Lines of Sight—the seventh volume in the Mechademia series, an annual forum devoted to Japanese anime and manga—explores the various ways in which anime, manga, digital media, fan culture, and Japanese art—from scroll paintings to superflat—challenge, undermine, or disregard the concept of Cartesian (or one-point) perspective, the dominant mode of visual culture in the West since the seventeenth century. More than just a visual mode or geometric system, Cartesianism has shaped nearly every aspect of modern rational thought, from mathematics and science to philosophy and history. Framed by Thomas Lamarre’s introduction, “Radical Perspectivalism,” the essays here approach Japanese popular culture as a visual mode that employs non-Cartesian formations, which by extension make possible new configurations of perception and knowledge. Whether by shattering the illusion of visual or narrative seamlessness through the use of multiple layers or irregular layouts, blurring the divide between viewer and creator, providing diverse perspectives within a single work of art, or rejecting dualism, causality, and other hallmarks of Cartesianism, anime and manga offer in their radicalization of perspective the potential for aesthetic and even political transformation. Contributors: David Beynon, Deakin U; Fujimoto Yukari, Meiji U; Yuriko Furuhata, McGill U; Craig Jackson, Ohio Wesleyan U; Reginald Jackson, U of Chicago; Thomas Lamarre, McGill U; Jinying Li; Waiyee Loh; Livia Monnet, U of Montreal; Sharalyn Orbaugh, U of British Columbia; Stefan Riekeles; Atsuko Sakaki, U of Toronto; Miryam Sas, U of California, Berkeley; Timon Screech, U of London; Emily Somers; Marc Steinberg, Concordia U.

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.

Mechademia 10 revolves around a maelstrom of events: the devastation of 3/11—the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear reactor crises—and the ongoing environmental disasters that have recently overtaken Japan. Because anime and manga have long proposed (and illustrated) alternative worlds—some created after catastrophes—it is fitting that this volume should consider this propensity for “world renewal.” Individual essays range widely, from a poetic and personal reflection on the ritual of tôrô nagashi (the lighting of floating paper lanterns that has traditionally commemorated souls lost in great public cataclysms, such as war) to a study of the various counterfactual histories written about the historical figure of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, a former peasant farmer who became a military dictator of feudal Japan. The book also includes an original manga, Nanohana, from the popular artist Hagio Moto, who is quoted as saying: “I want to think together with everyone else about Fukushima and Chernobyl, about the future of the Earth, about the future of humankind, and to keep thinking moving forward.”

If the source of manga and anime is physically located in Japan, the temptation for many critics and scholars is to ask what aspects of Japanese culture and history gave rise to these media. This ninth volume of Mechademia—an annual collection of critical work on anime and manga—challenges the tendency to answer the question of origins by reductively generalizing and essentializing “Japaneseness.” The essays brought together in Mechademia 9 lead us to understand the extent to which “Japan” might be seen as an idea generated by anime, manga, and other texts rather than the other way around. What is it that manga and anime produce that no other medium can precisely duplicate? Is anime its own medium or a genre of animation—or something in between? And how must we adapt existing critical modes in order to read these new kinds of texts? While the authors begin with similar questions about the roots of Japanese popular culture and media, they invoke a wide range of theoretical work in the search for answers, including feminist criticism, disability studies, poststructuralist textual criticism, postcolonialism, art history, film theory, phenomenology, and more. Richly provocative and insightful, Mechademia 9 both enacts and resists the pursuit of fixed starting points, inspiring further creative investigation of this global artistic phenomenon. Contributors: Stephen R. Anderson; Dale K. Andrews, Tohoku Gakuin U; Andrew Ballús; Jodie Beck; Christopher Bolton, Williams College; Kukhee Choo, Tulane U; Ranya Denison, U of East Anglia; Lucy Fraser; Fujimoto Yukari, Meiji U, Japan; Forrest Greenwood; Imamura Taihei; Seth Jacobowitz, Yale U; Kim Joon Yang; Thomas Lamarre, McGill U; Margherita Long, U of California, Riverside; Matsumoto Nobuyuki, Tokyo National Museum; Laura Miller, U of Missouri–St. Louis; Alexandra Roedder; Paul Roquet, Stanford U; Brian Ruh; Shun’ya Yoshimi, U of Tokyo; Alba G. Torrents.

