Emerging Worlds of Anime and Manga
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mechademia 1 Emerging Worlds of Anime and Manga Mechademia An Annual Forum for Anime, Manga, and Fan Arts FreNCHY LuNNiNg, eDiTOr Mechademia is a series of books, published by the University of Minnesota Press, devoted to creative and critical work on anime, manga, and the fan arts. Linked through their specific but complex aesthetic, anime, manga, and the fan arts have influenced a wide array of contemporary and historical culture through design, art, film, and gaming. This series seeks to examine, discuss, theorize, and reveal this unique style through its historic Japanese origins and its ubiquitous global presence and manifestation in popular and gallery culture. Each book is organized around a particular narrative aspect of anime and manga; these themes are sufficiently provocative and broad in interpretation to allow for creative and insightful investigations of this global artistic phenomenon. uNiVerSiTY OF MiNNeSOTA PreSS • http://www.mechademia.org/ The University of Minnesota Press gratefully acknowledges the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, whose Faculty Enhancement Grant 2005 helped support this project. “The Japan Fad in Global Youth Culture and Millennial Capitalism” was originally published in Anne Allison, Millennial Monsters: Japanese Toys and the Global Imagination (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006). “Kurenai no metalsuits, ‘Anime to wa nani ka/What is animation’” originally appeared as “What Is Animation?” in Ueno Toshiya, Crimson Metal Suit: Anime as a Battlefield, translated by Michael Arnold, Michigan Monograph Series in Japanese Studies (Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, 2006); reprinted with permission of the publisher. Anime timeline by Brian Ruh. Manga timeline by Patrick Drazen. Illustration by Ke Jaing. Contents Copyright 2006 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. 1 Anifesto Published by the University of Minnesota Press FreNCHY LuNNiNg AND CHriSTOPHer BOLTON 111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290 illustrated by sara pococK Minneapolis, MN 55401-2520 http://www.upress.umn.edu 11 The Japan Fad in Global Youth Culture and Millennial Capitalism Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper ANNe ALLiSON The University of Minnesota is an equal-opportunity educator and employer. 23 Globalizing Manga: From Japan to Hong Kong and Beyond WeNDY SiuYi WONg Mechademia Editorial and Advisory Boards 47 The World of Anime Fandom in America SuSAN NAPier Senior Board Editorial Board Michelle Ollie, Associate Editor Brent Allison Christopher Bolton, Admissions Editor C. B. Celbulski 65 Costuming the Imagination: Origins of Anime and Manga Cosplay Timothy Perper, Review and Trish Ledoux THereSA WiNge Commentary Editor, Otaku Editor David Rapp Martha Cornog, Review and Brian Ruh Commentary Editor Theresa Winge 78 Assessing Interactivity in Video Game Design Marc Hairston, Otaku Editor MArK J. P. WOLF Patrick Drazen, Otaku Editor Advisory Board Gilles Poitras, Otaku Editor Pamela Gossin 87 Yuriko Furuhata, Otaku Editor Adam Haecker Mori Minoru’s Day of Resurrection Thomas LaMarre John A. Lent TATSuMi TAKAYuKi Thomas Looser Nora Paul translated by christopher bolton Haijime Nakatani Lester Shen Susan Napier Abé Mark Nornes 92 Superflat and the Layers of Image and History in 1990s Japan Mark J. P. Wolf THOMAS LOOSer Wendy Siuyi Wong ANNE ALLISON The Japan Fad in Global Youth Culture and Millennial Capitalism In the Hollywood hit of 2003, Lost in Translation, Tokyo is the backdrop for a tale about modern-day angst and cultural dislocation. As shot by the film’s director, Sofia Coppola, the screen fills with scene after scene of a searingly beautiful Tokyo: neon-lit Shinjuku, a pristine sushi bar, the quietude of a temple, a nightclub’s jagged excesses. All of this is filtered through the per- spective of two American travelers who are as lost in this foreign culture as they are in their personal lives back home. Strangers when they first meet, the two connect over shared insomnia and malaise. Both are reluctant visi- tors to a country that neither one is interested in; both find Japan utterly strange. Yet the strangeness inspires not only gaffes and gaps in cultural (mis)communication but also intimacy between the two. By the time they part, Japan has acquired a new attractiveness and meaning for them. Yet nei- ther character exhibits greater knowledge or understanding of the country: they are as clueless as when they first checked into their hotel. Indeed, the film’s audience shares the same position, as strangers “lost” in a culture that, while quirkily and sensuously beautiful, is foreign and outside “translation.” In 2004 ABC aired an episode of the long-running children’s television show, Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers, with a story that referenced