#80 = Volume 27, Part 1 = March 2000
Ray Mescallado
Otaku Nation
Trish Ledoux,
ed. Anime Interviews: The First Five
Years of ANIMERICA, ANIME AND MANGA MONTHLY (1992-97).Viz
Communications (415-546-7073), 1997. 175 pp. $19.95 paper. Originally published
by Cadence.
Antonia Levi.
Samurai from Outer Space: Understanding Japanese
Animation. Open Court (312-939-1500), 1996. x + 169 pp. $18.95
paper.
Frederick
Schodt. Manga! Manga! The World of
Japanese Comics. Stone Bridge (800-947-7271), 1997. 260 pp.
$22.00 paper. Originally published by Kodansha in 1983.
____. Dreamland
Japan: Writings on Modern Manga. Stone Bridge (800-947-7271),
1996. 356 pp. $16.95 paper.
Masamune
Shirow. Ghost in the Shell.
Dark Horse (503-652-8815), 1995. 367pp. $24.95 paper.
_____. Intron
Depot 1: A Collection of Masamune Shirow’s Full Color Works.
Dark Horse (503-652-8815), 1992. 148 pp. $39.95 paper.
_____. Intron
Depot 2: A Collection of Masamune Shirow’s Full Color Works 1992-1998.
Dark Horse (503-652-8815), 1998. 111 pp. $39.95 paper.
Junk culture from a different shore:
for the most part, that is exactly what the ever-burgeoning flow of translated
Japanese comics (manga) and animation (anime) to America has been.
Don’t get me wrong: I count myself an otaku—that is, a dedicated fan
of anime and manga (though the term has broader usage in Japan,
encompassing any fanatical hobbyist)—and I love junk culture. I’ve
devoted a good deal of time and energy to studying American comics both as an
academic and a journalist, and I agree with Jules Feiffer’s contention, in The
Great Comic Book Heroes (Dial, 1965), that one of comics’ greatest assets
is its "junk" stigma and the freedom this allows the medium. But
without that sense of junk-culture perspective, without the understanding that
this is ephemera that only occassionally aspires to art, the desire to elevate
the accomplishments of certain creators—or to exoticize manga and anime
simply because they’re Japanese (and as any visit to an anime convention
will amply prove, there are many American otaku who are aggressively
Japanophilic) —would be too tempting. I have often heard otaku claim
that Japanese comics are superior to American comics with such vigor that one
suspects they see manga as an artform that American funnybooks simply can’t
aspire to, and creators such as Rumiko Takahashi and Masamune Shirow as auteur
geniuses with no peers in America.
Well, they’re wrong. Or to be more
precise, they’re oversimplifying the situation in the protective manner that
many dedicated fans tend to adopt. As a critic of the American comics industry
and its ongoing decline due to a bottlenecked distribution system, I find myself
fascinated by the booming success of the Japanese comics industry. The wide-open
secret of Japanese comics’ superiority to American comics—and for that
matter, European comics’ superiority to American comics—is that there’s a
higher standard and a wider range of mediocrity than one finds in America.
American comics are defined in the public and among their fan base by a handful
of genres—and one in particular, superheroes—that appeal primarily to a very
specific demographic: white male post-adolescents. In contrast, manga is
as prevalent in Japan as any other print medium; there are comics and animation
for just about every demographic group conceivable, and a hot Japanese manga
series has a level of media saturation that the American comics industry sees
only once in a blue moon (last time: Batmania; next time: X-Mania). Numbers with
multiple zeroes are often trotted out to impress the statistically minded, but
the point is that Japanese comics have succeeded as a mass medium in a way that
they haven’t in any other culture. Moreover, the connection between the comics
and animation industries is taken for granted in Japan, so that a runaway manga
hit is practically guaranteed an anime follow-up of some sort—either as
a movie adaptation or a TV series. Stateside, this is not nearly as frequent:
the lack of full legitimacy for American animation and the lack of any
consistent legitimacy for American comics doesn’t permit the multimedia
synergy that makes the manga-anime connection seem so natural.
One last factor should also be
considered: manga is made and read in a significantly different manner
from most American comics. Manga works through sheer volume: thousands of
new pages of story are published weekly, and installments of a series are often
thirty to forty pages per week (though there are also biweekly and monthly
series). For those not raised on the sensibility of Bang! and Pow! (or the more
idiosyncratic conventions of alternative comics), manga storytelling is
more accessible than many American comics because it’s considerably faster and
more cinematic in its narrative style. Comic books aren’t even the best
comparison: if anything, manga is in some ways closer to American Sunday
comic strips. A typical manga series installment can be read in the same
amount of time and by as wide a range of audience. Even when you consider the
specific audience that a typical manga series caters to—whether girls
under twelve or teenage boys or businessmen in their thirties—its circulation
numbers are often considerably higher and more likely to cross over to other
demographics than is the case with American comic books. For all these reasons,
I would argue that Americans who cannot identify with most American comics are
theoretically more likely (and even more willing) to find something that appeals
to them in translated manga or anime.
