Anime’s Identity

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Anime’s Identity
Performativity and Form
beyond Japan

Stevie Suan

University of Minnesota Press

Minneapolis
London
The University of Minnesota Press gratefully acknowledges the financial
assistance provided for the publication of this book by Hosei University.

Portions of chapter 2 are adapted from “Consuming Production: Anime’s

Layers of Transnationality and Dispersal of Agency as Seen in Shirobako
and Sakuga-­Fan Practices,” Arts, special issue “Japanese Media Cultures
in Japan and Abroad: Transnational Consumption of Manga, Anime, and
Video Games,” 7, no. 3 (2018): 1–­19. Portions of chapter 4 are adapted from
“Anime’s Performativity: Diversity through Conventionality in a Global Media-­
Form,” Animation: An Interdisciplinary Journal 12 (2017): 62–­79. Portions of
chapter 5 are adapted from “Repeating Anime’s Creativity across Asia,” Trans-­
Asia as Method: Theory and Practices, ed. Jeroen de Kloet, Yiu Fai Chow,
and Gladys Pak Lei Chong (London and New York: Rowman & Littlefield
Publishers, 2019), 141–­60. Portions of chapter 6 are adapted from “Anime no
‘kōisha’: animēshon ni okeru taigenteki/shūjiteki pafōmansu ni yoru ‘jiko’ ”
(Anime’s Actors: Constituting ‘Self-­Hood’ through Embodied and Figurative
Performance in Animation) Animēshon Kenkyū 19, no. 1 (2017): 3–­15; the
article was originally published in Japanese, with translation by author.
Portions of chapter 8 are adapted from “Anime’s Spatiality: Media-­Form,
Dislocation, and Globalization,” Mechademia: Second Arc (Materialities
across Asia) 12, no. 2 (Fall 2020): 24–­44.

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mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written
permission of the publisher.

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For Miku
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 Contents

Introduction: Anime’s Performance of Identity 1

1 Anime’s Local–­Global Tensions 61
2 Anime’s Dispersed Production 87
3 Anime’s Media Heterotopia 117
4 Anime’s Citationality 151
5 Anime’s Creativity 179
6 Anime’s Actors 203
7 Anime’s (Anti)Individualism 239
8 Anime’s Dislocation 269
Conclusion: Anime’s World 307

Acknowledgments 325
Notes 329
Index 353
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 Introduction
Anime’s Performance of Identity

Anime’s Identity
To commemorate the one hundredth year of animation in Japan, the
Association of Japanese Animations (AJA) put together a short, retro­
spective video titled Anime Next 100—­Special Movie made publicly
available online.1 Presented with permission from the producers of
the works shown, the fifteen-­minute video features 122 titles, cover-
ing a range of time periods, studios, genres, and materials, from the
1917 short Hanawa Hekonai Meitō no Maki to the 2017 TV production
of Osomatsu-­san. The selections include art animation such as Kuri
Yōji’s Human Zoo (1962), Kawamoto Kihachirō’s puppet animation
Oni (1972), and the claymation piece Jōji Namahake (1992), along with
many cel (celluloid) animated films like Akira (1988) and TV series such
as action anime Cowboy Bebop (1998) and idol anime The Idol Master
(2014). In addition to these, the video contains clips from a number
of successful franchises, such as Tetsuwan Atomu (1963), Mobile Suit
Gundam (1979), Dragon Ball (1986), and Puella Magi Madoka Magica
(2013). Interestingly, the video also includes clips from Tekkonkinkreet
(2006), directed by Michael Arias, as well as a clip from Naruto Ship-
pūden (2016) animated by Chinese animator Chengxi Huang, with
both creators working in Japan. However, despite the focus on anima-
tion produced in Japan, other important productions are conspicuously
absent, such as Momotarō: Umi no Shinpei (1945), the longest running
animation Sazae-­san (1969–­present), the impactful Space Battleship
Yamato (1974), the hit Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995), or any works
by the famous Studio Ghibli. Regardless of these glaring omissions
(which may have been due to problems with permissions), through the
selection of the included clips, the video effectually defines the term

9 1 0
2 Introduction

anime as spanning different mediums and including the various eth-

nicities of the producers, constituting a definition that rests on the ani­
mated product’s relation with Japan: anime is any type of animation
from Japan.
However, this video’s attribution of a national element to the term
“anime” differs from the generally accepted definition of anime in
Japanese, which has a much broader semantic range, often used as
“commercial animation in general”—­that is, animation not necessar-
ily produced in Japan. The domestic conception of anime as Japanese
national culture is a relatively recent development related to the wide-
spread push for global distribution and its accompanying marketing of
anime through nation-­branding campaigns like “Cool Japan.” Through
nation branding, anime is locally and globally promoted as a Japanese
pop-­culture product that is associated with other media (manga, light
novels, figurines, games) and activities (derivative works, fan conven-
tions, cosplaying, etc.). This produces a concept of anime as a local prod-
uct, and thus anime becomes identified as Japanese popular animation.
But considering anime to be Japanese popular animation also runs
into problems, as perhaps the most popular of Japanese animations
would be Sazae-­san, which even within Japan would be considered a
different type of animation than, say, late-­night (shinya) TV anime (la-
beled for the time slots they are broadcast on) like The Idol Master,
or the art animations of Kuri and puppet animations of Kawamoto.
Thus, in its selection of mainly TV anime, the Anime Next 100 video
negotiates a definition between anime as “animation in general” by in-
cluding many different types of animation (claymation, art animation,
TV anime) and the Cool Japan definition of anime as “Japanese pop-­
culture product.”
Anime’s connection to a national type of animation is more evi-
dent in the English usage of the word “anime,” often considered to be
a transliteration of the Japanese word anime but referring to “Japanese
animation.” Part of the reason why the definition of anime is so open
to interpretation outside of Japan is that it has so often been defined
in relation to Japan. Any type of animation can potentially fit into
the open label of “anime” so long as it is Japanese animation. How-
ever, this definition poses difficulties, as many animations from Japan
would most likely not qualify as anime in English. In fact, in the article
reporting on the release of the Anime Next 100 video on the popu-
 Introduction 3

lar English-­language anime news site Anime News Network, the post
ends by inviting readers to comment on the forums, asking, among
other questions, “were you surprised by the inclusion of stop-­motion
animation throughout the video?”2 Indeed, the anime productions that
support the global industry and are promoted by Cool Japan may be
commonly described as late-­night TV anime in Japan and are globally
considered distinct products from other Japanese commercial or art
animations. It is largely these late-­night TV anime productions that are
referred to by the English word “anime” at present.
Thus, even in defining the word in either English or Japanese, mul-
tiple facets of an identity for anime become evident, moving beyond a
single conception of anime as Japanese animation and forcing one to
come into contact with issues that move away from Japan and into the
global. Indeed, anime has maintained global distribution for most of
its history, and with the rise of the internet, anime is easily accessible
all over the world. Even in terms of production, anime is globalized.
So-­called Japanese anime have been produced through a transnational
production system for decades, with Tokyo as the major node and affili­
ated production studios spread throughout Asia. In recent years, there
has been an increase in the production of anime outside of Japan, some
of which are dubbed in Japanese and broadcast within Japan, as well as
high-­level foreign staff working in the industry within Japan. The more
global particularities of anime production, distribution, and consump-
tion complicate the narratives of nation branding, which attempt to
claim anime as a national cultural product and, with it, anime’s identity.
Despite these global dimensions, anime has a history of research
that relates it directly to Japan, specifically research that reads Japan
through anime, further entrenching anime’s identity as Japanese. Be-
cause of the many discourses in and out of academia that link anime
to Japan, anime becomes locally bound: anime’s identity is commonly
thought to be Japanese. Subsequently, anime is about Japan; one exam-
ines anime to learn about Japan, even if indirectly. This meshes well
with the traditional area studies methodology of using a cultural object
to talk about the society of an area in question. Jaqueline Berndt notes
this tendency in Japan studies research in an analysis of how anime
has been explored in academia, where there is a focus on the social
context of anime to explore societal issues in Japan. Focusing on how
anime is mined for sociological readings of Japan, Berndt notes that the
4 Introduction

idea of anime representing Japanese society is taken for granted.3 Here

anime acts as the conduit through which something is conveyed, an
invisible “in-­between” through which one views Japan. In general, the
tendency has been to examine how a particular anime reflects Japanese
society, study Japanese otaku as the de facto consumers of anime, or
explore how anime is part of nation-­branding campaigns. Such read-
ings are not unwarranted or unfounded. It is possible to sustain a read-
ing focused on Japan and Japanese society when analyzing anime, and
one can produce a history of anime as Japanese. In many ways, this is
important work, and it is the most practical approach to anime due to
its historical connection to Japan.
However, approaches to anime should not be limited to this per-
spective, nor should this preclude approaches from other directions.
This is not to suggest that anime should not be read as addressing is-
sues within Japan (which themselves may also be global issues), but
rather that “reading anime for Japan” is not the only, final, or most valid
reading of anime. Indeed, as noted by Christopher Bolton—­whose own
work focuses on contextualizing anime in Japanese political history—­
such a grounding in Japan is but one reading of anime among many
other possible interpretations.4 Furthermore, the point is not to say that
anime is not Japanese or simply that anime is a global product. Rather, I
want to examine anime’s identity as it relates to Japan instead of taking
that relationship as a concrete given. This point of departure can open
up a space for exploring the transnationality and globality of anime
without denying its relationship to Japan—­that is, map out a trans­
national dynamic that is still related to a certain geography while oper-
ating beyond national boundaries. In this moment of globalization, it is
increasingly difficult to maintain an exclusive preoccupation with the
national when faced with the actualities of transnational production,
distribution, and consumption. In such a context, it is imperative to
experiment with alternative approaches, more global positions, even
at the risk of treading water or entering into murkier depths. One may
ask if there are alternative approaches that account for anime’s more
global dimensions while keeping in mind Japan’s centrality for anime.
With that in mind, it is worthwhile to consider another aspect of
anime’s identity: the media products themselves. The abovementioned
late-­night TV anime, a grouping that overlaps in some of the English
and Japanese usages of the word, tend to maintain an aesthetic that
 Introduction 5

differentiates them from other animations. Because anime is a com-

mercial medium, as a product it must clearly resemble other anime
to be sold as that category of media, both inside and outside of Japan.
What maintains this recognizability and interrelation in the products
themselves is a reliance on a shared set of conventions, elements that
are consistently repeated in a variety of anime. For instance, anime
maintains a relatively consistent manner of character design, regular
utilization of conventionalized facial and bodily expressions that are
not always self-­evident (e.g., eyes turning to arches for happiness), a
particular rhythm of motion and stillness in its animation, and pat-
terns of narratives, among many other conventions.
The specificity these conventions produce in anime becomes espe-
cially clear when compared to other globally popular animation, like
that of Disney, that has its own recognizable brand. In particular, the
animation techniques used in anime are distinctive, developed from a
lineage of “jerky,” limited animation as opposed to the lush, full ani­
mation that Disney is famous for.5 Indeed, as Rayna Denison points
out, it is anime’s difference from other types of animation that makes
it stand out.6 The conventions that make anime distinct do not appear
naturally—­they have their own histories that must be considered along
with the processes that sustain them. In addition, the consistent repe­
tition of these conventions means that there is some formal limit to
anime or, rather, some sort of constraint to producing, and then sell-
ing, anime. In this sense, anime may be seen as having to maintain a
recognizable form based on the repeated employment of conventions.
Anime’s identity, then, also has a formal component.
Despite the importance of these conventions, academic literature
often fails to pay attention to anime’s form or how anime relate to one
another beyond a history of influences (often explicitly tying anime’s
history to the history of animation in Japan). Only in recent years
has there been an exploration of anime from a different disciplinary
perspective, mainly in the influential works of Thomas Lamarre and
Marc Steinberg, who both focus on Japan but develop media studies–­
oriented theories by examining the dynamics of the medium of ani-
mation as employed in anime. With these notable exceptions, there is
a definitive resistance to engaging with form in anime, or a perceived
difficulty in what to do with formalism.
Approaches to form have often been considered to be too static,
6 Introduction

overly concerned with formal minutiae at the expense of the social

elements of media. But a concept of anime form allows one to move
beyond simple essentialism (“anime is Japanese”) to see anime more
constructively in its global context, freeing one to (re)examine anime’s
history and production from a point of departure other than the nation.
This effort to go beyond national frameworks resonates with Mitsuhiro
Yoshimoto’s critical examination of national cinema studies, where he
exposes the interrelated division of Japanese film studies into historical
and cultural analysis by area studies experts on the one hand and film
theory’s formal analysis by cinema experts on the other to reach beyond
the image of a world order projected via a self/other dichotomy.7 In the
case of anime, I would suggest that it is a focus on form (informed by
approaches from media studies, area studies, and performance studies)
that can help provide a point of departure for exploring anime beyond
Japan, (re)examining anime’s relation to the nation, and in the process
providing a sketch of something more transnational, where internal
and external are intricately mixed in varying ways.
The usual apprehensions to formalism—­its rigidity of definitions, its
selective exclusions—­become a somewhat liberating point of view for
anime when conceptualized in a global context: if anime is a form of
animation, then it is no longer isolated to Japan; there is potential for
it to be released from national boundaries and allowed to roam. The
caveat, then, is that anime becomes defined by its form and the rigidity
that this implies. The converse is also true: anime as Japanese anima-
tion allows a formal openness—­any animation from Japan, regardless
of style, would be, by definition, anime. Despite these perceived road-
blocks, there may be a way to move effectively through these two prob-
lems of definition to open up a space for anime to be freed of national
exclusivity and still open to some sense of change.
As will be detailed below, rigidity of form is readily apparent in
anime, but this inflexibility is actually open to potential change and
creative in its adherence to formal boundaries. In a sense, anime’s
struggle between formal and national boundaries mirrors the tensions
of the contemporary moment of globalization, a contending with how
to engage with the (inter)national system that is institutionally and
conceptually lodged into our frameworks of thought and life. Anime
provides fertile ground to explore a different understanding of the
global that better reflects the actualities of the flows of products, poli-
 Introduction 7

tics, people, media, and technology. The problem of defining anime

itself already puts one into contact with globalization, grappling over
issues that connect to national boundaries (anime as Japanese anima-
tion) and form (anime as a type of animation) both inside and outside
of Japan. This study is an attempt to provide an alternative perspective
on anime, engaging with the transnationality of its production (and to
a lesser extent distribution and consumption) as well as its formal qual-
ities. This is not an effort to pin down some final definition of anime but
rather to work through and with these problematics of anime’s identity.
With this in mind, what follows is the groundwork—­a setting of the
stage, so to speak—­to explore those dynamics.

Macross’s Identity
Before I begin, I would like to provide a concrete example to explore
these issues by examining one of the many long-­running franchises of
anime. Among such franchises is the Macross series (1982–­present),
which has included several works over the past few decades. The fol-
lowing is a brief description of the history and details of the major it-
erations of the franchise and how it might be utilized to explore some
of the complex dynamics regarding anime’s identity that I will be ex-
amining in this book. In other words, this brief look at Macross will set
the groundwork for the inquiries that will be conducted in the coming
chapters, providing a point of departure to develop another framework
to think through anime’s identity: Macross’s identity problematic as a
microcosm of anime’s own identity problematics.
The first iteration of Macross began with the TV series The Super
Dimension Fortress Macross (1982–­83) and was followed by the film
retelling, Macross: Do You Remember Love? (1984). Both were made
during the “anime boom” period of the early 1980s when there was a
sharp increase in the number of anime produced. The story concept
itself came out of Artland and Studio Nue, and production was done
by Tatsunoko Productions along with Big West, Artland, and Star Pro.
Featuring heavy involvement by famed anime creator, producer, and
mecha designer Kawamori Shōji and stunning animation by animator
Itano Ichirō in many of the productions, the Macross franchise has long
been popular inside and outside of Japan.
Let me begin with an overview of the general story from the first
8 Introduction

Macross and how it relates to later series. In the first Macross produc-
tions, the narrative focuses on the young fighter pilot Ichijyō Hikaru and
the love triangle between him, his superior officer Hayase Misa, and the
pop idol Lynn Minmay. This occurs during an invasion of earth from
the Zentradi aliens who suspect that the humans are their creators, the
Protoculture. Utilizing the technology from an alien spacecraft named
the Super Dimension Fortress (SDF-­1) Macross, the military organiza-
tion U.N. Spacy defends earth against the Zentradi attacks that occur
on earth and in space. A central part of the franchise’s appeal, these
battles are featured at regular intervals throughout the series, involving
dynamic, fast-­paced action sequences of the human-­piloted Valkyrie—­­a
rapidly transforming mecha aircraft—­fighting through melee attacks
or massive missile barrages against the giant-­sized Zentradi and their
mecha. As the Zentradi try to understand the humans, they become
fascinated with them and their culture, in particular becoming deeply
affected by Minmay’s songs. Ultimately, it is learned that humans and
Zentradi can coexist (and fall in love), but the Zentradi are divided on
whether living with humans counts as coexistence with them or con-
tamination by them, and a large-­scale battle takes place. The humans
are eventually victorious, later integrating friendly Zentradi into life on
earth. After much emotional drama, Hikaru decides to be with Misa,
and they leave on a colonization mission beyond earth. In the film ver-
sion, the love triangle drama culminates in a famous final scene involv-
ing a massive space combat sequence where Hikaru, despite choosing
Misa, asks a heartbroken Minmay to sing. Her music is projected out
into space to pacify the enemy Zentradi, producing a visual and aural
spectacle that concludes the war and the film’s narrative.
The popularity of the original series and film, the music, and the
Valkyrie models and toys from the franchise sparked many iterations in
the 1990s. Super Dimensional Fortress Macross II: Lovers Again (OVA:
1992) takes place eighty years after the original series, when another
giant-­sized alien race called the Marduk attacks. The use of pop idol
songs to defeat the enemy invaders is still employed by U.N. Spacy,
but the Marduk also use their own female singers who invigorate their
military. Ace fighter pilot Silvie Gena helps the reporter Hibiki Kanzaki
and Ishtar, a rescued Marduk singer, to end the war; their interaction
results in a love triangle and many space battles involving Valkyrie and
Marduk ships. Macross Plus (OVA: 1994–­95, film: 1995) takes place
 Introduction 9

thirty years after the first series and focuses on human pilot Isamu Alva
Dyson and half-­Zentradi pilot Guld Goa Bowman, old friends who now
hate one another, each on the opposing sides of the competition for the
U.N. Spacy prototype of a new Valkyrie. Their rivalry gets more compli-
cated when another mutual friend and romantic interest, Myung Fang
Lone, now the producer of the popular AI entertainer Sharon Apple,
appears on the same planet. Eventually, Sharon Apple captures Myung
and goes to earth, taking over the SDF-­1 Macross and the surround-
ing city. Guld and Isamu rush to earth to save Myung and release the
world from the hypnotizing voice of Sharon Apple. Occurring thirty-­
five years after the first series, Macross 7 (TV series: 1994–­95, film: 1995,
OVA: 1995, 1997–­98) largely takes place on a colonizing mission in deep
space, where the fleet and its flagship, the Macross 7, is attacked by an-
other group of aliens called Protodevelin. The majority of the narrative
focuses on the rock band called Fire Bomber, the members of which are
Basara Nekki, Mylene Flare Jenius, Veffidas Feaze, and Ray Lovelock,
who are given specially modified Valkyries by U.N. Spacy to battle the
Protodevelin with their music. The series ends with large-­scale space
battles involving music, now customary by this iteration of Macross,
and the romantic entanglement between Basara, Mylene, and ace pilot
Gamlin Kizaki unresolved.
As anime entered another boom period in the late ­1990s to early
­2000s, Macross Zero (OVA: 2002–­4) was produced, a prequel that
features events occurring one year before the first series, when the
prototype for the Valkyrie was just completed. Anti-­U.N. forces with
their own Valkyrie-­like ships attempt to take alien technology on an
island in the South Pacific. U.N. pilot Shynn Kudo discovers that music
is the key to this alien technology via a romantic entanglement with
the priestess of the Mayan island, Sara Nome, and her younger sister,
Mao Nome, important members of the indigenous tribe that becomes
violently forced into the U.N. and Anti-­U.N. conflict. Macross Frontier
(TV series: 2008, films: 2009, 2011) followed a few years later, this series
taking place around ten years after the events of Macross 7 and focus-
ing on the colonial fleet, beginning when the Macross Frontier ship
is suddenly attacked by aliens called Vajra. The series focuses on the
love triangle between ex–­Kabuki actor turned fighter pilot Alto Sao-
tome, the famous pop idol Sheryl Nome, and the part Zentradi up-­and-­
coming idol Ranka Lee as they try to figure out how to calm the Vajra
10 Introduction

attacks through their music. The latest iteration, Macross Delta (TV
series: 2016), is set eight years after Macross Frontier and takes place
in a remote part of the galaxy called the Brisingr Globular Cluster.
The mysterious Var Syndrome—­which turns people berserk—­has been
wreaking havoc, but it can effectively be calmed by the songs of the idol
group Walküre. The narrative focuses on the newcomers to Walküre
and their military assistance unit, Delta Flight: talented singer Freyja
Wion and ace Valkyrie pilot Hayate Immelman. They form a love trian-
gle with experienced pilot Mirage Farina Jenius as they all work to end
an interplanetary conflict with the Aerial Knights of the Windermere
Kingdom.
Given the breadth and variety of Macross works produced, and the
extended time span across which they were made, from an area studies
(specifically Japan studies) perspective, the initial inclination would be
to view these works as depicting different changes in Japanese society.
With the first series produced during the height of Japan’s Bubble Pe-
riod and the follow-­ups made after the bubble burst, throughout Japan’s
“lost decade” and into the 2000s during the widespread acknowledg-
ment of anime’s global spread, this franchise spans an eventful length
of time in contemporary Japanese history. The content of each produc-
tion could be used to examine different elements that reflect Japanese
society at their respective times and chart the shifts occurring. For ex-
ample, one may want to examine the different gender roles employed,
such as the ace female pilots featured in Macross, Macross II, and Delta
or the once onnagata (female impersonator) Kabuki actor Alto and the
construction of his masculinity in Frontier, comparing these charac-
ters to those in other series and connecting them to trends at the time
of production. Or, in a different vein, one may want to examine the
approaches to multiculturalism featured in the narratives. Macross
anime consistently deal with alien invaders, have characters that face
discrimi­nation for their alien heritage, and feature characters who are
visibly not Japanese, as well as those who are multiracial. One could
examine how characters’ depictions in these works reflect changes in
regard to multiculturalism in Japanese society.
From a different angle, one may also want to trace many of the
iconic images that appear in the franchise to their connection with
Japan. Indeed, one of the central parts of the franchise are the trans-
forming robot aircrafts, mecha called Valkyrie. Giant robots, in par-
 Introduction 11

ticular those that transform, have long been connected with Japan,
especially its so-­called popular culture, and how this robot connects
to that iconography may be a path for exploration. Or one could attend
to the evolution of pop idols, another prominent feature in Macross,
examining how they have evolved over time in the popular imagination
of Japan, specifically in relation to anime and otaku culture. Character
design may also be important to consider, as these characters famously
feature a distinctive version of the highly recognizable anime eyes—­
large eyes filled with gleaming reflections of light, often glimmering
to express overflowing emotion. This type of character expression has
become synonymous with anime and, recently, directly associated with
Japanese culture in general.
However, even in these approaches to the iconography, a global di-
mension looms in the background as these images represent Japan to
the world. Furthermore, Macross also has another global element not
yet delineated here. The original Macross series was transformed into
the successful Robotech: The Macross Saga (TV series: 1985) released in
the United States and then distributed elsewhere. Likewise, Macross II
was sold on VHS in 1992 and 1993 in the United States shortly after
its release in Japan, implying that there was an acknowledged demand
abroad. Additionally, the problems of global distribution are also ap-
parent, as court cases in Japan and the United States over the rights
of different Macross series, as well as portions of the franchise (such
as character designs), were caught in a complex series of lawsuits and
countersuits between Tatsunoko Production, Studio Nue, and Big
West in Japan and the American company Harmony Gold. The rights
of different parts of the franchise have moved between companies de-
pending on the rulings, and international distribution claims were an
important part of this dispute, with the nation of the ruling sometimes
taken as effectively void outside of that country.8
There are also global elements involved in the production of the
Macross franchise. In fact, each Macross series had some of its ani-
mation made outside of Japan. The original series, though often seen
as an impactful anime export from Japan, involved the South Korean
company Star Pro in its production. In Macross II, some of the ani-
mation was done in South Korea at the studios Young Woo Pro (key
animation), Hana Pro, and Hanyoung Animation (in-­between anima-
tion as well as painting). The most recent series, Macross Delta, has
12 Introduction

production credited to Studio Nue and Satelight, with mechanical de-

sign by Kawamori and Stanislas Brunet and art design by Thomas Ro-
main and Vincent Nghiem; in-­between animation credits also include
the Toei Animation Philippines studio (TAP) and Xuyang Animation
in the People’s Republic of China.
With this in mind, it may be beneficial to shift attention to other ele-
ments revealed in an overarching examination of the Macross franchise
that can point us toward different directions for inquiry. As may have
already been apparent from the brief descriptions of the narratives of
each iteration, several patterns arise, yet each iteration remains specific,
part of the larger franchise. In Macross, each iteration needs to be dis-
tinctive enough to differentiate itself from the plethora of other anime,
maintaining enough similarities to other entries in the series to be con-
sidered part of the franchise while also diverging enough to appear fresh
and not as a redundant or bland repetition. While the setting of Macross
continually evolves with each iteration of the series, expanding the con-
nection to Protoculture or the U.N. Spacy organization and its technol-
ogy, some elements of the series are continually employed. For Macross,
every iteration is set in the same space-­faring universe, with particular
robot designs that battle in a certain manner (e.g., rapid transforma-
tions, jerky aerial movements, and missile barrages), along with sing-
ers (usually female) that possess special powers (often with peace/war
provoking capabilities) who are involved in love triangles between other
central characters (usually a male character choosing between a mature,
profession-­focused woman and a younger, “cute” idol). Each iteration of
Macross plays with these components, a formula of sorts that repeats the
same set of patterns and must be performed for a series to be considered
a Macross series, each iteration differentiating itself not only from other
science-­fiction anime, but also from other Macross productions through
different executions of the formula.
While generally maintaining their famous formula (or variations on
a set of conventions) of love triangles, idols, and transforming mecha,
Macross has shifted over time, adapting and updating character de-
signs and utilizing different technologies for animation as the industry
changed. For example, as distinct from the soft lighting and large orbs
of reflections of light in the eyes of the characters in the first Macross by
Mikimoto Haruhiko (Figure I.1a), Macross Plus has a distinctive char-
acter design style by Yamaguchi Masayuki with more angular faces
 Introduction 13

and thicker hair strands (Figure I.1b); Macross Frontier features elegant,
elongated limbs reminiscent of shōjo and bishōnen characters, designed
by Ebata Risa and Takahashi Yūichi (Figure I.1c); and following the pop-
ularity of idol group anime, the most recent iteration, Macross Delta,
features designs by Mita Chisato for the idol group Walküre, with
brighter costume colors and distinctive hairstyles (Figure I.1d). Fur-
thermore, the Valkyrie models change each iteration but share simi­
lar design concepts, always transforming in the same rapid manner
between fighter mode (as an aircraft), battroid mode (as a humanoid
robot), and GERWALK mode (as an aircraft with arms and legs). In
addition, the dynamic aerial battle sequences of these Valkyrie that
made Macross so famous are no longer animated in cel animation but
rather produced by computer-­generated (CG) animation. Despite these
differences in character design style and animation technology used,
later iterations of Macross invite association with each prior instance,
repeating elements that recall earlier productions.
For instance, typically, Macross anime conclude their narrative
with a spectacle-­oriented battle sequence involving Valkyrie, beam
cannons, and music performed by idols used to overtake the enemy.
Often the outcome of the final battle will resolve a love triangle, with
one of the characters confessing love for another directly before, after,
or during the battle. This pattern is often repeated, but there are dif-
ferences in execution. For example, the second Macross Frontier film
ends with an extended space battle with direct references to the ending
of Do You Remember Love? in the imagery: the idols’ dancing image is
shown enlarged over the battlefield, a musical performance is staged
on a ship explicitly resembling the SDF-­1, and some of the gestures
of the idol Ranka in the early sequences of the battle mirror those of
Minmay. But instead of the Zentradi, it is the Vajra they attack, and
rather than one singer, there are two idols, Ranka and Sheryl, sing-
ing together. The male protagonist finally reaches the last boss among
the massive explosions around him, declining the affections of Ranka
and almost confessing his affections for Sheryl before he is teleported
to another part of the galaxy by the Vajra, concluding the conflict. In
one sequence, just like one in Do You Remember Love?, a fighter pilot
breaks through enemy lines into the largest alien ship and destroys
the leadership, effectively winning the war in a few short and explo-
sive moments—­but this time it is not the protagonist (Alto) but a side
a

b
 c

Figure I.1. Characters’ eyes have large bubbles of light reflections in

Super Dimension Fortress Macross (a); Macross Plus (b) features angular
­character designs; Macross Frontier (c) has designs reminiscent of s­ hōjo
and bishōnen works; Macross Delta (d) features costumes similar to
recent idol anime.
16 Introduction

character (Brera). These differences create specificity, even as they refer

back to earlier patterns in their imagery (such as a projection of the
idols’ movements onto the battle) or in the types of battle sequences
shown (such as bursting into the center of the enemy and killing the
leader), each clearly recalling prior examples.
Another example of repetitions with variation, this time of narrative
elements, is the love triangles that are so prevalent in Macross anime.
The question of their resolution is often one of the crucial plotlines
of the series. For instance, in the first Macross (both versions), the
male protagonist chooses the profession-­focused female character, a
pattern repeated in Macross Zero and Frontier. Yet this pattern shifts
in the next series, Macross Delta, where the male protagonist chooses
the “cute,” younger female character (who, incidentally, is also focused
on her profession). But traditional love triangles are not present in all
Macross series, as Macross 7 has Basara largely uninterested in Mylene,
and their romantic interests are never resolved. Furthermore, it is not
always a female-­male-­female love triangle, as Macross Plus has a male-­
female-­male triangle, and the romantic conflict is solved with the death
of one male character. There are definitive patterns enacted in many
Macross series, but the tendency is to maintain a sense of repetition
while introducing a variation or twist that makes each iteration dis-
tinct, playing with the pattern itself.
I have opened with this example of Macross because the franchise is
emblematic, on a miniature scale, of many of the issues that come into
the foreground when considering anime in general: how to keep strong
associations with Japan while maintaining global prevalence; utiliza-
tion of a transnational production system that engages with different
materials, people, and technologies across national borders; the iconic
visual elements and diversity of styles; and certain types of narratives
and animation, all regularly repeated to produce a recognizable media
product that retains specific elements while keeping each iteration of
the franchise distinct. Somehow these anime maintain a relation to
one another, inviting regular associations despite drastic differences
in tone, character design, narrative content, and even production stu-
dios. Expanding the scale, many of the same issues at play here can be
seen in anime products in general, which create diversity while striving
to maintain a specific recognizability within a certain range. In other
words, anime products, as a particular type of media, operate by work-
 Introduction 17

ing through the problematics of an anime identity in each iteration.

What is needed, then, is a framework to approach this dynamic in a
way that can account for all the issues mentioned above.

The Anime-­esque
As touched on above, one of the many problems of classical notions of for-
malism (and genre theory) is what may be called the “selection problem.”9
When producing any theory of either form or a genre, methodologi­cally,
one would take a set of works, examine them, and then produce some
conclusions based on that set. For example, as discussed in this study,
anime employs certain types of character designs and acting, a conclu-
sion based on an examination of several anime from 1995 to 2018. The
next conclusion would be that, if all anime have this property, then any
animation that has that property will be anime. But this definition is
taken from a particular set of texts, and a different selection of texts may
reveal separate, even opposing properties. In other words, while one may
be able to produce reliable information from a certain set, the problem
lies with the criteria for selecting that initial set, which is then itself jus-
tified based on properties determined from that same set.
In order to mitigate this, instead of doing away with sets entirely, I
will engage with them (while dispersing them) through the concept of
the “anime-­esque.” Here I am adapting Jaqueline Berndt’s term “manga­
esque” for anime. As she describes it, the mangaesque is “what passes
as ‘typically manga’ (or typically anime) among regular media users . . .
in the sense of manga-­like or typically manga. . . . [I]t allows to draw at-
tention to practically relevant popular discourses on the one hand and
on the other to critically informed, theoretical reflections on what may,
or may not, be expected from manga (and anime).”10 This can be used
to consider manga-­specific practices like panel layouts, common con-
ventionalized facial/bodily expressions, character design styles, narra-
tive content, backgrounds, and world-­setting; for anime it also involves
character animation, voice acting styles, and sound designs. There are
also elements that are much harder to recognize for the uninitiated,
such as techniques of animation, styles of movement, narrative struc-
ture, and pacing. Expansive and fluid, the anime-­esque encompasses
the many conventionalized elements one could expect from anime, ele­
ments that make anime recognizable.
18 Introduction

In regard to the many entries in the Macross series discussed above,

what makes them recognizably anime-­esque is the use of certain char-
acter design elements (pointed hair, large, reflective eyes, etc.), repeated
facial expressions (arched eyes when smiling, glimmering eyes for
overflowing emotion, or circular, all-­white eyes for comedic shock and
despair), narrative tropes (ace pilots, invading aliens, battling adoles-
cents), pacing patterns (regularly alternating between intimate char-
acter moments and intense action sequences), and types of animating
(limited animation with minor movement and short bursts of complex
movement), to name just a few examples. Despite the differences in the
execution of these anime-­esque elements, they are present in the many
iterations of the Macross franchise, linking the various works but also
differentiating them from one another as well as from other types of
media, marking the recognizable specificity of anime. While produc-
ing an extensive list of all the conventions that constitute anime is a
near impossible task, I will use the conception of the anime-­esque to
encapsulate the variety of elements and engage with the problematics
of anime’s identity and its recognizability. In this sense, anime, seen
as an interrelated web of anime-­esque elements, is not about defining
what is or is not anime but a matter of degrees of engagement with
recognizable conventions. Furthermore, this places the emphasis on
the repetition of these conventions and not on their national origin.
It is important to stress that such conventions are not static but
are always in flux, and the creators, distributors, and viewers who rec-
ognize those traits will have varying levels of knowledge about them,
facilitating many different production, distribution, and viewing ex-
periences globally. Moreover, what qualifies as part of the anime set
will differ from place to place; within Japan or anywhere else, what
qualifies as anime-­esque will vary from studio to studio (even from
animator to animator, director to director), as well as between frequent
viewers and nonviewers. Those more familiar with anime will recog-
nize the more minor differences (and inconsistencies) in each perfor-
mance of the anime-­esque; those not familiar may not even register
them at all. It would not be out of line to say that the otaku fans who
frequent Akihabara would not include Sazae-­san in their set of anime.
Outside of Japan, anime spread through different markets at different
times with different tendencies. For example, North America, Europe,
and Asia accepted anime at different rates. The anime that initially
 Introduction 19

became popu­lar in North America were mainly in the science-­fiction

(SF) anime range, making representational works of anime actually
works of a particular genre (even though, I would assert, SF anime is
a dominant genre within anime globally). In other words, what counts
as anime-­esque is an act of interpretation (in production, distribution,
and consumption) that is not static and differs from place to place, per-
son to person, and across the globe.
Furthermore, global does not have to mean popular everywhere
equally. Although increasingly gaining mainstream acceptance
through global distribution by streaming platforms like Netflix, late-­
night TV anime have not always enjoyed such widespread popularity
beyond a subcultural niche, within Japan and elsewhere. Anime fans
and casual viewers are numerous, but compared to Disney’s fran-
chises, most late-­night anime are not nearly as broadly popular. Since
the early ­2010s, there have been well over one hundred different new
TV anime titles produced each year and, after 2014, over two hundred,
most of them never attaining mass appeal.11 This is not to say that the
popularity of anime is insignificant but rather to point out that its sta-
tus has changed over time, it is one of many different competing media
products globally, and it has a large, dedicated fan base, but one that is
not always at the center of the attention of the masses. In this sense, on
a global scale, anime is somewhere in between mass and niche, which,
as Ian Condry points out, is a pattern that can be observed in many
other global media.12 The point here is that this ambivalence of scale is
occurring in regard to anime both in Japan and outside of Japan: anime
is a globally (mass) distributed and consumed niche media. Because of
this, the niche of frequent anime viewers has developed its own taste
communities, meaning that anime viewers in Japan may not have the
same readings and tastes as nonviewers in Japan. Instead, they may
have more commonalities of preference with frequent viewers of anime
in France or South Korea. Of course, local differences (even within
Japan) will produce separate viewing tendencies. The point here is not
to equalize all these viewpoints but rather to express that locale does
not have to be the defining variable that links anime taste communi-
ties; what people consider anime-­esque can also link people together.
Just like the Anime Next 100 video, any work on anime, especially in
an academic context, will go about effectually defining anime in some
way, whether directly (“anime is X”) or indirectly by selection (“the
20 Introduction

works chosen here are anime”). The works used in this book have been
selected for didactic reasons, as easy to understand examples of many
of the points I would like to emphasize. Although I focus on those that
fall mainly under the rubric of late-­night TV anime, I have tried to take
into account works from a broad range. This includes anime such as the
abovementioned Macross franchise and the highly influential hit, Evan-
gelion (that develops out of, but also deviates from a lineage of similar
robot, SF anime) and those that repeat some of Evangelion’s elements
in the sekaikei genre (anime from around 2001–­6), along with more
recently popular works such as the Monogatari series (2009–­present)
and Idol Master: Cinderella Girls (2015). I will also refer to computer-­
generated anime such as Expelled from Paradise (2014) and Kemono
Friends (2017), openly transnational anime like Shikioriori (2018), and
anime animated outside of Japan such as School Shock (2015).
However, these selections will obviously have their own biases, and
I do not intend for them to represent all anime or all the anime-­esque
elements for every group. In fact, I would stress that these are just some
of the properties of a potentially endless number of anime-­esque ele-
ments, and I do not see the particular anime-­esque elements discussed
here as primary, or essential, to anime. I also want to emphasize that I
do not see these elements as defining anime but rather as having been
enacted often enough to be recognized as anime-­esque. The elements I
focus on are not comprehensive, but I would argue that they are perva-
sive in many anime-­esque works in animation. Further, I chose works
to examine in detail based on their relevance to global issues of the cur-
rent era. But this does not mean that they are the only relevant anime,
nor should the selected examples stand in for all anime globally. The
resultant analysis, simply put, is just one perspective on the anime-­
esque, and there surely are many others.
To recapitulate and bring this all together, I will be conducting an
inquiry into identity and anime—­the dynamics of which intersect with
issues of the nation-­state (anime defined as Japanese or as representa-
tive of Japan) and issues of form (the anime-­esque and how anime is
recognized as such)—­and how these overlap in regard to anime as a
globally relevant media. Subsequently, this is a project that analyzes
ani­me’s aesthetics as an intersection of identity, form, and globaliza-
tion; to investigate anime’s identity, one must examine its form and its
 Introduction 21

relation to the local, transnational, and global. It will be form, then, that
will be my point of departure into anime’s aesthetics as a global media.

On Forms
Although there are many definitions and approaches to form, here I
will be drawing heavily on Caroline Levine’s approach. Form, as Levine
describes it, is “an arrangement of elements—­an ordering, a patterning,
or shaping.” Providing a purposefully broad meaning, Levine’s forms
may be considered something like shapes; each form can have different
affordances and capacities that both enable and restrict possibilities.13
In this sense, forms “shape what it is possible to think, say, and do in
a given context.”14 Levine’s forms are expansive and widely applicable,
extending the conception of form in media texts to social forms, link-
ing the two together. For Levine, “if the political is a matter of imposing
and enforcing boundaries, temporal patterns, and hierarchies on expe-
rience, then there is no politics without form.”15 Subsequently, forms
found in media can inform, and thus transform, our understanding of
social forms.
Among the forms Levine details are what can be called “bordered-­
wholes,” which maintain a boundary that separates an internal and
an external, delineating an inside and an outside and thus affording
conceptions of interiority and exteriority.16 The bordered-­whole is a
common form that one can see at play in a variety of phenomena: on
a macroscale in the container model of the nation-­state (a domestic
interior and the foreign beyond its borders) or in the microscale of the
modern individual, whose internal self is discrete from the external
world. Another common form is the network, which takes shape when
multiple distinct elements, not necessarily close in proximity, are some-
how connected. More varied than the technologically based ­societal
networks of Manuel Castells, Levine’s networks include kinship rela-
tions, playlists, and manufacturing processes, all possible in different
configurations.17
Levine thus opens up forms to be applied in new contexts outside
and inside media, allowing one to examine what forms can do and their
potential to be active in the world. Crucial to her conceptualization
of form is her emphasis on “patterns of repetition and difference.”18
22 Introduction

Certainly, form must be repetitive in some sense because it is the simi-

larity between shapes that allows one to draw connections. In this way,
Levine’s forms are always relating to other instances that bear some
formal resemblance. Additionally, forms have an iterative capacity that
provides an opportunity to replicate the form, to work with it, and to
act through and/or upon it. In other words, repetition gives form its af-
fordances: common properties of a given form that facilitate or impede
actions. One may work in line with the affordances of that form but
may also work against them. This leads into the difference of Levine’s
definition, in which a given form will appear in various configurations.
Each instance of that form must have some distinction, or it would be
identical to the earlier instance. Accordingly, there is dynamism and
diversity in Levine’s notion of forms, where there can be variations
within a form, as well as across time and space.
Indeed, Levine asserts that while forms can be replicated across
time and space without necessitating radical change, context and ma-
teriality are inextricable. Forms, Levine states, can also be unstable,
executed differently over different periods, places, and materials. Here
I want to emphasize that there may be degrees of intensity and quali­
tative and quantitative differences in how forms are executed, which
ties into the mutability of forms and how they are caught in the ten-
sion between repetition and difference: if forms can travel but location
specifics matter, as Levine holds, then surely it is the enactment of this
form in that moment, place, and material that itself imparts a deviation
from its precursors. At the same time, each instance must bear some
resemblance to others to be recognized as the same form—­it must refer
to something so that one may group similar instances as forms, even
if by crude approximation. In other words, the manner and material in
and through which a form is executed affects its final product, even if it
is the same form enacted, distinguishing one iteration from the other.
In short, forms are not necessarily isolated but rather multiple and
nested; they are portable but situated, overlapping yet also conflicting
and clashing. To further explore such dynamics, it may be instructive
to consider Lamarre’s account of television networks in The Anime
Ecology in tandem with Levine’s notion of form. For example, as dis-
cussed by Lamarre, the infrastructure of national television networks
may sustain the imagined community of a nation-­state, a bordered-­
whole, even as its broadcasts spill out of it.19 Here the network form,
 Introduction 23

despite leaving out various areas within the nation, works in conjunc-
tion with the bordered-­whole to create an image of a unified nation.
While Lamarre’s examples are mainly from Japan, the same dynamic
can occur elsewhere, with national television projects that ultimately
cross the borders they purportedly assert.
Moreover, the network form itself can be seen as having variants:
the network is sometimes decentralized and at other times central-
ized, each option with its own affordances.20 Although Lamarre has
different concerns regarding his examination of television networks
and their dynamics, decentralized networks can be thought of as akin
to the heterarchical “point-­to-­point” operations he describes whereby
“any point in the network [is] potentially connected to any other point,
and with so many connections being made . . . they allow for innumer-
ably diverse pathways through them.” However, there are also networks
that perform what Lamarre’s terms “one-­to-­many” operations whereby
something is transmitted from a central source to multiple locations,
with a privileging of the central point.21 These centralized networks
would maintain a single node that organizes all that flows through the
network, with multiple points only intersecting through that node. As
I am reading Lamarre and Levine through one another, both these net-
work dynamics can be considered overlapping, sometimes conflicting,
with one never totally subsuming the other.
As another example of this study’s notion of forms, it is worthwhile
to consider the abovementioned difficulty in defining anime, whereby
two interrelated levels appear. The first level may best be explored by ini-
tially considering the form of the bordered-­whole. Utilizing this form,
anime is to be defined concretely, with exact borders as to what is and is
not anime. The deciding factor either falls within a nation-­specific level
(the borders of Japan) or a media-­specific level (the borders of defining
anime’s stylistics). The geographic boundaries of Japan may initially
appear to be a clearer delimiter, especially as media-­specific borders
become murky quickly. Yet, as noted above and detailed later, not all
animation from Japan would count as anime, even in Japan. Hence a
return to the notion of anime as a predefined set of media-­specific ele-
ments that are always enacted in the same manner, with anything that
violates those rules being definitively excluded. Again, there is a return
to borders, but these are media specific rather than nation specific.
To linger on the media-­specific level of anime, what I am invoking
24 Introduction

as the notion of “stylistics” is another sense of form that includes fre-

quently employed conventions in anime (e.g., character designs and
acting)—­that is, the anime-­esque. Anime as a specific type of media is
filled with a variety of anime-­esque conventions that are repeatedly im-
plemented, recurring in anime regardless of genre or production studio.
For anime, form is convention, and it operates with the same tensions
between repetition and difference as the forms Levine defines. In fact,
these anime-­esque elements can be seen as functioning like Levine’s
forms. But to avoid confusion, and for additional reasons detailed
below, I will be calling this media-­specific level “anime’s media-­form.”
What interests me here is that, if anime tends to get defined in either
its relation to nation specifics (Japan) or media-­form specifics, it is the
media-­form specifics that often lead to its recognizability as a Japanese
media. In an effort to engage with both the interrelated levels of nation
specificity and media-­form specificity, I will take up Levine’s notion of
the form of the network as the point of departure. Instead of viewing
media-­form as definitive through the bordered-­whole, the anime-­esque
allows one to see these conventions through the form of the network.
Reproduced in differing combinations, each anime is networked to
other anime through the repetition of prior anime-­esque conventions,
the reiteration of anime’s media-­form that sustains anime as a specific
type of media—­one that sometimes extends beyond animation and
outside of Japan.
I am not concerned with providing some final word on what pre-
cisely defines anime’s media-­form. Rather, I am interested in how the
media-­form operates and how those operations can reveal a more
transnational conception of anime. In a sense, this is a building up
from media to the social, the same gesture as Levine’s conception of
form: that media (or in her examples, literary) form can both inform
views on and transform the dynamics of social forms, as “there are no
politics without form.” It is with this approach that I will be examin-
ing how the conventions that constitute anime’s media-­form can reveal
insights into the transnational dynamics of this era of globalization.
To work from anime’s media-­form level upward, anime’s conventions
become the recognizably anime-­esque that are associated with anime.
This creates a network of anime-­esque enactments, which sustains the
illusion of a definable anime, as anime is usually approached through
the form of the bordered-­whole. Yet certain elements in anime tend
 Introduction 25

to work in accordance with anime-­esque conventions, others against

them. Even so-­called Japanese anime will have elements that are drawn
from non-­anime sources, and animation often seen as American or
Chinese will employ anime-­esque conventions. Thus, a messy network
of relations between conventions that do not have to be bound within
the borders of Japan starts to appear. Indeed, this network can be trans-
national, as is much of the animation production work that actually
produces parts of the anime watched around the world. In this sense,
there are layers of transnationality whereby a convention can appear to
come from one area of the world and become commonly repeated and
varied within Japan. However, the actual convention is sustained by its
repetition that occurs through the transnational production network
operating across Asia.
At the same time, these two forms, bordered-­whole and network,
sometimes coincide and sometimes clash with one another. The task
of this book is to explore the tensions between these forms as they
operate in regard to anime, with a focus on allowing the network form
to reveal an alternative conception of anime’s identity. The network
form is a way to consider anime from a formal perspective that begins
with the conventionality of anime as media to explore the potentiality
of such conventions to move beyond nation-­centered concerns while
maintaining the specificity of anime’s transnationality. By analyzing
anime’s media-­form as conventions, tracing them from their opera-
tions and through the form of the network and detailing how they both
overlap and conflict with the bordered-­whole, an alternative diagram of
anime’s transnationality may be revealed, which maps the underlying
shifts of contemporary modes of globalization.

Shifting Spatiality
Before engaging the transformations currently occurring through
globali­zation, it is important to consider what is commonly viewed as
the initial situation that is undergoing change. Although globalization
can be seen as a process that extends back to early humanity—­where
groups were always interacting across vast distances—­the tendency to
think of globalization as something occurring only at present is far
stronger than the envisioning of an always interconnected world. In-
deed, the dominant conception of globalization takes it to be a recent
26 Introduction

phenomenon, a drastic change from an earlier era of more divided, sepa­

rated peoples and cultures. The contemporary coupling of the local
and global that is globalization is considered to be a massive restruc-
turing of the former system. To briefly present one influential exam-
ple, Castells conceived of a networked “space of flows” that no longer
prioritizes geographic proximity due to high-­speed communication
infrastructures.22 More generally speaking, globalization’s shifts are
seen as, in JungBong Choi’s phrasing, signaling “a new order of geo-
political integration and organizational reshuffling driven by neoliber-
alist doctrines—­which intimately liaise with postmodern sensibilities,
post-­Fordist economic systems, and digital technologies—­as visualized
by a wealth of images espousing a borderless world, free trade, and dis-
persed, shifting networks of human resources.”23
Therefore, globalization can be seen as broadly emphasizing the pro-
cess of transition from some previous period that was presumably more
neatly arranged, which, as Choi notes, tends to ignore long-­standing
inter­cultural relations. This supposed prior state of affairs is often based
on the ideal of modern nation-­states and the “inter-­national” system (fol-
lowing Kōichi Iwabuchi’s phrasing with the hyphen for emphasis on the
national),24 where the world is supposedly split up into distinct nation-­
states, and border crossing appears easier to conceptualize because in-
ternal and external are neatly defined along national lines. Somehow
violating that previous order, globalization has evidently produced a new,
messy set of border crossings that are difficult to grapple with.
Although this is a simplification of the debates about globalization,
the basic structure—­a major shift from the modern organization of
space that enabled the inter-­national order to move toward a messier,
more chaotic system of border crossing—­can help reveal the complex
issues at play in this historical moment. The inclination to think of
globalization as a shift from discrete borders to chaotic interconnec-
tion is due in part to its dramatic qualities—­that is, how contemporary
currents of globalization come into conflict with modern approaches to
geographically defined space. Put differently, globalization is often seen
as a process that threatens the neat order of modern nation-­states that
is still seen as the dominant mode of spatially organizing the world.
Subsequently, postmodern globalization as violation of the modern
inter-­national exposes how modern modes of existence continue to be
at play in the current era.
 Introduction 27

I am not trying to deny the distinction of present-­day globaliza-

tion (especially its speed and connection to neoliberalism) but rather
consider the relationship between this more recent spatial dynamic of
globalization and an earlier, idealized spatiality inherited from moder-
nity. Indeed, modernity itself can be seen as a regime of spatiality—­
that is, of organizing, producing, and imposing borders on geographic
space and time—­a regime that is deeply connected with the rise of the
modern nation-­state, which in turn produces identities grounded in
the culture of individual nations. The nation-­state is often described in
the terms of a “container model” whereby national, geographic borders
are traditionally seen as the boundaries of the nation, its sovereignty
absolute within those borders, with the nation’s culture seen as defini­
tive practices that occur within those bounds. This conception of the
nation-­state came to dominate the globe with the rise of modernity,
accompanied by a sense of the (human) individual that shares a simi­
lar sense of borders of personal autonomy at the limits of the body
and the (national) culture they are located within and come from. Put
in Levine’s formalistic terms, the bordered-­whole is a spatial division
that came to prominence in modernity and afforded the mode of exis-
tence for both the individual and the nation-­state.25 It is this supposedly
cleanly divided spatiality that underpins much of modernity, and in
particular what is generally seen as individual subject formation, and it
can be extended to the nation and inter-­national world order—­an order
that contemporary globalization is seen as violating.
Thus, when considered from the perspective of modern spatiality,
a perspective still prevalent today, there is a massive reorganization of
space visible in the current era. Indeed, if one were to think of the mod-
ern nation-­state as the point of departure, globalization—­whether it be
the outsourcing of labor, the influx of immigrants or foreign cultural
products, issues of trade and/or roaming and unregulated capital, large
multinational corporations, or regional bodies of governance, to name
a few issues—­threatens the organization of the world order, impinging
on modern conceptions of autonomy and sovereignty that are intimately
tied to the formation of the nation-­state and the inter-­national system.
Furthermore, the reorganization of local, national, regional, and
global formations, which occurs across different scales and speeds in
disparate places, can be a point of stress and crisis for individuals situ­
ated within them. If individuals are supposed to be from some local
28 Introduction

place, a disruption of the local in regard to the global can facilitate

profound anxieties. Indeed, as Anna Tsing notes, concepts such as local
and global will need to be reconsidered from their classical usages: the
local is the “stopping point of global circulations . . . the place where
global flows fragment and are transformed into something place bound
and particular,” but, she continues, “if flow itself always involves mak-
ing terrain, there can be no territorial distinctions between the ‘global’
transcending of place and the ‘local’ making of places.”26 Moreover,
even the word “local” has come to easily slide from minor, specific sites
such as towns, cities, and provinces to the larger scale of the national
when placed in the context of the similarly ambiguous “global.”27 Re-
gardless of what local implies, under globalization, “places are made
through their connections with each other, not their isolation.”28 This
is a reorganization that further disrupts the modern spatial divisions
of the bordered-­whole.

