Introduction
In Rye, NY in the summer of 2003, I attended ShoujoCon, an anime convention (Shoujocon Chronicles, 2003). It was close to home, and being new to the world of anime, I did not realize that the conference was anything other than a general anime convention. However, I quickly learned that all anime does not revolve around robots, explosions, battles, and schoolgirls in short-skirted sailor outfits. I also discovered that the anime fan base includes many girls and young women. They were there to see shoujo anime animation created by women for a female audience. The conference had three viewing rooms going about 16 hours a day as well as a variety of panels for fans to exchange knowledge and meet industry professionals. Attendees ranked their favorite bishonen or male character, exchanged Web site addresses, and talked about what Web sites were worth visiting. My experiences at the convention piqued my interest in two broad topics‹how girls and young women relate to shoujo anime with its strong female leads, and how girls participate in the online anime fan culture. Since the content of these shoujo series is different in many ways from other types of anime, and since girls and young women are not as active in creating Web sites as are boys and young men (Pastore, 2000), I wondered whether girl fans of shoujo were typical fans in terms of their online behavior. For this chapter I studied Web sites created by college-age or younger women about shoujo series since they seemed to make up the bulk of the audience I saw at the convention.1 The next section of the chapter describes two types of anime available to viewers in the United States. Informed by the work of Angela McRobbie, this chapter then considers how girls based discussions of boys and romance on shoujo anime characters and stories. Lastly, John Fiske's conception of a fan economy is used to examine the webpages made by girls who are fans of shoujo anime as examples of textual and enunciative productivity.
Anime in the United States
Much like television and film, anime has stories for all ages, from many genres, with fast action, well-written dialogue, and amazing music and sound effects (Harbison & Ressner, 1999; Poitras, 2002; Yang, 1992). People are attracted to anime for the thematic complexity and variety (Napier, 2001). "A good anime should have a great plot with good animation and beautifully crafted characters with human failings, superb mechas (robots), fan service, great soundtrack and a cute mascot" (Siew, 1999). The first animated television series in Japan, Tetsuwan Atomu or "Mighty Atom," about a boy robot created by a scientist to replace his dead son, was also the first anime series to reach American television, in 1964, where it was dubbed into English and called AstroBoy. In 1967, the Japanese TV series Mach Go Go Go was popular in the United States, where it was titled Speed Racer. "My love of, and obsession with, Japanese animation began with two words: Speed Racer. I can vividly remember watching the show as a child. Its combination of humor, action and, to my young mind, sometimes shocking violence couldn't be found anywhere else" (Brittingham, 1998, p. 21). Robotech, Battle of the Planets and StarBlazers were popular on American television in the late 1970s (Drazen, 2003; Poitras, 2002; Reeseman, 2002; Yang, 1992). Recently, series such as Pokemon and DragonBallZ have become very popular with viewers of all ages.
A new wave of anime on American television started in the 1990s, targeting teen-age and older audiences, rather than young children (Atwood, 1995). This dramatically increased the audience for anime and made the audience more representative of the wider population. In 1991, MTV introduced a wider audience to anime when it ran the adult series Aeon Flux in 1991 (Corliss, 1999), and American audiences watched the post-apocalyptic film Akira on the art-house circuit (Atwood, 1995). Ghost in the Shell was the first anime movie to top the Billboard home video charts during the week of August 21, 1996 (Goldstein, 1996). Blood: The Last Vampire (released in 2000) sold 120,000 units in the first month it was available for home sales, making it the fastest selling anime title at the time (Anime on DVD, 2001). In 2002, Spirited Away won the Oscar for best-animated feature, and in 2003, three anime movies were eligible for that same Oscar‹Tokyo Godfathers, Millennium Actress, as well as the newest Pokemon movie (Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, 2003). Overall, viewers enjoy series that focus on "meaningful and entertaining stories" and have "characters I can fall in love with," as well as having "interesting, unusual plots that I can sometimes identify with my own life" (Brickell, quoted in Dubois, 1999). Others watch anime simply because it is "new" and "different" (Skinkami, 1998), or because it targets a wider audience than Disney animated features (FireoFire, 1998). It is often the anime experience itself that draws in fans, rather than specific story types, since most fans list favorites from 2 or more genres of anime (Napier, 2001).
For the most part the above are examples of shonen anime series targets at boys with stories featuring action, adventure, explosions, big robots, and battles, in which lead characters have a specific goal they must reach by the end of the series. The stories show the process characters go through to reach their goals‹training, journeys, quests‹and the companions who join them on that journey along the way. Characters discover their inner strengths by overcoming obstacles thrown in the way of reaching their goals (Davis, 2003b).
