Collective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime A
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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, as well as large networks of professionals including animators, directors, scriptwriters, voice actors, and producers. These networks produce texts that are then open to “multiple use,” dispersed into the hands of other producers through “element databases,” or converge in a “media mix,” spun through committees and centralized through “product-portals.” The resulting transmedia reflects the similar creative preoccupations within manga and anime: an ability to construct worlds through “character management”: the multi-authored process of constructing compelling characters with a variety of industrial functions. iii The dissertation of Bryan Hikari Hartzheim is approved. Seiji Lippit Steve Mamber Chon Noriega John T. Caldwell, Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2015 iv To my parents v TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter 1 – Introduction 1 Chapter 2 - Manga Production and Shueisha’s Weekly Shōnen Jump 49 Chapter 3 – Case Study: Toriko’s Database World 127 Chapter 4 – Anime Production and Toei Animation Studio 205 Chapter 5 – Case Study: Pretty Cure’s Convergence Text 306 Chapter 6 – Conclusion: Anime/Manga Transmedia Futures 375 Bibliography 385 vi LIST OF FIGURES Chapter One 1. Character healing 2 2. Manga magazines 5 Chapter Two 3. Prewar children’s magazines 57 4. Examples of akahon 59 5. Tezuka Osamu’s Disney-inspired characters 60 6. Examples of avatars in the manga magazine 76 7. Example of the weekly manga workflow 94 8. Shueisha offices 107 Chapter Three 9. Nakano Haruyuki’s map of manga transmedia 137 10. Examples of Toriko framing 164 11. Megamori Island 181 12. Sunny’s transition from manga to anime 193 13. The evolution of Komatsu 200 Chapter Four 14. Mikami Koji’s map of anime workflow 221 15. Toei Animation’s Oizumi studio 230 16. Seisaku iinkai (production committee) model 242 17. Seiya figurines 248 18. Director Hatano’s storyboards 276 vii 19. Animator workspaces and drawings 283 20. Voice-recording session 296 Chapter Five 21. Manga vs. anime transmedia models 308 22. Pretty Cure merchandise 314 23. Candy, shaped to play 341 24. Example of an uchiawase 351 25. Bryan vs. Brian: Translating character 359 26. Product portal 1: Royal Clock 367 27. Product portal 2: Miracle Light 370 viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This project began under the guidance of my professors and advisors at UCLA. I would like to express my gratitude first and foremost to my mentor and chair John Caldwell, whose intellect, energy, and consistent encouragement shephered my education since I began graduate school. It has been an honor and pleasure to work with such a model educator and person. The insight and support of my other committee members, Steve Mamber, Chon Noriega, and Seiji Lippit, was invaluable on this project and through the years in various seminars and independent studies. Others were also instrumental in helping me better see and write about film and media, including Janet Bergstrom, Giuliana Muscio, Nick Browne, Michael Marra, Ally Field, Vivian Sobchack, and particularly Denise Mann. In Japan, Yasuko Watanabe and Yukie Kito introduced me to key people in the anime and manga industries. Masaya Hasegawa, Go Wakabayashi, and especially Seki Hiromi were extremely patient in allowing me access to anything and everything in an anime studio that I could imagine. Takashi Otsuka and Morio Hatano were incredibly forthcoming about the creative process. Michihiro Aso and Mami Sugihara helped open my eyes to the publishing world. Any ethnographic study owes a tremendous amount to a number of human participants, many of whom I now consider my friends. Thank you all for the great conversations we shared over beers or ramen. None of this fieldwork could have been completed without two very generous scholarships through UCLA’s Terasaki Center for Japanese Studies from George and Sakaye Aratani. I am eternally in their debt. Above all, thank you to my parents for always pushing my education, from driving me to school on Saturday mornings across the city to study Japanese, to staying up late helping me read my first manga. This study is a product of their love and support. ix VITA 2005 B.A. English Graduated Magna Cum Laude with Honors University of California, Los Angeles Los Angeles, CA 