WORKSHOP SERIES Suspensions of Concentration: Kimetsu no yaiba and Blockbuster in the Year of the Global Pandemic Friday 19 & Sunday 20 March 2020 Suspensions of Concentration: Kimetsu no yaiba and Blockbuster in the Year of the Global Pandemic Friday 19 & Sunday 20 March 2020
Our original research project “Location of Anime: Institutions, Disciplines, and Fields” was planned as an international symposium/seminar at Waseda University’s Brussels Office in collaboration with its partner institution, the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) in Fall 2020.
Unfortunately, we had no choice but to cancel the event due to COVID-19. In the beginning, there was no plan to hold any alternative event because we were too exhausted from a seemingly endless series of Zoom meetings and other online affairs. While contemplating the discontinuation of the project, 劇場版「鬼滅の刃」無限列車編 or Demon Slayer the Movie: Mugen Train was released on October 16, 2020. Amid the coronavirus pandemic, this anime movie became an instant blockbuster, and eventually surpassed Miyazaki Hayao’s Spirited Away (2001) to become the highest-grossing film ever in Japan. Intrigued by this blockbuster phenomenon and the wide-ranging social effects the movie and the original manga have created, we have decided to reorganize the original project by focusing on Kimetsu no yaiba or Demon Slayer.
The main objective of our project remains the same, i.e., the investigation of the location of anime. This two-day online seminar is an attempt to accomplish this objective by examining a wide range of issues that are concretely related to Kimetsu no yaiba yet have implications beyond the single media franchise. Through presentations and discussions at the seminar, we will explore such topics and questions as the anime industry and media mix, fan culture, cosplay and social media, anime songs and music, voice acting and actors, genre systems, intertextuality, action and spectacle, speed and kinetic dynamism, narrative motifs, iconography, visual style, historical imagination, the political unconscious, affect, violence, censorship, gender and authorship, transnational reception and consumption, labor and marketing, COVID-19 and the culture industry, etc. By scrutinizing Kimetsu no yaiba in relation to these and other issues, we will collectively reflect on the location of anime in its broadest sense.
While it is our intention to maintain and expand a global network of anime scholars, this international seminar is organized specifically for the purpose of fostering a collaborative research on anime among Japan-based and Europe-based scholars. In addition to in-depth discussions on the main topics of the seminar, we will also spend some time considering the original theme of this Japan-Europe joint research project: “Location of Anime: Institutions, Disciplines, and Fields.” Our hope is to cultivate collectively seeds of new ideas that can be developed into future cooperative research projects or partnerships. Suspensions of Concentration: Kimetsu no yaiba and Blockbuster in the Year of the Global Pandemic Friday 19 & Sunday 20 March 2020
SCHEDULE
March 19th (Friday)
2 pm - 2.05 pm (JST) Welcome & Introduction 06:00 - 06:05 (CET)
SESSION 1 - PANDEMIC TIME
2.05 pm - 2.50 pm Jason Cody DOUGLASS (Yale University) 06:05 - 06:50 “Animation in Times of Pandemic”
2.50 pm - 3.35 pm Christophe THOUNY (Ritsumeikan University) 06:50 - 07:35 “Kimetsu eroguro: Oni longing for a face”
10’ Q/A
SESSION 2 - AFFECT AND POWER
3.45 pm - 4.30 pm Akiko SUGAWA-SHIMADA (Yokohama National University) 07:45 - 08:30 “Shinobu and Mitsuri as Post-Feminist or ‘Post’-Post Feminist Characters: Representations of Femininity and Power in Kimetsu no Yaiba”
4.30 pm - 5.15 pm Catherine REGINA BORLAZA (University of the Philippines 08:30 - 09:15 Diliman) “Binding Threads: The Emotional Structure of Attachment in the Animated Series Kimestu no Yaiba”
10’ Q/A
5’ Coffee Break
SESSION 3 - MANGA AND THE MANGAESQUE
5.30 pm - 6 pm Jaqueline BERNDT (Stockholm University) 09:30 - 10:00 “More Mangaesque than the Manga: ‘Cartooning’ in the Kimetsu no yaiba anime”
6 pm - 6.30 pm Bryan HARTZHEIM (Waseda University) 10:00- 10:30 “Parasketches: Tankôbon Interstices in Kimetsu no yaiba”
6.30 pm - 7 pm Discussant: Julien BOUVARD (Université Lyon 3 - Jean Moulin) 10:30 - 11:00
10’ Q/A Suspensions of Concentration: Kimetsu no yaiba and Blockbuster in the Year of the Global Pandemic Friday 19 & Sunday 20 March 2020
