Abstract
This article discusses the concept of fandom structures centring on Japanese popular culture fan conventions by highlighting potential factors underlying young Malaysians’ involvement in such conventions. Data were collected from participatory observations at four conventions and interviews with nine Malaysians involved in conventions for at least 5 years. These participants felt marginalized in their school lives because of their fondness for anime, yet they expressed a sense of togetherness while at conventions. For those continuously involved, the conventions were not limited to only a temporal ritual space, as may be explained with the term ‘communitas’. While experiencing a feeling of ‘communitas’ with other convention attendees as of members of their discursive fandom, they acquired a hierarchical system within other activity-based fandom. In this way, young Malaysians have not merely been subsumed into an existing system as the respective structural fandom communities enable the inclusion of democratic aspects by being open to the public through local conventions.
Introduction
American media scholars (e.g. John Fiske and Henry Jenkins) studied fan behaviour centring around local popular culture beginning in the 1980s. According to Ross and Nightingale (2003: 140), the fan convention consists of different elements, such as media screenings, distribution of fan-produced materials, game tournaments, art exhibitions and retail merchandise sales. At that time, studies of fan behaviour focused on the collective actions of fans, examining conventions as loci of fan activities. In the past two decades, however, as pointed out by Ikeda (2012), the focus of fan studies has shifted from fan communities to individual fans. In the 2000s, researchers began to explore individual motivations, perceptions and emotions, applying psychoanalytic methods, whereas previously, fan studies had neglected to examine the individual aspects of fans. In the post-Internet era, diverse fan studies have also been conducted from various viewpoints in different regions. Gray et al. (2007) proclaimed that investigations of fandom aim to deepen fundamental understandings of modern life, as fan activities are part of individuals’ everyday lives. Individual and collective aspects of fan activities and communities have been discussed in recent studies as a mode of examining young people’s lives (e.g. Nordström and Herz, 2013; O’Connor et al., 2015).
Since 1995, working as a Japanese language instructor at a local university in Malaysia, I have met many students who like to engage in entertainment activities from Japan, such as television (TV) drama series and anime (Japanese animation). After witnessing this interest in Japanese popular culture for more than a decade, I began a project exploring media consumption experiences among Malaysians. One interviewee of my previous project described a seiyuu (voice actress for anime) concert held in conjunction with a 2009 Japanese popular culture convention organized by a students’ club at one private university in Malaysia. With this as a turning point, I met and spoke to young people involved in organizing and participating in local fan conventions. As described to me, their fan convention participation was rooted in a fondness for anime and other forms of Japanese popular culture. When I first visited one of these conventions in 2010, the sponsors, vendors and guest speakers were all non-Japanese. The convention attendees, mostly young Malaysians, appeared to be the central agencies of the conventions. Yet, cosplayers (those who dress in costume to attend the event), artists and their art production were noticeably influenced by Japanese popular culture. When these kinds of conventions occur outside of Japan, they are often reported inside the country as confirming the trend of ‘cool Japan’ that the Japanese government has incorporated in its policy (e.g. Yamada, 2009). However, my previous findings (Yamato, 2014) have indicated that fan conventions are more demonstrative of young people’s personal engagement and their development rather than a nationalistic statement. In order to provide further insights into local fan conventions, this qualitative study was designed to explore the experiences of individuals attending those conventions.
Fan conventions
Geraghty (2014) stated that fan conventions have over 70 years of history in the United States. There have been descriptions of these fan conventions, especially about science fiction conventions in the United States, in media audience studies (e.g. Porter, 2004; Tulloch and Jenkins, 1995). In the recent studies, Lam (2010) and Tamagawa (2012) reported about the biggest fan convention held in Japan, Tokyo’s Comic Market, a marketplace for selling and exchanging self-published comics and fanzines, which had approximately 560,000 attendees and 35,000 exhibitors in August 2009 (Lam, 2010). Bolling and Smith (2013) compiled ethnographic studies at the yearly convention Comic-Con International, held in San Diego since 1970. It is the longest running comic book convention in the United States and has now turned into a promotional venue for other popular culture formats, such as films, TV series and video games. Besides studying the fans of particular media, Bolling and Smith have also analysed interactions between panellists (producers) and participants (consumers), the experiences of convention volunteers and the experiences of people waiting in queues at conventions. In Geraghty’s (2014) examination of collecting practice among popular film and TV series fans, the Comic-Con convention was referred to as a geographical site where cult media is collected. The San Diego Comic-Con convention was a site for fans to purchase physical collectibles as well as to gather information on their favourite media objects. In addition, Geraghty emphasized that the convention site had taken on different meanings for each fan as a space according to the kind of activities that were innovatively created and engaged in by both consumers and producers (industries).
