The Americampaign is my fallback if the Japaign doesn't work, which implies a bias in favor of the Sun. The reasons for my Japonisme are in part shallow and in part profound. However, of the various reasons, one in particular stands out, and it's the real reason why I am looking East:
The cartoon would work best in a Japanese context.
(Plus I've already thought through the story and don't want to have to start from scratch.)
(Plus I've fallen in love with the characters. Sue me.)

I can't write a summer romance novel, much less a work of political criticism, that takes place in a country in which I do not live. Ignorance of the ways of life would be the smaller problem. The bigger problem would be all the people thinking, "Why is this random American madman writing a political treatise against the status quo of JAPANESE education?" BUT! If I am living there, especially as a teacher, suddenly there is no more mystery.

Anyway, as I said, the cartoon would work better in a Japanese context. I can't explain all the reasons why this is true ad hoc, though in the future I will have a much better outline of the problems the series will deal with. Fundamentally, the show will be a criticism of 21st century neoliberalism and bureaucracy. This is a problem that plagues the entire first world. The story could take place in, heavens, Bulgaria and still relate to even an American audience. My story will intentionally have wide political relevance. It increases my options for future lobbying, whether or not it will be abroad.

The Plot of Futoko

One of the main characters, Dove, besides being a dissident intellectual generally, has the advantage of being fluent in the English language (it helped that her mother is an English teacher). Early in the first series, she criticizes the abject failures of the English education provided to her by the public school system. In addition, she faces the anti-intellectual conformism of her peers, who mostly have no interest learning the least bit of the language and ostracize her for her "arrogant" passion for learning the language.

There are several advantages to this narrative approach. First, there is the naturalistic anti-institutionalism expected of a young, energetic, and eccentric student. My primary target audience will be high schoolers and university students. It will be very easy for them to relate to the straightforward observations Dove has on the failure of English education in Japan. Second, this provides an unusual circumstance where the student is actually an expert on the subject being taught. This allows her to contemplate appropriate pedagogy from a position of authority. From this standpoint, her conflicts with teachers regarding their apparent lack of interest in adequate methodology highlight both the cultural and structural problems that are at the core of the failings of contemporary education, everywhere. Her direct and earnest questions, those of a student who just wants to learn, quickly bring to light the excuses made to uphold failing bureaucratic systems. And the whole time she is simply and inarguably right.

The second bit is that Dove is something of an "Ameriboo." She had picked up the habit of reading American literature in order to practice the English language. The very first episode introduces a girl who has been severely influenced by American Transcendentalism. This is the heart of her opening monologue, a poetic critique of Japanese society based on a quasi-religious romanticization of nature. (This also foreshadows certain feminist issues addressed as the story progresses, but I digress.)

Dove's interest in American literature began (before the first episode) with an exploration of famous written works. It is in this way that she descovered Thoreau's Walden at a relatively young age (the story starts in 7th grade). Her reading of Walden sparks deeper interest in philosophical and political literature, bringing her to read more American political works, eventually branching out to the broader Western canon. So as to not bore the audience, this aspect of her life generally occurs in passing or in the background (you know, while the interpersonal drama ensues). A new theme is brought up as she reads a new book, and that theme often returns later as she reconsiders what she had read after new life experiences. The entire show is ultimately a coming-of-age story of four characters, and in the first series, Dove's character development centers around her transition from the desire of life in the woods to the pursuit of a life in politics. The way this is expressed in the story is first through her reading of Melville's "Bartleby, the Scrivener." Wondering what the bust of Cicero is supposed to represent, she learns about Cicero's role in Roman democracy as well as his ideological conflict with the Epicureans. In this way, throughout her high school years, she deliberates between Epicurus and Cicero: the life in the garden vs. the life in the city. Ultimately, in seeing how corrupted systems seriously hurt those around her, she chooses the life of politics. There it is: my artistic critique of 21st century political apathy. And, surely, I will try to make this metaphor as on-the-nose as possible. (Plenty more literary allusion ensues beyond this.) There's a great irony that encloses the entire story: the character who wanted to live in the woods ends up in the capital, and the wannabe high-ranking bureaucrat (Osprey) ends up living in the countryside.

There is a particular advantage to having an intellectual main character show interest in a foreign country. From the perspective of a Japanese audience, they will become exposed to Western thought, and they will also be exposed to American approaches to politics, civics, and education as Dove begins to research these things. From the perspective of an American audience, they will be forced to listen to Dove's casual critiques of the way the system runs in America compared to Japan or to her own ideal. A foreign perspective is free of the presuppositions of the native population. Dove is shackled neither to the unchallenged ideals of Japanese society, nor does she take for granted the outrageous aspects of American culture that we have somehow grown used to.