Area Studies and Situating Anime

The difficulty of addressing the abovementioned spatial reorganization
is partially due to our debt to modern institutions of knowledge pro-
duction, which often have their point of departure as the nation-­state
(e.g., Japan studies or China studies). This issue has been a contentious
topic in area studies for the past few decades, with scholars making a
concerted effort to move beyond these boundaries. Here the transfor-
mative potential of knowledge production, where shifts in approach
can substantiate changes in how the world is viewed, is often invoked.
Indeed, this underpins one of the most recent influential approaches
to this issue: Kuan-­Hsing Chen’s work on “Asia as method.” Providing
alternative approaches to area studies, Chen implements a multilayered
reading of the “Asia as Method” lecture given by Takeuchi Yoshimi in
1960. Takeuchi attempted to work through the affinity he felt toward
China and its peoples’ relation to modernity, an analysis that would in
turn help him confront Japan’s own relation to modernity.29 Takeuchi’s
lecture is later rethought by Mizoguchi Yūzō in his 1996 work China
as Method, upon which Chen builds, adapting Mizoguchi’s concept of
“base-­entities.” Sometimes altered by external forces, these local spaces
are constantly shifting and different from place to place, but they all
have their own internal logics, contradictions, and social relations
 Introduction 29

that are products of long histories.30 Chen stresses the importance of

inter-­referencing, which would change the perspective on the base-­
entity that a mutual objectification allows both points of departure to
mediate one another and reach a different understanding: “to do area
studies is not simply to study the object of analysis but also to per-
form a self-­analysis through a process of constant inter-­referencing. . . .
Relativizing the understanding of the self as well as the object of the
study is a precondition for arriving at different understandings of the
self, the Other, and world history.”31
To remain on the importance of the institutionalized disciplines
of knowledge production for a moment, as noted above, research on
anime usually falls somewhere between media studies and area stud-
ies, as anime is a media product so often associated with Japan (and
the Asia region). Beyond just anime, this intersection of the two disci-
plines can have productive results. For instance, Ani Maitra and Rey
Chow have detailed how examinations of new media in Asia have in
fact emphasized the capacity for movement and disruption of estab-
lished temporal and spatial geographies in new media. Still, Maitra and
Chow assert that even if media like anime are seen “as a global ten-
dency or potentiality, we cannot entirely ignore the question of locality
that is introduced by the expression ‘in Asia.’ ”32 Traditionally, for area
studies (in this case, Asian studies and Japan studies), the methodol-
ogy is to examine what is in the appointed area—­working through the
form of the bordered-­whole—­and what is going on within that particu­
lar nation. While this is an indispensable tool of analysis, Maitra and
Chow lament that the results of such analyses can slip into an “ethno­
culturalist” approach to these media, highlighting “Asianness” by fo-
cusing on the “in,” the locale and its culture, of Asia.
As a possible work-­around to this issue in the face of everyday inter­
connectedness, Maitra and Chow suggest “disaggregating Asia” by
examining networks of actors that are human and nonhuman, such
as materials, objects, and technologies.33 Following this suggestion,
one may consider thinking through the flows across, not into, differ-
ent parts of Asia. To take from Chen’s terminology, this would mean
thinking not only about the base-­entities and inter-­referencing to shift
understanding, but also about how and what is traversing across these
local spaces. In Levin’s terms, this may be interpreted as moving away
from the imposed homogeneity of the bordered-­whole form of the
30 Introduction

nation and region and moving toward the network form of the trans-
national as it intersects with different peoples, materials, technologies,
and practices across borders. As Tsing points out, it is increasingly hard
to ignore how the world functions beyond received notions of locality,
nation, and region through technologies and media and interactions
with them; some media span far beyond their supposed national and/
or regional origin, spreading across the world.
To bring this more into focus for the study of anime specifically,
Sandra Annett problematizes what she calls the “anime in America”
discourse, where there is “a powerful dialectic of self-­Other identity,
operating in different registers in North America and Japan.”34 Build-
ing on Annett’s work, the framing she identifies of the media from a
foreign other (Japan, in this case), inside the boundaries of the self of a
country, can be seen as maintaining the spatiality of the bordered-­whole
inter-­national, even as the topic of discussion exposes the permeability
of those boundaries. Although research on how anime is engaged with
in various locations certainly is important, it is also imperative to con-
sider, as Annett does, the “movement[s] of media and bodies that [take]
place across multiple sites,” crossing national boundaries and involving
a “simultaneous mutuality and asymmetry of the engagement.” While
Annett concentrates on the distribution and consumption of anime,
the complex transnational movements across borders also apply to ani­
me’s production.35
In light of this, it is important to consider that there are multiple
modes of transnationality, regionality, and globality—­that is, distinctive
ways to operate across borders, with patterns of crossings, intersections,
and exclusions and specific methods of conceiving of spatial groupings
like regions and of “being global” in a manner that is not totalizing and
evenly distributed. Taking this into account, Annett details how differ-
ent approaches to conceptualizing border-­crossing interactions were
compatible with anime’s content, distribution, and consumption over
different time periods. According to Annett, inter­nationalism (border
crossing between supposedly discrete nation-­states or, in my terms,
inter-­nationalism) was the dominant framework in the early twenti-
eth century for conceptualizing animation’s content and distribution.
This later shifted toward what she calls post­nationalism (attempting
disassociation from the national for global export and localization)
in the second half of the twentieth century, which paved the way for
 Introduction 31

transnationalism (collaborative friction across national boundaries)

and transculturalism (cultural linkages irreducible to the national that
still recognize different orientations and contexts) in the early twenty-­
first century. But Annett asserts that these modes and eras of border-­
crossing interactions are not absolute divisions.36 Indeed, in the current
era one can see inter-­nationalism in a tense relationship with trans­
nationalism and transculturalism as anime continues its globalization.
In consideration of this, one of the aims of this book is to map out
the various coexisting formal configurations of anime’s transnational-
ity and their subsequent spatial dynamics. This entails exploring the
operations of networked transnationality without ignoring the role of
the bordered-­whole nation-­state. As Daisy Yan Du explains, “the trans-
national is usually an indispensable part of and sometimes even trig-
gers the formation of the national and nationalism. . . . the national
is [also] a prerequisite for the transnational, because without it, the
transnational has nothing to cross.”37 Indeed, to be transnational, as
Nina Glick Schiller defines it, indicates “the ongoing interconnection
or flow of people, ideas, objects, and capital across the borders of nation-­
states, in contexts in which the state shapes but does not contain such
linkages and movements” (emphasis added).38 In this sense, the forms of
the bordered-­whole (nation-­states) and network (the transnational) op-
erate concurrently, coinciding even as they clash. Certainly globaliza-
tion is a process that is not always initiated from outward in or inward
out via bordered-­wholes but can also occur across or through networks
transnationally. And as I am arguing here, that is precisely how anime
operates on multiple levels. With this in mind, it is possible to move
productively through the tensions between these coexisting forms to
examine anime’s transnationality.
Let me be clear that I am not trying to deride Japan-­or Asian-­
focused readings of anime, which continue to push research on anime
in important directions. Methodologically, one of the advantages of
grounding anime in Japan is that it gives anime a specific set of co-
ordinates to explore its relation to. But if anime is to be seen beyond
Japan, it cannot only be scaled up by moving from national boundar-
ies to regional or even global boundaries, as each scaled up moniker
merely expands the bordered-­whole boundary to increasing levels of
ambiguity. To elide this, one of the aims here is to detail how anime
has coordinates in relation to Japan that cannot be easily escaped,
32 Introduction

coordinates that are maintained partly because of anime’s recognizable

convention­ality, which both enables and is sustained by transnational
production that has its own specific patterns.
From this perspective, anime can be grasped as transnational, but it
is regularly related to certain places and media in distinct ways, and this
is where the complexities start to arise: anime’s supposed grounding in
Japan becomes riddled with transnational flows that move in many di-
rections while still being associated with Japan. Hence my effort with
this book is to suggest an alternative approach that includes Japan as
central to the transnational dynamic of globalization described here
for anime. Indeed, even as I assert the transnational and global dimen-
sions of anime, the importance of Japan for anime’s transnationality
becomes emphasized. Thus, I must also insist on the prominence of
Japan—­in the history of anime, its cultural relations, its development
on multiple levels (marketing, media mix, language, conventions, etc.),
and its function as the central node in transnational production pro-
cesses. It is clear that the (inter)national has not completely receded
but is operating in tandem with the transnational, clashing with it. The
difficulty is figuring out how to account for the multilayered trans­
nationality of anime while acknowledging the importance and weight
of Japan in this system.
This problem of how to situate anime in regard to its transnational
geography and institutionalized disciplines of knowledge production is
symptomatic of contemporary tensions of globalization. Indeed, Berndt
notes in her analysis of anime in academia the issue of situatedness: there
is a problem of whether to place research on anime in area studies—­
such as Japan studies (which she notes is highly relevant to the study of
anime) or Asian studies (since the dispersal of anime throughout Asia
occurs in production, distribution, and consumption), both of which are
struggling to distance themselves from nation-­focused paradigms while
maintaining their situatedness—­or in media studies, which approaches
the medium and materiality of anime. Berndt articulates another man-
ner in which anime is difficult to place and spread across disciplines,
evincing how the institutionalized production of knowledge itself can-
not cope with the globalized nature of anime. Following Berndt, anime
may be a perfect fit for reorienting, in conjunction with media studies,
what is thought of as area studies, whose central concern, as the name
indicates, is “area.” For anime insists on engaging the issue of defining
 Introduction 33

an area, where and how it is produced, as well as the modes of existence

it may afford as it confronts the shifts and processes of globalization that
are creating distinct spatial dynamics.
In order to properly explore globalization, and the conflict with
modernity, there is a necessary encounter with the issue of what form
the reorganization of area—­of field of study and geographic region—­is
occurring in and through. By attending to Levine’s forms, from the
broader types of the bordered-­whole (nation-­states) and networks
(transnationality) to the particulars of anime’s media-­form that me-
diates these dynamics, it is possible to inquire into globalization. It is
the fundamental clashing and concordance of forms occurring in glo-
balization that must be confronted. This particularly pertains to media
products: their production, distribution, and consumption, how and
where to situ­ate them, and the forms of selfhood employed to engage
with them. It is imperative to grapple with how to constructively con-
sider the tensions and alignments of these forms.
In an effort to do so, I will examine not only the specifics of anime
and its transnationality and globality, but also how anime as a media
product attends to the dynamics and tensions of globalization. My
analysis is not only in terms of transnational production or local re-
sponse to global circulation, but also in terms of how spatiality itself is
getting redefined, how the local and global get completely transformed
in the process of globalization, and how anime itself embodies these
transformations in the mechanics of its media-­form. Moreover, just
as the modern spatiality of the bordered-­whole affords a mode of ex-
istence for both the nation-­state and the individual, one may ask what
modes of existence the forms at play in contemporary globalization
afford, in particular as revealed in anime.

Media-­Form
Before going any further, I would like to clarify some terms that may
get confusing here, namely “style,” “genre,” and “media-­form.” To begin
with the word “style,” I am hesitant to pull definitions from neoformal-
ism in film because of its intense focus on the specificity of cinematic
narration. Although the distinctions between animation and cinema
are beyond the scope of this project, temporarily referencing some
neoformalist concepts can be illustrative. At first it may appear that
34 Introduction

the widespread conventionality of the anime-­esque is similar to David

Bordwell’s conception of classical Hollywood style in that it is a gen-
eral pattern of expression repeated across works, studios, and genres
with minor variations. As each film has its particularities, the classi-
cal film style, like the anime-­esque, is a set of selective observations
of widespread tendencies across distinct works. In addition, there is a
somewhat limited grouping of techniques employed with regularity to
give it a sense of consistency. The style involves repetition, and though
a style can apply quite broadly to various subject matters, it maintains
a historicity. Although the emphasis here is on animation, character
design, and acting, the anime-­esque does overlap somewhat with Bord­
well’s approach.39
At the same time, I want to stress that there are more negotiations
and conflicts at play with and against the conventions of the anime-­
esque, particularly in regard to material and medium involved, which
I will detail below. In any case, I will use “style” to mean the individ-
ual manner by which something is executed. Indeed, the term is often
used to denote individuality: a particular author’s or artist’s style, for
example. In the case of anime, it is the play on different components, a
consistent mode of distinction from certain models. A style bears clear
resemblance to a model but deviates enough that it is noticeable. In
common discourses on anime, style is generally attributed to specific
directors or studios, and sometimes to animators. Taken to an extreme,
anime’s media-­form might appear to not exist because it is merely the
grouping of styles that prioritizes the areas that are perceived to overlap
to produce the anime-­esque. But that does not mean that media-­form
is not a useful concept, as what is perceived as the overlap becomes a
model that is then deviated from or adhered to in different styles, a
process detailed in chapter 4.
This brings me to the term “genre.” Levine explains that genres “can
be defined as customary constellations of elements into historically
recognizable groupings of artistic objects, bringing together forms
with themes, styles, and situations of reception, while forms are orga-
nizations or arrangements that afford repetition and portability across
materials and contexts.”40 In terms of these definitions, anime would
be both genre and form. While anime is a genre in the sense Levine
describes, it can also be seen as a form, as the anime-­esque can be
performed in multiple animation technologies, and one can find many
 Introduction 35

anime-­esque elements in other media like light novels, games, and

manga. Furthermore, the media related to anime (the media mix, to
be discussed below), are part of a larger industry that anime plays a
significant role within.
To further clarify, it is important to note that how anime distin-
guishes itself, even within the media mix, is similar to how genre in
cinema operates. This involves what Steve Neale calls a process of
“repe­tition and variation” and Leger Grindon calls “cycles and clus-
ters” of patterns.41 One of the problems with using genre in regard to
anime is scale, as distinct from cinema. The aesthetics of repetition and
variation in genre are generally one part of a larger industry, such as
Hollywood, where genres operate as part of the internal dynamics of
the industry. With anime, the dynamics of repetition and variation are
the very operations of the entire industry, which is sustained by pro-
ducing the same type of products. This problem of genre can be seen
in the Macross franchise, which regularly repeats the same elements
with variation but is not considered its own genre, as it relates to mul-
tiple anime genres: SF, robot, romance, and idol anime. Indeed, the
same problematics of Macross’s repetitions and variations are present
in every anime, each interlinking with the others through its execution
of conventions with minor variation.
This complex problem of scale—­industry that has genres versus the
media-­form and industry itself—­is related to the very word “genre.” As
Neale explains, the term previously denoted entirely different qualities
in literature (e.g., essay vs. poetry), but currently it is connected to the
usage within cinema as differing categories of narrative (e.g., thriller vs.
romantic comedy).42 To use an imprecise but demonstrative metaphor by
Andrew Tudor to further explore the current connotation of genre, if “we
imagine a general model of the workings of film language, genre directs
our attention to sublanguages within it.”43 To use the term “genre” to
denote the difference of anime from other animation (genre as language)
would be appropriate, but when genre is used in the context of anime in
theoretical, critical, and fan literature, it is most often used in the “genre
as sublanguage” sense. Indeed, the processes of genre as sublanguage are
utilized by the anime industry to diversify, consolidate, and exploit a mar-
ket that largely deals in the same media-­form (SF anime vs. idol anime).
To avoid confusion with the “genre as sublanguage” meaning,44 I will
continue to use the word “media-­form,” denoting conventionality—­the
36 Introduction

repetition and variation involved in producing a form—­with an emphasis

on media since, following Lamarre, anime should not be separated from
its dynamics as animation.
To better define this conjunction of media and form, it is worth-
while to explore the word “media.” Here, I am invoking the delineation
of the word by W. J. T. Mitchell and Mark Hansen in the introduction to
their edited book, Critical Terms for Media Studies. Mitchell and Han-
sen advocate for a media studies that operates “from the perspective
of media. Media, become singular, forms an abstraction that denotes
an attentiveness to the agency of the medium in the analysis of so-
cial change.”45 They envision a media studies that crosses disciplinary
boundaries and engages the ambiguities of media, working through
the movement between media as the plural of medium (the materials
through which something is executed) and media as a collective singu-
lar of different mediums. They seek to see media beyond technodeter-
minism and an embodied sense of media as an extension of the human,
emphasizing the “middle-­ness” of media, of thinking through the pro-
cesses of media­tion. Aesthetics, technology, and society converge in
their conception of media studies, concerned “not only with extensions
of the human sensorium, but with their introjections into the struc-
tures of feeling and forms of life that constitute human subjectivity and
collectivity.”46 For Mitchell and Hansen, “rather than determining our
situation, we might better say that media are our situation.”47 There-
fore, media “do not remain static, but constitute a dynamic, histori-
cally evolving environment or ecosystem that may or may not sustain
a recognizable form of human life indefinitely.”48
In this view, it is important to maintain a multifaceted approach
to the media at hand while still attending to its specifics. As anime is
animation, it may be beneficial to start by turning to Deborah Lev-
itt’s conceptualization of animation as a medium (or in her terms, a
“super-­medium” that includes the various types of animation and
their divergent properties such as cel, CG, and claymation) in terms
of its “an-­ontology,” that is, how animation must build everything—­
backgrounds, bodies, movement—­from scratch. Levitt explains that
“animation must always create a world,” and thus it is not tied to the
indexical in the same way cinema is: “There are no necessary limiting
features, no essential finitude—­everything is shadowed by its possible
 Introduction 37

metamorphosis, erasure, and resurrection—­and there is thus no on-

tology.”49 In this sense, such a conception of the medium of animation
enables a radical untethering of anime from a permanent grounding in
the real—­meaning anime does not always have to be about represent-
ing Japan, its supposed indexical site of origin.
However, there is still more to the story of anime’s medium, as it
is also important to consider how the specifics of materials can mat-
ter to the medium in question. Although Levitt notes the significance
of materiality, in the current context, Lamarre’s work in The Anime
Machine may be read as an exploration of how the material and its
limitations involved in cel animation have important effects on how
the medium of animation unfolds for anime.50 In traditional cel ani-
mation, the individual layers of an image are adjusted on a multiplane
animation stand in a process called compositing, with the composited
images then played in succession to give the impression of movement.
In Lamarre’s theory, the strategies of maneuvering the cel layers during
the compositing process affords a manner of thinking technology via
the multiplane animation stand, of working with the constraints of the
material to solve technical problems that result in different aesthetics
in the resultant animation. Yet this is not simply determined by the
limits of the materials involved. Lamarre’s consideration of indeter-
mination allows for an opening of different effects and solutions to the
technical problematics. In this sense, Lamarre details a complex rela-
tionship between the material (the celluloid sheets and the multiplane
animation stand) and the medium (animation).
For instance, according to Lamarre, in some TV anime’s approach
to limited animation, the multiple layers manipulated in compositing
are spread flat across the sequence of images, shunting movement to
the surface. For Lamarre, this provides a different type of animation
than the “continuity of movement” of full animation, resulting in the
distinctive jerky rhythms of anime’s limited animation.51 Moreover,
this attention to the material dynamics of limited animation reveals
effects that ripple beyond specific sequences. One result of this flat
compositing is on character design, what Lamarre labels the “soulful
body,” where the potentiality for movement as well as “spiritual, emo-
tional, or psychological qualities appear inscribed on the surface.”52 For
such characters, it is “as if all the depth brought to the surface became
38 Introduction

condensed into one soulful figure, allowing it to flash from media to

media.”53 Soulful bodies are not limited to cel animation, as they are
“stretched across innumerable platforms and fields” in the media mix.54
Through anime’s media mix strategy, as Steinberg has detailed,
manga, figurines, games, and other media are constantly referenced
and adapted to and from one another, most often from manga to anime.
The goal is to produce a synergy that connects these media together to
propagate their mutual sales.55 This media mix is central to many of the
developments of anime’s aesthetics, and characters and their designs
are integral to this. Subsequently, to ease the integration of various me-
diums, such as comics, stickers, and figurines, a certain type of charac-
ter posing has proliferated, possessing what Steinberg labels “dynamic
immobility”: “stilling the movement of animation,” the sense of poten-
tial for movement caught in the pose of the character’s body.56 Com-
bining Lamarre’s and Steinberg’s concepts, the soulful bodies of these
characters and their poses in dynamic immobility enable them to jump
with relative ease between mediums and materials in the media mix.
Due to the prominence of these designs and poses, some characters and
poses have become formalized, made into conventions through their
continued repetition across different media, producing types of charac-
ter design and expressions that are now recognizable as anime-­esque.
With this in mind, it is imperative to consider how various media
interact with each other via their shared conventions. In fact, some of
the conventions seen in anime are not necessarily unique to it. For in-
stance, many of the conventionalized poses and facial expressions, such
as arched eyes and a tilted head smile, are often used in, or rather, cited
from, manga and are also seen in light novels and games. As Lamarre
notes, “as a result of the prevalence of manga-­to-­anime adaptations,
each media form began to take on some formal features of the other
from the 1960s onward.”57 In fact, manga and anime have developed so
closely that it often seems like each is mutually implicated in the other.
However, while anime and manga are often seen as sharing similar
conventions, there are a wide variety of types of each readily available.
More than anime, manga in particular has a far wider expressive range
that is commercially viable in Japan and abroad. Yet the most famous
are manga that Berndt calls “manga proper,” magazine-­based works
that consist “of highly conventionalized signs, which are memorized
by artists and readers in order to be replicable and to be shared” and
 Introduction 39

have a close relationship with anime.58 These products strive to produce

images in line with anime to create a sense of proximity and continue
to propagate the media mix.
Indeed, many works of manga proper have character designs made
with sharp lines that are easy to produce in the cel look that is the
mainstream in anime. For example, one can see this strategy at play in
the manga version of Macross Frontier, published in Shōnen Ace Maga-
zine (2008–­9), which clearly tries to mimic the character design styles
of the TV series with sharp lines and elongated limbs. This is despite
the fact that manga often feature characters drawn with sketchy lines,
which are easy to produce in print media but difficult to sustain in
animation. Thus, the manga attempts to create a recognizable connec-
tion with the anime despite differences in medium; different products
grapple with various materials as recognizable conventions create syn-
ergy across them. This is part of manga’s and anime’s connection to the
famous “database” that Azuma Hiroki theorized.59 They share similar
conventions, each enactment in their respective mediums attempting
to forge a connection. At the same time, anime’s medium specifics are
important to its identification within a media ecosystem that shares so
many of the same characteristics. If anime is to distinguish itself from
these other media, even as it bleeds into them, it must do so through its
particular medium—­that is, animation—­leading back to the starting
point of medium.
Therefore, read through the framework explored here, medium and
material interact with the repetition of convention: the technical engage-
ment with the material via limited animation affords a type of character
design and posing that, in turn, becomes repeated as the soulful body
and poses of dynamic immobility; such designs and poses also respond
to the other mediums and materials they repeatedly perform with in the
media mix. Moreover, this process is not necessarily linear; what causes
the prior, current, or next interaction is not always clear-­cut, pertaining
to what Lamarre calls—­building on Karen Barad’s term—­“intra-­action,”
entailing the “mutual constitution of entangled agencies.”60
While these dynamics are not limited to characters, because of the
importance of anime’s connection to other media, much of this book’s
focus on media-­form will explore the enactment of anime characters,
for example through animation, design, and acting. Although other
anime-­esque elements will be addressed, I concentrate on character
40 Introduction

in part because how the anime-­esque character looks and acts is not
isolated to anime. Indeed, across anime, manga, and games the anime-­
esque character is quite prevalent, a highly visible and recognizable fea-
ture that seems to signal Japan (especially abroad), even if the product
has pronounced transnational inflections. It is also important to note
that it is the conventionality of the anime-­esque designs and acting that
mark such characters as somehow related to Japan, even as its mode of
existence affords a different spatiality and potential. For the reasons
detailed above, anime-­esque characters will be examined through this
book as they intersect with transnationality and embody the nonlinear,
intra-­active interplay between material, medium, and convention that
constitutes anime’s media-­form.
To further elaborate on this interplay, anime’s conventions are also
performed in CG animation to produce recognizable anime shows and
films, adjusting and creating new technologies to do so. In this case, the
prior anime-­esque conventions are shifting materials and methods of
animation to sustain a media product. In this way, a similar distortion
and flexing to what occurred between anime and manga is occurring in
the technology for CG animation, as it is increasingly used to produce
anime. With full 3D CG animation, which has a longer history of pro-
ducing realistic and cinematic imagery (as in Pixar, Disney, and Holly-
wood films), creating standard anime is difficult, often coming across
as stiff and awkward. The past decade has seen many improvements
in producing CG anime, such as Expelled from Paradise, that seem to
attempt a general trajectory toward the established anime-­esque con-
ventions of cel animation. In such works, some sense of the anime-­
esque is moved toward and against, an execution that has to come to
terms with the technological and material actualities of the tools at
hand. Here it is the anime-­esque conventions that are inviting a linkage
between the cel animation of earlier anime and the contemporary “cel
look” of CG anime that affect the enactments in the material; that came
into conflict when anime was CG. This conflict is not easily resolved,
which reveals some specificity to anime that is not necessarily isolated
to the material it is produced in; at the same time there is a grappling
with how exactly to (re)produce the anime-­esque from cel animation
in CG animation.
To stay on the struggles of CG anime attempting to (re)produce the
anime-­esque, there have even been attempts to reproduce celluloid lim-
 Introduction 41

ited animation techniques in CG animation. The processing necessary

for CG animation takes significant time and computing resources, so
it may initially appear that the replication of anime-­esque limited ani-
mation stems from many of the same economic restrictions that helped
instigate early celluloid limited animation innovations. But cutting back
on processing time and labor results in more stuttered movements, such
as in Berserk (2016), that are not evident in celluloid-­based anime. This
is the effect of artificially lowered frame rates that do not replicate the
jerkier rhythms of limited animation and instead appear as stammers
that impede continuity of movement. Whereas hand-­drawn, celluloid-­
based animation allows a varying of frame rates during different seg-
ments of scenes that creates a rhythmic sensation, CG anime help cut
costs by keeping the frame rates the same across all segments. Osten-
sibly, the goal is to court anime fans by mimicking the lowered frame
rates of anime-­esque cel animation, but there is also a material push-
back from computer processing and software restraints that impose the
same frame rate and/or impede easier adjustments of frame rates, in
effect insisting on more choppy movements. Although fans seem to ei-
ther deride or ignore this, it has become a common quirk of CG anime
that the industry aims to overcome in favor of replicating the rhythms of
limited cel animation. As more popular CG anime like Kemono Friends
attest, animators appear to have become more adept at mimicking the
limited animation movements through increased stillness and editing
rather than producing an anime-­esque aesthetic from the stutters.
This leads to another important issue that runs in the background
of anime’s media-­form: it always involves labor, and this labor is not
always human. It is not only an active human agent that molds the
materials of the medium to the convention. The material can be seen
as forcing a certain dynamic forward, and the convention that develops
from this constrains the human to enact it within those established
bounds. CG animation attempting to mimic cel animation is one ex-
ample of the shaping force that the anime-­esque entails, noticeable in
the final product that may either violate or embrace the anime-­esque
to varying degrees. As time goes on, CG anime themselves may be-
come sources for the anime-­esque. At the same time, as noted above,
these are not exact replicas of cel anime, and there is a distinct resis-
tance to the anime-­esque derived from celluloid that is apparent in CG
anime stemming from the differences in the materials of production.
42 Introduction

Here, I want to underscore the specificity of animation’s medium, the

importance of the material realities of the production of animation
(from compositing practices to transnational labor), and the repetition
of convention that makes anime difficult to definitively own or con-
trol. The resultant view of anime makes it hard to sustain considering
an anime to be the product of an auteur director’s orchestration; it is
rather an approach that insists on a dispersal of agency in production
that can extend beyond national boundaries.
Indeed, it is necessary to engage with medium, material, and con-
vention for anime to even exist transnationally. The very material ac-
tualities of anime production allow for each layer of an image to be
produced by different people, in disparate places, at various times, be-
fore being composited together. This enables the outsourcing of anime,
which can occur across national borders. Moreover, because anima-
tion is not necessarily an indexical medium, the location of production
is easy to hide: as animation, each layer of an image—­if composited
and edited sufficiently—­can appear uniform, as if made in one place,
and maintains a unity in the visual conventions employed. What fa-
cilitates this is the anime-­esque, which, if executed acceptably, can
be said to enable that seeming uniformity, meaning that the conven-
tionality of anime-­esque animation both enables and masks anime’s
transnationality.
In sum, the term “media-­form” is used to invoke how medium, ma-
terial, and convention are all interrelated for anime. Though not neces-
sarily in this order, there are tendencies that occur through engagement
with the medium of animation’s material and technology (historically
celluloid and the multiplane animation stand, but now also CG), con-
ventionalized through reiterations (the anime-­esque) that, in other
examples, such as other anime, media mix products, and fan works,
invite connected groupings of repetitions that substantiate some idea
of a cohesiveness to anime. Therefore, this nonlinear, intra-­active inter­
play between medium, material, and convention that produces the
recognizability of anime is included in the term “anime’s media-­form,”
which is constituted through repetition and can occur transnationally.
Thus, when I state that I see anime as a media-­form, I am conceptual-
izing anime in regard to the materiality and medium of animation, the
technologies that enable the execution of that animation, the disparate
locales and practices of its labor, the repeated conventions that are in-
 Introduction 43

volved in its implementation, and how anime itself facilitates a mode of

existence in a specific historical moment.

Historical Moment
All the elements included in anime’s media-­form are here seen as part
of a particular time period. The historical era that I will specifically be
examining is the late 1990s to the present, with a focus on 1995 to 2018.
I chose these years partly because anime’s economic success inside and
outside of Japan became increasingly apparent in the 1990s, resulting in
government promotion of anime. Moving swiftly from a relatively niche
product for the subculture of otaku in Japan, anime was thrust into the
national limelight from the late ­1990s onward as representative of Japa-
nese culture on the global stage. Anime and manga, which until recently
had been seen within Japan as merely childish products, were promoted
as able to bring some degree of economic prosperity to Japan during the
stagnation of “the lost decade” after the economic bubble burst—­a major
shift for their image. Such nation branding is part of a larger phenome-
non of cultural commodification that is not isolated to Japan. Cultural
products have become one of the industries through which a nation can
gain a competitive edge in the global economy, with anime and other
otaku media beginning to be featured at the forefront of Japan’s globally
focused nation branding in the early ­2000s, culminating in the current
label of Cool Japan. Here the tensions of globalization become readily ap-
parent, as anime has to straddle between a globally popular product that
is also somehow representative of, and claimed by the nation-­state of,
Japan. This all coincided with the increase in academic study of anime,
both inside and outside of Japan.
It was also during the late ­1990s that the time slot of late-­night TV
anime began, further creating a market for the type of anime that
would be globally distributed. Foreign and local demand would also
prompt a steady increase in the number of anime produced year on
year, a peak of anime production that would eclipse production num-
bers of any other prior “anime boom.” This increase in numbers also
produced more repetition of anime-­esque conventions, as different
productions aspired to present themselves as an anime media product
locally and globally. Additionally, landmark works such as Evangelion
appeared, which opened up problematics repeatedly engaged with in
44 Introduction

later anime, grappling with issues of individualism under the rising tide
of global neoliberalism.
Here, I will broadly consider neoliberalism as David Harvey defines
it: “a theory of political economic practices that proposes that human
well-­being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneur-
ial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework character-
ized by strong private property rights, free markets, and free trade.”
But contrary to a rhetoric of emancipation through noninvolvement of
government, neoliberalism ultimately involves state intervention, often
through deregulation and privatization.61 Such a neoliberal framework
has rapidly spread across the world, and as scholars such as Makoto
Itoh, Tomiko Yoda, and Gabrielle Lukács have detailed, it took various
configurations in Japan during that time.62
Importantly, Harvey notes that neoliberalism dovetails with nation-
alism, where “the neoliberal state is expected to take a back seat and
simply set the stage for market functions, but . . . [also] be activist in
creating a good business climate and to behave as a competitive entity
in global politics.”63 On the macro scale of the world stage, then, each
nation’s exported products are seen as in competition with one another
on a global free market. Such a neoliberal worldview can be seen in Cool
Japan, which aims to sell anime across the world to bring economic
gains back to Japan. But neoliberalism also operates on more micro
scales. The illusion of state nonintervention places the onus on the in-
dividual as the unit of agency and responsibility, dismissing socie­tal
context as entirely external and irrelevant. Following Harvey and Jason
Read, neoliberalism can thus be seen as emphasizing individualism as
the standard grounding for neoliberal structuration of everyday life,
which became all the more visible during that historical moment.64
For these reasons, the transformative time frame of the late ­1990s
to the late 2­ 010s will be the focus of this study. Examining anime from
this period and exploring shifts in the production, promotion, and dy-
namics of anime’s media-­form can provide insight into the tensions
of straddling national and global culture. However, by eschewing a
focus exclusively on Japan toward the transnational, anime’s media-­
form can be seen as enmeshed in an environment Arjun Appadurai
describes as consisting of multiple flows of media, people, capital, tech-
nologies, and ideas across national borders, intersecting at different
points, over­lapping and colliding, linking to areas that are not always
 Introduction 45

geographically close.65 Connected not only by the transnational flows

of capital and industry but also by the media flows on the internet,
disparate peoples and objects are constantly shifting between diverse
systems as the compulsive production of new commodities continues
to expand and circulate globally. In this context, people are frequently
forced to come to terms with the inconsistencies of the inter-­national
as they live the global in their local lives.
Many of these tensions are enacted in anime: anime as a local versus
global product; anime as a specific media-­form that is transnationally
produced; maintaining a cohesive identity in production but articulat-
ing distinction; sustaining each product’s recognizability through the
implementation of conventions but keeping them diverse and varied
in each execution. Anime’s resultant aesthetic is thus well aligned to a
globalized world of cosmopolitan megacities and transnational flows of
production, distribution, and consumption. Accordingly, anime affords
a means for conceptualizing spatiality and its concomitant modes of
perception, expression, and existence in this moment of globalization,
which coalesce and conflict with those still prominent from modernity.

Performance/Performativity
To conceptualize anime as a media-­form in this historical moment
of globalization, several issues need to be accounted for, among them
medium, materiality, and conventionality’s repetition and diversity.
This is where performance and performativity theory become useful,
as they are well equipped to deal with many of these points. The great
advantage of this theory is the play between performance and perfor-
mativity. In performance studies, influential theorists such as Richard
Schechner reflect on the nature of acting and acts in the dynamics of
the performing arts broadly conceived, building on innovations by so-
cial scientists like Victor Turner and Erving Goffman, to move away
from conceptions of the theater’s exclusivity to the stage, using it in-
stead to examine the “real world.”66 For Schechner, all performance
is “restored behavior” coming from a variety of sources, reenacted in
various combinations in all manner of contexts.67 Here performance is
a heuristic lens for examining the world, taking into consideration the
context of acts, actors, actions, and how they interrelate. In sum, there
is an important emphasis here on not only individual actions but also
46 Introduction

on repeated actions and their histories, on how an act is executed and

how it produces meaning in that context. This is where one can start to
see an overlap with performativity theory.
Performativity theory begins with the inquiries into language by
J. L. Austin, who posits a temporary division between two types of lan-
guage: the constative and the performative. Constatives are assertions,
statements that can be verified in the outside world, such as “it is rain-
ing outside”; performatives are words that achieve some action (e.g.,
saying “I promise” is the act of promising), the enunciation of which
can bring something into existence. While acting as only a temporary
division, which Austin later abandons for a separate but related typol-
ogy of language (emphasizing that how something is said can change its
meaning), the performative reveals language as executing actions that
are not necessarily “true or false” but rather “felicitous or infelicitous.”
Felicity, as the appropriate and/or successful execution of a perfor-
mative, is often connected to several factors, such as the role of the
speaker, the context, and established conventions of the speech-­act,
and considers varying degrees of efficacy. Austin examines how even
in every­day life these performative dynamics are important to how lan-
guage functions. Addressing theater proper, Austin (in)famously notes
how words spoken on the stage are etiolations somehow parasitic of
the real instances of usage and relation to the everyday conventions of
their application.68 Jacques Derrida famously takes issue with this and
asserts that, in fact, all language works that way: it is citational and can
only operate in relation to previous instances. Furthermore, language
must rely on an iterability, a tension between repetition and difference;
each word must clearly, strongly resemble prior instances of its expres-
sion or it will cease to be legible, yet still be distinct enough to be sepa­
rate and specific. Additionally, there is a play between presence and
absence involved, something that both is and is not there (e.g., reading
the written words of a friend who is far away).69
Judith Butler, reading Austin through Derrida and Michel Foucault,
reinserts this understanding of performativity into the idea of per-
formance beyond the stage, deftly moving between performance and
performativity as she conceptualizes gender. In Butler’s view, gender is
not something that naturally springs from the sex of the individual. In-
stead, “a stylized repetition of act” brings gender into being and gives it
the illusion of solidity.70 Gender is thus performative, enacted through
 Introduction 47

reiterated conventions of a sociohistorical context, never able to ac-

tualize in some final configuration. Since gender is constantly consti-
tuted through citational acts, “the complex components that go into
an act must be distinguished in order to understand the kind of acting
in concert and acting in accord which acting one’s gender invariably
is.”71 Here, we are all both subjected to and the agents of imitable gen-
der conventions, where the external appears to be internalized through
habitual acts.
However, this does not mean that this is an easily alterable state of
affairs. Butler highlights repetition as integral to the legitimation of
such acts, and this makes them accumulate a rigidity over time. In her
work focused on language itself, Butler conceptualizes some hateful
language as building up associations with physical violence, each itera-
tion gaining a sedimentary force through repetition.72 In a similar vein,
the repeated conventions of gender are not an easy force to do away
with. Still, Butler does not see gender performativity as entirely confin-
ing, and there are acts that can reveal their mechanics and/or disrupt
them, such as drag,73 facilitating opportunities for change and varia-
tion, for “an improvisational possibility within a field of constraints.”74
In short, there is a potential for transformation in performative acts
within these fields of restraint, repetitions that open up into difference.
While this is a brief, selective overview, I would suggest that, with
these tools, performance/performativity theory can mesh well with the
concept of forms (Levine’s forms and anime’s media-­form) employed
here, with a focus on how something is enacted, how repetition of con-
ventionalized elements is constitutive of its existence, and how there is
a tension between the specific instance of performance and past itera-
tions in each enactment. In Schechner’s words, “performances can be
generalized at the theoretical level of restoration of behavior, but as em-
bodied practices each and every performance is specific and different
from every other. The differences enact the conventions and traditions
of a genre, the personal choices made by the performers, directors, and
authors, various cultural patterns, historical circumstances, and the
particularities of reception.”75 Much the same may be said of forms,
which, while restrictive, always maintain the possibility for variation
and difference. The great paradox of repetition is always at play in
the performance of form: two iterations must differ in some way or
they would not be two. Put differently, each performance of the form
48 Introduction

wrestles with the tension of reproducing the same, sometimes mini-

malizing difference, sometimes maximizing difference, but engaging
with prior instances nonetheless.
It is also important to note that Butler’s notion of performativity con-
nects well with other concepts of performance, namely Clifford Carl-
son’s, in that it involves “a consciousness of doubleness, through which
the actual execution of an action is placed in mental comparison with
a potential, an ideal, or a remembered original model of that action.”76
In regard to the media at hand, one can see how various anime consis-
tently repeat elements in different iterations, citing from a repertoire or
database of anime-­esque conventional models. This utilization of models
even connects to the execution of anime in the medium of animation,
apparent in the very performance of character animation: characters are
drawn in different positions to be animated, every drawing specific but
referencing a model of the same character, even as each drawing itself
produces more models, literally reiterating the character in variations in
the process of redrawing. In this sense, as Laikwan Pang notes, the physi­
cal copying of characters is how cel animation itself operates, where the
very performance of drawing the character, and even each image of the
movement, must resemble the character models they are based on to
maintain a sense of unity yet still be distinct to produce movement.77
While animating can be seen as a type of performance, at the same
time, performances may also be a type of animating, a line of thought
Teri Silvio follows in her article “Animation: The New Performance?”
More specifically, Silvio explores how conceptions of animation applied
outside of the medium itself may provide a fitting analogue to contem-
porary issues in the same manner that theater provided useful tools to
examine society. According to Silvio, if Butler “posits performance as
the introjection of the environment into the self, a psychic theory of
animation focuses on the projection of the self into the environment. In
both cases, the transitional space is where boundaries between self and
world are encountered, crossed, and reconstructed.”78 Silvio’s account
of the intertwining of animation and performance concepts touches on
many issues at play here, such as medium and materials of expression,
character construction modes, and codification, as well as objecthood
and branding in our globalized world of constant border crossing.
In addition to the ideas Silvio explores, I will be borrowing from
Donald Crafton’s adaption of performance theory to the study of ani-
 Introduction 49

mation. Crafton differentiates the performance of animation—­the acts

of producing animation—­and performance in animation—­the acts
that occur within the animation, the actions carried out by the char-
acters, or other entities, within the final product.79 Such an approach
allows one to see anime production as humans performing a type of
animation as they work with the materials involved in animating.
Further­more, it allows for an engagement with the dynamics of what
is occurring in anime, for example, the performances of the characters
within anime, or the repeated anime-­esque elements.
In sum, to examine how performances of and in anime constitute an
identity, I will be adapting the abovementioned performativity theory.
Through this framework, anime’s media-­form can be seen as produced
through a “stylized repetition of act” that negotiates anime’s identity
in each enactment of anime-­esque animations, working through the
problematics of diversity and multiplicity on the one hand and uniform­
ity and unity on the other. In the engagement of conventionalized el-
ements and the technical processes and materiality of animation, this
problematic is invoked through each performance of anime. In this
view, anime’s identity is constituted by the repetition of audio, visual,
and narrative conventions in the medium of animation. These anime-­
esque conventions bring anime into existence through a performance
that cites earlier enactments of those conventions, in effect producing
“acts of anime”—­a “doing” of anime that relies on prior iterations and
has no final configuration.
In fact, if an anime diverges too much from the expected conven-
tions, it loses its anime-­esque recognizability and cannot be sold or
consumed as anime; at the same time, works so repetitive they are re-
dundant become stale and do not sell well either. In short, in the “doing
of anime,” in the acts of the anime-­esque, one can see a tension at work
that results in many recognizably similar productions that all avoid
redundancy even as they work within a range of expression. Further-
more, many conventional elements that may be described as anime-­
esque or ascribed to “anime proper” (for lack of a better term) are
executed within various works, even those one would not normally as-
sociate with anime, as repeatable elements. Works one may recognize
as anime proper are not necessarily animations from Japan but rather
animations that perform many anime-­esque acts, whether produced
inside or outside of Japan.
50 Introduction

The rigidity in anime performances enables this portability, but

this is always accompanied by a slim margin for change. Specifically,
media-­form acts as a guiding force along which anime is performed,
but this does not mean that there is not any experimentation or po-
tential for a stark departure from trend. This is further complicated in
that the anime-­esque involves different elements, performed in differ-
ent amounts, to different degrees of cohesion or deviation from trend.
Each individual anime negotiates its identity by enacting the tensions
of distinctiveness and uniformity in its performance. It is the specific
way that each anime executes its iterative anime-­esque acts that creates
its distinctiveness. Anime, as a media-­form, must thus work through
this dynamic to consistently reproduce itself as a viable media product.
This means that to examine anime is to examine it in consideration
of its dynamics of repetition and variation. This is something that
was shown at play in the iterations of the Macross franchise but that
can be extended to the anime industry itself, each anime attempting
to work through the problematic of anime’s identity. Anime operates
via citation, sustained by those reiterations, yet blind repetition of the
same elements is often reflected negatively in sales; redundant prod-
ucts create stagnation, while variation on a pattern can be consistently
felicitous—­for example, the formulas executed in the Macross series.
Because anime so strictly maintains its recognizable media-­form,
the repetition within a certain range enforces limits: to do anime is
to perform within those limits, whatever they are identified as. Often,
anime’s media-­form limits are seen as determined by their relation to
Japan, even as the transnational production processes of the actual per-
formances consistently violate those limits. By conceptualizing anime
as performative, as constituted by the repetition of conventionalized
acts, anime’s media-­form is opened up to the global, performed in pro-
duction (and consumption) in many places at once—­anime as perfor-
mance on the world stage denies a natural relation between national
origin and the performance of anime’s conventionalized acts.

Overview of the Book

In sum, as an alternative to reading Japan through anime, this book
presents a new approach to forms that provides a means to inquire
into anime and the media dynamics, selfhood, and regionality that are
 Introduction 51

opened up by globalization. Put succinctly, the central claim of this

book is that the animated productions called anime maintain an iden-
tity, enacted in the execution of its recognizable media-­form, which
reflects the problematics of globalization. Adapting the theories of the
performative, anime is seen as constituted by a series of repeated acts
executed in animation, citing conventionalized models in each itera-
tion to sustain a recognizable identity as a category of media. Therefore,
this study explores the implications of this on the global stage, allowing
for an examination of anime’s history and production, and to a lesser
extent consumption and distribution, from a point of departure other
than the nation, examining how anime’s aesthetics are rife with the
tensions of globalization and transnationality in the current era.
Each chapter of the book approaches the problematics of anime’s
identity from different perspectives, engaging with at least two differ-
ent poles to explore how tensions arise. These include the bordered-­
whole and network, centralized and decentralized networks, the
(inter-­)national and transnational, uniformity and diversity, creativity
and copying, individuality and particularity, stillness and motion, the
micro and macro, and the local and global. These are not meant to be
seen as indisputable binaries. Many overlap, collide, inflect, and re-
flect one another, often operating in very different ways and registers.
There are surely other poles that anime operates with, and those dis-
cussed here are raised as tools to produce a framework for thinking
about anime transnationally and globally, or to think transnationally
and globally with anime.
Beginning with an interrogation of anime’s associations with nation
and region, the first chapters examine how two different ways of con-
ceptualizing the global afford disparate views and detail how anime,
as a globally prevalent media-­form, is moved between these two con-
ceptualizations. This is an effort to explore how the form of the inter-­
national (as bordered-­wholes of nation-­states) encounters the form of
the transnational (as network) in regard to anime production and dis-
tribution. Sometimes the inter-­national and the transnational collide in
conflict, as with internet piracy, and other times they work in concert,
as with official internet streaming.
Chapter 1 engages with the global shifts of defining anime and the
discourses on how one measures anime’s globality. Anime often has its
global circulation forced into the static framework of inter-­nationalism
52 Introduction

via national market diagnostics and licensing practices, traveling

around the world for decades yet always remaining a part of Japa-
nese culture. I interrogate this “standard” view of the global enabled
by the inter-­national, detailing how institutionalized concepts such
as exports, imports, and national markets force us to remain in the
inter-­national and are built on the form of the bordered-­whole as used
in the conceptualization of the nation-­state. Although this view is what
the book hopes to overcome, it should not be entirely dismissed. In fact,
the internal–­external dynamic afforded by this framework allows for
an exploration of the local–­global tensions of anime when defined as
a national cultural product through the nation branding campaign of
Cool Japan, revealing its contradictions. For instance, the way the local
gets conflated with the national in the context of the global corresponds
with the elevation of anime from subcultural to national media-­form
through nation branding as anime gains global recognition, evincing
how the global transforms the local. With this in mind, the relatively
recent shifts in the word anime in Japan are detailed and seen as a
response to the external acceptance of anime in other countries; the
definition of the English word “anime” as a type of Japanese animation
helps raise the definition used by the local anime fan subculture to
national prominence. Subsequently, examining these processes high-
lights the ambiguities of anime’s identity as a global product coming
from Japan.
While using the bordered-­whole is one way to examine anime’s glo-
bality, an alternative perspective will be revealed through an explora-
tion of anime’s production system. To set the foundations for how this
could inform a conception of transnationality, chapter 2 explores how
the dispersal of agency in anime production extends to transnational
production. This is done through an analysis of Shirobako (2014–15; an
anime about making anime) using actor-­network theory, revealing how
the series depicts anime production as a constant process of negotiation
involving a variety of actors, each having tangible effects on the final
product: human actors (directors, animators, and production assis-
tants), the media mix (publishing houses and manga authors), and the
anime media-­form itself. Anime production thus operates as a network
of actors whose agency is dispersed across a chain of hierarchies that,
though unacknowledged by Shirobako, often occurs transnationally,
 Introduction 53

making attribution of a single actor as the agent who addresses Japan,

or the world, difficult to sustain.
The transnational implication of this multilayered process of anime
production is explored directly in chapter 3, which details the trans­
national history and production as it relates to conceptions of region-
ality. Indeed, anime has been utilizing outsourced labor across Asia for
decades. Therefore, many of anime’s images are what Hye Jean Chung
calls a “media heterotopia,” where disparate locales of production are
composited into a single image while keeping in view the tensions
and labor involved in their creation.80 This production system takes
the form of the network, where people, technologies, and materials are
connected across national boundaries. Although this network is cen-
tralized in Japan, rather than focusing exclusively on the “one-­to-­many”
operations with Japan providing instructions for foreign animators to
simply follow, I emphasize the “many-­to-­one” operations whereby the
animators are performing anime-­esque conventions that get sent back
to Japan. Built from the operations of anime’s production across Asia
and elsewhere, a type of transnationality, centralized in Japan, begins
to take shape.
Taking this transnational production network into account, anima-
tors both inside and outside of Japan are seen as molded by anime’s
codes and conventions. As these outsourced animators also perform
many parts of the animation, their labor is (in)visible in the images
seen when watching anime, part and parcel of the final product. Their
contributions are often unacknowledged due to their successful enact-
ments, creating a sense of uniformity to the images presumed to come
from Japan. Thus, the felicitous performance of anime-­esque conven-
tions both facilitates and conceals the scale of anime’s transnationality.
Performing anime in such a felicitous manner can be seen as disrupting
the narrative of anime as solely Japanese since the animators actively
participate as a uniform layer in the image, exposing anime as an imi-
table media-­form that it is not exclusive to Japan. Anime as performa-
tive acknowledges the constraints while attempting to reveal a sliver
of agency, distributed across the network of production, where power
still lies in the hierarchy of production, mostly located in Japan. How-
ever, the performance of the animation stands as an imitable act that
occurs across borders. In consideration of this, on the level of anime
54 Introduction

production, in the images and sounds of the final product, anime is

heterotopic: anime’s images maintain a tension between the geographi­
cally disparate places, people, and materials engaged in the production
and their unity in the composited images of the final anime.
This tension between multiplicity and diversity on the one hand and
unity and uniformity on the other is engaged with in each of anime’s
performances. This is the subject of chapter 4, which examines these
dynamics through a deeper exploration of performance/performativity
theory, considering how anime itself, as a media-­form, enacts the ten-
sions of diversity and uniformity in its performance. Indeed, despite
the wide variety of subjects, anime maintains remarkable consistency
in its media-­form across genres and even studios. From this perspec-
tive, anime’s media-­form operates as a decentralized network through
cross-­referential citation, where each iteration is distinct but linked to
prior instances. To explore this tension, I engage with the mechanics of
anime’s performance as it balances a multitude of styles yet maintains
a relative uniformity to sustain a recognizable identity as a particular
category of media. In this way, anime operates like a brand: in straying
too far from a conventional model, it loses anime-­esque recognizabil-
ity and cannot be sold or consumed as anime. Therefore, anime must
continuously work through the problematic of maintaining its identity
without redundancy, each performance working through the tensions
of repetition and variation.
Working through this problematic entails a different type of crea­
tivity, as combinations of citations from conventional models in each
performance negotiate that anime’s identity as an anime and its dis-
tinction from other anime. From this perspective, creativity no longer
becomes an act of deviation, as in modern approaches that valorize
originality and individualism. Rather, creativity becomes an act of
repetition, moving toward a preexisting model rather than away from
trend. In this type of creativity, copies can become sources of their
own, and what separates a knock-­off from authentic work becomes dif-
ficult to sustain, as originality is not as important as recognizability
and iterability.81
Through an exploration of this type of creativity, which engages with
the generative and interlinking capacity of repetition, chapter 5 explores
how to consider this in the context of transnationally produced anime,
where the citationality of anime’s creativity crosses national borders.
 Introduction 55

