Tokyo Anime Fair, 2010

Doraemon floats above the Tokyo Anime Fair

Simple, rounded blue, yellow, white characters balloon from the ceiling above your head; people in the standard, over-sized-head costumes (perhaps as an octopus or with spiked fabric hair) gather passers-by; perfectly delineated thighs are line-drawn under short skirts or revealed by figure-hugging costumes on posters (and exposed on sales girls); a samurai poses with a stuffed toy… It's time for anime promotion. A couple of my recent posts have been about legal issues around manga, so about time for some positivity – perhaps especially in the light of one humourless/offensive comment from a US Republican that anime is proof that two atomic bombs weren't enough.

Anime, like manga, is often primarily associated with women in revealing clothes, but in fact it's a cross-age, cross-gender, broad church industry and art. The Tokyo Anime Fair allowed the industry to present its latest – whether from Doraemon (the long-lasting, "simple" and ubiquitous figure for kids) or from Trigun (an actor poses with his gun in red trench coat, yellow shades and spiked blond hair ready for action) or from colleges (Tokyo Gakuin, for one, promoted its anime/design course – not alone in employing, yes, short-skirted women in sales pitches at its booth.).

The event was held at Tokyo Big Sight, with more than 50,000 visitors on Saturday and topping 54,000 on the final day, yesterday, when I visited. However the industry is doing, there still seems no shortage of fans. And still no shortage of overseas interest judging by the significant number of foreign visitors.

But this is the 21st century, and the industry is apparently dipping in fortune of late - competing, as is everyone in the current climate, with alternative methods of entertainment, working out how to make a living from digital media, determining how to combat piracy etc. Only a month or so since Japan-observer Roland Kelts wondered about the state of the anime industry and suggested it needed to break with simple "national" boundaries. (Notable by its absence at the Tokyo Fair was Ghibli Studios – whose latest offering is about to be released, based as usual around an ecology theme, and this time on a favourite book from my childhood, The Borrowers. Maybe Ghibli has both that Japanese-identity plus its own of the kind Roland was mentioning – a success that doesn't need industry-promotion.)

But industry struggles or not, anime makers – often major companies, though also small producers – were putting on a good display. And at least breaking national boundaries in acknowledging and encouraging interest from abroad. China, this year, had notable floor space at the fair, though comparatively unnattended by fans, at least – however, the boy below seemed interested in what they had to offer.

Sales girls meanwhile attracted the most interest, if that interest is measured through fans with cameras, smilingly allowing photographs, as long as they included the promotional material they were holding. (I did spot one aging "fan", however, focusing his digital camera on skirt-and-thigh close up only, fulfilling a Japanese stereotype all on his own.) Sex undoubtedly sells to a large male target audience for certain types of anime, but it should not be forgotten that anime covers all the bases and targets in its audience and themes, styles and aims.

It's perhaps a question of finding your own space.

A fan poses with a character