March 20th (Saterday)
2 pm - 2.05 pm (JST) Welcome 06:00 - 06:05 (CET)
SESSION 4 - HISTORY OF THE PRESENT
2.05 pm - 2.50 pm Stacey JOCOY (Texas Tech University) 6:05- 06:50 “Kagura Dance: The Musicality of Ritualized Dance as Historical Imaginary in Demon Slayer/Kimetsu no Yaiba and Your Name/Kimi no Na wa”
2.50 pm - 3.35 pm Siyuan LI (Waseda University) 06:50 - 07:35 “Where is the Sacred Site? Reconsidering the ‘Sacralization’ of Tourism Destinations in the Midst of Public Craze for Kimetsu no Yaiba”
10’ Q/A
SESSION 5 - ANIME’S CONVENTIONAL AND EXCEPTIONAL
3.45 pm - 4.15 pm Seio NAKAJIMA (Waseda University) 07:45- 08:15 “Talk of Success: A Pragmatic-Sociological Discourse Analysis of How People Explain Why Kimetsu Became a Blockbuster”
4.15 pm - 4.45 pm Stevie SUAN (Hosei University) 08:15 - 08:45 “Colorful Execution: Conventionality and Transnationality in Kimetsu no Yaiba”
4.45 pm - 5.15 pm Discussant: Lukas R.A. WILDE (University of Tubingen) 08:45 - 09:15
10’ Q/A
5’ Coffee Break
SESSION 6 - KIMETSU AND BEYOND
5.30 pm - 6.15pm Rayna DENISON (University of East Anglia) 09:30 - 10:15 “The Distant Blockbuster: Gekijôban ‘Kimestsu no yaiba’ mugen ressha-hen (2020) and the Transnationalization of Anime Status”
6.15 pm - 6.45 pm Discussants: 10:15- 10:45 Marie PRUVOST-DELASPRE (Université Paris 8 Vincennes) Mitsuhiro YOSHIMOTO (Waseda University)
6.45 pm - 7.00 pm Concluding words 10:45 - 11:00 March 19th & 20th Suspensions of Concentration: 2021 Kimetsu no yaiba and Blockbuster in the Year of the Global Pandemic Friday 19 & Sunday 20 March 2020
Seminar Mitsuhiro YOSHIMOTO (Waseda University) Organizer/ Discussant
Bio Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto is Professor of Media and Visual Culture and Dean of Graduate School of International Culture and Communication at Waseda University. His published books in English include Kurosawa: Film Studies and Japanese Cinema, Television, Japan, and Globalization (co-edited with Eva Tsai and Jung-bong Choi) and Planetary Atmospheres and Urban Society after Fukushima (co-edited with Christophe Thouny). He most recently authored articles and essays on the intermedial TV drama adaptation of the manga and animated box office hit In This Corner of the World, nuclear disasters and ecocritical analysis of Japanese cinema, the Anthropocene and the apocalypse of cinema, and Fredric Jameson’s film theory for such journals as Series: International Journal of TV Serial Narratives, Asian Cinema, and Hyosho: Journal of the Association for the Studies of Culture and Representation. He is currently working on a book manuscript on Japanese anime. March 19th (Friday) Suspensions of Concentration: Session 1 Kimetsu no yaiba and Blockbuster in the Year of the Global Pandemic Friday 19 & Sunday 20 March 2020
Title Animation in Times of Pandemic
Presenter Jason Cody DOUGLASS (Yale University)
Abstract As an unprecedented box-office sensation, Kimetsu no Yaiba: Mugen Ressha makes for a fruitful site of inquiry for those interested in the enduring commercial success of theatrical anime despite the ongoing challenges posed to film exhibitors by COVID-19. Within the broader series, Kimetsu no Yaiba (hereafter Kimetsu) offers readers, viewers, and consumers an enigmatic take on a fantastical outbreak, as Tanjiro and his comrades seek to stop the spread of a curse that is turning humans into bloodthirsty demons. And as a media phenomenon, Kimetsu exhibits a number of viral-like qualities: it continues to spread across screens and bookshelves, disseminating throughout department stores and vending machines, and infecting those of us who caught the bug and have now decided to gather together to draw up a collective diagnosis of our present condition. By taking these various cues from Kimetsu – animation in pandemic, animation of pandemic, animation as pandemic – this talk endeavors both to locate the place of Kimetsu within animation history, and to consider some of the distinct forms and functions that animated media in Japan have assumed in times of pandemic. Rather than focusing closely on one of the myriad texts, spaces, or events that currently constellate the ever-expanding Kimetsu universe, I consider the franchise alongside brief historical snapshots taken from 1918 (“Spanish flu”), 1957 (“Asian flu”), 1968 (“Hong Kong flu”), and 1977 (“Russian flu”).