Jenkins (1992) stated more than two decades ago that ‘fans produce meanings and interpretations; fans produce artworks; fans produce communities; fans produce alternative identities’ (p. 214). Fans share their fan productions, socialize in fan communities online and offline, and reflect their identifications with particular fan communities. Online fan communities and fan behaviour have garnered much attention as an evolving phenomenon and have been increasingly studied since the end of the 1990s. However, Booth and Kelly (2013) have pointed out that ‘an enormous amount of fan work and fan activity continues to take place offline’ even though fans do use social media and mobile technologies to communicate with each other (p. 69). Booth and Kelly conducted their ethnographic study at an American fan convention for a British TV series Doctor Who, which originally aired from 1963 to 1989 and was revived in 2005. Fans of the original and revived series were present at the same convention, allowing researchers to compare both older fans, who had attended fan conventions in the 1970s, and newer fans. The study found that despite enormous changes in the surrounding technological environment, the in-person community still mattered for the fans of every generation who travelled to the convention, reflecting their pride in being fans, unashamedly, in an offline space. Bennett (2014) also highlighted offline activities, taking music concerts, cosplay (costume play) activity and fan conventions as examples, while discussing development in the fan studies field in relation to the World Wide Web, technological advancement and emergence of social media since the early 1990s.
In the mid-1990s, Porter (2004) explored fan conventions for the TV series Star Trek in North America and highlighted the following two primary motivations of convention attendees: having fun and the opportunity to speak with other fans. These motivations were discussed in the framework of a religious pilgrimage process, in which pilgrims ‘pursu[e] the embodied ideals’ (Porter, 2004: 164). In the context of Star Trek, ‘the embodied ideals’ are articulated as the Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combination (IDIC) ethic. The IDIC ethic was mentioned in only one episode of the Star Trek series, but it became a collective ethic of fandom through dialogic activities at fan conventions. Some fans discussed its meaning and others actually embodied the IDIC ethic at conventions. Porter revealed that a set of moral principles were cultivated and shared as well as practised among fans at the conventions. She argues that the Star Trek conventions are not exactly the same as religious pilgrimage sites, but the convention participants are travelling in search of their collective ideals.
Hernandez (2012) took up the term ‘communitas’, which has been used in discussions on the pilgrimage process, to illustrate the structures of anime fandom in Mexico based on surveys conducted at an anime conventions between 2007 and 2009. He categorized consumers of anime who participated in the anime convention into three groups: potential fandom, communitas fandom and structural fandom. The term ‘communitas’ was coined by Scottish cultural anthropologist Victor Turner (2012), and it refers to ‘a group’s pleasure in sharing common experiences with one’s fellows’ (p. 2). Communitas fandom and structural fandom are differentiated in terms of their shared ideology and identity. The former does not have any social structure and could be short-lived since it is based on the affective sensibility of fans who attend a physical event rather than having structures to maintain the fan community. The latter, structural fandom, is defined by its social structure which falls outside social norms of the society at large (Hernandez, 2012).
In Comic-Con’s 40 years of history, Japanese popular culture, especially anime, has been an additional media object since the 1980s (Geraghty, 2014). Napier (2007) reported characteristics of American conventions focusing on anime based on her one decade of participation and observation of 12 conventions and interviews with some organizers. These conventions have aspects characteristic of international exhibitions, offering experiences in traditional Japanese culture besides providing ‘subcultural capitals’ for anime fans through panels, forums and workshops conducted by Japanese and local industry professionals. Since most conventions are annually held in the same location, each convention site becomes a meeting point among old friends as well as new convention goers. Napier (2007) posited that a convention or fandom offers a structured ‘fantasyscape’, or in another word, ‘alternativity’ of mundane routines (p. 155). On the other hand, while discussing the network culture of anime and manga (Japanese comics) fans in the United States, Eng (2012) pointed out that convention sites function as a platform for fans’ self-promotion. This is along the lines of Hills’ (2002) argument about fandom in general: It can be seen ‘not simply as a community but also as a social hierarchy where fans share a common interest while also competing over fan knowledge, access to the object of fandom, and status’ (p. 46). Hills (2013) further argues that moral economies of fan productivity are not fixed since democratization among fans and distinction of subcultural capital between fans can coexist in respective fandom.