A second type of anime series is marketed primarily to a female audience. Shoujo anime content deals with questions asked by both boys and girls‹"who am I, what kind of person do I want to be, what would I be willing to do for love" (Davis, 2003a, p. 2). The stories focus on the internal decision-making process that the lead female character goes through to answer those questions (Davis, 2003b). These stories focus on topics of interest to girls and situations that reflect girls' real life experiences at home and school. The creator of "Through Rose Colored Glasses," an Utena fan site2, claimed that this was her favorite series because of the "interesting characters, arresting visuals, humor, drama, and disturbingly dysfunctional sibling relationships." The creator of a Paradise Kiss Web site commented that she fell in love instantly with the series, that the "story line really caught my attention too because it was so original. For some reason I found it somewhat easy to relate to as well since it was about fashion design and I had once wanted to be a Fashion Designer myself." They deal with emotions and relationships between the boy and girl characters; plot is usually secondary to relationship development. "Almost nothing happened, but you certainly knew exactly how everyone felt about whatever it was that wasn't happening" (Levi, 1996, p. 9). These series are written for girls by primarily female authors and artists. The audience, however, consists of both boys and girls because of the universal appeal of the situations in shoujo stories.
Sailor Moon was the first shoujo anime to be officially licensed for distribution in the United States in 1995 (Drazen, 2003). Unlike other anime series available in the US at the time, Sailor Moon was marketed to teenage and grade school girls. The stories in this series maintain a balance between romance and action, with themes of love, valor, and compassion.
In Sailor Moon you had a monster-fighting action story, a cute-girl showcase, an epic saga of heroism, and a timeless romance all in one. That's the kind of something-for-everyone formula TV execs and movie producers consider themselves lucky to have run acrossŠbut for shoujo it's not all that unusual. (Davis, 2003a, p. 2)
More than 60,000 copies of Vampire Princess Miyu have been sold on DVD and VHS since it was released, making it one of the most popular anime series (Reeseman, 2002). It is the tale of a young girl vampire who never ages and who spends her days hunting demon-gods who torture humans. "She is delicately beautiful, but self-assured and in command of formidable powers. And her beauty has a perverse edge: she remains a vampire who offers humans immortality in exchange for the blood she requires" (Amazon.com, 2002). Fruits Basket, a popular shoujo title, released in 2003 in the United States by FUNimation, tells the story of a young orphan girl who lives as housekeeper in a house along with two students from her school and their older cousin. The episodes deal with the deepening relationship between the boys and the heroine as she learns their family secret‹they turn into animals from the signs of the Chinese Zodiac when touched by members of the opposite sex. Many of the episodes take place in the local school and include situations with which all viewers can identify, such as taking exams and dealing with other classmates ({Fruits Basket} Offficial Site, 2002). The stories in the popular shoujo series Revolutionary Girl Utena, distributed by Central Park Media, involve students competing in fencing duels to win the right to possess "the Rose Bride" and the behind the scenes machinations of a mysterious person known as "End of the World." "Utena delivers for girls what Star Wars did for boys: a never-ending series of adventures that one can imagine themselves in, whether daydreaming or playing in the backyard" (Amazon.com DVD: Revolutionary Girl Utena). This series also takes place in a school; there are scenes in dormitories and classrooms that are familiar to young adults everywhere.
Shoujo heroines typically behave in certain ways, which Drazen (2003) labels shoujodo" or the way of the teenage girl. The heroine is expected to be meek and kind‹feminine, even while they are fighting to defend their friends or homes. In series with violence, the heroine can be involved in the action, but she goes out of her way not to actually hurt anyone. Unlike the villains they face, shoujo heroines are able to cry (Drazen, 2003). However, they are not the meek princesses of Disney fairy tales. Instead, shoujo lead characters take the lead in fighting the monsters, and even rescuing the prince when necessary (Davis, 2003b). The heroine of Fruits Basket is very loyal to the boys in whose home she lives; she struggles to protect them from the outside world by making sure others do not find out about the family curse. Utena, the heroine of Revolutionary Girl Utena faces ridicule at school for dressing in a boy's school uniform and has to engage in constant struggles against the powerful Student Council who control the fencing duels and access to the Rose Bride.
Given the emphasis on strong female heroines, I expected to find evidence on girls' Web sites that they identified with and/or admired the female lead characters. That, however, proved not to be the case, as these fans were more likely to talk about the male characters on their Web sites.
