Uncovering Secrets Behind Anime Piracy | Trash Taste #13
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- Oh, is it starting? - It's face reveal. This is the intro. - Oh no. - Face reveal, let's go. - Hello and welcome to another episode of Trash Taste Podcast. I'm your host for today, Gigguk. And today joining me is my usual co-host, the boys. - Hello. - We're the boys. - Hello. - Boy one and boy two. And today we have another special guest. Do you want to introduce yourself? - No, but hi.

- We'll introduce you for you then. This is our producer, Maylene. You probably heard her voice or seen her passing the camera a few times or seen us shouting at her or whatever, but there you go, face reveal. This is what our producer looks like. - I've seen Maylene's face in my videos, right? - Really? - Yeah, the Yowie Cafe. You were like the heavy breathing in the background.

- I think you've been on like all of our channels, right? - At one point. - Like the rental mom. - Yeah, the rental mom one and yeah. - But like on Trash Taste at least is the first time. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - So do you wanna explain what your job is and what you do and kind of why you're on the podcast today? - What's up with that? Why are you on here? - Why am I on here? - What are you doing? - Free real estate. But anyways, yeah, I'm Mei-Ling Mei-Ling Mei. I work at Book Walker.

You've probably seen that on all of their videos. Don't forget to use all their coupon codes. I don't have one, but yeah. Anyways, yeah. So Geeks Plus is a company under Kadokawa and BookWalker. And I started that within BookWalker last year. And yeah, now I work at Geeks Plus. I didn't even explain that right. Yeah.

- Yeah, basically- - Mylene is a nervous mess. - The long and the short of it is she's the reason we're all here now. - Yeah, pretty much. She's the reason why this show even exists. - Yeah, exactly. And the reason we invited her today is because I thought today we could talk about some spicy industry news, guys. - Ooh, I'm excited. - Yeah, so if you didn't know, there's a small indie anime site called Kiss Anime

Recently you went out of business. - Yeah, business. - As the time of recording this. - As the time of recording this.

And yeah, I guess we just wanted to talk about that. Talk about piracy 'cause you know, that always goes well on the internet. - Twitter has been a mess. - Oh my God. - When is Twitter not a mess? - Oh God. - I've seen so many garbage takes about it. - Where do we even begin? - Do we wanna explain what a kiss anime even is? - What a kiss, yeah. - What is kiss anime? - What is a kiss anime? - I'll explain what a kiss anime is. Monkey brain here to explain things for you. - Explain it like I'm five.

- KissAnime was probably the most notorious and well-known anime piracy website for streaming. - For a while. - For a while. - Not anymore. - Not anymore. But I'd say at least three years ago, it was definitely like the site. - Yeah, it was the top. - And then, you know, as somebody who at one point used it, it definitely became a thing of, oh, we're using .com

"Are you now instead of .com?" Okay, that's a little confusing. - And then suddenly you had to dispose of a bomb or something. - Yeah, you had to like the pictures. - Yeah, the caption got so fucking complicated that I was like, I didn't know how to navigate it. And then it got to a point where any way you click on the website, you got an ad. It was like trying to navigate minefield. It's like, where can I click without getting an ad? - I was waiting for the caption to turn into like Sulfur X. Trigonometry question. - You would ask for like,

- Cat, cat and blue skateboard.

- It had essentially become a second page of Google. - It was like a Turing test at this point. - It was like a minefield. Anyway, it was definitely the most notorious, I'd say overall website among the anime fandom. And it recently closed its doors and people seemed very upset about that for some reason, as if there isn't like 500 other websites that immediately pop up. - One thing that really confused me is that why are people sad? I guess, who's still using KissAnime in 2020? - Yeah, come on guys.

- I hate the fact that I just joke tweeted being like rip kiss anime, rip broke weaves and it became my most popular tweet. - It's got like 90,000 likes. I'm like, what? Who is like hashtag can relate? It's my most popular tweet and I hate it. I fucking hate it. 'Cause yeah, I jokingly said that in the sense of like, yeah, who the fuck uses kiss anime in 2020? And so many people are like, relate queen.

- Rip broke weebs. - You tell it out it is. - Rip broke weebs. - I don't understand Twitter. - Yeah, I know, it's horrible. - People were like, I don't know if you guys got this, but like adding me being like, you need to discuss this. It's such big community news. I was like, why? What do you mean?

- Why did sites get shut down all the time and then another one pops up? That's the reason we had every single country extension ever of KissAnime is 'cause they moved to every fucking country until they only have none left, I assume. - I saw KissAnime having a dot whatever in things that I've never even seen. I was like, "Oh, you." I'm like, "That's Russia, right?" - Okay, I don't offend the Russian fans of Trash Taste and we have a Russian- - Oh yeah, we have a giant Russian Democrat.

- But I'm sorry, I feel very uneasy when I see that .ru in my browser. I'm like, whoa. - You know something shady going on if it's on .ru. - Love Russia though, yeah, totally. - They have other things though, right? It's not only Kiss Sam, it's like Kiss Manga, Kiss Movie, Kiss Draw. - There's a Kiss Hentai as well, I think. - Yeah, I think so. - Yeah, there's actually a Kiss Hentai. - I remember somehow I got onto Kiss Cartoon and Family Guy was like the most popular. And I just sat there for a second, I'm like,

pirating Family Guy. Like, you know YouTube exists. - This shit isn't available anywhere. - Do you remember that phase where they were just like, there was a streaming phase where Family Guy episodes would just be like streamed on YouTube. And it would just be like 24 hour Family Guy stream, 24 hour Simpsons stream. - It was always the front page of fucking YouTube as well. - How official is it?

- No, no, no, no. - It's not official and yet like every time I'd open YouTube, there'd just be like 24 hours, 24/7 stream of the Cleveland show. I'm like, and there was like 700,000 people watching this stream. I'm just like, what? Yeah, but yeah, it's the same thing that happened

- What happened with like Hentai Haven, right? When Hentai Haven got shut down, people were like, "Where are we going to watch our hentai now?" I'm like, "I don't know, Google that shit." There's literally 700 websites for it. - I felt so out of the loop 'cause I never used Hentai Haven and when everyone was losing their shit, I was like, "But why don't you just use like the website I'm using?" - Why don't you just use every other website? - Everyone's like, "Links, Connor.

- Yeah, but yeah, question to you, Maylin, because you actually work in the industry. So what is your opinion on Kiss Anime and it shutting down as a whole from like someone on the other side of the wall? - Yeah, someone who like works with the copyright. - I don't really work in like the anime side. I work more on like the manga and occasionally like we'll do something with the anime. So I can't really speak for the anime industry.

- With like most of the discussion on Twitter and like most of the discussion on our side, a lot of it is just speculation. We don't actually know how much piracy affects the industry. You know what I mean? I think it can be argued that- - I don't think there's any like concrete stats, right? There isn't like, 'cause I don't think any of these piracy sites are making that shit public of like how much money they're actually making. - Of course not, 'cause they're making a disgusting amount on all those apps. - You can definitely guess. - I mean, at one point Kiss Anime was like one of the top 100 visited websites on the internet.

which is fucking insane. - That's crazy. - Like imagine how much money they were making just from ad revenue of being like the top. - Probably worth it to keep evading, you know. - Yeah, yeah. - You know what I mean? - Exactly. I mean, they made a disgusting amount of money that they really shouldn't have been making. - Yeah, 'cause don't,

a lot of the, because you know, obviously when you watch something pirated, it's not using a standard YouTube player or like a normal, it's using one of those really sketchy third party websites that hosts like anything. And I'm pretty sure those websites as well, a lot of the ones they were using would pay you to host files. - Right, right, right. - Like video files because they wanted their players to become more like universal. So a lot of these, so KissAnime at the time, again, I'm not sure, but from what I understood, they were getting ad revenue, like a lot of it, I imagine, 'cause you know, you've gone on that website and you've got like

- Hot Asian dating. - Hot singles in your area. - It's like always fucking Lois from Family Guy being rammed. And it's like, I'm just trying to watch anime. Like what is this? - No, and that'd be always like the shitty hentai games. That would be like advertised. I think one time I was watching something and just this advert for like "Cunt Wars" or a game called that. And I'm just like,

- Is this for real? Is this for real right now? I think that's a real game because that just stuck out in my mind. - To be fair, I want to play "Cunt Wars." Just from the fucking name of it. - I love "Rent-A-Girl." - Don't you accidentally click on those ads sometimes and then once you click, it's like boom, boom, boom, boom, all these pop-up windows. - Yeah, it's like boom, boom, boom, sex free cow in your area. Like that. - Yeah, so they were getting double dipping ad revenue. They were getting paid to host the files and they were, sorry, I leaned back.

I always fucking do that. - Yeah. - Stop going, yeah, so. - Okay, so they were getting like double ad ref basically, right? So, and then, you know, people on Twitter, which I disagree with. I think you can say, okay, there is a need for piracy in some extents, right? But then there's people who are like boo-hoo kiss anime, man. It's just like, they're doing the real hard work. It's like, are you kidding me? It's probably like four dudes racking in millions, bro. Why are you feeling sorry for them? What the fuck? - So wait, so I didn't see like the full story of like how they got shut down.

- I mean, I assume they just got shut down by some DMCA claim. - Right. But see, because they've had their thing shut down several times, right? They went from like kissanime.com to like .net to like .ru eventually, right? And when that happened, there was also like, obviously not as big because I don't think there were articles about it, but people were definitely making a fuss of like, oh no, kissanime is down. And then two weeks later, they're back with this new URL. So that's what I just assumed.

when I saw that article, I was like, oh, they'll be back in like two weeks. - I think it's the first time they've put in like a message saying like, yeah, it's over. - Yeah. - On their Discord, right? - I think so, yeah. - I didn't even know they had it.

- Who the fuck is in the KissAnime discord? - I would do need to go on the discord. - Who? Who? It was like, I love KissAnime so much. I'm going to join the discourse. - Yeah. There's always that argument that people present where it's like, what is it? Gabe Newell said like piracy is a service problem or something. - I think it's gone way past that now. - Yeah, I think so.

- The piracy is a service problem argument always gets brought up and it's just like, it's a different situation with the anime industry. - I think so, yeah. Games is a really different thing. Have you ever tried to pirate a game? Like that shit is like annoying. - Yeah, exactly. - It's like straight up just annoying. - But like one thing I find unique to anime piracy, right? And even hentai to the same extent as well is that

in no other industry do I see a pirate service get like the branding power that it does in anime. - That's true. - Like you think, okay, if you want to pirate a movie or if you want to pirate a game, where'd you go for that? You probably go to Google, right? But there's no like, oh yes, there's KISS Gaming. I go to KISS Gaming every day. I would die for KISS Gaming. Are you part of the KISS Gaming discord? - I downloaded "Cunt Wars" on KISS Gaming.

- You don't see that in any other industry. And it's like, I don't know why it is specifically to like the anime and manga and then like hentai circles where piracy just has this branding power where people will like gather behind this service which is just like any other pirate service. - Yeah, that's true. - You know what I mean? - Because I remember like, I think it was right before Hentai Haven got shut down as well. I remember they like messaged me being like, "Hey, do you wanna promote like our merch line?"

And I'm like, I'm not promoting a merch line for a fucking pirating website. Like, I'm sorry. Like, that's like if...

- That's like if Pirate Bay was like, bro, we've got like these- - They actually? - Yeah, they actually. - No, no, no, no, no. - Like I can say that because they're gone, but like, yeah, they fully did that. And I remember I messaged a few people just being like, does this seem right? Like, I think I'm missing something here. I don't think this is right. - You're not the only person, but it wasn't Hentai Haven. - Oh really? - It was KissAnime. - Really? - They messaged you? - Yeah, yeah, yeah. So KissAnime were going to open like a store. They were gonna open a store and they messaged me

being like, "Hey, do you wanna promote our store?" And I was there sitting, "Are these guys real? "What makes you think you're gonna get away with this?" And they had like an entire store page that they like linked me to and they had like, they had obviously it was like official products that were being sold unofficially, of course. - Were they like typing to you or writing to you in clear English or was it broken English? - It was actually clear English. - Was it in Russian?

- No, it was like a proper store and everything. And I'm just like, man, these are the balls in this guy's balls. - The Hentai Haven store as well was like, he had already even made like a landing page for it. And he was like, this is the lineup for the stuff. And it was like t-shirts. Obviously it wasn't anything like too like amazingly well-designed, but you know, it was just simple stuff like just the Hentai Haven logo on a t-shirt or something. And I'm like, oh, that's cool.

- And then two weeks later, I think it was maybe like two or three weeks later, that whole thing happened where they got shut down. - I wonder if it comes from disdain from the major companies more so than them, 'cause they don't actively brand anything. They don't do anything. They don't have like a he funny Twitter account. Like KissAnime never did anything.

I think it's just because- - It's all community driven. - I think a lot of the community just does not like the big guys, which whatever. - They're easy to share too. - Yeah, they are. - If your friend doesn't have an account and they're new to anime and you're trying to get to the anime, you'll link them to like a pirate site.

- And also it works in every country, right? - Yeah, yeah, exactly. - A lot of the official stuff. - I do think there is a space for piracy. I mean, I made an entire video on fan subs and how that was like really, really important for the community and how it helped it grow. And I will make the argument that I do think there is a space where piracy did very much play a part in helping anime grow, especially abroad. But I think it's gotten to the point now that anime, I don't know, it doesn't have that same effect anymore

because anime is now big enough where everyone knows anime. So I think there's still like a lot of countries where that kind of need piracy to help boost anime to make this a truly global medium. But places like the US and like the UK and places where you have a lot more accessibility and the fandom is a bit bigger, it's like that argument doesn't hold as much water as it did fucking 10 years ago or something like that. - I mean, 10 years ago, I mean, even further back,

beyond that, right? The whole Western community came from piracy, right? 'Cause you had to get like a bootleg, like VHS, why did I say H like that? - VHS. - VHS tape, right? You had to get a bootleg one, it was all shared around. It was all piracy, but obviously like you said, it's grown out of that. And I guess some people wanna hold onto that and argue that's how it should be. - I think that's the biggest problem though, right? Is that a lot of the discussion that revolves especially around anime piracy is like,

- Both sides of the argument is very, very much like situated on both sides of the spectrum, right? It's like you either hard agree that piracy in anime is bad or you hard disagree. Like there's very rarely any people who are kind of like there's benefits, but there's also demerits to it. - 'Cause I'm definitely someone who's in the middle.

- It's hard for me to get involved in like any discussion on Twitter because if you say anything, they either put you on one side or the other. You're either like hard into piracy or you're like a fucking crunchy roll in Funimation or Book Walker.