Bio Jason Cody Douglass is a fifth-year Ph.D. Candidate in Yale’s combined program in Film and Media Studies and East Asian Languages and Literatures, as well as the graduate certificate program in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. His dissertation brings questions of gender, race, class, and spectatorship to bear on the history of midcentury Japanese animation. His publications can be found in Film Quarterly, Animation Studies Online Journal, Women Film Pioneers Project, Animation Studies 2.0, and the edited collection Animation and Advertising (eds. K. M. Thompson and M. Cook, Palgrave Macmillan 2020). In 2018, the Society for Animation Studies awarded him the Maureen Furniss Award for Best Graduate Student Paper on Animated Media. In the fall of 2019, he served as Guest Faculty of Film History at Sarah Lawrence College. He is currently a Japan Foundation Doctoral Fellow based at Waseda’s Graduate School of International Culture and Communication. March 19th (Friday) Suspensions of Concentration: Session1 Kimetsu no yaiba and Blockbuster in the Year of the Global Pandemic Friday 19 & Sunday 20 March 2020
Title Kimetsu eroguro: Oni longing for a face
Presenter Christophe THOUNY (Ritsumeikan University)
Abstract In this presentation, I discuss Kimetsu as a symptomatic answer to the present planetary crisis, what I call Corona eroguro. By eroguro I refer to a series of artistic styles from the post-1923 Great Kanto Earthquake urban culture to postwar Japan new media revivals of the genre and today’s Corona moment, each resonating with each other in the search for an answer to the very same question, how to live a time of change, a time without ground - but passages, a time without home - but shelters, a time that asks us how much the body can take, how much deformation for value-extraction is acceptable and desired. In volume 12 of the Kimetsu manga series, Muzan, vampiric dandy, arch-enemy of Tanjiro, and father of an endless lineage of Oni freaks makes a simple and clear political statement (politics is always clear!) : ‘What I hate is change’. For Muzan, change of situation, of flesh, of emotions, all changes only lead to deterioration. What Muzan desires is eternal life without change of any sort, the Paradise on Earth, integrated capitalism, the end of the end, a neutral and stable face - mask. Quite the conservative statement at a moment in history where going back to our good old ways, going back to a safe and warm home has become an impossibility. Kimetsu as we know was already highly successful when the corona crisis hit global human societies, triggering a cascading effect that today sees no end in sight. And at the same time, nothing has changed with Corona, pre-established logics only intensified and accelerated as the Japanese write Tawada Yoko recently noticed. The demon (oni) slayer Tanjiro Kamado has no home to go back to and it is no surprise that one of the most popular scene of the movie is about dreaming of going back home and meeting his dead mother, brothers and sisters, dead because killed by an Oni, the father figure, Muzan. The choice of Taisho and of a Shinsengumi-like group of vigilante protecting innocent citizens-qua-victims is significant of this moment when there is no home, no family - only surrogate family- like gatherings, when the patriarchal structure has become infected by a parasitic life, when symbiosis and parasitism cannot stabilize nor slow down their mad dance. Kimetsu is conservative in its oedipal narrative, and insistently melancholic, as if dreaming that going back home was a possibility, as if the nation-state still existed, and yet knowing perfectly well this is not an option anymore. This is a melancholic state that I argue allows in Kimetsu for a reparative narrative of sorts, navigating the polarities of parasitism and symbiosis, mourning and melancholia in an ongoing movement of deformation never captured into a stable face, a white wall / black holes mask. March 19th (Friday) Suspensions of Concentration: Session 1 Kimetsu no yaiba and Blockbuster in the Year of the Global Pandemic Friday 19 & Sunday 20 March 2020