Relationships and Romantic Pop Culture Idols
Teen-age girls commonly talk about boys and romance; typically these conversations take place in the privacy of a girl's bedroom with her friends among wall posters of current idols from pop culture (Wulff, 1995). They cut pictures and posters out of fan magazines and hang them on their bedroom walls. Karniol (2001) discusses this behavior as the adolescent girl's way of fostering discussion with their girlfriends as well as making public their interest in boys. Girls tend to pick pop culture stars, from the movies or music, for their idols because the stars are part of the real, shared leisure culture in which all girls can participate" (McRobbie, 1991, p. 185). Idols can be selected from pop culture stars because they are convenient and safe‹they expect nothing from the relationship since they are not really part of the relationship. Male pop stars can serve as practice love objects as young girls begin to think about being in a romantic relationship (Karniol, 2001). Girls tend to prefer male idols with feminine features, and boys who are cuddly, like stuffed animals (Karniol, 2001). In fact, feminine features are attractive not just to adolescents; most adults also prefer male and female faces with more feminine features. These faces are considered more emotional, cooperative, and honest (Perrett, et al., 1998).
The male characters in shoujo anime series are known collectively as bishonen, which "literally means Œbeautiful' (bi) + Œboy' (shonen)Š Generally, the term Œbishonen' applies to male anime characters who are young (approx. 13 - 17 years old, very attractive and pretty, and even feminine to some degree (i.e. they have long hair, slender builds, might be gay, etc.)," according to the definition given on the "What are Bishonen" site. They show strong emotions. They are romantic. They are also the inspirations for many of the Web sites studied for this chapter; in fact, there are more than 360 entries in the Bishonen Underground Web ring. On the "Kuroi Tsubasa the Excellent page," the girl who created the site described why she liked a particular bishonen character, a demon-fighting angel named Access Time:
What this section is really for is to describe what I like about the darling AccessŠ Let's start with his looks. First off, I love his big glassy eyes. They're so cute. Then his hair. It's purple for one thing, and it's long for anotherŠHe started off his appearance with a low ponytail at his neck, but later has worn some other cool dos like a high ponytail. Access sports a stylish shiny purple gemstone on his forehead, and he has elf-like ears. I'm not too big on the ears myself, but they do add to his distinct image. Not to be overlooked, his single pointed tooth gives him a vampire-like bad boy appearance Š.Access is also sensitive, we can see, when he gave Chiaki advice about not hurting Maron.
Romantic relationships between the boy and girl characters interested girl fans of shoujo anime series and many chose to make Web sites about their favorite series. The "Hana Yori Dango Percolator" site described the plot of that series as: "fun fun fun manga and anime (and movies) about a scrappy little lady named Makino Tsukushi and how she deals with the snobby kids at her elite high school. Oh yeah, and there's lurve and serious teen issues (well, do I really need to say this is relative?)" The creator of "Heart's Melody," a site about the series Marmalade Boy, described why she created her site this way: "Eventually, as I became more entangled and interested in their [the main boy and girl characters] relationship, my feelings had to have an outletŠand voila, the idea of a site came to mind." Media tends to support girls' interest in relationship and romance. In her classic study of the British teen magazine Jackie, Angela McRobbie (1991) described the "code of romance" (p. 94) found in the images, articles, and short stories of the magazine. These magazines emphasized fashion and beauty in articles, while the short stories emphasized romance, trying to make it look "important, serious, relevant" (p. 95). The focus was on romance, not sex; this was true for the boy characters as well as the girls. These stories helped girls learn how to act as they changed from children to adolescents, but also promoted a stereotypical view of the role girls played in society, which included pursuing a boy, mistrusting other girls as well as her own boyfriend, and looking pretty. Girls fought to keep other girls from taking their boyfriends. Yet, the overall impression in these stories was that romance, when you can get it, was fun and worth experiencing (McRobbie, 1991).
Everything on the "DandT" site revolved around the relationship between a boy and girl, Doumyouji and Tsukushi, characters in the series Boys Before Flowers. The site included a list of reasons why this couple should have gotten together. The girl who created the "The Andre Grandie's Shrine" explained the attraction she felt for the Rose of Versailles series:
Berubara (the Japanese name for the series) is absolutely the kind of anime that grabs your heart and changes your life forever. This is one of the reasons why I dedicate this page to Andre Grandier and Oscar Jarjayes [the main couple from the story, one of whom is a woman pretending to be a man so that she can serve as a soldier in the royal court]: two people who were destined to be together and who fought for what they believed in.
