This timely work, despite its academic tone, offers a discussion of the topic that will be irresistible to die-hard anime fans. The list of participants is a "Who's Who" of Japanese animation experts. Almost half of the contributors have written top selling anime trade books in their own right. In spite of the academic tone, the discussion of such popular anime as "The Animatrix", "Blood: The Last Vampire", and others is irresistible to die-hard anime fans. With the animation releases increasing in the UK and films based on anime ("Transformers", "Speed Racer"), this remains a timely work.This collection charts the terrain of contemporary 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.

Table of Contents

The Anime Screen; S. T. Brown; PART I: TOWARDS A CULTURAL POLITICS OF ANIME; Excuse Me, Who Are You? Performance, the Gaze, and the Female in the Works of Kon Satoshi; S. Napier; The Americanization of Anime and Manga: Negotiating Popular Culture; A. Levi; The Advent of Meguro Empress: Decoding the Avant-Pop Anime TAMALA 2010; T. Takayuki; PART II: POST-HUMAN BODIES IN THE ANIMATED IMAGINARY; Frankenstein and the Cyborg Metropolis; S. Orbaugh; Animated Bodies and Cybernetic Selves: The Animatrix and the Question of Post-Humanity; C. Silvio; The Robots from Takkun's Head: Cyborg Adolescence in FLCL; B. Ruh; PART III: ANIME AND THE LIMITS OF CINEMA; The First Time as Farce: Digital Animation and the Repetition of Cinema; T. LaMarre; "Such Is the Contrivance of the Cinematograph": Dur(anim)ation, Modernity, and Edo Culture in Tabaimo's Animated Installations; L. Monnet.

Author Biography

STEVEN BROWN is Associate Professor of Japanese Literature and Popular Culture at the University of Oregon, USA.