- Filthy Book Walker show. - Even though I work at Book Walker, I know I probably shouldn't say this, but I'm in between. The only reason I'm technically in this industry or I got interested was because there were pirate sites. - Right, got you into it, right? - Yeah, and I got into it. And I mean, now there's just so many subtitles available, so many platforms, there's really no excuse, but you know,

you wanna see something fast and in low quality and maybe the translations aren't because it's stuck in Netflix. - One question I always had about, you know, on the Japanese side of things is that how aware are the Japanese companies of all these pirate sites? - Very aware. - Are they very aware? - Yeah, I've talked to them. - It feels very Japanese. They're like, "We don't care, I sleep." "Oh, you're pirating our anime? I'm woke." - No, they care. They're very strict, especially like,

not talking about like websites, but for example, YouTube. - Yeah. - Fair use is not a thing in Japan. - When we work with sponsors, right? If we wanna show just a screenshot of an anime, if they're sponsoring it, they'll bring that up. They're like, "Do you have rights to show the screenshot?" And it's like, "It doesn't matter if they have a problem." 'Cause I guess the YouTube mentality is right. If it's a problem, they'll let us know.

They'll take, well copywriters, right? Whatever, we'll fight it. Or if it's really unfair and I've just uploaded the 10 minute family guy or 24 hour family guy stream, yeah, I probably shouldn't be doing it. But most of the time it's like, if they're a problem, they can come and tell us. I feel like they're very much a risk averse mindset where it's like, just don't ever allow that situation to happen. - So like on the book walker side of things, how much of an effect do you guys see on piracy on like your side of things?

And is it how, like, how do you go about justifying that as well? - That's a toughie. - That's a loaded question. - That's a loaded question. - That's a hella loaded question. - I mean, if you don't have an answer, that's fine. - Yeah, I don't really have like a huge answer. Well, "Book Walker" is technically very new and despite it being around for almost five years,

When a pirate site goes down, we don't see that much of an effect because our users, the people who have been coming to our store every month are the type of people who want to support the industry. So people who have been stealing for years and they don't have money, even if the site goes down, they're not going to come to our store. That's like in the West. But in Japan, there's a site called, or used to be a site, you know it, Joey, Mangamura? Yeah, Mangamura. When it went down, like,

- There was a huge increase in sales. - Manga Muda was basically like the kiss manga of Japan. It was one of the biggest manga pirating sites and that got like properly shut down. Like the founders were like straight up charged and went to jail and everything. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Oh wow. - Yeah. - 'Cause a similar thing happened to a big Western app recently, which was Manga Muda. That got shut down. - Oh yeah. - They didn't really shut down.

- Did they not? - They like pivoted and shut it. They shut down the app in many ways. And then we're like, "Hey, we have other stuff, check it out." - Yeah. - Like so. - But like- - They're all adult are you basically. - Yeah. - But like after they shut down, did you see any change at all or increase in traffic or sales or anything on your side?

Not so much, I would say. I mean, because they also like... I don't know if I should share this. BookWalker is more popular for light novel readers. And usually pirate sites have manga. So when they want to read something, like, I don't know, manga or whatever, and they want to pirate it, they're going to...

stick to other pirate sites, like I said. - Is there any noticeable difference between the spending habits of Westerners and Japanese on manga? Anything that you're allowed to tell us?

- Because I think the general stereotype is that the Western audience is very fucking stingy. - Extremely stingy. - I remember it 'cause I think I had this mindset of I'm not paying for any media. Like when I was like 13, 'cause I grew up with just like pirating everything. - Yeah, exactly. - And then I think once you take that step of paying for media, I think you don't go back. 'Cause you're like, whoa, that was...

- Really easy. - That's the thing. It's like, I always feel piracy. - I always feel, that's why I've always said like piracy isn't exactly a bad thing because I feel it's just a stepping stone towards getting into the actual fan. Once you're mature enough and you've made your own money and whatnot. - Yeah, I do think most of the time, not saying it all the time, it's normally the younger ones who are die hard like piracy. And it's like, yeah, okay. That normally comes from having no income at all. Maybe your parents give you like 10 bucks

a month or something, I don't know. You can't spend that on- - Yeah, you're not spending that on a light novel, right? Like no one's gonna do that. - No, like it makes sense that then that you hopefully transition into it. And you know, when you get older and you get more monkey brained like myself, it becomes really fucking annoying when you're looking for 10 plus minutes to just find a link to watch what you wanna watch. And I'm like, I will throw 10 bucks to make this problem go away. I wanna watch it comfortably and just-

- Yeah. - Reliably, right? - Yeah, but then there's people who argue like, "Oh yeah, well, there isn't the good services to watch anime or read manga." There is, it's just most of the time people don't want to admit that.

- Yeah, even using Crunchyroll here in Japan. It's a bit of a pain because I have to use a VPN. It's still less annoying than going to KissAnime, opening up five fucking tabs, pressing pause six times before all the ads. You all know this, right? You know you've used too many websites. When you know, you're like, all right, how many clicks do I have to, how many times do I have to press play before it actually plays? - It's three times. Three is the magic number, right? It's always three. - And then you better fucking hope to God you don't have to pause that bitch. 'Cause if you pause that bitch and you want to press play again,

you know you got more poppers. - No, because I always wanna skip the anime opening and I know to skip the anime opening- - Oh, you've gotta be fucking pausing. - The cost you pay is three extra clicks just because you wanna skip the anime opening. - And then sometimes you completely fuck the buffering and you've gotta reload the whole thing and then before- - And then it all starts again, right?

And then before it plays, you gotta, you cannot allow this thing to play. You need to skip to 1 minute 30 before it even allows to buffer. Because it might fuck up and you cannot rebuff it. So I just want to avoid that dance. - And that's exactly why I stopped using KissAnime like four years ago, right? 'Cause I'm just like,

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- And Chromecast exists now, right? I wanna cast that shit to my TV. - I just wanna press one button and it goes on my TV. You can't do that with pirate sites, yeah. You know what I mean? - Some of them you can. - For Android you can, right? - Some of them you can, but it doesn't always work. Like sometimes you'll be watching it and you'll be like, okay, cool, episode one allows me to Chromecast. Episode two, none of these web players on the mirrors allow you to Chromecast. Then you're like.

- Fuck sake. - It's the YouTube anime like part seven is missing problem all over again, right? - It's like, do I just cave in and like just watch this on my phone and just be really annoyed for 20 minutes or do I, you know? And that happens to me. I have to do that because obviously sometimes Crunchyroll doesn't have it and there's no other way for me to get it.

- Or Netflix, fuck Netflix Japan not having English subtitles. - Yeah, I fucking hate that. I've not been able to watch so many shows that should be available to me because- - Yeah, you put the Netflix to UK, boom, it has English subtitles. Why can't you just put the subtitles on the Japanese Netflix? You have the subtitles, why would you not offer them? - I don't have that problem.

- If you wait a few months, the subtitles do get on it. - I'll just wait a few months. - For Baki. - No, Baki, they were there straight away. - Were they? - Yeah. - When I was watching the first season though, it wasn't there. - It's fucking rolling a dice whether Netflix will put English subtitles on it. It's like, oh, maybe it will. Maybe I'm gonna go and watch this anime, put it on, no subtitles.

- One thing I never got about some of the things, like some of the reactions I see on Twitter is, if you're gonna pirate anime, that's fine. I know plenty of people pirate anime, but there's been this like movement recently that I've seen where people are just like fucking like proud of this shit. - I'm right. - You should pirate anime, that helps everything. That helps the industry. And I'm like,

- I get it, you want to pirate anime, okay? Like I do it, everyone fucking does it, you know? But there's a difference between, yeah, okay, yeah, you know, I watched some of my shows pirated too. Yeah, I stand up for this shit. I'm gonna defend this shit, you know? I don't get that. - I think what it's maybe come from, I don't know, just I'm speculating here, is that like you get so many influencers and people in the industry who like actively shame people who admit that they pirate.

And even us, right? Probably talking about saying that we admit that we pirate is probably a risky move, right? Like Crunchyroll could easily turn around and be like, "We're never working with you again." Like, thank you for the free account, by the way. I love it. I do actually use my Crunchyroll account. Thank you, Miles. I love you. But just us mentioning that we pirate, right? Maybe there's some other YouTubers out there that would be like, "How dare you admit that you pirate

You should be a role model to those. - Yeah, but that's like saying like, oh no, I didn't drink until I turned 18. I was like, bullshit. Everyone drinks before they turn 18. - But you're not a 16 year old. You're not there as a 16 year old being like, guys, I'm getting fucking hammered in the middle of the fucking city. - I'm proud to defy the law.

- Yeah, I had alcohol before I was 18, which is the legal drinking age in the UK. But I wasn't there shouting it out for every fucking parent to see. I wasn't there in the fucking off license being like, "Hey, by the way, I'm 16. "Sell me your fucking alcohol."

- I think it's so much more approachable for viewers and people who watch us and especially people in the industry to admit like, hey, at one point I did pirate, but even now I still pirate when I have to. - What's important is the word did. It's that you did pirate, but you don't actively only rely on pirating now. - If I have a choice to pay and get it done easily, I will because I'm lazy and that's what I'll do. But I think having this mindset of you can never admit that you pirated,

You can never speak, say it has any merits. Like I feel like it just actively pushes people away from having any form of constructive like argument. - Yeah, because I think actually most people fit somewhere in the middle. - I think so. - But the only takes we see on Twitter is either like people actively like slut shaming piracy or something like that. Or just- - Or simping on piracy. - Or just simping on piracy. And I'm like, neither of these are correct. And I don't know why these are the only takes I see on Twitter. - I think as well, one thing that,

that drives a lot of people away, especially from the bigger figures, like a lot of the voice actors and a lot of the people in the industry is that like just actively like saying like, you know, you are wrong. I am in this industry. I know better than you. And although, okay, there is a sense of that, right? You are in the industry. So maybe you have been,

a bit more of a point, but you know, as far as a voice actor goes, it's like, you have no fucking say in what happens. You're doing a job, like you're doing a service. Like as far as you're concerned, you're just in the show and that's where your commitments end. You've no bearing on the show. - Yeah, you're not in the industry. - Oh no, right, right. And I think, you know, I think that,

a lot of these voice actors are also forced then to like, you can't, 'cause the way the industry works, you can't like, you can't be like to your friend, no, you're wrong. 'Cause if your scene is problematic, like, no, it's serious. Like if your scene is problematic, it's like, oh, well maybe a director won't hire you 'cause you're known for being a bit of a dick on Twitter. - Right, right, right. - You don't support, you said "Anime Piracy" was good and we wanted to hire you, but I guess, you know, you've got to pirate us. - I mean, I think a lot of people don't realize that just actively shaming people and like, it's just, well, just push them away to the other side

And it doesn't work by saying, "Hey, you shouldn't pirate. This is a bad thing." Even though like technically, it is, but that doesn't mean that people don't pirate for like a reason. - Yeah. - As weird as it is to say, it's like a really weird form of gatekeeping almost. It's almost like a reverse gatekeeping where it's like,

- If you pirate, then you're not a real anime fan. You really don't support the industry. And it's like, no, you can. You can eventually get to that point, but you have to start somewhere, right? And if piracy is your only option, then piracy is your only option. - Yeah, 'cause I saw like, it was like a tweet, I don't know. There was one of the takes that was like, "Oh, it's not available in your country? Tough, it wasn't made for you." And it's like, whoa. It's like, yeah, okay, no one has right to anime

to anything, right? But also if you can't get it legally and you're a fan of the stuff, like yeah, fuck it. Who cares? Pirate that shit. There's no way for you to pay for it. Like what? Why? I don't understand why this is such a, no, you can't. - There was another fucking horrible take, which was like, anime is a luxury. You remember that one?

- Oh yeah. - We saw like this like list of fucking like horrible arguments towards piracy. It was like, anime is a luxury and you should be, you should really like, you know, be proven lucky that you even get the chance to watch any of this stuff. I'm like, it's just a fucking cartoon bro. - I know some people who like work like two jobs, have no fucking money and they can't afford the like three subscriptions they need to watch all the shows they want. Yeah dude, kick back and relax. You deserve that shit. You've been working hard, man.

I don't give a fuck. If someone is broke as fuck, I would not shame them for pirating. I don't care. - I think that we can all agree that probably the worst take is the whole anime merch take, right? - Oh God. - Like the, I buy anime merch, therefore I have the right to pirate. - I think we all buy a lot of anime merch. - Yeah. - Used to, right? - I used to buy a lot. - Oh, okay. Tell us the reason why. - Yeah, why is it a past tense? - The real reason is, just kidding. I can't share that one.

- It's too much tea in this episode. The tea is being spilled. Okay, but like, what do you, as someone who actually works in the industry, what do you feel about like that argument of like the, I buy anime merch, therefore I have the right to pirate kind of thing? - I mean, you can't use it as a reason because I think,

I don't know how to explain this. Like, for example, royalties for goods. I've heard from friends in the industry that they go to different departments. It's not always directly to like that specific creator. Yeah, right. Like,

- So what are you saying? Like if they buy merch, the money still doesn't go back to the original creator. - It does, it depends I think on the contract they had. So I've heard. - Okay. - So I've heard. I'm not in that department. - I imagine the bigger of a brand the anime is, the easier it is to get a better deal in terms of royalties and cuts, I imagine. I don't know. - Yeah, because one thing that always confuses me is that people think that, I don't know,

- There's a lot of arguments that have been made that doing X is better for supporting the industry than doing Y. And I don't know how much, like, I don't know where they're getting this information from. 'Cause none of these people are like working in the industry. So every argument I see on both sides of things is a lot of the times just anecdotal. - It's all speculation. - And just speculation. - There's no theory behind it. They're just like,

- Well, I mean, I feel good buying merch. It feels like if I buy official merch, right? Because it's tied to that particular IP. You just feel like, oh, I'm supporting it. I'm helping to spread the love. I'm putting money into something that's official. So therefore in the back of their head, they're just like, yeah, that's gonna go back to the Craven somewhere. - I mean, it's better than not doing anything.

- Yeah, of course. But is it the best way to support that particular creator of the IP? No. - Not the best, but better than nothing. - So the best way just legally streaming, paying for the services, is that the best way in your opinion?

- I've heard that the DVDs, Blu-ray DVDs, for example, in Japan, I'm not sure about the US, but in Japan, buying the Blu-ray DVDs is the best way. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - That's when they know. - Yeah, 'cause they measure success from Blu-ray sales, right? That's how it's done. - That and like the original sources sale. - Yeah, like the manga. - Oh, so the manga and stuff like that. - That's what I've heard.