As one of the anime fan activities at the American conventions, Ito’s (2012) ethnographic study described the fan culture of anime music video (AMV) editors. Since AMV production necessitates digital video editing, this niche fandom is relatively new in the broader categories of anime and manga fan activities. Ito’s findings, though, represent characteristics of all related fandoms – that they appreciate high-quality AMVs and dedicated editors. At the same time, this hierarchical system does not turn away newcomers. Offline conventions play a central role in maintaining the structure of peer-based communities among AMV fans by organizing competitions and screenings of AMVs, even though these AMVs are accessible online.
Regarding fan activities in Japan, Okabe’s (2012) ethnographic research on female cosplayers shed light on the subcultural capital and hierarchical systems in fandom. His study revealed that there is a shared set of explicit guidelines in the cosplayer community. As Porter (2004) noted, ‘It is not place but rather fandom that represents the true centre of the convention pilgrimage process’ (p. 168). A group of people are at the centre of the fan community, and they create and share that system. When a system already exists, new cosplayers dedicate their time and energy to acquiring the niche knowledge held by members of that community. There is, thus, a continuous mutual learning process ongoing within the community. In another study on the cosplay community in Japan, Miyamoto (2012) also illustrated the structure of the cosplay community. Conducting event observations and interviews with participants, he identified jargon, event style, standards of judgment, stipulated manner and rules, and tacit rules in the community.
Aiming to give further insight into Japanese popular culture fan phenomena outside of Japan, this article highlights potential factors underlying continuous participation in local fan conventions among young Malaysians. It also discusses conceptions of fandom structures centring on the conventions in Malaysia.
Overview of anime, comics and games conventions in Malaysia
This study consists of two phases of data generation. The first phase, a questionnaire survey and observation, was conducted at four conventions in urban areas of Malaysia: Kota Kinabalu, Sabah; Kuching, Sarawak; Sunway, Petaling Jaya, Selangor and Kuala Lumpur. These conventions, which were held between December 2012 and August 2013, were selected because they are held more than four times annually. The preliminary purpose of the survey was to obtain background and contact information of convention attendees in order to find suitable interviewees with rich experiences participating in local fan conventions.
The survey team consisted of three members, who randomly asked convention attendees who repeatedly attended the same event to fill in a questionnaire at the research booth, set up in the same area as other commercial and art booths. The questionnaire included questions designed to outline attendees’ convention experiences. While managing the questionnaire survey, I also conducted participatory observation at each convention, observing attendees from the research booth, looking around at other booths and observing activities along with the other event attendees.
The total number of responses to the questionnaire was 585. Half of the respondents were born between 1991 and 1995 (18–22 years old in 2013). There were almost equal numbers of both genders. The respondents’ religions included four major ones in Malaysia (Muslim 27%, Buddhist 37%, Christian 28% and Hindu 0.5%). More than half of the respondents were students at institutions, including high schools, colleges and universities. All respondents were consumers of at least one format of media objects from Japan. For instance, 527 of them were ‘viewing anime’ and 500 were ‘reading manga’. This confirmed that these types of fan conventions are indeed gathering places for fans of media objects mainly from Japan, even though two of the four conventions did not officially announce their focus as Japanese anime, comics and games (ACG). At the same time, I observed that each convention also showcased some media objects from other countries such as the United States and South Korea.
Table 1 indicates that ‘meeting friends’ was considered a part of convention activities and the primary purpose among the respondents. The majority of respondents (89%) said that participating in conventions was beneficial. In response to the open-ended question asking what benefit they had obtained, 43 percent of the respondents wrote ‘meeting new friends’. Other benefits included ‘bought ACG products’ (12%), ‘learned about Japanese ACG’ (12%) and ‘having fun’ (11%), and a few answers, such as ‘gained experiences’ (11%) and ‘obtained skills’ (3%), demonstrate that some participants experienced the benefit of individual development. The results of the questionnaire survey imply that face-to-face meetings with other fans are central for convention attendees, as similarly reported in other studies (e.g. Eng, 2012; Napier, 2007). To explore individual convention experiences further, in-depth interviews were conducted with selected respondents.