Bio Christophe Thouny is an associate professor in the College of Global Liberal Arts at Ritsumeikan University. He researches modern Japanese urban culture in literature, movies and urban ethnography, and is the co- editor (with Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto) of Planetary Atmospheres and Urban Society After Fukushima (Palgrave, 2016). He also discusses global debates about environmental issues, queer theory and critical theory. He is now working on three research projects: the modern city and planetary thought in contemporary Japanese visual culture (film and animation); a monograph on urban experiences in Meiji and Taisho Tokyo literature (Mori Ogai, Nagai Kafu and Tayama Katai) and ethnography (Kon Wajiro); and a coming edited volume in English on postwar Japanese social critique in the work of the poet and essayist Yoshimoto Takaaki. March 19th (Friday) Suspensions of Concentration: Session 2 Kimetsu no yaiba and Blockbuster in the Year of the Global Pandemic Friday 19 & Sunday 20 March 2020
Title Shinobu and Mitsuri as Post-Feminist or ‘Post’-Post Feminist Characters: Representations of Femininity and Power in Kimetsu no yaiba
Presenter Akiko SUGAWA-SHIMADA (Yokohama National University)
Abstract This presentation will attempt to analyze representations of two female Hashira, Kocho Shinobu, Insect Hashira, and Kanroji Mitsuri, Love Hashira, in Kimetsu no yaiba, from a post-feminist perspective. I argue that Shinobu represents post-feminist potentials of female solidarity and conflicts in the man-centered society of Japan, and Mitsuri serves to present how she has experienced post-feminist struggles of femininity and gender equality, seeking a way to “have it all.” Because of her hyper- sexualized representation, the image of Mitsuri has been harshly criticized from feminist perspectives mainly through Japanese social media, which triggered a controversy between (male) “otaku” and “feminists” again in Japan. I will also try to tackle this problem if time permits.
Bio Akiko Sugawa-Shimada, PhD, is a professor in the Graduate School of Urban Innovation at Yokohama National University, Japan. Dr. Sugawa-Shimada is the author of a number of books and articles on anime, manga, and Cultural Studies, including Girls and Magic: How Have Girl Heroes Been Accepted? (2013, Won the 2014 Japan Society of Animation Studies Award, in Japanese), Studies on 2.5-dimentional Culture (2021, in Japanese), chapters in the books Japanese Animation: East Asian Perspectives (2013), Introduction to Anime Studies (2014, in Japanese, co-edited), Teaching Japanese Popular Culture (2016), Cultural Sociology of Post-kawaii (2017, in Japanese), Shojo Across Media (2019), Women’s Manga in Asia and Beyond (2019), 55 Keywords for Animation Culture (2019, in Japanese, co-edited), Contents Tourism and Pop Culture Fandom (2020), and Animating the Spiritual (2020), and as co-author, Contents Tourism in Japan (2017). March 19th (Friday) Suspensions of Concentration: Session 2 Kimetsu no yaiba and Blockbuster in the Year of the Global Pandemic Friday 19 & Sunday 20 March 2020
Title Binding Threads: The Emotional Structure of Attachment in the Animated Series Kimestu no yaiba
Presenter Catherine REGINA BORLAZA (University of the Philippines Diliman)
Abstract In a bid to expound on and explore literary treatments of emotion in the field of narrative theory, Patrick Colm Hogan in Affective Narratology underscores the relation between “story structures” and “emotional systems,” demonstrating how specific narrative prototypes—such as the Romantic, Heroic, Revenge, and Attachment, to name a few—are “fundamentally shaped and oriented” by emotions. In this paper, I employ Hogan’s affective narratological approach in inquiring into the emotion of Attachment and its corresponding story structure which is arguably at the crux of the character goals and relations and the narrative structure of the animated series Kimestu no Yaiba. Particularly informed by Hogan’s observation that Attachment finds its narratological expression through “emotional memories and mirroring relations,” I explore the intertwinement of the emotion of Attachment, which manifests between the siblings Tanjiro and Nezuko and the lower rank demon Rui and his human and demon family, and the literary topos of memory and mirroring in the Natagumo Mountain story arc (episodes 15-20) wherein the series’ metaphors, manifestations, and musings on the theme of familial attachment reach its climax. In doing so, this paper ultimately attempts to present pathways into examining the narrative structures and motifs of anime guided by insights and approaches in affective narratology and explain the enduring appeal of narratives coming to grips with and negotiating similar emotions and themes as Kimetsu no Yaiba.
