Tze-Yue G. Hu
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9789622090972
- eISBN:
- 9789882207721
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789622090972.003.0009
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
This book offers new insight and perspective of the medium-genre. In contemporary terms, anime is Japanese animation with distinctive recognizable representations and often with close-knit links to ...
More
This book offers new insight and perspective of the medium-genre. In contemporary terms, anime is Japanese animation with distinctive recognizable representations and often with close-knit links to the graphic literary world of manga. From a broader perspective, anime means more and the Western-sounding term speaks of a different Eastern language and culture from which it originates. The “flip-flop” use of the name-terms in the book—“Japanese animation,” “anime,” and “manga-anime”—is driven and guided not only by a specific culture of what this book is about, but also by the different periods in history from which it charts the visual medium's growth and the socio-cultural context of its development.Less
This book offers new insight and perspective of the medium-genre. In contemporary terms, anime is Japanese animation with distinctive recognizable representations and often with close-knit links to the graphic literary world of manga. From a broader perspective, anime means more and the Western-sounding term speaks of a different Eastern language and culture from which it originates. The “flip-flop” use of the name-terms in the book—“Japanese animation,” “anime,” and “manga-anime”—is driven and guided not only by a specific culture of what this book is about, but also by the different periods in history from which it charts the visual medium's growth and the socio-cultural context of its development.
Daniel Martin
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781628462340
- eISBN:
- 9781626746787
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781628462340.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, Comics Studies
This chapter considers the superhero in transnational Japanese-Korean animation, focusing on the feature film Blade of the Phantom Master (2004). A Japanese-South Korean co-production, this animated ...
More
This chapter considers the superhero in transnational Japanese-Korean animation, focusing on the feature film Blade of the Phantom Master (2004). A Japanese-South Korean co-production, this animated film offers a fantasy-action retelling of the iconic Korean folktale Chunhyang. Thus, this film is a revealing case of the cultural translation and transnational re-imagining of Korean literature and myth. This chapter covers the adaptation process, and examines the ways in which the specifically Korean aspects of the narrative and characters have been modified and adapted to reach a wider international audience. In particular, the recasting of the virtuous maiden Chunhyang as a fetishized super-ninja is shown to be particularly problematic. Rather than representing a step forward for Korean animation abroad, the film rewrites a Korean folktale for an international audience, drawing on the conventions of Japanese anime to create a new hybrid media for a global market.Less
This chapter considers the superhero in transnational Japanese-Korean animation, focusing on the feature film Blade of the Phantom Master (2004). A Japanese-South Korean co-production, this animated film offers a fantasy-action retelling of the iconic Korean folktale Chunhyang. Thus, this film is a revealing case of the cultural translation and transnational re-imagining of Korean literature and myth. This chapter covers the adaptation process, and examines the ways in which the specifically Korean aspects of the narrative and characters have been modified and adapted to reach a wider international audience. In particular, the recasting of the virtuous maiden Chunhyang as a fetishized super-ninja is shown to be particularly problematic. Rather than representing a step forward for Korean animation abroad, the film rewrites a Korean folktale for an international audience, drawing on the conventions of Japanese anime to create a new hybrid media for a global market.
Mark McLelland, Kazumi Nagaike, Katsuhiko Suganuma, and James Welker (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781628461190
- eISBN:
- 9781626740662
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781628461190.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Comics Studies
Boys Love (or simply BL) has emerged as a mainstream genre in manga, anime, and games for girls and young women. This genre was first developed in Japan in the early 1970s by a group of female ...
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Boys Love (or simply BL) has emerged as a mainstream genre in manga, anime, and games for girls and young women. This genre was first developed in Japan in the early 1970s by a group of female artists. By the late 1970s, many amateur women fans were getting involved and creating and self-publishing homoerotic parodies of established male manga characters and popular media figures. The popularity of these encouraged a surge in the number of commercial titles. Today, a wide range of products, produced both by professionals and amateurs, is rapidly gaining a global audience. This book provides an overview of the BL phenomenon in Japan, its history and various subgenres and introduces translations of some key Japanese scholarship not otherwise available. The book looks at a range of literary, artistic, and other cultural products that celebrate the beauty of adolescent boys and young men. In Japan, depiction of the “beautiful boy” has long been a romantic and sexualized trope for both sexes and commands a high degree of cultural visibility today across a range of genres from pop music to animation. Drawing from diverse disciplinary homes, the chapters unite in their attention to historical context, analytical precision, and close readings of diverse boys love texts.Less
Boys Love (or simply BL) has emerged as a mainstream genre in manga, anime, and games for girls and young women. This genre was first developed in Japan in the early 1970s by a group of female artists. By the late 1970s, many amateur women fans were getting involved and creating and self-publishing homoerotic parodies of established male manga characters and popular media figures. The popularity of these encouraged a surge in the number of commercial titles. Today, a wide range of products, produced both by professionals and amateurs, is rapidly gaining a global audience. This book provides an overview of the BL phenomenon in Japan, its history and various subgenres and introduces translations of some key Japanese scholarship not otherwise available. The book looks at a range of literary, artistic, and other cultural products that celebrate the beauty of adolescent boys and young men. In Japan, depiction of the “beautiful boy” has long been a romantic and sexualized trope for both sexes and commands a high degree of cultural visibility today across a range of genres from pop music to animation. Drawing from diverse disciplinary homes, the chapters unite in their attention to historical context, analytical precision, and close readings of diverse boys love texts.