Frederick Schodt is considered the
grand master of American otaku, and rightfully so. His groundbreaking
book, Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics, remains the bible of
the dedicated fan: first published in 1983 and re-released with minor revisions
in 1997, the book provides a comprehensive overview of manga as an
expression of Japanese culture. Schodt begins with a basic introduction to manga
and its pervasiveness in Japan, looks at the history of visual storytelling in
that country, then considers the manga boom after World War II. He
explores how manga built upon the ethic of bushido ("The Way
of the Warrior") and surveys the development of girls’ comics (shojo
manga), the diversity of genres available, and the modes of
creation/production in the manga industry. In his discussion of erotic
comics in particular, Schodt points out that what many Americans consider the
excessive sex and violence in manga and anime simply doesn’t
register for Japanese readers, because they intuitively recognize the difference
between reality and fantasy and have no problem keeping the former contained
while the latter runs rampant. The violent sexual fantasies on display in some
erotic manga are balanced, as Schodt shows, by more benign examples—such
as the June phenomenon, in which teenage girls dote upon stories of
"beautiful boys" in homosexual romances.
Perhaps the most vital contribution
Schodt made with his book was to introduce American readers to specific examples
of manga at a time when such translations were almost nonexistent.
Readers were treated to selections from Osamu Tezuka’s Phoenix, Reiji
(also Leiji) Matsumoto’s Ghost Warrior, Riyoko Ikeda’s The Rose of
Versailles, and Keiji Nakazawa’s Barefoot Gen (which had already
been partially translated into English well before the release of Manga!
Manga!). The diversity of these offerings—an existential epic, a World War
II short story, a romantic drama set during the French Revolution, and a
semi-autobiographical account of the bombing of Hiroshima—was surely
intentional: this is what manga can offer us, Schodt seems to be saying;
this is the potential of the comics medium that has been tapped by another
culture. But for some reason, this wide range of translated manga has yet
to be a common feature in the American market—a point I will discuss more
fully below.
Instead of drastically revising Manga!
Manga!, Schodt wrote a second book, 1996’s Dreamland Japan: Writings on
Modern Manga. Having done his comprehensive overview in the first book,
Schodt treats the sequel as a chance to explore the more idiosyncratic aspects
of the medium. As he writes in his preface:
My focus ... is on manga and
recent trends in manga that most people outside of Japan (and many inside
Japan) have never heard of and probably never will. Since, for me, manga
are also a window on another world, the works that I read tend not to be what is
popular, but what I personally find interesting and unusual. This is, therefore,
a personal book, and I only hope that readers find the material as interesting
as I do. (15)
As a result, the joys of reading Dreamland
Japan come in the details. After initial chapters that define the medium and
consider "Modern Manga at the End of the Millennium," Schodt
devotes chapters to manga magazine publishers, to specific artists and
their work, and to the "God of Comics" Osamu Tezuka. He considers manga
in relation to other Japanese media, and finally considers "Manga in
the English-Speaking World." There is a great deal to be learned here, and
Schodt is generous in both his opinions and his insights. I was personally
charmed by the Do-It-Yourself ethic that manifests in certain subgenres and
among specific audiences of manga, such as the Yan Mama Comic
magazine geared for Japanese biker moms who have formed their own rebellious
social circles in response to more conventional communities of mothers. Another
small-press manga that Schodt profiles is Garo, first previewed
for the American comics audience in Art Spiegelman’s RAW magazine and a
continuing bastion of artistic freedom in the overwhelmingly commercialized manga
industry. As an example of cultural differences, I noted ironically that the hentai
(pornographic) comics of Milk Morizono are intended for a female audience in
Japan but are more likely to be translated for a male audience here in America.
For those interested in the recent success of Hayao Miyazake’s Princess
Mononoke, there is a section devoted to Miyazake’s other eco-warrior
princess, Nausicaä of the Valley Wind, tracing exactly how it developed
from a successful manga to a successful anime.
Adopting a "personal"
perspective, Schodt interpolates himself into his material to good effect.
Considering his role as a cultural ambassador for Japanese comics, Schodt is
certainly entitled—and his writing is strong enough that these interpolations
are actually quite productive and entertaining. Schodt describes his various
meetings with publishers, editors, and artists, and even creates dramatic
tension when writing of his encounter with the AUM Shinrikyo cult, who were
creating comics well before their terrorist actions horrified the world. And
while he maintains the proper journalistic distance in most cases, a collapse of
this distance serves him beautifully in the chapter "Osamu Tezuka: A
Tribute to the God of Comics," which shows what has made this man and his
work so compelling not only for countless Japanese readers but also for this
particular American one. Calling Tezuka his "mentor," someone who
"encourag[ed] me and help[ed] me considerably in my career as a
writer" (238), Schodt also observes that he is "probably one of the
few people, other than Tezuka’s wife and closest employees, to see him without
a beret" (238). Schodt also weighs in on the recent controversy surrounding
The Lion King (1994), where Disney foolishly tried to convince critics
that their film was in no way derivative of Tezuka’s 1960s creation, Kimba
the White Lion.