Here I emphasize the decentralized, “point-­to-­point” potentials of the

anime-­esque, whereby each (re)performance is related, even trans­
nationally. Thus a more heterarchical type of transnationality that coex-
ists with the centralized network of production comes into view. Instead
of deriding anime-­esque works made outside of Japan as simply mim-
icking Japanese styles, this chapter explores alternative approaches to
openly transnational anime, calling into question the received dynam-
ics of cultural production of contemporary creative industries, which
is so often nation-­based. In contrast to the modern view of creativity
exploited by nation branding, where the individual artist, company, or
media-­form stands in for a nation’s interior culture that is exported, the
iterative performances of the anime-­esque are seen as enacting multi­
faceted transcultural linkages beyond national boundaries.
As the preceding chapters engage with how Levine’s forms, bordered-­
wholes and networks, could provide a more transnational analysis of
the performance of anime’s media-­form, the examples provided tend to
home in on highly visible and recognizable elements of anime, such as
anime-­esque characters and limited animation. These two intersect in
one of the most iconic elements of the anime-­esque that signals Japan:
the character acting employed in anime, such as the codified gestures of
glimmering eyes for overflowing emotion or arched eyes for happiness.
To fully explore an alternative approach to anime’s media-­form, instead
of reading these gestures as representing Japanese cultural norms ex-
clusively, one may consider them an entrance point into examining how
the enactment of anime characters affords a particular mode of exis-
tence that may be distinct from the selfhood of the modern individual
who possesses strict internal–­external borders. With this in mind, in
order to consider how anime characters act, one must first engage with
the medium they act in, with, and through: animation.
From this point of departure, chapter 6 explores how these anime
characters act through their performance of and in animation. Unde-
niably, animation has often been remarked on for its capacity to make
objects that are usually considered lifeless appear to move and act,
and in this sense, the medium already provides a window into differ-
ent modes of existence. If one follows Ursula Heise to say that ani-
mation facilitates a visual framework for a world of active objects by
animating their movement, then how the objects move through the
animation may change how they are constituted as actors.82 In other
56 Introduction

words, how bodies move in animation, human and nonhuman alike,

indicate conceptions of self as it is constituted through the dynamics
of its animation.
To extrapolate, chapter 6 aims to (re)consider Crafton’s conceptu-
alization of animation performance, embodied and figurative perfor-
mance, in relation to anime. In embodied acting, often seen in Disney’s
works, the expression of character is produced through distinctive
movements, where characters are constituted as individuals, each with
his or her own discrete inside and outside (a bordered-­whole). Figura-
tive acting, on the other hand, utilizes codified gestures and expres-
sions. Due to this reliance on conventionalized expressions, figurative
performances build from previous ones, citing these external codes
and reiterating them on soulful bodies in different contexts. It is this
latter type of acting that is often used in anime, where actors operate
through point-­to-­point network operations as they cite earlier itera-
tions, characters becoming both compounds of citations and sites for
other citations. Each mode of acting tends toward a different concept of
selfhood, with embodied acting performing the modern concept of in-
dividualism bound to the singular body that enacts the movement and
figurative acting performing a kind of particularity rather than individ-
uality, where the self is a composite configured through the citation of
codes. However, it should be noted that embodied and figurative acting
are not opposites but rather are mutually implicated in one another
to varying degrees. This interconnection is explored in animation and
by examining the contemporary performance of self under conditions
of neoliberalism through commodity-­based lifestyles, a mode of self-­
expression dominant in major cities across Asia and around the world.
Building on these conceptions of anime’s media-­form, the next two
chapters explore the varying approaches to anime’s globality and trans-
nationality detailed in earlier chapters through analyses of specific
anime. With this in mind, chapter 7 returns to (re)considering anime’s
relationship with Japan and the local–­global tensions detailed in chap-
ter 1 through an analysis of the sekaikei genre. Specifically, I investigate
how the genre engages with the questions opened up by the 1995 hit
Evangelion through the repetition and variation of Evangelion’s ap-
proach to characters and narrative in different sekaikei works. Building
on the Japanese-­language theoretical discourse on the genre, sekaikei
anime are analyzed, exploring how, spurred on by rising neoliberalist
 Introduction 57

rhetoric, sekaikei anime continually repeat a crisis of individualism for

the characters. The crisis’s resolution is intimately tied to the destruc-
tion or salvation of the world at large, and micro relations between two
characters have macro, global implications. In other words, sekaikei
anime put into juxtaposition and direct engagement the micro scales
of interpersonal relations and the macro scales of global transforma-
tions (in this case, destruction). This is read as a concurrent enactment
of a crisis of anime’s own identity, with sekaikei works appearing at
the same historical moment that anime became increasingly acknowl-
edged for its global popularity yet promoted as representative of Japa­
nese national culture via nation-­branding campaigns, tensely caught
between the local and global.
This seems to be where anime’s identity tends to currently settle:
governed by a tension between anime as Japanese cultural product
and anime as global. Initially it may seem like anime’s identity aligns
with contemporaneous nation branding. Indeed, once the sekaikei
genre’s popularity waned around 2007 and Cool Japan became more
pronounced, there was a concurrent rise of place-­focused anime based
on actual locales in Japan. While such an emphasis on places in Japan
can easily be folded into the national, this simultaneously reveals the
similar local–­global tensions displayed in sekaikei, where it is as if the
anxiety of anime’s acknowledged global reach is now covered up by
the insistence on locking anime to Japan through its supposedly in-
dexical relationship to places in Japan. But if anime is a performance
of media-­form, then the depiction of place in anime itself becomes a
performance, one that highlights the dynamics of globalization rather
than a national locale.
From this perspective, in the final chapter, I explore place-­focused
anime depicting locations in Japan and China, analyzing what may be
called the problematics of dislocation: being situated in a location but
somehow also displaced due to its relation to iterations elsewhere. To
examine this dislocation, I turn to discussions of spatiality as theat-
ricality, in theorizations by William Egginton and Samuel Weber, ul-
timately relating it to the dynamics of anime’s media-­form, building
on Levitt’s conception of animation’s medium. These concepts are then
explored through an analysis of two anime that perform dislocation
differently, each revealing the enactment of the two abovementioned
58 Introduction

notions of centralized and decentralized transnationality in varying

degrees.
The first anime is the openly transnational production Shikioriori, an
omnibus film from 2018 that depicts three cities in China, continuing
the trend of place-­focused anime that attempt to indexically tie anime
to Japan through the representation of locality. Although the places
detailed are in China, attention is drawn to anime’s media-­form as the
intermediary through which to explore them. The film also attempts to
authenticate this performance through an advertised relation to Japan
via its utilization of a famous production studio in Tokyo (CoMix Wave
Films). In the process, there is a reaffirming of Japan’s centrality even as
the transnational is brought into view. The second work is King’s Avatar
(2017), whose central production studio, B.CMay Pictures, is located in
Shanghai. This series builds on action anime conventions to present
the reinvention of a famous esports player with a new avatar in an on-
line game in China. Instead, of making any claims to authenticity in re-
lation to Japan, the up-front performance of anime’s media-­form aligns
with the narrative’s emphasis on a meritocratic judgment of gameplay
performance and hints at a different type of dislocation, building on
a heterarchical decentralized network and a sense of selfhood that is
distinctive but linked across media spaces and real spaces.
Although they provide different takes on dislocation, both anime
highlight what is evident in all anime-­esque performances. This is an
unease about situatedness, a tension between the local and global,
internal and external, that occurs on multiple registers: in the very
performance of the media-­form itself, which straddles the tensions of
multiplicity and uniformity in each iterative performance; in the en-
actment of characters, constituted by the execution of conventional-
ized expressions that themselves deal with the tensions of iterability,
of existing at multiple places at once, on and outside the characters;
in the movements enabled by working with and through the multiple
layers that are composited to make up the singular anime image; and
in the production processes where these layers are produced in multi-
ple locales at different times. Though distinct in their particulars, each
anime performance affords a spatiality that embodies the tensions of
the contemporary moment of globalization, of how a singular point
becomes the site of an accumulation of diverse relations, a node in a
network, always connecting to other instances in other spaces.
 Introduction 59

Altogether, what the performativity of anime’s media-­form reveals

is a complex intersection of different ways of being global and trans­
national. Viewed through the form of the bordered-­whole, it may ini-
tially appear that anime’s identity is caught in inter-­national stasis as a
Japanese cultural product with a global presence, grounded in the local
as it reaches out toward the global. But closer examination presents a
different configuration where Tokyo looms as the privileged point in
a centralized network of transnational anime production across Asia
and beyond. Still, on another level, what both enables and conceals this
production are the felicitous enactments of the anime-­esque, the cita-
tional mechanics of which afford a far more heterarchical, decentral-
ized network that operates across borders. All three of these dynamics
are clashing and converging at once, existing in tense interrelation in
the performances of anime’s identity.
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 9 1 0

Anime’s Local–­Global Tensions

The Bordered-­Whole Inter-­national

Since it is accessible around the world, asserting that anime, often de-
fined as “a style of Japanese commercial animation,” is global should
not come across as a controversial claim. Yet even such a seemingly
simple statement reveals one of the pressing problematics of contempo-
rary globalization: a tension between the local and the global and thus
between anime as Japanese, global, or somehow both. Therefore, it is
worthwhile to consider anime’s identity by inquiring into the frame-
work(s) anime’s globality is viewed through. With this in mind, in this
chapter I will be examining the dominant manner in which anime’s
globality is perceived and measured: “inter-­nationalism.”
The most potent and institutionalized framework, “inter-national-
ism,” sees the world as divided up into bordered nation-­states, where
trade occurs between and among them. Indeed, this is the institutional
framework we must contend with in our daily lives on the news (inter-­
national vs. national news), in paperwork (import and export forms and
visas), and in academic disciplinary structures that produce knowledge
(area studies such as Japan studies, Korean studies, and China studies).
In the inter-­national, the unit of analysis is the nation-­state, even if
multiple nations are involved and there is constant movement between
them. In this view, for each nation-­state, internal and external become
clearly defined, with inclusions and exclusions, which affords certain
conceptual possibilities and forecloses others.
In these ways, the nation-­state takes on a particular form, which
Levine calls the bordered-­whole: a container with discrete borders, an
inside and an outside.1 For Levine, “the nation is an especially power-
ful form of social experience: a bounded shape that contains and ho-
mogenizes, drawing boundaries around what belongs and excluding
what does not . . . [holding] heterogeneous materials together.”2 While

9 61 0
62 Anime’s Local–­Global Tensions

Levine relates the bordered-­whole to the nation-­state, one can consider

inter-­nationalism as a formal framework for the global, consisting of
various bordered-­whole nation-­states. In consideration of this, I will
call this set of bordered-­wholes of nation-­states the “inter-­national,”
following Kōichi Iwabuchi’s preference of using the hyphen to “high-
light the reworking and strengthening of the national in tandem with
the intensification of cross-­border media culture flows.”3
In what follows, I will be examining how anime’s globality is com-
monly conceptualized through the form of the bordered-­whole as inter-­
nationalism. To begin, I will explore this “standard” view of the global
by analyzing how institutionalized concepts such as “export,” “import,”
and “national markets” place us in the inter-­national, (re)producing a
conception of anime’s global distribution as from the local, internal, to
the external. Such frameworks keep anime in stasis as Japanese despite
its global movement. However, the internal–­external dynamic afforded
by this framework can also provide insights into the local and global
tensions of defining anime as a national cultural product through the
nation-­branding campaign of Cool Japan. This ties into the relatively re-
cent shift in the internal usage of the word anime in Japan—­overlapping
with “anime” in English as a style of Japanese animation—­which is
intimately connected to the external acceptance of anime in other
countries. This direct association of anime with Japan continues to be
produced through discourse at events like AnimeJapan, directly associ-
ated with the nation-­branding campaign Cool Japan, which are strong
forces in negotiating this internal shift. With this in mind, using the
form of the bordered-­whole as a tool of analysis reveals how the changes
in anime’s status in Japan are highly dependent on its external recep-
tion, making anime lie somewhere both inside and outside of Japan,
bringing us to the limits of this manner of conceptualizing the global.

Mapping Anime’s Distribution

Anime actually has a long history of global distribution. In fact, as
Ryotarō Mihara points out, despite the criticisms of the sudden pro-
motion of anime’s exportation, anime has been exported for most of
its history.4 In the late 1­ 990s and early 2­ 000s, when anime’s global pop-
ularity became increasingly visible, the swift rise in anime’s dispersion
appeared to come out of nowhere when it was actually just the most
 Anime’s Local–­Global Tensions 63

recent upsurge in a long history of booms and lulls of exportation that

occurred at different times in separate areas of the world. This time,
however, the number of anime exported and the external demand were
significantly greater, and anime was clearly promoted as Japanese, as
“from Japan.” If, for convenience’s sake, Tezuka Osamu’s Tetsuwan
Atomu is taken as a crucial turning point in anime’s history—­when
anime makes a leap toward the product recognized today—­one can see
that it was exported since this crucial early moment. Indeed, Sandra
Annett points out that Tezuka planned this external distribution and
notes the speed of its broadcast outside of Japan: Tetsuwan Atomu aired
in Japan on January 1, 1963, and its dubbed and edited version Astro Boy
aired in the United States on September 7, 1963, just eight months later.5
Anime was readily available throughout Asia from this era onward,
even in South Korea, which officially banned the import from Japan.
While in the United States and Europe, many did not know anime was
“from Japan,” it was still quite popular in the 1970s and 1980s.6 This
global expansion in the 1980s coincided with the anime boom of pro-
duction in Japan at the time, and a similar pattern occurred in the late
­1990s. With more anime available, there was more content to distribute
abroad. In the early 2000s, during another anime boom, anime’s pro-
duction numbers increased with global demand.7 After a temporary
dip starting in 2006, production numbers began to steadily increase,
and global distribution and demand is now at numbers far higher than
ever before.8
Through these shifts, one of the important processes of anime’s
global distribution occurs through the institutional practice of licens-
ing, which is generally only for a set number of years. Licensing has a
way of dividing up the world into bordered-­wholes; sometimes it di-
vides by nation, but other times it divides by region such as United
States and Canada or by language (e.g., “English-­speaking territories”).
This is complicated by the “global” licensing of anime funded by stream-
ing services like Netflix, which distribute their shows to all subscribers
around the world at once, although this is limited to the places their
service is available. While each case is different, in general, the money
for licensing (usually an up-front fee and sometimes royalties) goes
back to the rights holders of the intellectual property (IP), usually in
Japan, and the anime series is allowed to be sold or broadcast within
the assigned area for the allotted time.9
64 Anime’s Local–­Global Tensions

An anime’s globality can generally be measured by counting its for-

eign licenses. For example, Masuda Hiromi notes that anime licenses
were sold to 138 countries, making anime as a whole quite quantifiably
global.10 At the same time, the framework whereby anime’s globality
is ascertained and measured in this instance, and in many others, is
still seen through the unit of the nation via national markets. Relying
on this institutionalized framework, the most common approach to
anime’s globality is to detail a narrative in which anime is exported
from Japan and imported into foreign markets, where each market is
divided by the unit of the nation-­state. The institutional practices and
terminology of “import” and “export” (re)produce the inter-­national
by creating nation-­state bordered-­wholes as units of analysis: nations
become the sources for export and targets for imports. Their utilization
presupposes a bordered-­whole of a nation-­state with a specified inter-
nal area to export from and import into. Therefore, the methods used
to measure anime’s globality return us back to the inter-­national, with
the unit of analysis firmly the nation-­state. From this perspective, the
world appears neatly organized: anime is made in Japan and then sent
to foreign markets. A great example of this is a literal map from the an-
nual report of the Association of Japanese Animations (which, it should
be noted, is a grouping of private businesses and not funded by the
Japanese state). Titled “Overseas Expansion of Japanese Anime” (nihon
no anime no kaigai tenkai), it provides a clear visualization of anime as
coming from Japan and spreading throughout the world, where each
individual market is delineated as a bordered-­whole nation-­state with
discrete boundaries into which anime (from Japan) is expanding into.11
With many export customs, official procedures generally take time
to process, involving licensing, translations, localized dubbing into
other languages, and sometimes edits (from the minor to the exten-
sive) that must meet local standards. These official processes fit closer
to the inter-­national map, even with internet distribution like Ten-
cent, Bilibili, Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Crunchyroll, as each service
detects location and limits users to the official versions allowed based
on their area—­a practice called “geoblocking.” This provides the po-
tential for a more palimpsest vision of bordered-­wholes than the inter-­
national, where certain sets of anime may have overlapping areas that
licensed those anime and other areas comparatively empty, creating a
temporary geography of officially available and unavailable media based
 Anime’s Local–­Global Tensions 65

on licensing. Interestingly, Crunchyroll, which specializes entirely in

anime and manga and is a globally prominent streamer of anime, is
not accessible from within Japan. Therefore, even the potentially trans­
national space of the internet becomes re-­mapped in accordance with
the bordered-­wholes of the inter-­national through these institutional
practices, even though shared access across national boundaries can
constitute different types of regions.12
The acts of distribution also have other ways of reproducing the re-
lation to the nation-­state, in particular to Japan. For example, anime’s
distribution is temporally positioned in relation to Japan. This occurs
through the prioritizing of the Japanese market, with anime generally
made for broadcast in accordance with (and often catering to) Japanese
TV programming data and time slots. This is why what people outside
of Japan would consider anime overlaps significantly with what would
be considered late-­night anime in Japan, as this is the time slot when
many anime are broadcast. This route is important because it makes
anime an export from Japan due to its “original” broadcast occurring
there.
“Unofficial” distribution (largely considered piracy), which was, in
the early 2­ 000s, at the forefront of the speedy delivery of anime epi-
sodes (sometimes just one day after their broadcast in Japan), set the
tone for a demand of quick releases of anime subtitled in other lan-
guages immediately after their release in Japan.13 This sets up Japan as
the forefront of anime, and legal, simulcast options such as those on
Crunchyroll provide this as a thrilling selling point: “Watch new epi-
sodes one hour after they air in Japan” (emphasis added).14 Therefore,
the standard of measure for speed and directionality is calibrated in
relation to Japan here. Even the rare cases of broadcasts that happen
outside of Japan first (as in Space Dandy in 2014) reinforce the primacy
of Japan because they derive their special attraction from their relative
rarity, highlighting how Japan is the de facto source of anime. Because
of this, delays actually accentuate the authenticity of the product, as they
are often assumed to be caused by translation or other legal ­issues—­in
other words, by the difficulty of getting the anime out of Japan. To main-
tain the speed of delivery, most internet distributors embrace the fan-
dom of the Japanese voice actors and stream the anime with subtitles
(in multiple target languages, in the case of Crunchyroll or Netflix—­
often depending on detected locale).
66 Anime’s Local–­Global Tensions

But broadcasting within Japan is not nationally unified, as the same

anime program can be aired at different times on different stations
in Japan. Japan, as a bordered nation-­state, enjoys the luxury of a sin-
gle time zone, yet despite this, anime are broadcast first in Tokyo and
then sometimes a week later in other parts of Japan, like Kyoto. With
legally streamed services online, viewers outside of Japan can now regu­
larly watch anime just one hour after its release in Tokyo. Consequently,
some anime can be seen outside of Japan on these sites earlier than they
can for some people living within Japan.
Unofficial versions are of course available at a similar speed, spread-
ing throughout the internet with relative freedom, usually through
subtitles, which are easy and quick to produce. Different groups from
different places can use the same source material and add their own
subtitles. Sometimes these “rips” come from sources in Japan; other
times they are from disparate places around the world. For example,
groups can use an Italian rip of a Blu-­ray, delete the subtitles, and then
produce subtitles in their own language. Official regions do not matter;
the files circulate and are adjusted without regard to national bound-
aries. Still, as described above, the official framework with which ani­
me’s distribution is conceptualized remains the dominant one and is
squarely in the inter-­national.

Anime’s Inter-­national Stasis

The form of the inter-­national is perhaps best encapsulated in its em-
ployment in Cool Japan, which promotes anime, manga, and other
products from Japan’s “contents industries,” and its conceptualization
of commodified culture for global export: it is a nation-­branding cam-
paign, the premise of which is to take Japanese internal content and
export it to other nations to bring money and goodwill back toward
Japan. Put another way, Cool Japan works from the inter-­national frame-
work, utilizing the form of bordered-­wholes, emphasizing sharply de-
fined borders, an internal and an external. Due to its prominence, I will
be using Cool Japan as the foremost example of this view, where anime
is seen as an exclusively Japanese cultural product reflecting Japanese
culture, “Made in Japan,” and then exported globally.
As Mihara asserts, the primary goal of Cool Japan is economic
growth and anime’s export into growing markets abroad.15 While gen-
 Anime’s Local–­Global Tensions 67

eral recognition of anime as a Japanese cultural product did not begin

in the 1990s, it increased dramatically toward the end of the decade
with the success of franchises such as Pokémon (1997–­present), films
such as Princess Mononoke (1997), and shows such as Evangelion, both
locally and globally. The Agency of Cultural Affairs was involved in the
Japan Media Arts Festival since 1997, and the first white paper promot-
ing anime and manga appeared in 2000. Anime’s economic potential
was later affirmed by the widely publicized English article “Gross Na-
tional Cool” by Douglas McGray in 2002.16 Cool Japan’s usage as a label
for the extensive project officially began in the mid-­2000s, eventually
involving the Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO) in 2009. The
campaign continued to gain momentum toward the establishment of
the Cool Japan Office by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry
(METI) in 2010 and the Cool Japan Fund Inc., a public-­private fund be-
ginning activity in 2013. Dentsu, one of the world’s largest advertising
companies, and other major corporations engaged with anime’s media
mix industry are frequently involved in various Cool Japan–associated
projects.17 When the nation-­branding campaign became firmly estab-
lished after the late ­2000s and early 2010s, anime became increasingly
accepted as “officially” Japanese culture instead of a more niche, juve-
nile subculture. In sum, in Cool Japan and its antecedents in the 1990s,
there was a movement toward promoting internal acknowledgment of
anime as a cultural product that could provide a competitive edge for
the nation in the global economy.
The inter-­national as constituted by Cool Japan is riddled with ideo-
logical issues, a well-­documented topic, and tends to divert “public at-
tention away from imperative issues that cannot be dealt with in an
exclusively market and national framework.”18 However, if I may en-
tertain its premises for a moment, it might open up an opportunity to
engage with the local–­global tensions it embodies: the inter-­national
made up of bordered-­wholes of nation-­states with an internal and ex-
ternal allows one to question what happens when something internal
from one nation-­state gets exported to an external nation-­state and
becomes part of this other nation-­state’s internal. Stated in relation
to anime, What happens when the Japanese cultural product anime is
exported globally long-­term? What type of cultural product is anime
when it is imported into another state, thus crossing the boundary from
68 Anime’s Local–­Global Tensions

internal to external? Furthermore, are there any domestic changes in

relation to anime in Japan that are sparked by external stimuli?
Interestingly, these questions can be seen as invited by Cool Japan
itself. The goals of the nation-­branding campaign are to make anime
economically fruitful for Japan. But for anime to be consistently lu-
crative in places outside of Japan, it must be accepted there, becoming
part of that culture or, rather, in some way, a regular practice of media
consumption. In this way, even if the content of the anime stays the
same and the media consumed is not drastically altered (even though
translation, at the minimum by subtitles, is almost always involved, and
re-­editing is not uncommon), anime has to become integrated into the
local in some way to be consistently successful. People must learn to
understand the codes of facial expressions, follow the patterns of nar-
rative, be accepting of and absorbed in the rhythm of movements and
stillness so typical of anime’s animation. With this learning of anime,
it becomes possible to read anime. Of course, how anime is learned,
how it is interpreted, and the viewing habits of the audiences will be
different from locale to locale (and thus by localization), but it must be
learned and integrated in some way for it to be consistently consumed
and thus become successful outside of Japan.
At this point, does anime then become part and parcel of the local
culture, or is it a local culture consuming a Japanese product? If it is
the latter, that is, the inter-­national view of Cool Japan, then anime
is always part of Japanese culture. Therefore, even outside of Japan,
experiencing anime becomes experiencing Japanese culture. But, as
Iwabuchi asserts, it is framed not as a participatory experience nor as
a multidirectional exchange but merely as a one-­way consumption.19 It
is then never truly localized; it is always Japanese. In this way, there is
a stasis involved in the inter-­national view, even as anime moves across
borders: the Japanese product, outside of Japan, is still Japanese; Japa­
nese popular culture gone global is still Japanese. While some sense of
sharing must be allowed, it is more of a relationship of facilitating ac-
cess, where the product is still ultimately Japanese even if it becomes a
relatively constant fixture in another community. This then becomes a
relationship of allowing access to anime and presuming exclusivity of
anime to Japan, an exclusivity that can take on connotations of owner-
ship. In this sense, the structure of access to Japanese anime resembles
the structure of anime’s official global distribution through licensing
 Anime’s Local–­Global Tensions 69

from companies in Japan for a limited time. The newest official means
of distribution, through streaming services like Crunchyroll or Netflix,
takes this one step further, where customers do not even own the physi­
cal media and merely pay for regular access outside of Japan.
There is always, then, the concern that focusing on a foreign market
will cause anime to leave behind its “home” market of Japan and focus
on a larger one, or on a number of other markets. Indeed, since 2014
the market share for anime in Japan has begun to decline, but foreign
markets have been increasing at a remarkably rapid rate.20 This is even
more troubling if one of the selling points of anime is its “Japaneseness”
and popularity in foreign markets makes it somehow “less Japanese,”
a recent cause for concern as there has been a lot of publicized foreign
interest in funding and producing anime in the past decade. For in-
stance, Sudo Tadashi tries to dispel these fears when discussing the re-
cent influx of money from the People’s Republic of China in the anime
business, stating that China’s investment is merely the newest addition
to a longer history of foreign investment and that as long as anime is
made in Japan, it will be difficult to separate it from the context of
Japan’s culture.21 That such concerns are raised at all, however, reveals
that much depends on anime being seen as a Japanese product, so Cool
Japan must continually engage in practices of defining anime as Japa-
nese, of claiming anime as Japanese, to assuage this anxiety. In order to
explore how anime is defined in relation to Japan, let me take a closer
look at the dynamics of defining anime and, afterward, how that relates
to the events produced by Cool Japan.

Defining Anime
When anime is defined, a set of borders tends to be applied to what is
and is not anime. This practice of applying boundaries mirrors that
of the formal practice of the nation, with its own discrete boundaries
and presumed unity. Both nation-­states and definitions (in the classical
sense) operate through the form of the bordered-­whole. Indeed, the
act of defining takes on a national component with anime, as it usually
relies on Japan for its definition, which is often something like “a style
of Japanese commercial animation.” However, I have no intention of re-
defining anime here; rather, I wish to consider how the historical shifts
70 Anime’s Local–­Global Tensions

in defining anime can help better ascertain the local–­global tensions

of anime and other cultural products.
Up until this discussion, I have been using “anime” in the English
sense of the word, which is also ambiguous, though it mostly circles
around the importance of Japan. This imparts a sense of controversy
regarding if anime should be seen as a style (the word often invoked in
such discussions) or as a product of its production locale (Japan). For
example, the Anime News Network has an entry in its lexicon that
describes this problem, noting that defining anime based on origin is
a relatively simple definition and “that the only gray area occurs with
coproductions that may have had a portion of their animation, and/
or scripting produced outside of Japan.” When discussing “anime as
style,” they note another problem: “due to the wide variety of Japanese
animation, regardless of any style-­based definition, there will always be
Japanese animation that would not fit the definition, creating a scenario
where some Japanese animation would not be anime.” Ultimately, it
states that the definition officially used on the site is “anime based on
the origin of the animation. If it is primarily produced in Japan, it is
anime. It should be clear, that by adhering to a definition that defines
animation from outside of Japan that mimic common anime styles as
‘not anime,’ Anime News Network does not endorse the notion that
these ‘anime-­style’ works are in any way inferior to animation pro-
duced in Japan.”22 However, the website almost exclusively focuses on
commercial animations of a particular media-­form and demographic
(young adult) rather than on the entirety of Japanese animation, gener-
ally, but not always, excluding artistic and young children’s animation.
To give another example of the extent of anime’s association with
Japan, one of the largest English databases and rating sites of anime,
MyAnimeList.net, has only two options for the titles of anime—­English
and Japanese—­despite the site containing several works centrally pro-
duced in China or South Korea. In the case of these works, the titles ap-
pear as “English: title” and “Japanese: title” even if the script used in the
Japanese line is not Japanese. Therefore, anime as Japanese is built into
the very structure of the site. In one final example, the two elements of
origin and style are merged in the Oxford English Dictionary, which de-
fines anime as “a genre of Japanese or Japanese-­style animated film or
television entertainment, characterized by a distinctive visual style in-
 Anime’s Local–­Global Tensions 71

volving stylized action sequences and usually featuring characters with

distinctive large, staring eyes, and typically having a science-­fiction or
fantasy theme.”23 This definition perfectly highlights how the national
element of Japan looms large in the English definition of anime, as do
the particularities and ambiguities of anime’s media-­form.
In Japanese, there is a similar problem of definitions. The word
anime, written in katakana, is notorious for its wide semantic range,
denoting animation as a whole (often regarded as merely a shortening
of the Japanese word for animation, animēshon) and not necessarily a
particular type of animation. However, a closer examination reveals
tensions between the words animēshon and anime within Japan.24 For
example, one of the largest websites for anime news in Japanese, An-
ime!Anime!, features an article on the many definitions of anime, ex-
amining English definitions (like those discussed above) and Japanese
ones. Ultimately, the article states that, while within Japan anime usu-
ally refers to all animation, foreign and local, and is the same as animē­
shon, on the site they will use anime to mean “Japanese entertainment
animation” (including pre-­1960s works) and animēshon to mean any
other animation, either foreign or local, presumably also including “art
animation.”25 Indeed, Japanese art universities tend to imply art anima-
tion, such as that by Yamamura Kōji, and not commercial animation
when they open programs and departments with the name animēshon,
though this is changing.
Animation historian Tsugata Nobuyuki specifically details the dif-
ferences between the words and, while noting the “grey zone” for what
is anime, begins his discussion of defining the term in Japanese by stat-
ing, “within [the broader category of] ‘animation,’ anime is film, TV,
or other animation made in Japan for commercial purposes, and pro-
duced using mainly techniques of cel animation (or digital animation
that utilizes the style of cel animation), with a focus on story-­telling” or,
simply put, “commercial animation made in Japan.”26 Tsugata then lists
some media-­form elements including limited animation techniques,
visual style, lighting effects and camera work, the juxtaposition of 2D
and 3D (and realism and unrealism), and a focus on complex stories
over multiple episodes before stating that anime’s flat, homogenous,
2D aesthetic and visual style are probably its most defining features.27
Anime, Tsugata continues, despite targeting a wide range of age groups,
72 Anime’s Local–­Global Tensions

is often associated with the “young adult” demographic, something

that later becomes the target for late-­night (shinya) anime in the late
1990s and that continues to this day.28
To give a practical example within Japan, the still prevalent video
rental shops there feature a separate anime section, which includes
children’s animation (foreign and domestic) and Disney animation
but mainly consists of productions of the late-­night TV anime variety.
These latter anime are the types that support large city centers like
Akihabara through their sale of media mix goods and that otaku (fans)
tend to gravitate to. For otaku, when they say they like anime, the word
does not necessarily connote a large range of animations but rather
mainly late-­night TV anime and, more recently, online-­only anime. But
otaku, or more specifically, the otaku that watch anime, are not a ma-
jority demographic within Japan. The label only began to form in the
1980s, coming into ascendency in the 1990s, often with many negative
stigmas attached, such as the 1989 Miyazaki incident where a murderer
was painted as an otaku by the mass media.29 Regarding actual otaku
usage of the word, Tsugata notes that anime fans were already separat-
ing anime and animēshon from the 1980s on, a division that became
more widespread in recent years.30
Yet, as shown above, anime in English is often considered to be not
only Japanese animation but more specifically a style of Japanese ani­
mation. Tsugata notes that the word “anime,” in English and in other
European languages, began to spread in the 1990s,31 generally referring
to young adult Japanese animation.32 Instead of animations like Sazae-­
san, which are far more popular with the general populace in Japan, the
highest rated and/or most popular works displayed on American and
European websites are almost always those of the late-­night TV anime
variety. To be more precise, in practice this excludes some children
and family-­oriented shows (e.g., Chibi Maruko-­chan and Sazae-­san)
while including other children’s shows (e.g., Pokémon and Precure) as
well as late-­afternoon works (e.g., Dragon Ball Super and One Piece),
Ghibli’s works, and alternative or art-­house anime (e.g., Ping-­Pong),
with the focus on late-­night anime. In any case, it is this latter type
of commercial animation that makes up the bulk of what is consid-
ered “anime proper” outside of Japan, thus providing an overlap with
the sub­cultural definition of anime and the global English definition
of anime.
 Anime’s Local–­Global Tensions 73

The point I would like to stress here is that many different defi-
nitions of anime outside and inside of Japan need to be reconciled if
anime is to be a Japanese cultural commodity on a global scale. Due
to the drive to make anime as Japanese animation a global product, if
what the word “anime” signifies is different inside and outside of Japan,
there will be a conflict, as the country cannot sell the wrong product.
What is needed, then, is a redefining of anime within Japan (a process
that is continually occurring) that matches the global conception of
the word. This is what Zoltan Kacsuk contends is already occurring in
Japan with manga, and a similar (re)negotiation of what anime refers to
within Japan is currently underway.33 In fact, Tsugata states that with
the onset of Cool Japan that accompanied the widespread introduction
of the English word “anime,” anime, with its definition as “commer-
cial animation made in Japan” finally began to be widely understood as
separate from animēshon, a difference that, as stated prior, had already
started in the 1980s by the subculture of anime fans.34
To be clear, I am not arguing that anime has completely changed its
meaning within Japan, shortening its semantic range from commercial
animation in general to just “Japanese late-­night animation.” Rather, a
subtle and slow negotiation is occurring, where anime is taking on its
English connotations as a type of animation from Japan, even within
Japan. This definition, with its emphasis on the nation as point of origin,
is openly embraced by (if not substantiated by) Cool Japan. Prior to the
1990s, anime was considered too vulgar and childish to be representa-
tive of Japan, and as Kukhee Choo explains, the Japanese government
only started to take notice of anime due to its explosive popularity out-
side of Japan, promoting it as “official” Japanese culture with the hopes
of it bringing in revenue to the nation. While this might be seen as a
formal acceptance of sorts of the previously stigmatized media of the
subculture of otaku, the negative associations of otaku and their media
of choice do not necessarily vanish. Furthermore, following Choo’s as-
sertions, the nationalization of this social stratum’s media is a shift that
is enabled by a series of globalization processes, processes that involve
an internal–­external dynamic.35
As Choo describes, the “global consumption of Japanese culture
through the Contents industry is fundamentally linked to the yearning
for a Japanese lifestyle that can only be satiated through the consump-
tion of anything that is associated with preconceived notions of what is
74 Anime’s Local–­Global Tensions

‘Japanese.’ In turn, Japan’s national branding and marketing, which are

manifested through the culturization of its commodities, have heavily
focused on the image of Japan.”36 This also has effects, then, on what is
considered anime within Japan: if anime is to be promoted as Japanese
culture, but the anime that are promoted are those that sell well out-
side of Japan, then the negotiation over anime’s definition is not made
exclusively in Japan but at least in part externally. In other words, the
global definition of anime, as a type of animation, becomes the work-
ing definition for Cool Japan to both promote Japan as a nation and to
stimulate its economy.
From this perspective, the word “anime” has an inter-­national path:
it starts as a general word for animation in Japan that is then trans­
literated into English, used to denote what is conceived of as Japanese
animation and narrowing the range toward a type of animation (late-­
night, young-­adult works), the global popularity of which then forces
a change in the definition of the word within Japan to signify Japanese
animation. Throughout this border-­crossing route, the semantic range
changes, but the word becomes nationalized, going from a general word
for animation that is either foreign or domestic to a word that specifies
commercial Japanese animation, mostly of a particular type. This in-
fluence from outside Japan then begins to raise the profile of the usage
of the word anime among the smaller demographic of otaku within
Japan, which was largely the same definition as the global definition.37
Such a process highlights internal tensions, as a smaller demographic
is suddenly generalized as representative of the entire nation, both in-
ternally and externally. This overlap reveals the larger global movement
of anime—­whatever anime is, it seems to exist somehow between and
across borders, built through this internal–­external exchange.
Working from the perspective of the bordered-­whole, an (in)famous
pattern becomes visible: external appraisals facilitating the acknowl-
edgment of an internal element as a part of the official national culture
in Japan.38 As the positive reception of anime abroad became increas-
ingly visible in Japan, it started to change the perception of the word
within Japan.39 The foreign adoration for anime and manga facilitated
a shift in the conception of otaku subcultures, once perceived as dan-
gerously deviant, toward their promotion globally and locally as repre-
sentative of Japanese culture from the late ­1990s to early ­2000s onward.
 Anime’s Local–­Global Tensions 75

This viewpoint, while ultimately continuing to (re)constitute the inter-­

national, reveals the internal–­external tensions at play here. But it also
hints at the necessity for another perspective, as the overlap between
foreign and local fans regarding the consumption of similar products
during similar time frames exposes a more global phenomenon that is
difficult to think through with bordered-­wholes.
It should also be acknowledged that the “global” word “anime” is not
the only frequently used term for these animated narratives. As stated
before, global does not have to mean “equally present everywhere,” and
I have focused on the English word here because “anime” is so widely
transliterated as such, even in non-­English languages. There are, of
course, different words for anime in different languages. In the Sino-
sphere, the word dòngmàn is often used, which denotes both anime
and manga. This might even be a more appropriate wording because
of the close relation between anime and manga, and it is potentially
portable into Japanese because of the use of Chinese characters. Anime
and manga were historically also much more widely available in Asia
than in some parts of Europe or the Americas. Yet the English word
“anime” works exceptionally well for nation-­branding, as the trans­
literation of anime in katakana in Japanese allows for a directionality
to appear: “anime” comes from anime, and once more it reinforces the
source of anime as Japan. This directional relation to Japan is surely not
the reason the definition of the word “anime” is used, but it should be
noted that the Euro-­American adoption of “anime” is a factor at play
in this dynamic.

Anime as National Cultural Media-­Form

While the variety of agencies involved in the nation-­branding cam-
paign do not directly fund commercial anime production, and there
is distrust of the government program in the industry, Cool Japan
does actively engage in discourse production and the facilitation of
interpersonal–­ corporate networking through promotional events,
both in Japan and outside of it. As stated before, the goal of Cool Japan
is explicitly economic and implicitly about soft power. Whether ani­
me’s general economic success is due to Cool Japan or not is certainly
debatable, and any achievements may be in spite of itself, as Cool Japan
76 Anime’s Local–­Global Tensions

has many institutional problems, ranging from claims of corruption to

mismanagement. As Michal Daliot-­Bul and Nissim Otmazgin assert,
Cool Japan has had little effect in supporting the small and mid-­sized
companies that make up the majority of anime production in terms of
helping them project themselves globally or improving the industry
broadly, a fact that is widely acknowledged by creators.40 In some ways,
Cool Japan’s failures to address any systemic issues in the industry re-
veal neoliberal undercurrents. Cool Japan stays hands off in the local
industry while actively promoting anime by involving large corpora-
tions like Dentsu to extend anime globally—a neoliberal approach that
“draws on liberal moral invectives in order to authorize intervention
in the name of nonintervention” and mobilizes anime as a Japanese
cultural product competing in the global market.41
With that said, I will take the perhaps unpopular view that Cool
Japan, as the culmination and extension of various nation-­branding
campaigns, is quite effective in terms of exercising soft power through
discourse production. More precisely, the success of Cool Japan may
not be in terms of direct political and diplomatic gains (such as pro-
viding a favorable image of Japan), economic effects (such as increased
revenue for anime studios), or even industry changes (such as providing
support for animators and smaller companies) but rather in broadly
claiming, and continually assuring that claim, that anime is Japa-
nese, that its definition is tied to Japan, and that anime is part of Japan’s
national culture even as it promotes anime globally. If anime is defined
through its relation to Japan, then this connection to Japan performs
a regulatory function: authentic anime is Japanese, is “Made in Japan.”
Although the notion of anime coming from Japan predates the nation-­
branding campaign, Cool Japan’s effectiveness lies in maintaining that
anime (or anything that looks like it) is Japanese culture despite its
long-­term and highly visible globality—­this is the soft power at play,
both inside and outside of Japan.
Indeed, anime was not always readily acknowledged as a recogniz­
ably Japanese cultural product. As Iwabuchi has detailed, in the 1990s
and early 2­ 000s—­that is, when Japan’s nation branding had not yet
become Cool Japan officially—­the local–­global tensions of anime as
a Japanese cultural product are apparent in the discourses of muko­
kuseki (nationlessness), where the supposedly nationless-­looking (and
thus global) anime was to somehow produce a yearning for Japan (the
 Anime’s Local–­Global Tensions 77

local).42 The logic of mukokuseki was that not every anime features
easily visible Japanese cultural markers, making them somewhat “cul-
turally odorless.” In particular, it has often been noted that anime’s
characters do not representationally look ethnically Japanese and thus
were supposedly easy to identify with by people of other nations and
cultures. But if one follows this logic to say that, broadly, anime is cul-
turally odorless and its characters do not look stereotypically Japanese,
then what is supposed to signal that the characters are Japanese and
direct the audience toward Japan? A contradiction arises whereby
something supposedly nationless must in fact be national, or at the
minimum point to that nation.
As visual culture scholar Omar Yusef Baker states, a fundamental
problem in mukokuseki discourse is its failure to account for the ab-
sence of blackness, both cultural and chromatic, in its assertion of the
stereotypical manga or anime character’s cultural odorlessness. This
failure implies that, although anime character designs may not be read
in a precise indexical relationship to perceived stereotypical Japanese
physiognomic characteristics, a preponderance of light skin and hair
tones, along with the pejorative caricatures or sheer absence of other
ethnic markers, suggests a closer association with a fair global north
than a dark global south. For Baker, anime characters are thus neither
neutral nor emptied of cultural coordinates. While the design of the
stereotypical anime character may often and easily be read as Japanese,
white, neither, or both, it is rarely and less easily read as Black; this dif-
ference is commonly ignored in discussions of the representational am-
biguity and supposedly nationless appeal of anime character design.43
In a somewhat different but related vein, Alexander Zahlten points
out that while characters do not necessarily start out as having a na-
tional ascription, they can become recognizably nationalized and
sometimes even renationalized. Zahlten gives the example of South
Koreans who “ ‘falsely’ assumed that the anime they watched as chil-
dren were Korean,” only to realize later that they were actually “from
Japan.”44 Although Zahlten is discussing an earlier period than the 2000s
under consideration here, as he asserts, this evinces both how anime’s
characters have a certain relationship to Japan and how this relation-
ship was and is different in each locale at different times. Such factors
reveal the inconsistencies of the mukokuseki logic of the global spread
of a nationless anime.
78 Anime’s Local–­Global Tensions

Interestingly, as Choo details in her article “Playing the Global

Game,” with the official onset of Cool Japan, the mukokuseki dynamic
seems to change, and anime is no longer seen as detached from Japan in
its global circulation.45 Building on Choo’s conclusions, I would suggest
that the problematics of mukokuseki—­where supposedly non-­Japanese-­
looking images must produce a connection to Japan—­get resolved in
Cool Japan, as anime’s media-­form becomes the signifier of Japanese
culture. Indeed, it is not necessarily a stereotypical representation of
Japanese people that is required to provide an “odor” of Japaneseness;
instead, this can be shifted to how the characters are visualized, that
is, the anime-­esque conventions of character design and acting that
can signal Japaneseness. Anime as a media-­form is often defined in
relation to Japan, the character designs and figurative acting codes be-
coming synonymous with the media-­form. In other words, Cool Japan
is a claim of anime’s media-­form as Japanese: when one sees anime’s
recognizable images or anime-­esque conventions, they are taken as a
sign of Japanese national culture—­or, as Choo succinctly puts it, part of
a process of the “culturization of commodities.” Contemporary anime
is “ ‘nation-­f ull’ instead of ‘nation-­less.’ ”46
Part of this process of claiming occurs through promoting certain
works and companies, whereby Cool Japan is in effect making a decla-
ration of anime as a Japanese media-­form distinct from other types of
animation. Indeed, as Sheuo Hui Gan notes:

the worldwide popular reception of anime and the promotion

by the Japanese government of anime are both clearly centered
on this category of works that usually includes a mixture of
the following characteristics: (a) based on manga; (b) specific
voice mannerisms; (c) extensive use of selective [or “limited”]
animation; (d) the use of the camera work to provide motion
to still drawings; (e) specific patterns of character design and
facial conventions; (f) complicated storylines with long episodic
narratives.47

It appears that Cool Japan is using the global definition of anime as

it claims the media-­form while emphasizing Japan as its creative ori-
gin. This is an attempt to keep anime’s definition fixed as Japanese and
results in producing the image of anime’s media-­form, one with a na-
 Anime’s Local–­Global Tensions 79

tional element. Like Kabuki and Noh and the many other art forms that
were groomed to be representative of Japan’s national culture, anime
is well on its way to becoming a national cultural media-­form through
the efforts of Cool Japan.

AnimeJapan
While anime’s media-­form is bound to change as new works are made
at a rapid pace and trends move in and out of favor, Cool Japan already
anticipates that change: a claim to media-­form has future and past
productions already built into it, as it presumes a sense of uniformity
despite a variety of works. But this also means that consistent (anxious)
arbitration over what is accepted as anime-­esque and how it relates to
Japan is required, which involves negotiation. Anime and manga are
often infamous, especially outside of Japan, for displaying taboo, overly
sexualized, and violent imagery, affecting the associations of the media.
Attempts at censorship like the 2010 Tokyo Metropolitan Ordinance
Regarding the Healthy Development of Youths (Tōkyō-­to Seishōnen no
Kenzen na Ikusei ni Kansuru Jōrei or “Youth Ordinance Bill”), calling
for regulations of the sale of “obscene images,” are already attempting
to control what is now an emblem of the state, trying to “clean” anime
and manga, grooming them to be acceptable national culture.
Part of how Cool Japan mediates these negotiations and creates its
strong connection between anime and Japan is by discourse production
through events, both locally and globally. This can be seen in one of the
most prominent anime related events in Tokyo, the annual AnimeJapan.
Starting in 2002 as the Tokyo International Anime Fair (TAF), it was
originally organized by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government in coop-
eration with the anime industry. TAF was later surrounded by contro-
versy in 2011 regarding manga industry heavyweights (which own the
rights to many anime) that pulled out in revolt against the attempt to
halt the sales of pornographic manga in convenience stores connected
to the Youth Ordinance Bill.48 These companies created the event
Anime Contents Expo that competed with TAF until the two events
were merged and rebranded as AnimeJapan in 2014. AnimeJapan is
partly organized by the Association of Japanese Animations (AJA), in-
volving several larger publishing houses like Kadokawa in conjunction
Figure 1.1. Promotion for AnimeJapan.
 Anime’s Local–­Global Tensions 81

with the Japanese International Contents Festival (CoFesta), which is

supported by METI.
Aimed at both the domestic and foreign markets and industry,
AnimeJapan focuses on disclosing news about anime, with booths for
major studios, vendors, and various franchises, as well as presentations
and networking opportunities exclusive to those in the industry. All in
all, the AnimeJapan event itself can be seen as moving toward a defi-
nition of anime that keeps a strong link between anime and Japan. The
slogan, “Everything anime is here” (anime no subete ga, koko ni aru),
emphasizes place with the obvious linkage between “here” as the event
and “here” as Japan. Even the event’s name carries the same connota-
tion: while many anime-­related events outside of Japan keep the words
“Japan” and “anime” closely linked in their titles and marketing, An-
imeJapan literally fuses them together (Figure 1.1).
AnimeJapan also functions to formally define anime. The works
present can be seen as representative of that year’s anime, allowing for
aesthetic similarities to be noticed from within that set. Subsequently,
this presents an ever-­evolving set of works that authenticates what is
or is not to be considered anime-­esque. With pornographic products,
art animation, and young children’s shows conspicuously absent, the
vast majority of the animation productions featured at AnimeJapan
are what would be described within Japan as young adult, late-­night
anime. This is not to say that these are the only animations present.49
AnimeJapan 2017 also featured foreign animations Paddington (2014)
and Ballerina (2016), earlier and later years featured the popular chil-
dren’s show Chibi Maruko-­chan (1990–­present) in their posters, and
Rayna Denison details seeing Spongebob Squarepants and Ben 10 at
the event when it was still called Tokyo Anime Festival.50 But these
foreign animations are visibly in the minority and may be considered
part of the long-­term process of negotiating what exactly is under-
stood by the “anime”/anime in AnimeJapan as it mediates between
the external or global conception of “anime” as a type of animation
(“late-­night animation from Japan”) and the internal conception of the
word anime as animation not exclusive to Japan. AnimeJapan thus
functions as a negotiation of the local and global definitions of anime:
within Japan, it produces an image of what “anime”/anime is, but by
having the event in Japan, it offers itself as a locus for upcoming anime
to be showcased globally, emphasizing the authority of Japan in defin-
82 Anime’s Local–­Global Tensions

ing anime. Indeed, AnimeJapan features prominently on many anime-­

focused blogs and news websites in English. The result, then, is that
anime becomes a type of animation, defined by both its media-­form
and its relation to Japan.

