Susan napier why anime

This means that much some would argue most of its products are short-lived, rising and falling due to popular taste and the demands of the hungry market place. Can or even should anime be taken as seriously as the extraordinary range of high cultural artifacts, from woodblock prints to haiku, that Japanese culture is famous for?

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF. Skip to main content. This service is more advanced with JavaScript available. Hey, did I just see the hero die? What is anime? But anime is much more than that. It is an art form that arose from a modern society scraping off the ashes of war, hell-bent on economic growth and industrialization, and at the same time mourning lost traditions, values, and landscapes—in other words the tumultuous world of twentieth and twenty-first century Japan.

I was drawn to anime because it offered a rich and varied thematic universe that differed not only from American animation but also from the live action movies produced by Hollywood. The first anime movie I ever saw was in when, teaching in London, I wandered into the European premier of the movie Akira —a raw, kinetic, and stunningly dark story of motor cycle riding youths resisting authority in a post-apocalyptic Tokyo.

Not only was the story multilayered and immersive, but the overwhelming visuals—from a vision of a neon city thrusting at the night sky to a glimpse of a gigantic black crater—were like nothing I had ever seen.

Japanese animators seemed comfortable with a morally ambiguous universe and characters that possessed depth and complexity. But Miyazaki is not the only anime director worth looking at. The end product of all of this this is her second book that deals with anime, and the first major English volume that promises an in-depth look at the world of American anime fandom. Whatever her current interest, Napier's background is in Japanese literature and culture. And the first thing to keep in mind about From Impressionism to Anime is that beyond the introduction, anime itself is not even mentioned until a full pages in, more half half-way through the book.

These first pages, though, contain the crux of Napier's argument that how American fans approach anime in the 's is actually not all too different from the wave of fascination with Japanese culture that spread throughout Western Europe in the 's. She then traces how Japan has been represented in Western popular culture through the 's, the Reagan years, and finally, the cyberpunk aesthetic. These first chapters are excellent cultural history…but their relevance to anime fans is still strained at best.

The second, more anime-centric part of the book is composed of several distinct parts. One chapter is basically a history of anime and anime fandom in the U.

Another is a case study of the Miyazaki Mailing List. And a third, perhaps the most theoretical in the entire volume, looks at the sociology of anime conventions and typical convention activities. The conclusions she draws, for example, that "fandom is a form of resistance to the disappointing outer world," or that cosplay "has a sense of liberation and empowerment" may sound obvious if you stop and think about them — but that is a pretty big if.

And she clearly has taken the time to, well, stop and think. To wrap up, she attempts to ask the question of what exactly is the appeal of both anime, being an anime fan, and being a self-proclaimed member of anime fandom as a group. All of these chapters are built largely around the results of surveys Napier has been conducting with anime fans, as well as with such people as Meri Davis of the A-Kon anime convention and Tran Nguyen , the founder of manga publisher DramaQueen.

Of course, on the one hand, an interview allows for a great deal of access to an individuals views; on the other, that is exactly the problem.

The people she talks to may very well not be representative of the whole of American anime fans, and clearly, she does not look at, for example, casual anime fans, or those who for whatever reason abandon fandom. Especially compared to her previous book, From Impressionism to Anime is relatively light on obscure references and academic jargon, although Napier clearly knows enough to, for example, name-check Henry Jenkins when making any kind of argument about fandom.

And she is certainly interested in linking her study with some of the broader themes that are now becoming prominent in media studies, like concepts of 'soft power' and 'cultural capital. To an anime fan, not much of what she finds is going to be particularly novel, although it may certainly be interesting to realize that just as you the fan wonder about the reasons fandom exists as it does, scholars at universities around the U.

For someone who is not very familiar with the world of anime fans, though, Napier's analysis is a very good introduction.