Known as the “Walt Disney of Japan” it is no surprise that Tezuka Osamu is still the best-known manga creator to Western fans. Current scholarship has uncovered the profound complexity and ambiguity not only of his work but of the man, the artist, and his life—dismantling his position as the god of manga. Contributors to this volume of Mechademia—a series devoted to creative and critical work on anime, manga, and the fan arts—analyze Tezuka and his complicated approaches toward life and nonlife on earth, as well as his effect on the lives of other manga artists. Using essays and reprints of Japanese manga on Tezuka, this book questions his influence and attitudes toward the nonhuman, evolutionary theory, the aesthetic lineage of contemporary manga, incipient feminism in the reinscription of the nonhuman feminine, the sexual politics of manga bodies, the origins of the moe culture, and the styles of didacticism revealing the digressions of insects and classical modes, among others. The authors offer varying perspectives on the historical transformations in production, distribution, and reception that gradually integrated and differentiated an overlapping series of markets and readerships in the postwar era. Divided into four sections that explore different “lives”—“Nonhuman Life,” “Media Life,” “A Life in Manga,” and “Everyday Life”—Mechademia 8 serves as a prehistory of the impersonal politics of the present while tracing Tezuka’s legacy. Contributors: Akatsuka Fujio; Anno Moyoko; Linda H. Chance, U of Pennsylvania; Jonathan Clements; Hideaki Fujiki, Nagoya U; Patrick W. Galbraith; Verina Gfader, U of Huddersfield; Alicia Gibson; G. Clinton Godart, USC; Yorimitsu Hashimoto, Osaka U; Ryan Holmberg; Hikari Hori, Columbia U; Mary A. Knighton, College of William and Mary; Thomas Lamarre, McGill U; Christine L. Marran, U of Minnesota; Natsume Fusanosuke, Gakushuin U, Tokyo; Ōtsuka Eiji, Kobe Design U; Baryon Tensor Posadas; Renato Rivera Rusca, Meiji U; Frederik L. Schodt; Marc Steinberg, Concordia U; Tezuka Osamu; Toshiya Ueno, Wako U, Tokyo; Matthew Young.

From computer games to figurines and maid cafes, men called “otaku” develop intense fan relationships with “cute girl” characters from manga, anime, and related media and material in contemporary Japan. While much of the Japanese public considers the forms of character love associated with “otaku” to be weird and perverse, the Japanese government has endeavored to incorporate “otaku” culture into its branding of “Cool Japan.” In Otaku and the Struggle for Imagination in Japan, Patrick W. Galbraith explores the conflicting meanings of “otaku” culture and its significance to Japanese popular culture, masculinity, and the nation. Tracing the history of “otaku” and “cute girl” characters from their origins in the 1970s to his recent fieldwork in Akihabara, Tokyo (“the Holy Land of Otaku”), Galbraith contends that the discourse surrounding “otaku” reveals tensions around contested notions of gender, sexuality, and ways of imagining the nation that extend far beyond Japan. At the same time, in their relationships with characters and one another, “otaku” are imagining and creating alternative social worlds.

Through the analysis of the work of the main Japanese animators starting from the pioneers of 1917, the book will overview the whole history of Japanese animated film, including the latest tendencies and the experimental movies. In addition to some of the most acclaimed directors Miyazaki Hayao, Takahata Isao, Shinkai Makoto, Tezuka Osamu and Kon Satoshi, the works of masters of animation such as Kawamoto Kihachirō, Kuri Yōji, Ōfuji Noburō and Yamamura Kōji will be analysed in their cultural and historical context. Moreover, their themes and styles will be the linking thread to overview the Japanese producing system and the social and political events which have often influenced their works. Key Features Insight into both mainstream and independent cinema Scientific reliability Easy readability Social and cultural context