Schodt’s books are focused primarily
on manga, with only occasional references to anime. For those
interested in the latter form, Antonia Levi’s Samurai from Outer Space:
Understanding Japanese Animation is generally a good introduction, but the
book can prove alternately enlightening and frustrating. Levi’s writing is at
times too coy to be taken seriously, even as she presents useful information on
her chosen topics. After advancing the notion that the work of anime
creators is often intended for a strictly Japanese audience and thus
"offers a unique perspective, a peeping Tom glimpse into the Japanese
psyche," Levi continues with the following oohs and ahhs:
And what a marvelous place that turns
out to be! Who would have guessed all that was going on behind those dull
business suits and tightly wrapped kimonos? It’s so easy to dismiss the
Japanese as workaholics, economic animals, and uncreative imitators. It’s easy
to forget that they are the inheritors of an ancient culture drawn from East
Asia, but nurtured in isolation to produce something that surprises (and
sometimes appalls) even its immediate neighbors. It’s easy, until you watch
your first anime or read your first manga. (16)
On the one hand, one expects this
burbling enthusiasm to be shared by the readers Levi doubtless imagines for
herself: otaku who can’t get enough information on the anime
scene. On the other hand, the tone of this passage is that of a cheerleader
tourist, with Levi positioning herself as head of the otaku nation’s
own "Up With Anime" squad. More problematic is the manner in
which Levi often ties her general observations on anime to too-specific
examples from actual shows. The chapter on "Outrageous Women," for
instance, hinges on plot summaries of episodes of Ranma 1/2, Venus
Wars, Roujin Z, All-Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku-Nuku, and
others. While it’s definitely necessary to ground discussions of pop-cultural
phenomena in this manner—and, moreover, being able to cite a variety of manga
and anime is the best way to prove one’s otaku bona fides—Levi
is guilty of trying to impress too much; as a result, she risks losing
the more casual reader. I consider myself an otaku and even I was at
times overwhelmed by the rush of names and plot points and anime
specifics as I tried to keep track of how Levi’s more general observations
were developed in the course of a chapter. Her subtitle "Understanding
Japanese Animation" implies an in-depth look at the patterns and
conventions of the medium, but while Levi certainly makes stabs at providing
this, she also apparently thinks that having handy Cliff Notes is also an
important means of "understanding" anime. The audience for this
book is thus generally limited to otaku—novice and otherwise—who want
to read more about things they already know to some degree; it is difficult to
imagine such a volume appealing to the browser who has a casual interest in
"that Japanimation craze."
Still, what Levi delivers can often be
compelling. Of particular interest is her explanation of the seeming nihilism
that’s evident in Japanese animation, which is described in the poorly-titled
chapter, "Death and Other Bad Stuff." Eschewing examples from anime
for a couple of paragraphs, Levi reviews in concise (if still fairly simplistic)
terms the philosophical differences between the West and Japan, and how these
differences allow for popular narratives where heroes die and evil triumphs.
Tracking the cultural influence of Shinto and Confucianism, Levi concludes that:
To the Japanese, morality is a purely
human concept, a social concept. It’s not tied to any transcendental view of
the universe. People and the universe are two different things and play by
different rules. Heroism and self-sacrifice define an anime character as
a hero, but they will not save him or her. The universe simply doesn’t care.
(99)
Levi builds on this idea productively,
if in a typically over-erudite manner. About ten pages and over a dozen distinct
anime examples later, she makes the compelling point that the nihilism of
anime may be part of its appeal to Generation X: in contrast to "the
Judeo-Christian model of Heaven and Hell," the "amoral, indifferent
universe of anime with its assumptions that death means oblivion is
positively encouraging" to contemporary American youth (108). And while it
may not be news that alienation sells, to point out this ideological aspect of anime
is certainly productive.
Another guide to the world of manga
and anime is Anime Interviews: The First Five Years of ANIMERICA,
ANIME AND MANGA MONTHLY (1992-97), edited by Trish LeDoux. While there
are numerous anime-related magazines now on the newsstands—for example,
Tokyopop, Protoculture Addicts, and Manga Max—Animerica
remains the standard by which others are judged. Which doesn’t mean that
the standards are very high: Animerica is clearly a magazine of fannish
appreciation and not a forum for more penetrating critical assessments of the
medium. The longer articles are often filled with details and veiled opinions
that can prove instructive to the novice, but that’s as deep as it goes;
beyond that, one is treated to all the manga news and reviews that fit,
and there’s more than enough eye-candy on display to keep one turning the
pages. Anime Interviews is more meat-and-potatoes than a typical issue of
Animerica as it collects the best interviews from the magazine, mixing
rather evenly interviews with manga creators and anime creators
(as well as those, like Hayao Miyazaki, who are both). Even more than Levi’s
book, Anime Interviews is meant for the otaku who craves
information on favorite shows and creators. While Schodt’s and Levi’s books
come with resource pages for those who want to pursue specific topics, Anime
Interviews ends each interview with a Select Filmography and/or Bibliography
of the interviewee’s work. Much of what’s listed isn’t in translation, but
it certainly serves to whet the appetite of the dedicated fan.
