Anime's Identity: Performativity and Form beyond Japan - Softcover

Suan, Stevie

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1517911788 ISBN 13: 9781517911782

Publisher: University of Minnesota Press, 2021

Synopsis

A formal approach to anime rethinks globalization and transnationality under neoliberalism

Anime has become synonymous with Japanese culture, but its global reach raises a perplexing question—what happens when anime is produced outside of Japan? Who actually makes anime, and how can this help us rethink notions of cultural production? In Anime’s Identity, Stevie Suan examines how anime’s recognizable media-form—no matter where it is produced—reflects the problematics of globalization. The result is an incisive look at not only anime but also the tensions of transnationality.

Far from valorizing the individualistic “originality” so often touted in national creative industries, anime reveals an alternate type of creativity based in repetition and variation. In exploring this alternative creativity and its accompanying aesthetics, Suan examines anime from fresh angles, including considerations of how anime operates like a brand of media, the intricacies of anime production occurring across national borders, inquiries into the selfhood involved in anime’s character acting, and analyses of various anime works that present differing modes of transnationality. 

Anime’s Identity deftly merges theories from media studies and performance studies, introducing innovative formal concepts that connect anime to questions of dislocation on a global scale, creating a transformative new lens for analyzing popular media.

About this title

About the Author

Stevie Suan is associate professor at Hosei University’s Faculty of Global and Interdisciplinary Studies. 

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Minnesota Press
• Publication date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1517911788
• ISBN 13: 9781517911782
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 382