Tze-Yue G. Hu
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9789622090972
- eISBN:
- 9789882207721
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789622090972.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
Japanese anime has long fascinated the world, and its mythical heroes and dazzling colors increasingly influence popular culture genres in the West. This book analyzes the “language-medium” of this ...
More
Japanese anime has long fascinated the world, and its mythical heroes and dazzling colors increasingly influence popular culture genres in the West. This book analyzes the “language-medium” of this expressive platform and its many socio-cultural dimensions from a distinctly Asian frame of reference, tracing its layers of concentric radiation from Japan throughout Asia. The book's research, rooted in archival investigations, interviews with animators and producers in Japan as well as other Asian animation studios, and interdisciplinary research in linguistics and performance theory, shows how dialectical aspects of anime are linked to Japan's unique experience of modernity and its cultural associations in Asia, including its reliance on low-wage outsourcing. This study also provides insights on numerous Japanese secondary sources, as well as a number of original illustrations offered by animators and producers that were interviewed.Less
Japanese anime has long fascinated the world, and its mythical heroes and dazzling colors increasingly influence popular culture genres in the West. This book analyzes the “language-medium” of this expressive platform and its many socio-cultural dimensions from a distinctly Asian frame of reference, tracing its layers of concentric radiation from Japan throughout Asia. The book's research, rooted in archival investigations, interviews with animators and producers in Japan as well as other Asian animation studios, and interdisciplinary research in linguistics and performance theory, shows how dialectical aspects of anime are linked to Japan's unique experience of modernity and its cultural associations in Asia, including its reliance on low-wage outsourcing. This study also provides insights on numerous Japanese secondary sources, as well as a number of original illustrations offered by animators and producers that were interviewed.
Dana Milstein
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748625338
- eISBN:
- 9780748671038
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748625338.003.0003
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Media Studies
This chapter concentrates on unofficial music videos (UMVs): anime music videos (AMVs), which limit their video footage to anime-related media. It also covers the aesthetic traits that characterise ...
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This chapter concentrates on unofficial music videos (UMVs): anime music videos (AMVs), which limit their video footage to anime-related media. It also covers the aesthetic traits that characterise such videos and highlights how the impact of AMVs is now seeping into other forms of anime-related media. UMVs are developed by ‘ultimate fans’. The Internet has become home to many types of UMVers. The majority of AMVs look to incline toward retelling the anime's narrative or character profiling, while a few others focus on one-upping their own technical feats. The AMV may be an emerging and unaffordable art for Japanese fans, but music from and as an offshoot of anime remains quite popular. Creators of AMVs, by producing self-referential works, become the ultimate fanime champions. AMV culture is ‘an exciting alternative to [an entertainment] climate controlled by idiot-savants and overpaid wannabes’.Less
This chapter concentrates on unofficial music videos (UMVs): anime music videos (AMVs), which limit their video footage to anime-related media. It also covers the aesthetic traits that characterise such videos and highlights how the impact of AMVs is now seeping into other forms of anime-related media. UMVs are developed by ‘ultimate fans’. The Internet has become home to many types of UMVers. The majority of AMVs look to incline toward retelling the anime's narrative or character profiling, while a few others focus on one-upping their own technical feats. The AMV may be an emerging and unaffordable art for Japanese fans, but music from and as an offshoot of anime remains quite popular. Creators of AMVs, by producing self-referential works, become the ultimate fanime champions. AMV culture is ‘an exciting alternative to [an entertainment] climate controlled by idiot-savants and overpaid wannabes’.
Jolyon Baraka Thomas
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- November 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780824835897
- eISBN:
- 9780824871499
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824835897.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
Manga and anime (illustrated serial novels and animated films) are highly influential Japanese entertainment media that boast tremendous domestic consumption as well as worldwide distribution and an ...
