Academic literature on the topic 'Anime'

Sammanfattning Titel: Kärlek till anime – en tillräcklig reseorsak? En kvalitativ studie om anime-fans motiv till att besöka anime-destinationer Författare: Linda Smedberg Handledare: Jasmina Beharic Examinator: Hans Wessblad Ämne: Turismvetenskap III, examensarbete (kandidat) 15 HP, HT 18 Datum: 14/1–2019   Syfte och forskningsfråga Syftet med denna uppsats är att ge en förståelse till vilka resemotiv anime-fans har för att besöka en anime-destination. Uppsatsen förklarar vilka dessa resemotiv är. Således ställdes forskningsfrågan:   Vad motiverar anime-fans att besöka en destination som använts i en japansk animerad serie?   Metod Uppsatsen utgår utifrån en kvalitativ metod och följer en deduktiv ansats. Vilket betyder att teorier presenteras som sedan mynnar ut i en analys av mitt empiriska material. Vilket är grundat i en kvalitativ, webb-baserad enkätundersökning.   Resultat Studiens resultat visar att anime-fans besöker anime-destinationer av flera olika orsaker. Alla dessa är grundade i en förkärlek till anime-kulturen. Resultaten visar också att anime-landskap samt turisternas identitet kan forma och påverka deras resemotiv.<br>Abstract The purpose of this thesis is to create an understanding of what motivates anime fans to visit an anime destination. This thesis aims to enlighten the reader to what these motives are by trying to answer the question: What motivates anime fans to visit a destination that has been used in a Japanese animated series?   The method used is a qualitative one and the thesis follows a deductive approach. Which means that theoretical theories were first presented. These were then tested in an analysis of my empirical material. The empirical data was collected from a qualitative web-based survey.     The study’s results show that the primary reasons anime fans visit an anime destination is because they love anime. It also shows that destinations and anime landscapes together with one’s identity can influence tourists travel motivations.

This thesis explores the playful world of Keroro Gunsô, a manga-turned-anime comedy that is immensely popular in millennium Japan and starting to gain popularity on a global scale. Drawing from a parody of Japan’s military aggression during World War Two, the anime plays with the public memory about Japan’s imperial past and the binary opposition between war and peace, invader and the invaded, and ultimately, patriarchy and matriarchy. This paper will examine the text of Keroro Gunsô as a symbolic site of what Mikhail Bakhtin called “carnival,” a discursive space for renewal, festivity and laughter freed from ordinary social restrictions and conformity. I would argue that Keroro Gunsô offers a playful fantasy for Japan’s “post-postwar memory” (as Carol Gluck calls it) to deal with social anxieties associated with Japan’s imperial past and its tragic defeat in the war. I will start my argument by looking at the increasingly significant role of carnival/festival anime in today’s global culture. Then, after a brief reading of the story of Keroro Gunsô, I will locate its text in the framework of “carnival” to examine its carnivalesque features: the attack against historical facts through parody as well as the reversal of Japan’s patriarchal hierarchy through the mobilization of its symbolic characters. Finally, I will examine how Keroro Gunsô embraces/celebrates Japan’s playfully weak, irresponsible, and ultimately, emasculated identity as a response to the social anxieties surrounding Japan’s defeat in World War Two. Through the alternate reading of this incredibly popular comedy, this paper attempts to explore a different side of Japanese society encapsulated in this carnivalesque anime behind its humor and festival laughter.

Mobile Suit Gundam (1979-1980) is an iconic series in the genre of television anime featuring giant fighting robots, embedded in a system of conventions developed across decades of media aimed at boys that emphasizes action and combat. In this thesis, I argue that Gundam foregrounds the interiority of its main character Amuro, challenging conventions governing the boy protagonist. Using Peter Verstraten's principles of film narratology and Thomas Lamarre’s theory of limited animation, I find in Gundam's narrative strategies sophisticated techniques developed to portray his inner life. These techniques of interiority generate ironic tensions with the traditionally exterior orientation of combat narratives. These tensions connect to a larger discourse of Japanese postwar media built into the very lines that draw characters and robots, leading Gundam to a spectacular confrontation with its own genre’s legacy of mechaphilia.