- Yeah. - 'Cause I always try to make sure I buy my manga firsthand now. Like even if it's like an older series where I can easily go to like a book off or something and buy it for a hundred yen. Like I always just try and go to the bookstore, the first hand bookstore. 'Cause like I've heard that is truly the best way to support the creator, right? - I guess 'cause when it's pre-owned, right?

- The royalties don't go. - Yeah, right, 'cause I mean like two thirds of my JoJo merch is like pre-owned stuff. - That's because it's like- - You can't get that stuff anymore. - Yeah, you can't get them. - 'Cause for some reason- - It wasn't made for you. It wasn't available at the time. You don't deserve it. - You don't deserve it. - I deserve all the JoJo merch. Like yeah, I don't know, like I've spent thousands of dollars on like Yahoo auction, right? But none of that goes to like, because a lot of the time as well, like this merch is like, what, like a hundred bucks? And then two years later on Yahoo auction, it's 300 bucks and someone made a nice profit.

I mean, good for them. - Yeah, Iraq is definitely not seeing that profit. - I mean, the only thing that I've bought that's like brand new is probably the jump store stuff that we both bought. Like, 'cause the JoJo exhibition museum was canceled and normally you have to go to the JoJo exhibition to get the stuff, but they were like, "Hey, you can just order it online." So I ordered like- - You got the suits. - The suits as well I got. - Glam shirts. - But the thing is with the suits, right? That's Bandai collaboration with Perfect Suit Factory. So there's like two companies

that are making this thing before it gets to the present. - Yeah, they're taking most of it, right? - So like these $500 suits, how many of that goes to like, you know, "Shonen Jump" and then are like, the animators aren't seeing that shit, right? The animators are still underpaid as fuck. - I mean, I don't think there's anything we can do for- - Well, they're underpaid because it's just Japan's salary, the average salary in Japan. - Mike! - Man, Mike is taking a beating. - The average salary in general is low. - Yeah. - Yeah.

I mean, I feel like with animators, it's a like systematic problem of how the industry works as a whole. - That's a whole other can of worms. - That's a whole other can of worms. - You could argue that's also just like Japanese culture. - Yeah, that's a whole different argument to be had. But I think,

- One thing I see with a lot of like Western Twitter and Western people is that I feel like they don't want to support the industry mostly because they're not happy with like some of these bigger companies or like the image of like say Crunchyroll or Funimation. It's less of, I don't wanna support the industry and more of, I don't wanna support these companies in particular.

- Yeah, you don't wanna support the companies that are representing the industry in that country, right? - I can understand it at times. 'Cause you know, there's a lot of arguments that people make like underpaying translators that comes up a lot. And you know, like last year, like it was like voice actor apocalypse with Funimation. Like there's a lot of reasons why people might not want to, right?

- It's tough 'cause it's- - Because I don't think there's a right or wrong argument, but what I feel sometimes is that a lot of people won't support the industry and that's like a perfect system where all the money they go to goes to this one creator. Like they wanna- - Like a utopian system. - Yeah, yeah.

Like a utopian system where like every creator has a fucking Patreon or something and they can support any creator they want and how much they want. And that's just not a business model. You know what I mean? And I feel like a lot of people will use that justification to say, hey, we're not supporting the creator how I want to support the creator. So I'm just not gonna support anything.

And I feel like there must be a better way to go about it than that, because there's never gonna be a perfect system. - I mean, Trigger kind of did the right thing, right? Like they have a Patreon, they have a Twitch stream where they do live tours. - How much does a Patreon get?

- I'm not too sure. - I think I checked and I was like, that is nowhere near enough to- - Oh no, definitely not. It's basically just like a side revenue for them. But at least it's a way that is, will actually go directly to the studio. - True, true. - And is a payment method or a donation method that Westerners are very familiar with, right? - I think it's good to have just an option to do something like that. It's like, hey, do you want to directly support the studio? - I think Kixiv has that. It's not a studio, but there are some illustrators.

- Oh yeah, Pixiv kind of has that as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. But I mean, like, yeah, I mean, that's really the only thing and barely anybody's utilizing it, right? Like I've never heard of a manga artist using Patreon. - Is it like a, do you reckon there's like a pride thing in Japan? Like not wanting to ask people for money? 'Cause like begging is really like not a thing here. - That I don't know.

- I mean, culturally, yeah, begging is not even a thing. - Yeah. - Like not even homeless people beg you. - Yeah, homeless people just do their own thing. Like that just like, all right, fuck you. - It's true, I've never seen a homeless person beg. - Yeah, no, 'cause it's really disrespectful. - Yeah, it's not a thing here. Even the homeless here are respectful where they're just like, no, no, no, no, keep your money. - Yeah, they're like, I'm homeless, I still have my prize. - Yeah, exactly. I think it's just a different culture altogether. - There's a lot of it that comes down to that though, I think, in the industry.

how people want it to change. It's just not going to. - I also think a really big root of the problem when it comes to at least the anime industry is that they truly, even though in my experience, having done stuff with a lot of different studios and productions and whatnot in anime, they're aware of the Western industry. They just don't really give a shit about them. - I wouldn't say they care. They just don't know how or what to do. - It's not their first priority though. Their first priority is always the Japanese market, right?

And that's how they measure their success. I mean, of course, you know, I'm sure all of these studios now it's 2020, right? Like I think most of them are aware now that there are way more Western fans who are into their anime than there will ever be Japanese fans, right? - I mean China alone, right? - Yeah. Or just Southeast Asia. - All the mobile games coming out for China. - Even if you just look at Southeast Asia, right? That's more people just in general who will watch the anime and enjoy the anime and be willing to spend the money on it.

Because the Japanese anime industry is so, a lot of it is so old fashioned and thinking just locally that they're just like, okay, we understand that there are all these people out here who are probably willing to pay for our stuff. We just don't know how to do it. And we can't be bothered to figure out how to do it. - I mean, it's Japanese culture in general though, isn't it? - Yeah, it's just like, for example, the DVD and Blu-ray business model is just not going to work abroad.

You know what I mean? I mean, it can prop up the anime industry here in Japan and it has for like the longest time, but it took them like how many years to figure out that people just don't want to buy DVDs and Blu-rays. - That's like if Crunchyroll was like, "We're gonna open up a Blockbuster tomorrow. Come on in and rent your DVDs." It's like, no, it's not.

- It's shocking how many people in Japan do not know streaming services. Like even young people are just not aware. They're like, "Oh, you can watch anime on Netflix, what?" - They usually record it on their TV, like when it's playing live. - Yeah, when it's playing on TV. But it's like, I'm not staying up till 3:00 AM to watch a fucking "Rent-A-Girlfriend" episode, I'm sorry. - I've never seen a place where they like sell CRT TV so much.

Like, why? Like, there's CRT, I mean, Smash players were like, yes, yes. But, like, everyone else is like, why the fuck would I need a CRTV? Like, there's so many. There's big fucking chunky ones. The brick TVs, like...

I see so many of them for sale. - The TV that you grew up with, like the fucking brick of a TV, the thick boys. - I was in Akihabara and it was like a brand new electronic store. There was like LCD, like thin TVs. And there's a whole section for CRT TVs. And I'm like, who the fuck is buying this?

- Genuinely, who the fuck is buying CRT TVs? - Except for Smash Play. - The secondhand store culture here in Japan is fucking on another level because you go into a secondhand store and they have like fucking laser discs in like,

- Perfect, perfect condition. - Dude, I bought a fucking like full laser disc set of all the episodes of Evangelion for like 500 yen. I don't even have a laser disc player. I was just like, holy shit. Why is this here? And why is it such good quality? - If you love retro games, my God, like,

They have every single retro game system. You can buy like an N64, like used for like 20 bucks. - Dude, I bought my N64 brand new in box for like 90 bucks. - Yeah, you could get the SNES in box like 50 bucks in stores. It's crazy. You could get like Genesis games, which are normally really expensive in the West. Super cheap everywhere here. Sorry, going on tangent. It's crazy how wild that is. - It's great. If you like retro games, come to Japan. - Millie's like, "What the fuck is this podcast?" - I spaced out like half the time.

- We just talk mad shit. Maylene's like, yeah. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Yeah, what? - So like in your guys' opinion then, what can be improved in like the industry and how they approach, you know, marketing themselves to the West and, you know, obviously never getting rid of piracy 'cause I don't think piracy is ever gonna- - No, no. - Ever gonna disappear, but how could you,

- Just chill the fuck out. That's what I'd like. That's like the one that piece of advice I wish they would take. - I think it would just take a little bit more time. Like the next five or 10 years, it'll probably be much better. - I think it's sad, right? Because I think what would take one or two years in American companies, right? If you're that, right? Is like 10 years in Japanese companies.

you have to remember it's like an island and- - I know, I know, I know it is. I know, but it's so- - It's really telling though when like, you know, Japan is like still stuck in the eighties with like how they run their businesses sometimes. I'm just like, it just doesn't work. - But again, I think it's just every single thing that's like, why are they doing this? It's just a cultural thing, right? It comes back to like, it just, you know. - I definitely think one thing that will really, really help is just,

like just having an interest to listening to like what the foreign market is doing, right? Like, and a great start for example, is like working with foreign YouTubers like us, for example. Because I've convinced some companies to be like, oh yeah, actually that's a really dumb thing to do in our company. And they stopped doing it and it's worked out for them just because, you know, we understand it's really telling when we understand the foreign market more than the

the actual industry here. - Yeah. - And we're not even that highly

or like that in depth about how the industry works. - Exactly. - We've just been around it and kind of surrounded by it, right? - I mean, you see it time and time again where a Japanese company just is like dead fast and sticking to what they wanna do and not changing. I mean, if you even look at like Konami, right? With like Kojima. - Yeah. - Yeah. - They kick Kojima out 'cause they wanted to focus on mobile games and Pachinko and that's all they fucking do now is Pachinko. - Yeah. - And sure it's working great in Japan, but as far as the Western, like,

Konami's a dead fucking company. - Yeah, Konami died like five years ago. - You know what I mean? Konami hasn't made a, and I think Capcom's kind of doing the same road. They made like- - The moment Capcom axed Mega Man, they were just dead. - And then what was the other game they brought out recently? The top down shooter that was fucking awful. I can't remember what it was called. - I don't remember. I don't even know that. - You keep up with them? - Yeah, dude, I keep up with all the game news. And it's just embarrassing 'cause it's like,

- All Konami does now is pachinko. - Yeah, these companies that were like Goliath companies and that everybody knew who Capcom and Konami was, right? - Yeah, Capcom, Konami were giants in the NES era. - Huge. - Huge. - They couldn't adapt to the generation, I think. - But even with Konami, right, when they had Kojima, like Kojima was steering them in a good, I don't know, inside politics. It looked like, I mean, he was breaking like PT, right, came out, I don't see they canceled that. - Silent Hills. - Silent Hills, you know.

And they completely scrubbed him from Metal Gear 5. It was just like, I mean, it's time. I mean, that's just one really public occasion, right? But I mean, just interacting with them, we see this kind of stuff time and time again, where it's like, you have like the perfect idea and they're like, no. I don't know what we're allowed to talk about and what we're not.

- It's also hard for them to kind of try something new because they have no data to back it up. - But that's the thing, right? If no one's willing to try anything new, nothing happens. - There's no data for something that's new, right? - Are we allowed to talk about the audio book, for example? - Audio book? - Are we allowed to mention that? - Sure. - Okay, so when we did the audio book, the- - The Yowie one. - Plug, go and buy it.

we were trying to pitch to some of the companies saying, "Hey, would you mind like helping out with the funding of the audio?"

basically how the audio book got made was I put all my money into it and I hope that it sells well, I make my money back and it's worth one month. - Luckily it did. - One month of my life. Luckily you guys are amazing, you guys bought it. - You're so stressed out that month. - Oh my God, I was fucking losing it. I was stressing out my, 'cause it's like when you're in charge of it solely, it just takes one person to not do what they're supposed to do to ruin everything. And so shout out to Segi, man, amazing audio editor. He came in clutch, he did an amazing job and it turned out pretty well.

- We did two, one was a test. - One was a test, it worked out. We proved that it was successful, right? So we had the data that this would sell well. And so we went around pitching to- - Several different- - Basically saying, "Hey, you're gonna get guaranteed sales with this. Would you like-" - We had the data. - Yeah, it was like hard evidence that this would get you at least X amount of sales. - Oh, I'm sorry. - Yeah, it would get you X amount of sales. You would definitely get a return on the investment. And none of them wanted to like even remotely go close, right?

- And what was their reasoning behind that though? - Yeah, what was their reasoning? I can't remember. It was something like they just didn't think it would work, right? - No, I think it was not that. It was just, they didn't want to put their money into it. - They didn't want to put their money into something that they had the hard evidence that it would work. - And then we, I just decided that, 'cause originally we were going to publishers and being like, hey,

we'll choose one of your books. - Book Walker supported that one too. So it was like Book Walker and you supporting that project. - Yeah, both of us, right? Like we have a track record that I've done it, but none of these companies were willing to like even give it a shot. Like I didn't even need that much, right? Like I've produced the audio book for like $2,000, which is a lot less than like, I mean that also helps. - For one month of time. - For one month of time, yeah. We were doing it nonstop. We made a video about it, like very, like they were getting an insane deal, right? And none of them wanted to do it.

And then we just chose one. I just chose a book that I like, did it and got up. It's been like what? Like number one, like number one. - Every month, top 10 I would say. - It's yeah, like top five, top three. - That's a flex right there. - For like every month since it came out. And it's just like, it's so frustrating.

wanting to do these bigger projects and none of these Japanese companies just wanting to even give a chance. - That's just called bad fucking business. - We know that it works, right? We know that we can make this work. And it's so frustrating having to work with these companies. - I've always been curious. How did you convince Book Walker, a Japanese company to start working with like Western YouTubers? 'Cause I remember the like-

- I wanna know how that works. - Joey was the first one. - Yeah, Joey was the first one, but I think Book Walker was the first Japanese company that ever contacted me. I think like still now, one of the only ones that have like ever gone out and contacted us. - Yeah, without Book Walker. - Yeah, yeah. And that was your idea, right? - Yeah. - So how did you convince them to do that? - I mean, before, I guess using YouTubers,

- Using YouTube. - Using YouTube. - Oh, it makes them cry. - That's a bad way to say it too. I'm sorry, before collaborating with YouTubers. - There we go. Get those buzzwords in, Maylene. - Yeah, 'cause I was doing marketing for them and I guess I still was. I'm not in "Wook Walker" now. But I've tried so many things. I've done like SNS ads or collaborations with cosplayers or fan art artists. - Right, okay.

