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Nele Noppe

Frenchy Lunning: Japan Journey! - 0 views

verticaltime.blogspot.com/...japan-journey.html

manga manga_research non-academic

shared by Nele Noppe on 02 Jan 08 - Cached
  • the distinctive characteristics…reflect the Japanese subconscience and can be identified only by stripping away the influences of the modern history of manga as an imported style…Yet highlighting only those characteristics would slant the debate toward a closed argument…an echo of Orientalism.
  • Toys, animation, gaming, and western comics all show the influence of manga and anime, but evidence of this aesthetic can also be found in fashion, graphic design, industrial design, and fine art. Though initially this was considered a trend that would peak and be replaced, this movement, has steadily expanded since it emerged in the late 1980’s (in the US), and has established itself as a substantial and sustaining aesthetic, one that has transformed western design and consumer culture.
  • the continuing steady growth of manga and anime around the world in markets like France and Italy, which embraced manga years before the U.S. did, would appear to indicate that interest in anime and manga is not a flash-in-the-pan fad, but a trend that will continue on the upswing for some time to come. (www.icv2.com/articles/news/2953.html)
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • demonstrates the potential for new transnational aesthetics that become the uniting factor in such movements. Such an account of manga is crucial to understanding the ways in which transnational markets continue to expand and differentiate themselves, and begins to project how utopian images of the global village might become a reality.
  • I propose to look at manga graphics through an historical perspective, to trace lineages and flows of the art within Japan and from Japan to the world. Both from the standpoint of the images themselves, but also with an eye to other influential graphic objects whose national, commercial and popular cultural position in Japan meant that they have been overlooked as contributing influences on manga styles.
Ariane Beldi

Special Issue CFP: Transnational Boys' Love Fan Studies (March 2013) - 2 views

journal.transformativeworks.org/...19

website online journal english html textual pdf article academic social sciences theory method fandom public reception audience studies cfp BL

shared by Ariane Beldi on 15 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • Ariane Beldi on 15 Nov 11
     
    "'BL' (Boys' Love), a genre of male homosexual narratives (consisting of manga, novels, animations, games, films, and so forth) written by and for women, has recently been acknowledged, by Japanese and non-Japanese scholars alike, as a significant component of Japanese popular culture. The aesthetic and style of Japanese BL have also been assumed, deployed and transformed by female fans transnationally. The current thrust of transnational BL practices raises a number of important issues relating to socio/cultural constructs of BL localization and globalization. Scholarly endeavors in relation to BL can be enriched by further research concerning the activities of transnational BL fans, fan communities, fandom, and the production of fan fiction. Most previous BL fan studies have remained circumscribed to Japan and North America. Therefore, in order to further develop transnational BL fan studies, we are seeking contributors who are engaged in the exploration of non-Japanese and non-North American contexts (e.g. Europe, the Asia-Pacific region, Africa, and others). Transnational BL fan studies may also be incorporated into the broader socio/political critical frameworks offered by studies in economics, gender/sexuality, race/class, and other areas. "
  • Ariane Beldi on 15 Nov 11
     
    For those who are studying fandom and Boy's Love, this might be an opportunity to share your researches!
Nele Noppe

Live Action Anime? Only at MIT! - 0 views

www.henryjenkins.org/...post_5.html

anime cosplay dubbing fans theatre visual_language

shared by Nele Noppe on 18 Dec 07 - Cached
  • the many ways that anime crosses over from the "virtual" to the "real." The most obvious example is cosplay and the many forms of licensed merchandise, such as toys and models, that in effect bring anime through the screen and into people's hands. When fans take anime and manga characters, and use them to create their own fanzine manga (dôjinshi), a similar kind of translation effect is underway, that is, taking imagined characters, re-imagining through our own minds, and the creating something new in the world.
  • Anime creators always struggle with challenge of bringing the "real" into the "virtual" space of animation.
  • Anime fans have long debated whether Anime is best understood as a genre (or perhaps a set of related genres), as an aesthetic style, as a mode of production, or as a transmedia phenomenon.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Cyberpunk has long been a vehicle for authors and animators to reflect upon the influence of media on contemporary culture
  • captured the anime aesthetic
  • The performers developed their 'signature poses' and we worked from those to generate a language of motion. In the end, it was much harder than I thought it might be, to go through the entire piece in this sort of 'physical karaoke' but without ever speaking a word. It helped us reconsider the importance of breath and sound as components of human expression, because in the live action anime, working with the pre-recorded soundtracks, the performers never got to make a sound.
  • creating phrases with our bodies.
Ariane Beldi

White Rose Studentships (2009-2010) - 0 views

www.shef.ac.uk/...jrayner.html

white_rose_studentships japanese_cinema japan hollywood

shared by Ariane Beldi on 06 Apr 09 - Cached
  • Ariane Beldi on 06 Apr 09
     
    Although manga and animes aren't mentioned in the outline of this research project, it is certainly comprehended in the field being investigated, which is Japanese cinema. After all, animation is such an important element of Japanese audiovisual entertainment that it might be worth to propose topics about it.
  • Ariane Beldi on 06 Apr 09
     
