Mechademia 5

Fanthropologies

2010

Frenchy Lunning, editor

From fan-subs to cosplay, exploring the fan cultures inspired by anime and manga

Contributors: Madeline Ashby, Jodie Beck, Christopher Bolton, Naitō Chizuko, Ian Condry, Martha Cornog, Kathryn Dunlap, Ōtsuka Eiji, Gerald Figal, Patrick W. Galbraith, Marc Hairston, Marilyn Ivy, Koichi Iwabuchi, Paul Jackson, Amamiya Karin, Fan-Yi Lam, Thomas Lamarre, Paul M. Malone, Anne McKnight, Livia Monnet, Susan Napier, Kerin Ogg, Timothy Perper, Eron Rauch, Brian Ruh, Nathan Shockey, Marc Steinberg, Jin C. Tomshine, Carissa Wolf

This series remains one of the most vital, important venues for new research into contemporary Japanese graphic-narratives.

Electronic Journal of Contemporary Japanese Studies

Passionate fans of anime and manga, known in Japan as otaku and active around the world, play a significant role in the creation and interpretation of this pervasive popular culture. Routinely appropriating and remixing favorite characters, narratives, imagery, and settings, otaku take control of the anime characters they consume.

Fanthropologies—the fifth volume in the Mechademia series, an annual forum devoted to Japanese anime and manga—focuses on fans, fan activities, and the otaku phenomenon. The zones of activity discussed in these essays range from fan-subs (fan-subtitled versions of anime and manga) and copyright issues to gender and nationality in fandom, dolls, and other forms of consumption that fandom offers. Individual pieces include a remarkable photo essay on the emerging art of cosplay photography; an original manga about an obsessive doll-fan; and a tour of Akihabara, Tokyo's discount electronics shopping district, by a scholar disguised as a fuzzy animal.

Contributors: Madeline Ashby; Jodie Beck, McGill U; Christopher Bolton, Williams College; Naitō Chizuko, Otsuma U; Ian Condry, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Martha Cornog; Kathryn Dunlap, U of Central Florida; Ōtsuka Eiji, Kobe Design U; Gerald Figal, Vanderbilt U; Patrick W. Galbraith, U of Tokyo; Marc Hairston, U of Texas at Dallas; Marilyn Ivy, Columbia U; Koichi Iwabuchi, Waseda U; Paul Jackson; Amamiya Karin; Fan-Yi Lam; Thomas Lamarre, McGill U; Paul M. Malone, U of Waterloo; Anne McKnight, U of Southern California; Livia Monnet, U of Montreal; Susan Napier, Tufts U; Kerin Ogg; Timothy Perper; Eron Rauch; Brian Ruh, Indiana U; Nathan Shockey, Columbia U; Marc Steinberg, Concordia U; Jin C. Tomshine, U of California, San Francisco; Carissa Wolf, North Dakota State U.

Frenchy Lunning is professor of liberal arts at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.

This series remains one of the most vital, important venues for new research into contemporary Japanese graphic-narratives.

Electronic Journal of Contemporary Japanese Studies

Mechademia 5 is another solid issue.

Comics Worth Reading

Contents

Introduction
Frenchy Lunning

Sites of Transposition

The Art of Cute Little Things: Nara Yoshitomo’s Parapolitics
Marilyn Ivy
Transforming U.S. Anime in the 1980s: Localization and Longevity
Brian Ruh
Speciesism, Part II: Tezuka Osamu and the Multispecies Ideal
Thomas Lamarre
Undoing Inter-national Fandom in the Age of Brand Nationalism
Koichi Iwabuchi


Patterns of Consumption

World and Variation: The Reproduction and Consumption of Narrative
Ôtsuka Eiji
Translated and with an Introduction by Marc Steinberg
Frenchness and Transformation in Japanese Subculture, 1972–2004
Anne McKnight
Monstrous Media and Delusional Consumption in Kon Satoshi’s Paranoia Agent
Gerald Figal
Lucid Dreams, False Awakenings: Figures of the Fan in Kon Satoshi
Kerin Ogg


A Cosplay Photography Sampler
Eron Rauch and Christopher Bolton


Modes of Circulation

Dark Energy: What Fansubs Reveal about the Copyright Wars
Ian Condry
Akihabara: Conditioning a Public Otaku Image
Patrick W. Galbraith
Comic Market: How the World’s Biggest Amateur Comic Fair Shaped Japanese Dôjinshi Culture
Fan-Yi Lam


Styles of Intervention

Suffering Forces Us to Think beyond the Right–Left Barrier
Amamiya Karin
Translated and with an Introduction by Jodie Beck
Fans Behaving Badly: Anime Metafandom, Brutal Criticism, and the Intellectual Fan
Kathryn Dunlap and Carissa Wolf
Anatomy of Permutational Desire: Perversion in Hans Bellmer and Oshii Mamoru
Livia Monnet
A Cocoon with a View: Hikikomori, Otaku, and Welcome to the NHK
Marc Hairston
Reorganizations of Gender and Nationalism: Gender Bashing and Loliconized Japanese Society
Naitô Chizuko
Translated by Nathan Shockey


Aeryn’s Dolls
Jin C. Tomshine


Review and Commentary

The Space between Worlds: Mushishi and Japanese Folklore
Paul Jackson
Animation beyond the Boundaries
Susan Napier
Three Faces of Eva: Evangelion 1.01: You Are (Not) Alone
Cruel Angels? Cruel Fathers!
Paul M. Malone
Epic Fail: Still Dreary, after All These Years
Madeline Ashby
The Rebuild of Anime
Thomas Lamarre
Brief Visions of a Vast Landscape
Timothy Perper and Martha Cornog
Death Note: The Killer in Me Is the Killer in You
Susan Napier


トレンド Torendo

Otakuology: A Dialogue
Patrick W. Galbraith and Thomas Lamarre


Contributors
Call for Papers