Bio Catherine Regina Borlaza is an Instructor at the Department of English and Comparative Literature of the University of the Philippines Diliman, where she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Comparative Literature specializing in Asian literature. Her research interests include studies on adaptation, narratology, folklore, and Japanese popular culture. March 19th (Friday) Suspensions of Concentration: Session 3 Kimetsu no yaiba and Blockbuster in the Year of the Global Pandemic Friday 19 & Sunday 20 March 2020
Title More Mangaesque than the Manga: ‘Cartooning’ in the Kimetsu no yaiba Anime
Presenter Jaqueline BERNDT (Stockholm University)
Abstract
Bio Jaqueline Berndt (PhD) is a Professor in Japanese Language and Culture at Stockholm University. Prior to that, she served as Professor in Comics Theory at Kyoto Seika University, Japan. Her scholarly work is in the areas of Comics/Manga Studies and Animation/Anime studies, and engaged in relating New Formalism to Media Studies. Her publications include the co-edited volumes Manga’s Cultural Crossroads (2013) and Shojo Across Media: Exploring “Girl” Practices in Contemporary Japan (2019), as well as the monograph Manga: Medium, Art and Material (2015). She also directed the world-traveling exhibition Manga Hokusai Manga: Approaching the Master’s Compendium from the Perspective of Contemporary Comics for the Japan Foundation (2016-); currently she is preparing the exhibition Manga: Reading the Flow for the Museum Rietberg, Zürich (fall 2021). March 19th (Friday) Suspensions of Concentration: Session 3 Kimetsu no yaiba and Blockbuster in the Year of the Global Pandemic Friday 19 & Sunday 20 March 2020
Title Parasketches: Tankôbon Interstices in Kimetsu no yaiba
Presenter Bryan HARTZHEIM (Waseda University)
Abstract Scholars of manga have in recent years grappled with the materiality of the media, focusing attention to the role of printed materials in contributing to textual meaning and reader involvement. While there has been substantial analysis of the editorial and paratextual function of manga magazines, there has been comparatively less with regards to collected volumes of manga chapters, or tankôbon, regarded typically as little more than analog devices that assemble specific manga works into a readable and profitable format. This talk seeks to highlight some of the creative contributions of tankôbon, and also discuss their narrative potential as a platform for media convergence in an age of increasing digital comics production. Using the tankôbon of Kimetsu no yaiba as an example, this talk shows how the approach of the mangaka and editors to crafting Kimetsu’s tankôbon reflect one of the manga’s key themes of hidden, overlapping worlds. Specifically, I aim to show how the tankôbon’s small narratives and images comprise a reflective layer of meaning not available to readers of the manga magazine. Through an analysis of the in-between spaces of Kimetsu’s tankôbon – its dust jackets, book covers, and inserts – the paratextual interstices of the manga become an opening into creative repurposing and reframing of the manga’s world and characters, connecting the historical-fictional past of the manga’s world to a continuous, transmedial present.
Bio Bryan Hikari Hartzheim is an assistant professor in the School of International Liberal Studies and the Graduate School of International Culture and Communication at Waseda University. His work focuses on the production cultures of media industries, particularly the Japanese animation and video games industries, and he has published a number of essays on these topics in edited collections and journals including Television and New Media and Journal of Popular Culture. He is the co-editor of The Franchise Era: Managing Media in the Digital Economy (Edinburgh University Press, 2019), which examines the outsized importance of franchises to film studios and big tech corporations in light of rapidly changing digital technologies, and and the guest editor of a forthcoming special issue on media platforms and industries for Mechademia (University of Minnesota Press, 2023). March 20th (Saterday) Suspensions of Concentration: Session 4 Kimetsu no yaiba and Blockbuster in the Year of the Global Pandemic Friday 19 & Sunday 20 March 2020
Title Kagura Dance: The Musicality of Ritualized Dance as Historical Imaginary in Demon Slayer/Kimetsu no Yaiba and Your Name/Kimi no Na wa
Presenter Stacey JOCOY (Texas Tech University)
Abstract In episode 19 of Kimetsu no Yaiba, Tanjiro remembers his father’s Hinokami kagura dance, which offers him expected strength in battle. This worldbuilding sequence places the action amidst localized rituals of Shinto belief, which Jolyon Thomas notes in Drawing on Tradition, offers a fecund site for historical imagination. Kagura dances, as an element of Shinto, are historically localized and unique, offering modern anime fertile cultural space—a potent location for both soft power constructions and modern narrative. Hinokami can be grouped with the kagura dance in the recent anime movie Your Name (Kimi no Na wa) by Makoto Shinkai. Both dances reference essential aspects of Japanese traditionalism, residing in narrative spaces connected with memory. In Your Name, Mitsuha’s kagura dance contains powerful but forgotten regional memories that combine with the kuchikamizake ritual to create the pivotal time distortion. Hinokami kagura ties Tanjiro’s father to the power of regional ritual, the memory of which reveals forgotten breathing exercises that amplify Tanjiro’s technique. While both anime use traditionally influenced dance movements and music to depict kagura, Hinokami also incorporates an extended orchestration technique. “Kamado Tanjiro no Uta” by Go Shiina, underlaid throughout the scene, changes timbre from soft lyricism to heroic orchestral dynamism, aurally impacting the critical moment narrative switches from memory to climatic present. This presentation compares these two kagura scenes, using comparative musical analysis with aural-visual tracking, emphasizing their effectiveness in translating iconic elements of traditional Japanese culture into historical imaginary that builds powerful modern narratives of Japanese identity.
