Season 10, Episode 6: A World Gone Mad (Patreon)

This week on MSB: we're back with another remarkable episode of Victory dense with big questions: Is war a part of human nature? Is it better to die or to kill? Should we fight for people or for ideals?

And if that's not enough, in the research Thom begins to dive into the world of Japanese advertising agencies as we explore their unsung role in anime production.

Content warning: this episode of Victory alludes to the threat of sexual violence, which we discuss during the talkback. 

Please listen to it!

Show Notes

• The principal source for information about the ad industry and the internal operations of ad agencies in Japan in 1990 was:

  • Brian Moeran, A Japanese Ad Agency: An Anthropology of Media and Markets. University of Hawai'i Press, 1996. 

• Additional background about the relationships between anime studios, ad agencies, and sponsors came from:

  • Marc Steinberg. Anime’s Media Mix: Franchising Toys and Characters in Japan. University of Minnesota Press, 2012.

  • Justin Sevakis, The Anime Economy - Part 1: Let's Make An Anime! for Anime News Network.com, March 5, 2012. Available at https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/feature/2012-03-05.

• The tweets by Ueda Masuo that kicked off this whole investigation are archived here, and Mark Simmons translated them here.

• The comments by Koizumi Yoshiaki, the TV Asahi producer who worked on Victory, have also been translated by Mark Simmons and are available here.

• Information about early TV ads in the United States (with numerous videos of historical ads) can be found in this article on Project Muse by William M. O'Barr.

• The history (and the loss) of the first ever TV commercial in Japan is documented here on the Lost Media Wiki.

• Additional information about the TV industry and TV ads, including the relationships between networks, key stations, and semi-key stations came from:

  • The Japanese Wikipedia pages for key stations, and semi-key stations.

  • This 2021 Japanese article from the marketing consultant company NYLE which explains the difference between a network program and a local program for would-be advertisers.

  • This Japanese article from Friday Digital (republished by MSN) about the semi-key station Kansai Television and its recent success making drama programs for network distribution.

  • This page talks about the similar structure of TV ads in the United States.

  • This page describes how 'upfront' advertising works in the United States.

• General information about the major players in this story can be found on the Japanese Wikipedia pages for Dentsu / 電通, Sotsu / 創通, Asatsu / ADKホールディングス, TV Asahi / テレビ朝日, Nagoya Broadcasting Network / 名古屋テレビ放送, the TV Asahi Friday-evening anime-slot, the Nagoya TV Saturday-evening anime-slot, and the Nagoya TV Sunday-morning anime-slot.

• And just for fun, the scandal with the Space World amusement park and its ice skating rink full of dead fish is documented in various places, including in Sports Illustrated and CNN.

Mobile Suit Breakdown is written, recorded, and produced within Lenapehoking, the ancestral and unceded homeland of the Lenape, or Delaware, people. Before European settlers forced them to move west, the Lenape lived in New York City, New Jersey, and portions of New York State, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Connecticut. Lenapehoking is still the homeland of the Lenape diaspora, which includes communities living in Oklahoma, Wisconsin, and Ontario.

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