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Mechademia 2 Networks of Desire Frenchy Lunning, editor |
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Traces the web of desires that connects Japanese popular culture and its fans. Networks of Desire—the second volume in the Mechademia series, an annual forum devoted to critical and creative work on Japanese anime, manga, and the fan cultures that have coalesced around them—explores the varieties of desire that structure and influence much of contemporary anime and manga in manifestations that range from the explicitly sexual to more sublimated text and imagery. Collecting original essays by scholars, artists, and fans, Networks of Desire considers key issues at play in a Japanese society increasingly uncertain of its place in a globalized world: from idealized representations of same-sex desire in such shôjo manga (girls’ comics) as The Rose of Versailles, to fan fiction inspired by the gender-switching manga Ranma ½, to desire in otaku communities. Deftly weaving together desire and discourse, Mechademia 2 illuminates the techno-carnal fantasies, animalistic consumption, political nostalgia, and existential hunger underlying the most popular and influential expressions of Japanese popular culture today. Contributors: Brent Allison, Meredith Suzanne Hahn Aquila, Hiroki Azuma, William L. Benzon, Christopher Bolton, Martha Cornog, Patrick Drazen, Marc Hairston, Mari Kotani, Shu Kuge, Margherita Long, Daisuke Miyao, Hiromi Mizuno, Mariana Ortega, Timothy Perper, Eron Rauch, Trina Robbins, Brian Ruh, Deborah Shamoon, Masami Toku, Keith Vincent. “Japan’s pop culture, once believed unexportable, is now hitting the shores of other nations like a tsunami. In North America, young fans consume vast amounts of manga and anime, while academics increasingly study the entire J-pop phenomenon to understand it. One community has passion while the other has discipline, and what has been lacking is a bridge between the two. Mechademia is the bridge, and with a name like that, how can you go wrong? So why wait? Hop in your giant mobile suit and stomp down to the local real or virtual bookstore to purchase a copy right now!” —Frederik L. Schodt, author of Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics “The Mechademia series is an extraordinary anthology of original essays by scholars, artists, and fans discussing the popular culture of Japanese animation, manga, and their derivative fan-works, as gathered from an annual forum. A welcome contribution to Japanese popular culture studies.” —Midwest Book Review “A thoughtful collection.” —Animation Magazine Frenchy Lunning is professor of liberal arts at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. 184 pages | 68 b&w photos | 7 x 10 | 2007 TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction: Art Mecho (GRRRL) Shojo Shojo Manga! Girls’ Comics! A Mirror of Girls’ Dreams Ranma 1/2 Fan Fiction Writers: New Narrative Themes or the Same Old Story? Doll Beauties and Cosplay A Japanese Electra and Her Queer Progeny Powers of Time When Pacifist Japan Fights: Historicizing Desires in Anime The Quick and the Undead: Visual and Political Dynamics in Blood: The Last Vampire Bridges of the Unknown: Visual Desires and Small Apocalypses Animalization The Animalization of Otaku Culture Sex and the Single Pig: Desire and Flight in Porco Rosso The Education of Desire: Futari etchi and the Globalization of Sexual Tolerance My Father, He Killed Me; My Mother, She Ate Me: Self, Desire, Engendering, and the Mother in Neon Genesis Evangelion Horizons In the World That Is Infinitely Inclusive: Four Theses on Voices of a Distant Star and The Wings of Honneamise Between the Child and the Mecha Review and Commentary Anime: Comparing Macro and Micro Analyses Crazy Rabbit Man: Why I Rewrite Manga Brain-Diving Batou Lurkers at the Threshold: Saya and the Nature of Evil Torendo Contributors |
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$19.95 paper