Blurring Internal and External

Through both location (hosting the premier anime news event in Japan)
and selection (which animations are included), AnimeJapan effectively
operates as an authenticator of what counts as “anime”/anime. It is no
surprise, then, that “foreign” studios like Emon (located in Tokyo) and
IP management companies and investors like Haoliners (Emon’s par-
ent company), Warner Brothers, and NBC Universal Entertainment
are featured with large booths at AnimeJapan to show that their pro-
ductions are where “everything anime” is. This leads to the important
issue of how to conceive of transnational funding, which is increas-
ingly coming from foreign sources, such as Tencent and NBC Univer-
sal. Crunchyroll is also experimenting with working with creators, and
Netflix is continuing to fund anime for its platform. Because many of
these companies both finance productions and stream them directly to
their customers, they provide demographic data analysis directly to the
producers and production committee for multiple markets at once. Al-
ready, the analytics of the official inter-­national export data show that
China and the United States are the biggest national markets and that
Asia and Europe are the biggest regional markets, making such specific
but global data attractive for showing which audiences to cater to (i.e.,
which area’s notions of the anime-­esque to engage with). Furthermore,
it appears that from 2015 on, foreign licensing has produced more profit
than merchandising, even locally.51 In effect, the increase of reliable, fo-
cused data on other regions, the rise in profits from overseas licensing,
and the funding from foreign companies could produce a shift in the
hierarchy of the inter-­national system with a more dispersed focus on
external markets.
But that does not necessarily mean that Japan will no longer be the
central locale for anime, even as the transnational is more openly visi­
ble. Emon (part of the larger PRC-­based company owned by Tencent)
makes it a point to both acknowledge their Chinese background but
also show that their anime are made by Japanese staff and broadcast
 Anime’s Local–­Global Tensions 83

in Japan. Emon, which has Japanese, South Korean (they have a studio
there as well), and Chinese staff is not the only transnational anime
company that operates in Japan. Polygon studios, which specializes in
CG animation and also produces work contracted from companies out-
side of Japan, employs a staff that is approximately 20 percent foreign
within Japan,52 and Satelight has a French team of designers on staff
in Tokyo. How do these transnational elements of the anime industry
place within the inter-­national?
Thiam Huat Kam contends that, with the establishment of Japan
as the locus of operations, IP, the real source for profit, can be secured
within Japan, so the flow of capital will then move through or be active
within Japan.53 Indeed, with foreign investors like Tencent establishing
studios and offices in Japan to produce “authentic” anime, and the new
U.S.-­based giants of entertainment like Netflix and Amazon purchas-
ing licenses and funding productions in Japan and globally, it currently
appears that Japan is central to the anime industry. From this perspec-
tive, Cool Japan is also successful, capturing transnational flows and
wrangling them toward Japan.
However, not all transnational issues can be grappled with via the
inter-­national framework. To return to distribution, the institutional-
ized frameworks of national and regional markets are not necessarily
the most accurate ways to approach anime’s distribution. Popularity and
sales will not line up uniformly across a nation or a traditionally defined
region. For example, Sudo cites a 2015 survey by the Hakudo Institute of
Life and Living titled “Global Habit” that shows that anime and manga
are the most popular comics and animation in Hong Kong, Taipei,
Shanghai, Guangzhou, Seoul, Singapore, Jakarta, Manila, and Ho Chi
Minh, with high popularity in Beijing and Bangkok as well. Compared
to South Asian cities and U.S. cities like New York, which have much
lower sales numbers, anime is far more popular in East and Southeast
Asia, enough so that these markets could be reliable sources of income
for the anime business. But Sudo emphasizes that these are not nations
but cities, which disrupts the nation-­focused market structure, as the
rest of the nation is left out in favor of more precise locations.54
While it may appear that Asia can be seen as a broad target market,
Nissim Otmazgin notes the inconsistencies in that approach: many
of the places where anime-­related media mix goods are available are
84 Anime’s Local–­Global Tensions

centered in large cities, and the regionalization that this promotes

through the sharing of common media and products is one that fo-
cuses on the urban middle class, linking multiple Asian cities together
but leaving out other parts of the population.55 Thus, if licenses are for
entire nations or even regions, yet the profits are only coming from
certain cities, there may be a problem for investors who may only con-
sider region-­and/or nation-­sized, rather than city-­sized, markets.
Anime distribution outside of Japan also begins to produce a simi-
lar pattern as the Japanese market but in other countries: “anime in for-
eign markets is both a mass market and a fan-­niche phenomenon; it is
both an invisible import and an acknowledged Japanese product, with
its own subculture and discourse of magazines and conventions.”56 At
the same time, as anime’s lulls and highs of global distribution occur,
the effect is felt within Japan. As Clements explains, with ani­me’s
expansion increasing significantly in the late 1­990s and early 2000s,
“the production of new anime in Japan drops dramatically after 2006,
as the business rationalized along more sensible lines, and the flow
of cash from overseas returned to 1990s levels. Companies such as
Gonzo, which had come to rely on overseas funding, were forced to sus-
pend production.”57 Even when viewed in the framework of the inter-­
national—­which the ubiquitous utilization of nationalized markets
forces upon us—­the inherent transnationality of anime’s distribution
begins to become apparent.
Conceptualizing markets, however, is helpful not only for anime
but also for the myriad products in the media mix that are to be sold
alongside them. The most globally popular anime like Naruto have
rights holders within Japan, so there is a general flow of sales to com-
panies in Japan, not only from anime and their viewing licenses but
also from selling merchandise or related products from those anime.
But this too is inflected with a transnational element, as companies like
Haoliners, a Chinese company now operating within Japan and South
Korea, are aiming to deal with intellectual property like most Japanese
companies. Haoliners has its own studio (Emon), but it focuses largely
on Chinese IP such as famous manhua, and like Japanese production
committees, it hires several companies inside and outside of Japan to
produce anime for the IP. Because the anime industry relies so heav-
ily on adaptation (mostly from manga, light novels, and games) for its
media mix, when the source material is no longer from Japan but it is
 Anime’s Local–­Global Tensions 85

marketed as mainly made in Japan, does the anime still somehow count
as ultimately Japanese in the cultural sense?
These works are increasingly common. Two recent examples are
Tower of God (2020) and God of High School (2020), both based on dif-
ferent Webtoon comics from South Korea, which, like manhwa from
South Korea and manhua from China, already feature many mangaesque
and/or anime-­esque character designs, paneling, narrative structures,
tropes, and pacing. One would have to do some intense maneuvering
to squeeze these productions into the inter-­national framework. There-
fore, perhaps it would be more beneficial to consider how the inter-­
national framework itself forces us to designate a nationality to media
and to work toward alternative approaches to such increasingly com-
mon productions. In other words, it is an effect of the inter-­national
framework that forces us into an either/or situation for such anime
(they are either “Japanese anime” or “Korean anime” or not) rather than
more fully engaging with their complex, multilayered transnationality.
Such issues point to both the inadequacies of the inter-­national sys-
tem to deal with how to conceptualize these transnational flows and
the effectiveness of that very same system to capture capital within
its borders—­or rather, to guide capital’s flow toward it—­with foreign
companies aiming to produce anime in Japan for global distribution,
attempting to authenticate their product through its relation to Japan.
As the demand for anime grows outside of Japan, the internal and ex-
ternal increasingly cohabit one another, as the local is emphasized via
the global even though the local is itself already global. However, this
dynamic is difficult to contend with. For instance, it is often asserted
that anime’s global success is in spite of the anime industry’s focus on
the Japanese market, which is not necessarily always the case. But this
observation obscures that the local is a selling point for media globally
and that the local has global inflections. Not only is there transnational
investment and labor involved in Japan, but anime’s media-­form itself
utilizes conventions, some from other media cultures, that are familiar
enough to global viewers to sustain its consumption long-­term.
This leads to the limits of the inter-­national and its utilization of
bordered-­wholes to engage with the variety of transnational inter­
actions. What is at stake in conceptualizing anime as a media-­form
is deeply connected to nationhood—­defining anime is related to bor-
ders and to producing a bordered-­whole that resembles the form of
86 Anime’s Local–­Global Tensions

the nation-­state, a connection that is directly realized in the processes

that produce a description of anime as “a style of Japanese commercial
animation.” Thinking through the formal framework of the bordered-­
whole can expose internal–­external, local–­global dynamics, but it re-
stricts one’s capacity to move beyond the unit of analysis that is the
nation-­state.
Many of the established frameworks from area studies still utilize
the form of the bordered-­whole, springing from departmental struc-
tures organized with bordered off areas, a utilization that is often self-­
reflexively acknowledged, productively used in critique of the damaging
potential of nationalisms. As shown above, the bordered-­whole can be
used in this way to examine internal and external dynamics that reveal
the porousness of the boundary, exposing a series of local–­global inter-
actions. But this leaves anime placed in a strange in-­between zone that
is both and neither internal and external, and somehow frozen in that
position. What would a view of anime look like that moves toward the
limits of inter-­nationalism and reveals a different depiction of anime’s
globality?
 9 2 0

Anime’s Dispersed Production

Authorship and Agency in Anime Production

As noted in the prior chapter, the standard approach to anime’s global-
ity is one where anime is Japanese culture consumed outside of Japan
because, it is commonly thought, anime comes from Japan. This pro-
duces a conception of globality whereby people consuming anime out-
side of Japan are consuming Japanese cultural products, which is less
transnational (collaborations operating across the perceived borders
of nation-­states) and more inter-­national (one-­way access granted be-
tween distinct nation-­states). Consequently, there is a sense of inside-­
outside that is relatively neatly defined—­in this case, media being
produced in Japan and consumed outside of it.
But anime is not exclusively produced in Japan. Usually, this ele-
ment of anime’s production is glossed over, partly because anime is
seen as coming from Japan, which in turn easily affords a view of anime
as a commentary on Japanese society. Interestingly, it is anime films
that seem to invite such an analysis, with the director implicitly or ex-
plicitly being seen as playing the central role in production. A set of
famous directors occupy the majority of the focus: Miyazaki Hayao,
Oshii Mamoru, Kon Satoshi, and, more recently, Hosoda Mamoru
and Shinkai Makoto.1 Beyond pointing to the disproportional atten-
tion they receive, I do not mean to say that directors should not be
given recognition, that they are not involved in many levels of the pro-
duction (for which Miyazaki is notorious), or that they should not be
the subject of study. Instead, I want to highlight how this tendency to
credit some singular author or director and focus on a bound media
product reveals a propensity toward certain conceptions of agency in
creative and cultural production, as well as methodological approaches
to interpreting and consuming anime.
The concentration on film instead of TV series has led to the tendency

9 87 0
88 Anime’s Dispersed Production

inside and outside of Japan to elevate these directors to the status of

auteur. In these cases, there is usually an implicit understanding that
there are other agents involved in the production, as the problems of
auteur theory from film criticism are widely acknowledged.2 The cus-
tom of attributing singular authorship can certainly be productive, and
pragmatically, it is difficult to get around it, as there are few, if any, al-
ternatives. Still, the continual focus on a singular creative figure can be
easily misconstrued, downplaying the roles of multiple contributors as
the focus switches to the director as the central creative individual. In
a sense, this allows the film product to become the director’s “speech-­
act,” so to speak, whose definitive location in Japan facilitates an analy-
sis of the anime in question as an address from Japan exclusively, which
in turn can be more readily examined as focusing on Japanese society.
Now, I do not want to reject such approaches as unfounded and
worthy of dismissal. This is neither a disavowal of reading anime as a
commentary on Japan, which can be sustained and justified, nor of the
contributions such analyses have made (as contextualizing media is an
indispensable tool of inquiry, one that I will rely on in chapter 7), nor of
the importance of the nation at play here. Rather, I am trying to outline
these tendencies to produce an opening that may lead to an alternative
approach that more fully engages with transnationality.
Even when it is acknowledged that anime has a history of trans­
national production, the full implications of this are not often explored.
In the current context, this is important to consider, as much of ani­me’s
transnational labor goes into the animation, which is the basis of the
very media product itself: anime is animation, making the results of
the animators’ labor a significant portion of what is actually received
as the final work. Here, the abovementioned tendency to emphasize
directors—­who are individuals that operate in Japan—­over animators—­
who are numerous and often operate across national borders—­can be
seen as born from frameworks afforded by the forms of the bordered-­
whole (e.g., individualism, the nation-­state, and the inter-­national)
rather than the network (e.g., multiple actors and the transnational).
Therefore, the standard approach to anime via the bordered-­whole may
be disrupted by engaging with the form of the network to reexamine
production as a way to extrapolate the transnational dynamics of anime.
To this end, it can be beneficial to consider a more dispersed view of
 Anime’s Dispersed Production 89

anime’s transnationality—­that is, one that accounts for the dispersal

of agency in anime production and how this extends to transnational
production.
In order to explore the dispersed agency in anime production to set
the groundwork for a more transnational conception that better at-
tends to the actualities of the industry, in this chapter I will conduct
an analysis of the anime Shirobako (2014), which details a number of
processes of anime production as the central narrative of the series.
Broadly, this analysis is also done in reference to Ian Condry’s ethnog-
raphy on the anime industry in Tokyo and Bryan Hikari Hartzheim’s
study on anime production.3 I will also be relying on the sociological
research on animators in Japan by Matsunaga Shintarō, who empha-
sizes the division of labor and the specialized skills and craftmanship
necessary to perform the job.4 Each scholar details what Condry labels
“collaborative creativity,” which involves not only typical creative pro-
ducers such as animators and directors but also corporate executives.5
In terms of methodological approach, this chapter is underpinned by
Bruno Latour’s actor-­network theory. I use “agency” here as an adapted
version pulled from Latour’s work, where an agent performs actions,
“making some difference to a state of affairs, transforming some As
into Bs through trials with Cs.”6 Agents that exercise such capacities
are not limited to human actors but include a whole host of nonhuman
actors that work with or on humans, including various materials, tech-
nologies, and anime’s media-­form itself—­that is, the repeated patterns
that distinguish anime as a particular type of media product.
Because of the relationship between the multitude of human and
nonhuman actors, each working with, on, and through one another, one
can trace an intricate web of actions that affect the final product, often
in directly discernible ways, such as the narrative or the animation.
Therefore, instead of a single agent in one location orchestrating the
production, a network of actions from multiple agents at different times
in different places, and the negotiations that arise from their mutual
engagement, result in effects seen in the anime product. Subsequently
there are, as Sheuo Hui Gan notes of anime production, “a multitude
of ‘voices’ at work.”7 This does not mean that an anime cannot sustain
itself as a commentary on a topic or be read as exploring an issue (in
regard to Japan or anywhere else) but rather that the source of that
90 Anime’s Dispersed Production

exploration becomes complicated, as does the context with which it

may be engaging.
As a self-­reflexive exposition of anime production, Shirobako depicts
such a web of effects. In the analysis that follows, I will show that anime
production involves many actors with differing degrees of control, each
one involved in diverse developments that result in a constant process of
negotiation, the outcomes of which are tangible in the final anime and
can and do occur transnationally. Anime production thus operates as
a network of actors whose agency is dispersed across a chain of hier­
archies, making attribution of a single actor (human or nonhuman) as
the agent who makes the address solely from Japan difficult to sustain.

On Anime Production and Publicity

To begin, I will briefly discuss the particulars of anime’s business and
production, where the material capabilities of celluloid animation af-
forded a network of distributed labor in the early days of animation, a
network that continues to operate to this day and where a hierarchy
of production has arisen. This hierarchical production has a long his-
tory across the world, dating back to the innovations of Earl Hurd and
John Bray in the early twentieth century in the United States, where
animation production developed into a complex division of labor. Such
a system was in part facilitated by the adoption of celluloid sheets for
animation, which easily afford compartmentalized production, as dif-
ferent parts of the same image are painted on separate celluloid sheets
that are then overlapped, allowing for an organization of distributed
labor to develop.8 As animation is an infamously labor intense industry,
sometimes hundreds of people will be working on just one production.
The system that developed from this downplayed the individuality of
the artist in favor of a more uniform aesthetic that was enabled by the
assembly line of production of smaller tasks.9 Such industrialized pro-
duction processes have become the standard and are still utilized glob-
ally, in different configurations, in commercial animation.
Anime production has used cel animation for most of its history and
continues to operate under the same division of labor with computer-­
aided animation that also uses layers and enables uniformity. This in-
cludes administrative organization and planning, direction, script
writing, character design, storyboarding, color direction, layout design-
 Anime’s Dispersed Production 91

ers, key animation, in-­between animation, finishing and cleanup of im-

ages, coloring, background painting, compositing, cinematography, CG
and/or effects, editing, voice-­overs, digital effects, sound design, and
music production. Each division will often have a director who organizes
multiple people working at once (e.g., animation directors who direct the
key animators). While the exact order differs from company to company
and even production to production, and multiple processes are done si-
multaneously, the general order of production is as listed here.10
Anime production itself thus operates through complex networks,
with multiple companies and freelance animators (who make up around
70 percent of the industry) working on a single production.11 Sound and
music engineers and voice actors often come from companies separate
from the animation studios. Various animation studios are also sub-
contracted to help with specific episodes and scenes as needed. These
companies and freelance staff will often split after one production,
and a new network of staff and companies will be created for the next
anime. In other words, anime production networks are constantly pro-
duced and dismantled with each production.
The relatively uniform aesthetic in anime is thus partly a product
of necessity, as anime staff are associated with multiple productions
in various genres. The repetition of animation techniques, narrative
structures, character types, design styles, and facial expressions facili­
tates a smoothing over of multiple, constantly shifting networks of pro-
duction and the notoriously hurried pace of production. If a character
needs to show happiness in a scene, the conventionalized gesture is
readily available and can be reproduced in different scenes, at different
times, and by different animators indefinitely. This may also be consid-
ered an outgrowth of animation production using the cel bank system,
where cels were reused to save costs.12 A system of conventions further
allows a higher degree of control, as works have to be made within con-
ventional rules, allowing for faster creation and a degree of consistency
across studios and products. From the mid-­1990s onward, the anime
industry began to expand production and therefore increasingly rely
on this system.
A central studio usually organizes much of the division of labor, and
it often subcontracts work out (usually key animation, in-­betweens,
coloring, and backgrounds, which are all integral parts of what is ac-
tually seen in the final animation product), with sub-­subcontractors
92 Anime’s Dispersed Production

also not uncommon. However, the central studios are generally seen in
the popular discourse as the main producers of the anime, though it is
often acknowledged that work is shared among a few studios. There-
fore, crediting a work to one studio produces a hierarchy, where this
main studio is seen as the creative source of the anime. This is despite
the massive reliance on outsourcing, which is not only used to cut costs
but also due to a lack of an available skilled labor force, both domesti-
cally and transnationally.
That said, the need for fast, reliable, cost-­saving methods is one of
the circumstances that produced the anime aesthetic in its beginnings
in the 1960s, and it is this production culture that continues to this
day. Instead of focusing on selling the animated product itself, anime
are often designed to be central products in a media mix, referring
the viewer to manga, games, figurines, and a whole range of other
products—­a practice that dates back to at least the early days of anime
production with the TV adaptation of Tezuka Osamu’s manga Tetsu-
wan Atomu in 1963. As Marc Steinberg details, a crucial component
of anime production thus became the transmedia relationship to the
media mix. Indeed, the very business model of the industry itself is his-
torically tied to the media mix: by drastically underselling the original
production to TV broadcasters, Tezuka set the precedent for a business
plan that, with the notable exception of theatrical release anime, tends
toward a low price for the anime itself, with the profits recuperated in
the sale of merchandise. Cost-­cutting techniques then became impor-
tant, and Tezuka and his team at Mushi Productions began to experi-
ment with a style of limited animation production using fewer frames,
adapting heavily from the successful manga that Atomu was based on,
and relating to other products in the media mix. Therefore, repetitive
facial expressions and characters, a jerkiness in the movements due to
the limited animation, and a connection to the manga, toys, and other
merchandise became standard in anime from that point onward.13
With this in mind, contemporary anime production, if seen as a
hierarchy, often begins with the production committee (seisaku iinkai)
that funds the anime and its media mix, which became the norm in
the 1990s. Because of the large amount of capital needed to fund an
anime series, these production committees are assembled from many
different industries, running the gamut from publishers and distrib-
uters to toy manufacturers and advertising agencies, distributing the
 Anime’s Dispersed Production 93

initial investment needed between them. But it is not always the case
that the primary animation studio is even on the committee or has
much control. In fact, the producer and director tend to work based
on the committee’s decisions and regularly in relation to producers of
other major products in the media mix, such as manga publishers or
toy manufacturers. In this sense, even domestically, anime studios can
be seen as outsourced labor for the production committee.
Each committee for each anime is different (and is increasingly trans-
national itself), and the information on how much funding is provided
by each member of a committee is difficult to come by. However, it is
clear that production committees are related directly to the rights hold-
ers, often composed of the representatives of the companies or people
who own the intellectual property and can authorize various types of
commercial products from the show, such as character goods and music.
The profits made from such products usually go to those rights holders,
which are not necessarily the studios themselves. Even if studios are the
rights holders, most of them must give up a majority of the profits to
the other committee members. Thus, the depressingly meager pay and
lengthy hours of the animators of anime is, as Matsunaga points out, in
part due to the business structure of the industry.14 The central studio is
usually contracted by the production committee and paid a set amount
for production, so even if the franchise becomes a hit, animators—­many
of whom are freelance contractors not stably employed by a studio—­do
not get compensated accordingly, as anime is only one segment of a
larger media ecosystem of an intellectual property (IP).
In recent years, when publicizing a new anime production, in addi­
tion to the primary animation studio, the positions that are shown
prominently are the author(s) of the source work (usually a manga, light
novel, or game), the director, the scriptwriter, the character designer
(who may also be an animator, though this is not usually publicized),
the musical director or composer, and finally the voice actors. These
positions are considered at the top of the hierarchy of production. This
list is usually populated by entirely Japanese names, save for the all-­
inclusive name of the animation studio, which can include a large staff
under the moniker. It is important to note that if it is not the director
who receives central prominence, it is the abovementioned grouping
of people that is widely recognized as wielding a significant amount
of agency in anime’s system of production, even though it makes up
94 Anime’s Dispersed Production

only a small fraction of the staff needed to produce an anime. After all,
these staff perform the majority of the directing of labor and of craft-
ing the major elements that are repeatedly used in the final product
(e.g., character designs), and much of this labor is done within Japan.
Interestingly, this selection of positions, in particular character de-
signer, scriptwriter, and music composer, also highlights elements that
are seen as shifting between the media that make up anime’s media
mix: the characters must resemble one another between the anime,
manga, light novel, and games despite the different mediums they are
performed in; the story must either differ or be consistent to some de-
gree; and the music is itself another product to be sold.
But this popularized hierarchy, while an integral part of the pro-
duction process and the flow of money, should not always dictate how
the final product of anime is viewed. While the central animation stu-
dio is prominently displayed in these advertising materials, the many
freelancers and smaller studios that work on the animation are sim-
ply subsumed. It implies that the central studio will produce a brand
of ani­mation, but generally ignores those who produce the animated
images unless the viewer actively seeks out that information. Therefore,
it is worth investigating anime’s production system of animation in de-
tail, and Shirobako provides a good case study to examine.

Shirobako
What makes Shirobako relatively unique in the TV anime world is how
it brings the dispersal of agency in animation production to the fore-
ground. There are precursors to Shirobako, such as Otaku no Video
(1991), which details the transformation of a college student into an
otaku who then creates two otaku media companies, and Bakuman
(2010), a series about an aspiring manga creator and his relationship
with the anime industry. However, Shirobako focuses almost entirely
on the anime industry, exploring the finer details of anime produc-
tion itself. Centering around the production assistant and adminis-
trator Miyamori Aoi, Shirobako follows her role at the fictional anime
studio Musashino Animation and includes various characters heavily
inspired by those in similar roles in the real-­life anime industry. In
the background, Miyamori’s four friends from her hometown have also
joined the anime industry in different roles (2D key animator, 3D an-
 Anime’s Dispersed Production 95

imator, scriptwriter, and voice actor), and they dream of working on

an anime together. The narrative of the series follows the drama that
occurs during the production of two different intradiegetic anime, Ex-
odus! and The Third Girls Aerial Squad. With detailed depictions of the
making of anime, Shirobako provides a convenient object of analysis
with which to examine the workings of the industry and exactly who
and what is guiding the production, making decisions, and produc-
ing effects in the final product. However, because of the self-­reflexive
mode of address (an anime about making anime), the work should be
approached with a strong dose of skepticism. Its self-­representation
should not be considered the final word on the status of the indus-
try and can easily overdramatize or misrepresent the actualities of the
workplace.
Though I acknowledge that it is not necessarily an accurate depic-
tion, Shirobako presents a self-­referential account of the anime indus-
try and offers some evidence for the claims of its distributive agency.
Through an analysis of key sequences of the series, I will (1) discuss
how there is a production hierarchy where various roles exert different
degrees of control over the creative process; (2) explore the agency of
the materials involved as the animators and directors struggle with ele­
ments of cel animation and its mixture with CG animation and briefly
depict the differences between the manga and anime production indus­
tries; (3) detail how the media-­form constrains the production in dif-
ferent expectations for the product, the facial expressions used, and the
structure of the narrative; and (4) provide some brief information on
the transnational production involved in Shirobako—­something un-
acknowledged in the series—­and discuss how this conception of dis-
persed agency frees anime to acknowledge its transnationality rather
than emphasize its exclusive nationality. For ease of explanation, these
have been divided into distinct sections. However, it is important to
note that many of these are interconnected, such as when the capabili­
ties of the medium allow for a complex division of labor that affords
transnational subcontracting and, additionally, can affect where and
when certain types of animation are employed in the narrative.
96 Anime’s Dispersed Production

Negotiated Decisions
Let me start with the production hierarchy, which, as noted before, is
often conceived of with the directors and top-­level producers at the
top of the chain of command. Even if this is expanded, anime is often
seen as a creative industry in which animators, writers, designers, voice
actors, and musicians get much of the spotlight and credit for a pro-
duction. However, Shirobako consistently undermines this conception:
instead of a director, an administrator takes center stage and is shown
as integral to the anime production process, part and parcel of this
creative industry. This is evident in the position of the protagonist,
Miya­mori, who performs the role of “desk,” a production assistant who
organizes and relays information and materials between animators and
top-­level staff but also works toward solving problems that have tangi-
ble effects on the final product of the animation.
However, the administrators are not the only positions whose ac-
tions are shown to affect the final product. A whole slew of roles is
featured, such as general managers, animators, subcontractors, free-
lancers, colorists, editors, sound engineers, publishing executives, and
manga authors. Indeed, there are so many characters that names and
position titles are often inserted next to the characters in every episode,
something rarely done with such frequency in anime. Furthermore,
many of the characters move into different positions between the first
and second TV anime produced at Musashino, showing how each pro-
duction can be executed differently despite including most of the same
people.
It is also important to address the gendering of these positions. The
casting of many female administrators, animators, and other so-­called
below-­the-­line staff brings into focus the gender disparities in the ac-
tual industry. In fact, as Diane Wei Lewis has noted, the division of
labor in the anime industry has a long history of relying on women to
perform the important work of tracing, inking, cleaning up, and color-
ing (shiage).15 Such gendering continues to this day; although women
make up approximately 40 percent of the industry, there are still rela-
tively few female above-­the-­line staff, such as directors (notable excep-
tions being Yamamoto Sayo, Okada Mari, Utsumi Hiroko, and Yamada
Naoko).16 These gendered divisions are evident in the key characters in
 Anime’s Dispersed Production 97

the anime, as the four people in Miyamori’s friend group are all young
women in junior positions, whereas all the top-­level staff are male.
Because of the large group of people involved, the complex hier­
archies of production, and the diversity of technical, administrative,
and financial expertise necessary for the successful planning and im-
plementation of a production, the series has plenty of points of conflict
when nothing runs smoothly. Many of the conflicts featured disrupt
the conception of the singular vision of a director, with multiple agents
involved. These include supposedly minor roles such as production as-
sistants sitting in on and influencing important meetings with top-­level
producers, as well as the enforcement of conducting the labor itself.
In episode 5, for example, the “desk” for the first TV anime (Exodus!),
Yutaka Honda, comically forces the director to work by locking him in
a cage to finish the storyboards, showing how the director is the one
who produces the storyboard, but the enforcement of the actual enact-
ment of labor is left to other staff.
These conflicts also involve nonhuman actors. The specific materi-
als or sequences that display their use or malfunction often receive
close-­up shots: first and foremost, the cels, papers, pencils, and com-
puters used to make the animation; likewise, there are cars (and their
drivers) that can deliver goods at the speed necessary. But nonhuman
actors can also cause chaos, such as when the servers that transfer
data unexpectedly go down. Among this variety, particularly impor-
tant nonhuman actors are storyboards. It may initially be tempting to
label a storyboard’s creator as an authorial agent since a storyboard is
an adaptation of a script that will be used as a central reference point
by the animators and editors for the rest of the episode. Although it is
not uncommon for directors to produce multiple storyboards across a
series, it is not always the director working on them. Sometimes it will
be the episode director or another member of the higher-­level staff,
and the storyboard is then finalized in meetings with many members.17
That said, while credit should not be denied to storyboard creators, the
storyboard itself also becomes an agential actor, as it guides much of
the production from that point onward.
As Condry notes, while a storyboard is filled with details and instruc-
tions from its author(s), it can nevertheless have multiple interpreta-
tions.18 Such issues are worked out in meetings, but are also left up to
those with the skills to interpret and produce a refined section of the
98 Anime’s Dispersed Production

production based on the storyboard.19 Hartzheim explains that “ani­

mators are given a great deal of freedom, and if they have the time
and inclination, are allowed to expand upon the storyboards with their
own interpretations and personal expression.”20 For instance, Matsu­
naga notes that key animators can adjust the number of frames required
for a certain movement, even over those written on the storyboards.21
In other cases, there may not even be directions directly written, as
the storyboards have limited space. Therefore, for Matsunaga, there is
always a certain degree of discretion (sairyō) given to animators. How-
ever, the degrees of leeway are also dependent on the acceptance of the
directors and producers above them. This is part of a general tension
Matsunaga describes between the enactment of “individual creativity”
(dokusōsei), which is seen as somehow always manifesting itself, and
the adherence (jyunshu) to the demands of those above the animator in
the production line (who are not only directors, but also key animators
in the case of in-­betweeners). While the occupational norm tends to-
ward staying close to the directions from above, animators always, even
in the case of in-­betweeners, have some sense of interpretation of the
directions. Thus, the skills necessary to conduct animation labor are
not limited to the technical abilities of animating. As Matsunaga points
out, the interpretation of the directions is itself a proficiency developed
through experience—­rather than simply following orders, animators
need to make educated interpretations and then execute them.22 And,
often, storyboards are the mediators throughout that process.
Therefore, storyboards are important actors in anime production
that animators and other staff must grapple with and against (often at a
distance from the storyboard producers) to perform their various roles
in the production. This is addressed in episode 15, when Miyamori dis-
paragingly remarks that, despite the rough storyboard, the “animators
will draw it properly” (kono ato, animētā ha chanto kaite kuremasu
kara). Afterward, the director meets with the animators to explain
what types of images he wants, and extradiegetic comments once more
state that the animators have to make more polished images from the
rough images given to them on the storyboard. Thus, although guided
by the instructions provided by the director (or episode director or
storyboard artist), the animators negotiate with the storyboard itself,
as they must make creative decisions from the details (or lack thereof)
 Anime’s Dispersed Production 99

on the document, adding such interpretations into the animation of

the final product.
Further negotiations about how to execute a storyboard comes from
still more workers with multiple chains of command. This continues
to create conflict down the line. While Miyamori and another produc-
tion assistant argue over whose fault certain problems are in episode
5, they understand that everyone must suffer the consequences, and it
is only through the cooperation of various workers that the issue can
be fixed. Although there is a clear chain of instruction, with direc-
tors and producers at the top, Shirobako makes an effort to show how
collaborative the creative process actually is, revealing how even the
production assistants affect the final product in their daily negotiations
and decision-­making.
While the effect of animators in particular will be addressed below,
there are also other positions in the production process that are shown
to undercut, interrupt, and change the final product. These even come
from outside of the studio itself, problematizing the view of even a sin-
gle studio as the source of a product. Shirobako exposes the impor-
tance of relationships within the larger industry, with decisions often
occurring outside of both the Musashino studio and a formal business
environment. For example, in episode 12, producers from Musashino
informally discuss the possibility of their studio getting the contract to
produce the hit manga series The Third Girls Aerial Squad over a game
of mahjong with an executive from a publishing company. Ultimately,
Musashino gets the contract, displaying the importance of a network
of contacts within the industry for a studio to stay relevant with in-­
demand material to base their productions on.
It also reveals how integral other media are for the anime indus-
try and how anime studios “chase” those who hold the rights to such
source material. Anime studios appear dependent on source materials
(they cannot always produce “original” works) and are in a sense under
the control of the companies and their executives who are higher up on
the hierarchy of production. Indeed, Condry notes the importance of
various executives outside of what is normally considered production
staff in multiple anime productions that he observed. At other times,
this control is more indirect. For instance, Hartzheim details how the
toys to be released with some anime programs are given in advance,
and it is the job of the writers, directors, and other producers to figure
100 Anime’s Dispersed Production

out ways to integrate the toys into the anime itself.23 In some senses,
the toys themselves are part of the decision process, as they need to be
worked around and with to be featured logically in the anime’s imagery
and narrative.
While there are no toys in the Shirobako narrative, it still promi-
nently displays the importance of external companies and executives
in anime production. Although the contract for The Third Aerial Girls
Squad comes from the company that publishes the manga, this is a bit
of an oversimplification of the actualities of anime production, as it
is really a production committee that contracts an anime studio. De-
spite this discrepancy, the interaction with the publishing company—­
presumably a stand-­in for the production committee—­produces
engaging drama and displays some of the realities of how dispersed
agency operates in anime production, even at the top of the chain of
command. For example, the importance of voice actors is highlighted,
especially in episode 14, when producers and talent agents, as well as
the uninterested representative of the publishing company that owns
the rights to Aerial Girls Squad, argue over how different variables are
considered when casting for the anime, such as the voice actors’ roles
as idols or their current fan following, as well as their actual capacity to
play a given role. The inclusion of the representative from the publisher
highlights not only their importance in the hierarchy of production,
but also the role of the anime as part of a larger media mix, where the
anime is one product among many with a different capacity to draw
in fans. Voice actors are one of these avenues—­an aural component to
anime that is not present in manga.
The difficulties of such a production hierarchy are revealed through-
out the series. For example, in episode 13, when the character designer
is changed, the producers worry that the publisher may be displeased
and thus revoke the contract, as it may have chosen the studio based
on the staff from the previous production. There are also crucial mo-
ments when the publishing company executives and/or the author of
the manga step in to reject the work produced by the anime studio. This
includes forcing changes to character design in episode 16 even though
Musashino was well into the production process based on the earlier
designs. Such influences become extreme in episode 23 when, due to
poor communication between the publishing company’s representa-
 Anime’s Dispersed Production 101

tive and Musashino, the manga author rejects the storyboard by the
anime studio for the ending of the series, which would continue past
the manga’s current narrative developments. Though they received a
preliminary agreement from the manager of the manga author at the
publisher and proceeded quite far in the production (including the
voice acting), they are rudely requested to redo the final episode. On
top of this, the publisher does not allow Musashino’s staff to meet with
the manga author directly.
Such instances display the actual authority of the publisher (here
read as a stand-­in for the production committee) over even the top-­level
producers and director of the anime. In this way, Shirobako establishes
a chain of capacity for decision-­making, with the publisher/production
committee at the top, followed by the director and producers. However,
this is always complicated by the actual processes of production. Epi­
sode directors, animation supervisors, and the animators themselves
all make important decisions, and the production assistants solve vari-
ous problems and make suggestions—­or force higher-­ups to work. This
all results in tangible effects in the final product, examples of which I
will examine below. Therefore, Shirobako provides an account of anime
production in which there are layers of decisions upon decisions and
the assertion of agency at multiple levels within the chain of command.
Every action adds (or subtracts), adjusts, and transforms the results
seen in the final product. Shirobako makes apparent the shifts that
occur due to each actor (human and nonhuman) in the production pro-
cess, each having an effect on the final images and sounds. It displays
the struggles behind each frame and the labor behind the animation,
producing a multilayered take on anime production.

Media Mix and Materiality

Because anime production is so often part of a media mix, anime pro-
ducers must work in conjunction with publishers or production com-
mittees to maintain a degree of similarity with or planned divergence
from other media. This means that there may be conflicts between the
producers of the various media, conflicts that are not always based on
differences in creative vision but rather on the variety, or lack thereof,
of materials involved in their respective processes. Therefore, a large
102 Anime’s Dispersed Production

degree of agency must be negotiated, as directors and producers must

tackle not only the executives that own the intellectual property but
also the challenges of working with and through the materials that the
media mix are produced in.
This has wide-­ranging consequences. For instance, in episode 20,
there is a meeting discussing how to approach the ending of Aerial
Girls in which the director, producer, top administration staff, and the
scriptwriter brainstorm possible directions for the narrative, as the
anime’s airing will outpace the manga’s publication (a common occur-
rence in anime adaptations). The director points to how in manga it
is easier to change the direction of the story than in anime, and they
debate whether the trauma the protagonist in Aerial Girls received in
a previous episode should keep her from piloting (a regular trope in
mecha anime and manga), or if she should rise to the challenge, over-
coming her crisis at the end to fly her plane. In the current stage of
the manga, the pilot is left grounded, but the staff argue that in anime,
the expectations are different, and the pilot must fly in the end to pro-
vide a satisfactory conclusion.
While there is a chain of command here, it is clear that there are
multiple actors, each exerting varying degrees of agency throughout
the process. This gets further complicated as the agreed plan of having
the pilot fly is undercut by the Aerial Girls manga author during the
meeting finally secured in episode 23. The anime director makes his
case that the protagonist pilot should fly because, like in his life, she
continues to fight because of her compatriots, because of those working
hard around her. The manga author replies that, for the anime direc-
tor, the anime production team is like the Third Aerial Girls Squad,
to which the director agrees. However, the manga author sees it dif-
ferently, because each of the girls in the aerial squad is a metaphor for
the problems that plague him personally. While entertaining the myth
of the lone manga author here (in truth, manga authors often have as-
sistants and work closely with editors), a difference between mediums
is revealed: theoretically, manga can be made by one person with pen,
paper, and publishing technology (print or digital) who has developed
a set of skills (e.g., drawing, developing narratives and characters, and
paneling), whereas anime generally involves a large group of people,
each with various specialized skills (e.g., animator versus scriptwriter
versus voice actor) and access to different technologies and materials.
 Anime’s Dispersed Production 103

This difference in medium-­specific labor practices develops into a

difference of group dynamics, which is further extended into the re-
spective approaches each creator (manga and anime) takes when ad-
dressing the problem of how to continue the narrative. However, this
difference becomes productive through the collaboration of the di-
rector and manga author: the anime director’s interpretation of the
manga author’s approach sparks a renewed understanding of the pilot’s
character, one that the manga author then affirms. The director then
suggests a way to provide internal motivation for the pilot. Through
inter­active brainstorming, the anime director and manga author pro-
duce a mutually acceptable solution to this narrative problem, satis-
fying the demands of anime’s narrative conventions and the manga
author’s convictions: the protagonist will fly because she meets a new
character who provides her with renewed hope. Furthermore, the
anime director and manga author actively work together, a construc-
tive outcome of conflict that results in a similarity between the anime
and manga versions of the work.
Here, despite the apparent closeness of manga and anime, there
are productive divisions that the specific mediums afford, affecting
the production processes used and their group dynamics. More to the
point, the abovementioned interaction between director and author
exposes how human agents must work with the affordances of their
mediums, in concert and in tension with their constitutive materials, to
conspicuously produce similarity between manga and anime via inter-
connected but distinct conventions that invoke a recognizable relation
between them that synergizes the media mix.24
This problem of maintaining a relation between anime and manga
despite their distinctions in the materials of production occurs even
in areas that would appear simple to solve. For example, during the
character design phase for the production of Aerial Girls in episode 13,
the character designers explain the difficulty of designing a charac-
ter from the 2D manga for the anime, which has to work in three di-
mensions in animation. As Lamarre has detailed, character design is
itself a crucial element of anime’s engagement with the moving image
(Lamarre’s “soulful bodies”), both in the medium of limited animation
and as it relates to the characters’ ability to move across media in the
media mix.25 Therefore, the character designer must twist and morph
the designs that come from manga to work with the affordances of the
104 Anime’s Dispersed Production

materials at hand to adapt them for animation. As a result, a clear re-

semblance to the manga (referring viewers to the manga product as
well as other media) is maintained while still allowing for the operabil-
ity of the character designs in animation. In this manner, character de-
sign adaptation is another process of negotiation between nonhuman
and human actors.
There is another dynamic at play here in the adapting of character
designs from manga to anime. This is referenced in episode 13, when
a former animation director notes how in the process of imitating the
source manga, repeating the characters over and over, the animator
eventually makes the characters her own, and if this does not occur then
the ani­mator cannot be a character designer. The animation director’s
statements thus frame adaptation as a problematic of reiteration, bring-
ing attention to an important tension between repetition and variation,
in which reiterations somehow eventually produce change (further dis-
cussed in chapters 4 and 5). In these processes, there is not only the pro-
cedures of working with certain materials to produce the work but also
an active engagement with a history of conventions from earlier anime.

Anime’s Media-­Form
Before going further, let me reiterate what I mean by media-­form. Con-
cisely, anime’s media-­form is the interplay between medium, material,
and the repeated conventions seen in anime, that is, what makes anime
recognizable as such. In particular, anime’s conventions are myriad,
from the character designs to the voice acting styles, from the narra-
tives to the character expressions and animation techniques used. These
conventionalized elements become what is expected out of anime as a
particular media product, and new anime tend to repeat those elements
(even in new materials) in order to relate to earlier works and meet, and
ultimately reproduce, those expectations. This performance of the anime
media-­form is the subject of the drama of Shirobako, and it is what makes
Shirobako itself recognizable as an anime. What this means, then, is that
anime’s media-­form is another agent at play here that is constraining and
structuring the production process, restricting the staff within certain
boundaries while also giving them a point of departure.
Let me provide an example. In episode 12, the top-­level p ­ roducers
and administrators discuss an important scene at the climax of the Exo­
 Anime’s Dispersed Production 105

dus! series. They argue over the feasibility of producing the scene the
director wanted involving a herd of horses. Animating such a scene
would be complex and difficult to produce in terms of the technical
skill of the animators, as well as the time it would take to produce it.
One of the producers suggests either doing the scene in 3D (which
would be difficult because the 3D animators are already overbooked)
or adjusting the storyboard to pan over the horses and not show their
legs moving. This is harshly objected to by the managing production
assistant Honda. He argues that this is a climactic sequence and cannot
have shoddy animation sequences, insisting on the importance of the
climax for the success of the series itself. Indeed, even Shirobako fol-
lows the patterns they discuss in the show: the episodes at the climax,
in particular, episode 23, feature complex, action-­oriented sequences
as the director sneaks into the publisher’s office building, comically
performing fighting game–­like martial-­arts moves to defeat a string of
“bosses” (the executives and managers at the publisher) who try to keep
him from meeting the manga author.
In the conflict for how to animate the horse scene, there are mul-
tiple forces at play that drive the decision-­making process: the time,
staff, and budgetary restrictions, but also the expected structure of
the anime series, an expectation built from previous anime, which
demands complex and exciting animated sequences to ensure the
success of the series. The director is working toward the latter while
the producers must provide a solution for the former. Ultimately, it is
Miyamori who delivers a viable solution that satisfies both require-
ments, a solution that is itself from a famous animator who is entirely
outside of the company—­that is, using the in-­house veteran animator
Sugie Shigeru to animate the horses. However, even this final animated
sequence is achieved only through a team effort. Due to the time re-
straints, Sugie (who usually works on children’s animation) must draw
rough sketches that are then to be cleaned up by other lead animators.
In fact, the two animation supervisors actively volunteer to do this job,
as they want to learn from his techniques and participate in this part
of the production. Here, the multiple layers of laborers’ work that go
into a single animation sequence is portrayed (key animation, cleanup,
and, in other sequences, coloring and then editing) along with the im-
portance of building on the expectations from anime performances in
the production process.
106 Anime’s Dispersed Production

Because of its prominent references to other examples of animation,

anime has a delimiting range based on previous examples that struc-
tures the animation considered acceptable, highlighting how particular
the performance of anime’s animation is. This is evident in another ex-
ample when the junior animator Yasuhara Ema becomes overwhelmed
by fears of producing poor animation for a sequence involving a cat.
Her fears are visualized as the image of a cat with sharply defined lines
devolving into a squirmy ball that loses its distinction as a cat. These se-
quences in episode 8 explicitly show that there is a clear preference for
a particular type of animation that strays away from amorphous shape-­
shifting objects toward more stable images that remain recognizable.
While in this context it is a display of fear for reduction of quality, some
“art animations” purposefully produce destabilized images or have
character outlines that vibrate and are inconsistent. Yasuhara’s fears
visualized reveal a tendency within anime to shy away from animating
certain types of objects, like humans or cats, in an amorphous way in
favor of more rigidly defined stylistic boundaries.
To help Yasuhara get over her fears, general animation supervisor as-
sistant Iguchi Yuka takes her out for a walk and instructs Yasuhara to
look at previous examples of animation and “learn by copying,” implying
that animators are building their skills from previous examples. This also
stresses the importance of copying and repetition, as well as relations to
previous examples of anime history in the production of contemporary
anime—­something that is both beyond animators’ control, as it is in the
past and outside of their immediate decision-­making, and that they can
also contribute through copying and their own productions.
Similar themes are evident in a story arc that occurs over episodes
4–­6 when there is a dispute between a 2D animator, a production as-
sistant, and a 3D animator. Over the course of these episodes, the 2D
animator (Endō Ryūsuke) abruptly withdraws as animation director
because the 3D director had already finished animating an explosion in
CG that the 2D animator wanted to draw. Feeling as if 3D was becoming
favored, and due to the poor relaying of information by the production
assistant, the 2D animator becomes angry and withdraws. Ultimately,
the issue between 2D and 3D animation is solved in episode 6 by a
visit to an exhibit of a fictional anime (based on the 1980 anime Space
Runaway Ideon), where the two animators bond over their mutual af-
fection for that earlier series. This is one of the many sequences where
 Anime’s Dispersed Production 107

Shirobako shows how the animators, as well as other staff, were and
still are fans of anime, active consumers who have devoted themselves
to its production. This feedback loop of consumer and fan to producer
and animator, in which consumed anime informs produced anime, is
further emphasized in sequences where the animators observe them-
selves, other characters, or creatures to animate them by this refer-
ence. Because the show’s mode of address is in anime’s media-­form, the
characters are observing the anime world to (re)produce anime—­it is

Figure 2.1. Yasuhara (b) self-­referencing to animate an anime character

(a) in Shirobako episode 19.
108 Anime’s Dispersed Production

literally self-­referential. In fact, some sequences show anime character

animators observing themselves to then animate anime character ex-
pressions, as Yasuhara does in episode 19 (Figure 2.1).
This brings me to one of the most recognizable elements in anime
that exposes how external (and thus imposed, learned, and performed
by the animators) anime’s media-­form is to the production process:
anime’s conventionalized facial expressions. The performance of facial
expressions in Shirobako becomes an important plot point during epi­
sode 3, when they have to re-­cut a segment because the images (e) are
losing (maketeru) to the voice actor’s performance (shibai). The gen-
eral animation supervisor assistant, Iguchi, must redraw the character
expression, making it more expressive. This must be done in a timely
manner, so Iguchi concentrates on this particular expression, spend-
ing all night drawing the images, repeating to herself, “I knew it,” the
line that the character must say during the enactment of that pained
expression. This is a general practice in animation: an animator works
through an expression to get the timing correct or views her own face
making that expression. This practice makes the animator take on
the actions of the animated character and imbues the character with
the actions of the animator.26
However, it is important to consider that in anime, character ex-
pressions have to carefully balance the repeated conventionalized
codes, what Donald Crafton calls “figurative acting,” with the individ-
ualized expressions specific to that character’s emotions, what Crafton
calls “embodied acting.”27 These concepts will be more fully explored
in chapter 5, but for now it is important to stress that anime charac-
ter acting tends toward a stricter repetition of these codes, and in-
deed, the pained expression Iguchi is animating for the character Aya
in Exo­dus! is one that is performed similarly by characters in many
other anime. In such sequences, a character (often female) lowers her
head; her eyebrows become upside-­down arches that move closer to the
center of the head; her eyes transform between lightly arched lines to
squinted eyes and then become filled on the side with tears; as the head
moves, often in a diagonal, then circular motion, the tears disperse into
water droplets. For example, though this postdates Shirobako, Akko’s
character expression in episode 6 of Little Witch Academia (2017) is
performed in a similar manner—­an overdramatic expression that is
regularly repeated, not identically, but in the general model that is ad-
 Anime’s Dispersed Production 109

hered to across distinct anime productions. It is intriguing that Iguchi

herself is an anime character, thus further emphasizing not only how
those animating and those animated force each other to act, sharing
actions through the act of animating, but also how there is an added
layer in anime animation: the figurative acting codes must be adapted,
something outside both the animator and animated, forcing them both
within a certain mode of expression. Indeed, as if to comment on this
and highlight the meta-­performance, the soft-­spoken junior animator
Yasuhara is curious of Iguchi’s work and, while peering over her shoul-
der, loudly knocks over a garbage can. Yasuhara’s face immediately
switches to rounded, white eyes, a figurative code often used to display
shock and, in this case, embarrassment.
Such figurative expressions and their shared and thus external, non-­
individualized nature are emphasized throughout this episode. When
Miyamori looks at some other key frames in episode 3, the characters
have conventional facial expressions on them, which viewers can watch
by seeing Miyamori flip through each image, the camera focusing on
the papers. The next cut is to Miyamori with another separate, con-
ventional facial expression as she remarks with a sigh how cute the
characters are. Later in the episode, when scared about a possible error,
Miyamori makes the same round, white-­eyed expression for mortified
shock that Yasuhara did when she knocked over a garbage can, though
with the addition of puddles of tears and without a blue tint, changing
its nuance (Figure 2.2). Finally, at the end of the episode, both Yasu-
hara and Miyamori sit and watch the final cut of the animated, pained
expression.
After Iguchi finishes the key frames with the new expression, they
are sent to Ogasawara, the general animation supervisor. In one se-
quence, she reviews them and adds only a single line to one frame, ex-
plaining to Yasuhara how that one line on the character’s chin can make
a difference. Therefore, even the key frames receive an adjustment, a
masterfully placed line that changes the movement of the expression,
another agential layer added to the act of animation. Although not di-
rectly depicted in the sequence, in-­between work, creating the images
between the key frames, would also be included at this stage. Usually
in-­between work is regarded as uncreative and unimportant, but it adds
another agential layer, as the in-­between frames are essential compo-
nents that contribute to the movements seen on screen.
110 Anime’s Dispersed Production

Figure 2.2. Anime-­esque facial expressions performed by Yasuhara (a)

and Miyamori (b) in Shirobako episode 3.

