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日本文学と映画 (Japanese Literature and Cinema) Anime and the Contemporary Visual Culture

Development Team

Principal Investigator:

Paper Coordinator : Content Writer :

Content Reviewer:

Prof. Anita Khanna

Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi

Prof. Anita Khanna

Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi

Ms. Pujita Guha

Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi

Dr. Kaushik Bhaumik

Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi Paper No. : 16 日本文学と映画 (Japanese Literature and Cinema)

Module : 31 Anime and the Contemporary Visual Culture

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日本文学と映画 (Japanese Literature and Cinema) Anime and the Contemporary Visual Culture

Description of Module

Subject Name Japanese

Paper Name 日本文学と映画 (Japanese Literature and Cinema) Module Title Anime and the Contemporary Visual Culture

Module ID P16 M31 Quadrant 1 E-text

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日本文学と映画 (Japanese Literature and Cinema) Anime and the Contemporary Visual Culture

Anime and the Contemporary Visual Culture

This module seeks to present before the students a basic layout of the emergence of anime, or Japanese animation. However the route that the paper takes is not a simple straightforward one.

It begins with Gojira, reading it within a larger practice of special effects in Japanese cinema.

Gojira and anime, I argue, therefore, are linked in their desire to exceed realism, often considered the basis of live-action cinema.

This module is therefore divided into the following major parts

 Gojira, Anime and the non-realistic turn in Japanese cinema.

Grave of the Fireflies and representing History in Anime

 The rise of media mix, and anime‟s role in it.

 The darker side of Otaku culture – the pervasive presence of violence.

A Pre-history of Animation – Gojira, Reality and non-real imagination.

(Figure 7.1 – Right – Boatsmen on the Daigo Fukuryu Maru being exposed to radiation, Left – Boat burning in the distant sea)

In March 1954, an American H-bomb test contaminated a seven-thousand-square-mile area around Bikini Atoll.1 A Japanese fishing trawler, the Daigo Fukuryu Maru (Lucky Dragon No.

1 For a preliminary introduction to Japan‟ tryst with nuclear radiation read David Krieger, Castle Bravo: Sixty Years of Nuclear Pain, Nuclear Peace Foundation, July 7 2014, https://www.wagingpeace.org/castle-bravo-sixty-years-of-

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日本文学と映画 (Japanese Literature and Cinema) Anime and the Contemporary Visual Culture

5), inadvertently drifted within eighty-five miles of the site and was smothered with radioactive ash, its entire crew succumbing to radiation sickness. Bringing out the horrors of the atomic explosion, Gojira2 opens with a version of the Daigo Fukuryu Maru incident, with freighter(s) disappearing into the flaming sea. (Figure 7.1). Amidst these references to nuclear contamina- tion, bomb shelters and Hiroshima-Nagasaki, a „gigantic, hyper-destructive dinosaur lizard‟, Gojira, rises from the depths of the sea (Figure 7.2).3 Majestic and monstrous, the bomb sets off Gojira‟s hostility, „transforming an innocent Jurassic creature into a force of primeval destruction‟.4 Like the nuclear bombs dropped on the Japanese landscape, in Gojira too, the monster appears „invulnerable‟.5 It spews lethal radioactive rays from its mouth (figure 7.3), and with its indestructible scales, makes Japan‟s massive military power

(Figure 7.2 – Gojira emerging from the sea)

nuclear-pain/

2 The titular monster‟s name – „Godzilla‟ – synthesizes the English word „gorilla‟ and the Japanese word kujira (whale).

3 J. Hoberman, “Godzilla: Poetry After the A-Bomb”, Criterion, January 24 2012, Weblink - https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/2127-godzilla-poetry-after-the-a-bomb

4 Ibid.

5 Yomota Inuhiko, “The Menace from the South Seas: Honda Ishiro‟s Godzilla (1954)”, Japanese Cinema: Texts and Contexts, Alistair Philips and Julian Stringers (eds.), Routledge: Taylor and Francis, 2007, p. 106.