I worked with anime clubs and- - Anime clubs? - Yeah, I worked with anime clubs. - Wow. - Because they had movie nights or they wanna have manga reading circles. - Oh, so you sponsored the movie nights? - Yeah, yeah, like that. - Oh, okay. - You paid them? - We gave them free books.

to say oh maybe you guys should read it because the idea was they're going to be the ambassador of their community and if you give them free manga they'll check it out and then they'll give it to their friends if only there was some way to just reach a ton of people pretty easily like the internet or something I actually did it yeah so I was like googling around like what's

bigger than an anime club was bigger than a cosplayer we gotta think bigger yeah four years ago five years ago I think it was like five four or five years ago now so I didn't even know that anime YouTube was a thing I knew like anime music videos

- Very illegal stuff, I guess. In their eyes. - I've made anime music videos. - Fired from book. - No, but yeah, so I just knew about that type of like anime YouTube. But then I was a big follower of a lot of like Japanese vloggers, not Japanese vloggers, Japan vloggers. - J-vloggers. - J-vloggers. And then Joey appeared in one of the videos of the person that I was watching and I was like,

This person's called Anime Man? Anime Man. Oh, this is, oh, this could, hmm.

- That's some Giga Brain marketing right there. - So you didn't even know he was an anime YouTuber. If he wasn't called the anime man, you wouldn't have looked into it. - Giga Brain branding right there. - I think you weren't even talking about anime. - If I wasn't a J vlogger. - I think it was like Sharla's video, Sharla in Japan. - Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, if I'm collabing with J vloggers, I'm not going to talk about it. Like I can talk about other things as well.

- Yeah, I don't think I was talking about anime at that point. - I don't remember. I think you were like mixing drinks in a Royal host. - Oh yeah, some stupid thing. - Maybe, I don't know. But yeah, I Googled, not Googled you. I just clicked your videos and then I just started watching and I was like, what? There's people that review anime? Why would anyone wanna watch that?

- I hate reading people's comments. Like for example, Crunchyroll videos on the bottom of the episodes. - His comments, yeah. - I hate reading those. 'Cause you know, they might not like the same character or whatever. - I don't want people to say they don't like what I like. - That's some garbage opinion. - Dubs are better than subs or something. And I was like, but let's see if he likes manga.

And then I emailed and I was like, oh. - Not gonna lie, the first time I got your email and it said like from like, you know, it was like- - Kato Kawa. - Yeah, Kato Kawa. I was just like,

- I think this might be fish. I think this might be a phishing email. - I actually thought the same. 'Cause I remember the first time you emailed me, immediate delete. 'Cause I'm just like, there's no way this is legit. There's no way this is legit. - Maybe I did email you and then I asked Joey, he's like, "You know, I think this other anime tuber is not replying."

Because I was like, there's no way Katakawa's emailing me. Yeah, I was like, that Katakawa. I only know one Katakawa. And it's like the anime company Katakawa. And I use Katakawa because Book Walker is actually like a subsidiary. It's not like Katakawa. It is 100% Katakawa. But no one knows at that time. Yeah, because I'd never heard of Book Walker.

I've never seen you Catacal, but I'm just like, what is this shady company that's using Catacal's name? I'm like, there's no way this is legit. - Legitimately, I got the email, 'cause I was living in Australia still at the time, I'm pretty sure. Oh no, I was already in Japan. - You moved here, it was like four or six months. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I was already in Japan, that's right. And I remember I sent that email, I forwarded it to my mom and dad just to be like, does this look legit?

- I'm really scared to reply to this. - Why is it in English? - Why is it in English? And why is like the name Maylene? Like she doesn't sound Japanese at all. - Southeast Asian. - And I was like, well, you know, I'll give it a go. If it ends up being a fish, whatever. And that was the best email I ever sent. - I asked you to come to the office too. - That's right, that's right. Yeah, and then when you gave me the address and I looked it up on Google Maps, I'm like, okay, this is legit. - Yeah, 'cause it's actually in one of the cutoff

- Yeah, yeah, yeah. - I think I heard, was it true that like Katakawa just didn't like, they wanted to meet the YouTuber before they did anything with them? - It's not Katakawa, it's just Japanese businesses in general. Like to know if they're a real person or just, you know, to get- - To know if they're a real person. - Like just the idea of just- - To judge if they're good people

- So like if Joey wasn't in Japan, right? Would there possibly have been no collaboration? 'Cause like if Joey didn't come to meet you guys in person. - I mean, our first conversation was actually on Skype. - Right, right. Would that have been good enough to secure a deal, do you reckon? - Probably not. - Probably not, unless there's like a foreigner in the group. Like at that time I was like the only foreigner. - Working. - Probably. - Yeah, I think so. - Yeah, I was the first foreigner

- Yeah, 'cause I remember like when I went to the book walk office as well, that was like probably the first time I ever went to like a physical meeting in Japan. And since then, God, I've...

Every time a Japanese company is like, we'd like to meet up with you to discuss this thing. I'm like, do you know what email is? I don't want to leave. - I think without like, I mean, you guys starting it, I feel like they wouldn't have even considered YouTubers, right? I almost feel like the Japanese companies talking to us. - I think it took me like four months to get approved. No, not four months, maybe two months.

to get approval. - Which is actually incredibly fast compared to some of the other projects. - For a Japanese company, that's really fast. - My number changing, my email changing. - I had to like do, I guess BS, a lot of BS, a lot of like data. Oh my God, I'm gonna get caught.

- Did you cook the books, Maylene? - Yeah, maybe. It's like the inflow from YouTube. - I crunched the numbers. - I made graphs. I was like, the inflow from YouTube is like the best for, I don't know, reaching the hearts of teenagers. - Reaching the hearts. - Yeah, so I still probably have that slide. And I was like,

- Let's quantify how well YouTubers can reach their viewers hearts. - You're probably wondering for the past hour, what are these figures? We don't know what this is. - Well, it's because this episode is sponsored by EJ Anime Store. - EJ standing for Entertainment Japan, by the way. Carry on. - EJ Anime Store is Kadokawa's official anime store that sells anime, gaming, manga. - Directly from Japan. If you didn't know, Kadokawa has published huge titles such as

Evangelion, it's capitalized in the script. The Haruhi Suzumiya series, Re:Zero, KotoSuba and more. - And because Katakawa is producing these directly, what better way to support the industry itself? - There is no better way. Look at all these beautiful things that we have on the table that are from EJ Anime Store and that you can get your hands on right now. Look at all this asana. There's three asanas in front, well actually four asanas in front of me right now. - What does EJ stand for again? - Entertainment Japan.

- To give you an idea of the stuff that you can get at EJ Anime Store, they've brought in a few of the items. - Oh, Jesus Christ, Meilyne. - Speak of the devil. This is one of the things that you can get at EJ Anime Store. What is it, Garnt? - Did you have to aim for my face, Meilyne? - This is from Fates. Do you know Fates, Connor? It's from one of the spinoffs.

- It's from Fate/Khalid/Ilya Prisma. - So we don't have it here, but it should be on screen, which is the Fate/Khalid/Ilya Prisma. My God. Ilya's valve on Eisenburn wedding bikini version, one slash scale figure. - I'm fucking dying. - What did I just pronounce? But it does come with the t-shirt that Garnt is modeling if you do buy that figure.

- Look at that, beautiful. This is the only franchise you should care about because there's lesbian lollies in it. I don't know if I'm allowed to say that, but it's in the shot. - I'm also told the clothing veil and other clear parts are painted with pearl coloring. The veil, perio and bouquet are detachable. - There's also this figure, which is the Data Bullets Light Novel White Queen 7th Scale Figure Catacal special sets. And this figurine already looks just,

- Absolutely incredible. - This is fucking great. - So much detail in that. - And the best part about it is if you get this beautiful figurine, then you can also get this lovely B2 tapestry set with it as well. - For free. - For free, gentlemen, for free. There's also my favorite anime series, Sword Art Online. This is a Sword Art Online figure-rise standard asana Dengeki Pearl Color Limited version set with a beautiful asana tapestry as well that comes with it as a special bonus. There's also these two other asanas as well, which has the asana vacation set,

I mean, she looks like she's having a good time on the beach there. - Oh yeah, that's a- - She's about to get lathered up. - There's the regular version and then there's the ALO version. - If you want your own beach episode, there you go. - Yeah, it comes with the beach. - If you like any of these figures, be sure to go and check them out at ejanimestore.com or click the link in the description below. As they've only recently opened, there'll be tons of more merchandise coming out soon, so stay tuned. - Guna, what is EJ? - Entertainment Japan.

- Thank you for sponsoring us by the way. - Back to the video. - So did YouTubers work Meilyne? Don't we gonna scratch my own back here? - I don't know, did they? Why are you guys here? - I guess so. - Yeah, I think like one thing that a lot of people might be interested in is that you're a foreigner working in like the anime and manga industry in Japan. - You're basically living the weeb dream. - Yeah. - So like, how did that happen? How did you find a job in Book Walker Kadokawa as a foreigner?

- I know the story. - I think I know the answer to this. - Craigslist Tokyo. - Do you wanna tell the story about how that happened? - Oh, well I was working at a marketing consulting company in Japan. - Right. - You've been living here 'cause you had married your Japanese person. - Well, yeah, like my first second year in Japan. But yeah, I was working at a marketing, digital marketing agency being a consultant for several different Japanese companies who wanted to like get,

I don't know, foreign, not foreign, global traffic to their site or something. I said that weird. - 'Cause that would count as foreign. - Yeah. - Yeah. - It's still foreign. - I don't know why you're freaking, calm down, man. It's okay. - Am I sweating? Oh my God. - Don't wipe it on the table. - It's fine pine, man. - Where was I? - You're talking about the global. - Oh yeah.

- Shit. - You threw me off and now I'm like, what was I even talking about? - You were talking about how you got the job at Boca. - Oh yeah, and then, okay. And then I needed a bicycle one day and I finished my work and it was like during lunchtime and I was like, oh, I can just check Craigslist for, you know, a cheap bicycle, like 30 bucks, 20 bucks. I'm checking on Craigslist and then I found the bicycle. I didn't buy it though. And then I was like, oh, I wonder if there's like actually legit jobs on Craigslist.

besides like foot massage, whatever it is. - Looking for F. - Yeah, 'cause that's the image that Craigslist has in America. - Yeah, yeah. - Or a fridge full of cockroaches. - Yeah, you're the one who made me get that fucking fridge full of cockroaches. - When you buy something on Craigslist, you first look at it in person and then you decide. - I'm not going to some,

to the fucking person's house to check out a $10 fridge, Meily. - Why didn't you Amazon it? - Because. - Well now he knows better. - You were highly insistent that cockroaches, the Craigslist, may as well be a cockroach. - Craigslist changed my life. - You were so insistent, so insistent, the Craigslist, dude, you should really go to Craigslist, man. You're gonna get a mad deal.

Fine, Maylene, fine. I'll get a fridge from Craigslist. And then it got fucking cockroaches in it, Maylene. - But now you have a story. - I do have a story. - Yeah, we had a story and a great clip. - I love the story, but I hate you. - So this job, what did it say? What jobs did you find on there? - Oh, I think it was like- - Looking for F. - In our area. - It said like digital manga marketing specialist. And I was like, what?

They're looking for something like that? I click it and it doesn't say the name of the company. It says like, oh, Chiyoda Ku Itabashi. And I'm like, wait, there's only two publishers that I know of in this area.

And I was like, it's either this really big one or like this kind of the biggest one. And I Google all the, well, I knew it was Kadokawa. So I was like, oh, I'm going to Google every single Kadokawa like department and see what they're like. What they're looking for. Looking for. And then I found Bookart and it matched exactly kind of what the Craigslist thing was, which was, oh, looking for someone to go overseas to different anime conventions, like

to like market our store and i'm like i love it native english yeah native english no japanese required and this is like four five five years ago and like my japanese is nowhere fluent and at that time it was even more horrible so getting into the anime industry or manga industry you need to like speak english or not english japanese japanese like fluently yeah beyond business

And so I was like, oh, I'm never gonna work in the Mungin Street, unless it's like in America, then I could like apply. - Right, you got it. - Oh yeah. - That's like insane. 'Cause if I saw that ad on Craigslist, again, I would like think it was a scam or something. Like imagine Catacow going on like advertising a fucking job on Craigslist. - They didn't say the company name though. - But it's still on Craigslist. That makes it even more.

- It's more sketchy, right? - I fully expected it to just be like Kodakawa. It's like, oh, it almost sounds like Kodakawa. - It's like I saw in Rent-A-Girlfriend, it was like Tam-ly-Mart. - Tam-ly-Mart. - I was fucking losing it. All the letters, Tam-ly-Mart. I don't know why it was so funny. I was losing it. I don't know. - The golden oldie, Wook-donalds. Never gets old, never gets old.

I was gonna do a video on Craigslist. And I remember, why are you laughing? I suck dick for video. I wanted to see what was on there. And so I found this ad that was like looking for YouTubers below 10,000. And I was like, what? What was that all about? This was in London. So I called them up and it was, what? No, no, not Japan. I feel weird about that in Japan. And so I called them up and they were like, yeah, we wanna pay YouTubers.

below $10,000 below 10,000 subscribers, $5,000 to move to our platform exclusively. I caught this woman on the phone. I didn't tell her I had like a million subs and she was just like, she was going on and she was like, yeah, so we just need you to be in an exclusive deal with our partners and all this. I was so confused. I was like, what the fuck? I never heard of this platform since. And then they were like, oh yeah, but cause I was a guy obviously they were like, yeah, but we're only interested in women as well.

- That's like red flags coming up. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - I was like, I don't know. I wonder if I had like stumbled onto like the greatest like prostitution network or something. I don't know what it was. To this day, I still don't know. I have the phone call recorded on my PC. Yeah, and then I told them I had a million subs and then they were like, oh no, we're not interested. And I was also a guy.