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Manga and anime (illustrated serial novels and animated films) are highly influential Japanese entertainment media that boast tremendous domestic consumption as well as worldwide distribution and an international audience. This book examines religious aspects of the culture of manga and anime production and consumption. Rather than merely describing the incidence of religions such as Buddhism or Shinto in these media, this book shows that authors and audiences create and re-create “religious frames of mind” through their imaginative and ritualized interactions with illustrated worlds. Manga and anime therefore not only contribute to familiarity with traditional religious doctrines and imagery, but also allow authors, directors, and audiences to modify and elaborate upon such traditional tropes, sometimes creating hitherto unforeseen religious ideas and practices. The book takes play seriously by highlighting these recursive relationships between recreation and religion, emphasizing throughout the double sense of play as entertainment and play as adulteration. The book demonstrates that the specific aesthetic qualities and industrial dispositions of manga and anime invite practices of rendition and reception that can and do influence the ways that religious institutions and lay authors have attempted to captivate new audiences.Less
Manga and anime (illustrated serial novels and animated films) are highly influential Japanese entertainment media that boast tremendous domestic consumption as well as worldwide distribution and an international audience. This book examines religious aspects of the culture of manga and anime production and consumption. Rather than merely describing the incidence of religions such as Buddhism or Shinto in these media, this book shows that authors and audiences create and re-create “religious frames of mind” through their imaginative and ritualized interactions with illustrated worlds. Manga and anime therefore not only contribute to familiarity with traditional religious doctrines and imagery, but also allow authors, directors, and audiences to modify and elaborate upon such traditional tropes, sometimes creating hitherto unforeseen religious ideas and practices. The book takes play seriously by highlighting these recursive relationships between recreation and religion, emphasizing throughout the double sense of play as entertainment and play as adulteration. The book demonstrates that the specific aesthetic qualities and industrial dispositions of manga and anime invite practices of rendition and reception that can and do influence the ways that religious institutions and lay authors have attempted to captivate new audiences.
Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- November 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780824835941
- eISBN:
- 9780824871574
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824835941.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
Digital technology has transformed cinema's production, distribution, and consumption patterns and pushed contemporary cinema toward increasingly global markets. Japanese cinema has been revitalized ...
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Digital technology has transformed cinema's production, distribution, and consumption patterns and pushed contemporary cinema toward increasingly global markets. Japanese cinema has been revitalized as regional genres such as anime and Japanese horror now challenge Hollywood's preeminence in global cinema. In an investigation of J-horror, personal documentary, anime, and ethnic cinema, this book deliberates on the role of the transnational in bringing to the mainstream what were formerly marginal B-movie genres. It argues persuasively that convergence culture, which these films represent, constitutes Japan's response to the variegated flows of global economics and culture. Analyzng new modes of production emerging from the struggles of Japanese filmmakers and animators to finance and market their work in a post-studio era, the book holds critical implications for the future of other national cinemas fighting to remain viable in a global marketplace. As academics in film and media studies prepare a wholesale shift toward a transnational perspective of film, the book cautions against jettisoning the entire national cinema paradigm. Discussing the technological advances and the new cinematic flows of consumption, it demonstrates that while contemporary Japanese film, on the one hand, expresses the transnational as an object of desire (a form of total cosmopolitanism), on the other hand, that desire is indeed inseparable from Japan's national identity. The book challenges the presumption that Hollywood is the only authentically “global” cinema.Less
Digital technology has transformed cinema's production, distribution, and consumption patterns and pushed contemporary cinema toward increasingly global markets. Japanese cinema has been revitalized as regional genres such as anime and Japanese horror now challenge Hollywood's preeminence in global cinema. In an investigation of J-horror, personal documentary, anime, and ethnic cinema, this book deliberates on the role of the transnational in bringing to the mainstream what were formerly marginal B-movie genres. It argues persuasively that convergence culture, which these films represent, constitutes Japan's response to the variegated flows of global economics and culture. Analyzng new modes of production emerging from the struggles of Japanese filmmakers and animators to finance and market their work in a post-studio era, the book holds critical implications for the future of other national cinemas fighting to remain viable in a global marketplace. As academics in film and media studies prepare a wholesale shift toward a transnational perspective of film, the book cautions against jettisoning the entire national cinema paradigm. Discussing the technological advances and the new cinematic flows of consumption, it demonstrates that while contemporary Japanese film, on the one hand, expresses the transnational as an object of desire (a form of total cosmopolitanism), on the other hand, that desire is indeed inseparable from Japan's national identity. The book challenges the presumption that Hollywood is the only authentically “global” cinema.