Following Ogasawara’s adjustments, the images are colored and then

edited together to make the final cut. These scenes highlight how mul-
tiple people are involved in animating just this one sequence, and how
actions that affect the final product are traceable not only from person
to person but also through the enactment of the figurative code for
that pained expression. This episode, in particular, displays how many
people are involved as agents in the production process, but it also re-
 Anime’s Dispersed Production 111

veals how anime’s media-­form, something external to the animators,

is carefully enacted through repetition of references. Because these
sequences are already performed in anime’s media-­form, the practice
becomes emphasized, as they are referencing themselves as anime.
To close off this section on media-­form, it is worth noting how the
show displays anime’s media-­form as associated with Japan as a nation.
This is subtly revealed in one of the conversations that occurs during
the abovementioned conflict between the 2D animator (Endō) and the
3D animator. In episode 5, Endō and another animator remark on how
3D animators should just go to California to produce their flavorless
animations, revealing a distaste for the difference between 3D and 2D,
where 2D is connected to anime and thus more suited to it. This state-
ment occurs during a drinking session with Kitano Saburō (modeled
after animator Itano Ichirō, famous for his work on Macross), who
teaches “Japanimation” to 3D animators. It is important to note that
this is the first time that “Japanimation,” a term that nationalizes the
animation technique and media-­form, is used in the series.
Playing the role of the wiser, more senior animator, Kitano notes
how he teaches 3D animators to distort time and images using 3D soft-
ware and that, though the 3D animators cannot draw, they love anime
(thus connecting Japanimation with anime). Ultimately, he proposes
that they cooperate with 3D animators and learn the capabilities and
difficulties of 3D animation to improve anime’s quality. He acknowl-
edges that the differences in materials and technology provide distinc-
tive ways to animate, each with various strengths and weaknesses, and
that the negotiation between these two can be productive, helping to
make better quality anime. Here, there is an acknowledgment of the
clashes between 3D and 2D animation and the different capacities of
their technologies, as well as a connection between them that comes
from learning the basics of Japanimation, with Kitano stating that tech-
niques and “an artistic sense” (which is implied is something that can
be taught and learned) of 2D animation can be useful for 3D animation.
In this way, there is an implicit understanding that there is a difference
between anime’s media-­form and other types of animation, even if it is
here revealed in relation to a national distinction.
112 Anime’s Dispersed Production

Transnationality
While Shirobako depicts a generally positive view of freelancing through
the almost mentor-­like role that the freelance animator Segawa Misato
plays for Miyamori, the series provides a less favorable view of sub-
contracting. This is done through sequences involving a subcontractor
called Studio Titanic, portrayed as a run-­down office with sloppy or-
ganization and poor production quality. What the series leaves out is
the large-­scale reliance on such subcontractors and freelancers in the
industry and how transnational this work actually is.
Indeed, this is true of Shirobako itself. The series is produced by the
Japanese studio P.A. Works and Warner Entertainment Japan (a sub-
sidiary of the U.S. company). Beyond the funding, there is other foreign
labor involved in the production as well. This includes work such as fin-
ishing animation (usually the coloring), which was partly outsourced
to YABES, a studio in South Korea, and Toei Animation Philippines.
Key animation was also done in South Korea. For example, YABES and
Hanil Animation studios there created some of the key animation for
episode 13. Some of the backgrounds in episode 3 were done by Studio
Suu, with Vietnamese names credited at the end of the episode. Rong
Hong and Jung-­Duk Seo did episode 21’s animation directing, presum-
ably in Japan but possibly in South Korea or China. As for episode di-
rectors, along with Suganuma Fumihiko (episodes 7, 13, and 15) and
Kurakawa Hideaki (episodes 12, 16, and 22), Jong Heo directed multiple
episodes (episodes 3, 8, 17, and 24). Heo also did story­boarding for epi-
sodes 3, 8, 10, 17, 23, and 24. This means that some of the key sequences
that were analyzed above, specifically in episodes 3 (the facial expres-
sions) and 23 (the differences between manga and anime; the complex
“boss fights”), are partially due to the labor of Heo, who worked as epi­
sode director and/or on the storyboard. Thus, there is an important
dispersal of agency that is transnational, not only in the animation but
also in other levels of production, contributing to the labor in ways that
reflect in the final anime product.
Because much of this information is gleamed from the credits, it
is difficult to determine exactly which sequences were done by which
animators, and other than using the studio name, it is difficult to place
whether the labor took place inside or outside of Japan. That aside, one
can see that the dispersal of agency is not confined within the borders
 Anime’s Dispersed Production 113

of Japan but operates across anime’s transnational production net-

work. This is not a recent occurrence, but rather has been happening
for decades and still occurs on a large scale to this day, as detailed in
the next chapter. Moreover, as noted in the last chapter, funding is in-
creasingly coming from China and the United States.28 In this context,
the agency of the labor (here defined as the capacity to make decisions
that affect the final product) of anime production can take on a geopo-
litical dimension: roughly stated, Who, and in which country, is really
making the decisions? Because of the inability to work through trans-
national productions without relying on inter-­national frameworks,
there is a tendency to legitimize anime as authentic due to its relation
to Japan (“it is mostly a Japanese production, making it Japanese”; “the
Chinese are just providing the funding for this”). Conversely, such re-
liance on national frameworks can be exploited to show the power of
a foreign market over Japanese production (“they are catering to our
tastes now”). Either of these readings is possible because there are few
alternative frameworks to engage with when considering anime’s layers
of agency and the transnationality in its production, as well as in its
distribution and consumption.
Moreover, the standard take on creative labor, which presumes a
top-­down creative process, has ramifications if extended beyond the
borders of Japan. According to Joon Yang Kim, this top-­down approach
is built on a valorization of intellectual labor over physical labor. Kim
critiques the “dominant discourse in this mode of animation pro-
duction that places manual labor and laborers at a lower rank in the
artistic-­production hierarchy of brain over hand.” Discussing how there
is a bodily element to the act of animating, Kim asserts that anima-
tion is thus physical labor and that much of the credit for an anime
goes to higher-­ups in the chain who deal with more “cerebral” activi­
ties (e.g., directing).29 In this view, the creative vision of the director
is the esteemed agent, his instruction the authoritative guidance that
animators or other staff merely follow. Effectively, the director becomes
the authorial agent making the address or producing a commentary,
and the animators and other staff are simply carrying out the brute
labor necessary to execute that vision. Transnational subcontractors in
particular have their labor stripped of any meaningful contribution, as
they are seen as doing “uncreative physical labor” and “merely following
orders from the top.”
114 Anime’s Dispersed Production

As an alternative to this dominant approach, I would suggest shift-

ing toward a conception of dispersed agency. In this framework, all
parties involved have different degrees of power in this hierarchical
structure, which facilitates seeing a more collaborative, transnational
process at play in anime production. Indeed, it must not be forgot-
ten that, according to Shirobako, within Japan there are assertions of
agency at multiple levels in the production hierarchy, so this could also
be applied to those working outside of Japan and those from outside
of Japan working within Japan. Here, transnational laborers can be in-
cluded as another agential layer because their work is visible in the
animation of the final product.
Such an approach would align with what Lamarre sees in anime’s
visuality, that is, a multilayered “field dense in information” where
“character design or mecha design may prove more important than
story or character, or the key animation of battle scenes may garner
as much attention as character development.” Lamarre explains that
that such a visuality invites a mode of viewing that “flattens the hier-
archy of production by which directors are supposed to be of primary
importance, followed by producers or writers, followed by animation
directors, key animators, and character designers.”30 Building on this,
by highlighting the various agents involved in creative labor that ex-
tends across national borders, a flatter view of the transnational hier-
archy of production comes into view. To bring this view into focus, I
would like to stress the impositions, the limits on agency that occur
in the process of production, specifically the media-­form that comes
from outside of the animators but that they must all learn, regardless of
location of production, through copying and (re)production in iterative
performances—­topics to be taken up in later chapters. Including the
agential layer of the transnational labor in the performance of anime’s
media-­form significantly complicates the conception of anime as an
address “from Japan,” though I would insist that a reading of an anime
“about Japan” is still possible.
Not isolated to anime, there is an increasing need to reconcile the
multiple layers of transnationality and dispersal of agency in the pro-
duction, distribution, and consumption of global media in general.
With agency dispersed across a network, one that occurs across na-
tional borders, transnationality fundamentally shifts conceptions of
the local and global: a local site of production may be part of a larger
 Anime’s Dispersed Production 115

production network that crosses extensive distances and national

boundaries, intersecting with the global. Following Latour, when these
transnational networks are traced, whatever a national society is can be
understood as differently assembled. As media like anime are so often
tied to notions of locale-­based culture, it is important to rethink how
cultural production can be considered in light of these border-­crossing
assemblages. This also means that the material conditions of labor can
have diverse affects, even for related media. For example, manga (made
with a minimum of one human agent in one locale) and anime (made
with multiple studios and subcontractors in various locales) can have
different types of transnationality in terms of production despite their
close relation in the media mix. This would also mean that any of the
other products in the media mix will have different transnational paths
even though they are part of the same transmedia system. Thus, in un-
raveling the specific dynamics of these media, one may find different
networks of production, each with its own ways of moving beyond the
inter-­national.
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Anime’s Media Heterotopia

Geographies of Production
In the first chapter, I examined the tendency to rely on the inter-­
national framework when conceptualizing anime’s globality. Anime is
seen as made in Japan, which makes anime’s identity one of Japanese
animation; anime is from Japan even if it has a global presence. How-
ever, as shown in the previous chapter, anime production involves a
complex network of actors and a dispersal of agency that gets further
complicated as it occurs across national boundaries. Indeed, anime’s
animation has long been outsourced to different parts of Asia. This
fact has often been stated in a challenge to the status quo of “anime
is Japanese animation,” disrupting readings of cultural determinism
produced through Cool Japan and other discursive productions. While
this is a productive stance that exposes the intricate nature of the issue
at hand, little work has been done to inquire into what type of trans­
nationality results from such a production process and how that may
be conceptualized.
This dynamic needs to be accounted for in more detail, especially
when considered beyond a single anime and seen as a general pattern
for anime production. Anime’s production cuts across and through the
boundaries of the nation, making anime more than simply a Japanese
export. The context of anime’s production and subsequent distribution
is fundamentally transnational. In consideration of this, an alternative
approach to anime is needed, one that acknowledges the long history
of anime production within Japan and the many talented people there
who were instrumental in developing and producing anime while still
accounting for the transnational production, as well as distribution and
consumption, that has also had a lasting effect on anime.
This transnational view makes the internal and external as defined
by the inter-­national become thoroughly blurred, where local can no

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118 Anime’s Media Heterotopia

longer be defined in the same way. Everything is always in motion,

through and across borders, coming from multiple nations at once.
In light of this, one may want to consider regional groupings of na-
tions. But anime production does not necessarily coincide with being
regional as classically defined: a bordered-­whole of a single geographi­
cally proximate area with different bordered-­ whole nation-­ states
within it. Such a view of a region runs the risk of “supranationalism,”
where the bordered-­whole is no longer a single nation but includes the
neighboring countries as a region and implies internal cohesiveness.
From the transnational perspective, then, anime production cannot be
examined from a form of the bordered-­whole that affords the nation-­
state, the inter-­national, or the supranational.
The lack of frameworks to address the transnational is not unique to
anime. As Fabienne Darling-­Wolf asserts, there is an extended vocabu­
lary for engaging the national, in both support and critique, but little
to work with when processing the movement and blurring of bound-
aries evident in transnational and global interconnections.1 This lack
of vocabulary makes it harder to think through and enact methods
of dealing with pressing issues. Fundamentally transnational prod-
ucts like anime (and the vast majority of consumer products), flowing
across, between, within, and around inter-­national borders, intrinsi-
cally disrupt received geographies and institutional practices that stem
from the inter-­national conception of the global. Such maps, traced by
the movements during the production of media like anime, would look
very different from the received geographies of people. Areas drawn
from transnational flows of cultural productions like anime may be-
come defined less by geographic proximity and more by a regularity of
directed flows across borders. But this does not imply even inclusivity
or aligned dispositions of all those across the boundaries, as trans­
national dynamics can exclude large areas and groups of people as well.
This presents a challenging geography to approach.
To address such a situation, I would like to adapt the type of re-
gionality JungBong Choi proposes: “geocultural spheres of proximity
and intimacy beyond the nation-­state’s boundary with identifiable log-
ics and patterns of cultural production, circulation, and reproduction
that are simultaneously autonomous from and interconnected with the
forces of cultural globalization.”2 For Choi, this “cultural regionaliza-
tion takes place over a great historical and geographical breadth, shap-
 Anime’s Media Heterotopia 119

ing different modalities of tangible networks under shifting material

and social conditions.”3 In particular, Choi notes how a “synchroniza-
tion in audiovisual production and distribution leads to the thickening
of common cultural repertoires and style,”4 emphasizing “the lasting
relevance of emotional structures and aesthetic inertia whereby pre-
ferred routes, scales, and patterns of supranational cultural exchanges
are shaped.”5 Though the focus is on East Asia, Choi is “concerned not
so much with cultural geography as with cultural geometry and there-
fore not quite with a fixed region per se as with protean regionality.”6
Accordingly, this regionality can “spill beyond the territorial parameter
of East Asia” and may maintain a variety of dispositions from hostility
to solidarity.7
I will use something akin to Choi’s conception of regionality to ex-
plore anime’s transnational production processes and its complex geog­
raphy across various parts of Asia, the repeated patterns of which can
be seen as taking the form of a network. While there is certainly more
to a region than the production of one media product, the patterns of
anime’s transnational production create a regionality that extends be-
yond Japan. Here, the internal and external of bordered-­whole nation-­
states of the inter-­national is eschewed in favor of interconnected
nodes, which retain functions for directing flows. In the previous chap-
ter, through Latour’s actor-­network theory, numerous human and non-
human actors were shown to have various effects in anime production,
extending to the transnational dynamics of anime. In this chapter, as I
return to the more directly geographic dynamics of anime’s spatiality,
I will rely more on Levine’s work on the form of the network, although
it does intersect with Latour’s. Additionally, there will be some overlap
with Manuel Castell’s theorization of industrial and urban networks
that involve hierarchical nodes in a “space of flows.”8
Importantly, Levine also connects the form of the network to trans-
national flows in particular.9 This does not mean that the national has
entirely vanished, as it is shaping the border-­crossing currents. That
said, the network “is a form that invites our attention to patterns of
circulation rather than rootedness, zigzagging movements rather than
stable foundations.”10 Networks may take many different configura-
tions, and while all networks have the potential to expand endlessly,
in practice they are often logistically limited and do have specific pat-
terns that can be traced.11 Here, the transnational production network
120 Anime’s Media Heterotopia

engages with multiple points, not necessarily close in proximity, that

are somehow interconnected (even if not directly), with one point
weighted more than others in terms of traffic—­in other words, a cen-
tralized network. Although such a configuration will be the focus, the
effort here will be to accentuate that while there are one-­to-­many op-
erations at play (Japan as central), there are also a many-­to-­one aspects
involved (transnational flows into Japan).
To be clear, I am not proposing simply relabeling anime Asian or
East Asian instead of exclusively Japanese. Nor am I advocating for
anime to be seen as ambiguously transnational or global without any
specificity whatsoever. Rather, I want to attend to the form of trans-
nationality that anime’s production takes. To do so, I will explore how
the actualities of anime production come into conflict with notions of
(national) cultural production and received geographies of region built
from the form of the bordered-­whole, as anime production processes
are constantly operating across those borders in specific ways. I am
thus inquiring into what type of transnationality comes into view in
anime production, as anime’s transnational network has a certain spa-
tial dynamic stemming from its repetitions that have built over time.
The patterns of these operations delineated here provide a point of de-
parture to explore the general shape of this regionality.
Here I will be concentrating on places across Asia due to the pro-
duction history of anime but would like to emphasize that focusing on
Asia does not mean that anime should be seen as exclusive to it. Fur-
thermore, I want to emphasize that a more transnational view would
still acknowledge the weight of Japan in this system: the production
and history within Japan; the amalgam of different techniques and
aesthetics that developed in Japan; Japan as a selling point for anime,
as a central node in the network, as the locus of an important part of
the production and creative talent, and as connected to the local dis-
courses, media, and sociopolitical environment that are part and parcel
of anime’s history of media-­form and content. At the same time, one
cannot ignore the reliance on subcontracted Asian labor, the spread
of anime’s animation techniques and aesthetics beyond Japan, and the
global demand that helped spur anime’s growth and contributed to its
global presence by allowing for such fast production of so many works.
In consideration of such intricacies, anime production may thus be
 Anime’s Media Heterotopia 121

seen as enacting a centralized transnationality that operates through a

network with Japan (or, rather, Tokyo) at the privileged center.
In order to sketch such a transnational conception of anime’s glo-
bality, I will be adapting for anime Hye Jean Chung’s conception of
media heterotopia, invoking a mode of perception that acknowledges
the “digital composites of multiple layers that contain material resi-
dues of globally dispersed production sites and laboring bodies.”12 In
so doing, this will be an account of what Lamarre, building on Arjun
Appadurai, calls “media process geographies,” which are fluid, shifting,
and do not presuppose a set of (cultural, ethnic, etc.) properties within
sovereign territorial boundaries and may not correspond with precon-
ceptions of geographic region.13 Consequently, this will be an attempt
to think through the transnational in a way that undercuts the unit of
analysis of the nation-­state in favor of a more transnational perspective.
Moreover, I will examine the media-­form of anime as a specific type
of animation that itself has a transnational history and is produced
through a particular type of labor, regularly carried out in conjunc-
tion with certain material objects. The importance of the materials
utilized in this process cannot be overlooked, in particular because
the materials (celluloid and computers) and apparatus of production
(historically the animation stand and now computer software) involve
multiple layers that are the basis of the anime image. This affords a type
of production process still used today where different parts of the cel
animation can be produced in disparate locations. Such considerations
of the materiality of production can alter views of anime and other
media in general. As Chung asserts:

The ethical stakes of reclaiming materiality are high, because

it is a matter of ownership and control over a wide spectrum
of labor. In a socioeconomic structure in which recognition of
artistic talent and proprietary claims often directly translate to
economic, cultural, and symbolic capital, this erasure of labor
makes it all too easy for the finished product to be stamped
with the brand of large studios or production companies or the
name of above-­the-­line executives, producers, and filmmakers.
This issue acquires political meaning through the question of
what is rendered invisible through the effacement of site-­specific
122 Anime’s Media Heterotopia

materiality: the concerted efforts of diverse forms of labor

and the uneven distribution of ownership claims over the
finished product.14

Engaging with the transnational production of anime, in particular its

animation, sheds light on some of the invisible labor that produces it.
By tracing the movement of anime through the labors of production,
a different geography can be constructed: a centralized transnational
network.

Transnational Development
Although the focus of this chapter will be on anime’s transnational
production, it should be stressed that there are many more trans­
national elements involved in anime’s media-­form. As Choi empha-
sizes, the qualifications for transnationality should not be limited to
the production of a work. Further, Choi asserts that what may be trans-
national at one point in time can be nationalized at another: “As the
national internalizes and implicates the transnational, what once was
transnational could later be claimed as a bona fide national; what once
were ‘foreign’ can now be exalted as defining features of the national
via the intervention of historical amnesia. . . . Any object/event/practice
can be considered either national or transnational/foreign, depending
on how far back the timeline is stretched.”15 With this in mind, before
beginning the larger exploration of anime’s transnational production, it
may be useful to briefly detail how the development of anime’s media-­
form is itself transnational so as to avoid any overly simplistic notions
of anime’s origin as Japanese. What follows is not meant to be a com-
prehensive transnational history of anime but rather an illustration of
how anime, even in Japan, is always already transnational. Therefore, if
anime’s media-­form itself can be seen as having a more transnational
development, then even as the production of anime outside of Japan is
examined, anime is in fact transnational all the way down.
Although the usual point of departure for anime proper’s history is
Tetsuwan Atomu in 1963, if one wants to trace anime’s history earlier
than that, there are still transnational components. For instance, Hori
Hikari provides a compelling description of a complex transnational
dynamic in her history of animation’s development in Japan in the first
 Anime’s Media Heterotopia 123

half of the twentieth century. In particular, she provides a plethora of

examples of the transnationality of the animation occurring in impe-
rial Japan. Hori notes the cultural hybridity of The Suppression of the
Tengu (1934), including character animation built from a squash and
stretch technique commonly used in U.S. cartoons. In the Tengu short,
characters were “easily smashed but resuming their shapes, and freely
move in midair” but also animated to include Kabuki theatrical pat-
terns and visualize local myths.16
Across her study, Hori stresses how the booming domestic media
industry, specifically film, still included a transnational hybridity that
finds its ways into works that are regularly seen as nationalistic. In
particular, Hori notes an interesting relationship between Asia’s first
feature-­length animation film, Princess Iron Fan (1941) from China,
Disney’s feature-­length animations, and Momotaro’s Divine Sea War-
riors (1945) (or Momotaro, Sacred Sailors in Hori’s translation). In her
analysis, both the Chinese and Japanese productions situate them-
selves vis-­à-­v is Disney’s work, with Princess Iron Fan aiming to be a
Chinese national animation, vitalizing interest in a Japanese national
animation, which is attempted in Sacred Sailors. While Princess Iron
Fan continues Disney’s strategy of reproducing folklore, Sacred Sailors
takes a different route than overt re-­presentation of traditional Japanese
mythology and instead opts for playing with music and animation in an
omnibus style like that of Disney’s Fantasia (1942). Additionally, Daisy
Yan Du explains, Sacred Sailors also maintained some of the same mo-
tifs from Princess Iron Fan, such as utilization of animals invoking war-
time nationalism and a human hero who represents the nation. Beyond
Sacred Sailors, Du details how Princess Iron Fan continued to influence
postwar animation in Japan through the figure of Tezuka Osamu who
repeatedly addressed the film throughout his career.17
It should also be noted that Sacred Sailors was produced when
Korea was colonized as part of the Japanese empire and, according to
Joon Yang Kim, involved animator Yong-­Hwan Kim and possibly other
Korean staff.18 For Hori, Du, and Kim these dynamics are emblematic
of the contradictions of nationalism, whereby creating a national ani-
mation is actually an internalization of methods, animation techniques,
technologies, and concepts that are pulled from other places (external
to the nation but sometimes internal to the empire), even those that
are seen as enemy nations at the time. Noting similar hybridity in such
124 Anime’s Media Heterotopia

animations, Sandra Annett makes the case that these works were actu-
ally conceived of and consumed through an inter-­national framework
since so much of the content was structured through a nation-­oriented
worldview of interactions between distinct countries.19 Therefore, even
propaganda like Sacred Sailors, which easily fits into national frame-
works, has a production history that is far more complex: an influx of
elements from outside of the nation converged into and through the
local media sphere within Japan, resulting in the final media product.
Ōtsuka Eiji traces a similar degree of hybridization occurring during
the war period. Wary of nationalism in the promotion of anime and
manga, Ōtsuka constructs a history of anime and manga aesthetics
that is enmeshed in the context of imperialist Japan. Although Ōtsu-
ka’s work may be seen as constituting a history of anime and manga
as from Japan, it nevertheless exposes anime and manga converging
with outside influences, specifically Sergei Eisenstein’s montage the-
ory (from Russia), which influenced wartime animations, and Disney’s
character designs and production systems. Ōtsuka asserts that the
character designs common in manga and anime were in fact devel-
oped from Disney’s approaches. For Ōtsuka, these cartoonish designs
appear in stark contrast to the sharp, mechanical lines of technological
objects and military vehicles—­a mode of drawing that is in part related
to the promotion of a scientific realism in draftsmanship by the impe-
rial government. This all coalesced within Japan under conditions of
fascism, which enforced a type of technical drawing for the mecha­
nized elements (e.g., airplanes or tanks) and buildings in manga and
animation, whereas characters took on the cartoonish designs popu-
larized by Disney. This new amalgam became common in anime as
well as manga and became the point of departure from which anime
continued to evolve after the war. In this sense, what Ōtsuka sees as the
beginning of anime’s media-­form stems from multiple transnational
flows that coalesced within Japan before extending outward once more.
Therefore, the beginnings of anime’s aesthetics were transnational and
part of its trajectory toward the global. Ōtsuka even states that the
“form of expression combining Disney and Eisenstein cannot but reach
throughout the world.”20
To remain on the importance of Disney, in the opening chapter of
Anime’s Media Mix, Steinberg stresses both Disney’s influence on and
distinction from Tezuka Osamu’s business strategy, character design
 Anime’s Media Heterotopia 125

concepts, and animation techniques in the influential media mix of

Testuwan Atomu. Consequently, although concentrating on the media
entanglements within Japan, Steinberg highlights the transnationality
involved in these developments at a crucial point in anime’s history.
This becomes visible in the examination of the limited animation tech-
niques developed for Tezuka’s studio, Mushi Production, which were
very different from the full animation of Disney. However, they engaged
with Disney-­like character design, while the image compositions drew
on conventions from local kamishibai (paper plays) and manga that did
not involve full, physical movement. Moreover, these images employed
what Steinberg calls the “dynamically immobile” image, where “charac-
ters were often rendered as if caught in motion.”21 The dynamic immo-
bility of the image combines with a switching between different image
compositions and the degrees of relative movement and stillness that
have become the signatures of anime’s limited animation. As Steinberg
notes, a rhythm of motion and stillness, in particular “the specific style
of motion-­stillness developed around Tetsuwan Atomu” became the
“ ‘TV anime technique,’ that has been said to form the basic pattern for
all anime subsequently.”22 For Steinberg, it is this “dynamic immobility
of the image and the centrality of the character . . . [that] have allowed
anime to forge connections with . . . other media-­commodities, devel-
oping the media mix and its modes of consumption that are so essential
to anime’s own commercial success.”23
Indeed, anime’s fundamentals of character design stem from a long
history of interactions among media in Japan, in particular manga and
anime. Here it should be noted that character design goes beyond the
characteristic large eyes, triangular noses, small mouths, thick, pointy
strands of hair, and lanky bodies to the type of line work commonly
involved. As Fusanosuke Natsume notes, the lines of manga get stan-
dardized to look like anime as the practice of manga to anime adapta-
tion becomes the norm.24 Thick, singular lines and distinctive shading
patterns are easier to animate in cel animation, becoming their own
aesthetic that is imitated in computer graphics and allows for easier
recognition of the same characters in different media.25 Furthermore,
because so many anime were adapted from manga, repeated facial
and bodily expressions become shared between the media, making
them both read through similar patterns. The interaction between
anime and manga in Japan suggests that, though stemming from very
126 Anime’s Media Heterotopia

different media, they both clearly perform similar patterns to reinforce

a sense of mutual connection that heightens the relations between the
products of the media mix. Thus, putting aside for the moment man-
ga’s own history of transnational inflections, anime’s animation can
be seen as having developed across, through, and with its surrounding
media within Japan.
Beyond manga, other elements of the media mix crucial to anime’s
development were also transnational. For example, many of the now
iconic design elements commonly used in robot or mecha anime,
which relied heavily on toy and model sales, have their own histories
of repetition after their initial reference from other sources, which
themselves engage with local media conventions. For instance, there
is the influence of the U.K. show Thunderbirds, with its detailed min-
iature vehicle toys and extended launch sequences, that became part
of the now familiar mecha formula from the late 1­ 960s onward. This is
an influence matched by the narrative and design conventions in local
tokusatsu (special effects) TV programs like Ultraman and Kamen
Rider, which loop back from anime into these live-­action programs
with giant robot designs used in later Sūpā Sentai series from the late
­1970s.26 To draw from the Macross franchise, in the 1980s and ’90s, one
of its characteristic features was the transforming mecha design of the
Valkyrie. These Valkyrie were inspired by foreign (mainly U.S.) military
aircraft designs for its flight mode, as well as local giant robot designs
when transformed. These are now the iconic designs that are part of the
expected formula for the Macross franchise itself.
Bringing this brief history closer to the present, transnational ele-
ments also emerge within Japan in terms of visual design and narrative—­
parts of the production process that regularly occur domestically. As
Lamarre asserts:

Japanese producers and consumers have long had a high degree

of literacy in American, Hong Kong, Chinese, and European en-
tertainment, alongside literacy in the hybrid conventions of film,
manga, and animation expression established in Japan from the
1930s. The result is a heightened awareness of genre conventions
across national boundaries, as well as of modes of address that
are decidedly international or global, even when the target audi-
ence is Japanese.27
 Anime’s Media Heterotopia 127

For example, Annett details the global appeal of Cowboy Bebop (1998),
which she reads as reflexively representing a “world of borderless post-
national flows in which characters collide and then drift apart again.”28
Indeed, one can see a borderless world presented not only in the narra-
tive but also in the utilization of various conventions stemming from a
diverse range of media cultures: Cowboy Bebop displays a blatant famil-
iarity with Hollywood Film Noir, Hong Kong’s kung-­f u cinema, and the
multimedia genre of cyberpunk, mixing and enacting them with the
anime media-­form. Cyberpunk as a genre itself may be another case-­
in-­point for transnational development of media in general. As Rayna
Denison details, art-­house anime like Ghost in the Shell (1995) were
crucial to the conception of the genre and were themselves filled with
transnational elements. Indeed, she concludes in unequivocal terms
that her “examination points not to a shift toward transnationalism
in anime, but to the idea that anime has always been transnational.”29
Here I have just skimmed the surface of some of the visual and
narrative elements of anime’s media-­form and their transnational his-
tory. Throughout anime’s history and in multiple areas of its media-­
form, even in Japan, the transnational is at play, with technologies and
techniques flowing from multiple sources coming together and being
adjusted in the context of a local subculture and its commercial pro-
duction. I would like to highlight that the transnational is even at play
in areas that initially appear rooted in the national. Taking these trans-
national histories into account may help to, in Lamarre’s words, un-
dermine “the ideal of national sovereignty, in which flat, homogeneous
nationness appears to come first and only subsequently becomes inter-
nally fissured and ruptured by various forms of social segmentation.”30
With this in mind, anime’s development can be seen as fundamen-
tally hybrid. Hybridity, however, is difficult to parse, as it is traditionally
mistaken as a simplistic equation whereby a convergence of elements
from two or more disparate sources (so often related to locale and more
often nation) results in something described to be half of each source,
the two sources put together, or an entirely new, third thing. But hy-
bridity is a confusing dynamic, appearing simultaneously as (1) leaning
toward one source and/or (2) the other source, (3) maintaining some-
what even degrees of recognizability and/or relation to each source,
(4) discontinuing any relation and recognizability to either source, and/
or (5) becoming something entirely different from the two sources. This
128 Anime’s Media Heterotopia

is to say that hybrid objects can be seen as the same or similar as one
source, the other source, both, neither, and as something distinct, all at
once. This is itself an oversimplification, as I am only considering two
sources when in fact it is common to have many more, as is the case
with anime broadly. Moreover, the hybrid object itself may become a
source for further hybridity, with all sources being inevitably hybrid.
All these dynamics are operating in tandem and in tension, linking
disparate sources, sometimes emphasizing one over another, even as
the hybrid object becomes something distinct from either. Therefore,
hybridity can be seen as what Michel Foucault describes as heterotopic:
“capable of juxtaposing in a single real place several spaces, several sites
that are in themselves incompatible.”31
But because all these hybridizing processes are happening within
Japan, they can all too easily slip into the national, becoming Japanese
in the classical sense, making the transnational become national. As
Choi explains, something hybrid starts to be seen as part of a national
culture largely as a matter of selection, segmenting only a certain time
and place along the hybrid object’s history. This is not to say that these
transformations in Japan shouldn’t be focused on; highlighting a par-
ticular period and context is an effective and indispensable method
of examining media. Rather, as the abovementioned scholars make
clear, it is important to emphasize that, even in instances where locally
spurred innovations occur, what may initially appear to be exclusive
to Japan is always already filled with transnational flows. Indeed, it is
“within nationalized space where traces and energies of transnational-
ity are acutely sensed.”32 It is also important to contend with the lin-
guistic limitations, whereby the hybridizing process described above
is centered in Japan, making any description slip back into national
categories, as the statement itself includes Japan.
Whether the above process of border-­crossing flows and hybridi­
zations makes these elements Japanese or not is beside the point, as that
very question leads back into the inter-­national. Instead, the focus here
is on the transnational, where the nation itself has not entirely receded
but the emphasis is on the crossing. Therefore, the aim is to acknowl-
edge Japan as important without denying that anime is the product
of transnational flows. In this case, it is possible to see Japan as the
locus of much of the innovation, media mixing, matching, and evo-
 Anime’s Media Heterotopia 129

lution of anime’s media-­form, with the important caveat that some of

these sources are coming from abroad. This combination creates an
aesthetic where specific techniques of animation and editing combine
with certain character expressions and mechanical designs. These all
have become part of anime’s recognizable aesthetic and what one must
learn in order to perform anime, both inside and outside of Japan, thus
continuing the long process of transnational development.

Anime’s Animation Production Network across Asia

Despite the transnational history of many elements of anime’s media-­
form, their performance has become equated with the nation of Japan
and its culture. Anime production is usually seen as coming from
Japan—­anime, as “a style of Japanese commercial animation,” must
surely be made in Japan to qualify as such. As Kim notes, “ ‘Made in
Japan’ did and still does function as a national myth of animation pro-
duction in Japanese society,” a myth that is exploited by Cool Japan
and generally embraced outside of Japan.33 As Jonathan Clements ex-
plains in his history of anime, “although anime’s foreign appeal was,
to some extent, ethnically signified, as a sign of Japaneseness, the na-
ture to which anime might be said to be ‘Japanese’ in the twenty-­first
century is problematic. At the level of ownership, the capital invested
in anime comes from multiple sources—­it is ‘globalised’. . . . At the
level of production, it is similarly transnational with, depending on how
one counts, up to 66 per cent [sic] of the labour involved in making a
‘Japanese’ cartoon coming from overseas.”34 Some accounts state that
about 60 to 70 percent of the labor force in the contemporary anime
industry is not Japanese.35 Takahashi Mitsuteru claims that as many as
95 percent of the in-­betweens are produced in China, South Korea, or
other parts of Asia.36 There is little, if any, information on how these
numbers were gathered—­an important point to note, as the dynamics
of each anime’s production staff can vary greatly, even from episode to
episode. It should also be stressed that there is a massive workforce and
continued employment of all levels of animators, with much of the an-
imation (sometimes the majority) and other parts of production hap-
pening inside Japan. However, the important point here is that, while
accurate assessments of the labor divisions are surely difficult to find
130 Anime’s Media Heterotopia

(something future ethnographies of individual productions could shed

some light on), significant portions of anime’s production do regularly
occur outside of Japan.
And this is not only a recent phenomenon. Anime has a long-­standing
transnational network for animation production in Asia. Kukhee Choo
reveals how South Korean subcontracted animators are “prolific, yet
globally invisible,” having long contributed to anime production dating
back to anime’s early days in the late 1­ 960s with Ōgon Bat (1967–­68) and
Yōkai Ningen Bemu (1968–­69), both produced in South Korea under
Japanese supervision before being brought into Japan to add sound.37
Toei Animation, Japan’s longest continuously running studio, has an ex-
tended history of contracting work outside of Japan, also dating back
to the 1960s. It established a studio in the Philippines in 1986, making
it the subsidiary Toei Animation Philippines (or TAP) in 1999, which,
according to its own website, handles about 70 percent of its animation.38
In Thailand, Studio Rockets located in Bangkok works on 3D animation
for anime. Other CG and motion-­capture work is done by Studio Bokan,
which is based in Tokyo but has a satellite office in Taipei, Taiwan. Japan-­
based company Biho Inc., which specializes in the painted backgrounds
used in animation, also has a studio in Vietnam since 2005, with the
names of the Vietnamese staff often appearing in the credits of anime;
this means that many popular anime that supposedly feature places in
Japan may actually have been made in Vietnam. Farther north, there are
long-­standing studios in China, such as the Beijing Xie Le Art Company,
founded by Tezuka Productions in 1997, with many studios in Shanghai
such as FAI. South Korea also continues to host some of the most used
studios contracted for anime production, such as the studios Namu Ani-
mation and Dr Movie in Seoul, which also has an office in Tokyo. This list
is not exhaustive, and the studios mentioned above are just a fraction of
the more prominent ones; there are also many smaller and less successful
studios in each of these countries. It should also be noted that there are
many high-­ranking foreign animators and staff working within Japan
who sometimes move between companies and productions. A small se-
lection includes animators Cheng Xi Huang, Boya Liang, Se Joon Kim,
and Yong-­Ce Tu, designers Stanlias Brunet and Thomas Romain, back-
ground artists such as Arthell S. Isom, and directors Sunghoo Park and
Haoling Li.
 Anime’s Media Heterotopia 131

As noted before, the division of labor in the anime production sys-

tem easily lends itself to globalization. The system is already compart-
mentalized, and subcontracting and freelancing are the norm within
Japan, so it is relatively easy to send work to studios outside of Japan
without any restructuring of the workflow. In fact, as Clements notes,
there is actually a relative continuum of foreign investment and sub-
contracting of animation that dates back to the 1960s.39 The heavy usage
of foreign subcontractors began in earnest in the late ­1970s with the
second anime boom. Citing the massive amount of labor outsourced to
South Korea and other Asian countries, Kim asserts that this sustained
the next animation boom in Japan in the 1980s and the following anime
wave of the 1990s.40 The subcontracting to South Korean and PRC stu-
dios increased once more in the early ­2000s as anime’s foreign demand
escalated and the number of anime produced rose, with a sudden jump
and subsequent peak in 2006. This reliance on subcontractors, in par-
ticular due to the lack of a labor force in Japan to actually produce the
number of anime ordered, was to such a degree that sometimes en-
tire episodes were animated outside of Japan during this time.41 After
2006, the number of titles made decreased but started to steadily rise
again after 2011.42 The number of anime titles made per year in 2017
has already surpassed that of the 2006 boom,43 and the usage of sub-
contractors in Asia is still prevalent. But, according to Clements, this
transnational production process is not “necessarily an issue to anime’s
owners, since all modern animation productions are transnational in
nature. The difference with the anime business is that in many fields
its Japaneseness has become its unique selling point.”44 But, it should
be noted, this selling point of Japaneseness may be more for overseas
audiences than domestic ones.
In any case, the degree of transnationality in anime is quite high
regardless of whether it is considered by historical development, fund-
ing, or production locales, and it has been for most of the industry’s
history. For example, as mentioned in the introduction, every ­Macross
anime had some of its animation produced transnationally. This in-
cludes Macross Plus (OVA: 1994–­95, film: 1995), where much of the pro-
duction work was done in Japan by Studio Nue, Big West, Bandai Visual
(and others) and the key animation by Triangle Staff. However, almost
all the in-­betweens and painting for Macross Plus were done in South
132 Anime’s Media Heterotopia

Korea at studios DR Movie and Busan DR. For Macross 7 (TV series:
1994–­95, film: 1995, OVA: 1995, 1997–­98), Studio 4°C, Ashi Productions,
Artland, and others are credited with the production, which also in-
volved Big West and Studio Nue, all located in Japan. But, once more,
the in-­between animation includes the South Korean Kyesung Produc-
tion Inc. (for thirty-­eight episodes), as well as companies in China such
as Shanghai Hongqiao Animation (eleven episodes), Shanghai Rain-
bow (twenty-­six episodes), and Shin Woo animation (thirty-­eight epi-
sodes). As for Macross Zero (OVA: 2002–­4), the production is credited
to Studio Nue and the animation to Satelight in Tokyo. Some of the key
animation was also credited to South Korean studios JM Animation
and Tin House, with many names appearing in Hangul script in the
credits of the episodes.
The credits for the second most recent production, Macross Fron-
tier (TV series: 2008, films: 2009, 2011), include Satelight, Big West,
Studio Nue, and Bandai Visual, with key animation by Satelight. The
TV series had South Korean animation director Yong Sik Kim on for
three episodes and some South Korean staff at the studio My Bell Ani­
mation working on second key animation and other animation pro-
cesses, along with some foreign staff at Satelight in Tokyo and Japanese
staff at Satelight Osaka Studio. Background art was done largely by the
company Biho, which has a studio in Vietnam, and many of their Viet-
namese names are shown in the credits. There were even participants
working on some episodes from the Philippine studio KMU Manila
Studio and the PRC studio Zizidongman. The CG design was also done
with some South Korean staff and many Japanese staff. To give an ex-
ample from one of the films, Seong Ho Park worked on some of the key
animation of Macross Frontier: The False Songstress (2009). The newest
iteration, Macross Delta (TV series: 2016), includes mechanical design
by Stanislas Brunet and art design by Thomas Romain and Vincent
Nghiemm. There are also in-­between animation credits for Toei Ani-
mation Philippines studio and Xuyang Animation in China. As these
inexhaustive details show, even the Macross franchise has been trans-
nationally made for decades.
These long-­standing relationships between Japanese anime produc-
tions and studios outside of Japan have led to business practices that
are shared throughout the network and that do not necessarily adhere
to national boundaries. Kenta Yamamoto, who has conducted an ex-
 Anime’s Media Heterotopia 133

tensive inquiry into what he calls “the agglomeration of the animation

industry in East Asia,” notes that the long-­term usage of East Asian
labor by the Japanese animation industry has led to the adoption in
Shanghai and Seoul of “the transactional customs and industrial struc-
tures of their major client countries”:

They might design their facilities to look more like those of their
Japanese clients, use transactional sheets for production or em-
ploy Japanese speakers in the studio. These studios were able to
connect with Japanese partners and also to transact with other
studios located nearby, but using the same Japanese customs.
Although not all of the managers at these studios have neces-
sarily worked in Japan, they are familiar with the Japanese rules
of business. . . . Some animation studios do not explicitly record
contract details so that they can ensure flexibility of their con-
tracts’ contents. This is an example of a characteristic custom
among Japanese-­style animation studios.45

But these shifts in business practices do not only originate from Japan
and then spread to other countries. Hao Ling Li, representative director
of the studio Emon in Tokyo, stated (or advertised) in an interview that,
in contrast to Japanese studios, Emon offers its staff full employment
benefits in Japan.46
I should note that business is not necessarily the exclusive bottom
line here. Yamamoto details how trust is important in maintaining in-
dustry relations and is built over many years of goodwill among multiple
parties. Such interpersonal networks occur throughout the animation
industry, which relies heavily on freelancers, but they take on a differ-
ent dimension when they occur transnationally. Yamamoto explains
that groupings of studios coordinate group shipments of the animation
materials that head overseas to ensure timely returns, increasing local
solidarity. Moreover, Yamamoto points out that some of the studios in
South Korea that fill contracts for Japan only fill orders for Japanese stu-
dios instead of Western clients, which other studios serve exclusively.47
In fact, “some Seoul studios continue to make unprofitable transactions
with Japanese studios because they feel they owe the Japanese studios
while others take great care not to steal Japanese studios that are cli-
ents of other studios.” These long-­standing business relations “cement
134 Anime’s Media Heterotopia

mutual trust relationships among animation studios, even across na-

tional borders.”48 Therefore, something beyond the individualized units
of nation comes into relief through anime’s transnational production.
Indeed, as Madhouse studio producer Saitō Yūichirō has stated in an
interview with Condry, “we just want to make good animation; we are
not so concerned about national origins.”49

Heterotopic Images
Approaching anime as a national cultural product, exclusively repre-
sentative of Japan, produces an oversimplified, decorous conception of
the media-­form that ignores the transnational complexity of the pro-
duction process. When understanding this network of production, it
must be acknowledged that one anime animation sequence may be
merging the multiple locales of each part’s production into the cohesive
images that make up the sequence. For example, episode 6 of ­Macross
Frontier had storyboarding, key animation, CG, and compositing done
at various studios in Japan (often Satelight), but the labor also included
second key animation work by studio Daejin in South Korea, set direct-
ing from Frenchman Stanislas Brunet in Japan, animation and finishing
work by KMU Manila Studio in the Philippines and ShangJie Anima-
tion and Zizidongman in China, and backgrounds by Biho in Japan and
Vietnam. Therefore, while the specifics of which images come from
where are not often explicated, that particular episode contains parts
from different national locales of production composited together.
From this perspective, the anime industry outsourcing animation
throughout Asia can be seen as part of a transnational performance,
but one that tends to flow through Japan. Therefore, anime’s transna-
tionally produced images are what Hye Jean Chung, building on Fou-
cault’s ideas, calls a “media heterotopia”:

A mediated space of representation created by compositing

multiple layers that contain spectral residues of dispersed
geographical locations and laboring bodies. As a result, bits and
pieces of the material world—­that is, traces of sites and bodies
of production—­are embedded, or woven, into the film’s texture,
thus belying the aesthetic and rhetorical emphasis on seamless-
ness that glosses over any conflicts or frictions.50
 Anime’s Media Heterotopia 135

The compositing of multiple layers in any given image tends to rely on

erasure of the labor-­intensive production process, and cognizance of
this multilayered component allows for a rediscovery of this history
and tension in the supposedly seamless image.51 Each episode and even
each specific image may be transnational in its own way, as the various
layers of the image were produced in different places but composited
into a single frame. Put differently, the very images of anime themselves
are multilayered transnational products. The audio-­visual composite,
or media heterotopia, of anime performance, then, does not really come
from any single place but rather embodies a tension between multiple
places of production in its unified images.
Yet Chung focuses on live-­action cinema, where actual indexical
residues of locations can be identified. Animation is different, as each
layer of an image has to be created from the ground up. Because of
anime’s fabricated nature as animation, it more easily disguises the lo-
cation of the labor of production, so long as the conventions of anime
have been reproduced. A unity can be achieved through the organized
execution of similar visual conventions—­in other words, through the
performance of anime as a media-­form. Seeing anime as a performative
media heterotopia is an attempt to bring the layers of production into
view, providing a degree of agency to performers while acknowledging
the impositions and constraints through which they perform. Viewed
in this way, anime’s heterotopic images constantly balance a tension
between the multiplicity of geographically disparate places, people,
and materials involved in their production and the unity in the anime-­
esque conventions used to produce them.
While I am highlighting a perception of unity, I would like to clarify
that this unity is not one without its own frictions and hierarchies, with
anime’s relation to Japan bearing incredible weight in this dynamic.
The media-­form of anime that workers are performing, under current
conceptions of anime, is overtly acknowledged and promoted as Japa­
nese culture, forcing foreign animators to produce animation that is
visibly recognizable as from another culture. Even if the animators are
credited, which is not always the case, there are further problems, as
these subcontractors are often in or from places that Japan has his-
torically oppressed. While the conventions of anime are externally
imposed on all performers, a different relationship to this imposition
occurs for many animators outside Japan.
136 Anime’s Media Heterotopia

Kim explains that “encouraged by studio owners and the govern-

ment, and appropriated by subcontracted production, South Korean
animators’ hands in the 1980s became more and more coded to spe-
cific cultural-­industrial types of emotional and bodily expression. Their
hands were trained to draw lines in the styles demanded by the Japa­nese
and Western animation industries.”52 Repeated performances transform
the animator into someone who produces certain types of animation
(in this case, anime’s media-­form), delimiting the animator into this
particular range of expression, which may be seen as coming from a
foreign, oppressive, source. Against this, some animators may want to
produce different, local animation styles. Sometimes there are even
negative reactions when overseas animators produce domestic anima-
tions in the same or similar media-­form that they normally do when
they make anime. For instance, Choo describes this as having occurred
in South Korea, with such productions being derided as simply copying
Japanese works.53 Alternatively, as Chloé Paberz describes of the cur-
rent era in South Korea, others may approach their work with enthu-
siasm in a community of creatives actively trying to produce work in
the anime media-­form because it is what they themselves enjoy.54 With
multiple layers produced by people who may each take on any one of
those outlooks (or others) still being composited into a single image,
anime’s media heterotopia is complex, rife with all these tensions. See-
ing anime as a performative media heterotopia is an attempt to bring
these layers and tensions of production into view, acknowledging the
impositions and constraints through which animators perform while
affording a degree of agency.

(In)visible Performances
With this in mind, the animators outside and inside of Japan have
the anime media-­form’s conventions imposed upon them but should
also be acknowledged as the agents of their execution, utilizers of a
particular set of skills. Indeed, not just anyone can produce anime’s
animation; it must be performed in accordance with the conventions
of anime. Any anime production must include people trained to pro-
duce this particular type of animation, enacting the methods and tech-
niques that constitute anime performance. But that also means that
there may be varying degrees of successful performance, something
 Anime’s Media Heterotopia 137

that is acknowledged in the industry. For instance, Yamamoto notes

that the staff at studios in Japan he surveyed seemed to expect a better
quality of work from South Korean studios than those in China.55 In
terms of this book’s framework, such an attitude could be described
as regarding South Korean studios’ performance of the anime-­esque
as more suitable, according to some Japanese conceptions. Effectively,
this creates a hierarchy whereby Japanese performance is seen as the
highest quality, followed by South Korean and then Chinese, which
brings us right back to the inter-­national. To move away from such an
approach, it is worthwhile to inquire into not only the capacity to per-
form but also that performance’s visibility and approaches to judging
it transnationally.
To provide an example, I would like to turn to some comments
by Richie Marquez from the sales and marketing department of the
9Lives Animation Studio in the Philippines. 9Lives mainly seeks out
in-­between work as well as digital inking and painting but has also
received key animation and layout work for major projects such as
Youjo Senki (2017) and Gamers! (2017), doing up to 25 to 30 percent of
an episode’s animation. In an interview, Marquez stated that “anime
has always been our forte and we are just one of the very few compa-
nies who can do this type of animation work.” Marquez explains that
they received a “very positive response from the directors and produc-
tion coordinators in terms of our work and told us that they didn’t
realize that other nationalities would be able to animate like the way
they do and was very surprised with the work we did.”56 The Japanese
production studios even put their full names in the credits instead of
simply the studio name, which is the standard approach to crediting
outsourced animation for both Japanese and overseas companies. This
interview highlights that there is a perceived technical difference in the
execution of the animation that is connected to Japan. However, both
Japanese and Filipino producers ultimately recognize that anime can
be created outside of Japan by overseas animators; successful anime
performance does not need to be isolated to Japan.
It is important to consider that performance is not only the exe-
cution of an action, but also the judgment of something, which can
be felicitous or infelicitous.57 In consideration of this, one may con-
ceptualize a manner of judging anime’s performances that has two in-
terrelated categories: (1) quality: the adherence to or deviations from
138 Anime’s Media Heterotopia

the conventions and a proficiency of related skills and (2) authenticity:

where it was enacted and by who. Japan is central in this dynamic, as
anime’s media-­form itself has come to signify Japan. Because authen-
ticity and quality are so intimately tied together here, there is the im-
pression that the highest-­grade performances are Japanese. The nation
thus plays an authenticating role, and performances conceived of as
having occurred outside of Japan receive extra scrutiny and are often
derided as copies of a Japanese original.
But it is the very iterability of anime’s conventions that allows it to be
recognizable and to be judged, but also to travel and cross national and
cultural boundaries. This iterability—­the capacity to be re-performed
in a felicitous manner—­both enables and masks the transnationality
of anime. It can be learned, practiced, repeated, and this allows anime
to be produced outside of Japan; but because its recognizability is so
deeply associated with Japan, felicity and quality in performance be-
come associated exclusively with Japan, veiling the transnationality.
What occurs, then, is the fusion of both modes of judgment of the
performance (quality and authenticity). If anime is to be seen here in
terms of performance locales, then its performance is spread across
Asia, and the quality of the performance masks this labor, erasing its
trans­nationality. Anime’s media-­form is thus easily viewed exclusively
as a sign of Japanese culture.
With this in mind, it is worthwhile to return to the importance of the
actual visibility of anime’s dispersed production in the animation itself.
While many of the foreign animators, especially before the 1980s, may
have been underexposed or completely hidden, the fruits of their labor
are not: the animation itself still remains. The animators mark their
final product, as their particular performance of animation is evident in
the very images that are seen on-screen. Their performances are visible
for the viewers, even if they are not acknowledged. This is not unknown
to the animators and has been utilized in acts of resistance. Choo notes
how South Korean–­produced animation cels in the 1970s were some-
times sent back for revision because Korean temples were painted onto
cels without the authorization of the Japanese directors, intentionally
undermining and subverting the Japaneseness of anime.58 These are ex-
treme cases, and such examples never made it to the final cuts.
Unfortunately, the most common acknowledgment of the visibility
of overseas labor is a negative judgment. In more recent times, specifi­
 Anime’s Media Heterotopia 139

cally the early ­2000s, fans would find examples of bad animation in
anime, often blaming it on the cost cutting of outsourcing to studios
outside of Japan.59 For instance, one famous example of derided anima-
tion is an entirely round cabbage cut in a scene in episode 3 of Yoake
Mae Yori Ruri Iro Na (Crescent Love,­2006), which appears to have
actually been animated in Japan. A similar situation occurred in late
2018 with the series My Sister, My Writer, where many fans on twitter
speculated that the poor quality of the animation was due to outsourc-
ing, both to subpar companies in Japan and to overseas studios.60 Such
reactions to poor performance reaffirm the authenticity and presumed
superior quality of Japanese animators.
But because of the widespread use of overseas labor and foreign
workers in Japan, outsourced work has actually always been visible but
simply went unnoticed due to its successful performances, effectively
becoming invisible as it is misjudged as Japanese. In this way, the ma-
jority of the time, the outsourced work’s invisibility is the mark of the
felicity of its performance; it is seen but goes unremarked, passing as
anime proper. The felicity of anime’s animation performances by those
outside of Japan actually hides the tensions of anime’s transnationality:
if anime is supposed to be Japanese, and the animation is performed
in l­ine with its conventions, then there is no incongruity. The smooth
execution of anime’s conventions in each part of the animation-­image,
and its compositing into a single frame, allows one to gloss over the
complexities and colonial histories of hierarchies that enabled the un-
evenness for outsourcing to occur under Japanese direction. But poor
performances, or what is seen as low-­quality work, are disparaged, and
once more the authority and authenticity of Japanese producers is rein-
stated. In consideration of this, performing anime in a felicitous man-
ner can be seen as disrupting this authenticity, as the animators actively
participate in a uniform layer in the image, in effect proving that anime
is an imitable media-­form that they too can perform—­that the anime-­
esque is not exclusive to Japan, as it was always performed felicitously
by those outside of Japan.
Moreover, to fully consider anime as performative would also in-
volve making visible the conventions that maintain its recognizable
identity. This is where outsourcing and the so-­called uncreative physi­
cal labor of animators become important, as these actions are what
sustain the conventions necessary to identify anime at all. If overseas
140 Anime’s Media Heterotopia

animators are asked to produce the more conventional expressions, lay-

outs, backgrounds, or other elements that are seen as uncreative work,
then they are actually producing the images that make anime recogniz-
able as such in the first place. If these animators are given work that is
not considered innovative, it is still their marks on the images that are
seen in the final work. While credit for innovations (which are them-
selves hybridizations built on or against already established patterns,
local or otherwise) is deserved, the sustaining of conventions would
not occur without those who executed and repeated them; the recur-
rences themselves are what make the innovation noteworthy at all. In
fact, for a convention to survive, it must be constantly reiterated within
its param­eters. This is a process happening both inside and outside of
Japan, throughout anime’s history. And since trans­national, outsourced
labor was so heavily relied on for financial viability, compensation for
the lack of a workforce in Japan, and capacity to felicitously perform an-
ime’s conventions, these animators and other animation staff deserve
to be acknowledged for producing parts of the images that sustained
anime itself as a recognizable media-­form.

Transnational Hierarchies
However, even if these animators are credited or their labor acknowl-
edged, the hierarchy of production still looms large over them. The low
status of animation is evident in the financial structure of the industry
itself, with animators, particularly cleanup and in-­between animators,
making low salaries, working long hours, and having low job security,
even within Japan. As noted above, Emon’s president even remarked on
this fact in a Japanese interview, stating that his studio would provide
better benefits and a steady position.61 While some popular animators,
after many years of steady demand for their work, have made it to the
top of the hierarchy of animators or transitioned to directors and can
sometimes have quite high salaries (Tsugata puts it at about ¥10 million
or US$88,248 per year), many lower ranking and younger animators are
not paid well.62
The average animator’s salary in Japan is around ¥3.3 million
(US$30,052), but second key animators make as little as ¥1.127 mil-
lion (US$10,263) per year.63 This amounts to approximately ¥275,000
(US$2,504) and ¥93,916 (US$855) per month, respectively. Yamamoto
 Anime’s Media Heterotopia 141

states that 65 percent of freelance animators he surveyed in Japan re-

ceive less than ¥200,000 (US$1,821) per month.64 With many of the
studios located in Tokyo, where the average cost of living is around
¥120,508 (US$1,097) per month before rent, this does not amount to a
large sum of money. For comparison, out of the South Korean animators
surveyed by Yamamoto, over half of the staff who worked with Japa­nese
clients made around ₩1–­1.5 million per month (US$888–­1,332).65 This
is not much money considering that the average cost of living in Seoul
(where most animators are) is around ₩1,072,182 (US$942) per month
before rent. In China, the average income of animators surveyed by
Yamamoto in Shanghai was CN¥4,172 (US$624) per month.66 This is
below the average cost of living in Shanghai before rent at CN¥4,372
(US$654).67 While salaries on the higher end for animators in Japan are
the only ones that exceed the average monthly cost of living before rent
in the city the studios are located in, their salaries are not far above the
average cost of living. When compared to the average cost of living be-
fore rent in each city, none of the salaries on the lower end would allow
animators to live comfortably in their respective cities. These figures
are not meant to be definitive but rather broadly illustrative of how
the hierarchy of production is not only one that is between Japanese
and overseas production but is also a general hierarchy that is itself
transnational.
This disparity is also not evenly spread out throughout Asia. For
instance, in response to a question about the living and work standards
of Filipino animators in comparison to “Japanese animators [that] often
struggle to live because of their poor salary and their unhealthy work-
ing conditions,” Marquez stated that he believed that “Filipino ani-
mators are making a decent living doing animation work for Japanese
productions if we compare the cost of living here with Japan.”68 The
implication is that, despite the low pay and hard hours of the labor,
it may be possible for animators outside of Japan to have more pur-
chasing power from their salary than those animators in Japan. That
said, Marquez noted his studio’s uniqueness for offering higher pay and
mentioned that anime wages are significantly less than those in West-
ern animation; and with the history of exploitation of labor across Asia,
there are surely many other examples of animators receiving meager
payment, dealing with harsh working conditions, and sometimes being
denied credit for their work.
142 Anime’s Media Heterotopia

As for within Japan, the situation is so bad that a crowdfunded NPO

called the Animator Supporters began in 2014 to organize multiple
animator dormitory projects to help struggling young animators in
Japan. According to their numbers, the pay of young animators is even
worse than described above. Operating in both Japanese and English,
the project has attempted to gather both local and global support for
the dire situation of animators. Such terrible work conditions persist
despite the marked increase in overall revenue for the industry, which
itself supposedly falls under the purview of METI and the Agency
of Cultural Affairs. The animator dormitory project’s very existence
points to the contradictions of Cool Japan’s nation branding, raising
a subcultural product to the status of national culture and involving
large corporations to promote anime globally but failing to attend to
the extreme inequalities of the integral workers of anime production
domestically.

