Since the first translations of Lewis Carroll's Alice books appeared in Japan in 1899, Alice has found her way into nearly every facet of Japanese life and popular culture. The books have been translated into Japanese more than 500 times, resulting in more editions of these works in Japanese than any other language except English. Generations of Japanese children learned English from textbooks containing Alice excerpts. Japan's internationally famous fashion vogue, Lolita, merges Alice with French Rococo style. In Japan Alice is everywhere--in manga, literature, fine art, live-action film and television shows, anime, video games, clothing, restaurants, and household goods consumed by people of all ages and genders. In Alice in Japanese Wonderlands, Amanda Kennell traverses the breadth of Alice's Japanese media environment, starting in 1899 and continuing through 60s psychedelia and 70s intellectual fads to the present, showing how a set of nineteenth-century British children's books became a vital element in Japanese popular culture. Using Japan's myriad adaptations to investigate how this modern media landscape developed, Kennell reveals how Alice connects different fields of cultural production and builds cohesion out of otherwise disparate media, artists, and consumers. The first sustained examination of Japanese Alice adaptations, her work probes the meaning of Alice in Wonderland as it was adapted by a cast of characters that includes the "father of the Japanese short story," Ryūnosuke Akutagawa; the renowned pop artist Yayoi Kusama; and the best-selling manga collective CLAMP. While some may deride adaptive activities as mere copying, the form Alice takes in Japan today clearly reflects domestic considerations and creativity, not the desire to imitate. By engaging with studies of adaptation, literature, film, media, and popular culture, Kennell uses Japan's proliferation of Alices to explore both Alice and the Japanese media environment.

Alien refugees have come to Earth. They call themselves 9-Lives. Humans call them cat-boys, and force them to live as collared pets. Conri, a rebellious young 9-Life, ran away to escape this fate. But when a human named Adrian saves him from capture, Conri is torn between his desire for freedom and another desire he can't quite admit, even to himself... Can two people meet as equals in a world divided between masters and slaves?

After the tragedy at Altzard, Mizeria and Zelfa travel north to the city of Zazaatz, in pursuit of Rikhter and his captive, Clarissa. There, a festive carnival tempts our heroine to forget her worries, but danger lurks in the crowd...

Being a fan helps people to discover their identities, find friends, develop a sense of belonging, express themselves creatively, and act as powerful creators and participants in a capitalistic system. At times, however, being a fan becomes problematic, especially when clashes with other fans occur both inside and outside of their fandoms and fan communities. As their communication becomes contentious, power imbalances destabilize collectives and fans experience fear, sadness, pain, and harassment. Such problematic situations can become “fractured fandoms.” Fractured Fandoms: Contentious Communication in Fan Communities observes the problems or fractures that occur within and between fandoms as fans and fan communities experience differences in interpretation, opinion, expectation, and behavior regarding the object at the center of their fandom. The book demonstrates the fractures through an examination of self-interviews, collected news stories, and previous research regarding these problems, ultimately providing an assessment of the causes and effects of such fractures and the larger social and cultural issues they reflect.

Two dolls belonging to Kelin and Yuanshu have come to life and have decided they want to go to high school. Young adult.

Terror awaits the people of Tokyo, with gruesome lessons only the dead can teach, in the second volume of this manga horror anthology series. The short stories in Dark Metro 2 go even deeper into the dark side of Tokyo’s haunted underground. A waitress at a maid cafe sparks jealousy. A mother who can't handle the responsibility of raising her child commits a horrible crime. An ancient sword awakens a psychotic samurai. And finally, the solemn guide Seiya reveals his own tragic past—and the nature of his gifts that are his curse.