Mechademia #5: Mechademia 5: Fanthropologies

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; Naitô Chizuko, Otsuma U; Ian Condry, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Martha Cornog; Kathryn Dunlap, U of Central Florida; Ôtsuka 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.

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

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

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

Torendo

Otakuology: A Dialogue

Patrick W. Galbraith and Thomas Lamarre

Contributors

Call for Papers