Anime’s Transnational Production Map

Taking these complexities of performing anime across a trans­national
network into consideration, a map can be sketched of anime’s produc-
tion across Asia. To do so, it is important to consider how the trans-
national intersects with the national. Through an adapted reading
of Iwabuchi’s “cultural odorlessness” of globally circulated Japanese
products, Lamarre builds on how these products may not only be “de-­
nationalized (de-­odorized) and re-­nationalized (fragrance)” but also
nationalized through some process. Lamarre contends that this “pro-
cess does not necessarily take place in that order” and that products like
anime are in some ways “prenational and transnational.”69 As shown
above, anime is generally produced through practices that favor cost-­
cutting and strive to maintain a relatively consistent aesthetic through
the regular performance of conventions, and both these preferences are
facilitated by overseas animation production. Therefore, anime’s ani-
mation is both transnational and prenational, with Japanese language
dubbing marking anime as audibly Japanese and subsequently making
it easier to slip into singular national categories even before distribu-
tion, which, once more, nationalizes anime through institutionalized
processes like exportation.
With this in mind, anime production may best be conceptualized
 Anime’s Media Heterotopia 143

as an assemblage of different actors and materials, each with different

degrees of agency, where the product of the animation itself maintains
a tension between the disparate locales and the unity of the final work.
As Chung suggests, such “a media heterotopia can also be envisioned
as a map, one in which countries are not spatially separated by their
own locations or demarcated by clear national boundaries but instead
are merged together as a composite, mobilized into closer proximity
with one another, or linked via globally dispersed production pipe-­
lines.”70 From this perspective, a new map for conceptualizing anime
production can be sketched, one not isolated to the unit of analysis
of the nation. Shown here (Figure 3.1) is one such general map of an-
ime’s network of production across Asia. Visualized in this map are the
major nodes within the network, labeled by the cities where most of the
studios exist.71
This is intended to be a visual aid rather than an accurate and con-
crete map of anime production, meant to help conceptualize the flows in
contrast to the more common inter-­national map of bordered-­wholes.

Figure 3.1. Visualization of anime’s transnational production network

(meant to be illustrative rather than definitive or precise).
144 Anime’s Media Heterotopia

I am hesitant to use a city as a node in the network because studios

would be more technically accurate. But since so many major studios
are located within these cities, for ease of visualization and to empha-
size an element of translocality, I will be using the city names as mark-
ers of the major points in the network. Indeed, most studios are located
within cities, most specifically, Tokyo—­even studios owned by foreign
companies, like Emon—­but the same can be said for the outsourced
points, as so many of the animation studios used are congregated in
cities like Seoul or Shanghai.
Within Japan, there is also a lot of movement between the many
different production studios, but the density within Tokyo, once more,
carries the most weight. Of course, the network for each anime pro-
duction will be different. For example, some anime will centralize in
Kyoto if the main studio is Kyoto Animation, though the production
committee probably will have ties to Tokyo, as the headquarters of
many other publishing and merchandising companies are there, as
well as the majority of voice actors and their agencies. It should also be
emphasized that these networks are precarious. Most anime are made
by a unique grouping of different studios that are banded together to
produce a work. This means that each anime has its own map. These
groups undergo constant changes and shifts of relations, but this does
not mean that networks are only temporary. Indeed, some studios are
repeatedly used by the larger studios in Japan. For example, Toei has
its Philippines studio TAP, and though now closed, Kyoto Animation
had a studio in Korea, Studio Blue (sometimes known as Ani Village).
It is also not uncommon for small studios to open but then close after
only a few contracts, and new studios may arise in different locations
as the cost of production rises in other places.72 This makes the network
difficult to track, as it is constantly shifting.
Despite their spread across major cities in Asia, anime’s production
processes operate as a centralized network, with Japan, or more specifi­
cally Tokyo, as the control center in most cases. Tokyo, and to a lesser
extent Osaka and Kyoto in Kansai, thus operate as what Michael Curtin
calls a “media capital,” a transnational center that secures a prominence
in the regional or global production and circulation of media.73 This
dynamic adheres to what Chung describes in regard to global media
production, stating that “two seemingly conflicting forces are apparent
in this ‘new world geography’: the dispersal of space and the concentra-
 Anime’s Media Heterotopia 145

tion of power.”74 Within the hierarchy of anime production, the major

studios within Japan are usually orchestrating the production process,
with Tokyo carrying the most weight, information flowing back and
forth between places in Japan and other points in Asia, but not neces-
sarily between the nodes outside Japan.
It should also be pointed out that the areas that form this network
outside of Japan were former colonies of Japan (this map is hauntingly
reminiscent of those from imperialist Japan), significantly complicating
the relations and hierarchies within this network. Indeed, one cannot
deny that there is a hierarchy involved here, that there is exploitation
of animators occurring across borders, and that those currently in the
highest paid positions are located in Japan—­which makes this system
have (post)colonial undertones. That said, the key here is wording: “lo-
cated in Japan.” As anime becomes increasingly transnational in pro-
duction, the higher levels of the production process regularly feature
people who are not necessarily ethnically Japanese, though they may
be located in Japan.
As it stands, the actualities of anime’s transnational production
consistently call into question the relation of anime to Japan or any
one nation exclusively; however, Japan or, rather, mainly Tokyo, is still
clearly central in this system. In terms of regular patterns of cultural
production, this is not a solid and unified region defined in the usual
sense and is not one without its own hierarchies and tensions, as out-
lined above. This is, to borrow C. J. W.-­L . Wee’s phrasing, “a zone that
is not quite a [classical] region but not quite only composed of nation-­
states.”75 Or in Lamarre’s terms, “something comes into common,” but
its “ ‘where’ is between media and nations.”76 Therefore, a sort of region-
ality does come into formation in the process of anime’s transnational
production. The specificity of this regionality is not produced purely
by geographic proximity but by the combination of nodes that are
regularly connected to create anime products. In this sense, a type of
spatiality is also produced that, like the heterotopic images of anime’s
animation, maintains a tension between a diversity of places of pro-
duction and unification in the product, which is usually considered to
be Japanese. This is not something that can be concretely pinned down
and bordered in the same manner established frameworks presume.
Such a map is not meant to deny anime’s relation to Japan. As
stressed above, Japan is central to this dynamic in terms of how anime
146 Anime’s Media Heterotopia

is marketed, the institutions that facilitate its global circulation, the fan
activities that inform many of its trends, the methods of organization
of its production, the language of its voice acting, the locus of many of
its media-­form hybrid developments and interaction with the media
mix, and much of the imagery used in the content. At the same time,
anime is inextricably linked to the places outside of Japan involved in
its production through the labor and materials composited in the final
product, along with the transnational flows that invoked the innova-
tions of its media-­form. This is a regionality that is difficult to grasp
from the inter-­national framework where anime must be placed into
the established category of nation-­state (Japan). Nor does it match up
with received notions of region (Asia or East Asia) that were born from
the form of the bordered-­whole. Instead, stemming from the form of
the network, this regionality’s shape is nebulous and constantly flowing
but also has contours and exclusions, as it operates according to general
patterns (for example, animators generally only work in urban centers
in East and Southeast Asia).
On a geographic level, then, anime’s production network maintains
an ambivalence to established categories such as nation or supra­
national geographic regions such as East Asia; internal and external
become blurred and certain areas are left out, but the network main-
tains a center of power and hierarchies. The regionality of anime is a
network across Asia rather than a single locale, with most of the links
being the major cities of outsourced production (Shanghai, Beijing,
Seoul, Manila, and Ho Chi Minh) to the central node of Tokyo. Trans-
national works such as those from studio Emon in Tokyo, rather than
outsourcing from Japan to the periphery, create a movement of capi-
tal and talent into Japan through contracts and subcontracts and by
performing anime’s media-­form. There are also many foreign workers
in Japan producing anime in high-­ranking positions, working on di-
rection, key animation, and designs. How they fit into the hierarchies
discussed above is itself another complex issue.

Anime’s Media Heterotopia

In summation, my proposal is to see anime’s geography as a media
heterotopia where the media-­form’s conventions are executed via a
complex system with multiple layers and hierarchies; parts of the labor
 Anime’s Media Heterotopia 147

are made in disparate places both inside and outside of Japan, result-
ing in final products whose unities and tensions are provided by those
very conventions, each layer of a composited image forced into a single
frame. Instead of oversimplifying the production process and erasing its
tensions, one alternative way to grapple with this complexity is through
the form of the network: the relations between objects, materials, and
people across great distances that are connected in the production pro-
cess of anime. Each anime is its own network of relations, a different
combination of people and places and things that result in a heterotopic
image. Just like the heterotopic image of the animation frame, each
anime production becomes the singular point where all these places
interconnect. It leaves out large swaths of people and places that we
would usually attribute to the interconnection of these places. Many
anime productions are not necessarily exclusively from Japan as much
as they are from a temporary network of people and objects connected
across multiple places.
Such a geography is difficult to conceive of from the bordered-­whole
framework because internal and external are so intertwined. But such
interconnectivity does not mean that there is a harmony here, for the
network is complex, and the hierarchies of production are still preva-
lent, with different degrees of agency enacted. As Condry notes,

collaborative creativity draws attention to the networks of coop-

eration and spheres of competition that produce today’s worlds
of anime. . . . [The] energy around anime, which arises through
its circulation and the combined efforts of large numbers of
people, whose collaborative approaches to creativity built an in-
dustry through hard work, through synergies with other media,
and by developing a fan base that has grown and matured over
time. At each stage of the process, collaborative creativity arises
from both a focus of attention and a circulatory movement that
constantly reframes and redefines what anime is about.77

With this in mind, production networks, then, are a way to analyze not
only anime but also how anime has sustained itself and grown over
time. In this sense, to examine anime, we must work through networks,
otherwise the transnational material actualities of anime will continue
to clash with the imposed bordered-­wholes of the inter-­national.
148 Anime’s Media Heterotopia

For now, to focus on the transnational development of anime’s

media-­form, it is important to keep in mind that many of the local
innovations that occurred in Japan were themselves the product of
transnational flows. They too have a complex history from the perspec-
tive of network, where the concepts of Disney’s character design and
Eisenstein’s montage mixed with institutionalized forms of scientific
drawing in Japan; where designs and sequences from abroad looped
into local media spheres; where patterns of character expressions de-
veloped in the rich local industry of manga, whose interactions with
anime eventually settled into a system of shared conventionalized ele-
ments due to their media synergy. These conventions, though shifting
over time, were constantly repeated in anime productions, creating a
feedback system that (re)produces anime as a media-­form. Still, this
view mainly focuses on the flows coming into Japan and the influences
and hybridity in that locality and is only one way to view the central-
ized dynamics of anime’s transnationality.
Indeed, it is important to take into account how even those flows may
be going back and forth from other places. All too often, when these
hybridized components move beyond the nation’s borders, the many-­
to-­one operations shift toward a centralized one-­to-­many network,
with Japan as the privileged, commanding center. However, keeping
an emphasis on the many-­to-­one operations can reveal a very different
view of anime’s transnationality while not denying Japan’s privileged
position. While the abovementioned hybridizing process of anime’s
development into a media-­form was occurring within Japan, portions
of its animation were produced outside of Japan in South Korea, the
Philippines, China, and recently Vietnam, Thailand, and Malaysia. In
fact, many of the boom periods in anime’s history were facilitated by
the reliance on this transnational labor, and it was during these boom
periods that anime became further entrenched in its performance, its
conventions repeated over and over in many anime. The quantity of
productions and their constant expansion allowed for anime to appear
less like the work of an original group of artists and more like a series
of repeated conventions, making each anime production in some way
resemble other anime productions. This is how anime evolved into the
media-­form it is today, repetition creating the recognizable anime-­
esque, which has come to be seen as signaling Japan.
On one hand, such a dynamic can be read in terms of the one-­to-­
 Anime’s Media Heterotopia 149

many paradigm whereby Japanese innovations are copied by the many

and sent back to Japan. On the other hand, a many-­to-­one reading
would recognize the contribution of the many copies, or rather, itera-
tions, produced by the many that are needed to sustain the conventions
that make innovation noteworthy in the first place. A single instance
does not a convention make, and since anime is only recognizable as
such because of conventions, there is an important interrelationship
and participation in the many-­to-­one paradigm across borders, across
Asia, and back and forth to Japan, which is, as noted above, part of
other transnational flows. Cities like Shanghai and Seoul do not nec-
essarily connect to one another during an anime’s production and
function more as distinct nodes that get routed to the central point of
Tokyo.78 Here the heterarchical potential of multiple points in a net-
work becomes subsumed in favor of a hierarchy where Tokyo is still
central. But this does not mean that these points are not participating.
Indeed, they are fundamentally involved in the production of crucial
parts of the images composited into one in the central node of Tokyo. It
is the reiterations, the performances, of anime’s media-­form that hold
this complexity together, but via a related form of the decentralized
point-­to-­point network that clashes with this many-­to-­one network of
transnational production centralized in Japan, which will be the topic
of the next two chapters.
Such a conceptualization is an attempt to see anime beyond the na-
tional framework, radically reinterpret it through its transnational pro-
duction system, and see its globality from a different viewpoint. At the
risk of redundancy, this is not a denial of Japan’s contributions, initiatives,
creative labor, and innovations in regard to anime or anime’s connection
to the social modes and histories within Japan. As mentioned above, one
can ignore neither the importance of the producers who are located in
Japan, nor the influence of the media ecology in Japan (though the media
mix was and is relatively easily available throughout major cities in Asia),
nor how the discourse of anime as Japanese has affected its study. It is
crucial to stress Japan as anime’s locus of trans­national development,
organizational center, and, for much of its history, main market for the
taste community that spurred on its production.
With that firmly in mind, it should not be forgotten that anime can
only become a media-­form through repetition, which is only made
possible by referring to other instances. Therefore, the performance of
150 Anime’s Media Heterotopia

anime’s media-­form in animation by overseas labor and foreign work-

ers in Japan can be seen as not merely order following but an enactment
in which images produced are repeated again and again in other perfor-
mances. In the process, recognizable patterns are able to be sustained,
facilitating the recognizability of anime itself. But there can only be
such recognizability if there are enough anime produced to create a
pattern in the first place, and this is in part enabled by reliance on the
labor of overseas animators. Because anime’s conventions are partly
sustained by the reiterations enabled and enacted by trans­national
labor, animators both inside and outside Japan are consequently lim-
ited by those conventions, although the relationship to that imposition
(as learned, bodily labor) will change based on their relationship to
Japan. The standard perception of these conventions is that they origi­
nated in Japan rather than resulting from transnational processes. To
see anime as only Japanese is to miss seeing animators’ performances
outside of Japan as anything other than subjugation where their agency
is lost. Although transnational animators were molded by the anime
codes and conventions imposed on them, they were also the agents of
their enactment; as they produced animation, their labor’s mark was
(in)visible in the final product. Therefore, anime’s transnationality is
embodied in the heterotopic images of the animation itself.
Embracing a media heterotopic view of anime’s performance is an
attempt to rescue the layers of transnationality and agency that are
dispersed across the production network. By reexamining the judg-
ment of anime’s performance, a hierarchy of production is exposed as
authenticated through Japan, but the performance of the animation
still stands as a visible act in the production of anime that exposes
the imitable nature of anime. Animators from all over can be seen as
subjected to anime-­esque conventions but also as the agents of their
enactment, with a diversity of relations to that imposition and local
reactions to its performance. Anime as a performance thus returns a
degree of agency to the animators outside of Japan and reveals their
struggles across borders. With this in mind, anime can be seen as fun-
damentally heterotopic, constantly balancing the tension between the
unity in the composited images of the anime-­esque and the disparate
places, people, and materials involved in their production.
 9 4 0

Anime’s Citationality

Anime’s Brand
In the previous chapters, I analyzed the geographic components of
anime’s identity—­how anime’s globality is conceptualized through its
relation to Japan and how its transnational production disrupts nation-­
branded narratives of anime as Japanese animation, instead operating
as a centralized, networked region of sorts. However, I noted that this
centralized production network was caught in tension with the more
decentralized network afforded through the very processes of anime’s
performativity. To explore these dynamics, in this chapter I will turn
my attention to the mechanics through which anime sustains itself as
a particular type of animation.
Despite how anime differs from many other types of animation, per-
haps most famously from Disney’s animation, the distinction between
animation as a medium and anime as a particular type of animation
is not always made clear in the academic literature, even in works that
thoroughly explore anime’s medium specificity. For example, the divi-
sion between animation and anime is not fully articulated in Lamarre’s
groundbreaking work The Anime Machine. Lamarre explores how the
material limits of anime’s animation both constrain and enable the
potentials of movement in animation. He also examines the limited
ani­mation often employed in anime, exploring the aesthetics, creative
potentials, and implications of working with and through the material
limitations of cel animation. Yet, in the process, anime becomes repre-
sentative of animation as a medium: the terminology used is the “anime
machine” despite the book being a media theory of animation in gen-
eral, as its subtitle asserts. In some ways, this is one of Lamarre’s argu-
ments: animation studies can be justifiably based on anime due to its
global prominence instead of being particularized and culturalized as
Japanese animation.1 At the same time, such a statement is predicated

9 151 0
152 Anime’s Citationality

on the notion that there are some differences between anime and other
types of animation, otherwise there would be no need to comment on
anime’s capacity to stand in for all animation. With this in mind, to
further refine my line of inquiry into anime’s identity, I will consider
not only the medium specifics of anime explored by Lamarre but also
the other limitations that produce anime’s sense of uniformity and dis-
tinct performance of animation.
These limitations are in part discursive (as detailed in chapter 1),
but they are also in the media-­form, involving texts, production, and
consumption. Indeed, there is a likeness shared across many anime that
is partly due to the imposition of the category of anime, creating a cycle
of reinforcement that sells anime as anime, establishing additional sty-
listic boundaries. Anime is often wrapped in reproachful discourses of
sameness, yet it is quite diverse in terms of visual styles, genres, nar-
ratives, voice acting, and animation techniques. Still, there are evident
similarities among many of these works, enough that audiences can see
and hear resemblances and notice recurring patterns. A larger sense of
correspondence appears, going beyond individual studios and series,
inviting associations of individual anime with other anime.
As detailed prior, it is possible to identify common points that could
be labeled as prevalent in anime, recognizably anime-­esque elements
that are intimately associated with the medium due to their frequent
repetition. This repetition of conventionalized elements keeps anime
recognizable, distinguishable from other media. It is because of anime’s
recognizability that anime sells itself as a specific category of media,
both inside and outside of Japan. In this regard, it is hard for creators to
drastically deviate from anime’s conventions, as anime, and the global
anime industry, has created a system whereby anime (re)presents itself
through its repetition of conventions. With this in mind, anime can be
seen as operating almost like a brand in and of itself, part of a larger
phenomenon where brands maintain their own unified and recogniz-
able identities to keep themselves visible and easily identifiable. Such
branding is evident in many places. For example, multibillion-­dollar
businesses in the global electronics industry like Apple organize
around annual incremental updates, and brands like Louis Vuitton
consistently repeat patterns in similarly shaped products. We live in an
age where drastic departure from the distinctions that make a brand
recognizable is eschewed in favor of incremental variation. Anime,
 Anime’s Citationality 153

which operates as a recognizable brand, has to maintain its identity

with similar strategies.
Wedging diversity within the set framework of a brand label results
in a line of products that moves between diversity and uniformity.
The products of one brand need to be distinguishable from those of
other brands, but the products within a given brand need to be di-
verse enough to attract different customers and/or multiple purchases
while retaining a somewhat uniform and convergent brand aesthetic.
In this sense, branding as an act implies a sense of change, as different
strategies are used to achieve consistent recognizability in a variety
of products that evolve over time.2 I would posit that, in the case of
anime, the very content of the product itself (its conventional system)
is what is in constant flux, creating eras of prominent anime media-­
form discourse, with trending patterns frequently utilized at particular
times. Thus, what anime brands itself as—­the conventions recognized
as ­anime-­esque—­is bound to change, but anime cannot change too
much too fast or it becomes unrecognizable; a careful balance between
repetition and variation must be maintained.
These problematics of repetition and variation are evident in the
branding of popular production studios as well as in anime in general.
For example, the studios Kyoto Animation, Shaft, and Ghibli all strive
to produce a particular branded aesthetic that separates their work
from that of other studios, so that it is not only the studio name but
also the anime product itself that presents recognizably different visu-
als and narratives. Since its hit productions Suzumiya Haruhi (2006),
Kanon (2006), Lucky Star (2007), and K-­On! (2009), Kyoto Animation
has produced a number of series that follow an aesthetic starkly differ-
ent from its darker science fiction anime Full Metal Panic! The Second
Raid (2005). After Lucky Star and subsequent hits, Kyoto Animation
became known less for epic narratives and more for those that feature
cute girl and attractive boy characters at the forefront. Detailed back-
ground images and oversaturated lighting became the studio’s hall-
mark. Kyoto Animation has produced a number of works that follow
similar content, such as Hibike Euphorium (2015), which, like K-­On!, fo-
cuses on the lives of schoolgirls who play music. Kyoto Animation does
venture into different areas, such as with Beyond the Boundary (2013),
a show about high school students who defeat supernatural creatures,
Free! (2013), a TV series about competitive boys swimming, A Silent
154 Anime’s Citationality

Voice (2016), a dramatic film about a delinquent boy and his relation-
ship with a deaf girl, and Violet Evergarden (2018), a steampunk se-
ries. Yet in visual style, with precise line work in the character designs
featuring large eyes with detailed depictions of light, intricate back-
grounds, lighter color palettes, and blurred layers that reproduce the
bokeh effect of elements out of focus, these works all maintain the now
recognizable characteristic style of Kyoto Animation.
Shaft also has its own characteristic visual style, which tends to pre­
sent open, spacious, urban backgrounds that appear abstract and empty,
with many untextured colors, as in the work for the Monogatari series
and Mekaku City Actors (2014). Shaft is also infamous for utilizing a
strange head tilt gesture in almost all its productions, where charac-
ters arch their neck backward in a move impossible for humans to do,
something even seen in works that do not exclusively feature its char-
acteristic backdrops, such as Arakawa under the Bridge (2010). Finally,
and most famously, there is Studio Ghibli, which emphasizes complex
narratives that feature ecologically oriented themes, a vague relation to
local and European folklore, strong female leads, lush, painterly back-
drops, and a particular style of character design. With more globular
head shapes and less intricate eyes, the characters’ irises are often col-
ored brown in contrast to the flamboyant colors used in TV anime
eyes. Famed director Miyazaki Hayao, in fact, actively tries to distance
himself from TV anime like that produced by Kyoto Animation and
Shaft, going so far as to call his works “manga films” in opposition to
such works.3
All these studios try to consistently produce a recognizable style for
their brands, which becomes part of their marketing and differentiates
them from other production studios. However, as shown in the previ-
ous chapters, anime production is often partially outsourced and in-
volves many freelancers. With the notable exceptions of Studio Ghibli
and, to a much lesser extent Kyoto Animation (both trying to keep their
production as in-­house as much as possible but do regularly rely on
other studios and freelancers), this means that non-­studio producers
must emulate the hiring studio’s style in their productions, producing
a tension between the diversity of workers both inside and outside of
the studio and the repetition of the style. Furthermore, in each pro-
duction, studios must carefully tread the line between reproducing the
recognizable characteristics of their branded style while avoiding re-
 Anime’s Citationality 155

dundancy. They must maintain their identity not only as a particular

type of media (anime) but also as a particular brand of anime (the stu-
dio) and produce anime that are distinct from each other.
On a larger scale, a similar process occurs with anime in general, as
producers strive to differentiate their anime both from other anime
and other types of media. To give one example of the force of this in
anime as a whole, one can look to recent shifts within the industry, as
computer-­aided animation based on cel animation techniques is slowly
moving toward full CG animation. However, instead of realistic im-
agery, this movement has been guided by the invention of various
techniques to mirror the cel look of traditionally animated anime. Put
differently, even the inclusion of new animation technologies works to
maintain anime’s recognizable identity. This is quite apparent in the
2014 hit (both in Japan and abroad) Expelled from Paradise, which is
made entirely in CG but stays remarkably close in look and feel to cel
animated anime. There is far more to anime than just visual style, but
the point here is that despite changes in technology, and the techni-
cal difficulty of “porting” a 2D style to 3D, the anime industry actively
works to maintain a certain conventionalized look. Of course, outliers
exist (e.g., Ping-­Pong, 2014), but these are the minority, and they ac-
tively push the boundaries of anime.
Thus, the question considered here is, How does anime, a media-­
form that is highly conventionalized, defining itself through its very
conventions, go about adjusting and changing its conventions? Put dif-
ferently, How does anime maintain a relatively uniform aesthetic, and
thus retain its identity, but continue to produce diversity and change
over time? This is the aesthetic problem anime performances work
through.4 In order to better engage with the problematic of anime’s
identity and explore the mechanics of anime’s performance, in this
chapter I will examine the anime-­esque acts of character and mecha
design, conventionalized facial or bodily expressions (examined fur-
ther in chapter 6), animation effects, and movement.

Felicitous Anime-­esque Performance

To begin, anime’s performance can be seen as creating a set of unstable
identity coordinates that are always in flux but aggregated together, an
attribute of anime that Thomas Looser labels “anime-­ic”: “the insistence
156 Anime’s Citationality

on multiple layers, consisting of mixed styles and mixed media each

with their own particular orientations, brought together on a single
plane without any one point of origin that would fix the relations be-
tween them.”5 Brian Ruh, building on Looser, defines the anime-­ic as “a
space containing multiple (not unified) points of view that lacks a fixed
perspective,” seeing it as “a way of thinking about and experiencing that
space” in a globalized world of media flows that comprise a “database
fantasyscape.” The anime-­ic can thus be seen as a way of conceiving
space that relates to how anime organizes layers of perspectives that
are not unified.
In the anime-­ic, then, there is also a tension between multiplicity and
unity, in the material and the images, all in the context of the global.
Framed in this way, the anime-­ic and the anime-­esque can be seen as
overlapping (indeed, the topic of spatiality regarding anime-­esque per-
formances will be addressed further in chapter 8). As Ruh briefly notes,
the anime-­ic can be “a tendency toward anime or anime-­like charac-
teristics,” specifically in regard to anime’s limited animation.6 This res-
onates with the anime-­esque, which homes in on the performance of
conventions that can be easily recognized and associated with anime.
In the anime-­esque, the accompanying tension between repetition and
variation in such a performance is highlighted, where a supposed unity
hides a complex disparity that extends from the enactment of the con-
ventions themselves to the media heterotopia of the transnational im-
ages that appear to come from Japan due to the felicitous performance
of the anime-­esque by animators across Asia. At the risk of conflating
the terms but still bringing in Looser’s and Ruh’s ideas, I will continue
to use anime-­esque here, as recognizability is so crucial to felicitous
anime performance.
Conceiving of anime as a density of anime-­esque performances is
not an attempt to impose a uniformity on anime but rather to free it
from such an imposition. It is an effort to see anime as an assemblage
of performed elements that are enacted in different degrees. Because
recognizability relies on connections to prior performances, there is a
tension between repetition and variation in each performance of the
anime-­esque. Therefore, to see the wide variance within anime, we
have to examine its performative uniformity. Furthermore, this is not
an endeavor to insist on a fluid continuity and uniformity in anime
 Anime’s Citationality 157

evolution. In fact, there are many experimental attempts to resolve

these tensions in favor of pushing difference to the foreground. But
the anime-­esque, though always changing, is not limitless. Sometimes
such experiments are felicitous, sometimes they are not—­felicity de-
fined here crudely, in terms of market performance, frequency of ci-
tation in other works, and fan reception. Market performance has an
important effect on anime, and excessive experimentation may result
in lack­luster sales and adverse reactions from fans. In the terms set
forth here, how well an anime performs financially is connected to how
well it performs in terms of media-­form. In the case of bad sales per-
formance, it reveals how important adherence to conventional models
is to fan interpretation and consumption. While surely anything can
be labeled anime, whether it actually sells as such depends not only on
marketing but also on the product itself.
As Howard Becker has shown in Art Worlds, conventions of pro-
duction and reception are implicated in the conventions of a work it-
self in a complex system of repetition, reinforcement, innovation, and
reinvigoration.7 The dynamics of such feedback structures are complex
and cannot be considered in depth here, but we can briefly point to two
contrasting productions, each utilizing animation techniques that are
unconventional for anime. Aku no Hana (2013) was based on a relatively
conventional or mangaesque manga. However, the anime contained un-
conventional character designs, in particular a lack of shading, muted
hairstyles, and an atypical depiction of the characters’ eyes and mouths
(Figure 4.1b). This was an outgrowth of its entirely rotoscoped anima-
tion, where animators traced over footage of live actors rather than re-
producing anime-­esque expressions found in other anime. The resulting
patterns of movement and facial expressions were not very anime-­esque.
The production suffered from sour reception and extremely low sales.
Conversely, the entirely CG production Expelled from Paradise
skillfully employed many anime-­esque elements, including complex
hairstyles, large, reflective eyes, outlandish costumes, and conven-
tional facial expressions typical of anime (Figure 4.1a). The anime-­
esque can also be seen in the pacing used in anime, often connected
to limited animation techniques that stem from cel animation, creat-
ing marked differences in the use of stillness. For instance, extended
sequences of stillness and/or minimal movement will be interspersed
158 Anime’s Citationality

Figure 4.1. Expelled from Paradise (a) deftly performing the anime-­esque
in CG; Aku no Hana (b) performing away from the anime-­esque in roto-
scope animation.

with sudden, but short, bursts of complex movement. This creates

what Steinberg calls “a particular motion-­stillness economy” charac-
teristic of anime’s animation, what may be labeled an anime-­esque
rhythm.8 Despite Expelled from Paradise’s animation being entirely
CG, with its ample scenes of stillness, it effectively performed the vi-
sual and narrative pacing patterns and the rhythms of motion and
 Anime’s Citationality 159

stillness typical of cel animated anime—­in other words, it deftly per-

formed the anime-­esque—­a nd, subsequently, enjoyed wide acclaim
and substantial sales.
In this way, a powerful anime performance does not necessarily
break away from convention but often adheres to it. Anime’s identity,
and the anime media-­form, is created through this “stylized repetition
of act,” a performance of the anime-­esque.9 Therefore, anime’s con-
ventions maintain possibilities and restrictions. Conceptions of phys-
ics phenomena (e.g., the logistics of flight), allowances of what mecha
designs would be tolerated, character design combinations and visual
style, character types, facial and bodily expressions, world-­setting
depth and detail—­these constitute the rules that structure the anime-­
esque, rules that act as guidelines whether performed in line with or
against. Even those that attempt a violation of the conventional rules
are reacting to them, even if it is away from them. These rules dictate a
degree of restriction of potential, evidenced by the repetition of only
certain conventions. But these rules are not entirely limiting. They may
be described as, using the words of Jonathan Culler, “a system of consti-
tutive rules: rules which do not regulate behavior as much as create the
possibility of certain forms of behavior.”10 These rules thus operate as
conventional models that anime-­esque performances are in ­line with
or against to varying degrees.
The fact that performing the anime-­esque limits anime, making it
conform to some degree of uniformity, is not the main point here. Rather,
it is that stark difference is often subordinate to similarity, and this
creates a tension that is played out to varying effects as each anime
differentiates itself from other anime and other media. Anime, as a
performance of identity, negotiates between the endless extensions of
conservative movement toward conventional models and the experi-
mental movement away from them. The tension between these is irrec-
oncilable in a final configuration; there cannot be an actualization of an
ideal anime. An anime performance is not the execution of a static set
of conventions but an enactment of differing combinations of selected
conventions, facilitating constant reconfiguration. This is why anime,
as a media-­form, is always in play, always pushing and modifying the
limits of what it can do, emphasizing some established patterns over
others while folding in new techniques as it expands and morphs. Ani­
me’s identity always lies in excess of any of its performances.
160 Anime’s Citationality

Database, Citation, Re-­performance

Let me explore the mechanics of these performances in more detail. To
an extent, anime performance may be conceived of as a creative process
of selecting and assembling citations. Azuma Hiroki, who famously
conceived of the database theory of otaku consumption, has given the
example of many different character parts (“moe-­elements,” in his ter-
minology) that otaku disassemble and reassemble to create new char-
acters, producing derivative fan works.11 Such a conception can be
extended to the production of anime themselves, and may be considered
what Crafton calls “re-­performance,” “a second-­order restatement of
something else,”12 where the “infinite rehashings of animation stories,
sources, and actions . . . ‘can be worked on, stored and recalled, played
with, made into something else, transmitted, and transformed.’ ”13 This
entails a different type of creativity and thinking through problems not
based on modern conceptions of originality but on the combination and
manipulation of citing conventional models.14 In anime, creative poten-
tial is engaged with through the citational act’s capacity for reorga­nizing
and re-­performing parts, which is even evident in the cel bank system
of animation production. Thus, the interconnection of repeated con-
ventions across studio and genre boundaries does not make anime a
set of definitive works, elements, or production companies with clearly
defined borders but rather a dynamic, networked system. The anime
system is constituted by many such consciously and unconsciously
performed conventions combined in audiovisual narrative animations.
These anime-­esque conventions, when performed, bring anime into
being and produce meaning in the text through their interaction and
movement in relation to the system.
Each performance shares some commonality once enacted, and this
commonality is maintained through the system of conventional mod-
els that are slower changing, the models that constitute the repertoire
of anime performance or, in Azuma’s terms, the database. It is not the
core, not the heart of what anime is, but rather the common ground
of practices or models that anime can draw from to enable an anime
performance. This database provides “the conditions for the particular
types of behavior,” the models that are cited and performed around,
structuring what is actualized in each performative instance. The
combinations of such structural models appear as anime’s media-­form
 Anime’s Citationality 161

discourse. One can liken this system of structural models to langue

(conventional rules) and the discursive performances to parole (specific
instantiations), which may better clarify the concept.
However, the database terminology may appear to imply an act of
direct access, of duplication of elements and expansion when new ele­
ments are conceived. Yet the database in practice is not necessarily
limitless and ever-­expanding.15 Rather, one can read the database as
ever-­changing; each act of disassembling and reconstituting through
selective rearrangement is not an act of duplication but an act of cita-
tion and reiteration, an act that entails resemblance as well as differ-
entiation. As one iteration is made, it is already a particular point that
works around a model. Another iteration may work around the same
model but produce an equally distinct iteration. But there is an inter-
nal limit that the structural model itself implies. Rather than endlessly
expanding into new database units that reach variation exclusively
through difference of combination, the model itself changes with each
iteration.
As time moves on, the distinct iterations grow in number and, if fe-
licitous, build up through their repetition, making a structural change
to the model that new iterations work around. Combinations are al-
ways composed of different models, resulting in composites of conven-
tions, which may create new conventions that can then be one unit of
another combination of conventional models. Thus, while a new char-
acter may have the same type of hairstyle as other characters, she is
not a conglomeration of duplicates pulled from a database but a re-­
performance or, rather, a citation and variation of models. For example,
each moe-­element may be not directly accessed from the database but
rather a divergent expression performed around a model. In this way,
each iteration is distinct in the particulars of its performance. Change
through time is built into the performance, and repeated variation is
the aesthetic that is stressed; it is not about complete breaks from the
past but about the act of divergent modification where major change is
eschewed in favor of minor adjustment.
Each element cited becomes a structural model performed around
to create a citation. When these citations become prominent, they gain
a sedimentary force, feeding back into the structural model, as each
new citation opens up endless opportunities for further citations. Thus,
as the structural model gains a sedimentary force, it changes. In this
162 Anime’s Citationality

expanded interpretation of Austin’s felicity of the performative, here

reread through Butler, Derrida, and Azuma’s database, a felicitous per-
formative instance (parole), through the sedimentary force of its rep-
etition, feeds back into the structural model (langue), effectuating the
interactive relationship between media-­form discourse and structural
models in anime’s database. This system continuously repeats as cita-
tional performances are themselves cited, opening up further moments
of change. The citational force then becomes increasingly potent to the
degree that it pushes at the very structures of the larger system of the
media-­form, integrating deeper into the specific genre or the whole sys-
tem of anime itself, becoming one of the recognizable elements of the
performance of anime in general. This is why the glimmering eyes and
arched-­eye smiles are seen as so anime-­esque. Each anime iteration’s
particularity is a result of the selective nature of anime’s media-­form
dynamic, the tensions of anime’s performative identity, and the driving
force of anime aesthetics working through the problem of maintaining
uniformity but engaging with diversity and variation.
It should be stressed that the most common citational acts are not
duplications of specific instances from other anime but use the struc-
tural models that the repetition of performances brought about. These
are the elements of anime’s media-­form, such as characters’ figurative
acting in conventionalized facial and bodily expressions, that cite pre-
vious instances with every performance, referring to prior iterations.16
These expressions are generally slower changing, and some of these
gestures have been almost inseparable from the image of anime, in-
tegral acts of the anime-­esque. Each re-­performance of every anime-­
esque act, by its very nature as a conventional act, will be citing prior
anime performances.
But this does not mean that anime is fixed in advance. Rather, anime
performance is made up of a history of repetitive acts that both limits
and enables change through each reiteration. As Ruh explains, when
creating a new anime, “one is not only trying to create something new
but is also engaging many decades of animated history that have given
rise to certain taste formations within the anime-­watching commu-
nity. This large amount of history is the database that can be selectively
referenced.”17 Since any anime is a conglomeration of performances,
and each performance is a citation of something prior, there is an im-
pression of uniformity across texts, bringing about the conception of
 Anime’s Citationality 163

anime’s identity. Yet each citation is a selective re-­performance and,

in so being, reignites the potential for variation as each performance
diverges from the prior, especially in consideration of its distinct com-
binations of other citations.
This is also how external elements are folded into anime: the cita-
tional tendency of anime expands outward, and as each new element
is performed it is looped back for future citation. Citation itself is an
act performed from a later point in time, always after a prior act that
is then cited. Such temporal distancing also implies a difference of in-
terpretation, so that even what may appear to be a direct duplication
is instead an interpretation placed in a new context. This citationality
creates the sense of anime as a system of conventions and is part of
what performs the perceived unity of anime, establishing a linkage of
works that produces anime identity. At the same time, this citationality
also creates a wide degree of diversity through combinations of differ-
ent, distinctive citations.
While I am highlighting the opportunity for change here, I would
emphasize that anime is a conservative system and is, in a sense, forced
to maintain its own identity, tending toward stricter variation rather
than engaging with change in and of itself. This is done to make each
production a recognizably anime product. After all, performativity is
sustained by iteratability, and citation in general, as an iterative act, is
a sort of strict repetition, where a prior instance is repeated in a differ-
ent context. Persistent repetition creates a sense of uniformity through
the series of citations. This is how anime performance maintains simi­
larity as it performs around a model, each iteration citing a model in
a separate context. The reiterative nature of performance opens the
conventions up to change, as each iteration is particular while retaining
elements of conventional models, even when held in the more extreme
tension of deviation. Different productions, with divergent perfor-
mances of character design, backgrounds, world-­setting design, nar-
rative pacing, and so on, produce the diversity seen within anime, with
each performative instance distinguishing itself from other anime and
other types of animation.
To give examples of these mechanics, one can see distinct trends in
anime but also an underlying similarity of structure in character and
mecha design, working around certain models and taking cues from
earlier times. For instance, when examining the designs of a central
164 Anime’s Citationality

Figure 4.2. Different iterations of mecha (Valkyrie) discourse performed

around an ever-­changing structural model. (Valkyrie images cited, with
overlays by the author, from the Macross Mecha Manual site’s Valkyrie
designs.)

mecha in each of the anime in the popular franchise Macross over its
thirty-­year span (Figure 4.2), it is apparent that they are all designed
around the transforming Valkyrie model introduced in M ­ across: Super
Dimensional Fortress (1982), which itself cites a long history of mecha
designs. Putting this history aside for ease of explanation, all the Valky-
ries share many structural similarities, such as small heads, long legs
with vents on top, and compact, triangular torsos. However, they differ
in the shape and contours of their heads, legs, and pointed torsos. To
be more specific, the lowest section of the Valkyries’ torsos end in a
point except on VF-­25, but VF-­25 and YF-­19 share a similarly protrud-
ing chest. Another difference is the number of antennae on the Valky-
rie, which changes as the Macross timeline develops. The first iteration
of the Valkyrie design, VF-­1 (1982) has two antennae, as does VF-­2
(Macross II, 1992). But starting with VF-­11 (Macross 7, 1994) until YF-­19
(Macross Plus, 1995), the Valkyrie only have one antenna. This trend
continues in the design of VF-­0, a prototype Valkyrie developed in a
 Anime’s Citationality 165

prequel to the first series in 2002 (Macross Zero). Yet, in our historical
line, the next Macross anime, Macross Frontier in 2007, had the VF-­25
with two antennae, returning to the first Macross Valkyrie style, VF-­1.
In terms of the Macross timeline, although the design should have
trended toward the single antenna, the VF-­25 design reached backward
to an earlier instance. While such small differences may appear almost
insignificant to non-­mecha enthusiasts, I am providing this example to
highlight how the citation of different models does not move linearly
in a set direction even in mecha design. Instead, there are constant
references to both contemporary and earlier trends throughout anime’s
media-­form discourse. Yet the mecha designs maintain a structural
similarity and are recognizable as Valkyrie mecha from Macross and
not mecha from another franchise.
In this manner, the models themselves are not static but are con-
stantly in flux; they are not concretely defined by a set of borders but are
internally dynamic through their citation of structural models. Each
performance facilitates a shift in the structural models (as illustrated
in the bottom level of Figure 4.2), which are themselves interpretations
that are selectively enacted. For another example of these dynamics,
one can examine character design styles as they have changed over
time. For example, anime often showcase clothing styles and hairstyles
that reflect the time they were created in. Differences in coloration also
become apparent as the shift to digital coloring in the early 2­ 000s pro-
vided sharper colors; for an example, compare the coloring in the origi-
nal 1990s Evangelion series and films to the New Evangelion films in the
mid-­2000s. In short, certain character design styles gain momentum
over time through their repetition and become structural models for
further (re)performances; others fall out of favor.
A recognition of this difference in style is performed in Monogatari
Second Season’s (2013) openings of episodes 20–­22, where the back-
ground animation and character design shift between the styles of
the late 1­ 980s to the early 1­ 990s, which are shown in brighter colors
with a different eye shape and reflections of light (Figure 4.3b), and the
contemporary moment, with a separate palette, eye shape, and poses
(Figure 4.3a). The difference in character designs of the same character
(Senjōgahara), background animations, and music (which also seems
like it is from the earlier era), placed side by side for comparison, ex-
poses the performative nature of anime-­esque character designs by
166 Anime’s Citationality

Figure 4.3. Contrasting and linking the design styles of the 2010s (a) to the
late ­1980s and early ­1990s (b) through different versions of Senjōgahara in
Monogatari Second Season episode 20.

highlighting their differences from previous eras and how easily they
can be cited, locating the work in its temporal distance from prior per-
formances but also linking it to them through this citational act. More-
over, the stark difference between these two character designs placed in
juxtaposition further enhances the distinctiveness of Monogatari Sec-
ond Season, and the whole Monogatari series, a performance that nego-
 Anime’s Citationality 167

tiates the work’s particular identity as anime and as distinct from, but
linked to, other anime. For another example, there are brief images in
Macross Delta (2016, episode 5) of previous Macross series characters
in their now dated design styles (in particular pointed shoulder pads on
their flight suit, aviator glasses, and a multitude of thin strands of hair
without slivers of light—­a character design style popular in the 1980s
and ’90s), once more linking the newest Macross to earlier instances
but also highlighting its difference from them.
Lastly, I would like to briefly comment on the infamous anime eyes:
eyes that are overtly large, filled with bulbous reflections of light, some-
times appearing like shimmering water, often with ostentatious colors
like red or bright green, conventionally made to glimmer to express
overflowing emotion. Their exact history is difficult to trace, with large
eyes featured in Betty Boop and Bambi; Momotarō in the World War
II animation Momotaro, Sacred Sailors had somewhat similar eyes as
well, and large eyes have been regularly featured in TV anime since
Tetsuwan Atomu. Even employed in animations that attempt to parody
anime,18 they are perhaps the most widely recognized and remarked on
anime-­esque element. To limit myself to the period of focus (the 1990s
to the present), anime-­esque eyes are performed in character designs
across genres and studios, constantly displaying that recognizable,
characteristic anime look. But this does not mean there is only unity
here. Indeed, there is a startlingly wide variation of anime-­esque eyes:
for example, the sharp, reflective eyes of Eru in Hyōka (2013, Figure
4.4a) versus the magenta flower shape in the green eyes of Nia from
Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann (2007, Figure 4.4b). The similarities in
their general size and shape make them easily relatable to one another,
but their specificity is displayed in their distinct performances.
However, such eyes are not the defining component of anime-­esque
characters. Rather, they are one part of a number of anime-­esque ele-
ments that work in conjunction with one another, from which even a
specific character designer’s style can be discerned, further producing
a connection to works from different studios and eras. For instance,
the designs of the first Macross series in the 1980s were made by Miki­
moto Haruhiko, who has a predilection for eyes with large, luminous
white reflections and soft lighting, something that was difficult to per-
form with the budget and cel animation at the time. Recently, in the
anime Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress (2016), Mikimoto was tasked with
a

b
 c

d
Figure 4.4. Variation in anime-­esque eyes, as with Eru from Hyōka (a),
Nia from Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann (b), Ayame from Kabaneri of
the Iron Fortress (c), and Minmay from The Super Dimension Fortress
Macross (d).
170 Anime’s Citationality

designing characters, but this time, minute gradations and luminosity

were made possible due to computer-­aided techniques, becoming ap-
parent in certain sequences, particularly in the images of the charac-
ters Mumei and Ayame. This performance of anime-­esque eyes recalls
the earlier era’s iconic character designs from Macross. Ayame (4.4c) in
particular bears resemblance in design to Minmay (4.4d), with similar
stature and hair color, but her costume (a steampunk-­inspired hakama
with a pink top, blue girdle, and dark-­pink bottom) also evinces a style
reminiscent of the character Sakura (who wears a hakama with a pink
top, blue sash, and red bottom) from the 2000 production Sakura Wars,
linking this design to multiple productions but keeping Ayame’s itera­
tion distinct. Furthermore, while Mikimoto made the designs, other
people actually animated and colored the images, citing Mikimoto’s
designs in each instance.

Re-­performance, Convergence
If repetition appears primary here it is because doing anime is a cita­
tional act. Therefore, diversity is subsumed within repetition, produc-
ing what Lamarre might describe as a difficulty “in distinguishing
between invention and reproduction, at a historical moment where it
is difficult to tell them apart.”19 In the terminology used here, reproduc-
tion can be seen as minor variation enacted over departure from trend,
a process that is frequently operating in brands, similar to those found
in anime. Lamarre asserts that there is “a stunning array of patterns of
serialization, which are designed to build controls onto divergence, to
encourage divergent paths of animetic force into those patterns that
allow for greater returns.”20 While Lamarre generally describes seriali­
zation in terms of circulation of commodities—­into genres or move-
ment from anime to games, figurines, manga, and so on—­stretching
the term, there is another pattern of serialization in anime: the series
of performances that enable the doing of anime.
If anime itself operates like a brand, then Lamarre’s statement on the
Ghibli brand can be extrapolated to apply to anime in general: “when
animetism that enables a critique of modernity at the level of per-
ception becomes a paradigm, actualized in a pattern of serialization,
it enters into a theater of operations, becoming caught in securing the
brand’s perimeters.”21 Miyazaki’s critiques of anime aside, on the scale
 Anime’s Citationality 171

of anime as a media-­form, the paradigm is the repeated acts of doing

anime, of selling anime as a particular type of animation. The perime-
ters are the contours of anime’s system of conventions that allows for its
recognition as anime; the citational operations of anime’s performative
acts are the mechanisms through which this system works. In other
words, it is not only the material limits of the medium of animation but
also the performance of anime in the act of citation that facilitates the
doing and selling of anime, where variation is “an improvisational pos-
sibility within a field of constraints.”22 This is the performance of the
anime-­esque and, as such, keeps taut the tension between repetition
and variation, uniformity and diversity. Such is the problematic anime
struggles with, the answer tending toward repetition even as each itera­
tion maintains a particularity in its performance of that conventional
model. This tension arises in each anime-­esque performance.
As a brief example of how this operates, in particular as re-­
performances in anime, let me examine a sequence Lamarre describes
that is emblematic of a structure seen in anime. According to Lamarre,
the anime machine produces a multitude of effects within the limits
of its technology by shunting the force of the movement between the
planes of the multiplane image through different compositing meth-
ods. One process, flat compositing, engages the structure of “exploded
view/projection,” where the moving image is spread across the flat
plane of the image. This creates a particular structure of depth (or-
thogonal perspective) that differs from Cartesian one-­point perspec-
tive, spreading the force of the moving image across the surface of the
image, opening the structure of exploded projection to the divergent
series of animation.23 The structure of exploded projection “implies at
once a dispersion of the one into the multiple, and a capture of the mul-
tiplicity within unity. There is an inherent oscillation between multipli-
cation and unification, between dispersion and capture, for dispersed
elements remain tied to the whole, while the whole is relentlessly shat-
tered anew.”24
One example of the exploded view that Lamarre cites is the Dai-
con IV Opening Animation (1983), specifically the divergent and conver-
gent movements of missiles and their streams of smoke, which create
an emergent depth through their individual manipulation in the layers
across the flat surface of the image, the projectiles dispersing but “retain-
ing a sense of the whole, of the underlying integration.”25 The projectiles
172 Anime’s Citationality

swerve into and out of one-­point perspective, implying Cartesian per-

spective but also perverting and deviating from it, breaking into “mul-
tiple trajectories, multiple targets, and multiple depths.”26 Ultimately,
however, Lamarre is reticent, stating that “it is not pure divergence even
though it continually diverts its course.”27 He later explains that the
“under­lying structures of exploded projection serve to keep the anima-
tion elements and layers from utter dispersal or sheer difference.”28
What is particularly relevant for the topic at hand is not only the
description but also the objects of Lamarre’s observations of the ex-
ploded view: the divergent and convergent movements of missiles and
their streams of smoke, often called the “Itano circus” (Figure 4.5) after
key animator Itano Ichirō, who worked on many of the most famous
examples of such sequences, including Daicon IV and many Macross
productions. For example, in Macross Plus Movie Edition (1995), the
multiple swerving missiles with streams of smoke that sometimes
imply and later break Cartesian one-­point perspective are employed
in scenes made in traditional cel animation (Figure 4.5a). But the Itano
circus is also performed in CG, as in Macross Zero (2002) and even in
Expelled from Paradise with jet streams of light (4.5c); both sequences
involved Itano. These dynamics are also evident in Itano circus se-
quences that Itano did not animate, such as Macross Frontier: The False
Songstress (2009), where the streams of missiles arc toward a single
point before moving erratically away in different directions as they pur-
sue their target (Figure 4.5b). Other examples include Mobile Suit Gun-
dam AGE (2013, episode 45; Figure 4.5d) and Gundam Build Fighters
(2013, episode 10). This depiction of projectiles is a popular attraction,
a recognizably distinct element of anime of a certain genre, especially
in regard to Macross, where it is a necessary part of the formula of the
franchise. But also, as Lamarre’s description shows, it is emblematic of
much of anime’s animation in general. Put simply, the Itano circus can
be read as a recognizably anime-­esque element and a product of the
type of animation often employed in anime production. Therefore, this
example of (albeit imperfect) divergence becomes one of convergence
as it is re-­performed in other anime, repeated in different iterations of
the Itano circus.
From this perspective, then, there is another limit in the citation
of the structural model of the Itano circus. While the exploded view
 Anime’s Citationality 173

acts as a limit to the force of the animation, when repeated in the re-­
performances of the Itano circus, the potential divergence in the act
of animation is (re)folded back in the citational act of reiteration, and
thus this tension between divergence and convergence continues. On
a larger scale, the cycle of convergence and divergence of the missiles
mirrors the tensions anime itself enacts in each performative iteration.
The system of conventions of anime’s media-­form structures anime
productions along particular paths yet allows for a degree of movement
within them before extending outwardly toward the interactive rela-
tionship with the viewer, limiting the potentials through which anime
maintains its uniform aesthetics but continuing to produce diversity
and change over time.

