Weeb Life in Finland: Rising of Cinema and Return of Cons

Just earlier this week, it was announced that Wakanim (and its parent company Funimation) would be migrating their anime content libraries to Crunchyroll, meaning they would essentially cease active operations (adding new simulcast episodes) at the end of the current Winter 2022 anime season. Back in September of last year, I wondered if Wakanim would eventually be merged into Funimation, as AnimeLab had recently done, but it seems the higher-ups at Sony made a better decision and merged them both into Crunchyroll instead. Only time will tell how this will play out in practicality - a lot of Wakanim titles are for now region-locked in Crunchyroll and many have yet to be migrated at all - but one thing is certain: the anime streaming field is now more centralized than ever, with the plus side that for a consumer a Crunchyroll monopoly is still miles better than a Funimation monopoly. (Not so much for the workers behind the scenes though.) 

Meanwhile in Finland, it's a good time to be a fan of anime movies, because there's been quite a few of them seeing theatrical releases recently and in the near future. Last year, big franchise movies like Demon Slayer: Mugen Train and My Hero Academia: World Heroes' Mission did well at the box office, with the former becoming the 2nd highest-grossing anime movie of the decade so far in Finland and the latter doing about 70% better than the previous MHA movie, and this year seems to have begun with more attempts at hitting big numbers, as Sword Art Online: Progressive arrived in cinemas in the turn of January-February, and Jujutsu Kaisen 0 already has a theatrical release planned for later this year. Only time will tell how JJK0 does, but SAO's early numbers have not been impressive. 

On the other hand, auteur director Mamoru Hosoda's Belle has been doing much better, and as someone who had the chance to see it in a cinema, it's not hard to see why. The general Finnish perception of anime movies is still very "arthouse"/"auteur"-centric, and being a Mamoru Hosoda movie with a very modern touch to it gives Belle the power of appealing to both those adults who still remember Hosoda's earlier works, and teens to whom the movie's central message is directed towards. Having both franchise and standalone anime movies come out in Finland is a fantastic thing, but I think the average moviegoer's attention will be more in the latter for now. 

As the pandemic starts to settle down and restrictions ease, anime conventions are finally making a return in Finland. Kibecon had to be delayed at the last moment from January to May because of a new spike in infections around Christmas, but now I hope I'll finally be able to go there two years after I missed the January 2020 con due to personal circumstances. Other cons that have been announced for this year are Hypecon in June, Nekocon in July and Tracon in September, and probably others I haven't heard about. Here's hoping for a good year and that none of them will have to be cancelled.