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- Volume 4, Issue 1, 2018
East Asian Journal of Popular Culture - Volume 4, Issue 1, 2018
Volume 4, Issue 1, 2018
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Toshio’s movie castle: A historical overview of Studio Ghibli’s collaboration and promotional strategies
More LessAbstractWhile so-called ‘Ghibli films’ attract global academic and popular attention because of their technical and textual genius, the current fame of the studio and commercial success of its films is in large part the product of an intricate system of promotion and advertising developed in the 1980s. At the nexus of the studio’s commercial success is Toshio Suzuki, the key producer at the studio. This article argues that the success of the studio owes much, not only to the superb quality of the films it has created, but also to its relationship with other parties involved in filmmaking, such as publishing house Tokuma shoten, TV broadcasting company NTV and film distributors Tōhō and Tōei, relationships developed by Suzuki. The links with these companies forged in the 1980s enabled Ghibli to come into existence and continue to thrive by virtue of their financial and promotional support. Besides detailing how the links were forged and their significance for Ghibli, this article will also examine how promotional strategies played an important role in making Ghibli films and the name of Hayao Miyazaki (and to a lesser extent film director Isao Takahata) widely known in Japan in the 1980s. Therefore, this article will examine the connections between Suzuki’s creative work as Studio Ghibli’s main producer, while investigating how the links he forged with outside companies led to unprecedented levels of success for his nascent studio.
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Before Ghibli was Ghibli: Analysing the historical discourses surrounding Hayao Miyazaki’s Castle in the Sky (1986)
More LessAbstractWhile Studio Ghibli may have become Japan’s most important and successful animation studio, its early significance is far more debatable in relation to the success of its films. Normally viewed from the present moment, Studio Ghibli’s brand significance is unmistakable, having become a producer of world renowned animation, and a distribution label for its own animated hit films and other high-profile animation in Japan. To challenge this perception of Ghibli’s brand significance, this article revisits the early history of Studio Ghibli in order to examine the discourses around the formation of the studio. Using Studio Ghibli’s first official film release, Tenkū no shiro Lapyuta (Castle in the Sky) (Miyazaki, 1986) as a case study, this article argues for a corrective analysis of the importance of Studio Ghibli to animator Hayao Miyazaki’s first ‘Ghibli’ film. The article demonstrates that throughout this release, there was a tension between art and industry that would become the hallmark of Ghibli’s style, but that the company itself may have had little to do with that brand’s early conception.
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Marketing anime to a global audience: A paratextual analysis of promotional materials from Spirited Away
By Laz CarterAbstractThis article will focus specifically on the marketing materials utilized in the Japanese and American markets for Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi (Spirited Away) (Miyazaki, 2001). That is to say, it takes a more in-depth look at the paratextual deployment of film posters and theatrical trailers. Building on the work of Rayna Denison, Keith Johnston and Eriko Ogihara-Schuck, this study delves deeper into the specific paratextual elements present within Spirited Away’s promotional ephemera. Focusing on two primary factors – branding and linguistics – the following campaign analysis examines the meaning behind the addition and elision of certain signifiers. By comparing the different versions of both posters and trailers, this article highlights areas of cultural difference, postulating that the anglophonic paratexts have undergone a process of Disneyfication. Finally, the author extrapolates the key selling points that are accentuated for both the domestic and global markets of Studio Ghibli films and then muses on the resulting hierarchy of brand networks that appear to have formed.
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Can faithfulness to the original text betray the target public? The adaptations of Mononokehime (Princess Mononoke) in Italy
More LessAbstractOver the past few years audio-visual translation in ‘dubbing countries’ has been experiencing a significant shift from the traditional domesticating approach to a foreignizing approach that focuses more on faithfulness towards the source text rather than to the target readership. The Italian rendition of anime is a case in point: while appreciated by an increasing number of viewers, both serial and stand-alone anime, have either suffered a limited distribution or a highly homogenizing adaptation, in many cases through the employment of English as vehicular language. The first Italian dubbed version of the popular Studio Ghibli masterpiece Mononokehime (Princess Mononoke) (Miyazaki, 1996) is a clear example of the latter. The version distributed by Buena Vista International in 2000 as Princess Mononoke was adapted from the North American version, which included radical modifications aimed at providing a context with which the spectators would be more familiar. A second version, distributed by Lucky Red in 2014 under the title Principessa Mononoke, was re-adapted from the original Japanese script in order to improve fidelity to the original and was re-dubbed with a new voice cast. However, numerous viewers have criticized the unintelligibility of most of the dialogue. This article analyses the differences between the two versions and investigates whether the visibility of the translator can be seen as an obstacle for the understanding and enjoyment of films for the target viewership.
