, Condry recognizes fandom as another kind of collaborative creativity. There is a blurry line between fan and pro, both are motivated to impress their peers with their energy and commitment. Groups that work well together have an exciting buzz, a social dynamic and energy, and that is what keeps people coming back for more. “Status always seems a step away.”

We can no longer think of media as merely representational, it is real because the affective relationships among people that make use of those media objects are real. It is through fandom that we can see how social relations need not directly include other people (see the Idea Channel piece on Hatsune Miku in the comments below) but can also be inclusive of digital worlds and virtual experiences. So there is not a neat division between what is “fantasy” and what is “real,” rather it is activity originating in groups defining and generating value in a social context.

With a nod to Scott McCloud (whose classic, Understanding Comics, is a must read for fans and may be of interest to students of visual anthropology too), Condry argues there’s more to anime than representational content. For McCloud the comics reader must play a creative role as well, filling the gutter, that blank space between comic panels, with meaning. Collaboration depends on conversation between author and reader in the space between.

While most of The Soul of Anime focus on creators and producers, Condry includes an excellent chapter on the practice of fansubbing, fan made videos with subtitles translating Japanese dialogue into local languages, and another chapter on the new forms of masculinity among otaku fans who fall in love with fictional characters.

In the case of fansubbing the emergence of values out of social relationships comes to the fore with Condry providing extensive documentation for ethical debates within the community. The practice of fansubbing is a violation of copyright, but community members reject law in favor of their own code of ethics. Media companies like blogging and viral marketing, and may even give away content for free if they’re in control but fans posting videos online without permission is still piracy. Nevertheless fansubbers see themselves as helping media companies by disseminating their product into new markets with translations where commercially licensed products are not available. They see their piracy as “pro-anime,” and once commercial translations of an anime production are available pressure mounts from within the fansubber community to pull down pirated videos. Here we see the distinction between broadcaster and consumer blurred as Condry emphasizes that consuming popular culture is never passive but “something you do.” The space between viewer and content is filled with energy.

Fansubbers are particularly sensitive to portraying cultural nuances in their favorite shows, especially giving significance to historical settings and translating puns and local humor that audiences would not otherwise pick up on. Rival fansubber clubs compete with one another for the most “authentic” translations of anime productions, they value craftsmanship and at times will be stridently critical of translations they perceive as lacking. Fansubbers have their own fanbase and add themselves into the show credits with screen names and alter egos. Like with graffiti artists, social energy arises from the fansubber community by gaining status, earning recognition among people who are in the know.

How is that people come to be emotionally attached to characters? Some anime falls under the heading of moe (pronounced “moh-ay”), meaning that the characters, premises, and worlds (but less so the story) are meant to elicit a complex affective response that is at once passionate and at times erotic, but also nurturing and protective. “Feeling strawberry,” as one fan puts it. This is one of the aspects of anime that intrigues American audiences the most because it epitomizes a supposedly “weird” Japanese sexuality that fascinates and repels as it mystifies. When Japanese men declare that they want to marry fictional characters, what’s going on with that?

Condry relates this phenomenon to changing masculinities, in particular media consumption as expressive of masculinity, by drawing a contrast between the otaku and the salaryman. The label “otaku” is used to refer to super-fans, persons who express their devotion to media objects through cosplay (dressing up as their favorite characters), fan-made manga, and buying figurines and other merchandise. The salaryman is a dominant image of manliness in Japan, his masculinity is defined by production and his place in the world of work shapes his place in society and in the family. But not everybody gets the good education and lands the good job, not everybody has a happy family to come home to at night. If the salaryman is the ideal towards which men are expected to strive then what about the men who fail? Condry argues that the otaku redefine masculinity in terms of consumption rather than production, and establish an alternate community with new values that match the life that they actually lead rather than an unobtainable ideal.

The otaku community and their affective lives, intriguing and occasionally scandalous to westerners, is also one driven by the social energy of collaborative creativity. Frequently anime favored by otaku features vulnerable, conflicted, or powerless men. Shinji in Neon Genesis Evangelion is a prime example (see the video in the comments section). In this sci-fi series Shinji is neurotic, depressed, and has a poor relationship with his father but is a hero nonetheless because in the future there are alternate styles of heroic action. Moe then is not just a feeling, but a way to share feelings with others who feel the same. It is affect emergent out of social contact with fellow otaku, internal feelings are also a product of collaborative creativity. On the surface it might seem that the otaku represent a rejection of Japanese society’s unobtainable ideals for men, but Condry stress how moe is a plea for acceptance. Moe is a practice of immaterial consumption, an affective realm of consumption as performance recognized and valued by other otaku.

The Soul of Anime will appeal to anyone studying small groups of dedicated people working on a collective project and does not require prior knowledge of esoteric anime shows. Fans of anime and manga will also find something worthwhile here from interviews with well-known directors and artists to hidden histories behind popular shows (e.g. Japanese animation tends to be drawn first and then actors lay down the voice track, whereas American animation tends to start with the actor’s voice and then is drawn; manga could branch out into adult themes of sex and violence because Japan, unlike the United States, never had a Comics Code). As a casual anime fan I enjoyed learning about shows I hadn’t heard of before and appreciated the light shed on some shows I have seen but didn’t really understand. The Soul of Anime is fun and well written, easily comprehensible by talented undergraduates, and features helpful conclusion sections at the end of each chapter.

One running joke between us is that I’ve been to her campus library more than she has. For the most part she uses electronic resources, but on occasion she will need a book from my campus. Her campus has a smaller collection and all of it is set in moveable stacks. It seems that one of her secret fears is getting trapped between the moving walls of books and crushed as another person is shifting the stacks. I shake my head and tell her that’s not possible, but she insists that it is and so on the rare occasions she needs a book she fetches it under a cloud of distress. Quickly she dashes in and out without lingering.

Real estate on her campus is tight and the library is popular, so to expand the library will be hugely consequential because there is not much space. Or, I should say that the library is popular but the stacks are not. All of this is fodder for discussion in the senate. Students come to the building to use the coffee shop and commons more than the books. In discussion with her fellow senators about how to get more students to use books it was suggested that the proposed library expansion intersperse work areas throughout the stacks, so that students would have to enter that space in order to get to the desks and carrels.

Then one senator addressed the elephant in the room. If the library was to expand the stacks would that mean there would be more moveable stacks? He had always been afraid to go in them for fear of being crushed. And a second person rose to agree, she too never went in there. What if someone rolled the stacks on top of her?

See! My wife declared, other people are afraid of the moveable stacks too. It’s not just me.

Apparently this is a thing? Be honest. Are you afraid to go into your libraries moveable stacks?