Bio Stacey Jocoy is an associate professor of music history at Texas Tech University. She holds a Ph.D. in musicology from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She has presented on music in anime at the American Popular Culture Association, the Animation and Public Engagement Symposium, Mechademia conferences, and Anime Expo Academic Conferences. She is a guest editor for Mechademia 13.2 “Soundscapes” and has articles appearing in the upcoming Anime and Music Handbook (Palgrave) and Animation and Public Engagement at the Time of Covid-19 (Vernon Press). Her research explores the intersections of music, politics, and constructions of gender, focusing on the functions of musical narratives in context. March 20th (Saterday) Suspensions of Concentration: Session 4 Kimetsu no yaiba and Blockbuster in the Year of the Global Pandemic Friday 19 & Sunday 20 March 2020
Title Where is the Sacred Site? Reconsidering the ‘Sacralization’ of Tourism Destinations in the Midst of Public Craze for Kimetsu no Yaiba
Presenter Siyuan LI (Waseda University)
Abstract Anime pilgrimage (seichi junrei) usually refers to the visit to real places where used as the basis for background settings of anime works. However, the terms “seichi” and “seichi junrei” are pervasively used by the audience in general, with less emphasis on visual similarities between the real places to anime scenes. Fans of Kimetsu no Yaiba have been identifying and traveling to “sacred places”. Many of these locations are identified because of shared names or visual similarities to content from the series, not because they were used as references for the settings. For instance, shrines in Kyushu that contain the characters for “Kamado” in their names, associating it with the family name of protagonist Kamado Tanjiro. Tofuku Temple in Kyoto because its checkerboard pattern garden can be associated with Tanjiro’s Kimono pattern. More than 50 locations have been listed by media and visited by fans as “sacred places”, despite that some locations have only tenuous connections to the series. In addition, inspired by Demon Slayer the Movie: Mugen Train, JR Kyushu and JR Gunma operated steam locomotive trains respectively, and offered special railway tours to passengers. With decorations and services provided on board, the trains were theme-park like adaptations of the movie into physical spaces. I attended the tour organized by JR Gunma and would like to share my experience and observations. Through a review of various types of Kimetsu no Yaiba pilgrimage visits, I argue that the sacralization of anime tourism destination is a co-productive process, whereby association could be incorporated on the basis of fans’ common recognition rather than visual similarities.
Bio Siyuan LI is a Ph.D. student at Graduate School of Asian and Pacific Studies, Waseda University. Her fields of research interests include international popular culture fandom and anime tourism. . March 20th (Saterday) Suspensions of Concentration: Session 5 Kimetsu no yaiba and Blockbuster in the Year of the Global Pandemic Friday 19 & Sunday 20 March 2020
Title Talk of Success: A Pragmatic-Sociological Discourse Analysis of How People Explain Why Kimetsu Became a Blockbuster
Presenter Seio NAKAJIMA (Waseda University)
Abstract The blockbuster anime film Demon Slayer the Movie: Mugen Train was released in Japan on October 16, 2020, and in 73 days, the film became the highest-grossing film of all time. Social scientists have attempted to analyze economic successes (and failures) of cultural products through two distinctive approaches. The first is a positivist approach gathering objective statistical-numerical data and conducting quantitative analyses such as regressing box office figures on “star power.” The second is a constructionist approach focusing on how people talk about why a film has succeeded. In this presentation, I put to work the latter approach by relying on the analysis of discourses of various media contents including newspapers (e.g., articles, opinion pieces, editorials), magazines, as well as the Internet including posts in social media. Preliminary analysis of the reasonings of success people present reveals a highly complex matrix of justification: discourses that focus on the nature of film text itself (e.g., character development, narrative, visual effects) vs. those focusing on social-contextual factors (e.g., release dates of Hollywood blockbusters delayed due to the COVID-19, hence more available slots for Kimetsu screenings); among those focusing on film text, those emphasizing “unique” expression of Japanese culture and tradition (e.g., respect for social order and hierarchy) that resonates with the Japanese audience vs. those focusing on universal attraction (e.g., perseverance of a hero); critical-evaluative (i.e., discourses that describe the reasons for success but are critical of the phenomenon itself, excluding the addresser outside of the phenomenon) vs. descriptive (i.e., discourses that simply describe the possible reasons for success). As a general theoretical stance, I rely on “sociology of critique” of pragmatic sociology, which emphasizes the critical ability of audiences.