Top four activities and purpose.
Multiple-choice answers.
Open-ended question.
The ACG convention in young Malaysians’ lives
I conducted interviews with four male and five female Malaysians, between the ages of 19 and 32 years. The primary selection criterion was actively taking part in local conventions for more than 5 years. Their interviews were conducted between January 2013 and January 2014, with the only exception being Dan’s interviews (all names in this article are pseudonyms). His interviews were conducted in August and October 2012 as a preliminary process to develop and confirm the interview protocol. I met Dan in 2010 through a previous study participant, and I saw him occasionally since then as he ran a merchandise booth at conventions. Table 2 shows the interviewees’ profiles and summaries of their convention involvement.
Interviewee’s profile and summary of local convention involvement.
Pseudonyms.
The semi-structured interview covered mainly the following two topics: consumption of popular culture and past convention participation. With the exception of Hadi, other selected individuals were interviewed twice. The second interviews were conducted in order to elaborate on information and descriptions from the first interviews. All interviews were conducted in English since the interviewees had a sufficient command of English, and I did not have sufficient proficiency in their mother tongues. The interviews lasted for about 1–2 hours, were audio recorded and transcribed verbatim 1 by a Malaysian English speaker. Individual data were descriptively coded using NVivo, qualitative data management software. When all individual NVivo projects were merged as one project file, coding categories were refined further. Besides this, the participants’ life events were chronologically summarized with regard to their consumption of popular culture and event participation. An inductive analysis was conducted to allow themes to emerge from the data in order to understand convention participants’ lived experiences from their viewpoints.
Feelings of marginalization and communitas
The interviewees began attending local conventions between 2002 and 2008. All of them consumed anime, comics (manga) and/or games originally produced in Japan either since the 1990s or the early 2000s. Even though some of them did not claim to be anime fans, all had viewed anime to a considerable extent in their childhood and/or as teenagers. Alina, Dan and Rona, who were absorbed in anime since the 1990s, forthrightly expressed socially marginalized feelings because of their fondness for anime. Dan described himself as a ‘hard core’ fan of Japanese ACG. When I first met him in 2010 (he was 24 years old then), he had already attained proficiency in Japanese since he had learnt Japanese through playing Japanese role playing games (RPGs) without translation. He recalled 10 years before and said, ‘Those who watched anime and [read] manga were only a few people [in school]. [Many friends] didn’t understand what we were talking about’. At the age of 16, he found a local convention and attended with his elder brother. He described his feeling at the first convention with the expressions ‘got a shock’ and felt ‘quite happy’. The convention was rather small scale, only having a few hundred fans. This feeling of happiness, though, encouraged him to be more involved in the convention by assisting in its organizing committee. He explained, ‘maybe I wanted to know more [about the community], that’s why I help out … make the interest group grow bigger [laugh] in Malaysia’. Dan and his brother undertook selection of background music at one of local conventions from 2003 to 2007.
Aline had similar feelings to Dan when she attended a convention for the first time in 2004:
I always thought that [other people] would think of me as a very immature person if I watched anime … But [when] I went to the event I knew that there’re people like me too. So it makes me feel better, you know? And I feel that [it’s] ok [to be an anime fan]. Now it’s time for me to help [others]. That’s why I perform [at conventions]. That’s why I do this and that.
Alina started participating in karaoke competitions at a small scale convention. She was a 20-year-old college student at that time. After winning the first prize in a singing contest at an established local convention in 2010, she formed an amateur singing group with other fans of her favourite Japanese composer and started singing anime songs on the stage of local conventions. At the time of our interview in 2013, Alina was a 30-year-old working woman, very active in participating in conventions and practising her singing on days off. She elaborated on her stage performance at the conventions as follows:
I want to try to introduce Japanese entertainment, language, manga, anime everything in one. So when I go up on a stage, [I say] ‘ok, hi, my name is [her nick name in Japanese] blah blah … ’ and … I introduce the singer; the composer, the anime and everything else around [the song]. So I think that’s how I want to contribute to Japanese culture and language … I hope that will arouse interest in what actually Japanese animation, culture, songs, language are all about … I’m not only performing to let people hear my voice …
Alina and Dan, who once felt that they were marginalized with regards to their consumption habit, have been involved in local conventions for a decade. They realized that they could do something at conventions as fans. They cultivated opportunities to contribute to local conventions that other fellow fans established and kept going.