Coppola’s 11 movie. Titled “Lost and Found in Translation,” this story of a cross-cultural on the show come to read and appreciate the differences of their Japanese encounter is played with a twist: here the protagonists will not only lose counterparts. Bearing a style that the Americans find cool in its own right, but also find their way in(to) a different culture. The episode opens in the the show’s cultural logic doesn’t defy translation as much as yield a different United States with the rangers—teenagers who morph into superheroes to interpretation. fight alien monsters and defend the earth—in their everyday garb, working I use these two tales of imaginary encounters between Americans and on a social science project comparing two cultures. On television, they dis- Japan/ese to reflect on the rise of manga, anime, video games, and various cover a program from Japan that turns out to be a version of Abarangers (that play trends around the world, including the United States. Starting in East season’s variant of Power Rangers) dubbed into English. Two of the three and Southeast Asia in the 1980s and other parts of the world such as Western Americans are riveted, fascinated by the cy- Europe, Russia, Peru, and the United States in the early to mid-1990s, the borgian upgrades and fighting stances of the global market in Japanese youth products has skyrocketed. Called the coun- the global market in Japanese rangers. But the third dismisses try’s GNC (gross national cool) by the American reporter Douglas McGray Japanese youth products the foreign show as inauthentic, saying that (2002), these exports now exceed what had been the leading industries in has skyrocketed. these they “got it all wrong” and discounting the Japan’s postwar economy: automobiles and steel. Having tripled in the past exports now exceed what enemy as a “guy in a rubber suit.” His pals, decade—a time of a nagging recession precipitated by the bursting of the had been the leading however, remind him that it’s just a TV show Bubble economy in 1991—the industry of cool culture is bringing much- industries in Japan’s and urge him to use his imagination. Sitting needed capital to Japan, both real and symbolic. Taken seriously these days postwar economy, back and watching more, he gets into the even by the Japanese government, which hopes to channel it as a form of automobiles and steel. action and admits that it’s “kinda cool.” The “soft power,” J-cool raises questions about what precisely the nature of its ap- episode ends with a message about cultural peal is around the world; what, if any, influence it is having on global culture; difference voiced by the new convert. “We’re not so different after all, just and how exactly “Japan” figures in any of this. Concentrating on the United a slightly different interpretation.” Returning to his homework assignment, States here because of how its own cultural industries have dominated the he announces the title to the others: “Japanese versus American Culture— global imagination, I consider how Japanese properties are entering not only Closer Than We Think.” the marketplace and play habits of U.S. kids but also the imaginary of Ameri- Both the above stories, produced by U.S. cultural industries in the new cans more generally. In a place where storytelling has been so ethnocentric, millennium, feature Americans who are discomforted in their encounters the omnipresence of Japanese cartoons on Saturday morning TV, for exam- with a foreign culture. In both cases, that culture is Japan; in both cases, the ple, and the shelves of manga sold in chain bookstores like Borders (many discomfort is dispelled. The reasons for this, however, are different. In the printed right to left in Japanese style) are striking. Does this really represent former, a blockbuster movie for and about adults, the characters are dislo- a shift, however, from the global (cultural) power of Americanization? Fur- cated from home in a cultural milieu they feel lost in. But, in what has been ther, what do we make of the fact that this fad, so driven by youth, is also so called a love story, the couple uses the alienness of Japan to bridge their own incomprehensible to American adults, that “culture” here comes in the reg- personal alienation in the company of one another. And, in this, the setting ister of virtual, fantasy worlds, and that J-cool trades in an image of Japan could be anywhere, reviewers have suggested, and Japan acts more figura- more imaginary than so-called real? tively than literally to signify a sense of dislocation in the world at once un- The influence of Japan on American pop culture is hardly new. Godzilla, easy and potentially pleasurable. The story line in “Lost and Found in Trans- of course, was a huge hit in the 1950s, with its endless sequels and incar- lation”—an episode for a children’s television show featuring kids—is quite nations that have survived until the new millennium.