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The ‘Totoro Meme’ and the politics of transfandom pleasure
More LessAbstractThis article is an exploration of the ‘Totoro meme’ as a site of affective, transfandom pleasure. In the Totoro meme, Japanese and non-Japanese fans alike appropriate the now-iconic image of Satsuki, Mei and an umbrella-toting Totoro at a bus stop from Hayao Miyazaki’s 1988 film, Tonari no Totoro (My Neighbor Totoro), to their own fannish ends, creating fan art that inserts favourite characters from other media into the scene in ways that often have a doubled semiotic resonance. I argue that this meme is characteristic not of the global appropriation of a broad ‘Japanese anime style’, per se, but a specific, affectively appealing ‘Ghibli style’, one that is fully part of non-Japanese fans’ own popular cultural repertoires. In its cross-border merging of globally circulating Studio Ghibli aesthetics with other fan-favourite media, I contend that the Totoro meme and its associated fanworks are in fact wholly congruent with, and representative of, what Matt Hills has termed ‘trans-fandom’ (2015), contemporary practices of ‘navigating across and combining and fusing fandoms’ (Hills 2015: 159). I conclude with a consideration of the implications of what might be termed ‘corporate transfandom’ in the context of transfannish citations of Kaze no tani no Naushika (Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind) (Miyazaki, 1984) in Star Wars: The Force Awakens (Abrams, 2015).
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Bridge builders, world makers: Transcultural Studio Ghibli fan crafting
More LessAbstractWhilst global hits such as Pokémon utilized what Marc Steinberg calls anime’s media mix, implementing a multiple-platform narrative world in an attempt to synergize/converge a franchise, what are we to do when one finds a dearth of official merchandise available to transnational audiences? What are the reasons or politics for such a decision that seems to run counter to a long sociocultural history of such media ecology? Equally as important, what do fans do when their championed fan objects offer a relatively restricted media palette? This article looks at how Studio Ghibli has, to a degree, negotiated and/or rejected the traditional ‘anime media mix’. This is not to say that Ghibli is void of media mixing; rather, via online communities, one has seen a growing presence of fan-crafts whereby audiences are making their own Ghibli objects. In doing so, these transcultural fan-made Ghibli objects extend fan ideologies linked to the studio, expanding on what Susan Napier terms ‘MiyazakiWorld’ (2006: 49, 2007: 193). Much like Miyazaki’s philosophy, this is not entirely rejecting industry, but offering creative alternatives. The fan-as-producer of Ghibli objects is doing so through convivial construction. Thus, this article offers new insights into global audience practices and affective meaning-making around Ghibli that goes beyond the films themselves.
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Webtoons to promote critical thinking in neo-liberal South Korea: A thematic analysis of Awl social justice themes
By Jinhee ChoiAbstractThis article explores the use of South Korean webtoons, Songkot (meaning Awl), for informal adult learning through visual narratives and audience comments in the social, historic and academic context. Drawing on Newman’s critical thinking and Giroux’s critical public pedagogy, the study explicates how the Awl creates a discursive space for an unpublicized theme, unionization, through its narrative structures and audience discussion. The findings imply that Awl’s major themes – critical thinking, empathy and social action – create informal adult learning opportunities for the public by increasing their conscious awareness of institutionalized oppressions. Awl also has the potential to promote critical thinking about commonly unvoiced issues of social justice in neo-liberal South Korea.
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Reviews
Authors: Yu-Han Lin, Jaqueline Berndt and Mary ReiselAbstractIdentity Politics and Popular Culture in Taiwan: A Sajiao Generation, HSIN-I Sydney Yueh (2016) 1st ed., Lexington Books, 222 pp., ISBN: 9781498510325, Hardback, $85.00 (£54.95); ISBN: 9781498510332, eBook, $80.50 (£54.95)
Rewriting History in Manga: Stories for the Nation, Nissim Otmazgin and Rebecca Suter (EDS) (2016) 1st ed., New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 208 pp., ISBN: 9781137554789, h/bk, $99.99; ISBN: 9781137551436, electronic, $79.99
Idols and Celebrity in Japanese Media Culture, Patrick W. Galbraith and Jason Karlin (EDS) (2012) 1st ed., New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 239 pp., ISBN: 9780230298309, h/bk, $100,00; ISBN: 9781349334452, p/bk, $95,00; Electronic ISBN: 9781137283788, $79,99
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