Besides Alina and Dan, Rona and Zain also expressed their exhilaration explicitly when they talked about their first convention participation. They were excited by being with other convention attendees. When these interviewees talked about their sense of belonging, it was not a feeling towards one specific convention – it was towards a space created by a number of people having a wide range of different interests regarding ACG. A new sense of community appeared when engaged in activities at a convention. Alina mentioned that ‘there is a community [for] who loves [anime] just like I do’. She found similarities between the convention attendees and herself in terms of a fondness for anime. At her first convention in 2004 after seeing a crowd of other anime fans, she became eager to be in that community of ACG event goers. Alina and Mei began searching online for more information about local conventions and ACG activities after attending a convention for the first time. Other interviewees were involved in online forums before participating in a convention. They had a means to contact other fans and share their interest online. In fact, some of them found conventions through online forums. Rona, who was also a long time anime fan, extended her fan circle by producing fan art and fanzines online before attending a convention. The local convention for Rona furthered her opportunities to meet up with more fan artists and to display her talent as a fan artist despite having less opportunity in creating new things at her work place as a graphic designer.
Jafar, who helped launch one of the local conventions, highlighted the marginalized feeling even when he was a non-anime fan:
[A]s I grow, my hobby keeps changing. I don’t really read manga that much and I don’t play card games anymore, neither do I watch anime … Each hobby that I lived [with], left me with something that is positive. Ah, I … either learned something new from that hobby. Erm, I also learned not to discriminate if someone has a [rare] hobby. I don’t know why Malaysians like to do that …
He also added that some of his hobbies in the past took up too much time and were financially tough to stick with. Nevertheless, he expressed the importance of providing a place for younger generations to share their hobbies with others and said that was one of the reasons why he continued organizing an annual convention for 7 years. He explained,
[P]articipants found [name of the convention] to be the place to find friends. Especially [for] the type whom parents lock up. ‘I don’t want you to meet people because you are so different; you are so weird’. That’s the parents’ standard. When they come out [from the house], they notice that ‘hey I got someone that is like [me] as well’. … When they have friends, they start talking with people and then their confidence grows. They stop being so introvert … I think that’s a positive thing … I, myself, have been there …
He elaborated on his use of the expression ‘locking up’ in our second interview as follows:
[T]here are times, you know, you might have a hobby that your parents think it is crazy. Your friends think you are weird and you have no one to talk to. And when that happens, you end up locking up yourselves. It can be very depressing.
He described the first event he organized as a place where ‘lots of people just [showcased] their hobby for six hours a day … people just got to know each other’. As in other fan studies (e.g. Booth and Kelly, 2013), these young Malaysians needed to negotiate their fan identity offline in terms of shame for engaging in a deviant hobby and the desire to become skilled within that pursuit. At all of these ACG conventions, we see the need of young Malaysians to get together in person, besides using the Internet as a space to chat about their hobbies beyond geographical borders. In this way, shamefulness about being an anime fan or a geek empowered some young Malaysians to take up challenges 2 in opening up their geekiness in the local public sphere. That initially involved them affirming their local identities as people who accumulated subcultural capital mainly from Japan since their childhood.
In addition, their marginalized feelings did not originate only from Japanese media objects. For instance, Zain liked the Gundam series (Japanese media franchise featuring giant robots) but he was more absorbed in American shooting games, military action figures, and his cosplaying was inspired by his military action figure collection. Even among those who were identified as fans of Japanese ACG, some also liked American TV series, played Korean online games and cosplayed their characters. That is reflected in my observation of the convention activities. Malaysian fan conventions initiated by fans of Japanese ACG conceived elements of popular media objects such as Hollywood movies and American comic book superheroes. Because of the wide popularity of American media objects in Malaysia, offline fan gatherings for American media objects were not an initial offline platform for Malaysian geeks and deviant hobby enthusiasts. In other words, ‘alternativity’ (Napier, 2007) of mundane routines was dispensable for fans of American popular culture, but Japanese popular culture fans in Malaysia needed the ‘alternativity’ desperately because of their marginalized feelings, especially during the early 2000s.