Bio Seio Nakajima is Professor of Sociology and Asian Studies at the Graduate School of Asia-Pacific Studies, Waseda University. He has conducted organizational analyses of the Chinese film industry, as well as ethnographies of Chinese film audiences and consumption. His articles include “The Genesis, Structure and Transformation of the Contemporary Chinese Cinematic Field: Global Linkages and National Refractions” (Global Media and Communication, 2017), “Official Chinese Film Awards and Film Festivals: History, Configuration and Transnational March 20th (Saterday) Suspensions of Concentration: Session 5 Kimetsu no yaiba and Blockbuster in the Year of the Global Pandemic Friday 19 & Sunday 20 March 2020
Bio Legitimation” (Journal of Chinese Cinemas, 2019), and “The Sociability of Millennials in Cyberspace: A Comparative Analysis of Barrage Subtitling in Nico Nico Douga and Bilibili”(in China’s Youth Cultures and Collective Spaces: Creativity, Sociality, Identity and Resistance, edited by Vanessa Frangville and Gwennaël Gaffric, 2019). He is embarking on a new project on the socio-technical analysis of safe driving and autonomous driving technologies, serving as the Director of the Research Institute of Automobile and Parts Industries (RIAPI), Waseda University. March 20th (Saterday) Suspensions of Concentration: Session 5 Kimetsu no yaiba and Blockbuster in the Year of the Global Pandemic Friday 19 & Sunday 20 March 2020
Title Colorful Execution: Conventionality and Transnationality in Kimetsu no Yaiba
Presenter Stevie SUAN (Hosei University)
Abstract The sustained achievement of the Kimetsu no Yaiba film in the number 1 spot at the box office and claim to the highest grossing film of all time in Japan marks an important achievement for late-night TV anime. While two other anime, Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi and Kimi no Na ha, have reached similar levels of sales and popularity, neither of these works were based on an established late-night TV anime like Kimetsu no Yaiba is. This may invite questions of what makes Kimetsu no Yaiba so special as to achieve this degree of fame. However, instead of pursuing the question of Kimetsu no Yaiba’s uniqueness, this presentation will instead explore how conventional the anime actually is, through an examination of its media-form, exploring how Kimetsu no Yaiba performs as an anime. Such an exploration will examine some of the recent trends in anime that are employed in Kimetsu no Yaiba, including certain character types, narrative tropes, and character designs. In addition, I will examine some of the patterns of production, and, in comparison with the manga, reveal how the media-formal elements of both mediums reveal divergent types of transnationality.
Bio Stevie Suan is an Assistant Professor at Hosei University’s Faculty of Global and Interdisciplinary Studies, Stevie Suan holds a doctorate from the Graduate School of Manga Studies at Kyoto Seika University and a masters in Asian Studies from University of Hawai‛i at Mānoa. His main area of expertise is in anime aesthetics through which he explores various modes of existence. In his recent research, he utilizes performance/ performativity theory and media theory to examine anime as an example of the shifting currents of cultural production and consumption in our moment of globalization. This is the topic of his upcoming book, Anime’s Identity: Performativity and Form beyond Japan, forthcoming from University of Minnesota Press (2021). March 20th (Saterday) Suspensions of Concentration: Session 6 Kimetsu no yaiba and Blockbuster in the Year of the Global Pandemic Friday 19 & Sunday 20 March 2020
Title The Distant Blockbuster: Gekijoban ‘Kimetsu no yaiba’ mugen ressha-hen (2020) and the Transnationalization of Anime Status
Presenter Rayna DENISON (University of East Anglia)
Abstract By any standard, the recent success of the Kimetsu no yaiba (Demonslayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba) franchise would justify its inclusion in lists of the world’s most popular films of 2020. In fact, Hollywood films have increasingly moved into online distribution in 2020, this franchise’s film incarnation – Gekijôban “Kimetsu no yaiba” mugen ressha-hen – may well prove to be one of the most profitable and popular of the year worldwide. Reportedly seen by over 20 million people in Japan and bringing more than $260 million so far, the “theatrical version” of Kimetsu no yaiba is significant for the way it inverts and subverts some of the longstanding debates and assumptions about the blockbuster film (Schilling 2020). Chris Berry has argued that Asia has its own thriving, localized versions of blockbuster culture, and calls for the “de-Westernization” of the blockbuster as a way of understanding “big” films from around the world (2003: 219). In this talk, I seek to examine how an example of Kimetsu no yaiba might shift the discourse of the blockbuster away from its American centre. In particular, I focus on the how Kimetsu no yaiba’s success is being assessed outside Japan as the film slowly transnationalizes and travels. In doing so, I examine how critics, cultural commentators and journalists are debating the film’s “blockbuster” status in relation to its reliance on the domestic market in Japan for the majority of its success. Through a comparative examination of the discourses around this hit film at home and abroad, I attempt to unpick how anime’s meanings shift as they travel, and how such local blockbusters are framed and understood before they become accessible outside of the domestic market. Through this analysis, I am to demonstrate how Gekijôban “Kimestsu no yaiba” mugen ressha-hen has become a kind of “distant” blockbuster whose success at home echoes around the world.