The actual interviews are puff pieces
for the most part: no tough questions are broached, and there is not enough
space to explore issues surrounding the manga and anime industry
with any rigor. This is no surprise, given the source—and no shame, given the
intended audience. But more instructive are the introductions that begin each
interview, which are close in tone and intention—if not as engagingly written—as
the individual artist profiles to which Schodt devotes a whole chapter in Dreamland
Japan. The personalities on display in the actual interviews vary widely.
Nanase Okawa of the group Clamp—best known among American otaku for Magic
Knight Rayearth, X/1999, and Card Captor Sakura—provides wonderful
insight and charming enthusiasm in relating how that famous all-female manga
collective works. Battle Angel Alita creator Yukito Kishiro and Ghost
in the Shell creator Masamune Shirow both wax cyber-philosophical for at
least a question or two, while Galaxy Express 999’s Leiji Matsumoto
provides the most satisfying interview in the book, discussing articulately the
Western influences on his work and his philosophy of what anime, manga, and
science fiction can accomplish.
As overviews of this aspect of Japanese
culture, the four books should prove more than sufficient, adopting different
perspectives on—and assuming varying levels of familiarity with—the primary
material. But of course, overviews serve a limited function: none of these books
is meant to be critical; these are introductions to the manga/anime
experience serving the fan base that wants an inside track and not those who
seek to assess the experience from a critical distance.
After all, fandoms often justify their
existence by becoming a central focus of their members’ identities, by placing
a high value on the kind of information and acquistiveness that is only truly
meaningful within that narrow community. Speaking for myself, I can give you
detailed information about the characters and plot twists in Marmalade Boy,
a high school romance anime that’s my personal favorite series; I have
Japanese books devoted to the series (the manga collections and art
books), which I can’t read but which delight me and are the envy of the fellow
Marmalade Boy fans that I know. In the right mood I will try to sing
along and pantomime to the opening theme of the series. So certainly, I
understand the allure and see nothing wrong with such intense enjoyments within
the proper context. On the one hand, such a specialized mastery is perfectly
natural for any kind of community, be it a church or a school or a paramilitary
militia; on the other hand, it can also encourage a cultish insularity that can
make a person socially maladjusted. This risk is particularly pronounced among
fan communities that are precisely built upon fantasies that reinforce
alienation from the mainstream culture, which is certainly true of the world of
both fanboys and otaku. This is not a uniquely American dilemma, by any
means. For proof of a similar concern in Japan, Studio Gainax’s Otaku No
Video pointedly alternates between a real-life documentary on the
experiences of otaku of various kinds (manga, anime, hentai,
military fetishists) and an anime narrative in which a young man decides
to make himself "the king of otaku." The creators at Gainax are
obviously aware of just how pathetic the lives of some otaku must be—at
one point in the documentary, they ask a man obsessed with hentai if he
ever tries to meet real girls and he answers blithely in the negative—but are
also sympathetic to the challenges of intellectual and social mastery that exist
within a fan community, insular though it may be.
The cross-cultural nature of anime
and manga only makes such insularity more problematic. Levi points out
that a mastery of the Japanese language—and, implicitly, a "mastery"
of Japanese culture—is highly valued by American otaku because it means
they can watch anime without need of English dubbing or subtitles, and
can even make such translations themselves, thus exercising a palpable influence
on the otaku nation and its tastes (whether locally, among friends, or
more generally, in online postings and discussions). Levi and Schodt both strike
a careful balance between wanting to make anime and manga
metonymic for Japanese culture and pointing out that this is only a specific
aspect that doesn’t engulf and define all of Japanese life. But is that the
way American otaku understand their hobby? Consider the last two
paragraphs in Dreamland Japan. A few pages earlier, Schodt acknowledges
that "some of the less healthy minds on the fringe of English manga/anime
fandom" may have their pedophilic urges encouraged by certain material, but
he concludes:
There is an element of risk in
promoting manga, as there is no guarantee foreigners will get a better
impression of Japan from reading them. The material foreigners prefer, moreover,
may not be what is preferred in Japan, and it may be interpreted differently. In
a worst-case scenario, the "Lolita complex virus" might even be
inadvertently exported.
More likely, however, manga will
give a far truer picture of Japan, warts and all, than "highbrow" tea
ceremony or Zen ever could. As a form of popular culture, comics of all nations
tend to be tightly woven with local culture and thought. In translation, manga—especially—can
be both a medium of entertainment and a Rosetta stone for mutual understanding.