I've researched both places, and I will continue to research both places. Simply put, there is so much worth in the detached comparison of the ways of Japanese and American society. P.S. The Japanese are sometimes stereotyped for having little awareness of the outside world. I don't deny the stereotype. But it's true in the United States as well. And if Americans watch a series that is critical of the education and bureaucracy of JAPAN, they will feel much more comfortable listening to Dove's critiques than if they were watching a story taking place in America. This will therefore make it much more impactful when Dove begins to make connctions between the two countries as she becomes increasingly disillusioned from her fantasy of America as the "Land of the Free." Suddenly, her perfectly reasonable arguments will be forced into a domestic context, and the audience will have already unwittingly agreed to them.

There is another serious advantage to the story taking place in Japan: the approach it provides me in dealing with religion. Dove is a (radical) atheist. Her best friend Pheasant is a minority in Japan given that she is a true, believing Christian. This gives me the opportunity to tell a story where Christianity is the minority position in every conceivable way, and the Christian character is unequivocably the underdog. Pheasant and Dove frequently engage in theological debate, and for Dove, Christianity is a perplexing non-sequitur — in a particular way that wouldn't be the case if she were, say, a minority atheist within the Bible Belt, or an ex-Christian. Pheasant is a proselytizer without being a proselytizer; Dove listens to Pheasant's theological arguments precisely because her point of view is so unusual. Dove eventually approaches the study of Christianity like a science. Though for most of high school she could be considered like that of a rationalist, she eventually simply studies the history. This provides narrative opportunities for telling a story that involves both religious metaphysics and history, despite not being a work of, let's say, Protestant propaganda, direct-to-DVD. (I deal with metaphysics to ultimately disprove metaphysics, that is, to demonstrate the irrelevance of it as a field of study.) The story appeals to Christians, because it features a Christian character represented as an underdog. It also appeals to atheists, because it is not a naïve work of Sunday school propaganda. I could go on. Maybe some other time.

Finally, there is the advantage of history. Dove happens to be interested in the study of history, including, naturally, the history of Japan, which she finds relatively uninteresting until she gets deep into the Meiji period, where she learns about the passionate grassroots politics of the Freedom and People's Rights Movement. Having studied Western philosophy and politics to an extent herself, she has a particular affinity towards the intellectuals who learned from the West in order to attempt revolutionary democratic reform. She also learns about the Meiji origins of public education in Japan and directly confronts the degree to which education determines culture given its central importance in creating the popular nationalism that became Showa fascism.

Americans know about the Civil Rights Era. Well, more accurately, Americans have a vague sense of nostalgia for the Civil Rights Era while remaining ignorant on most of the details. This vague nostalgia, nevertheless, means that there would be less novelty in creating a series that deals particularly with this era (granting that it may still be a very strong theme nevertheless). In comparison, Americans know practically nothing about the Meiji Era, but furthermore it seems to me that even the Japanese, generally speaking, recall very little about the period that evokes any kind of inspiration. Americans, but also people from other countries, look back vaguely at the life of Martin Luther King, Jr. as a source of political inspiration. There is no comparable tradition of the Japanese, or anyone else, looking back at any major or minor figure of the Meiji Era as a source of inspiration despite the profound parallels the era has with democratic politics today. The Freedom and People's Rights Movement, or even the early initiatives of the Meiji government in establishing a system of public education, takes on the role of historical trivia for the vast majority if not simply being forgotten entirely.

Dove, in her historical studies, reflects on her own experience with the utter failure of "democracy" in contemporary Japan as she learns about figures such as Chiba Takusaburo who, once in contact with Western ideas, decided to put the ideas into practice by drafting a People's Constitution at a time when the People's Rights Movement was fighting for the passing of a popular constitution. She recognizes the ways in which propaganda through mass media (newspapers, at the time) as well as control over the education system rapidly diminished the masses' interest in any kind of democratic development, the pursuit of civic rights fading out almost as quickly as it was introduced. Dove relates to the plight of civic intellectuals after the peak of the People's Rights Movement, who, after having spent so much energy studying, traveling, and organizing to solve what were immediate, demonstrable issues affecting the masses, came to realize that there were no more peasants interested in the study of Western literature, let alone making the sacrifices required for high-stakes political participation. There is such a direct link between the fight for democracy in the Meiji Era and the idea of a fight for democracy today, one that almost nobody today appreciates (but Dove does!). This offers a novel approach for both highlighting the degree to which what today is called "democracy" is hardly a democracy at all as well as providing real-life examples of civic role models whose values could be in many cases directly transfered to the modern day.

The Japanese grassroots fight for democracy during the Meiji Era was fundamentally different from the fight for democracy during the American Revolution because it was precisely the common people (or, technically, the low-ranking samurai) who were determined to decide the future of their system of laws and rights, as opposed to the aristocrats who founded the American Republic. It's also different from the study of, for example, abolitionism or even suffrage since it had not been a fight for a specific group of people but was rather a fight for democracy, per se. Ultimately, I find the politics of the Meiji period (and perhaps Taisho period) so inspirational and so full of opportunities for political education through a fictional narrative that it motivates me to tell a story that takes place in Japan. (There will be plenty of allusions to history in the series. Dove often teaches Pheasant about the people and events she learns while reading history books.)

The Elephant.