    Widescreen aesthetics and technologies have been analysed almost exclusively in relation to American cinema practices. The proposed studentship will redress this imbalance by offering an in-depth analysis of the adoption, development, use and interpretation of widescreen cinema by Japanese studios and significant filmmakers. The 'mixed' nature of this area of Japanese film production will be apparent in comparisons drawn between Hollywood and Japanese productions and technologies, and the emergence of a culturally-specific response to the representational qualities of the widescreen frame.
Nele Noppe

Moe and the Potential of Fantasy in Post-Millenial Japan - 2 views

www.japanesestudies.org.uk/...Bryce.html

academic manga anime moe fans characters romance sexuality games kawaii zoomorphism affect emotion visual_language boys_love dojinshi

shared by Nele Noppe on 11 Mar 10 - Cached
  • If kawaii, or the aesthetic of cute, is the longing for the freedom and innocence of youth, manifesting in the junior and high school girl in uniform (Kinsella 1995), then moe is the longing for the purity of characters pre-person, manifesting in androgynous semi and demi human forms. This is called 'jingai,' or outside human, and examples include robots, aliens, dolls and anthropomorphized animals, all stock characters in the moe pantheon. A specific example would be nekomimi, or cat-eared characters. More generally, in order to achieve the desired affect, moe characters are reduced to tiny deformed 'little girl' images with emotive, pupil-less animal eyes
  • I argue fantasy characters offer virtual possibilities and affect
  • Moe is also used by fujoshi, zealous female fans of yaoi, a genre of manga featuring male homosexual romance. However, the word moe indicates a response to fantasy characters, not a specific style, character type or relational pattern. While some things are more likely than others to inspire moe, this paper will focus mainly on the response itself rather than the forms that inspire it.
  • ...43 more annotations...
  • Both otaku and fujoshi
  • The moe character is a 'body without organs' (Deleuze and Guattari 1987), and the response to its virtual potentials is affect.
  • Massumi argues affect is a moment of unformed and unstructured potential (Massumi 2002). The experience, what he calls an 'intensity,' is outside of logical language and conscious control. Moe provides a word to express affect, or to identify a form that resonates and can trigger an intensity.
  • It is for this reason that moe is consistently misunderstood as first and foremost images of young girls instead of a response to virtual potentials
  • In the field interacting with otaku and fujoshi, I was constantly confronted by the concept of moe, and found it necessary to engage it.
  • These are both men and their discourse centers on male otaku, but I will argue from them a more general theory, applied later in the paper to fujoshi structures of desire.
  • Honda, a youth-oriented novelist and self-styled moe critic, defines moe as 'imaginary love'
  • the salient point is his judgment that a relationship with a mediated character or material representations of it is preferable to an interpersonal relationship.
  • the moe man is feminized
  • While recognizing the conservative nature of otaku sexuality, Azuma attempts to account for the schizophrenic presence of perversion in the moe image. For Azuma, otaku are postmodern subjects with multiple personalities engendered by their environment and enthusiastic media consumption
  • To feel moe for all characters in all situations, the narrative connecting characters or moments in time is de-emphasized.
  • cat ears,
  • response is unconnected with 'reality' and thus offers new potentials to construct and express affects.
  • Separating their desire from reality allowed for a new form of affect called moe.
  • Simply stated, moe is about unbounded potential.
  • Moe is affect in response to fantasy forms that emerged from information-consumer culture in Japan in the late stages of capitalism.
  • conditioning of young girls into 'pure consumers'
  • Such a space is disconnected from social and political concerns, and exists for the preservation of the individual.
  • the media and consumption feeding into moe is a specific sort centered on affect.
  • Manga scholar Itou Gou argues that since the end of the 1980s characters in anime, manga and videogames became so appealing that fans desired them even without stories (Itou 2005). Ito dubs such character types 'kyara,' distinct from characters (kyarakutaa) embedded in narratives.
  • Proof of this can be found in the rise of 'parody' doujinshi,
  • The doll-like and semi-human Ayanami became the single most popular and influential character in the history of otaku anime; fans still isolate parts of the character to amplify and rearticulate in fan-produced works to inspire moe.
  • In works featuring these characters, the original work functions as a starting point, and the extended process of producing and consuming moe takes place among fans in online discussions and videos, fan-produced comics (doujinshi), costume roleplay (cosplay) and figures.
  • virtual potentiality
  • That the moe form, the body without organs, is outside personal and social frames is precisely why it triggers affect.
  • 'moe otaku' a superficial fixation on surfaces and accelerated consumption of disposable moe kyara, impetus for him to declare this younger generation culturally 'dead'
