Customer Reviews

Mechademia 1: Emerging Worlds of Anime and Manga

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
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The full table of contents for this book is as follows:

"The Japan Fad in Global Youth Culture and Millennial Capitalism"
by Anne Allison

"Globalizing Manga: From Japan to Hong Kong and Beyond"
by Wendy Siuyi Wong

"The World of Anime Fandom in America"
by Susan Napier

"Costuming the Imagination: Origins of Anime and Manga Cosplay"
by Theresa Winge

"Assessing Interactivity in Video Game Design"
by Mark J.P. Wolf

"Mori Minoru's Day of Resurrection"
Introduced by Takayuki Tatsumi

"Superflat and the Layers of Image and History in 1990's Japan"
by Thomas Looser

Kurenai no Metalsuits, "Anime to wa nani ka/What is animation"
by Ueno Toshiya, translated by Michael Arnold

"Anime: The Multiplanar Image."
by Thomas Lamarre

"The Werewolf in the Crested Kimono: The Wolf-Human Dynamic in Anime and Manga"
by Antonia Levi

"Metamorphosis of the Japanese Girl: The Girl, the Hyper-Girl, and the Fighting Beauty"
by Mari Kotani

"Revolutionary Girl Utena: Manga and Anime Citations"
Compiled by Timothy Perper and Martha Cornog


REVIEW & COMMENTARY SECTION
(Edited by Timothy Perper and Martha Cornog)

"Metropolis," reviewed by Bill Benzon; "Adult Manga: Culture and Power in Contemporary Japanese Society," by Sharon Kinsella, reviewed by Vern Bullough; "Mobile Suit Gundam," by Tomino Yoshiyuki, translated by Fred Schodt, reviewed by Patrick Drazen; "Maria-Sama ga Miteru" and "Azumanga Daioh," reviewed by Marc Hairston; "Manga: 60 Years of Japanese Comics," by Paul Gravett and "Watching Anime, Reading Manga: 25 Years of Essays and Reviews," by Fred Patten, reviewed By Brian Ruh; "Revolutionary Girl Utena: The Adolescence of Utena,"by Saito Chiho, reviewed by Timothy Perper and Martha Cornog.

TORENDO SECTION
(Edited by Michelle Ollie)

As an anime and manga fan and an academic researcher, I see Mechademia as a great contribution. This first number has not the maturity of the following volumes, but it's fresh and full of great information and discussions. The Utena's article was my favorite, great contribution for feminist and gender studies concerning shoujo anime and manga. I'm really satisfied with my acquisition.

This a literary journal that discusses the anime/manga fandom on an intellectual level. I enjoyed this very much. The disscussions on animation in general were very interesting, i learned a lot. I read this a long time ago, so i'm a bit fuzzy on the other essays, but if manga/anime, is as much a part of your life, as it is apart of mine, then you owe yourself to check this out, and it's following volumes.

I love this book. The articles are excellent and interesting. This is the first book of it's kind that I have ever seen. It is nice to see something critically reviewing anime and manga story lines like native books and television shows have been reviewed and studied for years. I suggest it.

An "academic journal" on this J-Pop phenomenon that should interest anyone/everyone, accessible to all. Don't miss the second issue, "Networks of Desire." A thousand ideas per second.

Though considerably slimmer than subsequent volumes of the series, the first Mechademia is still an extremely stimulating foray into the badlands of postindustrial Japanese-American culture and media. It signals its originality early on, with an "Anifesto" which illuminates the central purpose of the series through the use of illustration and sparse, abstracted commentary which configures 'Mechademia' as a sort of textual cyborg, a metallic anime babe who sprouts leaves and sheets of paper (likely a reference to Japanese word for language, kotoba, which literally means something like 'spoken leaves'), representing the assorted articles and commentary which follow. The contents of the volume likewise diverge from what one typically expects of dry academic works: the articles run the gamut from the origins of cosplay to the technical aspects of anime perspective. The collection boasts some definite heavyweights in the arena of Japanese studies, including Anne Allison, Thomas Lamarre, Takayuki Tatsumi, and Susan Napier.

Every article here is of value, although some are more enjoyable reads than others: my personal favorites were Allison's discussion of the increasing popularity of Japanese products in the United States, Wendy Siuyi Wong's treatment of the history of Japanese manga in other regions of Asia and its future in the United States, and Thomas Looser's exploration of the Japanese aesthetic of 'superflat,' one of my favorite areas of aesthetic inquiry. None of the pieces veer into the territory of the unreadable or the excessively dry (always a pitfall of academic writing) and are uniformly interesting. Though occasionally articles may be excessively short (such as Tatsumi's piece), overall I highly recommend this, and the other Mechademia volumes, for their consistently enjoyable writing and unexpected insights into our self-consciously postmodern condition.