Decentralized Network of Citations

As anime performance works through citation, new links are constantly
produced, changing and morphing, always in process, even if most of
those citations are conservative, eschewing drastic change for stricter
repetition of anime-­esque elements. Furthermore, each anime will be
linked to many others through citational performance: referencing and
alluding to prior iterations, each anime-­esque (re)performance is a mi-
metic act. There will be cycles of patterns that are frequently cited and
performed and clusters of works that routinely cite similar elements,
creating what can be called genres.29 The resultant genres, however,
are not neatly bordered. Reading Rayna Denison’s observations on
interrelated anime genres and subgenres from the perspective of the
current study, many works only cite elements of one genre (as opposed
to repeating generic elements wholesale) while also citing elements
of another genre.30 This produces overlapping networks of clusters of
genres. For example, magical girl anime has its own genre cluster, and
one of the typical anime-­esque elements found in it is the transforma-
tion scene. But this is also shared in many other anime, such as mecha
anime, which is part of its own genre cluster where transformations
are performed by giant robots rather than magical girls. There are also
simi­lar transformations and costumes cited in the recent ­Macross se-
ries Frontier and Delta, as multiple idols regularly transform, often
more rapidly than magical girls, when they perform their songs.
a

b
 c

d
Figure 4.5. Re-­performances of the divergent and convergent movements
of projectiles (Itano circus), animated by Itano Ichirō (a, Macross Plus,
hand-­drawn key animation), and by others, in 3D CG (b, Macross Fron-
tier: The False Songstress; c, Expelled from Paradise, which involved
Itano), and hand-­drawn key animation by Se Joon Kim (d, Mobile Suit
Gundam AGE).
176 Anime’s Citationality

Whatever one wants to focus on as anime-­esque—­transformations,

character designs, eyes, gestures and expressions, or types of animation—­
those elements can be seen as connected to a whole web of other in-
stances as a citation. But this does not mean that every single work
considered anime follows a set number of anime-­esque parts, nor does
it imply that each performance is felicitous. Many anime play with
anime-­esque elements, sometimes deviating from only one element.
For example, the abovementioned Ping-­Pong: The Animation drasti-
cally strays in terms of character design but is very anime-­esque in re-
gard to pacing and narrative structure (a tournament where characters
become more powerful), genre (sports anime), character personality
types (protagonist with potential whose self-­doubt is crippling), and
limited animation. Sometimes, different forms are ported from “out-
side.” Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt (2010) performs the contem-
porary cartoon character and background design drawn from so-­called
American works like Dexter’s Laboratory (1995–­2003), which itself en-
acts anime-­esque elements and was partly animated in South Korea.
Or, in a reverse example, when anime-­esque conventionalized facial
expressions are performed in the “American” DC comics–­based Teen
Titans (2003–­6), which was also partly animated in South Korea.
As Daliot-­Bul and Otmazgin note, works like Teen Titans were mar-
keted as anime-­inspired, and many such animations share aspects from
certain anime genres that are part of a tool kit that is now trans­cultural.31
Indeed, anime-­esque elements are increasingly recognizable in works
that are not usually seen as anime at all. For instance, the traditional
magical girl transformation sequence can be seen in the otherwise non-­
anime-­esque superhero animation Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug & Cat
Noir (2015–­present). Despite employing a 3D CG visual style reminis-
cent of Pixar’s The Incredibles (2004) and using tight-­skinned leotard
costumes common to superheroes, the transformation sequences that
focus on a magical object openly draw on the tradition of magical girl
transformations, adding an anime-­esque element to the series.
Anime-­esque performance is thus a matter of degree: animation
that performs many anime-­esque elements can be understood as eas-
ier to categorize as anime proper, but those with fewer elements may
not qualify for some creators and fans. Some animations may include
only a few anime-­esque elements (e.g., Teen Titans and Miraculous),
whereas others may try to densely pack in as many as they can (e.g.,
 Anime’s Citationality 177

Macross Frontier and Delta) and still others may be in between. In this
respect, it is not a matter of concretely determining whether an an-
imation is anime or not. Rather, anime-­esque performance becomes
a matter of degree in terms of fidelity to and density of citations and
participation in discourse (what is cited and with what frequency).
On a larger scale than character designs and transformations, anime
in general is a constant (re)performance of different structural models
that are mixed and matched, the products of which become anime’s
media-­form discourse that are then cited and re-­performed in a dif-
ferent combination or fade into the sidelines. These are the mechanics
of how anime operates as a system of conventionalized elements, ever-­
shifting but maintaining a sense of uniformity in its diverse aesthetics
through citational performances of various structural models. Anime
then becomes a network of performances rather than a set of works.
This network can be expanded or contracted depending on how one
views the anime-­esque and will have a cluster of shows that are seen
as the most anime-­esque or anime proper and fade away into perfor-
mances that are less and less anime-­esque. This view may provide a
different map of anime, one of gradations, unstable and dissimilar in
different locales and times. What is considered anime-­esque is an act
of interpretation and can differ from one location to another—­not only
for consumers but also for producers.
This account allows for a reconceptualization of anime not as a
bordered-­whole but as a network. Except, unlike the centralized net-
work of anime’s transnational production, this one is decentralized,
engaging the point-­to-­point operations as each anime connects to oth-
ers via its citations. Harder to be grounded in some concrete origin or
contained within national boundaries, these citational operations con-
sequently have transnational inflections. For instance, when an anime
cites an anime-­esque element that is presumably from Japan, it is actu-
ally citing something transnational. Not only was anime’s development
transnational, but the anime-­esque models themselves were sustained
by the repetition enabled by transnational labor; furthermore, specifi-
cally cited images may have actually been animated outside of Japan or
by foreign animators.
At the same time, this decentralized network of citational perfor-
mance is in a tense relationship with the centralized network of anime’s
transnational production, where most anime flow through Japan in
178 Anime’s Citationality

some manner, making it easier to obscure the transnational dynamics

of anime’s media-­form in favor of the bordered-­whole; anime can more
easily be seen as Japanese, and the potentials of anime’s decentralized
network become hidden. With this in mind, histories of anime may be
traced across the network, one not bound by national requirements
but rather by relation to conventions. This allows for a reexamination
of how to think about cultural production, with anime as a creative
product that is not necessarily isolated to Japan.
 9 5 0

Anime’s Creativity

Anime’s Creative Industry

In recent years, media products like anime have been seen as part of
the creative industries, a sector that has been the focus of much at-
tention as East Asian nations undergo shifts in the stage(s) of global
neoliberalism. A diverse range of occupations are included under the
rubric of creative industries, many of them associated with popular
cultural products like commercial animation. Indeed, the South Ko-
rean and Chinese governments have been investing in their respec-
tive animation industries in recent years, and the output of animation
has increased dramatically.1 However, in terms of global presence and
recognizability, Japan’s commercial animation industry, with anime as
its emblem, appears at the forefront. As discussed prior, by exploiting
the institutional and methodological tendencies to use nation as a point
of departure for examining culture, Cool Japan has helped sustain an-
ime’s aesthetic as representative of Japan—­in other words, it has estab-
lished an exclusive link between the media-­form of anime and Japan.
However, anime production, which is usually thought of as located
in Japan, has a long history of transnational production within Asia.
As analyzed in chapter 3, this operates as a centralized transnational
network, with many-­to-­one and one-­to-­many dynamics going into and
out of Tokyo to cities across Asia. At the same time, the anime-­esque
itself operates more like a decentralized network, whereby each itera-
tion is linked to prior performances, sustaining a point-­to-­point system
of citations—­a topic detailed in the previous chapter. Though these two
network tendencies exist in tandem in anime production, they do not
always align and can come into conflict. Taking this clashing of the two
types of network into account, in this chapter, I will focus on anime’s
creative industry across Asia, instead of focusing only on Japan, in an
attempt to rethink how transformations of the notion of creativity can

9 179 0
180 Anime’s Creativity

alter the concepts used to consider cultural production, which is so

often focused on a preestablished category of nationalized space. To
do so, I will examine the operations of creativity as it applies to anime,
building on the mechanics of anime’s citationality, whereby anime is
sustained on a type of iterability with minor variation. Such operations
are in contrast to dominant conceptions of creativity, which valorize
originality and departure from trend. Instead, each anime performance
negotiates its identity in relation to but also in distinction from prior
enactments. Because of this, anime’s identity itself is predicated on re-
iteration, engaging with what Alf Rehn and Christian De Cock describe
as “repetition in the name not just of seeking an answer to something
but of locating, deepening, embellishing a problem.”2
Anime’s creativity, then, lies in its ability to consistently work
through the problematic of diversity and uniformity in performance.
This productive tension facilitates modes of existence that are different
from those cherished by modern conceptions of originality and creativ-
ity, which conceal ideals of individualism within them. As I will show,
anime performances undercut this modern worldview through the
repetition of anime-­esque elements across borders. This central prob-
lematic of repetition and variation, along with the tension between com-
pulsory output and reliance on earlier iterations, underpins many of the
aesthetics of creative output in this historical moment of globalization.
In consideration of this, I will examine the implications of this type
of creativity in regard to recent transnational anime and propose how
to (re)consider anime’s history of outsourcing labor across Asia and its
relation to cultural production and regionality. While the focus will be
mainly on recent works that relate to China’s creative industries due to
current production practices, I will also pay attention to other places in
Asia that have been part of anime’s transnational production network.

Creativity and Copying

To begin, it may be worthwhile to interrogate the terms within “crea­
tive industry”: the word “industry” implies an economic model and
the regularity and controllability of production, which seem almost
antithetical to the common usage of “creativity.” As John O’Connor
and Gu Xin espouse, “the term [creativity] feeds on a form of ‘artis-
tic’ sensibility and practice—­breaking the rules, ‘thinking outside
 Anime’s Creativity 181

the box’, ‘coming from left field’, etc.—­which links to the aesthetic of
the ‘revalua­tion of all values’, ‘the shock of the new’ and the agonistic
struggle with the existing order which characterizes the modernist and
avant-­garde traditions.”3 Such an understanding of creativity is deeply
connected to the largely Western notion of the individual artist, whose
interiority is externalized and can ideally induce substantial challenges
to the social world.4 In other words, modern notions of creativity valo-
rize an artistic output of distinctiveness that may conflict with the regi­
mented, repetitive, and predictable outcomes presumed in industry.
As Neale details in regard to genre, much of this valorization of
the individual artist comes from a long-­standing modern (Western)
tradition of art with a clear hierarchy of “ ‘authentic’ authorial expres-
sion” against the “formulaic, stereotypical, artistically anonymous, and
therefore artistically worthless” genre.5 Neale emphasizes a history of
genre where “to be ‘generic’ is to be predictable and cliched; within
that ideology, literature and art generally has to be free, creative, indi-
vidual.”6 With this historical development, “repetitive patterns, ingre-
dients and formulae are now perceived . . . as the law of the market . . .
principally associated with an industrial, commercial and mechani-
cally based art.”7 This explicitly positions the positive uniqueness of
“high art” in contradistinction from the droll, repetitive, conventional
fodder of “popular culture/low art.” Opposed to an embrace of repeti-
tion and trend, such conceptions of creativity emphasize novelty that is
predicated on a distinction from that which was prior—­a stark depar-
ture from previous trends.
In their deconstruction of creativity, Rehn and De Cock see such
a view as a “dominant neo-­liberal, market-­focused ideology of ‘creativ-
ity’ as a well-­behaved category and phenomenon.”8 In this, there is an
assumption that something novel and unique is implicitly superior to
that which came before, which is stale and represents a reluctance to
progress.9 Rehn and De Cock interrogate this conception of creativity,
asking:

Doesn’t the obsession with “novelty,” with “frame-­breaking”

and “thinking outside the box”—­“ ideas” for the sake of “ideas”—­
suppress that what is actually happening under so much active
and activistic energy reflects rather conservative norms: “com-
pulsory individualism, compulsory ‘innovation,’ compulsory
182 Anime’s Creativity

performativity and productiveness, the compulsory valorization

of the putatively new”?10 Does the recent interest in creativity
from policy makers . . . not contain a strong ideological dimen-
sion: a need to respond to and fit in with the perceived needs of
contemporary capitalism in a globalized risk society?11

They conclude by stating that valorizing novelty over the preexisting

keeps the ideals of creativity in line with modern notions of progress
and the need for continual capitalistic development. Such a conception
obscures thinking of creativity as process and praxis, as work and labor,
and conceals the history that enabled creative production.12
This conception of creativity resembles what Laikwan Pang details
in her work on the creative industries. She sees our understandings
of creativity as “characterized by the tensions and dynamics between
freedom and control, art and design, textuality and industrialism.”13
Pang contends that “unpredictability and indocility make artistic cre-
ativity both resistant and germane to the modernity project”14 and that
the contemporary global creative economy is the latest manifestation
of this, following the logic of the individual artist in the regime of intel-
lectual property rights (IPR).15 As noted above, the creative industries
often link up with nation branding, where an intimate relationship be-
tween nation and creative production are made in the context of the
global. The interiority of the individual artist or company can stand in
for a nation whose unique cultural interior is externalized through the
product and exported throughout the world where it can compete in
the global marketplace.
Furthermore, the promotion of the creative industries seems to build
on the discourse of cultural modernization, which is now no longer
about the management of rapid industrialization away from a peasant
society but rather about the promotion of creativity enacted in various
products.16 Such a shift is in part to meet the demands for cultural
consumer goods, to move beyond the production of basic consumer
goods toward a leisure economy, the “next stage” in economic develop-
ment.17 This, as O’Connor and Xin assert, “presents problems in East
Asia generally, [and] it poses specific questions in China.”18 They raise
the intriguing query of whether “China [can] develop an innovative
entertainment and leisure sector without the artistic milieu, without
that active modernist cultural sensibility?”19 In other words, is there a
 Anime’s Creativity 183

different model of creativity that fits the conditions of contemporary

China and its developing creative industries?
This question is raised by O’Connor and Xin in consideration of “the
direct control of content and the resistance to any notion of an autono-
mous cultural sphere” in a country where maintaining social stability is
paramount to the state.20 Indeed, as Anthony Y. H. Fung and Vicky Ho
detail in their account of the animation industry in China, maintain-
ing a harmonious society is one of the criteria that guides the censorship
and award system for domestic animation production.21 Fung and Ho
argue that, while there has been an increase in the number of anima-
tions produced, there is a stifling of artistic creativity because animated
works “ought not to be shocking or disruptive,” restricted by the pre-
vailing conceptual and policy views that animation is a child-­oriented
medium and works must be in line with the government agenda.22 They
also note that there has been a history of Japan outsourcing animation
work to studios in China and that this has left a “lingering Japanese
influence,” where works of this type are sometimes lambasted as copy-
cats.23 This can be a common reaction in Asia, where local animations
that are recognizably anime-­esque receive similarly negative reactions.
It is important to note that the reaction to imitation in the context
of creativity has a national component to it. Placed in opposition to the
modern artistic creativity defined as departure from trend and valo-
rized in discourses on creativity—­even imbedded in the very notion
of creativity, as Pang details—­practices that follow trend, that result
in “mere copies,” are denigrated as derivative and lesser. Indeed, this
is part of the dynamic of the many accusations of mimicry applied to
Asia, often in comparison to Western models.24 Japan itself has often
been characterized as a country of copying in various contexts, not
least of which is imitating Western modernity itself.25 China has been
one of the recent targets of such accusations. Sometimes this is pointed
at animated productions, which are charged with imitating Japanese
animation without any local flair—­in other words, without creating a
decidedly Chinese type of animation.
But is this not replaying the same debates about the interplay be-
tween modernization, nation, and culture as in the construction of
national literatures or cinema? Does every Asian nation necessarily
have to create its own unique type of animation? Of course, modern
notions of creativity should not be wholesale discarded, nor should one
184 Anime’s Creativity

ignore how departure from trend can be a powerful tool for inciting
liberatory and beneficial modes of thought and perception. However, it
is also worth exploring how one may conceive of a creativity of copying,
specifically in regard to anime across Asia, and how this may inform
or impede a conception of regionality, of “something coming into com-
mon” as Lamarre puts it.26 To do so will require a reconsideration of
how to engage with the dynamics of copying and creativity in anime
production across Asia.

Citationality and Anime’s Creativity

With all this in mind, how can anime’s creativity be conceptualized?
Indeed, anime is often portrayed at the forefront of Japan’s creative
industries, raised as an example of the national culture’s creativity. The
above neoliberal conception of creativity is the one that Cool Japan
espouses: anime is promoted for its individualized uniqueness that rep-
resents Japan on the world stage while also continually manufacturing
commercial cultural products. Anime as a media-­form facilitates this
compulsory production—­a system with a repertoire ready to be per-
formed in different combinations. Anime could be seen as creative in
the sense of enabling a regularity of production, but not in the modern
sense of straying from norms.
In consideration of this, anime can be seen as having a different
approach to creativity in its very mode of production, one that ques-
tions claims of individualistic creation: it embraces repetition, and it
moves toward the conventional in terms of media-­form. Pang sees the
type of creativity in anime and its surrounding culture as related to
the logic of copying, which both resists and fortifies concrete identity.27
For anime, citation, copying, imitation, and mimesis are not dispar-
aging terms but the very means that sustain it. As Rehn and De Cock
note, “the hall mark of success in [this type of] a creative endeavor is
that one has succeeded in copying that which one references.”28 Here,
“originality lies in the relational dynamics, not in the thing itself, and
thus not in creativity itself either.”29 It is the system of anime-­esque
elements consistently performed through citation that allows anime to
sustain its own identity, but each iteration opens a moment for change,
for varia­tion and minor innovation that can only be understood in re-
lation to prior instances of that performance. Indeed, I have noted how
 Anime’s Creativity 185

popular franchises like Macross are themselves constantly engaging

with formulas to maintain their own identities for decades.
Such a conception of creativity is different from that of the modern
idea of the artistic creativity of the individual. But this should not be
understood as some appeal to a culturalist tradition in Japan or Asia in
general. Instead, as Rupert Cox reminds us, “with the ubiquity of copies
through commodification and the attraction of new sensory experi-
ences made possible through copying machines, the copy may speak
much more to personal desires and feelings than to national quali-
ties.”30 To use Pang’s words, “at a time when we can foresee no more
breaks, when creativity cannot bring us any shocks of the new, I hope
that we can gain a different understanding of the relationship between
the established and the new by reverting to the logic of copying.”31
Informed by this approach to anime’s creativity, which resembles the
logic of copying in the citationality of the anime-­esque, I would like to
reconsider anime’s performances across Asia.

Citations across Borders

Before going any further, let me provide an example from the anime
School Shock (2015), which was animated outside of Japan (with the
central studio in China and some South Korean staff involved) and
deftly performs many anime-­esque elements. Based on a manhua by
Bái Māo Sunny, the narrative follows high school student Son Hōken
(Haoxuan Sun), who, we later find out, is a special Child of Eden and is
protected by a nanotechnology-­powered human weapon, Ruri (Liu Li).
Ruri transfers to Son’s high school to guard him as her final mission
before she is “decommissioned.” In terms of visual design of characters,
conventionalized facial expressions, narrative tropes, and voice acting
styles (it was dubbed in Japanese and features famous voice actor Kana
Hanazawa), it executes relatively standard anime-­esque performances.
In many ways, the animation would fit in with many late-­night TV
anime associated with Japan.
To give an illustration of the degree of similarity between School
Shock and the average anime, at the very end of episode 2, Son is day-
dreaming at school, thinking about his traumatic experience as a hos-
tage and his rescue by Ruri. Snapped out of his dream by the teacher
scolding him, he obeys her instructions to close the window next to
186 Anime’s Creativity

b
Figure 5.1. The trope of the protagonist sitting by the window (a) with a
similar structural layout of a classroom (b) used in anime set in Japanese
schools, re-­performed in School Shock.

him and gazes out onto the dirt soccer field below. He sees Ruri in his
school’s uniform, implying that she will be a transfer student to his
school. It is not only the scene reminiscing about the traumatic events,
or the character designs, or the inclusion of a mysterious transfer stu-
dent that I want to highlight here. It is also the placement of Son’s seat
and the general layout of the school that is noteworthy. For a narrative
 Anime’s Creativity 187

supposedly set in China, the design and placement of the seating are
strikingly similar to stereotypical images of Japanese schools in anime
(Figure 5.1). In fact, the seat placement follows a widely known trope in
anime: the main character is almost always seated by the window
with the blackboard in front (evinced by Chinese and English internet
memes of this “godly seat” of the protagonist).
How does one read such a scene, supposedly set in China, that is so
closely related to imagery associated with Japan? It is clear that on mul-
tiple levels the above work, part of a growing number of productions, is
reproducing recognizable anime conventions that are supposedly from
Japan. But, as already stressed in earlier chapters, this act of repetition
is not outside of the norm, even in Japan. Indeed, anime’s recognizabil-
ity implies that there is a degree of repetition already invoked in anime
supposedly made in Japan. Yet when this occurs outside of Japan, the
reaction to such work is quite adverse.
Therefore, when approaching anime made outside of Japan like
School Shock, attention should be paid to how they cite anime-­esque
elements (as all anime do). Many do not appear to drastically devi-
ate from the conventions of mainstream anime. One may see such a
conservative performance of anime-­esque conventions as an asser-
tion of anime identity. In other words, too radical and flamboyant a
performance would risk estranging them from the media category of
anime. Because the prevailing conception of anime’s identity is anime
as Japanese animation, works openly acknowledging their production
outside of Japan are already on shaky ground. Therefore, they must rely
on an extreme conservatism in their performance of the anime-­esque
to highlight their identity as anime products. Because of this, they fea-
ture characters designs, facial and bodily gestures, narrative tropes,
and limited animation techniques, among other components, regularly
found in so-­called Japanese anime. In this sense, they are operating
under the same performative processes as anime proper, which usually
translates to Japanese-­made anime. But as I have shown, most anime
in general are made in a transnational system, so it is hard to argue a
nationalized authenticity or a strict inside and outside to anime proper.
This does not mean, however, that all anime productions are per-
formed felicitously. Indeed, many anime, inside and outside of Japan, are
not popular beyond their smaller fan groups and are received as relatively
minor productions. Therefore, interesting deviations or developments
188 Anime’s Creativity

in their iterative performances will probably not be cited in other anime.

Consequently, there is a politics of citation—­a power wielded by pro-
ducers who have marketing prowess and connection to other creatives
who tend to felicitously perform anime—­at play here. This is something
often limited to companies based in Japan. Popular studios, often pub-
licized as the creative sources of anime, can exercise some authority of
approval through the innovations from elsewhere they selectively cite in
their works. However, a felicitous anime performance is not a simple
execution but rather a relatively fragile act: its production takes place
across vast distances and by multiple operators with varying levels of
skills and experience. The felicity of the performance must endure these
factors as well as the reception of fans, sales figures, and ultimately the
rate of the final product’s citation in later works. These latter parts (re-
ception, sales, and citation) are all impossible to control.
To give another brief example of the operations of citation and a
creativity involving minor variation, I would like to turn to the charac-
ter design element of nonhuman ears (often cat or bunny ears, as with
Nashetania in Rokka no yūsha, Figure 5.2a). A multitude of characters
with different types of animal ears appear in the surprise hit Kemono
Friends (2017). These character designs all perform a reiteration of prior
nonhuman ears, but with a slight innovation or change to the struc-
tural model. For instance, rather than placing house cat ears on the side
of the head like in many popular character designs, the ears are based
on different animals and adjusted accordingly. Animals referenced
include the serval (5.2b), fennec fox, white-­faced owl, and rockhopper
penguin (5.2c). As for adjustments, the ears were placed directly next to
one another at the top of the head. They were elongated in the character
of the serval and brought to the front of the head in the character of the
rockhopper penguin. In fact, Kemono Friends can be read as an experi-
ment of innovation on this type of design, each cast member a variation
on nonhuman character elements. This is an embellishment of anime’s
typical repetition with minor variation. Following Azuma’s assertion of
the importance of database character design in otaku culture and con-
sumption, it is surely an aspect of Kemono Friends’s popu­larity. Such
success comes in spite of its initially bad reception, low production
quality, and polarizing use of 3D CG. The smaller studio that produced
it, Yaoyorozu, was jettisoned into the limelight and, as such, similar
 Anime’s Creativity 189

innovations on nonhuman ears like those found in ­Kemono Friends

may appear in the future.
It is in this context that the antennae used in Ruri’s design in School
Shock (Figure 5.2d) can be considered a citation and minor variation on
such conventionalized character elements. However, it remains to be
seen if such recent innovations will catch on for both School Shock and
Kemono Friends. They may spark more citations. Alternatively, they
may be relegated to obscurity because the designs are too iconic and
repetitions may appear redundant. This may be due to fan reception or
to a creator’s affinities. Felicity can be fickle in this way as well. In this
sense, performing anime’s creativity comes with its own risks, as it in-
novates on its own terms. But there may also be an element of exclusion
or inclusion based on an anime’s relation, or lack thereof, to Japan. This
leads to further issues: how to consider these citations as they occur or
don’t occur across borders; whether the authentication of an anime’s
relation to Japan has a role to play in such processes or not; and, more
broadly, how to conceive of such creative practices when they occur in
specific areas across Asia.

Anime’s Creativity in China

Considering anime as a performance of a media-­form has implications
on the context of anime as a creative industry across Asia, particularly
in China. Anime is constituted through the repetition of anime-­esque
conventions, whether it is produced inside or outside of Japan. Anime-­
esque elements become external to all performers as things that must
be learned, taught, practiced, and enacted, regardless of locale. Further-
more, anime’s creativity is less about innovation and departure from
trend and more about relying on the refined execution of preexisting
conventions, a mixing and matching of cited anime-­esque elements. Be-
cause anime is sustained by recognizable repetition within a restricted
field, it emphasizes minor variation over departure from trend.
In light of this, anime’s creativity may initially appear to fit the spe-
cific demands of the creative industries in China. Anime’s creativity
is about sustaining an aesthetic through recognizability and variation
within the field of constraint as opposed to the valorization of disrup-
tive difference; it does not have to privilege novelty, instead focusing on
a

b
 c

d
Figure 5.2. Innovations on the character design element of animal ears:
bunny ears (a, Nashetania, Rokka no yūsha), a variation on the ­popular
cat ears (b, Serval, Kemono Friends); crests (c, Rockhopper Penguin,
­Kemono Friends); and antennae (d, Ruri, School Shock).
192 Anime’s Creativity

reiteration. This does not mean that innovation completely vanishes,

but that repetition is not viewed negatively, as it is the very mechanism
by which anime is identifiable as such. This closely resembles the logic
of copying that Pang details. In fact, Pang explicates a “correspondence
between China’s piracy culture and the Japanese cartoon [anime] cul-
ture in the common affinity for mimesis.”32 In one example, Pang ex-
plores an illegally produced book that displays information and images
about director Miyazaki’s works along with images and articles from
other sources but inserts minor variations, producing a distinct prod-
uct in the process. This is also evident in derivative works (nijisōsaku)
and dōjin culture in Japan, China, and elsewhere, where fans make
their own versions of anime, manga, game, or light novel characters,
carefully staying faithful to the designs and narratives while deviating
enough to produce distinct work.33 Such practices produce a sense of
community among those who make and read such works, as well as
other fans, often because of their mutual familiarity with the conven-
tions that they are repeating.34
This familiarity with anime is not necessarily something new, ei-
ther. Early anime like Astro Boy (Tetsuwan Atomu, 1963) and Kimba the
White Lion (1965–­66) were “the first batch of popular culture reaching
the Chinese masses” just as China was (re)opening up to the world in
1978.35 In the 1980s and ’90s, works like City Hunter (1987–­88), Dragon
Ball (1986–­89), and Slam Dunk (1993–­96) were also popular, resulting
in an entire generation of people now coming of age who have grown
up with anime their entire lives. With more recent simultaneous broad-
casts and streaming across borders, there is a great concurrence in the
viewing habits and timing of fans in China and across Asia broadly.
Intimate familiarity with the anime-­esque and the capacity to both
recognize and perform it, then, does not have to be isolated to Japan.
Indeed, as Pang notes, “animation in general has been shown to be a
culture of appropriation,”36 and it should not be surprising that anime’s
explosive popularity and history of outsourced production in China
would give rise to the desire to produce anime there.

Openly Transnational Anime

Yet familiarity does not only come through consumption. As detailed
in prior chapters, Japanese studios’ extended outsourcing of animation
 Anime’s Creativity 193

has occurred for decades, often in parts of Asia where Japanese man-
agement could be seen as reinscribing a history of oppression. While
the conventions of anime are externally imposed on all performers,
many animators in these areas experience a different relationship to
this imposition. This makes the performance of the anime media-­form
outside of Japan difficult not only because of accusations of imitation
but also because of a complex political history. While I have stressed
the positive potentials of the creativity of copying—­that is, the genera-
tive capacity of repetition to produce familiarity and affinity as well as
minor change—­I must also acknowledge the oppressive connotations
that such practices entail: restraint and an enforcement of limits, some-
times with the threat of violence.
For example, in the context of the Korean peninsula—­where there
is a history of brutally forced labor under Japanese colonial rule, the
attempted evisceration of Korean culture and language, and the com-
pulsory acquisition of Japanese cultural practices and language—­the
imposition of the anime-­esque (seen as Japanese) may have connota-
tions of copying over, of copying as a technique of erasure. Indeed, as
stated in chapter 3, the iterability of anime-­esque conventions both en-
ables and masks anime’s transnationality. Therefore, the complexities
of the politics of creator and copier of media-­form can be overlaid onto
the regional politics of East Asia, with justifiable tensions that arise
from these dynamics.
Indeed, the dominance of the anime-­esque in animation has be-
come more and more visible. Over the past few years there has been an
increase in the number of anime open about their production outside
of Japan, advertised as such even in Japan. Due to their anime-­esque
narratives, settings, and characters, Tze-­Yue G. Hu notes that “even
the affective aspects of these works carry a déjà vu feeling that reminds
the audience of previously shown anime feature films.”37 Hu also ac-
knowledges that the history of outsourcing in Asia has left animators
with entrenched patterns, often making anime appear to be the stan-
dard to be achieved, with some creators unapologetic about measuring
their work against anime-­esque designs.38
While Chloé Paberz observes a similar adherence to established
anime and manga patterns, she also details how creative workers in
South Korea often take great pride in their work that engages with the
visual conventions of media seen as coming from Japan. Importantly,
194 Anime’s Creativity

many of the sentiments of Korean workers align with those Matsunaga

Shintarō describes of Japanese animators. Matsunaga notes that these
animators may best be described as “craftsmen” (shokunin), the very
same English word Paberz utilizes to describe the situation in Korea.39
For Paberz, these creative laborers see themselves as part of a commu-
nity broader than the nation that emphasizes refinement of skill and a
personal education of the body where, through repetition, they are able
to acquire the specific aesthetic they value: the mangaesque and anime-­
esque.40 In this sense, there seem to be some affirmative associations
with the anime-­esque by creatives and an increased acknowledgment
of both the necessary acquisition of skills to perform it, as well as the
transnationality of anime in terms of creative practitioners.
Indeed, Studios like Emon are quite open about their transnational
position. Emon’s president even stated that the company aims to make
anime that “goes beyond nation” through mutual cooperation in pro-
duction.41 This is important to consider, as Chinese companies’ con-
nections to the anime business in Japan have increased in recent years.
For example, several series in 2016 were connected to Chinese compa-
nies by the Chinese investment in and contracting of Japanese studios
or by Chinese studios openly acknowledged as working on the anime
production.42 These works include Spirit Pact, Bloodivores, Cheating
Craft, To Be Hero, Soulbuster, and Idol Memories. Such productions are
clearly aiming for the mainstream, performing in line with standard
anime conventions, but many are based on IP from outside of Japan.
There are also anime presented as coproductions, such as the relatively
successful show Reikenzan, which ran for two seasons (2016–­17). This
show was marketed as coproduced by Studio Deen (a well-­known Japa­
nese studio) and Tencent’s Haoliners/Emon, with the source material
coming from a Chinese web novel and manhua. Closer inspection finds
that, like most productions, several other studios were involved, based
in Shanghai (Shanghai MCC), the Philippines (TAP), and Vietnam
(Nam Hai), along with a few smaller studios in Japan (Jumondo, Mouse,
Studio Gram, and A-­Line).43 This, as shown prior, is not atypical, as
most anime are transnationally produced to some degree. While mar-
keted as a Chinese-­Japanese coproduction, it is actually a much more
transnational production.
Putting that aside, the simple assumption that anime is made in
Japan gets disrupted by such anime, which maintain the same media-­
 Anime’s Creativity 195

form, are of similar production quality, and are open about their trans-
nationality or production outside of Japan. Many of these works, like
School Shock or Spirit Pact, display a blatant connection to the particu­
larities that anime is globally famous for, evincing aesthetics that are
often directly associated with Japan.44 Initially, the common practice
of labeling them “Chinese anime” may appear to mitigate exclusivity
by allowing for distinction and difference. However, as Zoltan Kacsuk
details in regard to manga made outside of Japan, adding the country of
origin as an adjective or denoting a broader grouping like “non-­Japanese
anime” effectively indicates that those animations are somehow dif-
ferent from anime proper, which is presumed to always come from
Japan. Subsequently, such labels actually highlight the centrality and
authority of Japan as the locus of anime proper, as the unmarked word
“anime” still connotes an origin in Japan and invites a comparison be-
tween the two. That said, I must also recognize, as Kacsuk does, that
any terminological choice will unavoidably privilege one position over
another.45 With all that in mind, here I will be reluctantly using “Chi-
nese anime” for illustrative purposes only, with the aim to reveal the
intricacies of these power dynamics in order to move beyond them. As
a placeholder, the term can help expose how, despite the recognizable
performances of anime’s media-­form, if one defines anime in exclusive
relation to Japan, then Chinese anime do not qualify as anime proper.
Indeed, because of anime’s image as Japanese, anime made outside
of Japan generally receive extra scrutiny and are often derided as imi-
tations. In this sense, from the inter-­national perspective, one might
say that Chinese anime appear to be a mimicry of the Japanese media-­
form, mimicry here used in a manner that builds on Homi Bhabha’s
conceptualization. Bhabha refers to the explicitly colonial imposition
of cultural modes on the colonized, observing how the resulting acts of
mimicry constitute a resemblance that is recognizable but denigrated
by the colonizer in an assertion of dominance: “almost the same, but
not quite.”46 Thus, mimicry can be seen as revealing performances with
the same or similar stylistic elements but with one looked down on as
lesser due to the power relations at play between performer (colo­nized)
and imposed performance model (colonizer), producing an intelligi-
ble but distant Other for the colonizer in the almost-­but-­not-­quite
performer (the colonized). Yet in the process, the supposed sanctity
and exclusivity of the performance model becomes suspect, as the
196 Anime’s Creativity

repetition reveals the model’s imitability, calling into question the sup-
posedly grounded, unified authority by which the mimicry is judged as
a poor imitation.
As Kacsuk notes of manga, because authentic anime are seen as Japa­
nese, Chinese anime are forced to stick closely to established anime-­
esque patterns, as any deviations from or innovations on what are
seen as a Japanese media-­form are “perceived as leading away from
manga [or anime] and not enriching it.”47 Thus, even exacting perfor-
mances in/of Chinese anime can appear to be mimicry of authentic
Japanese anime, imitations of an original performance model from
Japan. But by seeing anime as a media-­form, anime becomes ambiva-
lent to ­nation—­­it is performative, repeatable elsewhere, and, as such, it
exposes Cool Japan’s anxious need to continually claim it as Japanese;
otherwise, the focus on anime as media-­form would too strongly reveal
its imitability. Indeed, consistently produced events like AnimeJapan
exhibit this anxiety, as they must be repeated to continually ground
and delimit the anime-­esque as Japanese.
With this in mind, works like Balala Fairies (2008)—­which may at
first appear to be a copy of magical girl anime associated with Japan like
Princess Precure (2004)—­or Dragon Lancer (2015)—­which may appear
like an imitation of children’s robot anime Gyrozeter (2012)—­are not
Chinese knockoffs of Japanese originals but are actually continuing a
practice of similar productions to sell toys with the synergy from the
media-­form of anime, a media mix practice that is abundant in Japan.
The Precure franchise itself has a multitude of similar shows and prod-
ucts, and Gyrozeter is one of a long line of similar products that date
back to the early days of robot anime’s integration with the toy market
in Japan in the 1970s.
With this approach to anime’s creativity, where repetition and cita-
tion are the norm even inside of Japan, how can the transnational labor
involved in anime production be considered? Used as invisible labor,
overseas workers developed the skills needed to produce anime from
years of animating the very anime that they are accused of mimick-
ing. Choo explains that, due to the long history of Japanese companies
subcontracting with South Korean studios, when regarding the South
Korean animations in the 1970s and 1980s often seen as knockoffs, “it
may be difficult to categorize South Korean animation as plagiaristic
products because the companies were created to reproduce (or copy)
 Anime’s Creativity 197

Japanese animation.”48 Choo states that “the boundaries between

Japanese and South Korean animation were blurred by hybrid visual
representations,”49 asserting that “South Korea’s position is unique in
that it was not a passive consumer but rather an active participant in
the production process of Japanese animation, which led to its boom-
ing domestic industry.”50 Discussing some of these works produced in
South Korea at the time, she notes how they “functioned as nationalist
media for domestic youth audiences,” but because “they were virtually
no different from Japanese anime in terms of narratives and character
design,” it resulted in “paradoxically creating a dislocated yet shared
animation identity.”51 To examine these productions, Choo adapts
Bhabha’s mimicry concept but sees these animations made in South
Korea as “a postmodern hyperbolic mimicry”:

the reappropriation was to “overcome” rather than to “become.”

The in/visible gaze of the colonizer and its associated anxieties,
ambiguities, and ambivalence were here circumvented by the
fact that the praxis of mimicry in South Korean animations were
unknown to both the Japanese and South Korean audiences at the
time. Unlike Bhabha’s “almost the same but not quite/not white”
relation, the South Korean animators’ overdetermined and un-
apologetic appropriation of Japanese anime created a hyperbolic
mode of mimicry—­“not only the same, but actually Korean”—­
that existed for the gratification of South Koreans only.52

While Choo emphasizes that this may slip into nationalism, she hints
that other potentials are at play here as well. Indeed, because the anime-­
esque is so closely associated with Japan, such performances receive
negative receptions, as they run counter to established conceptions of
creativity, ownership of culture, and cultural appropriation, implicitly
challenging the norms of national ownership of a cultural product.
For instance, when productions appear to have no Japanese staff and
are not dubbed into Japanese, like Noblesse (2015)—­produced in South
Korea—­or Tōng Líng Fēi (2016)—­produced in the China but involving
South Korean companies—­they may at first be treated like imitations
of a Japanese cultural product. However, these are works that are pro-
duced in much the same way as the animation production that had
already been done there, sometimes for decades, but under contract
198 Anime’s Creativity

from domestic rather than Japanese companies. Approaching these

anime as knockoffs would be difficult from a transnational perspective,
as anime has generally been a transnationally produced product that
is sustained by repetition. Indeed, as noted in the previous chapter, all
performances of anime can be seen as mimetic acts.
However, Japan still comes into play for many such works. As shown
prior, animation is not the only part of anime production, and there
are many other jobs in the industry, such as directing, organization,
character design, voice acting, and script writing. Most of this know-­
how has stayed localized within Japan and has historically not been
outsourced, although it is clear that those outside of Japan can perform
these roles as well. Perhaps the most restricted to Japan is the Japanese
language voice actor–­celebrity system, which is an important part of
anime’s marketing.53 The Japanese voice actor system is highly com-
plex, with voices being highly stylized and star voice actors consistently
playing certain role types, making their voices an important part of the
anime performance. This can be a crucial selling point, as many fans
inside and outside of Japan follow specific actors who are often adver-
tised when the show is promoted.
Importantly, animation can be masked quite convincingly with
voice-­overs in another language, which is how anime is often localized
outside of Japan. But the reverse can also be true. Though promoted
as a Chinese anime, School Shock, which deftly performs anime con-
ventions, has a Japanese dub with well-­known Japanese voice actors.
This is the path also taken by Emon’s Spiritpact, which was actually
animated mainly in South Korea but received a Japanese dub and was
broadcast in Japan. These productions are advertised as foreign made
but also as collaborating with Japanese voice actors. Generally, subtitles
are quicker and cheaper to produce than voice-­overs, but these works
underwent the time-­consuming and expensive process. Such a prac-
tice suggests that, while anime viewers abroad enjoy anime in Japanese
with subtitles, anime viewers within Japan are more inclined to watch
anime in Japanese without subtitles, emphasizing the importance of
the stylized Japanese voice—­and the voice actor–­celebrity system—­to
anime viewers across the globe.
Therefore, even for works animated outside of Japan, Japan is still
an important part of the network of production as a significant force
of skilled labor and maintaining the power of authenticity that events
 Anime’s Creativity 199

like AnimeJapan attempt to secure. Just as Kacsuk details how Japanese

manga are the vanguard for manga purely by their existence as Japa-
nese, so-­called Japanese anime are also seen as more legitimate by their
existence as Japanese. Under such conditions, anime animated else-
where have to be seen as Japanese in some way to avoid accusations of
mimicry. Thus, even shows made outside of Japan tend to flow through
Japan in some way, with dubbing into Japanese or collaboration with
Japanese companies and advertisements and/or broadcast in Japan to
position themselves as “real” anime.
This demand for some sort of production in Japan, as Sudo notes,
is due in part to the “Japan Brand.”54 As discussed prior, these nation-­
branding effects can already be seen in the long-­term influx of capi-
tal and talent from China, Europe, and the United States into Japan:
Haoliners and Netflix have both set up a headquarters in Tokyo to
produce works, fund new projects, and court anime licenses (among
other media) for streaming services. This may initially appear to open
up possibilities for transnationality and embracing concepts of shared
cultural production. But as Pang notes, the global IPR regime threatens
to capture the productive flows across the network within the national,
and the transnational anime business is beginning to follow the more
litigious footsteps of Hollywood, enforcing ideas of ownership on crea­
tivity. Indeed, continuing the patterns of the major Japanese publishing
companies, Haoliners is a company set up to control intellectual prop-
erties, and Emon is its central studio in Tokyo that produces the anime
based on them.
Moreover, these practices suggest a desire for a recognition of au-
thenticity through connection with Japan. Indeed, one could see this
as a strategy for foreign-­made anime to legitimize themselves as proper
anime, consumed in Japan and thus amenable to global audiences. But,
effectively, this will hide how many anime are transnational and that
this sort of transnational production is common. It will, once more,
mask the transnational with the inter-­national. While there are surely
examples of “nationally pure” anime productions, there are also many
anime produced transnationally, with different parts of their produc-
tion performed in multiple places across Asia. Furthermore, anime
distribution has spread worldwide, not just recently, but dating back de-
cades, even to its earliest eras. Therefore, anime can be seen as strikingly
ambivalent in regard to the inter-­national on multiple levels, unable to
200 Anime’s Creativity

be easily placed in any exclusive national space but constantly shunted

into that framework, even as it exists tensely as a media heterotopia.
This imposition of the inter-­national framework aligns all too well with
modern notions of creativity, whereas a creativity more closely aligned
with the logic of copying meshes more with the transnational actuali-
ties of contemporary creative industries across Asia.

Anime across Asia

To counteract the controlling aspects of the contemporary IPR regime,
Pang calls for a different approach to contemporary (Western) concep-
tions of creativity. She theorizes this alternative creativity as “a result of
social praxis that demands labor” and “a form of textuality that prolif-
erates on its own.”55 This involves a community “with people influenc-
ing, observing, and copying each other,” and as textuality it “resembles
how cultures and history evolve.”56 Such a conception of creativity
challenges the modern individual artist, a concept that is mapped onto
the contemporary creative economy where popular cultural products
are exported as emblems of a nation’s culture. Examining anime as
a performatively constituted media-­form reveals a type of creativity
that satisfies many of the requirements that Pang lays out and reaches
beyond the framework of national culture toward a networked concep-
tion of transnationality and region.
In this view, anime sustains itself through citationality, a per-
formance that straddles the tensions between repetition and varia-
tion. Therefore, on the level of media-­form, the locale and nationality
of the performer is less of an issue than the fidelity to anime-­esque
models. Anime focuses on minor variation, moving toward citation,
a strict repetition. Chinese coproductions or anime largely produced
in China, South Korea, or elsewhere are continuing this practice of
citation. Indeed, the unremarked nature of anime’s vast transnational
production network attests to the imitability of anime and the skill
of the performers, who often go unnoticed due to the felicity of their
citational performances. There is great potential to see anime’s media-­
form as shared, unable to be fully owned by one person, company, or
nation, highlighting the participatory element of the labor involved. It
also offers the dim, but persistent, capacity to move beyond the individ-
ualism of artistic creativity—­which is mapped onto the nation-­state in
 Anime’s Creativity 201

the global nation branding of creative industries—­to recognize similar-

ities and familiarities and rely on shared conventions that can operate
transculturally across borders.
Stretching this perspective further, as anime performance cites other
anime that are not produced exclusively in Japan but trans­nationally
across Asia, on a media-­formal level, “inter-­Asia referencing” becomes
the means of sustaining and enacting the anime-­esque.57 Anime like
School Shock make this blatantly visible because they are perceived as
anime from China when anime is supposedly from Japan; they refer-
ence what is seen as Japanese by enacting the media-­form. In this sense,
anime’s media-­form becomes a network of relations across national
borders, interrogating where those borders of cultural production and
consumption actually lie and how they may take on a different form.
Anime performance thus incites the problematic of how to even con-
sider an area (a space generally taken as sustaining a bounded inside
and outside) as it operates across, as a network of inter-­relations that
is decentralized. It traverses received boundaries, gesturing from one
performance to another as it consistently references the anime-­esque
from other places to (re)enact anime.
Anime and other similar products may not provide the type of poli-
tics usually valorized, often in the form of direct action and challenges
to the status quo—­that is, anime does not often explicitly employ the
modern notion of artistic creativity. Furthermore, although one must
acknowledge the more oppressive tendencies of modes of creativity like
copying, an outright disavowal forecloses the opportunity for alterna-
tives, for opening up spaces for different approaches. It does not mean
that anime’s creativity lacks a politics or the potential for other modes
of expression, ways of being and viewing this world that should be ex-
plored. Rather, these are difficult to grasp through established frame-
works that disregard media-­form analysis or relate certain media-­forms
exclusively to national culture. Despite their deficiency of overt disrup-
tion, anime-­esque performances defy narratives of cultural exclusivity
in creative production. In this sense, anime-­esque performance has the
potential to move beyond the binds of national ownership. Otherwise,
anime is always only Japanese, its animators performing something
that will never be theirs.
Because anime is not just consumed within one nation or region,
the anime-­esque will differ per group, even within the same nation, yet
202 Anime’s Creativity

can produce a community linked by familiarity with the anime-­esque

across borders. Pang notes that the degree of affinity and popularity
for anime in China is indicative of contemporary cultural industries,
which actively “separate cultural expressions from their community
origins for the market, access rights migrate from the social to the
commercial realm.”58 She notes that “we cannot assume [the Japanese
anime industry] to reflect a national culture organically, because the
extremely complex marketing logic carves and recarves up the national
market into various niche sectors, which both segment Japanese read-
ers and connect them to those outside the country.”59 Furthermore,
this may be different between media, and taste communities based
on locale may not overlap with the population’s media diets: anime
viewers may not be watching K-­dramas despite living next to people
who avidly consume K-­dramas. This is not just isolated to East Asia
or Asia in general. While a reliance on conventionality can produce
community, it can also be exclusionary, as those unfamiliar with the
conventions are left out—­a practice at the core of the concept of region,
with those who are part of the region and those who are left out of it.
As noted above, because citation is the mode of maintaining ani­me’s
identity, there is also a type of politics of citation and enactment: what
gets cited, by whom, and what authenticates performances? This is where
the issue of nation branding comes into play, attempting to capture the
transnational flows by making anime seen as exclusively Japanese. This
shows how important the authentication of relation to Japan is for anime.
It raises the question, Will Chinese-­produced anime be cited in the fu-
ture? In some sense, they already have been (along with anime produced
in South Korea and elsewhere). Anime has been transnational for much
of its history, with citations that relate to earlier instances that may have,
in fact, been animated outside of Japan—­point-­to-­point links that cross
national boundaries. But this is difficult to get acknowledged, especially
since transnationality can easily be eschewed for the single nation frame-
work. If anime (or other cultural products) is to be recognized as trans-
national, it cannot stay exclusively Japanese, or it will foreclose on the
radical, transformative possibilities enabled by modes of creativity that
follow the logic of copying across national borders. This may be the great
irony of anime’s creative industry across Asia: that its reliance on repeti-
tion has the capacity to invoke transformation.
 9 6 0

Anime’s Actors

Animation and How Objects Act

In previous chapters I have focused on character design and limited
animation because of their prominence as recognizable features of the
anime-­esque. I have also mentioned some codified gestures, which
themselves are notable elements of the anime-­esque. Because so many
codified expressions do not require complicated movements, utilizing
TV anime’s brand of limited animation, many of these gestures would
presumably be prime candidates for outsourced animation both do-
mestically and transnationally, as they require fewer frames. Setting
aside the geographic coordinates of the transnational performance of
anime characters for the moment, it may be beneficial to explore how
the conventional gestures that constitute anime-­esque characters op-
erate and if this may lead to an understanding of a sense of self that
relates to contemporary modes of existence not isolated to Japan. Since
these characters are constituted through performances in/of anima-
tion, examination of how the medium can provide an alternative world­
view is a good point of departure.
As a medium, animation has long been marveled at for its ability
to make objects normally perceived as lifeless move, to allow objects
to be visualized as acting. Ursula Heise contends that this distinctive
quality provides an “aesthetic framework” to explore conceptions of
non-­anthropocentric worldviews. Such visions of active objects may
initially be difficult to imagine, but in animation, objects are seen as
animated actors, giving them agency and character in the process. For
Heise, animation “sets objects in motion, endows them with agency,
and inquires into their ‘objecthood.’ ”1 But, she cautions, the movements
of these animated objects, both human and nonhuman, are not neutral.
In particular, she notes the racist stereotypes of African Americans

9 203 0
204 Anime’s Actors

depicted in the crows in Dumbo, a remapping of derogatory notions of

racialized movements onto the animated actors.2
In consideration of this, historically and culturally specific no-
tions of selfhood may also be seen as projected onto animated objects
through their movement. For instance, generally speaking, the mod-
ern conception of selfhood is a human individual (with who counts as
human itself contested, a topic unfortunately beyond the scope of this
study) separated from the external world by a body, with which he or
she expresses agency and acts upon passive objects.3 Such a sense of
modern selfhood can be mapped onto nonhuman objects in animation
through strategies of enacting movement in their bodies. But repro-
ducing modern, human selfhood does not have to be the only means of
conceiving of active objects. Animation is diverse, with many materials
and techniques employed in its execution. Focusing on how human and
nonhuman objects depicted on celluloid-­derived computer-­aided ani-
mation (but also 3D CG) perform as active, this chapter will examine
the different ways selfhood may be enacted in animation to explore
alternative modes of existence.
More specifically, I will investigate the following line of inquiry: if
animation allows one to envision a world of active objects by animat-
ing their movement, then how the objects move through the anima-
tion can be seen as changing how they are constituted as actors. Put
another way, how bodies move in animation, human and nonhuman
object alike, also entails certain conceptions of self as it is constituted
through the dynamics of animation. Indeed, how objects are animated
has important effects on what type of self they invoke. As such, one may
ask, What modes of acting do objects perform in different animations,
and what type of actors do these acting modes afford? If animation can
visualize a world of active objects, can it also enable conceptions of
selfhood other than the modern individual? Furthermore, would these
alternative conceptions of selfhood be better suited to envisioning a
mode of existence in this historical moment of globalization?
In order to explore these questions, I must examine the processes
and dynamics of the movement of different objects (or rather, ob-
jects’ bodies) as performances in/of animation. Whereas the previous
chapters relied more on performativity theory, in this chapter, I also
invoke performance theory to examine how anime’s specific perfor-
mances in/of animation afford a different conception of selfhood. From
 Anime’s Actors 205

the perspective of performance theory, I would suggest that while the

enactment of various animations are specific types of performances,
there are tendencies of performance—­repeated strategies and modes
informed by certain conceptual tendencies—­that can be seen as shared
by or even transposed from theatrical acting to animation’s actors and
vice versa. Here I would like to reiterate that, in addition to its theatrical
connotations of acting, the word “performance” here means to do, to
execute, to assess,4 but also to enact, to bring about, to constitute, to
bring into existence.5 With this in mind, Crafton’s take on performance
in and of animation allows one to see the importance of how animation
is done, how it is judged, the dynamics of that execution as it produces
movement in a body, and how that body acts in the resulting animation
product.6 While there are a multitude of approaches to the performance
of movement in animation, Crafton provides two detailed conceptuali­
zations: embodied performance and figurative performance.
Embodied performance (or embodied acting, as Crafton uses the
terms somewhat interchangeably) “is introverted. It is the philosophy
and practice of creating imaginatively realized beings with individuality,
depth, and internal complexity.”7 The expression of character is produced
through individualized movement that flows from that specific charac-
ter. Embodied acting is influenced by Stanislavskian method acting and
deeply connected to Disney animation (Crafton detailing its develop-
ment in the studio in the 1930s) that emphasizes realism and individu-
ality in the motion of character animation.8 Figurative performance or
acting, in contrast, “is extroverted. Characters behave as recognizable
‘types,’ marshalling a small range of instantly identifiable facial and body
expressions.”9 But this does not mean that figurative acting is devoid of
feeling; rather, it uses different devices, specifically through vocabularies
of gestures and codified expressions. Due to this reliance on codified
expressions, figurative performances build from previous ones, replaying
and reiterating them in different contexts.10 Figurative acting is not only
found in animation but also in many traditional theaters, and though
Crafton does not mention them, examples would include Noh, Topeng,
and Kathakali, as well as ballet and certain types of mime. While Crafton
focuses his discussion of figurative acting on 1930s American cartoons,
he notes that figurative acting is pervasive in anime.11 Indeed, anime-­
esque figurative expressions, like glimmering eyes, are almost synony-
mous with the image of anime as a media-­form.
206 Anime’s Actors

I would like to note that this should not be taken as an Asian (tradi-
tional theater) versus Western (method acting) comparison but merely
as an exploration of diverse approaches to performance that actualize
in differing ways, of which there may be more than discussed here. It
should also be stressed that Crafton does not see a hierarchy among
figurative and embodied performance.12 Nor does Crafton actually see
these different approaches as two opposite poles. Rather, they can be
considered connected, where both modes can be performed in vary-
ing degrees13 and where one tendency can be implicated in the other.
However, as this study aims to build on Crafton’s conceptualization
of animation performance—­deviating from his approach since Craf-
ton does not consider in detail the types of selfhood constituted by
embodied and figurative acting, their relationships to modernity, or
anthropocentrism—­to better examine these two modes, I will begin
by analyzing them in their extremes before exploring their mutual im-
plication. In addition, I will examine anime as a type of animation that
inclines toward figurative acting and compare it to Disney’s works, as
they are emblematic of embodied acting.
These two types of performance can be seen as producing differing
tenets in their enactments. Each follows a separate approach to crea­
tivity. Embodied performance maintains the modern conception of
creativity in the sense of uniqueness and originality, stemming from
the internal and moving outward as it tries to distinguish one bodily
performance from another through individual distinctions. Figurative
performance, on the other hand, conceives of creativity in the sense of
creating, as the citation of codes allows for a relatively stable system
to draw from for production, calling into question the denigration of
copying and valorization of originality. In addition, embodied acting
presumes a relation to reality that hides the inherent construction of its
“naturalness.” This presumption, however, does not necessarily exist in
figurative acting, which is facilitated by reiterable performance models.
Moreover, each extremity presupposes a specific understanding of
what a character and its selfhood should be in the very techniques of
its enactment. In this sense, these acting modes may be seen as what
Foucault called “technologies of the self” in the performances in and
of animation, with each extreme enacting a different “way of being,”
exemplifying a certain conception of selfhood through the very opera­
tions of its expression.14 Embodied acting performs the modern con-
 Anime’s Actors 207

ception of individualism bound to the singular body on the object that

performs the movement; figurative acting performs a type of particu-
larity rather than individuality, where the self is a composite config-
ured through the citation of codes. In other words, through figurative
acting, self-­contained individualism is deferred in a gesture toward a
more interconnected conception of self.