It is not just boy characters in general that make attractive idols for adolescent female viewers. In the romantic short stories studied by McRobbie (1991), the boys were not just the normal boy-next-door type; instead, they were nice, and interested in romance‹in other words, idealized. Girls liked how different the boys in the stories were from the real boys they knew from school (McRobbie, 1991). This seemed to be true of the shoujo Web sites as well. One Web site served as a shrine to the boy/girl couple Miki and Yuuhi of the Marmalade Boys series. The creator of the Yuuhi tribute page said that he was the character from which she felt the biggest impact; she called him a "pure boy" who loves everyone around himŠHe's a normal, down to earth kind of guy and who wouldn't love someone who cooks like Yuuhi doesŠAnd that is why I love Yuuhi so muchŠhe has so much real depth, his relationship have ups and downs, his character is flawed and still beautiful, and he still keeps realŠhe becomes even more noble than he once was.
Just as with McRobbie's observations about the girl's magazine stories (1991), the girls and young women who created these Web sites are interested in romance, not sex. They rejected the more adult (as in pornographic) anime, known in Japanese as hentai or ecchi. None of the series represented by these Web sites are in this category, although in the series Revolutionary Girl Utena, rape and incest are strongly hinted at in the onscreen action and explicitly discussed by fans. Many people who are not part of the fan culture associate anime with the explicit sex and violence titles that were the earliest imports and that are still a part of the anime fan world as seen in the description of activities at a Texas fan convention:
In Dallas last month (at an anime convention), audiences wildly applauded short anime films made by their fellow fans, more packed with tentacled sex monsters, cute high school girls with magical powers, and the inevitable panty jokes than anything imported from TokyoŠAnd in one corner, a tall shape, hooded in black, shuffles menacingly in the corner -- the rapacious "Overfiend" of the hentai sex horror anime movie Urotsukidoji, his slimy tentacles and, well, other protruding things, all made out of squeaking, gaily colored party balloons." (Lewis, 1997).
The fans I studied did not want to be associated with that part, the most socially disvalued part, of the genre. The creator of "CrazyAnimeFreak [miss you more]" mentioned several times that her site is hentai-free. The grade school girl who created the "Hamtaro Kingdom" site was particularly grossed out by the thought of hentai anime she said that it was "ewww" and that anyone who liked it was a "sad little monkey".
In addition to being concerned with the relationships between the characters in their favorite shoujo series, these girls were often fans of anime in general. Many mentioned a variety of series they have watched. During the course of my research, it became clear that the girls manifested many of the same characteristics of fandom as described by Fiske (1989, 1992). Two aspects of his cultural economy of fandom are considered here textual and enunciative productivity.
Fans as Textual Producers
Fans are very important to the success of anime in the United States. Anime fans meet at local and regional conventions and in local clubs, in Internet chat rooms and thru e-mail lists. The first anime-specific fan groups were started in the United States in the late 1970s (AnimeUSA, 2003). "More than any others, anime is an industry run by fans" (Yang, 1992, p. 47). American fans of anime refer to themselves as otaku, which in Japan is a derisive term for a geek or a person totally obsessed with something video games, television, computers, etc. (Levi, 1996), but which in America is more likely to mean "diehard fans who ignore everything else because they love anime so much" (anime fan quoted in Napier, 2001, p. 241). However, anime fans have many other interests and are not as single minded as the quote makes out (Napier, 2001). The audience for these series has typically been young and male the "skateboard and surfing consumer, but also the computer user" (Atwood, 1995, p. 82). However, that changed in the 1980s with the introduction of series such as Sailor Moon and Pokemon.
If I learned anything from Otakon (one of the largest anime fan conventions), it is that the stereotypical white, male, socially inept fan is dead. The people I saw at the convention constituted a surprising mix of genders and ethnicities, mirroring the multicultural composition of America in general. (Ruh, 2003)
Fans are different from general audience members. They have been defined as being obsessed with something such as a band or an actor (Hills, 2002), and as having "excessive enthusiasm" (Jenkins, 1992, p. 12), as well as having a sense of community based around the object of that fandom (Ehrenreich, Hess & Jacobs, 2003). That obsession is demonstrated with almost encyclopedic knowledge of the object of their fandom (Jenkins, 1992). A high level of knowledge, or perhaps even better, having access to unique if arcane knowledge, is evidence of credibility in the fan culture. One source of information from which they draw for these activities is fan magazines, which provide statistics and background information, pictures, and interviews. NewType USA, an English language version of an anime fan magazine produced in Japan, includes information on anime series that have little chance of ever being licensed for distribution in the United States, as well as about what channels on Japanese television schedule anime. American fans can make little direct use of this information, but knowing it makes them a part of the anime fan community (Ruh, 2002). "In fact, this is part of what I find most appealing about anime, discovering "new" shows or movies that have a following in Japan but haven't been released here yet" (Brittingham, 1998, p. 22). Fans accumulate knowledge about the programs, the actors, the producers and writers. That knowledge then is used to create new texts.