2008-2012 Teaching Assistant Department of Film, Television, and Digital Media Los Angeles, CA 2009 M.A. Film, Television, and Digital Media Awarded Distinction University of California, Los Angeles Los Angeles, CA 2010 John Siegel Fellowship 2010 Sasakawa Fellowship 2011 Hugh Downs Graduate Research Fellowship 2011 UCLA Graduate Research Summer Mentorship 2011-2013 Aratani Field Experience Scholarship PUBLICATIONS AND PRESENTATIONS Hartzheim, Bryan Hikari. “An Asian Doll in French Clothes: Assimilation and Reception in the Films of Tsuruko Aoki.” Paper presented at Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference, Tokyo, Japan. May 2009. ---. “Tsuruko Aoki: Wife, Lover, Transcultural Star.” Mediascape (Winter 2011). ---. “The National Imagination Factory? Intersections in Film Policy, ‘Japan Cool,’ and Independent Film.” Paper presented at Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference, New Orleans, Louisiana. March 2011. ---. “Toei Animation and the Japanese Media Mix.” Paper presented at Mechademia Conference, Seoul, South Korea. December 2012. ---. “The Planner’s Tale: Inside a Japanese Mobile Game Studio.” Paper presented at the Southwest Popular American Culture Association Conference. February 2015. Iwatani Toru. “Foreward.” Trans. Bryan Hikari Hartzheim. Video Games Around the World. Ed. Mark J.P. Wolf. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2015. x Chapter 1: Introduction Japanese anime (animation), manga (comics), and video games have spread over the globe increasingly since the 1990s. This wave of “Japanophillia,” incidentally, has not gone unnoticed by those in prominent positions of influence. “Japanamerica” and “Japanification” are but two of the neologisms that have been coined by critics and scholars to describe this current iteration of Japanese cultural influence.1 As far back as 2002, in fact, Douglas McGray came up with the idea of Japan’s “gross national cool,” or GNC, to describe the nation’s newfound soft power (the ability to influence through attraction and co-option, rather than coercion and force) in the form of highly attractive cultural commodities in the global sphere.2 Japanese policymakers have been swift to capitalize on the trend, pumping millions of yen into a branding strategy known as “Cool Japan,” a catchphrase referring to the planned economic and political influence of the nation’s content industries.3 When the global “success” of anime and manga is discussed in “Cool Japan” terms, issues relating to national identity and Japanese diplomacy are inevitably brought up. In his policy speech to the Diet in 2007, former Prime Minister and self-described otaku (obsessive anime fan) Aso Taro said, “What is important is to be able to induce other countries to listen to Japan. If the use of pop culture or various sub-cultures can be useful in this process, we certainly should make the most of them.”4 Two years later, Aso talked 1 See Roland Kelts Japanimerica: How Japanese Pop Culture Has Invaded the West (New York: Palgrave, 2006) and Mark I. West ed. The Japanification of Children’s Popular Culture (Lanham: Scarecrow Press, 2008). 2 Douglas McGray, “Japan’s Gross National Cool,” Foreign Policy 130 (May/June 2002). 3 Japan Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry, Cool Japan Initiative, 2014. <http://www.meti.go.jp/policy/mono_info_service/mono/creative/file/1406CoolJapanInitiative.pdf> (12 February 2015). 4 See the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, “Policy Speech by Minister of Foreign Affairs Taro Aso to the 166th Session of the Diet,” 26 January 2007. 1 about his love for the medium and his desire to build a national manga museum in the center of Akihabara – a district of Tokyo that is already practically a museum for manga and anime.5 Other officials of the Cool Japan initiative have said that one of the goals of the project is to emphasize Japanese cultural exports in trade in order to “foster the brand power of Japan.”6 This importance placed on “brand power” cannot be underestimated; in the post-Cold War era, the role of cultural capital has grown in global politics as the use of military or economic power has decreased. Companies in Japan can create popular characters, using their images for a variety of purposes and sustaining businesses over decades. But the government, apparently, can also reuse that character’s popularity to “heal” international relations with foreign peoples and territories.