Tze-Yue G. Hu
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9789622090972
- eISBN:
- 9789882207721
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789622090972.003.0003
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
This chapter discusses the wide array of art forms available in Japan and stresses their continuity over the years. It introduces the “visualness” of Japanese art forms including anime and attempts ...
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This chapter discusses the wide array of art forms available in Japan and stresses their continuity over the years. It introduces the “visualness” of Japanese art forms including anime and attempts to locate and conceive the twentieth-century medium-genre in a visual awareness tradition that exists within the mental make-up of an assimilating subject. The classic Japanese two-dimensional art forms, namely paintings and wood-prints, first appeared during the Asuka period (AD 593–710). One distinctive type is the emakimono or picture-scroll, a form of painting where happenings and events are spoken through the act of illustrating. Today, emakimono is embodied in countless manga works and their co-animated creations. Zen portrait painting is another example of two-dimensional art that displays the realist tradition. Although Zen portrait paintings were meant as contemplative wall paintings, anime characters were created for popular consumption in the late twentieth century.Less
This chapter discusses the wide array of art forms available in Japan and stresses their continuity over the years. It introduces the “visualness” of Japanese art forms including anime and attempts to locate and conceive the twentieth-century medium-genre in a visual awareness tradition that exists within the mental make-up of an assimilating subject. The classic Japanese two-dimensional art forms, namely paintings and wood-prints, first appeared during the Asuka period (AD 593–710). One distinctive type is the emakimono or picture-scroll, a form of painting where happenings and events are spoken through the act of illustrating. Today, emakimono is embodied in countless manga works and their co-animated creations. Zen portrait painting is another example of two-dimensional art that displays the realist tradition. Although Zen portrait paintings were meant as contemplative wall paintings, anime characters were created for popular consumption in the late twentieth century.
Tze-Yue G. Hu
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9789622090972
- eISBN:
- 9789882207721
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789622090972.003.0004
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
This chapter investigates and hypothesizes the productive spirit of anime as a whole in relation to the underlying native philosophical inclinations and cultural thought. It examines the country's ...
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This chapter investigates and hypothesizes the productive spirit of anime as a whole in relation to the underlying native philosophical inclinations and cultural thought. It examines the country's depth of thinking in relation to its expressive visual self, natural or constructed, and in response to a larger long-running project—dialogue with the industrialized West. First, it discusses the primary aspects of Shintoism. It also analyzes the anti-Confucianist thought of a Tokugawa shintō advocate, Motoori Norinaga, in comparison to a similar trend of thinking that already existed in China and Korea at the time. It also considers the philosophical works of Nishida Kitarō in order to show that anime lies at the heart of an extensive prolonged communication project.Less
This chapter investigates and hypothesizes the productive spirit of anime as a whole in relation to the underlying native philosophical inclinations and cultural thought. It examines the country's depth of thinking in relation to its expressive visual self, natural or constructed, and in response to a larger long-running project—dialogue with the industrialized West. First, it discusses the primary aspects of Shintoism. It also analyzes the anti-Confucianist thought of a Tokugawa shintō advocate, Motoori Norinaga, in comparison to a similar trend of thinking that already existed in China and Korea at the time. It also considers the philosophical works of Nishida Kitarō in order to show that anime lies at the heart of an extensive prolonged communication project.
Tze-Yue G. Hu
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9789622090972
- eISBN:
- 9789882207721
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789622090972.003.0007
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
This chapter discusses the creative worlds of master animator Miyazaki Hayao and his colleague, animation director Takahata Isao, focusing on the collective yet individualistic components of their ...
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This chapter discusses the creative worlds of master animator Miyazaki Hayao and his colleague, animation director Takahata Isao, focusing on the collective yet individualistic components of their animated works. Miyazaki and Takahata founded Studio Ghibli in 1985, aimed primarily to produce animated feature films. Since the mid-1980s, Studio Ghibli's films have become well-known in Japan and abroad. Using the auteur model, the chapter also seeks to provide a theoretical framework for analyzing the anime cinema of Miyazaki and Takahata. It attempts to show how Miyazaki and Takahata have utilized the expressive medium of animation in responding to the changing socio-cultural environment of post-Second World War Japan.Less
This chapter discusses the creative worlds of master animator Miyazaki Hayao and his colleague, animation director Takahata Isao, focusing on the collective yet individualistic components of their animated works. Miyazaki and Takahata founded Studio Ghibli in 1985, aimed primarily to produce animated feature films. Since the mid-1980s, Studio Ghibli's films have become well-known in Japan and abroad. Using the auteur model, the chapter also seeks to provide a theoretical framework for analyzing the anime cinema of Miyazaki and Takahata. It attempts to show how Miyazaki and Takahata have utilized the expressive medium of animation in responding to the changing socio-cultural environment of post-Second World War Japan.