Fiske (1992) identifies textual production as one aspect of the cultural economy of fandom. Fans write fiction stories and create works of art. They write about what they think will happen or what should happen on their favorite television program, drawing on their deep knowledge of episodes and their opinions about character motivation (Fiske, 1989). More than just creating stories, they share their stories based on favorite episodes and characters with other fans. These fan-produced texts help define the fan community (Fiske, 1992) by marking off what fans like and do not like (Fiske, 1989). Unlike texts produced by the mass media, fan texts are not meant for the general audience, but rather for other members of the fan community, people who also have background knowledge of and appreciation for the object of the fandom (Fiske, 1992). Anime fans are what Napier (2001) describes as "committed media fans" (p. 242). For example, groups of fans subtitle episodes of anime shows that are not yet legally distributed in this country (Newitz, 1994; Yang, 1992); these subtitled tapes have been credited with fueling the growing interest in anime (Ito, 2000).
Fan Web sites are a type of textual production. Fans of bands, movies, and television series are all represented on the Internet, with discussion groups, chat rooms, and personal fan pages. Fans use the Web to share their story ideas and fictional writings. The Web makes worldwide distribution of these stories possible, not to mention the use of archives, multi-media, and links to related Web sites (Chandler-Olcott & Mahar, 2003). Fan Web sites provide episode background information and character profiles which are useful to people who do not have access to tapes of the series yet. Fan-written fiction can also make use of these episode summaries as the foundation for the plots they develop (Chandler-Olcott & Mahar, 2003).
One group that has made extensive use of the Internet and the Web is anime fans. While it might be possible in a city to find hundreds of other fans of a particular movie star or a sports team, the anime fan base is smaller and more dispersed. There is a line in the movie Otaku no Video (released in 1985 by Gainax Studios in Japan), where a new anime fan exclaims, "Why is it that you can be a sports fan and people won't mind, but like animation and EVERYONE HATES YOU?" (Otaku no Video cited in Yang, 1992). The Web makes it possible for anime fans to be part of the bigger and supportive online fan base, including the shoujo fan base. There is no shortage of Web sites created about shoujo anime series. For instance, "Amie's Shoujo Web Ring," a general Web site for sites about any shoujo series, had 17 active sites. The Escaflowne series fan listing had 19 sites included, and the fan list for the Ceres series had more than 100 entries. A Web site could be constructed as a place to demonstrate ability and talent. Further, a variety of knowledge was demonstrated on these anime fan Web sites. including knowledge about the series, technical ability, literary and artistic talent, and knowledge of Japanese. Such knowledge accumulation is, according to Fiske (1986), characteristic of fandom.
The first type of knowledge was about the anime series itself. The Web sites included episode synopses, character profiles, scripts, translations of text, and scanalationsimages created from scanned manga pages and superimposed English translations. The creator of "*Emily's Hana Yori Dango Page! Ver. 2.0*" included paragraphs of story summary interspersed with images from the program and her opinions of the characters ("mostly interesting") and the music ("great"). "Kyo's Overview" page on the "Welcome to Furuba Magic! Site" includes story synopses, information on the voice actors, titles of songs on the soundtrack CD, and descriptions of the available merchandise for Furuba (the Japanese title for the Fruits Basket series). The character profiles were sometimes very detailed with information included from the DVD liner notes but also from the manga comics, art books for the series, and official Web sites put up by the distributors.
A second type of knowledge included was of the Japanese language and of Japan itself. Girls on the "Vival La Diva" and "Dia-Chan's Marmalade Boy Page" sites mentioned studying in Japan in the near future. Levi (1996) points out that there is language snobbery among American anime fans; they prefer subtitled to dubbed versions and they mix Japanese words into their everyday English. Using Japanese words plays up the otherness of anime, its exotic background as well as the knowledge of the site creator (Napier, 2001). It is also an example of how knowledge is capital in the fan economy; as in most economies, capital accumulation brings with it a measure of power and respect (Fiske, 1992). This is especially true if the person is willing to put their capital, in this case knowledge, on public display. Sites had Japanese words sprinkled throughout, sometimes with definitions for the uninitiated, while other times no translation or commentary was provided. Some examples include omake (extras or bonus) , arigato (thanks), and kawaii (cute or adorable), which is "the most widely used, widely loved, habitual word in modern living Japanese" (Japanese teen magazine CREA quoted in Roach, 1999). Hamtaro Kingdom used kawaii when describing the hamsters in Hamtaro. The "Energetic Heartbeats" site greeted the visitor with the phrase "Ohayou! Youkoso! ^_^ ," which she translated to "Hello! Welcome!" Sometimes the Japanese text was not translated, as if to say, if the reader has to ask, they obviously are not part of the (anime fan) club. The "naishin [] innermost thoughts [] pure heart" site has the term ja ne as a menu option on the front page with no explanation. The "Andre Grandies' Shrine" site had the Japanese phrase "Kimi wa kikari, boku wa kage!" on the main page with no translation and sugoi on the "about me" page. The site called "Dia-Chan's Marmalade Boy Page" included a page of Japanese phrases that the site's creator is learning from a book on Japanese street slang. The "Energetic Heartbeats" site also had a lingo page with key Japanese words and definitions. The Japanese words were written with English characters and not Japanese symbols, which require special software to display.
