Collective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime A
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Inside the Media Mix: Collective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Film and Television by Bryan Hikari Hartzheim 2015 © Copyright by Bryan Hikari Hartzheim 2015 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Inside the Media Mix: Collective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime by Bryan Hikari Hartzheim Doctor of Philosophy in Film and Television University of California, Los Angeles, 2015 Professor John T. Caldwell, Chair Japanese creative media – particularly, its comics, animation, and video games – has found success globally, but it is primarily a product made for and by a domestic audience. What characterizes the success of its various creative industries on the domestic level, before they reach out to global spheres? This dissertation attempts to provide an answer to this question by examining the logics of franchise media production in Japan. I conduct ethnographic fieldwork into Japan’s manga and anime industries, as well as close analyses of concomitant transmedia texts, in order to demonstrate the collective authorship that surrounds the production of contemporary media in these industries today. By focusing on the production of texts in commercial outlets such as Shueisha’s Weekly Shōnen Jump and Toei Animation Studies, I show how large-scale, franchise media in Japanese production is organized, managed, and distributed through small networks of mangaka, ii assistants, editors, and readers,
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