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日本文学と映画 (Japanese Literature and Cinema) Anime and the Contemporary Visual Culture

(Figure 7.3 – Left - Gojira spewing radioactive rays from his mouth; and Right – (a reverse shot) an electric pole melting because of it)

In Figure 7.4 a – While Gojira makes its way through the city, Honda repeatedly cuts between shots of Gojira being attacked by the military (top left and right), while the monster itself remains unfazed, trampling cities and electric poles with an absolute sense of might (left).

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日本文学と映画 (Japanese Literature and Cinema) Anime and the Contemporary Visual Culture

appear redundant (Figure 7.4a and 7.4b). The film is filled with documentary-like images of panic: Tokyo is ablaze, children and orphans are being evacuated, mass casualties are being admitted to makeshift hospitals (Figure 7.5). The film recreates the horrors of war, one where even Gojira‟s growl, composed by Akira Ifukube, is made up of audio samples of Japanese fighters, firearms, and bombs.6

Nevertheless, the film is most remembered for imagining a new category of monsters, and the special effects it deployed for this purpose. The film utilized the “tokusatsu” style of shooting which involved actors in latex costumes trampling a miniature city (Figure 7.6).7 Actor Haruo Nakajima, playing Gojira, had to don a suit made of wires, bamboo, fabric cushions and latex

6Ibid, pp. 103-106.

7 Ian Failes, “The History of Godzilla is the History of Special Effects: The iconic Japanese monster has gone from rubber suit to CGI” Inverse Entertainment, October 14 2016, Weblink -

https://www.inverse.com/article/22234-special-effects-in-godzilla-movies-history

Figure 7.4b – Towards the end of the long drawn sequence where Gojira destroys Tokyo, a fleet of airplanes attack Gojira in the hope of bringing him down (Left and Left below).

However, Gojira is mildly disturbed and chooses to return to the sea instead (Right below)

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日本文学と映画 (Japanese Literature and Cinema) Anime and the Contemporary Visual Culture

that gave the piece its 200 pounds plus weight and created a lumbering/dawdling effect on screen.8 Since rebuilding sets was a time and money consuming affair, Nakaijma had to destroy the intricately built miniature pieces in a single take, one that would display enough force, power and dynamism within it. However, Gojira was not entirely presented as a “guy-in-a-suit” film.

Primitive visual effects were added to give Gojira a frightening feel. In the shot where Gojira is seen tearing up Tokyo and “boasting its bright flashing hind fins”, hundreds of cells were hand drawn frame by frame, to create those flashes of light. (Figure 7.7).9

(Figure 7.5 – Top Panel – Left – mass evacuations taking place in and around Tokyo, and on Right – Masses being admitted to the makeshift hospital in large numbers.

8 Ibid.

9 Steve Ryfle, Japan's favouritemon-star: the unauthorised biography of "The Big G", Canada: ECW press, 1998, p. 275.

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日本文学と映画 (Japanese Literature and Cinema) Anime and the Contemporary Visual Culture

Bottom Panel – Left – News journalists recording the event live, while on the right a mother clutches her daughters right before they are to be trampled by the monster)

(Figure 7.6 – Left – Eiji Tsuburaya (left) and Ishiro Honda (right) examining the miniature puppet Gojira. Right – Haruo Nakajima in the Gojira costume.)

(Figure 7.7 – Gojira‟s brightly lit dorsal fins were painfully hand-painted using the cell animation technique)

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日本文学と映画 (Japanese Literature and Cinema) Anime and the Contemporary Visual Culture