Marginalized feelings could be at the root of the interviewees’ involvement in local conventions. At the same time, it should be underlined here that none of them implied a preference for a closed gathering among a limited group of people. They showed a desire to welcome newcomers to the convention they were involved in. For example, Hadi said,
The event is meant to be open to people who do not know [about ACG]. That’s how it is supposed to be. It’s like telling them that people like us are not weird as you think … we show you things we actually watch and play. That’s it. If you have the same interest as what we have, you are just one of us …
Nora also said, ‘Anyone can enjoy the event as long as they are open-minded’, and she continued to say, ‘I wouldn’t say the concept of ACG is new but it’s still not as big as in other countries like America or the UK. … But it is growing [in Malaysia]’. When Alina talked about newcomers to ACG conventions, she said, ‘I think they will actually enjoy because there’s a lot [of things] to look into [at] an event’. The ACG community, the interviewees referred to accepting a wide range of people who consume different ACG products. Each convention provides a space where attendees can feel closeness with one another, because there are elements that enable relationships to build no matter which ACG form each attendee is interested in. Anyone is free to feel that they are a member of the community.
Turner (2012) expounded that ‘communitas’ is not the same as ‘solidarity’ (p. 5). The solidarity realizes a sense of togetherness that is opposed to the existence of an out-group. An opposing group such as non-ACG fans was not indicated among the interviewees. They instead implied that anyone can be a part of the community if a person has the capability to step in to the new (sub)culture, or a person realizes that he/she actually has interest in a part of ACG fan culture. Thus, the discursive ACG community mentioned by these interviewees is grounded with feeling of communitas. Hernandez (2012) identified communitas fandom as only integrated with affective sensibility as a fan, and this fandom is short-lived. However, in the case of these interviewees, I did not identify the period when they shifted their fandom membership from communitas fandom, which is bonded merely by the feeling of togetherness, to more structured fandom. They seem not to be in communitas fandom but rather having the feeling of communitas – intense feelings of social togetherness and belonging. This constant feeling of communitas is one of the factors responsible for their continuous involvement in conventions.
Accepted ideology and admirable hierarchy
In this study, all interviewees had been involved in at least one activity since finding a local convention. These activities helped to form their identities at conventions, which comprised ‘cosplayers’, ‘organizers’ (including ‘volunteers’ and ‘helpers’), ‘booth owners’ (including artists), ‘stage performers’ and ‘gamers’ (Table 2). A kind of hierarchical system was identified in some identical groups centring around shared ideology. Since seven interviewees had descriptions as cosplayers and four as convention organizers, I discuss hierarchy as the factor of their continuity of involvement in ACG conventions, taking cosplayers and organizers as examples.
Mei explained how she discovered cosplay in 2005, when her friend asked her to come along to one small event. She said, ‘I wasn’t interested [in cosplay] at that time until I went to the convention. I realized there are a lot of people who actually do [cosplay]’. Within the same year, she read about cosplay online and began cosplaying. She explained,
[W]hen you just search on the Internet you realize, oh, wow, [it] is actually how you do your costumes; what type of cloth to use; what type of plastic you need for your sword, your arrows, your bows … so mostly the research was done online.
Using information found online, Mei acquired the necessary knowledge to be a cosplayer. She also added,
The first thing is to actually show your, I would say, maybe skills in cosplaying: how you actually style your wig or how you did the prop or the sword. So people will ask you [about your cosplay skills at the convention].
Therefore, from the beginning Mei’s cosplay activity appeared to be not only for having fun wearing costumes of her favourite anime characters. She stepped into the community to confront her challenges in cosplay. The convention was the place to show her achievement as well as to share her process with other cosplayers. Hadi also began his cosplay experience by utilizing information online within a year after his first visit to a small convention in his hometown. However, he stopped cosplaying after a few years because he did not agree with the hierarchical system imposed by some senior cosplayers. He explained why he stopped cosplaying as follows:
[T]hey [senior cosplayers] created this terms that I hate the most. … like some groups that just cosplayed for few years and suddenly created this. … new cosplayers have to respect these old cosplayers. [F]or me, … you just cosplay and have fun; why you have to have this.
He was not comfortable with the formation of a hierarchical role imposed by the other members of the cosplay community, even though he enthusiastically spoke of his cosplay experiences, such as difficulties getting the right costumes and wigs, making his own props and forming a cosplay group to showcase all the characters of Naruto Shippden (anime title) at one convention.