- Why 10,000? - I was really confused about that. - Is it because like, if like, you know, they wanna like drop out for example, or if there's like drama, they're like, oh, this guy's gonna go 10,000 subs, they won't go anywhere. - They kept saying stuff that was like too good to be true. They were like, one, we'll give you $5,000 to move. We were in the UK as well, by the way. That was already like, that was weird. And then also they were like, we can give you premium ad rev rates of like $10 CPM. I'm like,

"Get out of here, $10 CP, fuck off." No way, I was losing it. I wish to this day, I still wanna know what that was. I don't know why I told that story. - Did you even check their website thoroughly? - They wouldn't tell me what it was. They were like, "It's on the download." And I'm like, "That's weird." - That sounds sketch as fuck, man. - That sounds sketchy. - That sounds like a hiring ring for like a prostitution, like a black market prostitution. - That's why I never wanna use Craigslist. 'Cause every single story I've heard from Craigslist is literally- - Apart from yours,

- Outside of Japan, I think probably goes with the sketch. - Yeah, have you gone to like the section where you can pay for favors? - You can? - Oh yeah, yeah. - Oh no, that's like the community or something like that. - There's one where it's like for old people, it's all just like 40, 50 year old women looking for like dudes to just

- Is this in Japan? - Yeah, and UK and the US. I checked all of them. 'Cause I wanted to see if there's anything crazy about Craigslist. - I'll buy you something crazy. - Don't tell me you're gonna make a video on that. - No, I did not. - Okay, thank God. - Don't tell me that's where all the hot, sexy singles are. - They're all Craigslist. - In my area, they're all in Craigslist. It's not KissAnime, God damn it. - That's why you're not homesick.

- What if you just clicked on the kiss anime ads and it just takes you to the crisis? - No dude. - It makes sense. - Dude, it's wild 'cause there was like 40 year old women who were married showing their face and giving their mobile phone number. And I was like, whoa, you are playing with fire surely. - That doesn't sound safe. - But also you're married, right? So I saw your face, Karen. - Every Karen is like. - You don't know if it's their real photo.

- Yeah, true. - It could be very much a scam. - It definitely has to be their number though, right? I mean. - Unless they just randomly- - I guess we have to find out, by God. - There's only one way to find out. I would totally call her just for a video. I'd do that. I mean, I have like no qualms about doing that. Like calling them, but. - Okay, but like steering back to the conversation. - Sorry, yes, we got off topic. - Steering back to the conversation.

- I think we can all agree that like Maylene's story is very much a rare case, right? - Is it a rare case? - I think so. - I've never heard of anyone getting into the anime industry through Craigslist. - I think this is people who probably most people know or you guys know are in the US working for US anime. - Was there ever a time you wanted to work in the US industry?

- What's that smile? That smile just pays off a thousand words. - What's that smile, Maylene? - That is the most nervous smile I've ever seen. - Yeah, I did. There was probably two companies that I applied to that were- - She got rejected, Maylene.

- You're rejected. - You're rejected. - Is that why you- - But they called back and they're like, "You were the second candidate." - That hurts even more. I don't hear that. - Yeah. - He was like, "When I was a fresh graduate." - Right. - Do you wanna know if you haven't got the job? I don't wanna know. I just wanna apply and move on. - I wanna know. - No, I wanna move on. - I also like, I don't know, wanna know the reason. - They're not gonna give it to you. - They're never gonna give it to you. - I guarantee to every person who dropped, they said you were the second one. I guarantee it. - Honestly, we wanted to. We wanted to really. - That's what I would do.

But like what would be, 'cause I'm fucking certain, right? That not just people watching this episode, but I reckon like every weeb living overseas probably has that dream somewhere in the back of their head where they're like, man, I wanna move to Japan. I wanna work in the anime industry. - Do you get those emails as well? - Yeah, I get those emails as well. - Everyone gets them, right? We all get them, right? So as someone who actually made it,

- What is the advice you would give to people who like want to chase that dream? - I think that the speed run round. - It took a year and a half, I think. - That's pretty fast though. - That was not why. - For Japan. - Yeah. - No, no, no, you didn't get the green card to move here. - I was like, no. - I mean, that's the easiest way though, right? I mean, that's what you guys are like,

- You can marry someone again. - No, not really. - True, true. - But what advice would you give for someone who's like looking to work in the industry? - In Japan? - Yeah, in Japan. - The most realistic. - Yeah, I would say learn some, a lot of like learn Japanese.

the easiest way to get in. Not alone, like there's that JLPT where it's N1, N2 or whatever. And I've heard like, oh, N2 is like sufficient. - If you can get to N2, you can pretty much snag like any job that's not like too language focused. - Because you're native English, right? - Or be extremely knowledgeable about like the industry.

- Right. - That's like the biggest thing. - Yeah, 'cause people ask us all the time, they're like, you know, what's the best way? And I'm like, bro, I'm like in the weirdest situation. - Yeah, don't take my career path. That's a really weird career path. - We just wanna stress, we're not part of the industry.

- We work with the industry. - We are not part of the industry. - Why are you asking a YouTuber on immigration law? I don't know anything. You think I know immigration law? Fuck. - You should because you immigrated here, right? - I barely know how to file my taxes correctly, come on. - But like, are a lot of Japanese companies hiring foreigners? - Yes, yes they do actually, quite a lot are, especially in the past year or two. They've expanded to like the global market. - Because people watching this are like, write that down, write that down.

- Japan knows how popular anime is overseas. That's why of course there's like the cool Japan thing. - If Book Walker did a job application today, what would my CV, my resume need to look like? What are we looking for? - And you can tell us this, 'cause you're probably gonna be like, if a job opening ever opens up, you'd probably be the one doing the interview, right? So what do you expect from someone who wants to work in there? - I don't know, I'm not in like,

that team anymore. - Give us your thoughts mainly. - Hypothetically, 'cause you also have to hide for Geeks Plus, which is also very similar. - Don't be like an incel or something. Like don't be a nervous wreck.

- So a bit of charisma, a bit of charisma. - Yeah, and have like a social life kind of, 'cause you got those really weird- - That's a real tall order for weaves. - When they come in, do you can like, can you sense it straight away? - We did some like interviews recently actually, where we were like, we did it through Zoom or like video call. And like the thing I was like looking for is like they smile and like-

I don't smile. And then I also like we ask them, what's your favorite anime series or something? And it's not the anime series they choose. It's the reason why they like it.

- If they say, "Normie, get out of here." - It's like, "Oh my God, he said that serious." No, no. - Every application you're gonna have from now on, like every CV is just not an incel. - It's not an incel. - Smiles in a Zoom call. - And they have to have experience. - I would say experience is like the biggest thing because- - Experience in what? - Working in a company actually. - Just anything? - Yeah. - Yeah. - 'Cause I feel like that's a lot of,

a lot of experience that a lot of people are missing, you know, that just working in a company environment is actually really valuable. - Yeah, corporate experiences. - Yeah, corporate experience. - Definitely. - Or if they're like fresh graduates, at least have a few like internships under your belt. 'Cause there's some people like in my like previous companies I've worked with in the past, like they're new graduates, they go into the job and they don't even know how to use Excel. So if they're like familiar with all the Microsoft.

- I mean, it's something you never like actively learn how to use these like Excel and Word, but it's like such a necessary like skill to have working in a corporate job, which is knowing how to use Excel. It's not an any like job application, but it's fine. When I was working in the BBC, I had to use Excel for fucking everything. - I'm convinced my engineering degree was an Excel degree in disguise. I'm convinced. 'Cause we used Excel for everything. - Yeah, yeah, yeah.

- We had classes in high school that was specifically towards Excel. - So what's like the main points, right? On a resume. Like if there's a three most things that you can have as a candidate for applying. - What stands out the most to you? - We're not talking about like, don't be an insult. - I'm not like the final judge of this thing. - No, no, no. - In your opinion, right? - In your opinion, in your opinion.

- I'm just like the way they write their intro paragraph about themselves. - Oh shit, that's actually important. - Well, I don't know for me, I read it and I'm just like, what do they say?

do they sound passionate or they're just copying and pasting top 10 best ways to write a cover letter or something? - In Japan, don't you have to write every like letter and like resume by hand? - Yeah. - That's disgusting. - Oh yeah. - Oh my God. - Nowadays that's electronic. - That's too much. - So there's like, what is the little job fair they do when they're like leave school? What's that called? They spend like a year trying to get it. - Oh, shukatsu? - Yeah. - And they can write up to 100 applications by hand. The same shit.

I would lose my damn money. - I had to do that when I was applying for internships in Japan. I think I wrote,

- Jesus Christ. - And that wasn't nearly as much as some of what my friends did. - And apparently they look out for like, if you care enough. And I'm like, to me, that just seems like, why is this the thing that we're caring about? - It's like, I don't care. I just want money. Give me the experience. - I'm here to make you money. Shut up. - Can we just be honest here and just say, why do you need this job? Because I'm broke and I just graduated and I need the fucking money.

- I need the fucking money, okay? I need a job. Just give me the job, fucking hell. - I do like it when they're extremely passionate too. Not saying like, oh my God, I'm like a huge LoveLiver and I've loved life for everything. It's more like, you know, I was in a difficult time. - Shout out to the LoveLivers. - I would never hire someone who's obsessed with LoveLive. You know why? Because their loyalty will never lie with you. No matter what. - But you can bribe them.

- That's true. - I have tickets to Muse. - How long can you bribe them? - If you don't finish this, I'm ripping it. - All right, your phone just slammed on the floor, very dramatic. But okay, right, let's say, they're addicted to Gatcha. Who knows how long it is before they do one too many Gatchas. They coming at you with a raise. They want a raise mainly. - They wouldn't ask me. They would ask like the CEO for the raise.

- Okay, but hypothetically if you were the CEO, right? Then how would you respond to that? - Well, first I would ask, oh, what have you been doing this past year differently? And like, how much have you affected this? Like how much has the sales been affected by your work? And what do you wanna try doing differently? If I gave you this much money, what are you going to do

Is it really going to better your life? So it's basically another job interview is what I'm hearing. Is what I've heard. I mean, I don't have any underling.

- Because one thing I find fascinating is how the story of like, we all have you to thank for like this podcast and being here in Japan because it's all an awful lot of what we've done is thanks to Maylin. She's like the brainchild to a lot of it, but like,

- I just got lucky, okay? - Yeah, but like how did the story of Geeks Plus forming come to be? Because you made Geeks Plus. - Geeks Plus is the agency that we're all in. - Oh yeah. - And the reason why we're here. - And the reason why we're here. So like how did that come about? - So like Kalokaua has like a new business contest or competition every year. And then within their like departments, they also do like business competitions. - Right.

The first year I decided to like submit something and it was the King's boss thing. - Hell yeah. - Usually, well, I didn't want to submit it before 'cause there was like, the prize money was like this much. And then this particular year, the prize money was like this. And I was like, maybe I want that money.

- I gotta meet it to win it. - So wait, I gotta ask. Because I remember the exact meeting where you asked me, she asked me in a meeting, have you ever considered moving to Japan? - Yeah, we were just casually talking. - Yeah, just casually talking. But did you have that prize money and that competition in mind when you asked me?

- I respect the hustle. I respect the hustle. - Thank you. - I don't give a shit about these YouTubers coming out with my cold hard cash. - Are you allowed to tell us how much you got? - Okay, so like people will say, oh, it's not that much, but it was like, I think they told me it was like, oh, the prize is gonna be like .

- I mean, that's like a decent bonus. - Yeah, it's not an idea, that's not bad. - But what I wanna know is how you managed to convince them because as we've all talked about Japanese companies are fucking difficult. - They never wanna try anything new. - To try anything new and convincing Japanese companies to send over like three or four AniTubers and just sponsor their visas and- - Well, I had an advantage. You guys have been working with like BookWalker for at that point, like two, three years already. So I had data.

- But as we know, that isn't always the case. - We know from the audio book that that's not always the case. That's not guaranteed. - That wasn't enough though. This is like three years worth. - Never enough. - It's all about that data. - God damn it. The Excel sheets. - Exactly. Excel sheets and PowerPoints.

And so I think in the back of their mind, they were already thinking like, oh, if we had this business, it would be interesting. And my superior, Ross, at that time was like giving me a tip. Oh, maybe you should submit that idea because maybe they're thinking about it. Yeah. And I was like, OK, I guess I have enough data. So let's do it. And then I won the thingy.

- Was it like an apprentice type pitch where you had to like go into like a boardroom meeting and just pitch? - I attended one, yeah. - Oh really? - Yeah, I was the first week I moved here, they were like, do you wanna come to this thing? - Yeah, then you met Mr. Karakawa. - Yeah, I met like, yeah, yeah. It was weird 'cause I just sat down in like the most like sterile room you can imagine. Imagine like, just like,

- 100, 200 Japanese businessmen in the quietest room in your life and I came in, 'cause I came in midway. So I was making so much fucking noise just trying to sit down. Of course, my seat was in the middle. - You were like the only non-Asian in this room. - I was the only one not in a suit of some sort as well. So I come in with like my T-shirt and jeans, making some noise, I'm like, excuse me, excuse me, sat down and then one of the Japanese people kept translating in my ear and I was like, just stop translating.

You're making too much noise. People are looking at us. I'll just pretend like I know what's happening. But they were already good sports about it. They were nice to me afterwards. It was like that. We had like a new business plan format document. You fill it out. And then within that, I think it was like over 200, maybe around 200 applicants. And then it narrowed down to like 50. And then when you're the top 50, they narrow it. You don't do anything. You just like make like a three-year...

- Business plan? - Yeah. - Where did I go? - What? - Why did I go again? There was free food and drink. There was really good sushi and free beer. - Yeah, there was like, yeah. - It was really good. - If there's free food and drink, I'll go to anything. - Yeah, exactly. - Okay, not gonna lie, right? - And you were bored probably.

- I had no internet. - They didn't arrive yet. - I think I felt bad 'cause I've been crashing on Joey's couch for like a week. I felt really bad that I was bothering him so much. - That's fine dude. - Okay, right, this is the thing, right? Company parties, at least in Japan, they don't spare any expense with food and drink. Like they do such good food and drink. Maylene's a food snob, I don't count her opinion. - I thought it was good.

- It was good. - Okay, okay. But like they have like bomb food and drink. - Oh yeah, it's the best. - It's always so good. - It's so good. - Like they'll have like restaurant quality, like food just there for you. And you're like, yeah, okay, yeah. - It is a restaurant though. - Well, no, it's like a hotel and they just bring in a platter and you're just like dig in. - Yeah. - It's like sweet. - And all you can drink alcohol. - Yeah, yeah, yeah.

- Yeah, that's good. People, awkward people and the Japanese women taking photos 'cause you told them. - Oh yeah, they were like. - They're like, this is the guy who made the yaoi, the one that you had to check for the sex noises. - The Book Walker support team, I think they're mostly women and then like. - That was so weird. - This is the man. - They are like all fan girls of you, I think.