The use of hand-painted cell animation in Gojira, even if utilized briefly to amplify the emotions of a narrative, points to a larger history within Japanese cinema, one that seeks to exit the “reality impulse.” This impulse is not merely the presentation of otherworldly fantasies, tales of monsters and fairies, but also a departure from the mere recording of events in front of the camera. Within the history of cinema, and consequently of film scholarship, the un-manipulated mere recording of images by a mechanical camera refers to a truthful recording of reality, one that forms the basis of documentary realism as well.10 To its absolute opposite end then lies the fabulation of images – either through the “toku-satsu”, through special lighting techniques, computer generated graphics or in its oldest, most popular hand-painted avatar – Anime. Hand-painted moving images in Japan date back to the Utsushi-e images of the nineteenth-century, which were essentially lantern slides with movable parts (hands, feet, heads) that could be manipulated during the showing.11 Utsushi-e had began to be adapted within Japanese films shortly after the first animated pictures from abroad were shown in Japan around 1909. The means of projection were several: single moving parts taken from the utsushi-e blackboard drawings, which were erased and modified for each succeeding exposure, and traditional stencil-cut shadow play.12

10In his seminal essay “Ontology of the Photographic Image”, Andre Bazin “discovers that throughout the depths of civilization, a recurring theme appears, the so-called “mummy complex”. According to Bazin, the idea of mummification emerged from the everlasting need of humanity to halt time against decay. A major tool of humanity in the ongoing battle against death has been the arts: Preservation of life through representation. Certainly, the idea that immortality can be achieved through some form of mummification process is no longer the case in modern society, but “all are agreed that the image helps us to remember the subject and to preserve him from a second spiritual death”. Throughout the evolutionary process of the plastic arts, from cave painting to sculpturing, the endeavor to recreate the absolute duplication of reality has been the ambitious mission of almost every artist, a mission, which, as we will see later on, will never be accomplished. The obsession of the plastic arts with likeliness was finally redeemed by Niepce‟s and Lumieres‟ invention, the photographic camera. In the case of painting, between the image and the object, there will always be the objective mind of the painter. Frankly, painting, as a tool for creating likeliness by objectivity, is flawed. With regard to the breakthrough of the camera, Bazin notes “for the first time an image of the world is formed automatically, without the creative intervention of man.” When we take a picture of an object there is a counterfactual dependency between the object and the picture. The photographic camera captures the image, as it is. Although there will always be the presence of the photographer, who decides such aspects as framing and exposure, the image will always be taken by the camera.” This is largely what will define the realist impetus of image making, and of photography and cinema in particular. Isakie Brown, “What is Realism? (Through the Theoretical Scope of André Bazin)” Isakie Brown, February 21 2016, Weblink -

https://isakiebrown.wordpress.com/2016/02/21/what-is-realism-through-the-theoretical-scope-of-andre-bazin/

11 For more on the Utsushi-e magic lantern art form of Japan refer to “What is Utsushi-e?”

http://www.f.waseda.jp/kusahara/Utsushi-e/What_Is_Utsushi-e.html

12 For more on the same refer to Donald Richie, “Documentary and Manga” in Hundred Years of Japanese Film,

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日本文学と映画 (Japanese Literature and Cinema) Anime and the Contemporary Visual Culture

Seen in the present, Anime too demonstrates the graphic and spatial assumptions that are closely associated with the early cinematic techniques and the print artists of a century before, especially those of master printmakers Hokusai and Hiroshige.13Breaking away from camera-based recording, Anime also seeks to reject any illusion of three-dimensional reality, presenting images that often lack depth. Anime images often move at a speed of 8 frames per second, as against cinema‟s projection at 24 and western animation‟s at 12.14This gives the anime image a jagged quality, the image moving further and further away from the seamless life-like motion in cinema.

