著者

PELÁEZ MAZARIEGOS Edgar Santiago

出版者

国際日本文化研究センタープロジェクト推進室

雑誌

Dōjin Journal : An academic journal on popular cultures established by the International Research Center for Japanese Studies (ISSN:24357901)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.1, pp.27-36, 2020-11-30

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This paper analyzes the role of Mexican fans in the promotion and distribution of Japanese media content in Mexico, focusing mainly on anime. During the 1990s, in the middle of the global craze for Japanese content, Mexican audiences became highly involved in the consumption of Japanese animation. While new television broadcasting companies began partnerships with Japanese enterprises, such as Bandai and Tōei, to bring Japanese media content to Mexico, fans or otaku became not only active consumers but also promoters of anime, hoping that bigger audiences would prompt large media companies to supply more of these cultural goods. After Japanese content was removed from mainstream media in the early 2000s, some of these fans decided to take matters into their own hands and get more involved in the distribution of anime and other related products by starting their own companies. Through trial and error, these entrepreneurial fans discovered ways to navigate the business environment in Japan and establish successful arrangements with Japanese companies that met the demands of the Mexican market, becoming cultural intermediaries that revitalized and created a second "boom" in anime consumption in Mexico. This research argues that Mexican fans of anime have evolved from text readers and poachers into cultural brokers who form a bridge between Japanese anime producers and Mexican consumers, and are, therefore, a central part of the distribution of anime and other Japanese content in Mexico.