Conversely, Hadi accepted the hierarchical system among convention organizers. He began volunteering for one convention 1 year before stopping cosplay and continued that for 5 years. In his second year of volunteering, the organizing committee started a volunteer training camp prior to the convention. He explained,
[A]t first I thought like going to be you and me, both strangers who don’t know what you guys [referring to the main committee members] do and what we [are assigned to] do. We are just here to help you guys and then we leave. The camp totally changed everything. It means like you and me get to know each other more and then we hang out after that. We created more bonds. And then … we helped out for the event in a very fun way [laugh].
As Hadi also said, ‘the old people [were] guiding the new people’ – there was a hierarchical system among members within the volunteers’ group. He even became one of the training camp leaders in his fifth year, responsible for coordinating new volunteers. He did not like the hierarchical system in the cosplay community but at the same time, he showed respect towards leading committee members who had managed the convention longer than he had. He added, ‘I’m close to the volunteer friends … I feel like … I am making a mafia group’, and ‘I’m glad that I know these people. If not, I wouldn’t be here [referring the place he lived because his hometown was far away]’. Ito (2012) found from her study about the AMV community in the United States that newcomers respect those who have more experience, but that respect goes only to those members who can create high-quality AMVs. It is not only about years of experience but also sense and skills in producing AMVs. In Hadi’s case, he did not agree with a skill- or achievement-based seniority system. Moreover, this particular group of cosplayers did not meet his expectations of who should take on the role of seniors. He insisted that he still had some cosplayer friends, and it was not a matter of feelings towards individuals. His continuous involvement in the cosplay community, thus, was not sustained only by his enjoyable feelings and having friendships with members of the community.
Among the interviewees, relatively senior cosplayers (Lily, Mei, Nora and Zain) said that they did not respect a cosplayer if he/she did not do certain things as a cosplayer. Lily said, ‘Cosplay is about, er, refining your technique and putting your effort and also [showing] how good you are at coming out with a certain replica of the costume’. She also added, ‘[C]osplay is about bringing, er, a certain character that you like, to life, and making it as close as the certain character as possible’. Mei’s definition of cosplay was the same as Lily’s definition to some extent. Lily used the expression ‘to life’, and Mei highlighted the importance of giving life to a certain character when she explained the difference between new and old cosplayers that she had noticed while cosplaying nearly a decade:
[New cosplayers] end up cosplaying because they like the costume. Or they like the character’s looks. So they don’t really know how the anime is like or how the manga is like. Ah … it’s alright for people to [cosplay in that way] but sometimes, er, when you really really like a character and you see people don’t cosplay it the way that you think it should be, you feel a bit sad.
Mei and Lily participated in different conventions but they shared similar thoughts on how a cosplayer is supposed to be. In addition, the following description by Nora, who is a newer cosplayer, indicates that she accepted the way the convention-based cosplay community intervened in her cosplay activities and how the experience developed her as a cosplayer in the community:
It gave me motivation and encouragement to do as good as them [other cosplayers at the convention], so, ya, then [I am] getting to know them. I know one cosplayer. She did a very good job on her costume so I was bit jealous [laugh] and bit motivated. … so we exchanged information with each other.
She also recalled the most memorable cosplay she had done so far:
I got experience how it feels like to make your own costume; the blood, sweat and tears on the costume; also to make the props for the character. So, ya, it’s different from ordering [a costume] because ordering it from a tailor, you don’t have to do anything. You just pay. But this one you do it on your own; you got your own fabrics; you got your own materials. You put your efforts to it. … You feel like it’s all from your own handwork. Er, you feel you have done justice to your own character by doing it yourself.
Nora ordered her costume for her first cosplay. She had to compromise her cosplay efforts for a few years because of her limited budget and time. ‘Doing justice to your own character’ was important for Nora in cosplaying since other cosplayers she met at conventions made her want to try as hard as she could. Miyamoto (2012) pointed out that the basis for ‘the evaluation of beauty’ among cosplayers is different to other usual standards of beauty. The beauty or level of cosplay is judged based on resemblance to an original character in the media object. This implies that cosplay fandoms in both Japan and Malaysia embrace the same ideology of cosplay. Those who embrace the ideology stay in the community.