Indeed, the jerky poses of Anime has been compared to the still poses of Nihon buyo, the Japanese classical dance. This kind of dance differs Western ballet, in that “the moments of rest are considered the high point, while in ballet it is the dynamic movement itself which defines the strength of the choreography.”15Moreover, borrowing from manga, the comic-book form from Japan, anime presents itself as a story-board in motion: the succession of discrete frames come one after the other, more often not linked together as a smooth flow of shots. This effect is seen at its purest in NagisaOshima‟sBand of Ninja(Ninja bugei-cho, 1960), which consists of photographs of the original drawings which ShiratoSampei made for the comic strip of the same title (Figure 7.8). .Thus, just as cinema has been influenced by Manga, Manga/Anime itself has borrowed from cinema. Osamu Tezuka's 1947 manga Shin Takarajima(New Paradise Island) is considered a pioneer , as it showed a driver speeding along a road, an action taking place over several comic-book frames, using different visual ("camera") angles. Earlier, Japanese Manga comics had shown actions from only fixed positions, „Tezuka's varying perspective offered something new to printed manga, and presaged the anime to come.‟ (Figure 7.9) .‟16

One of the key-sites with which anime has established its non-realistic status is its representation of the human body. Anime or manga, because of their popularity amongst the youth, are often set in (high)-school settings, attracting teenagers who are experiencing

Tokyo and New York: Kodansha International, 2001, pp.252-254 .

13 For more on Hokusai and Hiroshige refer to “Hokusai and Hiroshige: Teacher‟s Workshop,” Education: Asian Art,Weblink- http://education.asianart.org/sites/asianart.org/files/inline-pdfs/Hokusai_and_Hiroshige.pdf

14 Richie, Ibid, pp. 253-254.

15Ibid, p. 253.

16 Ibid.

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(Figure 7.8 – A small sequence of shots in Oshima‟s Band of Ninjas. They give the viewer the feeling that they are viewing a manga-storyboard in motion. Unlike the images, the sound track runs continuously, giving us the feeling

that one is encountering a radio drama, overlaid with an album in motion)

(Figure 7.9 – The opening three panels from Osamu Tezuka's Shin Takarajima depicts a boy racing through the road. Instead of depicting the action in a single frame, or with few a disjointed frames, Tezuka develops the action

like a filmic scene, photographing the action related frames, giving the readers a holistic view of the action)

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日本文学と映画 (Japanese Literature and Cinema) Anime and the Contemporary Visual Culture

rapid changes within their own bodies.17 Such a transformation often takes a turn towards fantasy especially in the magical girl (mahoushoujo) genre, when schoolgirls „alluringly transform into superheroines equipped with magical powers.‟ In Hiroaki Samura‟s manga series Ohhikoshi, one encounters a group of art school students who “fall in love and lust, play in rock bands, ride motorbikes, eat, sleep (together), and try to avoid making life decisions while drunk.”18 Young people find themselves at the cusp of naïve, carefree childhood and a burdensome adulthood, even as their bodies become the site of turbulent emotions (Figure 7.10). The fantasy of escaping this conflict is realized in these protagonists, who, if unable to transform their bodies magically, enter into niche sub-cultural phenomenon like rock or punk that demand a particular performance or imagination of the self. The young undertake multiple piercings, wear Gothic rock and roll costumes, put a thick coat of paint around their eyes and keep their hairs disheveled – all of this while appearing to maintain long legs and vanishingly slender waists (Figure 7.11).

Anime which demands this move away from the flesh and blood of real bodies to thin, insubstantial lines that fit its long vertical pages – reflects a larger cultural desire to produce alluring bodies in youth. Appearing unreal on all accounts by mixing long slender legs with round teary eyes, these strips are able to exploit the “appeal and fascination of the unreal”, expressing a social desire for not what reality is, but what the readers feel it “should be”. 19

17 Dwayne Dixon, “2D Bodies: Depictions of Youthful Bodies”, USC, Weblink -

http://scalar.usc.edu/works/breakdancers-vocaloids-and-gamers-east-asian-youth-cultures-spring-2015/2d-bodies- depictions-of-youth?path=japanese-anime-youth-culture

18 “Ohhikoshi TPB”, Dark Horse, Weblink - https://www.darkhorse.com/Books/13-546/Ohikkoshi-TPB

19 Dixon, Ibid.

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(Figure 7.10 – Ohhikoshi deals with the trials and tribulations that young high school adolescents of Tokyo have to go through, caught between their childhood and adulthood, while their bodies struggle to own up to puberty)

(Figure 7.11 – Left – In this act of sub-cultural belonging, men are imagined as becoming rougher, grungier as expressed with their likeness for heavy, noisier metal rock, while women (on the right) are projected as having long

slender legs and waists even if they keep their hairs disheveled, smoke, drink and wear punk costumes).