Bio Rayna Denison is a Senior Lecturer in Film, Television and Media Studies at the University of East Anglia, UK, where she researches and teaches contemporary Japanese animation and film. She is the author of Anime: A Critical Introduction, and the editor of Princess Mononoke: Understanding Studio Ghibli’s Monster Princess. She is also the co-editor of the Eisner Award-nominated Superheroes on World Screens. Rayna has edited special issues of the Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema, the East Asian Journal of Popular Culture and Animation Studies Journal, and her articles can be found in a wide range of scholarly journals including Cinema Journal, Japan Forum, the International Journal of Cultural Studies and Animation: An Interdisciplinary Journal. March 19th (Friday) Suspensions of Concentration: Session 3 Kimetsu no yaiba and Blockbuster in the Year of the Global Pandemic Friday 19 & Sunday 20 March 2020
Discussant Julien BOUVARD (University Jean Moulin Lyon 3)
Bio Julien Bouvard is currently associate professor in Japanese studies at University Jean Moulin Lyon 3 (France). After graduating in History and in Japanese language and civilization, he wrote a doctoral thesis in 2010 entitled “Manga politique, politique du manga (Political manga, politics of manga): History of the Relationship between a Popular Medium and Power in Contemporary Japan from the 1960s to the Present.» His research focuses on the history of manga, but he also conducts work on other aspects of Japanese popular culture such as video games and animation. He is currently working on a book project on the materiality of manga, otherwise on manga as an object. March 20th (Saterday) Suspensions of Concentration: Session 5 Kimetsu no yaiba and Blockbuster in the Year of the Global Pandemic Friday 19 & Sunday 20 March 2020
Discussant Lukas R.A. WILDE (Tübingen University)
Bio Lukas R.A. Wilde is a research associate at Tübingen University’s Department for Media Studies, Germany. He studied theatre and media; Japanese; and philosophy at the Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg and the Gakugei University of Tokyo, and is a fellow of the German Academic Scholarship Foundation (Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes). His media studies dissertation on the functions of ‘characters’ (kyara) within everyday communication of contemporary Japanese society was awarded the Roland-Faelske-Award for the best Dissertation in Comics and Animation Studies in 2018. He is the Vice President of the German Society for Comic Studies (ComFor) and a member and former spokesperson of the Committee for Comic Studies (AG Comicforschung) of the German Society of Media Studies (GfM). Lukas Wilde is also one of the organizers of the digital artists initiative Comic Solidarity and the GINCO Award (The German Inclusive Comic Award of the Independent Scene). March 20th (Saterday) Suspensions of Concentration: Session 6 Kimetsu no yaiba and Blockbuster in the Year of the Global Pandemic Friday 19 & Sunday 20 March 2020
Discussant Marie PRUVOST-DELASPRE (Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint Denis University)
Bio Marie Pruvost-Delaspre is Lecturer in Cinema Studies at Paris 8 Vincennes- Saint Denis University since 2017. Her PhD dissertation, conducted at Sorbonne Nouvelle University, focused on the history of the Japanese animation studio Toei Doga and the evolution of its production system from 1956 to 1972. She published several articles on anime and the history of animation techniques, and co-authored a number of books in French, such as Japanese Animation in France (2014) and Grendizer the Never-Ending Story (2018). Her first monograph will be The Origins of Anime: Toei Doga Studio (forthcoming, 2021).