Tze-Yue G. Hu
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9789622090972
- eISBN:
- 9789882207721
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789622090972.003.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
This book examines anime, the popular Japanese form of animation. It analyzes in detail the historical growth of the medium-genre, its essential ties with an innate socio-cultural environment from ...
More
This book examines anime, the popular Japanese form of animation. It analyzes in detail the historical growth of the medium-genre, its essential ties with an innate socio-cultural environment from which it originates, and the internal and external agencies which participate in advancing its popularity. It also focuses on the modernization experience of the Japanese which provides centrifugal force in nurturing the emergent strength of the medium-genre and its widespread acceptance and communicative usage within the Japanese society. Anime is considered as a “medium-genre” because it has acquired unique recognizable characteristics, such as character design, background presentation, origins of storylines, production work practices, channels of distribution, and kinds of audienceship.Less
This book examines anime, the popular Japanese form of animation. It analyzes in detail the historical growth of the medium-genre, its essential ties with an innate socio-cultural environment from which it originates, and the internal and external agencies which participate in advancing its popularity. It also focuses on the modernization experience of the Japanese which provides centrifugal force in nurturing the emergent strength of the medium-genre and its widespread acceptance and communicative usage within the Japanese society. Anime is considered as a “medium-genre” because it has acquired unique recognizable characteristics, such as character design, background presentation, origins of storylines, production work practices, channels of distribution, and kinds of audienceship.
Rebecca Suter
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- November 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780824840013
- eISBN:
- 9780824868581
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824840013.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
This book looks at the repeated reappearance in modern fiction of the so-called “Christian century” of Japan, the period between the arrival of Jesuit missionaries in 1549 and the Shimabara rebellion ...
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This book looks at the repeated reappearance in modern fiction of the so-called “Christian century” of Japan, the period between the arrival of Jesuit missionaries in 1549 and the Shimabara rebellion of 1637–1638, the last Christian revolt before the final ban on the foreign religion under the Tokugawa regime. Literature authors as different as Akutagawa Ryūnosuke, Endō Shūsaku, Yamada Fūtarō, and Takemoto Novala, as well as film directors, manga and anime authors, and videogame producers have expressed their fascination with the cultural negotiations of the Christian century, and produced creative interpretations of them. By looking back at a time before Orientalism, a time when the Japanese interacted with Europeans in ways that were both very similar and significantly different from modern ones, the fictional representations of the Christian century I discuss in this book offer an alternative to conventional models of postcolonial and globalization studies, and an opportunity to reflect critically on both Japanese and Western social formations. The ghosts of the Christian century that haunt modern Japanese fiction prompt us to rethink conventional notions of East-West relations, mutual representations, and power relations, complicating our understanding of global modernity.Less
This book looks at the repeated reappearance in modern fiction of the so-called “Christian century” of Japan, the period between the arrival of Jesuit missionaries in 1549 and the Shimabara rebellion of 1637–1638, the last Christian revolt before the final ban on the foreign religion under the Tokugawa regime. Literature authors as different as Akutagawa Ryūnosuke, Endō Shūsaku, Yamada Fūtarō, and Takemoto Novala, as well as film directors, manga and anime authors, and videogame producers have expressed their fascination with the cultural negotiations of the Christian century, and produced creative interpretations of them. By looking back at a time before Orientalism, a time when the Japanese interacted with Europeans in ways that were both very similar and significantly different from modern ones, the fictional representations of the Christian century I discuss in this book offer an alternative to conventional models of postcolonial and globalization studies, and an opportunity to reflect critically on both Japanese and Western social formations. The ghosts of the Christian century that haunt modern Japanese fiction prompt us to rethink conventional notions of East-West relations, mutual representations, and power relations, complicating our understanding of global modernity.
Jolyon Baraka Thomas
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- November 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780824835897
- eISBN:
- 9780824871499
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824835897.003.0006
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
The concluding chapter summarizes the main arguments of the book and offers suggestions for future study. The book shows that the religious aspects of manga and anime culture are visible in the ways ...