(340)
The optimism of Schodt’s ending, and
his valorization of the popular, is admirable. But in trying so hard to make manga
and anime, as definitively Japanese experiences, both
comprehensible and palatable to a wide American audience, do Schodt and Levi
give short shrift to the psychological and cultural complexities of the otaku
experience on these shores? What do American otaku see in anime
and manga—and, in turn, in Japan as a cultural force, as a nation with
a historically tempestuous relationship with the United States—that makes
these media so appealing? The dream of many otaku, sometimes announced
outright but usually expressed implicitly, that "I wish I lived in
Japan"—or even "I wish I was Japanese"—is often (though I
should stress, not always) as unrealistically romanticizing and lamentably
uninformed as Jack Kerouac’s infamous wish, in On the Road (1957), that
he could be a Negro. More generally, where do otaku place themselves
within the popular culture matrix? After all, they often look down on American
comics and their readers for not being discriminating or mature enough—but otaku
often display an almost knee-jerk worship of the anime subculture that
indicates merely a surface variation in fanboy attitudes and mindcandy
dependence.
To give an anecdotal example, I
recently heard of an American student studying Japanese, who initially learned
bits and pieces of the language from watching anime and who thus started
taking classes armed with phrases and intonations that were more appropriate for
a cartoon character. Her instructors were apparently horrified. After all, this
would be the equivalent of learning how to speak English by watching episodes of
the G.I. Joe cartoon and Steven Seagal movies. The line Schodt observes
Japanese manga readers drawing between reality and fantasy is still
maintained among most otaku, but perhaps it’s more likely to blur when
the lure of an exoticized Japanese identity is mapped onto the otaku
experience. The popularity of hentai comics is an example of this: do
comics such as Bondage Fairies or Silky Whip celebrate Japanese
culture’s "naughty" side, or simply provide another outlet for
frustrated white males with a fetish for "Orientals"? The complexity
of the colonized imagination is particularly ripe among otaku: is Japan’s
cultural influence the determining force that structures the American otaku’s
imagination, or do these otaku on some level appropriate and misapprehend
the intent of anime within Japan in order to reinforce their sense of
alienation from their own culture? I would argue that it works both ways, that
this is part of the process by which a globalized popular culture is claimed,
contested, defined, and perpetually redefined thereafter. In any case, these
various subtleties are inaccessible to Schodt and Levi, whose mutual tone of
fannish celebration and eager promotion does not lend itself to asking the
harder questions.
On a slightly different note, I
appreciate that Levi and Schodt both point out (at least in passing) the
influence of other fandoms on the rise of the otaku nation: comic book
fandom, certainly, but also science fiction and fantasy and gaming—that is,
the whole panoply of post-adolescent male-geek subculture. Schodt and Levi both
point out proudly—and rightfully so—that the otaku nation is much
more heterogenous than, say, the fan base for American comics. I would argue,
however, that the American comics market has had a very pronounced impact on
translated Japanese comics—and a nasty one, at that. As I noted earlier, the
demographic audience for comics in America is much narrower than for comics in
Japan, especially when one factors in the direct distribution system in the US
(which is the basis for comics specialty shops) and its influence on what sells
and what doesn’t. What happens, then, when a true mass medium (manga)
tries to make its presence felt in a "specialty hobby" medium
(American comics)? Of course, the material most accessible to that new target
audience (American comics readers) tends to become the easiest—and relatively
safest—choice. Once again, the complexities of a globally cross-pollenized
popular culture become evident in an unexpected manner—and, I would hazard, in
a manner that many otaku would be unwilling to recognize.
The diversity of manga had to be
experimented with outside comics fandom before it could even be
considered within the confines of the fanboy community—and, in turn, the otaku
contingent of that community. In this light, the diversity of translated work
was limited by the preexistent channels American comics provided: the manga
chosen was aimed at the very limited and very established demographic of white
post-adolescent males. Luckily, though, more than this was available if and when
other audiences demanded it. After all, it was only after the breakout success
of Sailor Moon as a translated cartoon—something outside of the
influence of American comics publishers and retailers—that the market for shojo
manga was perceived as truly viable. At the same time, because of America’s
video-based culture, the boom of interest in anime definitively
outstripped the interest in manga—but this, in turn, created an
interest in more diverse offerings, first in translated animation, then
eventually in translated comics. Sports comics are only beginning to make
headway now, because the type of people who read comics in America are of course
less likely to care about athletics. Never mind that Slam Dunk (still
untranslated) has a breakout potential in a culture that has raised Michael
Jordan to the status of a demigod. And of course, artistically ambitious manga
by the likes of Suehiro Maruo and Yoshiharu Tsuge are even more rare in
translation.
A more likely crossover success, given
America’s abiding enthusiasm for capitalism, might be the finance- and
business-related manga that was a staple of the magazine Mangajin
before its unfortunate demise; indeed, a book of translated economics manga,
Shotaro Ishinomori’s Japan, Inc., was released by Lancaster Press in
1996. The chances of such comics being translated with any enthusiasm in
the current American comics market, however, are just about zero. After all,
businessmen in America supposedly don’t read comics, never mind gain their
information on business through that medium. For their part, the otaku nation
wants their power fantasies dished up with hot Asian babes and gleaming giant
robots and deadly samurai swords; treatises on the mundanity of the real world
aren’t considered exotic enough, aren’t as relevant to the imaginative space
they’ve molded for themselves. Clearly, a wide cultural gap still exists
between the Japanese perspective on comics and the American perspective, and
while the current otaku are intent on proselytizing for what they like,
what they like is still a limited slice of a very large pie.