There was a range of technical skill and talent, another type of knowledge, demonstrated on the sites. Some sites exhibited no evidence of technical talent, as the site creator appeared to be making her first Web site, and the results were amateurish. These site creators, intrigued by the graphic and color possibilities, combined background images with foreground text in many colors and foreground images. "Grace's World" had a left hand border of daisies and several sections of options down the very long page, each with their own graphics. The results were often exuberant and colorful, but difficult to navigate. These sites often consisted of long pages, through which the reader had to scroll, with no hint of what was to come. A general bishonen fan site entitled "Bishonen Guide... understanding the pretty boys of anime, manga, j-rock, video games, and beyond" is one very long page, with a very long name and with few links to other information or to other pages by the same girl. The creator of a general shoujo fan site named, plainly enough, "main" seemed to realize how long her page was; she even put text midway down the page to tell visitors to keep looking for the guestbook "PSSSST! The Guest books even closer now! Come on you can make it! I have faith in ya!" On some sites, pictures were not optimized for use on the Web and took much longer to download than they should. "Dia-Chan's Marmalade Boys Page" site had many such pictures; they were small on the screen, but were very large, slow to download files.
At the other end of the technical knowledge spectrum were those sites created by people with obvious training in Web design and layout. Their layouts were graphic-intensive and some archived past layouts. These sites made use of cascading style sheets, Javascript, and custom icons. The "CrazyAnimeFreak.cjb.net + Welcome to my crazy world!" site had a very professional look and archived a variety of her past layouts, along with a collection of graphics visitors could copy onto their own site and an update history on the front page. The main page of "Autumn Crescendo" site for the Marmalade Boy series was a Photoshop image that had been divided up into many small graphics to create an image map; each individual image loaded quickly, but the whole page was not viewable until every graphic had downloaded successfully.
In the mid-1990s, increasing access to the Internet and the World Wide Web changed some aspects of media fandom. Perhaps, most importantly, it became easier to find information and other like-minded fans (Gwenllian-Jones, 2003). Web page search engines made even niche publications accessible to a worldwide audience. Usenet newsgroup search engines, as provided by DejaVu and then Google, made it possible to read and post messages to thousands of ongoing discussions from the user's Web browser. Companies such as GeoCities and Tripod provided free disk space, so anyone could put up a Web page, or a multi-page, multi-media Web site for that matter.
The Web allows for a multi-media presentation of self; adolescents make use of their own text and photos as well as files taken from other sites. Site creators often asked visitors to submit things for the site to help it grow. They rework the images, combining them with new music to make their own music videos, for example. There were fan-written stories and fan-drawn pictures. Some sites offered images visitors could download for monitor background image (wallpaper); they even offered thumbnail images so that image gallery pages would load faster. "Kim's Anime Page" site has a thumbnail image gallery for the Fushigi Yugi series. "Jam & Jelly :: A Marmalade Boy Site" has wallpaper that she created and several thumbnail size pictures that visitors could click on to see images of Miki, a character from that show. The "Vision of Escaflowne" site created sprites (small figures) for visitors to download. The "naishin [] innermost thoughts [] pure hearts" site had paper dolls (as well as a link to the site to download the software needed to play with them), and desktop icons. There were images, lyrics to songs, and multi-media pages from which visitors could download video and sound clips. With digital multi-media editing tools available on home computers, fans can make videos and add pictures to illustrate favorite songs.