- 93% back at it again. - Let's go, let's go. - I was so confused 'cause like none of them could speak English. So I was like, why are you listening to my stuff? - Some of them are, like for the reason why they knew about you was because I think it was last year when we did the first audio book, they were playing it on speaker because

- They would get like emails from customers saying, "Oh, I don't know how to play this MP3." And so they're like, "Oh, let's check if there's a problem." And they play it and they just end up playing it on speaker. - Did they play the new one on speaker? The new one has like a hardcore sex scene at the end. - No, because what is it? Coronavirus? We're working from home. - Good, good. - So they played it on the speakers at home. - Probably, yeah, probably. - That was weird 'cause then I was just eating and then they were like, "Can we take a picture?" And I'm like, "Who are you?"

- We're your fan girls. - What is this? It was so weird. - So did you expect to win the competition at all or was it like a fucking surprise for you? - Kind of a surprise, I guess.

- I knew I was the best. - No, no, no. Well, my boss at the time was saying like, "Oh, you have like maybe like a high probability because he was the one reviewing the other business thing." - Oh, okay. - So maybe he helped me a lot. Thank you. - I mean, it's a pretty radical idea, right? Especially in like such a traditional company like Kaboom! - Yeah. - Do you know what other ideas you were competing against? - Yeah, it was, they're kind of like manga service, like manga subscription or something like that.

- That would be good as well. - I mean, that would be good for Japan. - We have marmalock.jp. Ever heard of that? - Sweats profusely. - So like, I kind of want to talk about the opening party of Geeks Plus because that was probably the most extra business party I've ever been to. - Oh my God. - So sad I wasn't there. - Yes, so Connor wasn't there. - Michelin star restaurant.

- Connor wasn't there because he was at the Crunchyroll Anime Awards. So he was, there was about like 10 iPads scattered around this entire like- - Three. - Three iPads. Okay, three iPads, whatever. Scattered around this like two-star Michelin restaurant. What was the restaurant that was like held at?

- It's owned by Kadokawa. - So I didn't know that Kadokawa owned so many things outside of just like anime and manga. - Multimedia. - Yeah, yeah. And so we were at this two star Michelin restaurant and Connor had to join us via Skype or Zoom or whatever you were using. - It was like a stupid time for you, right? - It was like fucking like- - Your face was like this. - It was like, yeah, like 10, 11:00 PM or something. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - And then I had to do a speech and it was like the most fucking awful speech. - I remember like you were like in the fucking

- In the fucking hotel room, like downward. - 'Cause I was like, - He said it all in Japanese and I was like, wow.

- To explain, so this is like, there are a lot of important people at this party. - How many people are there? Maybe like 50 plus, right? - Yeah, 50 plus. Basically it was like, there was like Mr. Katakawa was there. There was like pretty much any anime company. - MyAnimeList CEO.

- The CEO of my anime list was there. I didn't even know that he was Japanese. - Danny Chu was there. - Yeah, yeah. Basically like any company that is like in Japan, any big company, there was a representative for that company there. This was like the biggest dick energy I've ever been. - And Connor on a night. - And so I remember we had to do a speech in front of all these important people.

And I remember the CEO of Geeks Plus. - Kurimoto. - Kurimoto-san, like kind of, he introduced us to like make our speech. And I was like fucking shitting myself because man, I was shitting myself because I had to talk in front of all these fucking people and I couldn't speak a lick of Japanese. So I had to just like, I had to speak in English, but I remember that he introduced us and I remember hearing something like, oh, the heroes of anime.

And I turned to Joey and I was like, my Japanese isn't the greatest, but did he just call us the heroes of anime for Western anime fans? And Joey was just like, yeah. And I was just thinking to myself, why would he lie like that? - The heroes of anime, I was just doing the blinking meals like.

- To be fair though, I would say it's kind of true. There's a lot of people that- - There's a lot of people who would disagree with that. And I'm not sure if I would- - A lot of people call us the villains of anime.

- Some people are probably who are like in the middle of nowhere that have no anime friends and they're getting bullied for it. And they're like, oh, these people are like anime and they're actually cool. - Punch them back. - Anime is not a lame thing. - All I remember was like, I was suited up, Sydney was suited up and then like Joey rocks up in fucking, I can't remember what you were wearing. - I was in a Jojo shirt.

- And then Eddie. - And like shorts. And I was like, and I looked at like, I looked at Garnt like so properly dressed with like collar, shirt and everything. Sydney was in like this really nice dress and I'm just there with like my jeans and like fucking sneakers. And I'm just like, "Sup, hero of anime here." - I did that to another party. - To them though, this is like, "Oh my God, that's how YouTubers dress." That's like, you know. - They're like, "Fuck."

- Celebrity wear. - Celebrity wear. - I'm like Uniqlo 90% of the time. - I'm so celebrity, I wear Uniqlo everywhere. - Yeah. - I don't think that anyone understood what I actually said in my speech. You're the only one who anyone could understand. - Yeah, I mean. - I was told no one could hear me. - A lot of them did speak English. - Yeah, 'cause you started speaking and the speakers just weren't on. So all we could see was,

- It was an amazing speech. It was such a good speech. - What was more hilarious was just not only just Connor's speakers not being on, but just 50 Japanese businessmen just like really seriously just looking down at the iPad, just being like. - They were paying attention. - They were paying attention. - You have to bear in mind as well, I can't see anything. Like I'm just talking into a webcam. Like I don't see shit. So as far as I know, like I'm just talking in the fucking void over here with my shitty Japanese.

- Oh my God. - That was really funny, yeah. But no, that was like a really interesting experience for me 'cause that was like a holy shit moment. Have I made it? Is this the point? - We met some really fucking cool people there. - Yeah, yeah. - Who was like the person you met?

- That like stood out the most or which company did you like freak out over? - I was so many, I mean- - Was there Shueisha, Shogakusai? - Yeah, I mean, obviously like, you know, the Shonen Jump guys were there. But I think the coolest one, just because it just kind of came out of nowhere was, I think I was talking to the Shonen Jump people and they were like, "What manga do you like? "Like what are you interested in?" And obviously I landed a bunch of Shonen Jump stuff. And then one of the guys was like, "Oh, what about stuff that's not Shonen Jump? "Like, I'm just genuinely curious." And I think I said Berserk.

because I fucking love "Berserk." And then literally the moment after I said "Berserk," some guy tapped me on the shoulder and was like, "Hi, I'm the publisher for "Berserk." I was like, "Oh!" - The editor. - Was his like things like dusty? He's like, "I've never done anything. "I've been hired for five years "and I haven't done anything." - I've never even met Mira in my life. - No, and so he said that and I read the card. I'm like, "Oh shit, yeah, that is like the publication of "Berserk." And I just said like, "Not to be rude,

"What the fuck is Mira doing? "What is he doing? "What's going on with that?" - Let's jump right into it. - You're his publisher, right? Give me the details, what's going on? What's he doing? And he's like, "Oh no, he's working hard, don't worry." I'm like, "Yeah, that's what they all say." - Idol master in the background, "Yeah, I'm working hard." - "Yeah, I'm working hard." - "You winning, son?"

- Yeah, no, but that was really cool. Danny Choo was really cool. - Danny Choo was really cool. - Because like, I think it's safe to say that Danny Choo is one of those people who really put anime, just like weeb culture in the West, just like on the map. Because I think it's not too much of a stretch to say that without Danny Choo's influence,

I don't think any of us would really even be interested in Japanese culture. - No, not at all. - Especially people in the West. - He did so much for not only like our culture, but our industry as well. 'Cause he was one of the first like foreigners who moved to Japan and really put a highlight on a lot of things going on in the Japanese industry. - Yeah, exactly. 'Cause before I remember it was just like Japan was just kind of a black hole. Nobody knew shit that was like what that was happening in Japan. We just got anime somehow, but he actually like,

spotlighted a lot of the things going on. And if not for him, I probably wouldn't even have even considered moving to Japan or have any interest in the industry itself. - He did some great motivational speeches at a lot of events like Anime Expo. - And he's a really down to earth guy as well. - He's so humble. He's incredibly, incredibly humble. - Considering everything he's done, he's so humble and so down to earth. - He just showed up with his doll.

- Yeah, he showed up with a smart doll. Yeah, that was so cool. Shout out to Danny Chu. Yeah, but you should have been there, bro.

- I'm pissed off, I missed out. - How was the Crunchyroll Anime Awards compared to that? Do we really wanna go into that? - I mean, one day I came back in my room and there was a trash bag full of stuff that wasn't mine. Can you believe that? - What, in the hotel? - In my hotel room. - Who went in there? - I don't know. I called them up and I'm like, "Hey, there's just a giant bag of trash in my room. What's up with that?" And they're like, "Really?" They didn't believe me. I'm like, "Yeah, come, come."

- The maids probably cleaned it. - Well, yeah, what I think they did is the maids were cleaning and they just forgot about it. So I didn't care much about it. They gave me a letter that was like, "Dear Sea Dog, sorry that we left trash in your room." And I was like, "Why is it Sea Dog?" - Probably the name they put on the reservation. - No, it was Connor, 'cause I checked in with my real name and the guy must have known or something. It was weird as fuck, 'cause then he gave me another bottle of wine, but it was like a terrible hotel screw cap wine. I'm like, "I wouldn't even cook with this shit."

- No offense, like it's just garbage wine. I mean, I'm not picky, but even I knew that. - But how was the actual awards? - Yeah, how was it for you? 'Cause we both went on different years. How was it? - I mean, I imagine it's the same for you. The best aspect was just chatting to the other creators. - Yeah, it felt like a holiday where you just got to like meet other creators. - I've been missing Chipotle a lot. Although I kept, I was like, 'cause we would all eat lunch together, right? And I was like,

- Chipotle, I want Chipotle. And then one of the, I forgot her name from IGN. I think she was Hispanic and she was like, "No, Chipotle is garbage." I'm like, "Listen, I come from a place, well recently, where they don't have any Chipotle or, you know how hard it is to find a burrito bigger than like your index finger in this country? Impossible."

- I think out of every cuisine, Mexican is one of the hardest to find in Japan. - I want a burrito that like fucking kills me. So anyway, it was nice having lunch with them. Sorry, I'm going on a rant. But yeah, it was really cool. The offices were cool. They'd made it into like- - Yeah, you got to see the offices, didn't they? - Yeah, it was cool. I mean, I felt like a little extra, like, I don't know. There was a lot of free La Croix. I didn't really care for La Croix. - Millennial water, I think. - It's like the meme drink. - It's the most disgusting thing I've ever had. - Is that like White Claw?

- No, no, no. - No, no, no. La Croix is like, it's like salt water, right? - Flavored sparkling water. - So it was weird 'cause I think you went two years in a row. - Yeah, and I didn't go to the one where they were streaming at the Twitch headquarters. Were they streaming at the Twitch headquarters? - No, they were streaming in their office. - Oh, okay. - So there was like a back room with a small crowd of about a hundred people and it was fine. I really got bored of how many times you had to practice.

- How many times did you have to rehearse? 'Cause we only had to rehearse once. - Four fucking times. - Jesus. - Four? - What were they rehearsing? - I think it was for the host. 'Cause obviously he had a lot of lines. For me, it was easy. I just, during the rehearsals, by the way, I mean, Garnt, okay, so I gotta tell the story, right? So they were like,

they wanted us to have a mixture of scripted and do your own stuff. So as I think it should be, right? Like I want to be on track, but I also want to be myself. So they would ask me a question that was Connor, who do you think is best girl? And-

During rehearsals, right? I never said like anything even remotely mean me. I was like, oh yeah, like Rem. And then I texted Garnt like an hour before the show started. I was like, yo, give me the worst girl. Give me the worst best girl. And I will dead ass say this, like straight face in front of all these people, like I'll do it.

I'll do it on the Twitch stream. 'Cause I thought I wanna make this funny. In a good way that wasn't fucking with punchy roll, but just a way that we could get a bit of laughter out of it. - And I said Nina from Code Geass. That was the first name that came to mind. - So I remember I said that joke and fucking crowds like,

- I watched the stream. - I was watching Garnt's stream. - Yeah, I was pissing myself. I was fucking pissing myself. - I thought to myself, 'cause I knew no one was gonna laugh at this joke, right? And I just told myself, I was like, "The Twitch chat, they're gonna love it. "Twitch chat's gonna love this. "I don't mind. "I'll just put up with the awkward silence "for like one second." - I was watching the Twitch stream and the moment you said that, I died. Twitch chat was fucking loving it. - Yeah, yeah.

- The crowd and the audience and everyone's there. - I remember the moment I said it, right? For some reason, Jacob from Fakku was in the crowd and I just made eye contact with Jacob and he looked like this. I was like, and then I think I made like a joke or something. I made something like try and segue it and it didn't work very well obviously, but I didn't give a shit. - It made for a great clip because it was like so perfectly timed with my stream. 'Cause I was like, yeah, I told Connor to say Nina. And as soon as I said that, you said it.

And it was just like the most perfectly timed moment I could ever hope for. He actually asked me what he should say for this. In the chat, he was like, you're going to ask me who best girl is, who all-time best girl is. I told him, say Nina from Code Geass. All right, fair. Connor?

- Nina from COVID. - Oh my God! - Yeah, it was good. I mean, it was fun. I mean, we hung out in like the green room or whatever. It was chill.

I remember I chat with Prozy D a lot, really cool guy. That man knows his anime. He knows a lot of anime. - He knows so much anime. I had a similar conversation with him and I'm like, man, you know more anime than most AniTubers. - He was just in this room and it was silent. Then you would just hear someone playing the fucking Love Life. Just Prozy D sitting there like this. - He's a Love Liver?

- Oh, he's a hardcore. - I love it when he would talk, 'cause it would be like, whenever Prozy D talked, everyone in the room was like, "Yes, Prozy D, I'll listen to you." He has such a commanding voice, it's amazing. - Who has the deeper voice in real life? - It's like just two mumbles talking, I think, when we're talking, 'cause he's like, "I'll get McDonald's."

- The subwoofer on this conversation is ridiculous. - Overall it was good. I think that the parts I remember the most were like not the actual like award. - I don't remember anything or what happened was that when I was on stage. 'Cause I remember when I was on the- - You were in front of a giant crowd on the- - It was a big fucking crowd. Like how big was your crowd?

like no more than a hundred. - Right, 'cause we were like, they rented out a whole stage in LA or something. They had like a red carpet, which was like an orange carpet. It was like, it was charming about like, it was 'cause it was still like a small scale event, but they really tried to dress this up to look like something official. And you know, there was a lot of technical difficulties and mess and mess up, but that's probably like,

- If you watch the streams, right? - The technical difficulties in that year were glorious. - But they made for great meme material. It was charming in its own way because it wasn't like the game awards, it wasn't the fucking Oscars, but they tried their best. And I think for what they had, they did a pretty decent job. - B plus for effort, I'd say. - I think they said that they wanted to dial it back this year to make it a little more like have personality shine through a bit more.

