Customer Reviews

Mechademia 2: Networks of Desire

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The Mechademia series is an extraordinary anthology of original essays by scholars, artists, and fans discussing the popular culture of Japanese animation, manga, and their derivative fan-works, as gathered from an annual forum. Mechademia Volume 2: Networks of Desire especially focuses upon sexual and gender issues and subtexts present in manga and anime - although, despite the provocative cover image of a nude girl bound in ropes, most of the manga and anime examples discussed are emphatically not pornographic. Sample essays include "Shojo Manga! Girls Comics! A Mirror of Girls' Dreams", "Ranma 1/2 Fan Fiction Writers: New Narrative Themes or the Same Old Story?", "The Animalization of Otaku Culture", "Between the Child and the Mecha", and much more. A handful of black-and-white animation stills and other photographs illustrate this welcome contribution to Japanese popular culture studies.

As a shoujo fan and researcher, I was really happy when I hold my Mechademia number with Rose of Versailles article. I just loved all the content and for that reason bought the other numbers. This kind of material is a great contribution for academic studies about manga/anime and all that is related to Japanese pop culture. I'd like to have something like this in my language.

The full table of contents for this volume is as follows:

Introduction: Art Mecho
by Frenchy Lunning and Thomas LaMarre

*** PART I: SHOJO / GRRRL ***

Revolutionary Romance: The Rose of Versailles and the Transformation of Shojo Manga
by Deborah Shamoon

Shojo Manga! Girls' Comics! A Mirror of Girls' Dreams
by Masami Toku

Ranma 1/2 Fan Fiction Writers: New Narrative Themes or the Same Old Story?
by Meredith Suzanne Hahn Aquila

Doll Beauties and Cosplay
by Mari Kotani (translated by Thomas LaMarre)

A Japanese Electra and Her Queer Progeny
by Keith Vincent

*** PART II: POWERS OF TIME ***

Thieves of Baghdad: Transnational Networks of Cinema and Anime in the 1920s
by Daisuke Miyao

When Pacifist Japan Fights: Historicizing Desires in Anime
by Hiromi Mizuno

The Quick and the Undead: Visual and Political Dynamics in Blood: The Last Vampire
by Christopher Bolton

Bridges of the Unknown: Visual Desires and Small Apocalypses
by Eron Rauch

*** PART II: ANIMALIZATION ***

Malice@Doll: Konaka, Specularization, and the Virtual Feminine
by Margherita Long

The Animalization of Otaku Culture
by Azuma Hiroki (translated by Yuriko Furuhata and Marc Steinberg)

Sex and the Single Pig: Desire and Flight in Porco Rosso
by Patrick Drazen

The Education of Desire: Futari etchi and the Globalization of Sexual Tolerance
by Timothy Perper and Martha Cornog

My Father, He Killed Me; My Mother, She Ate Me: Self, Desire, Engendering, and the Mother in Neon Genesis Evangelion
by Mariana Ortega

*** PART IV: HORIZONS ***

Fly Away Old Home: Memory and Salvation in Haibane-Renmei
by Marc Hairston

In the World That Is Infinitely Inclusive: Four Theses on Voices of a Distant Star and The Wings of Honneamise
by Shu Kuge

Between the Child and the Mecha
by Frenchy Lunning

*** REVIEW AND COMMENTARY SECTION ***

Godzilla's Children: Murakami Takes Manhattan
William L. Benzon

Anime: Comparing Macro and Micro Analyses
Brent Allison

Crazy Rabbit Man: Why I Rewrite Manga
Trina Robbins

Brain-Diving Batou
Brian Ruh

Lurkers at the Threshold: Saya and the Nature of Evil
Timothy Perper and Martha Cornog

*** TORENDO SECTION ****

UAAAAA! Trashkultur! An Interview with MAK's Johannes Wieninger
Christopher Bolton