ANIMATION
FILM
PERFORMANCE
Frames of Anime: Culture and Image-Building
ISBN 978-962-209-098-9 (paper), ISBN 978-962-209-097-2 (hard)
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Japanese anime has long fascinated the world, and its mythical heroes and dazzling colors increasingly influence popular culture genres in the West. Tze-yue G. Hu analyzes the “language-medium” of this remarkable expressive platform and its many socio-cultural dimensions from a distinctly Asian frame of reference, tracing its layers of concentric radiation from Japan throughout Asia. Her work, rooted in archival investigations, interviews with animators and producers in Japan as well as other Asian animation studios, and interdisciplinary research in linguistics and performance theory, shows how dialectical aspects of anime are linked to Japan’s unique experience of modernity and its cultural associations in Asia, including its reliance on low-wage outsourcing. Her study also provides English readers with insights on numerous Japanese secondary sources, as well as a number of original illustrations offered by animators and producers she interviewed.
Japanese Animation: East Asian Perspectives (2013)
ISBN 978-161-703-809-9
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Japanese Animation: East Asian Perspectives makes available a selection of viewpoints from media practitioners, designers, educators, and scholars working in the East Asian Pacific. This collection not only engages a multidisciplinary approach in understanding the subject of Japanese animation but also shows ways to research, teach, and more fully explore this multidimensional world.
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Presented in six sections, the translated essays cross-reference each other. The collection adopts a wide range of critical, historical, practical, and experimental approaches. This variety provides a creative and fascinating edge for both specialist and nonspecialist readers. Contributors' works share a common relevance, interest, and involvement despite their regional considerations and the different modes of analysis demonstrated. They form a composite of teaching and research ideas on Japanese animation.
animating the spirited: journeys and transformations
ISBN 978-149-682-625-1 (paper), ISBN 978-149-682-626-8 (hard)
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Contributions by Graham Barton, Raz Greenberg, Gyongyi Horvath, Birgitta Hosea, Tze-yue G. Hu, Yin Ker, M. Javad Khajavi, Richard J. Leskosky, Yuk Lan Ng, Giryung Park, Eileen Anastasia Reynolds, Akiko Sugawa-Shimada, Koji Yamamura, Masao Yokota, and Millie Young
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Getting in touch with a spiritual side is a craving many are unable to express or voice, but readers and viewers seek out this desired connection to something greater through animation, cinema, anime, and art. Animating the Spirited: Journeys and Transformations includes a range of explorations of the meanings of the spirited and spiritual in the diverse, dynamic, and polarized creative environment of the twenty-first century. While animation is at the heart of the book, such related subjects as fine art, comics, children's literature, folklore, religion, and philosophy enrich the discoveries. These interdisciplinary discussions range from theory to practice, within the framework of an ever-changing media landscape. Working on different continents and coming from varying cultural backgrounds, these diverse scholars, artists, curators, and educators demonstrate the insights of the spirited.
Authors also size up new dimensions of mental health and related expressions of human living and interactions. While the book recognizes and acknowledges the particularities of the spirited across cultures, it also highlights its universality, demonstrating how it is being studied, researched, comprehended, expressed, and consumed in various parts of the world.