Mechademia 2: Networks of Desire

Mechademia #2

by Frenchy Lunning

Japan's pop culture, once believed unexportable, is now hitting the shores of other nations like a tsunami. In North America, young fans consume vast amounts of manga and anime, while academics increasingly study the entire J-pop phenomenon to understand it. One community has passion while the other has discipline, and what has been lacking is a bridge between the two. Mechademia is the bridge, and with a name like that, how can one go wrong?  So why wait? Hop in your giant mobile suit and stomp down to the local real or virtual bookstore to purchase a copy right now!” —Frederik L. Schodt, author of Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics

 

Networks of Desire—the second volume in the Mechademia series, an annual forum devoted to critical and creative work on Japanese anime, manga, and the fan cultures that have coalesced around them—explores the varieties of desire that structure and influence much of contemporary anime and manga in manifestations that range from the explicitly sexual to more sublimated text and imagery. Collecting original essays by scholars, artists, and fans, Networks of Desire considers key issues at play in a Japanese society increasingly uncertain of its place in a globalized world: from idealized representations of same-sex desire in such shôjo manga (girls’s comics) as The Rose of Versailles, to fan fiction inspired by the gender-switching manga Ranma ½, to desire in otaku communities.

 

Deftly weaving together desire and discourse, Mechademia 2 illuminates the techno-carnal fantasies, animalistic consumption, political nostalgia, and existential hunger underlying the most popular and influential expressions of Japanese popular culture today.

Contributors: Brent Allison, U of Georgia; Meredith Suzanne Hahn Aquila; Hiroki Azuma; William L. Benzon; Christopher Bolton, Williams College; Martha Cornog; Patrick Drazen; Marc Hairston, U of Texas, Dallas; Mari Kotani; Shu Kuge, Penn State U; Margherita Long, U of California, Riverside; Daisuke Miyao; Hiromi Mizuno, U of Minnesota; Mariana Ortega; Timothy Perper; Eron Rauch; Trina Robbins; Brian Ruh, Indiana U; Deborah Shamoon, U of Notre Dame; Masami Toku, California State U, Chico; Keith Vincent, NYU.

Frenchy Lunning is professor of liberal arts at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and editor of Mechademia 1: Emerging Worlds of Anime and Manga (Minnesota, 2006).

Genres: Nonfiction, Manga, Japan, Academic, Sociology, Anime, Art History

304 pages, Paperback

First published December 26, 2007

Reviews

[Nabilah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Collection of academic essays on the nature and shape of desire in manga and anime. Quite compelling reads. I like it.

[Yupa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Come sempre con le raccolte di saggi (questa poi, dovrebbe essere una rivista... ma la confezione di 300 pp. e la periodicità annuale ne fanno praticamente un volume), ci sono alti e bassi.
Nel complesso, però, diversi spunti interessanti.
Notevoli e utili le traduzioni di saggisti giapponesi, tanto per spezzare l'autismo che isola le diverse "tradizioni" di critica su manga e anime nei varî paesi.
Il problema: la dominanza, in questo volume, quasi esclusiva (a volte persino ossessiva) di quella prospettiva "femminista" elaborata nelle accademie U.S.A. Nulla contro il femminismo (perlomeno, non contro certo femminismo), ma qando un approccio diventa privo di alternative, stanca comunque.

[Empanadani · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not as good as I expected. I skimmed through the end of it. It could be because I read this in short spurts once in a while, but the analysis provided by the essays was not very thought-provoking and sometimes a little bit boring.
Also, I know this is a compilation of essays, but I wished it would they would have a little bit more focused on a singular topic. It seems they were chosen only because women or sex were mentioned.