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The concluding chapter summarizes the main arguments of the book and offers suggestions for future study. The book shows that the religious aspects of manga and anime culture are visible in the ways in which people visualize religious worlds, entertain religious ideas, and appropriate religious sites and concepts for novel purposes. Audiences re-create religion in the interpretation and exegesis that accompany narrative and visual reception. In some cases, the verisimilitude of fictive worlds—regardless of their fidelity to formal religious cosmologies—is so entirely convincing that figments become facts and chimera incarnate. Future studies can focus on products marketed primarily to girls and women as well include more emphasis on the material aspects of religious manga and anime culture, including the technical apparatuses used in the production of these products, the anime- and manga-derived paraphernalia such as ema and amulets (omamori) that are currently proliferating at formally religious institutions, and the toys that help fans get in touch with their favorite characters.Less
The concluding chapter summarizes the main arguments of the book and offers suggestions for future study. The book shows that the religious aspects of manga and anime culture are visible in the ways in which people visualize religious worlds, entertain religious ideas, and appropriate religious sites and concepts for novel purposes. Audiences re-create religion in the interpretation and exegesis that accompany narrative and visual reception. In some cases, the verisimilitude of fictive worlds—regardless of their fidelity to formal religious cosmologies—is so entirely convincing that figments become facts and chimera incarnate. Future studies can focus on products marketed primarily to girls and women as well include more emphasis on the material aspects of religious manga and anime culture, including the technical apparatuses used in the production of these products, the anime- and manga-derived paraphernalia such as ema and amulets (omamori) that are currently proliferating at formally religious institutions, and the toys that help fans get in touch with their favorite characters.
Frenchy Lunning (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816680498
- eISBN:
- 9781452948706
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816680498.001.0001
- Subject:
- Art, Visual Culture
This book, the seventh volume in the Mechademia series, an annual forum devoted to Japanese anime and manga, explores the various ways in which anime, manga, digital media, fan culture, and Japanese ...
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This book, the seventh volume in the Mechademia series, an annual forum devoted to Japanese anime and manga, explores the various ways in which anime, manga, digital media, fan culture, and Japanese art—from scroll paintings to superflat—challenge, undermine, or disregard the concept of Cartesian (or one-point) perspective, the dominant mode of visual culture in the West since the seventeenth century. More than just a visual mode or geometric system, Cartesianism has shaped nearly every aspect of modern rational thought, from mathematics and science to philosophy and history. The chapters in this book approach Japanese popular culture as a visual mode that employs non-Cartesian formations, which by extension make possible new configurations of perception and knowledge. Whether by shattering the illusion of visual or narrative seamlessness through the use of multiple layers or irregular layouts, blurring the divide between viewer and creator, providing diverse perspectives within a single work of art, or rejecting dualism, causality, and other hallmarks of Cartesianism, anime and manga offer in their radicalization of perspective the potential for aesthetic and even political transformation.Less
This book, the seventh volume in the Mechademia series, an annual forum devoted to Japanese anime and manga, explores the various ways in which anime, manga, digital media, fan culture, and Japanese art—from scroll paintings to superflat—challenge, undermine, or disregard the concept of Cartesian (or one-point) perspective, the dominant mode of visual culture in the West since the seventeenth century. More than just a visual mode or geometric system, Cartesianism has shaped nearly every aspect of modern rational thought, from mathematics and science to philosophy and history. The chapters in this book approach Japanese popular culture as a visual mode that employs non-Cartesian formations, which by extension make possible new configurations of perception and knowledge. Whether by shattering the illusion of visual or narrative seamlessness through the use of multiple layers or irregular layouts, blurring the divide between viewer and creator, providing diverse perspectives within a single work of art, or rejecting dualism, causality, and other hallmarks of Cartesianism, anime and manga offer in their radicalization of perspective the potential for aesthetic and even political transformation.
Mary Robertson
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781479879601
- eISBN:
- 9781479807512
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479879601.003.0005
- Subject:
- Sociology, Gender and Sexuality
This chapter shows how important alternative media is to the formation of queer cultural scenarios that speak to the sexual subjectivities of the youth of Spectrum. While acknowledging that there are ...