By contrast, science fiction manga
and anime haven’t suffered in America. While sf isn’t the main focus
of any of these overview books, there are specific sections in Samurai from
Outer Space and Anime Interviews that would be of interest to
scholars and fans of the genre. As I noted, the Ledoux collection features
interviews with leading science fiction manga/anime creators; besides the
ones named earlier, there are several creators included who specialize in mecha—which,
as Levi tells us in her book’s glossary, "can refer to any kind of
machine, but usually is applied to robots and other large, high-tech items"
(161). Mecha artists get plenty of attention in Anime Interviews—e.g.,
Yoshiki Takaya of Bio-Booster Armor Guyver, Macross creator Shoji
Kawamori, and Armored Trooper Votoms’ Ryosuke Takahashi. Despite the
occasional aside on the appeal of mecha to anime fans, for the
most part the interviews detail more industry-specific concerns of design and
the process of animation. Levi’s book has a chapter on "Androids, Cyborgs
and Other Mecha" that is typically filled with breathless examples
culled from a dozen or so anime, but does manage to explore attitudes and
anxieties about technology—specifically regarding the interface between the
human and the technological that defines almost all mecha, whether it be
explicitly cyborg in form or involving pilots inhabiting incredibly huge
robot-ships—and how these attitudes and anxieties differ for Japanese and
American audiences. If anything, the abundance of examples and the lack of a
truly coherent overarching argument in this chapter makes Levi’s analyses of
the Japanese concerns for organ transplants and artificial prosthetics less
relevant than they could be. In this case, the development of a specific genre—mecha
and the whole cyborg/big-robot nexus that surrounds it—does indeed point to
some deep-seated questions about the nature of the human-tech interface. But
Levi could have spent more time trying to figure out the larger picture, and
might have come up with a conclusion more compelling than the following:
"Because of different assumptions and cultural mores, the Japanese
sometimes have somewhat different fears about the future [than Americans]"
(95). The number of qualifiers in this passage gestures towards a more complex
situation than Levi’s extensive plot-summaries and pseudo-erudition is capable
of accessing.
Science fiction-derived manga
and anime is one of the main genres translated in America. Sf material
made up the entirety of Viz Communication’s first line of manga
translations, Eclipse, in the late 1980s: namely, Mai the Psychic Girl, Xenon,
and Area 88. Marvel’s Epic line translated the Katsuhiro Otomo epic Akira,
though they’ve foolishly let it go out of print since then. The range of
translated manga and anime that uses sf themes and ideas is
incredibly wide, more than anything found in American comics. As a result, the
most striking aspect of sf manga and anime is just how much intent
and narrative tone can vary from series to series.
Indeed, science fiction can be mapped
onto almost every other non-historical/non-factual genre available in the
medium. For example, some shojo manga artists use sf modes to excellent
effect: there are dramatic mysteries such as Moto Hagio’s They Were 11,
where alien races interact in a military training session gone wrong; in Keiko
Nishi’s work, a simple romantic tale can take on a slightly askew feel when it’s
revealed that the setting isn’t Earth. Outside of shojo, Hayao Miyakazi’s
Nausicaä of the Valley Wind is both an unusual manga
stylistically and an excellent science fiction tale that exemplifies Miyazaki’s
skills at adult narrative (he and his Studio Ghibli are also well-known for such
popular children’s anime as Kiki’s Delivery Service and My
Neighbor Totoro). Set in a post-apocalyptic eco-feudal world filled with
bizarre mutated monsters, the story focuses on a princess who uses both
technology and nature to become her world’s hope-bringing messiah. The story
is much denser and more demanding than the typical manga, delivering on a
variety of levels and showing why Miyazaki is held in such high regard by otaku
in Japan as well as abroad.
In contrast to this rather solemn
approach is the considerably more liberal usage of sf in the slapstick romantic
comedy that was manga legend Rumiko Takahashi’s first major hit, Urusei
Yatsura. The principal characters are Lum, a beautiful, flying,
electricity-shooting space princess who wears a tiger-skin bikini, and the
Earthman she loves, a clumsy and lecherous Japanese high school student named
Ataru, who wants to get rid of Lum so he can continue chasing anything and
everything in a skirt. In this series, science fiction, the supernatural, and
high school experience are all drawn upon as fodder for very broad—and very
effective—comedy. At one point, Lum uses a computer dating machine to confirm
that Ataru is right for her; in another story, the priestess Sakura tries to
exorcise Ataru to rid him of his horniness. Other series that fill this curious
vein of "horny loser boy falls in love with unbelievably bizarre but
beautiful girl who ends up being a lot of trouble" are Kosuke Fujishima’s
Oh My Goddess!, in which a college student calls upon a goddess
and the goddess service computer determines that the couple should stay together
forever, and Masakazu Katsura’s Video Girl Ai, in which the girl in a
video that a high school boy rents from a myserious shop somehow becomes
electronic flesh and blood linked to the well-being of his VCR. These other
series tend to feature less slapstick and more romantic tension, but also
combine mystic and science fiction elements seamlessly. If Urusei Yatsura
is good-natured burlesque (the dozens of characters who become regulars or
semi-regulars have their own individual shticks, a technique of characterization
Takahashi has carried over into her other series), Oh My Goddess! plucks
more delicately at the heartstrings while Video Girl Ai is sexier,
sleeker, and more soap operatic in the interactions among the characters. Anyone
who thinks that the high level of output that’s expected of manga
creators must produce a very bland, homogenous medium would do well to read and
compare these three series.