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日本文学と映画 (Japanese Literature and Cinema) Anime and the Contemporary Visual Culture Representing History in the Grave of the Fireflies

Founded in June 1985 with funding from the Tokyo based publishing company Tokuma Shoten, Studio Ghibli was the brainchild of Hayao Miyazaki, Isao Takahata and Toshio Suzuki.20 Accredited with making anime popular on the global stage, the name Ghibli refers to the Arabic name for the sirocco, also known as the “Mediterranean Wind” or “Hot Sahara Wind”, reflecting the studio‟s intention to “blow new wind through the anime industry.”21 This new wind was a departure taken by the studios from the fantasy of war and aggression towards more humanitarian themes, focusing on petite female warriors who resist dark powers and “their fatal malignities” to bring about justice.22 At its centre, however, is the love for the planet, a consequent degradation of social systems marked by a degradation of the planet itself.23

Unlike the then predominant culture of presenting young girls valiantly battling large-scale injustices, Grave of the Fireflies (Hotaru no Haka, 1998) presents a world where young girls are forced to confront real wars and injustices, maligned and forgotten by the nation and its people.

Based on Akiyuki Nosaka‟s eponymous semi-autobiographical short story from 1967, the film tells the story of two siblings, Seita and Setsuko, and their „desperate struggle to survive during the final months of the Second World War.‟24 A meditation on life and death, Fireflies extends this concept via the very stylistic tropes of Anime. Anime videos tend to disregard a realistic representation of motion, selectively foregrounding a few elements or characters against a predominantly still, painted background. In Fireflies this becomes a larger commentary on who can selectively afford movement over stillness and thus life over death in the post-war chaos of Japan. At the very beginning of the film, as Seita‟s ghost sees the last shred of his body wither away and become a corpse (Figure 7.12a), the frame cuts to a wider shot of the chaotic rail

20 Jeff Lenburg, “Emerging into an Auteur” in Legends of Animation: Hayao Miyazaki, New York: Chelsea House, 2012, pp. 43-44.

21 Kat Lawson, “A Brief History of Studio Ghibli”, The Film Magazine, February 11 2015,Weblink - https://www.thefilmagazine.com/a-brief-history-of-studio-ghibli/

22ZeynepAltundag, “Hayao Miyazaki: Child Heroines in the Dream World” in Directory of World Cinema: Japan 3, Bristol and Chicago: Intellect, 2015, p. 120.

23Ibid, pp. 120-121.

24 Masami Ito, “Isao Takahata‟s stark world of reality”, The Japan Times, September 12 2015, Weblink - https://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2015/09/12/films/isao-takahatas-stark-world-reality/#.WpxWF4KYPwc

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station dotted with similar bodies starving and withering away, while others move around them with palpable disgust (Figure 7.12b). The film next cuts to a close up of Seita‟s face, unfazed by the whirring fly that visits it, the body lying absolutely still and untwitching (Figure 7.12c). A repetitive trope in the film, their mother‟s last remains wound up in layers of surgical tape is similarly infested by chaotically moving maggots (Figure 7.12d) and Setsuko‟s near death condition is revealed to us by a fly that moves against an unmoving, absolutely frozen face (Figure 7.12e). These images speak of a life that has been stilled by death, but infested by creatures that will morph these bodies in time. In fact, borrowing from the title, the film itself is drawn between two kinds of flies. The first, parasitical houseflies that decapitate dead objects, signifying the slow decay of things and second, the fireflies, who with their warm glow signify play and life (Figure 7.12f). But, as the film makes it apparent, even the fireflies have a short span of life, bright and giving life in one night, dead and laid to rest the morning thereafter (Figure 7.12 g).