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This chapter shows how important alternative media is to the formation of queer cultural scenarios that speak to the sexual subjectivities of the youth of Spectrum. While acknowledging that there are now far more representations of queerness in mainstream media, I challenge the assumption that mainstream media has handily embraced homoeroticism and genderqueerness. The chapter shows how queer media, like erotic fan fiction and anime, have an established history of providing alternatives to the heteronormative mainstream, alternatives that, thanks to the internet, are more and more accessible to young people of all walks of life. In this way, queer media that resists heteronormativity has the power to influence the sexual subjectivity and gender identity formation of young people. Therefore it’s not that mainstream media are becoming less homophobic and shifting cultural norms in the United States but, rather, that young people have access to so much more media outside the mainstream—including self-produced media like fan fiction—which then influences their understanding of themselves and the world they live in.Less
This chapter shows how important alternative media is to the formation of queer cultural scenarios that speak to the sexual subjectivities of the youth of Spectrum. While acknowledging that there are now far more representations of queerness in mainstream media, I challenge the assumption that mainstream media has handily embraced homoeroticism and genderqueerness. The chapter shows how queer media, like erotic fan fiction and anime, have an established history of providing alternatives to the heteronormative mainstream, alternatives that, thanks to the internet, are more and more accessible to young people of all walks of life. In this way, queer media that resists heteronormativity has the power to influence the sexual subjectivity and gender identity formation of young people. Therefore it’s not that mainstream media are becoming less homophobic and shifting cultural norms in the United States but, rather, that young people have access to so much more media outside the mainstream—including self-produced media like fan fiction—which then influences their understanding of themselves and the world they live in.
James Tweedie and Yomi Braester
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9789622099845
- eISBN:
- 9789882206731
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789622099845.003.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This book is about city films, a genre of sorts that involves a reconsideration of both urban environment and cinema. It proposes several redefinitions of the terms “cinema” and the “city” while ...
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This book is about city films, a genre of sorts that involves a reconsideration of both urban environment and cinema. It proposes several redefinitions of the terms “cinema” and the “city” while focusing on the relationship between the media and the increasingly urbanized life throughout East Asia. It traces the developments in the urban cinema of East Asia and is concerned with not only film per se, but also with experimental documentaries, avant-garde videos, anime, and other emerging media or genres.Less
This book is about city films, a genre of sorts that involves a reconsideration of both urban environment and cinema. It proposes several redefinitions of the terms “cinema” and the “city” while focusing on the relationship between the media and the increasingly urbanized life throughout East Asia. It traces the developments in the urban cinema of East Asia and is concerned with not only film per se, but also with experimental documentaries, avant-garde videos, anime, and other emerging media or genres.
Anne Allison
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520219908
- eISBN:
- 9780520923447
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520219908.003.0002
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Asian Cultural Anthropology
This chapter examines sexual motifs in the mass culture of manga (comics) and anime (animation), looking at a form of male gazing targeted at children. The look is fashioned as coming from male ...
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This chapter examines sexual motifs in the mass culture of manga (comics) and anime (animation), looking at a form of male gazing targeted at children. The look is fashioned as coming from male watchers, and its objects are females who are either naked or eroticized at particular erotogenic zones (breasts, genitals, buttocks). Mothers spoken to find this form of presentation relatively harmless and view it as an acceptable forum for escapist leisure that takes children away from the hard work which otherwise consumes their lives. The chapter examines two aspects of this image: its location within a genre explicitly intended for children and its structure of a look at fetishized female bodies by male viewers whose gaze is illicit, coercive, and voyeuristic.Less
This chapter examines sexual motifs in the mass culture of manga (comics) and anime (animation), looking at a form of male gazing targeted at children. The look is fashioned as coming from male watchers, and its objects are females who are either naked or eroticized at particular erotogenic zones (breasts, genitals, buttocks). Mothers spoken to find this form of presentation relatively harmless and view it as an acceptable forum for escapist leisure that takes children away from the hard work which otherwise consumes their lives. The chapter examines two aspects of this image: its location within a genre explicitly intended for children and its structure of a look at fetishized female bodies by male viewers whose gaze is illicit, coercive, and voyeuristic.
Jolyon Baraka Thomas
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- November 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780824835897
- eISBN:
- 9780824871499
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824835897.003.0003
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
This chapter plots manga and anime along a continuum ranging from casual diversion to explicitly religious recreation. One the one hand, it provides a typology of religious manga and anime based on ...
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This chapter plots manga and anime along a continuum ranging from casual diversion to explicitly religious recreation. One the one hand, it provides a typology of religious manga and anime based on criteria related to the attitudes that characterize their production, allowing for differences in intentionality while examining the rhetorical techniques ranging from satire to sententiousness that manga artists and anime directors use in the service of amusing, educating, and persuading their audiences. On the other hand, it examines the side of reception, highlighting the different ways in which audiences interpret products with apparently religious content and plotting those responses on a continuum from apathy to reverence. It looks at the exegetical commentary of fan groups, ritualized activity derived from fictive manga and anime worlds, and the emergence of formal religions (groups that are legally incorporated as religious juridical persons, with clearly delineated hierarchies and doctrines) out of fan groups.Less
This chapter plots manga and anime along a continuum ranging from casual diversion to explicitly religious recreation. One the one hand, it provides a typology of religious manga and anime based on criteria related to the attitudes that characterize their production, allowing for differences in intentionality while examining the rhetorical techniques ranging from satire to sententiousness that manga artists and anime directors use in the service of amusing, educating, and persuading their audiences. On the other hand, it examines the side of reception, highlighting the different ways in which audiences interpret products with apparently religious content and plotting those responses on a continuum from apathy to reverence. It looks at the exegetical commentary of fan groups, ritualized activity derived from fictive manga and anime worlds, and the emergence of formal religions (groups that are legally incorporated as religious juridical persons, with clearly delineated hierarchies and doctrines) out of fan groups.
