Hello everyone. I'm doing this post mainly to try and keep everyone in the loop about what may be a very troubling development. This news is actually about a week old now, and I was planning to save this for my next Monthly Update post, but I thought it might be a better idea to say something about this while the news is relatively fresh. Plus it'll mean a shorter Monthly Update post for this month (the last one ended up being two pages).
So last Sunday night, the orange lunatic who is unfortunately our nation's president announced on his social media platform that he wants to put a one-hundred percent tariff on movies produced outside of the U.S. Now you may be reading this and asking, "Why should I care?" The reason you should care, dear readers, is because this tariff could potentially affect anime distribution to this U.S. Now a little earlier this week, the Anime News Network posted an article that goes into the nuts and bolts of this potential crisis.
You can read the article by clicking here.
The short version of this tariff could end up being nothing at all, or it could be one of the worst things to happen to the anime industry in decades. Apparently the intention of this tariff is to dissuade American production companies from filing overseas. It wouldn't affect film projects that originate from other countries, like say the upcoming Madoka Magica movie that we're supposed to get later this winter. The thing to remember though is this is a developing situation. Trump or some of his cronies could decide to try and expand the tariff to include things like anime productions.
That same ANN article remarked that Trump probably isn't an anime fan. It's probably more accurate to say that he doesn't even know what anime is. This is a man who is out of touch with...I was going to say the common people, but it's probably way more accurate to say that he's out of touch with reality. Trump also recently announced that he wants to reopen Alcatraz because one night he saw the movie, Escape from Alcatraz and apparently thought it was some sort of documentary. I guess the point I'm trying to make here is that the potential impact Trump's movie tariff might have on anime distribution is more of an unintended consequence than anything.
I'm not saying this to defend the man; far from it. What I'm trying to say is that Trump is more like a kaiju that's lumbering through the city and trailing destruction in bis wake, totally blind and ignorant to all of the lives he stepping on and all of the buildings he's destroying. Unfortunately it's looking like the anime industry may end up getting caught in his path of destruction. If anything though, we should probably be glad that Trump is clueless about anime and manga. I imagine that if anyone were to show that lunatic a few episodes of Sailor Moon, he'd probably declare anime and manga to be a threat to our nation's youth and try to slap an embargo on it.
Sorry for going off on kind of a small rant there. Like I said at the start of this post, I'm just trying to do what little I can to make sure everyone is aware of what is a potentially troubling situation. The sad truth is this is a stressful time to be an anime fan, and it probably won'y get better anytime soon. All we can do is stay aware of what's going on and find ways to deal with it if we can. The movie tariff may be a minor story to the major news outlets, but it could be a very big deal to those of us who enjoy anime and other forms of entertainment from places like Japan or Korea.
Until we meet again, thanks for reading.