A site called "Fire Starter - A Dilandau Albatou Shrine" had a multi-media section with separate pages for images from the Escaflowne series, wallpaper, music, and sounds. Examples of the literary and artistic talent were on display from both site creators as well as site visitors. Site creators were proud of the wallpaper graphics files and the link banners they had made for their sites. "The Utena Network" site had a variety of wallpaper graphics and skins for WinAmp for the visitor to download. Others described their efforts to scan images from manga comics and capture image from anime tapes (ex. "DandT"). The creator of a Fushigi Yuugi site called "A Site Dedicated to Amiboshi" mentioned that she did not own a scanner yet and so had to borrow pictures from other sites. At the other extreme, a site with the over-punctuated name "Yuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuhi!!!!!!!!!! =) version 7 of EVENING SUN" has 138 images, a mix of those she scanned herself and those she took from other Web sites. "I scan these pictures for you guys, so please have the smallest respect back. If I didn't love my viewers, I wouldn't do this at all." She also had created a variety of wallpaper that she shared on her site for others to download. The "Welcome to Hana Yori Dango Magic!!" site had scans from a variety of series related merchandise‹the manga, poker cards, character art books, and fan drawn comics. There were fan-written stories and fan-drawn pictures. For example, the "<- - - K y o t o m i s t 's Vision.of.Escaflowne - - -> ver 2.0 " and "naishin [] innermost thoughts [] pure heart" sites both had sections for fan fiction and art. Site creators often asked visitors to submit things for the site to help it grow.
One interesting type of information on these fan sites was the creators' reaction to spam, hackers, and to people who copy their work. The creator of the "Hamtaro Kingdom" site was very worried about her site being hacked and her designs stolen. She wanted to be friends with people who visit her site unless, as she mentioned specifically, the visitor was into hacking Web sites or was a pervert. She threatened that her father, lawyers, and police would find them; then the hackers would have to pay money and go "to juvi"‹assuming that the hackers would be other young people her age. Strangely though, she admitted she had taken pictures from other sites without permission in the past. The creator of the "Forever Rain" site also asked people not to copy her pictures. "All content and information etc. were done and written by Cindy. Under no circumstances can you take this information. I have enough people copying me already. I don't like it one bit." The creator of the "Empty Movement" Utena fan site threatened anyone who borrowed one of her layouts. "There are better designers to steal from, but should you be found out, I will hunt you down and kill you. Though it happens rarely, do NOT ask if I will make a layout for you. I won't." After all the threats and complaints of people borrowing the pictures and designs on their sites, sites included disclaimers somewhere that they did not own the anime or the characters and asked that they not be sued.
Enunciative Productivity
Community is a big part of any fandom culture, including anime fandom. For some people, who may not have earned financial and cultural rewards in the general society, the praise of the fan community means a lot (Fiske, 1992). Fans are drawn to others who share their obsession, and getting together to talk about the object of their fandom is one aspect of Fiske's (1992) concept of enunciative productivity. Copying hairstyles and dress from that object are another part. Music fans dress up like stars of their favorite rock bands (Fiske, 1989, 1992). They communicate with media creators about characters and plot. Fans take pride in the amount and variety of knowledge they master about the object of their fandom. A fan's stake in the community can be raised by learning and creating new things for the community. Perhaps most importantly, fans are happy to find they are not alone in their appreciation of the object of their fandom (Jenkins, 1992).
Writing before the widespread popularity of the Internet, Fiske (1992) considered enunciative productivity as a product of face-to-face communication. However, online communication, as seen in online guestbooks where visitors can both leave a message and read messages left by others, seems to be another type of fan talk. The messages aren't necessarily written with an eye to being archived, but rather are part of an asynchronous multi-location conversation. Enunciative productivity is part of creating a social identity; online communication can be part of that creation process. For example, several pages identified by Chandler and Roberts-Young (1998) in their study of adolescents' Web pages, were created by frequent chat room participants; the creators of these sites referred other chatters to the Web site if they were interested. The software necessary to put a guestbook on a site is available free from a variety of sources so even a technical novice can have a guestbook.
Many of the shoujo fan sites studied for this chapter linked to a guestbook in several places throughout the site. Guestbooks served as a way for site visitors to talk to the site creator, but also to subsequent visitors who were encouraged to read all the public posts. With posts from countries as varied as Thailand, Singapore, Japan, France, and Canada, they demonstrated the international nature of the anime fan community. The protocol for posts to the guestbook was to be positive, to gush over the work involved in creating the site, and to ask for more content. Posters also included a variety of different smiley faces in their comments. The Boys Over Flowers site "Welcome to Leely.com" had many such messages; including this example: "Hello!! You have done a very good job on this Web site. I really like your translation. It's nice of you that you translate the new issue for us. I wish I have found you long before. Thanks!!" from 26 October 2003. The "heart's melody" site for Marmalade Boy had almost 300 posts in her guestbook. One recent post said "I love this shrine. It's very good considering you have a great amount of content whether it's information to images. Best part is, easy navigation (^_^) Keep up the good work." Positive messages can serve as validation for the site creator's efforts, and, at the very least, provide a reason for the site's existence. Guestbooks are also a way for creators of other related sites to publicize their own efforts. Site creators sometimes comment about items in the guestbook. The creator of the "Kuroi Tsubasa The Excellent" site commented on some feedback on her site, "Ore-sama thanks you all for your adoration! I love you too! ^_^ Not quite as much as I love Fin-chan, but..... anyways, a big thanks for the hits! I'm really glad that 'Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne' is so popular, and that I'm so popular! How cool is that?"