(Figure 7.12a – Left – Seita remembers his death as a ghost, even as he see himself become a corpse on the railway platform (Right))

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日本文学と映画 (Japanese Literature and Cinema) Anime and the Contemporary Visual Culture

(Figure 7.12b – Left – The wider shot of Seita dying in a busy rail station, while others express disgust at these dying bodies. Right – Seita finally falling dead on the station floor)

(Figure 7.12c – Notice the subtle differences in the fly’s position, against an absolutely stilled corpse)

(Figure 7.12d – Their mother’s burnt corpse visited by maggots. Again notice the subtle difference in positions of the maggots and the fly that eats her away.)

(Figure 7.12e – Similarly notice the change in the fly’s position as Setsuko lies barely conscious on the meadow)

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(Figure 7.12 f – When Seito and Setsuko move to the abandoned cave, they often catch and play with fireflies at night, mostly to ward off Setsuko’s scare of darkness. However, with Takahata’s painterly imagination these scene

come to represent the idyllic childhood the siblings momentarily attend only to then be betrayed by the forces of history.)

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日本文学と映画 (Japanese Literature and Cinema) Anime and the Contemporary Visual Culture

(Figure 7.12g – When night breaks to day, Seito comes back from work to see Setsuko digging a grave for the fireflies that have died the following morning. The mass grave of the flies triggers the mass grave of humans who

were piled into the pit after the war, and he breaks down having made this conjunction in his head. )

(Figure 7.13a – Images of Kobe after being bombarded down completely.)

(Figure 7.13b – The idyllic landscape where the two retreat)

If the first half of the film presents the cruelty of war (Figure 7.13a), then the latter, more predominant half shifts to rural Japan. Here the landscape moves from the hard, burning, vivid tinges of brown and orange to the pastel, soft colours of green and blue. The landscape is treated with a halo-ed mystical wash, the suspended ash that engulfs the city is replaced by the glowing fireflies in which the siblings find comfort and strength (Figure 7.13b). And yet, as Setsuko and Seita realize, despite this escape into an idyllic backyard, they cannot escape the “hellish fate” of their times, with Seita unable to access money, food, job and even empathy from their stingy aunt. Scholars have argued that our empathy for these characters is heightened by the anime form, with Ghibli using plastic animated bodies to give shape to these characters. Plastic, not only because shape-shifting and moulding into a deformed malnourished body, but also because they are unreal, artificial in their imagination – the exaggerated non-realistic features, especially the

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eyes, conveying meaning in the absence of realistic motions and dialogues (Figure 7.13c). Pitted against the historical scenario on which it is based, this anime posits new philosophical understandings of war, memory and history. Film critic Roger Ebert argues that when one sees Setsuko starving and dying, because she is animated, or hand-painted, “she becomes the idea of a child starving and not the child herself.”25 He opines that in comparison to live-action films of the same type, where a young actress would utilize her own body and her acting, bring herself into the performance, the animated feature, contrary to claims of mis- or non-representation, becomes in fact a “purer” statement of war. It creates an emotional core of the moment, bereft of the specific accuracies of the actor or the body. It is a method of eliciting powerful emotional responses, not by “reflecting reality in a slavishly mimetic manner but by refining and sublimating its brute matter.”26 It is animation that “gives simple actions and scenes a beauty and innocence that would not have existed otherwise, creating all the more contrast with the harsh and painful realities experienced by the characters.”27

(Figure 7.13c – The film literalizes Setsuko’s innocence as she devours the world with her wide-eyes. In her last days her eyes increasingly gets smaller, as she gets delirious, unable to see the world as before.)

Anime and the Media Mix Culture

Contrary to Western imagination, Anime is not restricted solely to children‟s entertainment.

They deal with romance, comedy, tragedy, adventure, doomsday fantasies, youth cultures and

25 Wendy Goldberg, “Transcending the Victim’s History: Takahata Isao’s Grave of the Fireflies”, Mechademia, Volume 4, 2009, p. 42.