All this presupposes, of course, that I am able to 1. create an animated series and 2. publish it and attain a non-trivial amount of public attention. Bold assumptions. Especially the second one. The first assumption just requires doing, continuously doing until I get it done. I trust my own work ethic, and my own insanity. The second is built on the assumption that my genius will be recognized. There's nothing I can do to guaruntee that condition. Once I have a pilot episode (or, really, once I have some trailers finished), I will submit my work to film festivals, especially but not limited to high profile ones that cover animation. If I don't win any awards, or I only win the most esoteric awards offered by exclusive secret societies, the entire thing is dead on arrival (which I don't think I will regret, having become a multitalented polymath in the process, but nevertheless).

There is no solution, per se, but aspects of my long-term plan allow for more entry points into fame, or more realistically, infamy. A minor entry point is through my software projects. Grumpet Graphs will be a free-and-open-source software for generating highly visually customizable graphs of all kinds (including timelines), designed to work well within the constraints of documents full of text. Nothing like this exists, to my knowledge. Even within the sphere of paid software, there is surprisingly little available (despite this not being a particularly difficult issue to solve in terms of coding). This could get me some mild attention on the Internet. Probably not. (It was TIMELINES ALONE that convinced me to plan on creating this software. Seriously. What's the deal?)

My much more significant software contribution will be (the free-and-open-source) Grumpet Animator, which will, as it were, become the software I use to make my animated series. This will take me quite a while to make (several years). I will have a devlog on YouTube documenting my process. Absolutely nothing like it currently exists. I could go on forever explaining its particular features, but in short, it is essentially a game engine turned into animation software. Rather than relying on hand-made keyframe animations, the bulk of the animation will be procedural animations built on both math-based bone movement and simple hand-made animation loops. Complexity emerges out of the combination of simple systems. There is so much I will be able to do with this software. Instead of manually animating character movement, I simply "direct" a scene where (AI) characters walk/run/crawl/skip/commando roll from one place to another. Background animations (crowds, pedestrians, traffic) will be automated using basic pathfinding, animation states, etc. Lip syncing will be automated, as will head movements and gestures, with an editor allowing for fine-tuning of character expressions. Presumably there will be a decent amount of fine-tuning required for a professional-looking final result, but the point is that 80% or more of the work will be essentially automated. This will make it possible for me, an "indie" animator, to make an entire animated series. Even more feasible if I manage to find other people to work with. FINGERS CROSSED. Maybe the very existence of this useful creative tool will garner enough attention in-and-of-itself, before I even have any episodes of the series published. Maybe not.

I did mention in LOBBYING APPROACHES that I will definitely be performing live music (in particular, songs that will become part of the soundtrack of my series). My music will be bombastic and very unique. At least, I don't know of much music that has a style similar to my own. If I can perform it live, I can potentially grow a fanbase well before there is a single episode out. Even better if I could start a band. FINGERS CROSSED. (They are getting sore...)

All this is in addition to the fact that as I work on making the assets and artwork for my series, I will post these things using social media platforms as (politically-charged) art pages. There will be quite a bit of concept art that will come out over the years and even more 3D model work that I'll be able to showcase. This could, hypothetically, get me a bit of an audience before launch, especially if I make sure that my style is impeccable. I have an eye, I believe. DON'T LET THIS TEMPORARY WEBPAGE FOOL YOU.

Conclusion

I say all this with the very real possibility that in six months, a year, or two years I will be completely convinced that I must remain in the United States and deal with domestic politics. However, I have an extremely high amount of creative energy: in this way my current goals are, really, self-indulgent. I want to create a profound work of art. My motivations are of course also political, and this work of art will be extremely political, and it has utility in organizing for significant political change, but even if I had discovered that, in a utilitarian sort of way, I would have maximal success by living a much more bureaucratic life in my twenties, I don't suppose I would give up my creative goals for that opportunity. The fact of the matter is that if my dramatic, creative, and theatrical goals of my twenties don't work out, I'll have my thirties (and the rest of my life) to live a more humble and bureaucratic life. On the other hand, the reverse does not apply: if I become committed to a certain kind of bureaucracy now (or within the next four years), it would be very hard to escape it if I one day wish to return to my creative roots.

If I start an educational program now, I am tied to the management of that program. I have a duty to it. The bureaucratic busywork involved in the program would give me no extra time or energy to pour into my (politically) creative pursuits. If I pursue a creative path first, and little of political significance comes out of it, I am tethered to nothing and can devote the rest of my life to whatever bureaucratic project I see fit.

I believe I cannot yet devote myself to bureaucracy. It's not a matter of should, it's a matter of could. I have too many creative ideas and passions. It is what it is. I can learn a large amount of creative skills now while I am free, but if I become a bureaucrat, I may never have the opportunity to learn them again, and I believe I would regret that deeply.

Nevertheless, I have formulated my plan such that at various moments I could shift from Japan to the United States depending on how things seem to be going. Even though there is much in particular that I will be committed to, I've still left quite a bit of flexibility so that I may take advantage of certain opportunities if they come up.