Then there are manga and anime
that don’t rely on science fiction per se but take an almost fetishistic
interest in modern technology as exemplified by guns, cars, and surveillance
equipment. Kosuke Fujishima and Kenichi Sonada exemplify this trend: Fujishima’s
love of motor vehicles is evident in certain stories of Oh My Goddess!,
but is much more on display in the traffic police comedy You’re Under
Arrest, where quirky cops and bizarre traffic offenders clash in souped-up
cars and cycles of all sorts. Sonada’s Gunsmith Cats—which is about
two young, female bounty hunters in Chicago—also deploys customized cars, but
also all manner of firearms and explosives. In these series, technical
specifications are often given in great detail for the benefit of the interested
reader. A different kind of fetish is involved in Hideo Yamamoto’s Voyeur,
where cutting-edge surveillance technology is used to expose the dirty little
secrets of everyday people. In the first story in the series, the hero, Ko
Higaonna, tests just how much he trusts his girlfriend Satomi when a mysterious
stranger encourages him to investigate what she does on her own time. The
technology becomes an extension of human curiosity and distrust, a tool to
expose as well as manipulate. In that metaphoric sense, this work is perhaps
more in keeping with science fiction than something like Urusei Yatsura.
If there’s any manga/anime
subgenre that is rigorous in its use of science fiction elements, it would
definitely be mecha. The focus on technology as both a metaphor and a
mediator of human experience demands a discipline that’s in keeping with
traditional hard sf. At the moment, the best known mecha creator in
America is Masamune Shirow. His Ghost in the Shell is one of the most
popular manga translations in the States, while the 1995 film adaptation
by anime auteur Mamoru Oshii ranks with Akira (1989) and Ninja
Scroll (1993) as one of the essential anime for a budding otaku.
Perhaps more importantly, Shirow has defined the sensibility of Japanese mecha
in works such as Ghost, Dominion, and Appleseed. Like the
famous pinup artist Hajime Sorayama (who is cited as an influence), Shirow uses
the female body as a means to fetishize technology; yet where Sorayama relied on
slick metallic surfaces curved over the female figure, Shirow opts for a more
aggressively cyborg effect. His women are Victoria’s Secret cybersoldiers,
posed langurously on tanks and other mecha in a manner reminiscent of
cheesecake calendars. Shirow does more than titillate, however; he also plays
with issues of identity and technology in a way that makes his work truly
cyberpunk in nature. Ghost in the Shell is the most instructive text in
this regard. In Ghost, the heroine Major Motoko Kusanagi is a cyborg
covert operative for the government of a near-future "corporate
conglomerate state called ‘Japan’." Kusanagi and her fellow operatives
in Section Nine encounter the gamut of abuses possible in such a world:
sweatshops where children are sacrificed for cheaper tech, wiped memories and
false memory implants, humanoid constructs used for a variety of pleasures and
economic expediencies, and the inevitable inter- and intra-government deceits
for the sake of mixed agendas.
Perhaps the most striking example of
tech life in Ghost are the artificial intelligence robot Fuchikomas:
acting as individuals but also possessing a hive mind, the Fuchikomas have the
potential for revolt but are nevertheless kept in check by the "human"
opposition of cyborgs. As a cyborg working for humans, Kusanagi is highly
cynical about the idea of a human essence, of the "ghost" that may or
may not inhabit her "shell." When she encounters an artificial
intelligence truly capable of growth, her sense of identity and her role in
society lose what measure of stability she had assumed they had. The work is
complex, well-written, erudite, and philosophical. The anime by Mamoru
Oshii is equally challenging, although Oshii focuses much less on the comedy and
action that Shirow uses to add depth to his characters. Instead, Oshii evokes a
dreamlike state as a means of depicting the complexities of the tech-human
interface, applying his distinctive narrative sensibility to Shirow’s
compellingly detailed universe. What unites the two creators is a fascination
for the philosophical heart of mecha, for the tensions and harmonies
implicit in a cyber-identity.