26DaniCavarello, “The Nightmare of History” in Anime and the Art of Adaptation:Eight Famous Works from Page to Screen, Jefferson and London: MacFarland and Co., 2010, p. 30.

27 Ibid.

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samurai – anything whose equivalence one may find in live-action feature films.28 Unlike cartoons elsewhere, in Japan anime is truly a mainstream pop cultural phenomenon: its rabid and fanatical fans found across all sections of the society. This popularity of anime has allowed it to exceed the usual domains of television and cinema, being available everywhere – in classroom (they are often used as tutorials in class), media commodities (shirts, toys, and other merchandise), and peering over billboards all across Japan.29 This phenomenon, also known as media mix, is at the heart of anime culture: it refers to the ways in which particular texts are made to migrate across different media forms,” coupled to the “migratory behavior of audiences who will go almost anywhere in search of the experiences they want.”30

If convergence culture in the West opened up in the 90s, it has a longer history dating back to the 60s.

Scholars maintain that it can be dated to Tetsuwan Atomu (Astro Boy; 1963–66), the first made-in-Japan, thirty-minute, weekly television animation show (Figure 7.14a).

(Figure 7.14a – Left the poster for Astro Boy when released in USA, 63. Right - Advertisement for Marble Chocolates from the back cover of Shōnenmagazine, April 1964 issue, featuring Otamu stickers on it).31

28 Susan J. Napier, “Introduction” in Anime: From Akira to Howl’s Moving Castle, New York and London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, pp. 6-8.

29 Ibid.

30 Marc Steinburg, “Introduction: Rethinking Convergence in Japan” in Anime’s Media Mix: Franchising Toys and Characters in Japan, Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2016, pp. vii-viii.

31Ibid, p. 45.

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This show pioneered the installation of character merchandising into Japanese popular culture.

Whereas traditional selling of a product required one to sell it based on its content, with Astro- Boy, companies would advertise their products by “overlapping the commodity image with a character image.”32 This anime media mix has a particular material history, inseparable from the

„sticker-distributing activities of its sponsor, chocolate maker Meiji Seika, and from toy makers‟

use of the character image.‟33 Indeed, the sticker‟s light, circulating, mobile quality remains the model for all subsequent forms of character merchandising till date.

If the rise of Astro-Boy allowed the manga characters to be disseminated across multiple platforms, in the recent past anime and manga have borrowed from its surrounding mediums like video games, novels and feature films. Inazuma Eleven is a case in example. Originating from the Nintendo game series (Figure 7.15a), this role-playing game was later translated onto a Manga series by Tenya Yabuno, and adapted into a 3 part Television series aired on Tokyo TV network. The TV series is regularly screened across half the globe, with nearly thirty different franchisees, including tie-ins with Kelloggs and McDonalds in Japan (Figure 7.15b).

(Figure 7.15a – Left - Screenshot of the Imazuma Eleven game, Right – of the Manga strip)

32Steinberg, p. ix.

33 Ibid.

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Figure 7.15b – Imazuma Eleven’s merchandizing range)

Scholars have argued that anime characters easily lead to merchandizing because they feature what is known as the “dynamically immobile image.”34 Generating a sense of movement into the still image of manga, the dynamically immobile image becomes the iconic sign for the character that can be replicated both in merchandize and also in the anime series itself. In Inazuma merchandize, one regularly encounters its jagged energetic logo along with Mark Evans, the protagonist in dynamic motion about to kick the football, its infectious energy almost enveloping

(Figure 7.15c – Dynamically immobile image of Mark Evans in Inazuma Eleven)

34 Steinberg, Ibid, p. xiv.

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the audience (Figure 7.15c). Inazuma‟ spopularity, is facilitated by an energetic and a lovable protagonist at the heart of the series, around whom all advertising and consumption is tied.

