Cinema Anime: Critical Engagements with Japanese Animation

246 Pages·2006·1.48 MB·English

by  Steven T. Brown (eds.)

Cinema Anime
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Cinema Anime
Critical Engagements with
Japanese Animation
Edited by
Steven T.Brown
CINEMAANIME
© Steven T.Brown,2006.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2006 978-1-4039-7060-2
All rights reserved.No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any
manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief
quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
First published in 2006 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN™
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Companies and representatives throughout the world.
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave
Macmillan division of St.Martin’s Press,LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd.
Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States,United Kingdom
and other countries.Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European
Union and other countries.
ISBN 978-0-230-60621-0 ISBN 978-1-4039-8308-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9781403983084
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Cinema anime :critical engagements with Japanese animation/
edited by Steven T.Brown.
p.cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1.Animated films—Japan.I.Brown,Steven T.
NC1766.J3C56 2005
791.43(cid:2)340952—dc22 2005052934
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd.,Chennai,India.
First edition:April 2006
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
ForAstro Boy’s Biggest Fan,
Gabriel
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Contents
1. Screening Anime 1
Steven T.Brown
Part I Towards a Cultural Politics ofAnime
2. “Excuse Me,Who Are You?”:Performance,the Gaze,and
the Female in the Works ofKon Satoshi 23
Susan Napier
3. The Americanization ofAnime and Manga:Negotiating
Popular Culture 43
Antonia Levi
4. The Advent ofMeguro Empress:Decoding the Avant-Pop
Anime TAMALA 2010 65
Tatsumi Takayuki
Part II Posthuman Bodies in the
Animated Imaginary
5. Frankenstein and the Cyborg Metropolis:The Evolution
ofBody and City in Science Fiction Narratives 81
Sharalyn Orbaugh
6. Animated Bodies and Cybernetic Selves:The Animatrixand
the Question ofPosthumanity 113
Carl Silvio
7. The Robots from Takkun’s Head:Cyborg Adolescence in FLCL 139
Brian Ruh
Part III Anime and the Limits ofCinema
8. The First Time as Farce:Digital Animation and the
Repetition ofCinema 161
Thomas Lamarre
viii CONTENTS
9. “Such is the Contrivance ofthe Cinematograph”:
Dur(anim)ation,Modernity,and Edo Culture in
Tabaimo’s Animated Installations 189
Livia Monnet
Bibliography 227
Notes on Contributors 239
Index 241
1
Screening Anime
Steven T.Brown
Cinema not only puts movement in the image,it also puts movement in
the mind....The brain is the screen....Cinema,precisely because it
puts the image in motion,or rather endows the image with self-motion
[automouvement],never stops tracing the circuits ofthe brain.1
—Gilles Deleuze
Cinema Animecharts the terrain ofcontemporary Japanese animation,
one of the most explosive forms of visual culture to emerge at the
crossroads of transnational cultural production in the last twenty-five
years.This collection ofessays offers bold and insightful engagements with
anime’s shifting negotiations with gender identity, anxieties about body
mutation and posthumanity,and the asymmetry between two-dimensional
cel animation and three-dimensional digital cinema.The contributors to
Cinema Anime dismantle the distinction between “high”and “low”cul-
ture and offer compelling arguments for the value and importance of
critical scholarship on popular cultural flows in the transnational spaces
oftranslation from the local to the global.
Rather than recapitulating the conventional distinction between
“cinema”and “animation”that devalues anime as somewhat less than the
cinematic standard of live action film, Cinema Anime explores anime’s
hybridity ofdifferent styles and modes ofimage making.Instead ofbeing
defined as a pale reflection of national cinema, anime is repositioned
along a continuum of visual production mapped in relation to the inter-
secting and multidirectional lines oftransnational movement out ofwhich
political, economic, social, technological, ethnic, and aesthetic flows
emerge,coalesce,enter into conflict,and take flight.Authors discuss anime
by Japanese directors ranging from Kon Satoshi to Oshii Mamoru,from