  • One man I spoke with said, 'Moe is a wish for compassionate human interaction. Moe is a reaction to characters that are more sincere and pure than human beings are today.' Similarly, another man described moe as 'the ultimate expression of male platonic love.' This, he said, was far more stable and rewarding than 'real' love could ever be. Manga artist Akamatsu Ken stresses that moe is the 'maternal love' (boseiai) latent in men,[xxi] and a 'pure love' (junsui na ai) unrelated to sex, the desire to be calmed when looking at a female infant (biyoujo wo mite nagomitai) (Akamatsu 2005). 'The moe target is dependent on us for security (a child, etc.) or won't betray us (a maid, etc.). Or we are raising it (like a pet)' (Akamatsu 2005). This desire to 'nurture' (ikusei) characters is extremely common among fans. Further, moe is about the moment of affect and resists changes ('betrayal') in the future, or what Akamatsu refers to as a 'moratorium' (moratoriamu). Moe media is approached as something of a sanctuary from society (Okada 2008), and as such is couched in a discourse of purity.
  • I will now demonstrate how it is further possible to reduce people to characters, or to reduce reality to fantasy in pursuit of moe.
  • Association with the two-dimensional world, and lack of depth or access in the three-dimensional world, makes a maid moe.[
  • The appeal of the maid cannot purely be sexual: As many as 35 per cent of customers are women
  • this arose in Japan in the late stages of capitalism as a result of shifts in consumer-information society
  • bias towards male fans of anim
  • aoi erases the female presence because fans say female-male or even female-female couples[xxxvi] are too 'raw' (namanamashii). Put another way, the reality of relationships is removed from yaoi to make the moe response possible.
  • the ambiguous yaoi 'male' is quite literally a body without organs
  • Many other fujoshi I spoke with dated men even as they imagined possibilities of coupling them as characters with other men.[xl] As Saitou points out, the reality of heterosexual relationships and virtual possibilities of homosexual couplings are separate and coexistent (Saitou 2007). Journalist Sugiura Yumiko explains this as the crucial difference between fujoshi and otaku, who approach fantasy as an alternative for things that they actually want but cannot realize in this world (Sugiura 2006).[xli] A fujoshi, for example, would not 'marry' a two-dimensional character the way some otaku advocate;
  • Sugiura is importantly highlighting that fantasy and reality are separate and coexistent, but this is widespread in moe culture and not solely a female quality.[xlii] As much as male otaku boast of their two-dimensional wives, they often do so with levity as a self-conscious performance
  • While it is true that men tend to feel moe for single characters that they can possess while women feel moe for relationships or character couplings, this broad difference is fast disappearing. In truth, the media popular among so-called 'moe otaku' in recent years has come to resemble yaoi aesthetics: multiple girls in a nostalgic or fantastic world with minimal male presence and heightened emphasis on relationships and emotions
  • In all cases, the database (Azuma 2009) is present. The elements that constitute and indicate a certain type of top or bottom, for example glasses or hairstyle or height, are predetermined; any given top or bottom is a construct of defined character traits and behavior.
  • One of the most recognizable features of the moe phenomenon is the anthropomorphization of objects into objects of desire. Otaku turn cats, war machines, household appliances and even men of historical significance into beautiful little girls to trigger moe. Reality is flattened, and from it emerge polymorphous forms of stimulation. Similarly, fujoshi can rearticulate anything into beautiful boys and sexualized yaoi relations. Moe characters can be based on a written description or drawn image, a physical person or even anthropomorphized animals, plants and objects.
  • The erotic fantasy effectively re-mystified their world, adding a layer of potential to the mundane (the very ground under their feet!) and making the familiar queer and exciting. Latent potential so unlocked, the three friends replayed the moe relationship across other potential players such as shampoo and conditioner, knife and spoon, salt and pepper.
  • More startling and subversive is 'moe politics' (seiji moe), where national histories, international relations and imposing world leaders are reduced to moe characters across which yaoi romance can be read.
  • It should be noted that Hetaria was written by a man, and these sorts of stories are becoming increasingly popular among young men known as 'fudanshi' (rotten boys).
  • it precisely because it is pure that it can give birth to such perverse and polymorphous possibilities.
Ariane Beldi

The Center for Book Arts ~ Garo Manga, 1964-1973 - 1 views

www.centerforbookarts.org/...showdetail.asp

website english html textual images professional institution article announcement museum books manga

shared by Ariane Beldi on 10 Apr 10 - Cached
  • Ariane Beldi on 10 Apr 10
     
    "Garo Manga, 1964-1973" will be an exhibition focused around the renowned manga (Japanese comics) journal Garo during the period of its greatest aesthetic experimentation and political commitment. Garo is well-known amongst comic enthusiasts and historians of postwar Japanese culture both for its challenging of formal and thematic conventions within the field of comics as well as for its engagement with the main political issues of the day, from rightwing incursions into national education policy to Japanese involvement in the Vietnam War.
Nele Noppe

Full Metal Apache - 0 views

books.google.com/books

academic books manga anime united_states international cyborgs_robots sexuality folklore aesthetics performance characters

shared by Nele Noppe on 06 Mar 09 - Cached
  • Nele Noppe on 06 Mar 09
     
    by Takayuki Tatsumi
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