However, synchronous with it is how late/contemporary capitalism works itself on a global scale – “the increasing prominence of media in everyday lives,”35 with images being consumed and circulated at ever greater speeds every day. This increasing speed of circulation has also laid claims to ever greater speeds of producing images, one that has led to innumerable instances where artists have died of excessive work; their bodies unable to cope up with the increasing demand to produce new hand-painted images: a dark reality far away from the fantasy world of Anime.36

Conclusion/ Critical Comment

Owing to its expansion, anime over the years has absorbed various sub-genres under its umbrella, even those displaying extreme violence, blood and gore. In the non-Japanese context, films like Akira (Katsuhiro Ôtomo, 1988), or Ghost in the Shell (Mamoru Oshii, 1995) with their

“transgressive and apocalyptic images of death, violence and metamorphosis of the body”37 have achieved cult status over the years. Here, it becomes important to consider the formal qualities of anime in relation to its representation of controversial content; and the impact these images have on public culture at large. It would be simplistic to suggest that since anime is removed from the

„real‟ indexical world, controversial images or any other kind of images have no impact on it. On the contrary, countless instances have been reported where people have acted violently influenced by anime images, proving thus that it is a particularly dynamic medium. It is „full of energy, pacey action, and spectacle,‟ and can evoke powerful „moments of physicality and excess.‟38 Because of its distinctly flat quality, in anime the foreground and the background

35 Steinberg, Ibid, p. xii.

36 Ryan General, “Veteran Anime Artist Allegedly Dies of Overwork in Japan”, Next Shark, Dated – April 10 2017, Weblink - https://nextshark.com/veteran-anime-artist-allegedly-dies-overwork-japan/

37 Caroline Ruddell, “Cutting Edge: Violence and Body Horror in Anime” in Feona Attwood, Vincent Campbell, I.

Q. Hunter and Sharon Lockyer (eds.)Controversial Images: Media Representations on the Edge, New York and Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, p. 157.

38 Ibid , p. 167.

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Japanese

日本文学と映画 (Japanese Literature and Cinema) Anime and the Contemporary Visual Culture

move against each other to depict actions full of great speed and force.39 In the anime version of Ichi the Killer,40 one of the most violent anime series‟ to have emerged in the contemporary, the violent slashing scenes take place at a great pace, accompanied by „frantic thrash metal and often using a heavy black and red colour scheme‟ (Figure 7.16a) .41 And as is common in anime, these fast actions take place against slower moving background images, so that the viewer can appreciate the force of a particular blow (Figure 7.16b).

(Figure 7.16a – Ichi is about to slash one of his targets, and during action the frame switches to red and black to give a heightened intense feel.)

(Figure 7.16b – As is evident the characters move against a stilled background to give a heightened sense of movement and blow)

39 Ibid.

40 Ichi the Killer (KoroshiyaIchi) is a manga series written and illustrated by Hideo Yamamoto. The series revolves around Ichi, a psychologically troubled killing machine, and his enmity with the yakuza of the Shinjuku district of Tokyo. Released in ten parts over 2001, it was later adapted into a live-action film by Takashi Miike, and into an anime video series the following year after. For more on the same read the Ichi the Killer (manga entry) on My Anime List. Weblink - https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/manga.php?id=4221

41Ruddell, Ibid.

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Japanese

日本文学と映画 (Japanese Literature and Cinema) Anime and the Contemporary Visual Culture

Despite its controversial status, scholars have argued that Ichi, amongst plenty like him, is not a simplistic representation of a young man who sadistically tortures and kills women. He is also a troubled man who „cannot reconcile his desires with a societal „norm‟, and is systematically aroused by violence.42 The series also touches some common preoccupations in anime, for example “psychological anguish, gendered identity, technology and the technological body, coming of age issues” and even “apocalyptic and dystopian imagery.”43 It is here that anime escapes its mere status as a representational trope of violence, using it as a technique to speak about other malaise and difficulties that plague Japanese society.

*******

42Ibid, p. 168.

43 Ibid.

References

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