As identified by Okabe (2012) and Miyamoto (2012), the cosplay fandom is established with a shared identity indicating who a cosplayer is and a stipulated manner and rules followed by many cosplayers, even in Malaysia. In ‘structural fandom’ (Hernandez, 2012), the collective identity and ideology maintaining the hieratical system are shared. Structural fandom is not a comfortable community for everyone, even if that person admires the activity. As Hills (2002) pointed out, a social hierarchy is established and continuously renewed in structural fandom as ‘fans share a common interest while also competing over fan knowledge, access to the object of fandom, and status’ (p. 46). Someone who enjoys cosplaying does not necessarily enjoy being a member of the cosplay fandom, especially in physical spaces like convention sites. While at conventions, obvious differences are explicitly identified in terms of ‘skills’ based on the existing ideology of a cosplayer regarding how the cosplay should be done, what a cosplayer should achieve and so on.
Other activities the interviewees were involved in also implied knowledge and skills or a ‘fan subcultural capital’-based hierarchy (Geraghty, 2014). For instance, Jafar and Mei definitely had years of hands-on experience in handling fan conventions in Malaysia. They said that it is not necessary that all enthusiastic convention attendees are efficient committee members or even volunteers, and they always recruit new volunteers. Regulations and systems necessary to run any given convention are developed by older members. Booth owners, stage performers and gamers all require fan subcultural capital to be successful or attain satisfaction in their activities. Therefore, I propose to call the hierarchy in convention-based fandom an ‘admirable hierarchy’ because those who are at the top of the hierarchy are admired and approved by other members of the fandom, as was also reported among AMV fans in the United States (Ito, 2012).
Conclusion
Each interviewee admitted feeling socially marginalized to a certain extent because of their fondness for ACG. That is the reason why the feeling of communitas they found at ACG conventions had such a strong impact on their lives. These participants also continued to be involved in conventions for a longer term by participating in activities. They went on to build closer relationships with some members who shared the same hieratical system within the structural fandom. These interviewees accepted the system in the fandom and were bonded through the respective fan activity of local conventions. Otherwise, I would say that they were of higher status in the particular fandom, and because of this they continued their involvement in their respective conventions and served in those communities. Moreover, those who have a certain status within the fandom community may feel responsible for maintaining the system that keeps their fan activity alive. While being involved in structural fandom with a hierarchy system, the interviewees still had feelings of communitas with ACG event goers. In Turner’s (2012) description of the communitas phenomenon among mountain climbers and a guide, she explained that the guide, being in a higher position than the other climbers at one point, was excluded from the communitas. In other words, when equal states are switched to hierarchical states, the balance of the communitas breaks down. In this study, the interviewees’ lived experiences indicated that the feelings of communitas and the system of ‘admirable hierarchy’ could coexist within the fan convention situation. The fandoms constructed through local ACG conventions consist of democratic aspects as their imagined communities are open and reachable to anyone, and their systems are attainable and negotiable, even though there is existing ideology.
Recently, anime fans are not as much outcasts among Malaysian teenagers as before. In 2014, the estimated number of attendees reached 49,000 for Comic Fiesta (http://www.comicfiesta.org/), the most successful ACG convention in Malaysia. Whether the increasing number of local convention attendees only reflects the number of young Malaysians who walk around aimlessly at convention sites or if they have the potential to be key players within their respective fandoms is still unknown. As Hills (2013) argues, however, that, undoubtedly, Web 2.0 is responsible for making it possible for ACG fans to easily share and acquire subcultural capital as well as to effortlessly be collectors of media objects even in Malaysia. It is also becoming highly competitive to be an exceptional fan with efficient subcultural capital and demonstrative skills in a respective fan activity. Besides the growing numbers of ACG convention attendees, I have witnessed the development of computer-animated television series produced by Malaysian animation companies since the late 2000s. Original characters of these animations, which apparently reflect the influence of anime and manga, have been printed on children’s clothes and stationery which are now sold widely in local markets. This discussion is based only on the views of a limited number of ACG convention participants and my own observations. However, it will pave the way for other local researchers to examine further how young Malaysians develop their own fan communities, which may lead them to live as responsible adults as well as fans, and how these fandoms may contribute to the Malaysian creative industry. It is also hoped that further study will henceforth extend this discussion in comparing ACG convention phenomena to other countries.
Footnotes
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Ministry of Education Malaysia under Exploratory Research Grant Scheme [ERGS/1-2012/SSI08/UPM/02/8].