- It's still hard 'cause I think sometimes some people aren't as good on stage as others. - Yeah, right. - Is that your first time like kind of hosting a- - I wasn't really doing anything.

- He was literally just sitting on a couch cracking jokes. - I don't really get to, the only thing I was nervous about was cracking that joke. Like everything, 'cause I knew that was gonna, I knew no one would laugh, but I didn't mind. But other than that, I really don't mind doing something like that. That's fun. - I remember the only weird thing that happened when I was on stage was I was standing next to Lily 'cause I was hosting with Lily Pichu when I was presenting my awards. And so I was staying at the bright lights and all I heard was,

- And I thought someone said, "I love you guys." And I shout out in the Crunchyroll Awards, "I love you too, man." And then I watched the VODs. And the guy shouts out, "I love you, Lily." - That's even better. I would be like, "No, I love you." - I love you.

- You may not love me, but I love you unconditionally. - I mean, I don't think anyone noticed it, but yeah, I thought you were just screaming for us both there, that guy. - When they did the final award at our Crunchful Anime Awards, they had like a giant, like what is it called? The fucking thing they open. What's it? - Sake? - No, I think it is. They all had sake, that's part of the story, but they have like the big boxes that we had the names of the winners in. - Oh yeah. - The anime of the year had like a giant one. - Oh yeah, yeah. - I don't know what they call it.

- I don't know what they call it. I know what they're talking about. - So when they did the giant one, they were like, "Yeah, okay, everyone's gonna go on stage and we have fake sake for you, it's water." And I was like, "Oh, cool, cool, cool." So I have it, right? And I'm smelling it, like next to Lily. I think you can see me and Lily in the vault, it's like visual confusion because we do it and we're like, "That's fucking sake." They told us it was fucking water. And then me and Lily are like, "God, that's fucking vile." She's like, "Yeah, that's gross."

- They lied to us, cunt you all. What if I was like allergic to alcohol? - They gave you free alcohol and you didn't even know. - Yeah. - Because there was alcohol right after the after party. - Surprise alcohol. - Okay, so we know that you're now working for Book Walker and Geeks Plus and all that. That's really great, Malin.

- Why say it so condescendingly? - Because that's not what I care about. - I wanna know what you were doing when you were younger in Japan. What jobs are you doing? - We wanna know about your weebies. - What is your path to getting to where you are now? - We want the viewers to recognize with your Shonen protagonist. - Shonen protagonist? - We need to build up maybe. - We've told all of our backstories. It's time for us to tell your backstory. - Backstory?

- Okay, so I used to go to a lot of anime conventions. - As you do? - Yes. And where am I going with this? - So you met your husband, right? - Oh yeah, yeah. That's the thing. I forgot to tell the story or not tell the story. I wanted to say like the biggest tip is to envision what

you want in the anime industry and make like steps to get there. The steps I made for myself is one, keep going to a lot of anime conventions and make friends that work in like some like- - In the industry. - Yeah. - And one of the people that I met at a convention happened to bring like Japanese rock bands. - Right. - Like yeah, Japanese rock bands to the US.

anime conventions. And then that person like introduced me to a lot of people that were in Japan. And the hardest thing for a foreigner or not foreigner, for someone to get their, sorry, the hardest thing is to get into Japan with the visa. Finding a job that'll give you a visa is,

when you don't speak good Japanese is extremely difficult. So the first thing I did was get a job that has no relation to anime to get the experience and then try to do a consulting job

that consults for anime figure like type of companies. - Oh, okay. - And then after that, meet people from that industry, get the know-how from them and then apply to the job that I have now. But,

- Gosh, I'm like going there. - That's calculated. - Yeah, I calculated everything. - But at the end of the day, it's that age old, it's not what you know, it's who you know. - It is that you're- - I think I've heard similar stories with other friend like Nabi, who I had no idea how he knew so many people in the industry. I remember asking him and he was just like, "Yeah, just go to enough events, just talk to enough people." - Just talk to everybody. - There's a lot of events here. For me, I'm like a nervous wreck.

Like... Yeah, we can tell. Do not be fooled by Maylene's nervousness. She is a killer. It's only you guys in the room, so that's why I'm, like, comfortable with, like, there's more than that. Yeah. Holy... Oh, my God. This would be soaked. But, like...

Yeah, so you have to meet people, network. A lot of people find that difficult in the US and everything and abroad because the only place I could possibly think of is conventions and everything. But in Japan, there are so many official events that you can go to to meet people. What would you recommend then? What should people look out for if they wanted to just be in the right place at the right time? There's a lot of Facebook groups actually.

And a lot of these Facebook groups are for like the otaku community. And sometimes they have industry people as surprise guests or like just show up. Yeah. So go to those and you can meet people. Or when there's like,

they're kind of like panels, industry panels. You can meet people at the after party of these things. - Okay. - Yeah. - I've like from experience, I've had people, one thing I know that doesn't work is to just go up to someone, is to just go up to someone and be like, "Hey, I'm this person, here's my business card, call me." - Oh yeah.

- I don't know what you do. What do you want to do with me? - I've had that so much. They come to you really like suave like, here's my car. I expect to hear from you. - You small talk first though. - Yeah. - Well, like, you know, at least explain like what is the purpose of you coming up to people, right? Like what is the kind of connection that you want? It's not just about like, I want to make a connection.

because I want a connection. It's about why do you want the connection? What do you want to do with the connection? And explain why it'll be mutually beneficial. Don't just be like, here's my business card. - If you know that they would be in a beneficial position, sometimes I might just lay down and be like, oh yes, what do you do? And they'll tell me like, oh no way, I'm in the same industry. - Yeah, exactly. - It's organic, right? But all the time I'm realizing, all according to Kiernan.

- It's because a lot of weaves don't realize that one of the most important skills you need to learn when getting a job in any industry is just social skills. - God dammit, God, no! - No matter what, you just gotta learn social skills. - But I don't wanna talk anymore! - I actually tutored random people in English in Japan to develop social skills. - And this is like,

- Like should be inspiration for all of you. If this nervous wreck can develop enough social skills to be working in the industry and convince fucking Japanese companies to form Geeks Plus, there's hope for you as well, okay? - No amount of social anxiety is gonna stop you, all right? - The first time I called with you, I was like, "Wow, why is she so fucking nervous?" - Yeah, yeah, on the phone, I think you were like, "Oh, it's okay, don't be nervous." And I'm like, "Oh, it's just, it's winter, it's really cold."

- That is the worst thing to say though, right? - Yeah, it got me more nervous. - Saying don't be nervous is just gonna get them more nervous. - I think I was like, why are you so nervous? - Yeah, you said that and I was like, oh, it's cold, it's cold. - Okay, I did know that that was like. - Yeah, no, no, that's a no, no. - Yeah, because I thought that I wanted to see what kind of reaction Maylene would give. I don't know why. I just wanted to see, 'cause I just got a vibe that you would react really fine. - But we met in real life first at Anime Expo. - We did, we did, we did, yeah. So that's why I didn't mind. - And then you said the same thing. You were like, oh, you don't have to be so awkward.

- You have to be so awkward. - 'Cause we were talking and then you were like, "Well, I don't know if we can..." And I was like, "What the fuck's wrong with you?" - 'Cause I remember my first business meeting with you as well. And whenever Maylynn's negotiating, it's the most hilarious thing I think I've ever seen. - Was this when we had the piece of paper and went like, "How about this?" - It's like, you know, I feel like it's so obvious if you don't like the deal that's offered. - Yeah.

- It's like, how do I say no without sounding like an asshole? - I know how she says it, she says,

- Oh, oh, oh, that's the, whenever you hear Maylene saying that, you immediately are like, oh, it's not good, is it? - There's different kinds of oh's. - No, I was about to say, you can write a fucking dictionary on your fucking oh's and like which tone you say it in just communicate something completely different. - You even type it to us as well. Like when I'm texting you about like a business deal and I'm like, oh, they came back with this, what do you think? And you legitimately come back with, oh.

- I didn't notice, you pointed it out. - I know exactly what you mean. - I remember the story. I don't know if I've told this. Have I told you guys about the time at Promare? There was a guy. - No, no. - So when I was at the premiere of Promare at AX, I was sitting in the studio trigger seats 'cause a friend, Caramel, got me into the studio trigger seats and I was like,

It's fucking cool. And so I'm sitting on the end of the studio trigger seats, right? Prometh is about to start. It's obvious it's studio trigger 'cause all the seats say reserved for studio trigger. So I'm sitting there and then this guy in like a Final Fantasy like cloud cosplay comes up to me and he goes, "Hey, do you work at trigger?" And I was like, "No, do these guys do?" And then he goes, and then I say that to him and I was like, "Oh, I made a mistake." 'Cause then he's like, "Oh, hello?" And then I'm like,

of over me, like hello. Bear in mind, he's full costume, fucking giant sword. He's like, how do I get a job in studio trigger to this Japanese man who can't speak a word of English? And he's like, uh, uh. - He should have just been like, not like this. - I literally, I was like, bro, I don't think this is the right time. I asked that to them and they were visibly confused. I'm like, bro, I don't think this is the right play. He's like, oh, okay. And I'm like, what the fuck?

- With these kinds of people, what do they expect the answer to be? Be like, "Oh yes, here's my business card, contact me anytime." - It's like Willy fucking Wonka. It's like, "You were the right guy who asked. We were waiting for someone to be bold enough to ask us at the pro-math." Like, "No, fuck off." - No, that's not how you get a job. - They used to be true just like one of those moments. I was like, "Oh no." - That's secondhand embarrassment, right? - Yeah. - "Stop, don't do this. This is the biggest problem."

I've ever seen in my life. - Yeah, so advice, right? At your next convention and you go, you see an industry guest, don't do that. That's not how you get a job. - I couldn't believe it. - I mean, I don't think they're looking to hire when they're at conventions. - No. - I don't know. - The person that's like the hiring person wouldn't go to that event anyway, I think. - I mean, if I ran an anime company, the last place I would go to hire people is an anime convention. - Yeah, it just seems like the way to get hired in Japanese companies is just,

- First to be in Japan, right? - Yeah, pretty much. - Being in Japan or like applied to like US companies, like punch your role. - Just being like outright and so like, not even, I mean, that's a little aggressive asking, right? Like that kind of way just doesn't work. It's like, you gotta like insert yourself. - You weren't even cosplaying as a Trigger character. You were cosplaying as fucking Cloud. - You were cosplaying as fucking Cloud. - So if you turned up full like Ryoko, kill, kill, like, oh. - As you can see, I am a fan.

- Can I have a job? - So like our audience knows what we think about working in Japanese companies. How is it for you who actually works in a Japanese company for the industry? - I worked in different Japanese companies before the anime.

- The anime one? - Oh no, awkward mode on. - It's okay, it won't hurt you, it's a microphone. - I will kill you if you do that. - I don't know, like do you want me to say it's like exciting, it's like nerve-wracking? - No, no, just be honest. - Be honest, are the rumors true? Are Japanese companies, how?

- I'm joking. - What? No, no, no. - 'Cause it's like black companies, right? Gray, white. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. So like Japan has like this terminology where it's like it's black or it's white. White is like they follow the rules, they treat their employees nice. And then black is like they overwork you. They ask you to work like, I don't know, 12 hours or something like that.

But no, like I got really lucky, I think, the company I work for is really like very aggressive about telling their employees, go home, you know, have a social life. And they like highly, highly value that.

- That's good. - What do you think about the Japanese work life schedule? Do you think like the- - As someone who lives- - I think it's on average Japanese- - It is crazy. - Yeah, they work on average 80 hours a week. - Yeah. - Jesus Christ. - 80 hours a week. - How is your work life schedule compared to when you are working outside of Japan? If you have any comparison. - Well, I only worked for an American company in San Francisco.

for a month before I quit and chase my anime dreams. I guess based on that one month experience, it's very different. Like in America, I would just clock out and leave. That's it. Here it's like you want to impress your supervisor with good results and sometimes to get those good results. I mean, it doesn't necessarily make more time, but if you spend more time and do more research. - Like, "Oh, Maylene's a hard worker." - Yeah, absolutely. - I don't know.

- And then the polar opposite, you got like the Scandinavian countries, which are like, yeah, six hours a day is fine, four days a week, that seems good. But I mean, there's been plenty of studies that prove that working more doesn't necessarily mean more money. I mean, there's studies to actually prove the opposite of that, which is working less tends to be more productive. - I mean, that's where the whole controversy of like the whole Zangyo thing comes from, right? Where like employees of like traditional companies are,

almost forced like socially, it's not a rule in the company, but they're almost socially bound to stay back over time to work. - I don't think they should though. - Not because they need to do the work.

But because as you said, they want to impress their supervisors, right? Yeah, kind of. But there are some times like I think they really shouldn't stay behind even if they're not really working or working because it really takes a toll on their like mental health. For me, usually before an event, the month or a month and a half, I'm actually working like really late, like 11 p.m. or something because crunch time type of thing. And I felt like,

miserable during those times. So I can only imagine how miserable like Japanese people at Japanese companies that like do overtime. - They have no life. I feel sorry for them. - Yeah, I felt angry for no reason. I'm like, why am I angry? Oh, it's because I'm in my-

Am I working too much? But I really loved what I did. - Monkey brain. - Yeah. Even if you love what you do though, when you get tired, you get cranky. - I mean, that's the same as us. I mean, we love our jobs. - You guys are always working. - Yeah, but we're always working and we never get a break. But even though we love what we do, there's times when I fucking hate anime. You know, you're just like- - There are times where I'm just like, I don't wanna work on this video.

I just wanna play games. - I know, I know. - Just watch porn or something, like anything else, right? To just get my mind off it. - Just watch porn. - Just watch porn. - Not even, not even, not even Faptor, just watch it. - This is one of those days, you know? - What's the convention time like for you then? Because for us it's like, especially AX, it's busy as hell, but I've seen people working in the industry working fucking overtime when it comes to convention season. - Yeah, I wonder as well, like expanding on that is like, how does it all work with like,

and the conventions and like, you know. - I can only speak from like my particular perspective or spot. - I wouldn't expect you to be the arbiter of knowledge on conventions. - For Japanese companies, I think they have to pair like a lot more than US companies because we have to like consider people that don't speak English coming over and their first time exhibiting at an event and

the amount of time it takes to ship something. Like if they're gonna sell something overseas at the convention, shipping it might be a problem. So it takes like a lot of time. - To be fair though, if I can say something, like, I don't know if it's just Karakaba, I've noticed with like any booth that is run by a Japanese company, the amount of staff they have,

- Oh my God. - It's kind of ridiculous. - There's usually like a supervisor that's watching another supervisor watching another supervisor. - Yeah. - It's like the entire supply chain just watching each other. - You go to like an American like company booth, right? Maybe say like two to five max. The Kato Kawa booth had like 60 people. - Yeah. - I remember going inside the Kato Kawa booth. I remember there was like 30 employees. I was like, this is just stupid.

