India’s anime community is fairly decent in size and growing fast, with some pretty hardcore fans, but its still an underground thing. You can usually find anime discussion threads on Indian forums, and there are a couple of dedicated forums like Animestan, the blog/forum which my name links to.

Unlike similar asian countries like South Korea, China, Hong Kong and the Phillipines, India never had a legacy of Japanese speakers after WW2, instead having a legacy of English language use, so Indian readership has been dominated by the more available English-speaking European and North American comics, (basically India was growing up on Tintin and Batman when countries like South Korea in comparison were growing up on Astro Boy and Fist of the North Star). India’s anime community only began more recently with the English-speaking fan community, rather than stright from the horse’s mouth. That is a shame because India is culturally more similar to the east asian sphere, but grew up largely on European style comics, just due to a quirk of history.

Like most places, the main source of anime viewership, is downloaded fansubs, which are considered superior to the dubs aired locally on TV, although a lot of people have crap internet connections, so have to rely on sharing disks in the local community. A lot of people for this reason are exposed to anime at university, where there are fast connections and shared dorms. The local audience recieves Animax India, which airs popular shows like GitS:SAC, Naruto, Cowboy Bebop, etc, usually dubbed into English, although Animax claims it wants to do regional languages like Hindi too, and is known for in-house dubs into other east asian languages. Some other American style cartoon channels occasionally air anime like Dragonball, but Animax is the only dedicated channel. DVDs have become more available recently, although usually arnt regionalised into local languages since most of the target market speaks English. Also, some anime fans import anime from America or Japan. In the last few years, some larger book stores have started to stock manga. Before that, the occasional manga series used to be imported or sold second hand in random small book stores.

Its also worth noting that to celebrate the anniversary of Indo-Japanese relations, (which have always been quite strong due to India being part of the same cultural region, being seen by some Indians during the independence movement as an asian inspiration, India not being effected by WW2 in the same way as countries like China, and being seen by Japanese as the homeland of the Buddha and the famous saint Bodhidharma), an anime was created of one of India’s two great Sanskrit epics, the Ramayana, and this was really popular in India, even before the recent surge in anime viewership. Ramayana: The Legend of Price Rama was made in 1992, and has aired extensively on Indian TV since. Many Indians who dont follow anime even consider it to be better than the other myriad adaptations of the epic (so do I).

Other anime and manga occasionally uses Indian themes, like yogic type powers in Naruto, the Kushan Empire in Berserk, Osamu Tezuka’s Buddha manga (which according to some sources is selling well for a manga in India), anime like Rg Veda (the name of India’s oldest sacred text), and Indian mythology in games like Shin Megami Tensei, etc. Also of course Jouney to the West, a story about Chinese monks visiting India for Buddhist scriptures has been adapted countless times.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_comics

India and Japan share similar philosophical ideals and culture, thanks to the common influence of Buddhism (some Indian gods have been adopted into the Shinto-Buddhist pantheon for example, and Shintoism was pretty similar to Hinduism anyway), so when I look at India, I kinda see a country that could potentially be another Japan entertainment-wise – but unfortunatly is held back by attitudes like ‘cartoons are for kids’, and consumer demand from the masses for Bollywood musicals that are mostly crap, etc. Also, although India is a free country, there is usually some political group or journalist willing to stir up a moral outcry, as seen in this badly written tabloid piece:

http://www.tehelka.com/story_main33.asp?filename=hub040807cutie_and.asp

That sort of thing dosent effect anime fans who are old enough to buy their own anime, and I think a large proportion of the community are in their 20s, but it probably does send some ignorant parents into a frenzy if their kid watches Animax, etc. On the other hand there has been far more posetive journalism from jounalists who are also otakus, both in national papers and on sites such as this:

Techshout link

India’s TV market is already the third largest in the world, and will tripple in the next decade, and India is one of the largest animation outsourcing destinations, so im hoping to see an Indian version of Bleach or GitS or Initial D one of these days. Superficially speaking, it seems India is poor (how the hell do you set a cyberpunk story in a city that looks like it is falling apart), or that India is conservative (like how the government banned Salman Rushdie’s book for the sake of minority opinion), or that India isnt part of the east asian cultures (being host to European and Arab invaders from the west in the last few centuries of its history) – but this is the same country that wrote the Kama Sutra, gave birth to the Buddha, has epics in which gods fire nuclear weapons Dragonball style at each other, where half the world’s software is written, with an established heavy metal, hip-hop and electronic music scene, where shiney skyscrapers are springing up every few weeks, which had its own wandering ronin, and 5000 years of history, etc.

“Singaporean anime distributor Odex is asking for legal settlements from children as young as nine years old for copyright infringement through file-sharing”

Im an information junkie. I enjoy finding new sources of entertainment in life, whether they be ancient epics or modern cyberpunk, obscure folklore or science fiction classics, idealism or nihilism, religion or irreligion, fiction or non-fiction, myth or history, domestic or foreign, mainstream or underground.

Anime attracted me because of its unique diversity – I have listened to music, watched TV, watched films, played computer games, read comics and read books from across the world – Europe, North America, India, China, Japan, Korea, etc – and from every genre. And in all that time, I never found anything apart from literature (and the films adapted from it) and manga (and the anime adapted from it) that were so diverse.

Maybe there will always be counter-culture movements, and maybe marginal or underground expression will always make it into the mainstream, in which case there is nothing to worry about, but its nice that anime has a higher degree of artistic diversity – I cant watch something like ‘Ghost in the Shell’ on British TV – I cant watch a Indian version of ‘Bleach’ – I cant watch an American ‘Berserk’.

There is also the issue of censorship – part of the reason I enjoy anime, is that it dosent not conform to western taboo – it is made for a Japanese audience, but I can relate more to the shows they watch than the shows people watch in my own country.

If anime were commercialised for the export market (and it seems to be going in this direction), how long would it be before companies decided “lets not mention Satan in this scene, because it might offend elements of the export audience”, etc?

Commercialisation can damage creative freedom.

The saving grace of Japanese entertainment so far has been manga. But the pressures of market demand may force the anime and manga industries apart, with great Japanese manga series not often being adapted into anime, in favour of series that can be easily exported.

Featuring classic series that might generate interest in, or at least acceptance of anime is OK, but for hard-core fans the best outcome would be for enough interest to develop in closing the gap between Japan and the rest of the world that series would appear almost simultaneously in Japan and abroad. That, and a respect for unedited, original language anime.

Normally, I’d agree with you. I wouldn’t mind things going “mainstream” since it implies better funding for projects and more accessibility. However, when it comes to anime going mainstream in the West, this isn’t really the case.

As much as I’d like anime to be more popularized around here, and lose the stigmatization of being “cartoon porn” or “kiddy shows”, it’d do us hardcore fans more harm than good. The way I see it, the more popular anime gets here in the West, the more companies will try to crack down on piracy and downloading, which means acquiring episodes fresh off the air from Japan may prove to be much more difficult.