Frenchy Lunning

The themes of war and time are intertwined in unique ways in Japanese culture, freighted as that nation is with the multiple legacies of World War II: the country’s militarization, its victories and defeats, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the uneasy pacifism imposed by the victors. Delving into topics ranging from the production of wartime propaganda to the multimedia adaptations of romance narrative, contributors to the fourth volume in the Mechademia series address the political, cultural, and technological continuum between war and the everyday time of orderly social productivity that is reflected, confronted, and changed in manga, anime, and other forms of Japanese popular culture. Grouped thematically, the essays in this volume explore the relationship between national sovereignty and war (from the militarization of children as critically exposed in Grave of the Fireflies to reworkings of Japanese patriotism in The Place Promised in Our Early Days), the intersection of war and the technologies of social control (as observed in the films of Oshii Mamoru and the apocalyptic vision of Neon Genesis Evangelion), history and memory (as in manga artists working through the trauma of Japan’s defeat in World War II and the new modalities of storytelling represented by Final Fantasy X), and the renewal and hybridization of militaristic genres as a means of subverting conventions (in Yamada Futaro’s ninja fiction and Miuchi Suzue’s girl knight manga). Contributors: Brent Allison; Mark Anderson; Christopher Bolton, Williams College; Martha Cornog; Marc Driscoll, U of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Angela Drummond-Mathews, Paul Quinn College; Michael Fisch; Michael Dylan Foster, Indiana U; Wendy Goldberg; Marc Hairston, U of Texas, Dallas; Charles Shiro Inouye, Tufts University; Rei Okamoto Inouye, Northeastern U; Paul Jackson; Seth Jacobowitz, San Francisco State U; Thomas Lamarre, McGill U; Tom Looser, New York U; Sheng-mei Ma, Michigan State U; Christine Marran, U of Minnesota; Zilia Papp, Hosei U, Tokyo; Marco Pellitteri; Timothy Perper; Yoji Sakate; Chinami Sango; Deborah Scally; Deborah Shamoon, U of Notre Dame; Manami Shima; Rebecca Suter, U of Sydney; Takayuki Tatsumi, Keio U, Tokyo; Christophe Thouny; Gavin Walker; Dennis Washburn, Dartmouth College; Teresa M. Winge, Indiana U.

War/Time

Mechademia 4

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.

Emerging Worlds of Anime and Manga

Mechademia 1

Fetish Style

Contributors to volume eight of Mechademia analyze Tezuka Osamu and his complicated approaches toward life and nonlife, as well as his effect on other manga artists. Using essays and reprints of Japanese manga on Tezuka, this volume questions his influence and attitudes toward the nonhuman, the sexual politics of manga bodies, and the origins of the moe culture, among others.

Tezuka's Manga Life

Mechademia 8

"Lines of Sight, the seventh volume in the Mechademia series, explores the various ways in which anime, manga, digital media, fan culture, and Japanese art challenge, undermine, or disregard the concept of Cartesian perspective. 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."--publisher website.

Lines of Sight

As passive consumers of manga and anime become active users of cultural commodities, this volume explores the possibilities of, and challenges for, engagement

User Enhanced

From fan-subs to cosplay, exploring the fan cultures inspired by anime and manga.

Fanthropologies

Explores the influence that World War II has on Japanese popular culture, including animated films and television programs, video games, and comic books.

War/time

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 themÑexplores 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 represent

Networks of Desire

Annotation. Limits of the Human the third volume in the Mechademia series maps the terrain of posthumanity using manga and anime as guides and signposts to understand how to think about humanitys new potentialities and limits. Through a wide range of texts the folklore-inspired monsters that populate Mizuki Shigerus manga; Japans Gothic Lolita subculture; Tezuka Osamus original cyborg hero, Atom, and his manga version of Fritz Langs Metropolis (along with tomo Katsuhiros 2001 anime film adaptation); the robot anime, Gundam; and the notion of the uncanny in Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence, among others the essays in this volume reject simple human/nonhuman dichotomies and instead encourage a provocative rethinking of the definitions of humanity along entirely unexpected frontiers.

Limits of the Human

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.

An exploration of cosplay and its relationship with the realms of its global fandom, performance, and the modes of fictional existence Flourishing far beyond its Japanese roots, cosplay has become an international phenomenon with fervid fans who gather at enormous, worldwide conventions annually. Here, author Frenchy Lunning offers an intimate, sensational tour through cosplay’s past and present, as well as its global lure. Through a culmination of years of personal research on cosplay, and growing out of Lunning’s wealth of scholarship, conference presentations, and cosplayer interviews, Cosplay is a unique and necessary examination of identity, performance, play, and otaku fandom and culture in relation to contemporary theories. With discussions covering construction, masquerades, and community through performance, Lunning presents cosplay as a dynamic and ever-evolving global practice. She combines the fascinating viewpoints of cosplayers with observational, in-depth research on cosplay history and practice, and a deep dive into critical theory involving the modes of fictional existence, in order to understand its global expansion. Augmented with beautiful photographs, this is an engrossing, lively read that explores a complicated and often misunderstood history and meditates on how cosplay allows its participants to create and construct meaning and identity.

The Fictional Mode of Existence

Cosplay

Mechademia

Sandra Annett

Second ARC

Mechademia 13.1

Mechademia 12.1

"Anime and manga have long proposed alternative worlds--some created after catastrophe. Mechademia 10 revolves around Japan's 2011 earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear reactor crises and considers a propensity for 'world renewal.'" from publisher's website.

World Renewal

Mechademia 10

Second Arc : Science Fiction

Second Arc : Modes of Existence

Second Arc

Mechademia 13. 2

The groundbreaking Mechademia book series is reborn as a biannual journal. Mechademia: Second Arc expands its focus from Japan to Asia and beyond, covering professional and fan-created works influenced by the forms of anime, Japanese manga/Korean manhwa/Chinese manhua, cinema, television dramas, digital media, video gaming, music, performance arts, and many other forms of popular culture that have proliferated in East Asia and throughout the world. The inaugural issue, "Childhood," explores the profundities of that experience, considering it from angles ranging from metaphor to marketing strategy to lived, mediated reality. Contributors include Honda Masuko, Sandra Annett, Brent Allison, Sharalyn Orbaugh, Okabe Tsugumi, Itô Gô, Mia Lewis, Ana Matilde Sousa, and Leticia Andlauer.

Frenchy Lunning

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