Carl Silvio’s recent article on the anime
version of Ghost in the Shell (in SFS #79, 26:1 [March 1999]:
54-72) is a highly instructive look at the tensions, contradictions, and
ultimate containments in the cyborg discourse of Oshii’s movie. It should be
pointed out, however, that Shirow offers a more progressive vision in his manga
than does Oshii in the anime. For example, Silvio makes a compelling case
for the fact that Kusanagi possesses the body of a child at the end of the film,
thus recuperating her radical cyborg possibilities into a fairly conventional
vision of reproductive normalcy. In the comic, on the other hand, Batou has
acquired a body for Kusanagi that he thought was female but which turns out to
be male in origin, a confusion (and diffusion) of gender assumptions better
suited to Donna Haraway’s notion of a cyborg identity transcending the
strictures of essentialism.
Before turning Shirow into an
existential cyberguru, though, it’s necessary to direct one’s attention to Intron
Depot and Intron Depot 2, two collections of color artwork recently
made available through Dark Horse Press. These collections presume to hold up
Shirow as an artistic genius, but the main pleasure is the mecha
cheesecake displayed on almost every page. The first collection is an enjoyable
enough compendium that covers many of the manga that have been translated
stateside, including Ghost in the Shell. The true revelation, however,
comes in the sequel. If there is a gaze that combines a fascination with
technological gadgetry and the sexualized display of the female body, then
Shirow has refined it to its very essence in this volume. On first glance, the
complications and contained resistances that Silvio traces in the film version
of Ghost in the Shell would seem absent here: the images that make up Intron
Depot appear to be pure male adolescent power fantasies, "exotically
Japanese" to American consumers, but more familiar in their ideological
project as a result. Looking through these books, one immediately notices that
Shirow uses the same serene face and statuesque body structure on most of his
female figures. There is a Shirow type, one we see develop in the first volume
of Intron Depot and which is completely codified in the second. This
definitive Shirow Woman is rendered in various hairstyles and skin tones and
settings and artistic tools in a celebration of surfaces that conflates the
gleam of skin and machine, the allure of flesh and artifice.
Much of the text Shirow writes as
accompaniment to these magnificent illustrations focuses on art techniques
(computerized and otherwise), his choice of backgrounds and motifs and textures,
and the way he creates variations on the same set of images; there is also some
charmingly disarming self-criticism. But Shirow does not apologize for his
choice of subjects, for their state of dress or undress, for their
interchangeability. Like the authors already considered in this review, Shirow
knows his audience and caters to their needs. And perhaps that is as instructive
an illustration of the functions of junk culture as we might ask for—that its
familiarity and popularity allow an imaginative space for resistance for those
who might desire it (it’s entirely possible to see his technologically
augmented females as radically empowered), but that these very same features may
also serve to reinforce conservative ideological perspectives. It’s a
double-bind that has been noted by Janice Radway in romance novels and Ernest
Mandel in detective fiction. Perhaps it’s time to consider the same
contradiction in the otaku mindset as well.
Even more than Ghost in the Shell,
Intron Depot 2 proves that Shirow is a postmodern artist—not only in the
content of his comics, but in the attitude he brings to his work, in the way he
plays upon surfaces and forces his audience to explore that terrain with no
recourse to a faux depth. Following Kusanagi’s lack of concern for the
human essence, the reader of Intron Depot 2 can best enjoy this
compendium by taking its pleasures as they appear on the page, and not searching
for a meaning held between the lines, drawn or otherwise. But while this can be
a mindless pleasure for those who wish only to amuse themselves to death, there
is also, as with Kusanagi’s eventual revelations, a potential impetus for
inquiry directed inwards and outwards. Schodt and Levi are right that manga
and anime are a reflection of the Japanese mind, but they both know that’s
only part of the story. In choosing to consume it, we Americans have the chance
to see what parts of our psyches are drawn to these media as well. Shirow’s
gaze becomes our own, he draws what we wish to see and experience. And
ultimately that gaze doesn’t originate from either of us, maybe not even from
the cultures we each inhabit—rather, that nebulous commonality derives from
the power of art, as well as from the power of the popular.
While junk culture may not be a
universal language, the attempts to sell one culture’s junk to another culture’s
audience suggest complex interactions that would benefit from closer scrutiny.
While I haven’t yet had the chance to read Satori Fujii’s recent collection Japan
Edge: The Insider’s Guide to Japanese Pop Subculture (Cadence, 1999),
which examines various aspects of Japanese sub-pop through autobiographical
essays, it would seem to be a step down the road towards an interrogation of
cross-cultural perspectives. An online excerpt from an essay on anime by
respected journalist Carl Gustav Horn, for example, examines the
Reagan-era obsessions and anxieties in the author’s psyche that permitted anime
to enter and colonize his willing imagination. Ultimately, the otaku
nation is as uniquely American as the sport of baseball is uniquely Japanese—each
has claimed another culture’s offerings as their own, and in that claiming has
both conserved and transformed the cultural import of the original material. If
there’s a reason to pay closer attention to Japanese anime and manga,
if there’s a reason to demand that closer scrutiny should accompany the
inevitable fannish fawnings, it’s because only such disciplined inquiry can
trace the complications of an increasingly globalized cultural identity, one
that we all already share.
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