Conventions featuring anime (Japanese animation), manga (Japanese comic books), video games, and related merchandise have accumulated fandoms (fan communities) through the provision of a supportive environment that facilitates consumption of imported products. Anime conventions in the U.S. and Canada attract consumers from across North America. Attendees frequently utilize cultural and symbolic capital to express their enthusiasm as fans. Some fans create elaborate handmade costumes and perform as their favorite characters during the convention. This activity is commonly called cosplay (or “costume play”). Cosplayers borrow directly from Japanese popular culture media texts and aim to make the best possible realization of the characters. Drawing on Bourdieu’s Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste (1996), theorists of fandom have examined the consumption of popular texts, such as television, magazines, or books, with regards to dominant cultural standards, or taste. Some fan theorists profess that fan subcultures challenge the institutionalized cultural hierarchy. Fans invest time and money in the consumption of devalued products, namely popular culture. Consumption of popular texts and the fan activities associated with them are denigrated by dominant culture. This thesis draws upon Bourdieu’s concept of taste to examine how conceptualizations of “good” and “bad” taste relate to gender and physical attributes, such as body size and skin color. Cosplay is a social activity where fans temporarily assume and perform a fictional identity. However, interviews with cosplayers indicate that a cosplayer’s decision making is informed by dominant social standards of beauty, based on physical appearance, body size, and to some degree, ethnicity. Conventions provide relatively safe places for the transgression of normative concepts of gender and sexuality. Cosplay provides an opportunity for gender ‘play’ and self-invention through the performance of alternative personas. Cosplayers are stigmatized by dominant society for their inordinate interest and consumption of a devalued commodity. The activity involves skill, time, and devotion that mainstream society prescribes for a career or in some way contributing to the economic system. Fan activities, including cosplay, and online fan communities contribute to an alternative discourse about desire, sexuality, and gender that challenges dominant, patriarchal social norms.

Despite growing as a new popular facet of tourism in Japan, Seichi junrei is still niche and largely undocumented, stifling both the experiences of participants as well as the opportunities in the tourism industry. The tourism industry is changing and always trying to improve but lacks a personal touch. According to studies, the tourism industry focuses more on mainstream tourism than it does on niche tourism. Seichi junrei community issues are not being heard by the tourism industry; There are no user-friendly platforms available for the subculture to contribute towards tourism. This text explores the development of tourism and improving the experiences of tourists participating in the phenomena known as seichi junrei. Seichi junrei is explored through ethnography to create bonds. Together as a team of voluntary participants, through participatory design challenges the current problems with tourist experiences and improves them through digital tourism. The thesis creates a community and a platform that solves the user experience problems of seichi junrei. Seichi junrei becomes a guide for new fans where everyone can work as a community and help evolve the tourism phenomena of seichi junrei.

This postgraduate thesis called "Gender, Identity and Sexuality in Japanese Anime", will be dealing with the depiction and grasping of the meaning of gender, sexuality and identity and the overcoming of their traditional borderlines in Japanese anime. The meaning of the word "gender" in this thesis, is primarily referring to it's original meaning, typically used with reference to social and cultural arrangements of gender roles rather than biological differences between sexes, which is how the word "gender" is often misused. This thesis will primarily be an in-depth research of the diverse interpretation of gender, sexuality and identity in Japanese animated film from an anthropological point of view, incorporating history, tradition and social development in Japan, ranging from its very first mythological beginnings up to present day. Japanese animated film is characterized by its broad range of genres and it's diversity, which is derived not only from the richness of its own unique culture and way of thinking, but also by adopting western concepts, which are then moulded together and joined in a new original form. This manner of adopting certain aspects from other cultures and their uniting with Japanese tradition and culture created a rich fertile ground for growth of new concepts of gender, sexuality and identity. It is also thanks to this aspect, that Japanese anime has obtained a huge enthusiastic and devoted fan base all around the world. The aim of this thesis is to illuminate the background of the emergence of different concepts of gender, sexuality and identity in Japanese anime and to point out these aspects in individual film and series productions, which best depict these different concepts.

This dissertation traces the circulation and consumption of Japanese anime, or Anime, in Kuwait to examine the changing consciousness of normativity regarding gender and sexuality for audiences and fans. Anime has been distributed and accessible since the 1970s in Kuwait. Nonetheless, with the advent of "New Anime" after the 2000s, the audience has widely accepted characters and protagonists that deviate from the existing representational practices portraying active men and passive women. Drawing from gender and sexualities studies, media and anime studies, Antonio Gramsci's theory of hegemony as well as Raewyn Connell's theory on masculinities, this study critically investigates "hegemonic masculinities" in Kuwaiti society to argue the ways in which the reception and practices of Anime help to erode them.<br>博士(アメリカ研究)<br>Doctor of Philosophy in American Studies<br>同志社大学<br>Doshisha University

Syftet med examensarbetet är att få en bild av huruvida det är möjligt att använda sig av anime som undervisningsmaterial rörande etik och moral. Med hjälp av filmer och en enkätundersökning har detta genomförts. Sammanfattningsvis pekar resultatet på att eleverna verkligen får tillfälle och möjlighet att med hjälp av anime reflektera över etiska och existentiella frågor.