One interesting bow to the fan community is the spoiler warning. There is some tension between sharing the information one has about a series as a way of establishing credibility and not giving away a story ending to another fan. The "naishin [] innermost thoughts [] pure hearts" site warned of spoilers, but explained their presence on the site by saying she "likes to be as comprehensive as possible on all her sites." On the Escaflowne site " Ashfae's Anime Page" was a warning that the pictures contained major spoilers. "So if you haven't seen all of the anime, you might want to think twice before looking around in here; I won't warn you again."
As a last observation about community, many of the sites appeared dead and abandoned. For instance, "Grace's Café" hadn't been updated since January of 1999, the "Berusaiyu No Bara Presents: The Andre Grandie's Shrine" site since sometime in 1999, and the "HYD Project" and "Energetic Heartbeats" not since November 15, 2001. Site creators offered no explanation for abandoning their sites. There were no good-bye messages, no explanations for why the site creator left the site and its audience. The abandonment was exhibited in several ways. Most often there was a last updated message with a date several years old promising some format change or new content that never materialized. Other times pictures no longer loaded and links were no longer valid. Sub-pages disappeared. One possible explanation is that the site creator began to like another anime series more than the one for which this site was created or became a fan of something other than anime in general. Another explanation is that maintaining the site became more of a time commitment than they could handle. This showed up several times in update messages complaints about the pressures of school assignments, including promises to do more once the site creator graduates. Strangely, even though a site had been abandoned, visitors continued to post messages in the guest book complementing the hard work evident on the site. This disconnect between the site creator and the site visitors strains the role of fan Web site as part of the fan community idea discussed above.
Conclusion
Fans often have a hard time identifying why they are drawn to any of the genres of anime. It may be the anime experience itself that draws in fans, rather than specific story types, since most fans list favorites from two or more genres of anime (Napier, 2001). The girl fans who made Web sites included in this study liked a variety of anime series. They liked the stories, the graphics, and the action, just like fans of anime in general. The evidence suggests that fans of shoujo anime are much like other anime fans and fans in general. They like to demonstrate their knowledge of their favorite series. They like to participate in community activities, as evidenced by the use of guestbooks and participation in fan listings and Web rings. They like to create pictures and write stories about their favorite series and characters and then to share them with others in the fan community.
They like stories, including stories about boys. With shoujo anime, they also are able to discuss boys and relationships, topics of general interest to girls. McRobbie (1991) suggests that the media that target young women provide stories and images that young girls can use to try out aspects of their changing identity. She found that print magazines talked about romance and relationships between boys and girls. Shoujo anime series, which also target girls, also provide material about relationships with idealized boys who are kind and interested in romance more than in sex.
They do not necessarily identify with the female characters; they are not watching shoujo anime because they want to see talented girls or even kind, sweet girls become the heroines of the story. For the most part they showed no identification with the girl characters, but rather put themselves into the relationships she was experiencing. The girls use the Web sites to talk about the boys they like from their favorite anime series, and to put up pictures of those boys. This is very similar to the reasons girls were found to read romantic stories (McRobbie, 1991) and idolize pop stars (Karniol, 2001). Both of these activities might take place in the privacy of their bedrooms if they were idolizing pop stars, because for those images and relationships they could find lots of other fans locally. For the anime fan, the Web makes it possible to find others who like the same series. The girl fans of shoujo anime have moved their bedroom discussion to the Web. The implications of moving what are typically private conversations into a relatively more public arena needs further investigation.
Along with discussing boys, the girls who made these Web sites have learned a lot about anime, especially about their favorite series. They are active participants in the anime fan culture, even though, overall, girls tend to be online less and have fewer Web pages than do boys (Pastore, 2000, 2002). The cultural economy of fandom is based on capital accumulation and textual production (Fiske, 1992), and the anime fan economy is no different. They exhibited a lot of knowledge about the series, anime in general, and about making Web pages. They got rewarded for these displays. People posted positive comments in their guest books, engaging the site creator in fan talk about the series. They were also rewarded when other people contributed images and stories for the Web site a form of capital exchange. The Web makes it easier to accumulate knowledge and to share texts among the dispersed membership. This is especially true for girls who like shoujo anime because of their relatively small numbers. The Web provides an excellent arena for studying this specialized cultural economy. More attention to the types of conversations about anime that take place on these Web sites may add to our understanding of the relationship between enunciative and textual production in what is, in all respects, a community built on text interactions.
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