Ian Condry
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520267374
- eISBN:
- 9780520950320
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520267374.003.0013
- Subject:
- Sociology, Gender and Sexuality
The idea of developing relationships or falling in love with characters is not new in the virtual world and in the world of anime. However the debates surrounding Japan’s obsessive fans or otaku, and ...
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The idea of developing relationships or falling in love with characters is not new in the virtual world and in the world of anime. However the debates surrounding Japan’s obsessive fans or otaku, and their self-involved attachments are interesting for the ways they constitute a particular kind of argument on masculinity and love. Part of what gives the debate about Japanese men and anime cultural specificity aside from otaku is the notion of moe, or the affection for 2D characters or the internalized emotional response to something with no hope for reciprocal emotional response. This idea of moe is also associated with the larger questions on the ways fans relate to virtual characters and worlds, and on the power of media producers vis-à-vis consumers. This chapter is particularly interested in the ways these debates revolve around a question of the value of private, inconspicuous consumption as a legitimate expression of manhood. It maps some of the ways the value of internalized consumption is described as a means to think about whether it might point toward a new kind of politics. It offers an intriguing alternative to the focus on productivity as a measure of man. Otaku posits a question about what kind of value arises from consumption, particularly if that consumption is immaterial.Less
The idea of developing relationships or falling in love with characters is not new in the virtual world and in the world of anime. However the debates surrounding Japan’s obsessive fans or otaku, and their self-involved attachments are interesting for the ways they constitute a particular kind of argument on masculinity and love. Part of what gives the debate about Japanese men and anime cultural specificity aside from otaku is the notion of moe, or the affection for 2D characters or the internalized emotional response to something with no hope for reciprocal emotional response. This idea of moe is also associated with the larger questions on the ways fans relate to virtual characters and worlds, and on the power of media producers vis-à-vis consumers. This chapter is particularly interested in the ways these debates revolve around a question of the value of private, inconspicuous consumption as a legitimate expression of manhood. It maps some of the ways the value of internalized consumption is described as a means to think about whether it might point toward a new kind of politics. It offers an intriguing alternative to the focus on productivity as a measure of man. Otaku posits a question about what kind of value arises from consumption, particularly if that consumption is immaterial.
Saitō Tamaki
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816654505
- eISBN:
- 9781452946108
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816654505.003.0003
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
This chapter assesses how otaku outside Japan perceive beautiful fighting girls, emphasizing the diversity of “anime fans.” In online interviews conducted with anime fans in the West, most of the ...
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This chapter assesses how otaku outside Japan perceive beautiful fighting girls, emphasizing the diversity of “anime fans.” In online interviews conducted with anime fans in the West, most of the respondents confused the beautiful fighting girl and the Amazonian woman warrior, widening the definition of beautiful fighting girls to encompass brave women in general. The beautiful fighting girl doesn’t appear to have emerged as a genre in the West the same way that it has in Japan. The chapter then reviews Benjamin Liu’s thesis on the relationship between anime and feminism, which assumes that works, such as The Rose of Versailles (Berusaiyu no bara), Gigi and the Fountain of Youth (Mahō no purinsesu Minkii Momo), and Sailor Moon, in which females act masculine, undergo transformation, and engage in witchcraft, symbolize improvement in the status of women.Less
This chapter assesses how otaku outside Japan perceive beautiful fighting girls, emphasizing the diversity of “anime fans.” In online interviews conducted with anime fans in the West, most of the respondents confused the beautiful fighting girl and the Amazonian woman warrior, widening the definition of beautiful fighting girls to encompass brave women in general. The beautiful fighting girl doesn’t appear to have emerged as a genre in the West the same way that it has in Japan. The chapter then reviews Benjamin Liu’s thesis on the relationship between anime and feminism, which assumes that works, such as The Rose of Versailles (Berusaiyu no bara), Gigi and the Fountain of Youth (Mahō no purinsesu Minkii Momo), and Sailor Moon, in which females act masculine, undergo transformation, and engage in witchcraft, symbolize improvement in the status of women.