- The reason is like each person, like even within Karko, like say these are all from the same series or no, not the same series, same publisher. Each department has a different person in charge and that person in charge needs to be there to like- - But this feels like it's been like- - But do they though? - Yeah, but this feels like it should be, this should have been like,

- Coordinated somehow. - Yeah, like in a way that like this isn't needed. - Just get like one person to just like kind of look over everything and then once the event is done, just report back. - That's not how they do it, Sherley. - Seems like a lot of redundancy. - I think it's also really important for them to go overseas because they're like, their mind is open, open mind. They become open-minded. - Yeah, yeah. - Sometimes. - This is how like the American otakus are. - Yeah. - But the problem is half the employees don't come out of the booth. So they don't even get to experience the culture. - But they can see like,

or hear from outside the booth, like what items being sold the most and like take mental. - So what do they think of foreign conventions and foreign culture then? From your perspective? - I've heard they think it's like, wow, amazing. Like so different and like so open.

compared to the fan otaku culture here. - That's what I've heard from a lot of Japanese people. - The fans here are really uptight. Like for example, I don't know, like Comiket or anime events here, you can't go there and cosplay because you would bring shame to the event. The neighboring people. - Oh yeah, I've heard that story. - Actually, my friends and I cosplayed at Comiket like six years ago and we were like the top trending thing

at that time on 2chan saying these three American girls cosplaying as Love Live on the train and shame on me for not doing my research beforehand but- - But still chill. - Yeah, I had like friends in America, Japanese friends in America messaged me, what are you guys doing over there? You can't cosplay in the train. - It's not even- - Isn't it fun though? I'd love to see a cosplayer on the train. - We had like a Dojin circle follow us from station to station.

They were like, "Oh, can you take that off?" But we were only wearing the wig. We were wearing, like I was wearing normal clothes, just the wig. - You're not even allowed to wear a wig. - Yeah. - That's weird. - And then I told, my friend told her, she's like, "You know, we're only wearing the wig." And like, "No, they know from your hair what character you are." - But like, I understand if it's something, you know, like gratuitous, like,

if you were all cosplaying as like fucking Ryuko, right? Where it's like a little more like scandalous, right? But like it's love life. You're in school uniform. The only thing that separates you from like a regular school girl is just the wig. - But to be fair, like they wanna protect this culture. They wanna keep having these events. - It's just gay geeky. - How does that happen? - It's gay geeky. - That is gay geeky. - 'Cause like for example, Normie would be on the train and they see some crazy cosplayer. - Isn't that fun though?

- Yeah, but they might- - Spices your life up a little bit. - But also like anime otakus in Japan aren't viewed in like a positive light. - I don't think they necessarily are in the West. - I don't feel like there's as bad a stigma compared to this here. - I think you're like sweaty and I mean I am, but like- - We're all sweaty.

- You're just so weird. You watch like the weird stuff on the internet. - I rocked up on the London underground in the maid outfit. Like just did it like 40 minute commute. Hell yeah. - Yeah. - Everyone loves it. They're like all laughing or giggling. - Or they'd be like, what are you cosplaying?

- I'm just playing or dressing up as. - I'd get like heckled from the other side of the thing and then like, you know, it's just good fun. I don't know. I thought it was funny, but obviously I guess. - It's such a weird double standard though, isn't it? Where it's like, you know, like anime loving otakus are like, ew, sweaty, gross. And then meanwhile, if there's a guy rocking up with like full on, like, you know, idol shit, they're just like, oh, he just really likes idols.

It's like, no, he's just a sweaty. - I don't know, a lot of people think it's gross. Like every time I told like Japanese people, like, oh, I'm an otaku. They're like, no, you're not, you don't look like, what does an otaku look like? And it's like really like, how dare you insult my people?

- Yeah, like what do they expect an otaku to look like? Where it's like you're fucking 300 pounds. - I think it's like how weeaboo, the word weeaboo used to be seen like 10 years ago in our community where who would like identify themselves as a weeaboo? That's like cringey, that's like a cringey person nobody wants to know, right? - Right, because the stereotypical like otaku in Japan, like you don't see people like that anymore.

- There's like people who like anime and that's just like normalized here. - That was cool, like 20 year old girls have like the Ita bags. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Love 2D.

- And everyone loves JoJo's. - Every businessman is always like nice shirt. - That's like the Chi Chi, right? You just wear JoJo merch to like a business meeting. - It just feels so good. - Yeah, you'll get like a 50 year old businessman, can't you be like, I love JoJo's. - Dude, I was buying manga at like my local bookstore and I was wearing one of the glam JoJo shows. And the guy like stopped like,

and he's like, "Where'd you get that shirt from?" And I was like, "Oh, Glam." And he's like, "That looks sick, dude." He just high-fives me. I'm like, "I've never had this experience in Japan before." - What the fuck? - Obviously this is before the pandemic, right? Social distance. But like, and everyone clapped. - Everyone in the store applauded Joey. - Congratulations. - And then they played the JoJo opening and I left. - Jono's theme came on. - Jono beat me as I ran out of the store.

- No, he just straight up high-fived me. I was like, cool. Jojo brings people together, man. It's fucking awesome. - That does sound like an ass slash that happened. - I remember I mentioned in my, like when I was talking about dating in Japan video, I mentioned like, oh yeah, I just openly said I was an otaku. And then I was like, why are people getting all worked up about it? And then I got loads of comments that were like, it means a bad thing in Japan.

I was like, yeah, I know. I just don't care. If I can normalize it, I can help to get there. - If someone wants to see it in a negative light, that's their prerogative. - Exactly. - Most of the people that I told it to just didn't give a shit. - Going back to conventions though, one thing I've always been curious about is how do you guys like pick the guests

to like bring over and showcase to people. Is there like a process behind that or? - For my company there was at the time when I was like the event person in charge of events. We would look first at the sales. Like, oh, what's trending? What's like the top selling manga or light novel, the top 10. And then I just contact them.

And because I'm in Book Walker and Book Walker is like has really close ties to all different kinds of publishers. - Yeah. - I guess we're able to ask them. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah, 'cause that makes sense. 'Cause I've done so many like creative panels, especially at AX with Book Walker. - Like Danmachi, Overlord. - Yeah, I did it with like Danmachi, Overlord. - Goblin Slayer, Monster Musume. - Yeah, a lot. And every time, I remember like every time one of those panels finish,

always one person who comes up to me for some reason of all people and was like, "Hey, next year, can you get the author of this light novel? That'd be really cool." - Did you ever get people who thought you were the author of something? - Yeah. - Yeah, I've had that as well. - Yeah, I've had that. - Really? - Someone came up to my thing, okay, this is back when the 93% was still a thing. - Oh yeah, yeah. - Some guy, like 13 year old boy came up to me and I'm like, "That's weird, why is there a guy in my line?"

- The 7%. - So he comes up to me, he's like, "Oh yeah, yeah, he took a photo, did the signings." Like you're the author of "Goblin Slayer", right?

- No kidding. I was like, no. - Because we had autographs on our booth floor. - Yeah, for Goblin Slayer. - And he was like, you're the author of Goblin Slayer. I'm like, do I look like Japanese? - No, no, I don't get a lot of you're the author, but I always get a lot of like, you're the guy who does the official translations. Because you translated like what the author was saying. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - And yeah, I remember I had a guy just being like, when's like volume three of Goblin Slayer gonna get translated?

Like I fucking know. - You should have just been like, yeah, actually tomorrow. - Yeah, I'm working on it right now actually. Don't worry, it's coming soon. - If you just left me alone, it would have been done. - Yeah, but I get so many people just being like, hey, can you bring on this creator or like this author? I'm just like, don't ask me, man. I'm just hosting it. - Anime departments of like certain companies, they usually bring guests

of like say directors or whatever of whatever anime is coming out that season and they have a premiere and the author or director comes to promote the premiere so not necessarily it's like trending but

- So it's basically just all marketing then? - Yes. - Is the way I see it. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - It's all data, it's all marketing. - It's all data and marketing. - It's all business. - 'Cause I always wondered, AX must be really expensive to put up all the booths, the staff, the marketing. - Definitely. - Is it like, I mean, obviously it must be worth it, right? Is the return on investment huge there? - I mean, they're not really looking for sales directly.

- I think it's just looking for presence. Because if you don't have a presence, it's like not being at E3, you know what I mean? - I guess even companies now are like questioning if E3 is worth it. - Yeah, I mean, Sony wasn't at E3 the year before, I think. And that was like massive news because that was like a massive statement being like, "Hey, we don't fucking need E3." - We're fucking Sony. - I wonder if that would be a thing with that like AX when the company's like, "Oh, we don't really need AX anymore." - A lot of companies though, or Japanese companies are bringing their own guests

instead of through the guest of honor thing. - Yeah, 'cause I feel like right now with anime growing so much in the West, I think there is a big, there's more eyes at AX now. So if you're not there, then that's a missed opportunity more than, "Hey, this is E3." This is already established. - There's just so much press too. A lot of news sites are all at this event, so they could arrange interviews or whatever that could promote it.

- So going back 900 million topics ago. - We're gonna finish this episode up. - With how we started it, piracy in anime, Kiss anime going down. Like what are our final thoughts? Like I guess what are our like final thoughts on piracy in anime? 'Cause we've thrown around a bunch of like different discussions about it. - This episode has turned into like an anime industry episode as a whole. I think wrapping up the piracy debates, I mean,

- I don't wanna get any companies that never wanna work with us. I mean, generally, piracy, bad. I think we can all agree piracy is not good. - It's not good. - But like everything in life, there is no heart. - Sometimes it's a necessary evil. - Right, right. It's not always clear cut. And I think until people in the positions of authority most of the time or who are in the industry recognize that there might be, in some cases, it's all right.

- It's much of a service problem as it is a community problem, right? Because like, yeah, of course people will say like, oh, you know, the only reason these piracy sites are thriving is because these legal sites aren't doing the job that these piracy sites are covering. But then at the same time, a lot of the community is like,

- Nah dude, let's just use the piracy. - I don't think you need to justify or say like shame people either. - No, definitely not. And I think there's one thing, one last point I want to make about the service thing where no matter what, like I don't think legal sites will ever get to a point when they can fully compete with piracy.

I mean, there's never gonna be one company that has all the shows or has like every show in existence. - Even though every company is trying their best. - Every company is trying their best, but I don't think we'll ever get to a point where we're gonna get like a legal kiss anime. Know what I mean? Or a legal whatever site. And I think recognizing that it is an uneven playing field and you know,

legal companies aren't perfect, but in my eyes, I give them a bit of leeway. All I look for is if I can just play my fucking anime on my Chromecast without any worries, and that's pretty much all I need for like my $5 subscription. - Yeah, I've paid for Crunchyroll for years. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I just like,

if we could just stop the argument being like, okay, you were either on one side or the other, you're either with us or against us. I think there's a healthy middle ground for people to be had. - Also who the fuck cares? Let's be honest.

I'm gonna pay for it. And if you don't want to, I don't particularly care. - Yeah, I don't give a shit. - There's enough people like me who have disposable income and can afford to do so and are willing to do so that at the end of the day, who fucking cares? Most of these people who are like on their high horse shouting at people not to pirate, you're shouting at like 12 year old kids who don't know any better. Let's be honest. That's what the fucking half of Twitter is. Who gives a fuck?

- I don't care. - That's like going to the law class and being like, you can't afford Balenciaga? What the fuck's wrong with you? It's like, yeah, maybe some people just can't. - You mean you're buying knockoff Balenciaga? - Yeah, what the fuck, ew. You're not supporting the fashion industry because of that? It's like, yeah, just do you, man. And just keep it to yourself. - Like none of us really care that much, I don't think. We're not like activists or whatever. - You pay for your anime legally? - Cool. - You pay for your anime illegally? - Cool. My philosophy has, has and always has been just do what you can.

Everyone's situation is different. Everyone's got a different reason or is in a different position in life. Just do what you can and do what you feel like, whatever. - Don't be a bully. - Just don't be a dick. - Don't be a dick. - Don't be a dick and just like, don't try to take advantage of the system. And yeah, that's pretty much my opinion. - Please Konami, stop making pachinko machines. I beg of you, make anything but pachinko. - And check out BorgWalker.

- That's the bottom line. - You know what you can also check out? Patreon, like these lovely people have. - Look at these lovely names on screen. - Look at all these names, Maylene. They support the show. - Was that over?

- I like him. I like him or her. - Big thank you to today's sponsor as well, EJ Anime Store. - Yeah, thank you very much. Also you can go check out our subreddit, also check out our Twitter. All the links as always is in the description below. - Monkey brain gang rise up. - Unfortunately, I don't think you can check out Maylyn. Do you have any social media you want to shout out or anything like that, Maylyn? - It's cringy, so no. No, no.

- But again, you can check out Book Walker. - Check out Book Walker instead. Do you run the Twitter account for that still? - No, I stopped like last year or something. - Okay, okay. - That's why the memes became less fire. - The last thing posted was, was it inner species reviewers?

- Wow, throwback, Jesus Christ. - But yeah, thank you very much for coming on. I know there was a lot of limited things you could not talk about, especially still working on an industry, but we very much appreciate you. - That's business, man. - Yeah, that's just business. - I'm sure people will be mad that you didn't get to talk as much as us, but we talk our asses off. - If I talk too much, I might say something illegal.

- I'm just kidding. - You guys want more Maylene, don't worry. There'll be plenty of Maylene. I was shouting at Maylene. - She'll always be behind there somewhere. - Behind the camera. - Behind the cameras running the secret mastermind behind this show. - Thank you very much for coming on and shining more light on the industry. - Thank you for having me. - Saying what you can say about what goes on behind the scenes. 'Cause I know there's a lot of like eyes and you don't wanna get fired or anything like that.

- I think a lot of people though will like appreciate your opinions. Especially like with the whole like, you know, getting a job in Japan thing. - Yeah, check out Craigslist. - Shout out to Craigslist. - Shout out to Craigslist. - Craigslist doesn't even sponsor people, I think. - Hey, Craigslist. - We're open. - Except when there are cockroaches in the fridge. - I've seen too much. Please don't. We should not be supporting this. - Craigslist gave you your visa.

Anyway, thank you very much for watching today. We've been Trash Taste and the boys and we've been Maylin or Maylin's been there and we'll see you guys next time. Bye.