After decades in which American popular culture dominated global media and markets, Japanese popular culture—primarily manga and anime, but also toys, card and video games, and fashion—has exploded into a worldwide phenomenon. From Pokémon and the Power Rangers to Paranoia Agent and Princess Mononoke, Japanese popular culture is consumed by an eager and exponentially increasing audience of youths, teenagers, and adults. Mechademia, a new annual edited by Frenchy Lunning, begins an innovative and fresh conversation among scholars, critics, and fans about the complexity of art forms like Superflat, manga, and anime. The inaugural volume, Mechademia 1 engages the rise of Japanese popular culture through game design, fashion, graphic design, commercial packaging, character creation, and fan culture. Promoting dynamic ways of thinking, along with state-of-the-art graphic design and a wealth of images, this cutting-edge work opens new doors between academia and fandom.The premiere issue features the interactive worlds that anime and manga have created, including the origins of cosplay (the manga and anime costume subculture), Superflat, forgotten images from a founding manga artist, video game interactivity, the nature of anime fandom in America, and the globalization of manga. Contributors: Anne Allison, Duke U; William L. Benzon; Christopher Bolton, Williams College; Vern L. Bullough, California State U, Northridge; Martha Cornog; Patrick Drazen; Marc Hairston; Mari Kotani; Thomas LaMarre; Antonia Levi, Portland State U; Thomas Looser, NYU; Susan Napier, U of Texas, Austin; Michelle Ollie; Timothy Perper; Sara Pocock; Brian Ruh; Takayuki Tatsumi, Keio U, Tokyo; Toshiya Ueno, Wako U, Tokyo; Theresa Winge, U of Northern Iowa; Mark J. P. Wolf, Concordia U; Wendy Siuyi Wong, York U.Frenchy Lunning is professor of liberal arts at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.

This inaugural volume on anime and manga engages the rise of Japanese popular culture through game design, fashion, graphic design, commercial packaging, character creation, and fan culture. Promoting dynamic ways of thinking, along with a wealth of images, this cutting-edge work opens new doors between academia and fandom.

From Nausicaä to Sailor Moon, understanding girl heroines of manga and anime within otaku culture.

“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 one 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 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 shjo manga (girls’s 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, U of Georgia; Meredith Suzanne Hahn Aquila; Hiroki Azuma; William L. Benzon; Christopher Bolton, Williams College; Martha Cornog; Patrick Drazen; Marc Hairston, U of Texas, Dallas; Mari Kotani; Shu Kuge, Penn State U; Margherita Long, U of California, Riverside; Daisuke Miyao; Hiromi Mizuno, U of Minnesota; Mariana Ortega; Timothy Perper; Eron Rauch; Trina Robbins; Brian Ruh, Indiana U; Deborah Shamoon, U of Notre Dame; Masami Toku, California State U, Chico; Keith Vincent, NYU. Frenchy Lunning is professor of liberal arts at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and editor of Mechademia 1: Emerging Worlds of Anime and Manga (Minnesota, 2006).

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.

For students, fans, and scholars alike, this wide-ranging primer on anime employs a panoply of critical approaches Well-known through hit movies like Spirited Away, Akira, and Ghost in the Shell, anime has a long history spanning a wide range of directors, genres, and styles. Christopher Bolton’s Interpreting Anime is a thoughtful, carefully organized introduction to Japanese animation for anyone eager to see why this genre has remained a vital, adaptable art form for decades. Interpreting Anime is easily accessible and structured around individual films and a broad array of critical approaches. Each chapter centers on a different feature-length anime film, juxtaposing it with a particular medium—like literary fiction, classical Japanese theater, and contemporary stage drama—to reveal what is unique about anime’s way of representing the world. This analysis is abetted by a suite of questions provoked by each film, along with Bolton’s incisive responses. Throughout, Interpreting Anime applies multiple frames, such as queer theory, psychoanalysis, and theories of postmodernism, giving readers a thorough understanding of both the cultural underpinnings and critical significance of each film. What emerges from the sweep of Interpreting Anime is Bolton’s original, articulate case for what makes anime unique as a medium: how it at once engages profound social and political realities while also drawing attention to the very challenges of representing reality in animation’s imaginative and compelling visual forms.

Untangles the web of commodity, capitalism, and art that is anime