Embodied Performance
Put succinctly, embodied performance in animation is when the indi-
vidualized qualities of the character are actualized in and as movement,
where “animators perform movement to perform emotion.”15 Embod-
ied animation performance meshes well with the smooth continuity of
movement employed in full animation, a steady stream that can imbue
movement with affective tinges. Embodied performance can produce
unique gestures that express emotion in abstract ways, for example in
the strange contortions seen in many modern dance performances.
In animation, this manner of embodied performance plays with ani-
mation’s “plasmatic,” amorphous capabilities, like those famously de-
scribed by Sergei Eisenstein. An exaggerated example of this can be
found in the non-­figural synesthetic section “Meet the Soundtrack” in
Fantasia (1940). However, although the potential for embodied perfor-
mance to shift to a more amorphous movement is always present, there
is a different, more common tendency that is engaged with, especially
in many contemporary commercial animations, including other Dis-
ney productions.
This type of embodied acting, which tends to be quite anthropo-
centric, will be the focus of this section. Animations that employ such
embodied performances present themselves as attempting to imitate
the subtle movements of everyday life and presume a sense of natural-
ness in the reproduction of those gestures—­with nonhuman characters
acting in the same manner as humans. Interestingly, as Crafton notes,
Walt Disney made significant attempts to integrate stage and film act-
ing of the Stanislavskian lineage (later called “method acting”) into his
animation, with many of his animators going through acting lessons
and observing and drawing human actors and animals.16 A good actor
of this type works by drawing from internalized real-­life experiences
that are externalized in performance, not only in dialogue but also
208 Anime’s Actors

in gestures and movements. These motions should appear motivated,

inner-­driven.17 Personality is expressed in characters’ movements and,
as such, produces uniqueness and individuality.
Significantly, Stanislavski’s method arose around the same period
that Deborah Levitt associates with the rise of the modern biopolitical
regime, a conception of life that is managed in specific ways. For in-
stance, Levitt details how the rise of early cinema coincided with many
medical regimes in the late ­nineteenth and early ­t wentieth centuries:
a “ ‘culture of life’ emerges that produces and is produced by modern
media.”18 New imaging technologies allowed for the capture of human
movement for analysis, which ultimately allowed for greater control of
human bodies. The “study and management of corporeal practices . . .
carried out through images” in turn were “used to reprogram bodies,”
a biopolitics that is part and parcel of the cinematic, grounded in mo-
dernity and in the human body’s movement on screen. Levitt gives the
example of Frederick Taylor’s “scientific management” for industrial
efficiency, whereby “through photographic and filmic analysis, any
individual expressivity contained in the gestures of factory workers”
would be discovered and excised “in favor of perfectly homogenous
and efficient gestures synchronized with the movement of machines.”19
For Levitt, “the same set of techniques that open up a new kind of
access to corporeal management and optimization for science, medi­
cine, industry, and government also produce the luminous, larger-­than-­
life bodies of the cinema,” and in turn “the living human body is for
the most part . . . preserved or conserved as an autonomous, massy
anatomical entity in an anthropocentric world.”20 While Levitt has
different concerns, one can link her observations to Latour’s view of
modernity as premised on the large-­scale division of humans and
nonhumans, society and nature, a fundamental separation whereby
the human subject goes about controlling objects.21 The cinematic re-
gime Levitt describes can be seen as part of this division, focusing on
the human body even as it is itself subjected to controls. I would suggest
that it is partly through this cinematic regime that a deeply anthropo-
centric worldview is sustained, one where the divisions between active,
human subject and passive, nonhuman object are entrenched via the
modern media, out of which a type of embodied acting emerges.
Indeed, this type of embodied acting plays with the same dynam-
ics of control of human bodies as the cinematic regime. Taylorism is
 Anime’s Actors 209

about discovering idiosyncratic movements in order to excise and thus

control them, and Stanislavski’s acting operates as the other side of
the same coin: discovering movements to emphasize their uniqueness.
Rather than taking the individualism out, it is about controlling the
body to operate through the insertion of individualism by creating in-
teriority. The sense of autonomy of the character thus produced is, in
some ways, a forced autonomy that is built on a strict division between
inside and outside, where personality appears internally sourced but
externally expressed through movement.
This type of embodied performance is employed in both traditional
cel and CG animation. A great example of this can be found in the re-
cent CG animation Disney film Zootopia (2016) in the well-­publicized
scene of the rabbit character, Judy, and the fox character, Nick, going
to the Department of Motor Vehicles run entirely by sloths. The sloth
characters are extremely listless in their movements, while Judy, under
a time restriction, is in a hurry, in need of information from them. Nick
knows a sloth ironically named Flash, who proceeds to look up the
information for Judy in an extremely slow fashion. Flash speaks in sin-
gle words with long pauses between them, and Judy becomes frantic,
moving and speaking quickly as if to counteract the languid pace of
Flash. As Flash is typing in the information at an excruciatingly slow
pace, Nick tells Flash a joke. The simple pun takes a long time to reg-
ister on the sloth’s face, the full extension of the smile and lifting of
the eyebrows occurring in near slow motion. Flash begins to turn to
his coworker to repeat the joke as Judy becomes increasingly frantic
at this new diversion and Nick grins coolly at the success of his joke.
The extreme slowness of the materialization of the expression and the
joke’s repetition, in contrast to Judy’s frantic and speedy movements,
is part of the gag that makes the scene so funny. Each character’s pos-
ture, speed of movement, and performance of expression is unique:
Judy’s ears drooping in disappointment and folding back in distress;
Flash’s extended lowering of the jaw into a smile and raised eyebrows;
Nick’s perked, pointed ears that match his smirk. Their differing enact-
ments of varied expressions appear logical to each of them, their move-
ments smooth and linearly progressing from stimuli in a lucid manner
that is exaggerated and extended in duration to incite a comical reaction.
Accordingly, the characters’ different emotions are expressed in their in-
dividual manners.
210 Anime’s Actors

In these scenes, and many others, the specifics of characters’ move-

ments partly stem from their designs; movement differs depending on
a character’s body. This dates back to the early days of the development
of embodied acting in animation. For example, in the 1937 Disney short
“The Clock Cleaners,” which Crafton cites as a great example of em-
bodied performance,22 Goofy walks in his own loopy manner that is
enabled by his long legs whereas Donald walks in a strut on his shorter
legs. Characters are kept discrete where “the ‘action’ is derived not only
from moving the body in space . . . but also from protecting the in-
tegrity of its somatic boundaries.”23 In other words, a bordered-­whole
body, with an internal and external, is produced.
Through movement that appears to be internally motivated, char-
acters engage with the outside world, producing a distinctiveness and
individuality that is easy to understand. Individual characters move
between emotional registers in a smooth, logical, linear progression
that appears consistent; it is supposed to look “real,” like these char-
acters actually emote individually, with internal emotions that are
externally expressed.24 As such, embodied acting produces a sense of
emotion in movement but limits it to the body, making it appear per-
sonalized, individualized. In this sense, characters are locked to their
bodies, becoming self-­contained. Embodied acting thus presumes an
actor with sharp internal and external limits, an actor whose identity
is individualized by the specific movements of his or her body. Thus,
embodied performance re-creates a type of actor that is an individual,
a strictly bordered self, and, in this sense, operates through the form of
the bordered-­whole.
In embodied performance, movements are supposed to appear im-
mediately graspable, easy to comprehend without any prior knowledge,
as if they represent “real” character movement. The viewer should not
need to exert much effort to engage with the performance. The inner
qualities of characters are to be materialized in movement as “something
that observers will accept naturally, with barely a second thought.”25 The
character movements feel self-­contained, logically connected to charac-
ters, self-­evident of their personalities in the specifics of the way they act,
smoothly expressed in full animation with its emphasis on continuity of
movement. In other words, movements are supposed to provide a sense
of realism based on an accurate depiction of the world.
But this realism is actually historically and culturally specific. It
 Anime’s Actors 211

is a type of naturalism entailing a supposed sense of transparency to

reality.26 It assumes that any person is capable of understanding this
naturalism, projecting a subjectivity of a specific time and place onto
“everyone.” It presumes its own self-­evidence, adhering to a type of re-
alism thought to be obvious even though it is fabricated from a certain
time and place. Indeed, Crafton notes this, stating how these move-
ments were what “Western audiences are trained to look for first and
gaze at most intently.”27 But this presumption can be applied to any
area (Western or not) that performs the embodied as “realism.” In other
words, embodied acting can assume a “realistic” worldview, when it is
in fact enacting the anthropocentrism of the cinematic regime.
Put concisely, embodied performance in its anthropocentric ex-
treme is a conception of acting that sees gestures, facial expressions,
and other movements as unique to that body; where each movement
stems from an inner drive that is specific for that character, expressed
externally through the character’s body, producing an individual whose
somatic boundary separates inside and outside. While embodied act-
ing is not inherently connected to individualist notions of the subject
and naturalism, the manner it is frequently performed in in animation
tends toward these concepts. Even in scenes when nonhumans are an-
imated, through their embodied performance, they become locked to
their bordered bodies. Though objects do move, allowing one to visual-
ize a world of objects with agency, because they all operate through an-
thropocentric embodied acting, the actors are constituted in the mode
of modern individuals, each with their own discrete inside and outside,
emoting in “realistic” ways that appear “natural” for certain humans.
This suggests that embodied acting in animation visualizes objects
as actors on one level while on another it repeats the framework of
modern human individuals. There are many such instances in Disney
films, such as the characters of objects in Beauty and the Beast, who all
move in embodied acting, reinstating modern human individualism in
their bodies. Indeed, the characters of objects are, in the narrative, only
active because they used to be human (there are inanimate objects fea-
tured in the film as well). Although anthropomorphizing objects is un-
avoidable and can help with visualizing a world of active objects, there
is the risk of a totalized remapping of the anthropocentricism of the
modern individual when embodied performance enacted by animated
objects is seen as the global standard of animation. When depictions
212 Anime’s Actors

of human or nonhuman objects that perform as discrete individualized

modern subjects become the measure for quality animation and are
seen as the most naturalistic and universal means of acting, it fore-
closes on other possibilities for constituting selfhood in animation.

Figurative Performance
In the above section I examined the extreme performance of anthropo-
centric embodied acting in animation, but here I will examine the ex-
treme of figurative acting, specifically in commercial TV anime. Now,
to say that figurative expressions are prevalent in anime is almost an
understatement. Figurative expressions are not only rounded, shocked
eyes and nervously shaking bodies but also character poses, ways of
walking, running, and eating, and a huge range of other actions. From
static facial expressions to complex movements, to a large degree, figu-
rative acting is anime acting, with recognizably anime-­esque elements
regularly performed.
Let me provide an example from a scene at the end of episode 5 of
Macross Frontier (Figure 6.1). The entire sequence is made up of char-
acters performing conventional codes in their interactions with one
another. The three protagonists in a love triangle (Alto, caught between
his lineage as a Kabuki actor and his dream to be an ace pilot; Sheryl,
the prideful and strong-­willed popular pop idol; and Ranka, an inex-
perienced and bashful up-­and-­coming idol) inadvertently meet at the
end of a day out for Alto and Sheryl. After Sheryl states her gratitude
for the pleasant day together, Alto is surprised at her appreciation, re-
marking that it is rare for her to offer thanks. Sheryl responds with a
quip that it is indeed precious, so he should be grateful. Here, her eyes
are closed, and her face is tilted downward, a common expression for
haughtiness (6.1a). She immediately switches to the codified expression
for softer laughter, her closed eyes turning upward to slight arches, and
her eyebrows making a similar shift (6.1b) as she remarks that she can
return back to her ship reassured. Somewhat shocked by Sheryl’s com-
ment, Alto opens his eyes larger, then tilts his head in a lighter display
of friendliness. Sheryl then tells him she will give him tickets to her
farewell concert (6.1c). When Alto promises to find her lost earring (the
reason for their outing), Sheryl performs the expression for overflowing
emotion: glimmering eyes (6.1d). She closes her eyes briefly (a common
pattern in such sequences), assuring him with a small smile that she’ll
 Anime’s Actors 213

be waiting before suddenly kissing him on the cheek (6.1e). To this, the
stunned Alto’s upper cheeks turn lightly pink in embarrassment (6.1e).
Watching from a distance, Ranka is taken aback, and she responds with
her own enactment of the glimmering eyes expression (6.1f). Sheryl,
satisfied with her actions, walks daintily away (6.1g) while Alto, still
affected by her actions, turns to watch her leave, bringing his hand to
the cheek she kissed. A close-­up shows his expression softening as he
tilts his head and shoulders to show his acceptance of the event (6.1h).
Finally, Sheryl slowly waves as she walks away, another regular gesture
for dramatic, emotionally charged exits.
These facial expressions and gestures, and the sequence they are
performed in, are not unique to those characters but rather are codi­
fied, preestablished before the characters enacted them. Many such
codes are well-­known clichés of anime’s conventions, including arched
eyes for happiness and glimmering eyes for overflowing emotion, which
are so common that they are a stereotype for the way anime charac-
ters express themselves. In fact, Sheryl and Ranka both perform the
same expression (glimmering eyes) in this scene. The commonality of
such codified expressions occurs not only between characters but also
across different works from different studios. For example, the codified
expression of placing a hand on a cheek that has been kissed can be
seen in episode 20 of Death Note (2006–­7), when Misa kisses the char-
acter L. The situation and facial expression are not exactly the same as
in the scene described above, but the gesture itself is one regu­larly per-
formed in situations when a character unexpectedly kisses another on
the cheek. A softening facial expression is also commonly performed
to express a sudden endearment to another character, making the per­
formance of Alto’s reaction to Sheryl’s kiss a combination of two dif-
ferent expressions.
The point here is that anime relies heavily on character types whose
actions are often codified to display their personalities, usually in fa-
cial and bodily movements that are figurative codes. Two characters,
human or nonhuman, can run the same way, walk the same way, and
even smile the same way. For example, though mainly for children,
this sharing across species can often be seen in works like Pokémon,
where the main character and his or her companion creature both
smile with arched eyes. This extends to certain robots (mecha usually
do not emote) and all other manner of nonhumans who perform with
the same facial expressions as the humans in the narratives do.
a

c
d

f
216 Anime’s Actors

h
Figure 6.1. Each expression in this scene from Macross Frontier episode 5
is a performance of a figurative acting code.

These codes are performed with only minor variations regardless of

production studio and narrative content. To give a brief example of how
figurative acting is used in anime across genres, in SF anime Evangelion’s
episode 26, the character Rei, who is usually very prepared and intro-
verted, frantically runs with toast in her mouth because she is late for
school, insinuating that she overslept. This is done to show that she has
a completely different personality in this short segment in an alternate
 Anime’s Actors 217

universe. In the first episode of slice-­of-­life anime K-­On!, the character

Yui also frantically runs to school with toast in her mouth after waking
up late, likewise showing that she is clumsy and unprepared. This is not
necessarily how actual Japanese high school girls run when they are late,
but it is a code that is repeated in so many other anime that it was even
self-­reflexively parodied in Seitokai Yakuindomo (2010). It should also be
noted that figurative acting is often employed in the performance of chibi
transformations, when characters suddenly switch to smaller, exagger-
ated versions of themselves, often displaying such codified expressions.
Figurative performance involves more overt participation from the
viewer, necessitating an active reading of codes. It offers a different type
of realism than the naturalism of embodied acting, one that entails dif-
ferent expectations and relations with experienced reality. This may be
interpreted as what Ōtsuka Eiji calls “manga-­anime realism,” which in-
volves the “semiotic body” (kigōteki shintai) of manga and anime char-
acters that are built entirely from codified expressions.28 Although it is
worthwhile to explore this type of realism, here I would like to focus
on how anime’s characters act through specific mechanisms. In order
to be readable, each performance of a figurative expression must be
connected to prior iterations yet retain its relevance in the context of
that specific performance. Codes like these must be learned, both by
the viewer and the producer. Moreover, figurative acting may be seen as
more communal, but it is also exclusionary in its own way—­one must
know the codes to both perform and read them.
At Comiket and other events where fans distribute and sell derivative
works (nijisōsaku), as well as on illustration sites like pixiv.net, fans from
all over the world perform the same codified expressions as profession-
als do. To give one specific example, on the smile (egao) tag on pixiv.
net, at any given time there are a variety of different smiles, but many
of them are minor variations of the codified facial expression where the
eyes arch. There are even ugoira (animated illustrations) by fans that
feature this smile. In fact, it is not rare for fans to become professionals,
as famously occurred with the anime studio Gainax. Fans and profes-
sionals already using shared codes for character acting can be seen as
one factor that facilitates movement across the boundaries of consumer
to producer. In general, such codes enable a type of collaborative expres-
sion, facilitating production and consumption by multiple actors.
While figurative expressions in anime often involve movement,
218 Anime’s Actors

they tend toward minor movement, such as vibration and glimmering,

or tableau, rapidly switching from one expression to the next. In this
manner, figurative acting, while not exclusive to limited animation,
meshes well with anime in its lineage from limited animation. This
relationship with limited animation further connects to anime’s pre-
dilection toward jerky motion and sudden switches between images.29
This jerkiness is optimized through the editing of differing image com-
positions, producing a sensation of movement where gaps in continuity
are exposed and sudden changes or appearances are the norm (e.g.,
figurative facial expressions that switch in an instant from resting to
sad to happy). As Steinberg explains, it is because of the jerky rhythms
of anime’s particular lineage of limited animation that anime produces
images of “dynamic immobility.”30 Indeed, these dynamically immobile
images are often of poses and other figurative expressions, providing a
sense of animated-­ness to the still image.
Interestingly, many of the figurative expressions in anime can be
traced to manga, a purportedly still medium. To address this close re-
lation despite the difference in medium, it is not adequate to say that
manga is static and anime moves. Following Lamarre, it is important to
see manga as a technology of the moving image. Lamarre explains that
manga displays an exploded view of movement and, following Ōtsuka’s
argument, agrees that it is easy to see manga almost like a storyboard
ready to be animated or filmed. In other words, manga displays the pro-
jection of movement through paneling, where it is easy to perform the
same rapid switches that facilitate the execution of figurative expressions
as anime. The reverse is true as well: limited animation is well attuned
to adapting the same rapid switches (without continuity of movement),
creating a sense of similarity between the two media. Through this mu-
tual development, figurative expression in anime has come to thrive on
the jerky rhythms and rapid switches of limited animation.31
Anime’s reliance on jerky rhythms also allows for a certain type of
humor: expressions that switch between modes, from satisfied to furi-
ous or from loving to embarrassed at a moment’s notice. To contrast
with the slow reveal of the Zootopia scene, I would like to examine a
scene in episode 2 of the anime Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu (2003) (Fig-
ure 6.2). The character Sousuke has forgotten the homework notebook
of his classmate/love interest, Kaname, who is unusually cheerful that
day. Through multiple cuts that switch viewpoints, Sousuke nervously
 Anime’s Actors 219

and carefully prepares Kaname for the explanation that he forgot

her homework (6.2a, c) while Kaname’s face displays a carefree smile
(6.2b, d). At the moment of his confession, Kaname, still smiling with
her mouth agape, is in complete stasis. The view switches to overhead
as Sousuke packs up his things and rises from his seat in awkward si-
lence (6.2e). Just as he begins to speak, a sudden cut shows an exagger-
atedly large Kaname angrily shaking Sousuke (6.2f), berating him for
forgetting her homework, and then slamming him backward into the
floor with a wrestling move. The rapid switching between viewpoints
and figurative expressions facilitate the exposition of humor, as the
suddenness of Kaname’s mood switch provides the punch line of the
gag. Similar humorous scenes, which are afforded by the jerkiness of
limited animation and the rapid switches of figurative expressions, are
a hallmark of comedy in anime.
Such figurative expressions are also well ­suited to the type of da-
tabase consumption conceived by Azuma. In the context of figurative
acting, each code can be seen as part of this database. These codes or,
rather, performance models in the terminology used here, are cited from
this database and executed as a series of performances (the same pro-
cess detailed in chapter 4). This is how these figurative codes retain
their uniformity and iterability as they build upon previous perfor-
mances. In this sense, figurative expressions are all connected, each
iteration engaging with (1) the expression’s codified emotion within the
system and (2) the emotion within the narrative context for that char-
acter at that point in the story. How they are interpreted beyond this
depends on the viewer. In this sense, figurative performance cannot
stand alone. It must be repeated and cited to survive, connecting and
relating to prior iterations and gesturing toward future enactments in
each performance.
As such, figurative expressions do not exist in any one place. They
often occur in the same place at the same time, performed in unison
in the same scene by different characters. The figurative expression is
thus not locked in place like embodied performance is—­it can travel.
It does not emanate from inside the body or create an identification
with the body. The expression is more free-­floating, independent from
individual bodies. One such example occurs at the end of the first two
episodes of the anime The Idolmaster Cinderella Girls (Figure 6.3). In
the first episode, a producer scouting for new pop idols states to one of
a

b
c

d
 e

Figure 6.2. A comedic scene with figurative acting affording sharp shifts
of emotional registers through limited animation in Full Metal Panic?
Fumoffu, episode 2.
 Anime’s Actors 223

the girls that his reason for choosing her is because of her smile. Such a
statement would imply that there is something special or unique in her
smile. As the episode goes on, another girl asks why he approached her,
and the response is the same: because of her smile. In the second epi-
sode, a third girl indirectly asks why she was selected, and he responds,
once more, that it was her smile. This may appear patronizing, but as
anime characters, a strange problematic arises: they all perform the
same figurative expression for smile, so what makes these three girls’
renditions so special?
In the final scenes of the second episode, the three main characters
lament that their PR photoshoots did not go well, stating that it was
hard to act normal (futsū). A new strategy is suggested, and the three
are given a ball to toss around to ease the tension. As they pass the ball
to one another, their personalities appear as they each perform differ-
ent figurative expressions in reaction to this new activity. They begin to
smile and laugh, two of them performing the same smile while the last
girl lets out a hesitant smile. When they joke about how they were cho-
sen for their smiles, they realize that the producer said the same thing
to each of them, and they all suddenly laugh in unison, with two of
them performing the same expression at once.

Figure 6.3. Two characters performing the same expression at once in

The Idolmaster Cinderella Girls episode 2.
224 Anime’s Actors

In such scenes, emotion is expressed in performances of ­figurative

e­ xpressions, and these occur simultaneously. Characters do not indi-
vidually generate emotions, but they can perform them locally. Fig-
urative expression, then, in its performance, cannot operate as the
individual, external expression of an internal emotion like embodied
acting does. Figurative expressions are shared and are not external re-
sponses to inner feelings but rather the enactment of feeling on the sur-
face, cited from other surfaces. Emotions as figurative codes are thus
nonpersonal, outside of the character, making the internal and external
operate in an ambivalent manner.
Such a dynamic may be seen as what Lamarre calls, citing Maurice
Merleau-­Ponty, “indistinction.” Describing the concept, Lamarre notes
that “an individual’s body is not fully distinct, distant, or separable
from others’ . . . While your smile is not distinct from the other’s smile,
it is also enabling a kind of distinction. Bodies [or in this case, expres-
sions] are not clearly distinct from one another, but such indistinction
is not the opposite or negative of distinction.”32 Although Lamarre,
who is referencing Shiloh Whitney, focuses on the affective dimen-
sions of Merleau-­Ponty’s conception of indistinction, space does not
permit me to engage with the complexities of affect here, and I will be
deviating from Lamarre and Whitney in that respect. However, in the
abovementioned scene of the three girls laughing in Cinderella Girls,
the simultaneity of their performance of laughter and smiling appears
similar to the ideas of participatory, contagious affect that dissolves a
perceived strict division between internal and external, self and other.
Focusing on these latter operations, as indistinction is not necessarily
in opposition to distinctiveness, how, then, does anime create a distinc-
tion between characters who move and emote in the same way?
To follow this line of investigation, let me examine the dynamics of
figurative acting in theater. The figurative acting tradition in theater
(such as in Noh) is considerably different from the embodied perfor-
mance practices of method acting. By comparing them, some clues can
be found about how anime distinguishes characters who perform the
same figurative expressions. Training in figurative acting is not nec-
essarily about accruing different experiences from observing people
and formulating an interpretation into a sudden moment of actuality,
as would be exemplary in method acting or embodied performance.
Rather, figurative acting training entails repeating preexisting patterns,
 Anime’s Actors 225

refining and conforming to the execution of performance models. At

their most extreme, figurative expressions are nonlinear, nonlocalized,
and able to be expressed in rapid succession by multiple performers
at the same moment. Thus figurative acting places its limit not in the
localized body of the performer but in the system of codes, as each code
has a performance model that functions as the limit within which it
must be performed. Figurative acting retains and combines past move-
ments, with all previous instances overlaid in each execution, even as
they remain distinct.
For example, in Noh, the shiori gesture is used to show that a char-
acter is crying. Enacted by different actors in different narratives, the
codified gesture can function because each iteration cites a past perfor-
mance of shiori without deviating from the model (kata) of the gesture.
Therefore, each performance produces a relation to prior and future it-
erations of shiori. When performed, it is both the general shiori gesture
displaying a character is crying and something specific to that instance
of performance. In other words, each performance of that code is both
a copy (citing the performance model) and spatiotemporally distinct in
its minor details of execution.33 Since figurative performances are itera­
tive codes citing a model, each expression gains a sedimentary force
through repetition, creating an association of a particular code with a
particular context, an association retained in each subsequent perfor-
mance of that code.34 This sedimentary force is sustained by relation to
prior iterations and (re)vitalized in each specific performance. It cannot
be performed felicitously without that relation to previous iterations.
A good actor of the figurative tradition re-­produces already structured
models in a refined manner.35 In a sense, then, in figurative acting, the
body does not use these codes to express emotions; the codes use the
body to express distinction. The performing body is defined by its rela-
tion to the codes performed.
The performed self is thus constituted through this compositing
of citational codes. The juxtaposition of these performance models
in combination produces something distinctive in sequential perfor-
mance. Discussing Betty Boop, an early emblem of figurative acting,
Crafton remarks that “her personality is an infectious composite of ac-
quired details, more like a collection of poached traits than a complex
expression of inner drives and motives. As a figure, she lacks an interior
core of emotion or individual expressivity.”36 The key here is that she is
226 Anime’s Actors

a collection of traits, and this collection is what makes her a distinctive

character. Additionally, it is not only the codes but also the charac-
ter types that are reiterated, each distinct character employing similar
groupings of figurative codes. The popular tsundere anime characters
are a case in point, defined by their patterned switching between codes
for haughtiness, feigned indifference, or irritation (tsun) and affection
(dere). Interestingly, according to Teri Silvio, anime characters are not
necessarily experienced by fans as organic totalities precisely because
of anime’s reliance on codified elements to constitute characters.37
Here the importance of character design should also be stressed, as
it is another way to distinguish particularity—­the character is distinct
in part because this specific character is performing the expression, and
vice versa. But design alone does not account for their distinction. In
practice, the specificity of the performative constitution of character in
figurative acting does involve character design and spatiotemporal loca-
tion but is fundamentally combinative: the mixture of performed expres-
sions produces the character through a series of citational performances.
This particularization through combination is an integral part of charac-
ter performance in anime’s figurative acting. Therefore, the problematic
of producing distinctiveness in figurative acting has different terms of
negotiation than the production of individuality in embodied acting.
This problematic of distinction is worked through in many anime.
For example, as hinted at in the description of Cinderella Girls, the
show can be read as a practice in producing particularity from repe­
tition. Much of the narrative of Cinderella Girls is thematically focused
around differentiation of characters, which coincides with the work of
becoming an idol: character gimmicks (rock idol, goth idol, cat idol,
bunny idol), group naming, costuming, song, and dance. Dance se-
quences function as more than visual spectacles or the culmination of
differentiation practices to become idols. In fact, the characters per-
form almost the exact same moves, often in near synchronization, and
viewers have to find the specific characters in their different designs
and costumes. Fans search for the characters’ particularity among the
similarity, playing with the repetition of movement and the distinction
of character.
Yet this is still spatiotemporal and character design–­based, inviting
a search for minor details. The constitution of character production
 Anime’s Actors 227

occurs over the course of many sequences. Staged introductions of

characters (often including their names, which appear below them as
they pose to introduce themselves) are typical in anime, but especially
so in anime like Cinderella Girls. They differentiate characters not
only through character design, voice acting, and speech patterns like
catch phrases, but also through poses. In episode 2, the figurative poses
are emphasized by a snapshot from a camera in a PR photoshoot that
captures each character’s signature pose rather than individualized
movement. Each pose creates silhouettes that can easily distinguish
each character. These poses are based on figurative performance mod-
els (e.g., shy girl posed with knees pointed inward or playful cat-­like
character with curled hands like paws) repeated in many iterations. For
instance, in another example, over the course of the K-­On! series, char-
acters are produced by repeating similar codes, often a combination
of expressions and poses, with each character performing a different
set that becomes particular to her in that instance. As such, when a
character performs a code outside of her frequently used set (e.g., a
rare smile for a generally serious character), it makes that instance of
performance special for that character and adds to the cumulative set
of expressions that is her character.
In sum, acting in anime is facilitated by the jerky rhythms of lim-
ited animation. Shifting between modes at a rapid pace, nonpersonal
and indistinct, it allows for figurative acting codes that can be arranged
and rearranged. It is the combination of figurative actions, frequency of
these actions, and types of codes employed that differentiate characters
since they all cite from the same database of figurative codes. Such
combinative citation and spatial and temporal distancing are how fig-
urative acting distinguishes characters through the repetition of their
codes. In terms of selfhood, figurative acting produces characters that
emote through codes. Creating a self through a mutual participation
of shared elements acknowledges the connected nature of figurative
performance operations. Figurative acting makes the performing body
become part of the citation, each code performed through the citation
of its model only to itself be cited later. In this sense, figurative perfor-
mance is always an act of networking, of connecting to other acts of
that code, tending to operate like a heterarchical point-­to-­point net-
work of interrelated citations.
228 Anime’s Actors

Throughout these operations, figurative acting maintains some sense

of distinction between characters. Unlike embodied performance, how-
ever, figurative performance does not try to multiply individuality in the
classic, modern conception of a discrete, unique self. Instead, figurative
performance in anime hints at a different conception of self where each
character is not an inimitable, self-­contained actor but rather commu-
nal, shared, composite, and citational. This conception of self allows
for a wave of creativity through combination. As such, figurative per-
formances always maintain a tense balance between particularity and
uniformity: they must cite codes but only do so in a specific context.
While anthropocentric embodied acting hides its constructed nature
and the connectedness of identity in its presumption of naturalism
and production of unique individuals, figurative acting embraces the
repe­tition of models and composites of citations. In some senses, then,
the characters constituted by figurative acting maintain qualities that
are both pre-­individual (the codes utilized exist prior to the character)
and trans-­individual (the codes are necessarily linked to other instan-
tiations via other characters). Figurative acting subsequently entails a
different conception of the strict internal–­external borders of modern
individuality to the extent that the word “particularity” (a specific part
of a repeated series) is perhaps better suited to describing it, as it is al-
ways a distinctive iteration. Figurative acting always relates to models
of performance but is distinguished in the specifics of their execution
and the contexts and combinations of their enactment.

Mutual Implication
Thus far, I have been examining the extremities of these two types
of performance to highlight their differences. Lingering on these ex-
tremes, embodied acting’s individual-­characters and figurative act-
ing’s particular-­characters may initially appear to coincide with Ito
Go’s well-­known division of kyara and kyarakutā, and it is worth not-
ing some basic points of overlap and divergence here.38 For Ito, kyara
are seen as proto-­kyarakutā, which have an abstract lifelike sense to
them; kyarakutā, on the other hand, give the impression of rounded-­
out characters with personality, sometimes appearing “human-­like.” In
this sense, kyarakutā are similar to the anthropocentric conception of
individual-­characters.
 Anime’s Actors 229

But Ito emphasizes kyarakutā’s ties to narrative, which is certainly

important to the constitution of characters and their selfhood but is
not always necessary to consider when examined from the standpoint
of figurative/embodied acting, where the operations of producing
animated-­ness through motion is the point of departure to explore the
types of characters the performances constitute. From this perspective,
kyarakutā performances in figurative acting may undermine their per-
ceived individuality, and kyara may be read as individual-­characters
if their movements tend toward embodied acting. Moreover, while
Ito does build on Ōtsuka’s concept of the “semiotic body” of manga
characters, neither of them fully extrapolate the radical possibilities of
breaking the spatial boundaries of the character’s body due to the type
of performance involved. This spatial aspect of particular-­characters I
detailed above may overlap with how kyara are easily spread out across
various media, but it also extends to show the dislocation inherent in
the mechanics of enactment: the figurative codes that go beyond the
specific character to prior, external iterations, relating them to a whole
system of figurative codes, revealing a network of connections to other
instantiations of those codes on other characters.
All that said, there is one important commonality in the indivisi-
bility Ito sees in kyara and kyarakutā. For Ito, the birth of kyarakutā
in manga suppresses the kyara element that is necessary for its own
existence. This is a key similarity between the kyara/kyarakutā divi-
sion and the embodied/figurative acting division: they do not describe
separate poles but rather modes that are mutually implicated in one an-
other. Indeed, embodied and figurative performances are not opposites
but tendencies that go in different directions, sometimes to an extreme,
with each tendency keeping traces of the other in each performance. In
some senses, like the kyara/kyarakutā suppression, embodied acting
may be read as attempting to obscure the figurative, codified elements
of its own performance to insist on autonomous individualism.
Be that as it may, it is perhaps impossible to perform embodied acting
and do so entirely uniquely—­there will always be some semblance of
connection to prior codes. Embodied expressions actually tend to rely
on stock emotions—­smiles, tears, and so on—­that can easily be linked to
prior examples; and in method acting, repeating movements observed
in other people is integral to creating a unique character. Likewise, each
performance of a figurative code will retain some sense of individuality
230 Anime’s Actors

in its particular performance—­no two codes are ever performed exactly

the same, being spatiotemporally differentiated at minimum. Further-
more, embodied performances can also become figurative performance
codes. For example, once a facial expression (which could have been an
embodied performance) becomes cited enough, it becomes a figurative
expression. To an extent, the balance of embodied and figurative perfor-
mance is how each anime negotiates its identity.39
But it should be stressed that Disney’s animation still tends strongly
toward embodied acting, and even when anime moves toward the em-
bodied, the figurative is kept especially close. For instance, mecha or
robot bodies engage in figurative performance less in explicit codes
expressing emotions and more in how they move in battle sequences.
As a brief example, in episode 2 of Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn (2010),
despite utilizing full animation and even CG at some moments, the
graceful movements of battle between Banagher Links in his Unicorn
Gundam and Full Frontal in his Sinanju mobile suit are interspersed
with jerky movements. These give the impression of speed, suddenness,
maneuverability, and intensity of impact as the two fight with beam sa-
bers, kicks, and laser guns. The jerkiness of limited animation has come
to be expected from such moves as the conventional performance of
standard mecha fighting.
Such robot fighting movements are figurative performances (as are
many other fighting movements), but this is not necessarily because
of the specific techniques used. For instance, as noted in chapter 5,
­Macross has a very specific style of depicting aerial battles between
mecha, such as the missile barrage of the Itano circus but also in its par-
ticular Valkyrie mecha, which rapidly transform between modes during
battles. Typically, the Valkyrie transform rapidly and make sharp turns,
shooting and dodging the missiles of the Itano circus in quick succes-
sion. But while this pattern is part of the formula of a Macross anime,
each iteration is distinct—­the missiles never follow the same paths, and
the erratic movements of the Valkyrie are never the same. What makes
them figurative performances is the codified use of similar jerky, quick
movements that emphasize suddenness, lateral movement, and speed,
movements characteristic of that expression of fighting. These tend to
build on limited animation’s variability of low frame rates to facilitate
such effects. Even though these scenes are sometimes in full animation,
animators will take out frames to give such an effect.
 Anime’s Actors 231

Since anime tends toward figurative performances, when a perfor-

mance strays too far into the embodied tendency, it can sometimes
appear out of place. A famous example would be Eva-­01 (which ap-
peared to be a standard mecha) going berserk at the end of episode 19 of
Evangelion. The bipedal Eva tears apart the enemy, squatting and pant-
ing, moving around on all fours, and violently devouring the Angel.
Performed by key animator Iso Mitsuo, the Eva’s movements can be
seen as embodied acting, expressing its primal nature. The shock of
the Eva-­01’s actions come from it moving as embodied performance,
enacted not in a human body but in a mecha/robot body, a body type
that is usually typified, like most anime bodies, through figurative
performance.
Even anime that engage with highly complex and fluid full anima-
tion and would appear to move toward the embodied mode have se-
quences that tend toward the figurative. This can be seen in the figure
skating scenes in Yuri!!! on Ice (2016). Figure skating itself deals with
many codified elements that are arranged into particular sequences.
Skaters are scored on enactment of form and timing, as well as perfor-
mance, the “physical and emotional involvement of the skater/couple as
they deliver the intent of the music and composition.”40 In this manner,
figure skating involves not only accuracy but also performing emotion
through movement. It requires mastering specific iterative actions but
then performing them with the affective force of that particular en-
actment. Episode 3 of Yuri!!! on Ice uses this as a central theme, with
two ice-­skaters performing two songs, imbuing a personal conception
of agape and eros into their respective performances. In fact, different
key animators were used for the different characters, giving each an
individualized performance. For this episode, the animation directors
were Itō Noriko, Nakamura Yumiko, and Min Bae Lee and figure skating
animation directors were Abiko Eiji and Tachinaka Junpei. Through the
execution of the skating sequences, the animation enacts affective regis-
ters in the characters’ performances but maintains the figurative codes
that are the predetermined components of that dance sequence.
For one final example of the mutual implication of figurative and em-
bodied performance, one can look to Ghibli’s animations. The perfor-
mance of much of Ghibli’s character animation may at first appear to be
embodied acting. This is evident in a scene in My Neighbor Totoro (1988)
when the character Mei smiles. She raises her shoulders up slowly and
232 Anime’s Actors

b
Figure 6.4. The performance of the anime-­esque smile with arched eyes
is the same for Sheryl (a, Macross Frontier) and Mei (b, My Neighbor
Totoro), but the actual performance of the expression differs in their
­execution in movement.

slightly tilts her head as her smile begins to form. Mei’s design is typical
of Ghibli, with the shape and size of her head and eyes different from TV
anime. The slow pace and angle of her shoulder movement engenders a
sense of purity and childlike innocence that is a revelation of her charac-
ter. But, upon closer inspection, her head and eyes reveal a similarity to
 Anime’s Actors 233

figurative acting in TV anime, specifically in the moment her eyebrows

are raised, eyes become arches, and head slightly tilts (Figure 6.4b). This
is the same type of figurative expression done by characters in TV anime.
For example, Sheryl in Macross Frontier (Figure 6.4a) has arched eyes
and a tilted head but a smaller mouth and lower eyebrows than Mei. In
this sense, one can see that the model is very (TV) anime-­esque, work-
ing around the figurative acting code. However, the performance in the
animation, as embodied acting, is individualized.

Lifestyle Performance and Figurative Acting

As noted in this book’s introduction, Silvio sees animation, in conjunc-
tion with performance, as a means to thinking through the particular
ways self-­identity is enacted in the current era. Consequently, it follows
that there may be different ways to animate the contemporary self.41
Thus, to return to some of the questions raised at the beginning of this
chapter, if at one extreme embodied acting in animation reproduces
modern individualism, how does the type of selfhood displayed in the
figurative acting in anime relate to contemporary modes of existence?
This is a matter of concern not only in Japan, but globally: Disney’s dis-
tinctive and popular school of embodied performance in animation is
the dominant global performance standard, but anime’s school of figu-
rative performance may be seen as a prominent alternative on the world
stage. What follows is a proposal for conceptualizing the context and
implications of such a globally prominent performance of characters.
As detailed above, in figurative acting, the actor becomes a
particular-­character in the frequency of performed codes, and the spe-
cific set that creates—­the act of aggregating the shared codes onto one
body and performing them—­constitutes the specifics of that character.
Figurative acting has to work through a system in which all iterations of
the code only gain relevance through their relation to prior instances.
The character’s self becomes a composite of these codes, a bundle of
such relations, forming a selfhood as a particular point within this net-
work. While embodied performance tends to imply strictly bordered
individuals limited to specific bodies, figurative performance operates
by connecting spatiotemporally separate elements through citation, fa-
cilitating a different framework for conceiving of a self that meshes with
widespread cultural practices in our contemporary historical moment.
234 Anime’s Actors

Indeed, such a constitution of self is not necessarily unique to anime,

and anime may be one example of a general trend. Diedrich Diederich­
sen, who sees the world as increasingly filled with animated objects for
consumption, notes operations similar to the constitution of selfhood
in figurative acting in the 2011 novel Dein Name by Navid Kermani,
explaining that the narrative “bring[s] out the improbable connected-
ness linking the point I now find myself in to all other points in time
and space.”42 While Kermani (as narrator and protagonist) is “secondary
and relational through and through, someone who is something for oth-
ers,” he is also paradoxically very particular, as “only the combination of
these relations affords him a particular spot in the world.”43 Figurative
expressions in anime work through very similar operations: all perfor-
mances of figurative expression link with one another yet maintain a
particularity in the combination that performs a character.
Accordingly, the fact that figurative acting shares citational elements
that compose a particularity in combination somehow fits in a global
arena of multiple transnational flows—­of people, technologies, capi-
tal, and media44—­where the internal and external of the nation-­state
are intensely blurred. What happens to the modern human subject
in such a globalized, commodified, media-­dense world? According to
Diederichsen, “the contemporary subject must permanently engender
itself as an ostensible subject and yet a consumable—­edible, we might
say—­and legible self; a contradiction it resolves by conceiving itself as
a thing for other things.”45 Such circumstances may be symptomatic of
a fatigue in the world of late modernity, of neoliberal capitalism, where
“the neoliberal subject is exhausted by its double function as responsi-
ble agent and object of the action.”46
In light of this, it is worth exploring what Gabriella Lukács details
as a movement toward neoliberal politics in Japan that corresponds to
a shift in media that displays lifestyle, where the consumption of se-
lected products becomes a performance of self.47 Lukács sees the rise of
lifestyle as part of a moderating of rising class frictions in post-­bubble
Japan in the 1990s and early 2000s. Lifestyle, especially as depicted in
live-­action TV dramas, displays a mode of identity in which (actively
ignoring class) people seem to exercise a choice in the “style of life” they
wish to lead by purchasing certain products. This enactment of self-
hood coincides nicely with neoliberal ideals of discrete individuals op-
erating freely in the market, a creative sense of self-­expression enabled
 Anime’s Actors 235

by buying consumer goods. Such a neoliberal notion of individualism

and personalized expression easily aligns with the performance mode
of anthropocentric modern selfhood discussed above.
But there is an interesting relationship between the conceptual
framework of neoliberal individualism and the mechanics of the ac-
tual enactment of lifestyle performance. People purchase commodities
that are entirely external to them and come with branding and other
marketing images attached. This styling of life and self happens by mix-
ing and matching to express individuality. Here, lifestyle performance
resembles the operations of citation, where people select from pre­
arranged products and compose a lifestyle from them. New lifestyles
are created and move into and out of trend. People cite different styles,
struggling to keep up with the many products and activities that define
them. Moreover, the products become inseparable from the perfor-
mance of self. Thus, this performance of selfhood attempts to produce
individuals who direct their inner selves (of which they are supposedly
in command) outwardly to control external objects. And yet it is this
very enactment that displays their ultimate reliance on those objects to
create individualized selves, as they cite others and objects to construct
them. It is here that a tension can be seen between the espoused intent
and neoliberal framework that rests on the same tenets as embodied
acting (individualism) and the subsequent execution of that individual­
ity as it operates like a figurative performance with external objects.
As Diederichsen asserts, in this context of “contemporary capitalism
of self-­optimization,” there is an “imperative to produce a perfect self as
a perfect thing.”48 For an alternative to self-­optimization, he asks, why
not move toward object identification, “why not affirm the inanimate,
be it in one’s own self or in the beloved other? Why not choose a self . . .
as nothing but a conjunction of relations in the here and now?”49 Under
these conditions, the contemporary individual is crafted at a rapid
speed, composing a self from a variety of commodities, jerkily moved
from one product and “style of life” to another. Figurative acting, which
constitutes a self that produces particularity through rapid, nonlinear
compositing, seems well attuned to this backdrop, facilitating an aes-
thetic more in line with moving toward orientation with objects. While
the figurative acting self is enacted as a composite of cited codes, the
self in lifestyle is enacted as a composite of commodities. However, this
does not always mean that it is acknowledged for its potential to provide
236 Anime’s Actors

an alternative to the late modern individual, as lifestyle performances

both align and clash with the dominant discourses on individualism.
This may be part of the fatigue of the performance of the contemporary
self, of the burdens of late modern identity, as the actualities of per-
forming the self in daily life come in conflict with conceptions of self
that are born from the neoliberal individual.
Furthermore, such a movement toward a self that is performed
through objects via lifestyle is not isolated to Japan but visible through-
out the world, especially in major metropolises. There is another layer of
transnationality because lifestyle involves products and brands that are
both made in and signify places and countries from around the planet.
Throughout Asia in particular, images of urban-­modern lifestyles are
seen by C. J. W.-­L . Wee as aspirational and important to contemporary
media, “function[ing] as a major expression of a shared commonality-­
in-­difference.”50 To build on Wee’s observations and merge them with
the concerns here, there is a commonality in the practices of lifestyle
that is not isolated to one location. Indeed, the depiction of lifestyle
practices can create a sense of unity across borders. But there is also
a sense of differentiation in the types of lifestyles or the specifics of
the products utilized to create lifestyles. In this sense, lifestyle per-
formance is a transcultural mode of enacting selfhood under global
neoliberalism.
While in some sense this brings me back to the human, I should
note that in anime and in our lives, figurative acting is not performed
only by humans but can be shared between humans and objects. As
the products people use to define themselves—­in particular media—­
become governed less by possession and more by access, and as users
continue to split their performance of selfhood across media platforms
(each with its own affordances), the tendency toward figurative acting’s
particular-­characters becomes more and more visible. But the embod-
ied acting tendency is not entirely excluded, as the operations of figu-
rative acting are ostensibly to serve as an expression of individuality.
As this brief view of embodied and figurative performance outside
of anime displays, these two tendencies of animated acting are often
enacted around us. With the world increasingly becoming visibly an-
imated, from robotics to the screens prevalent in everyday life, the
implications of objects’ performance must be carefully considered. In
its extreme, embodied acting can produce hyperindividualism that is
 Anime’s Actors 237

beyond easy interpretation because it is so singular; that is, individual-

ism at its most severe is entirely isolating. At the moment, tendencies
toward figurative acting may appear to be a potential alternative to
the dominant individualism of embodied acting, but figurative acting
can become its own regime. Because figurative performance relies on
recognizability, it is as exclusionary as it is participatory, and figurative
modes of expression are still bound by the processes of citation and
the power dynamics at play within them. As an act of citation, figu-
rative expression tends toward a strictness of repetition in maintain-
ing the limits of the structural performance model since new codes or
codes performed in an unrecognizable manner become a risk. In this
sense, there is a strong tendency of conservativism toward established
patterns, even while such figurative acting provides an alternative way
of constituting an animated self.
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 9 7 0

Anime’s (Anti)Individualism

From Evangelion to Sekaikei

Over the course of the preceding chapters I examined the instabilities
of a supposedly solid anime identity—­in the fault lines of the standard
reading of anime’s identity as Japanese animation via nationalizing a
definition from foreign impetus and the complex transnational produc-
tion network, in the tautness between repetition and variation in the
citational acts of the anime-­esque that sustain the illusion of unifor-
mity yet enable diversity, and in the composite selfhood of particular-­
characters created by shared anime-­esque figurative acting codes that
contrast to the presumably cohesive individualism of embodied acting.
Building on these analyses, in this chapter, I will concentrate on ani­
me’s historical shifts and, focusing on the aftermath of the landmark
hit Evangelion, detail how some anime question their own identities on
multiple levels, enacting crises of self through their re-­performances
of specific elements.
There is no escaping the impact of the original Evangelion series
(1995–­96) and films (Death and Rebirth, 1997; The End of Evangelion,
1997) when considering the historical shifts of anime. The series was
massively influential in many ways: kicking off the anime production
boom in the late ­1990s, facilitating the creation of the new category of
late-­night anime due to the high popularity of Evangelion’s rebroadcast
during that time slot, propagating the production committee model of
anime production due to its successes, popularizing TV anime to the
extent that its economic and global relevance was impossible to ignore,
and spawning a multitude of anime that overtly grapple with many of
the questions and innovations employed in Evangelion.
But what is perplexing about Evangelion’s success is that it was, in
fact, poorly received by many when it initially ended. The final two
episodes of the TV series eschew the conflict with the Angels and the

9 239 0
240 Anime’s (Anti)Individualism

Human Instrumentality Project that are integral to the narrative and

instead focus on the introspection of the major characters. On top of
that, the final film, The End of Evangelion, which features the same
narrative conflicts, ends in a nearly incomprehensible manner and con-
tinues to dwell on issues of the selfhood of the main character Shinji,
maintaining abstract images that delve into his mind, the results of
which leave viewers at, for lack of a better description, the end of the
world. At the time this was shocking both inside and outside of Japan,
and the series, over two decades since its release, is still infamous for
its confusing ending.
With this in mind, I will explore the impact of Evangelion in anime
from the late 1­ 990s onward, in particular in the genre most often re-
garded as “Post-­Evangelion:” sekaikei (“world-­type”). Much of this discus-
sion will be in reference to Maejima Satoshi, who has written the most
extensive study on the sekaikei genre, detailing its history, evolution,
and the discourses it was involved in. According to Maejima, sekaikei
first began to be used in the early ­2000s with a degree of ridi­cule to mean
“Evangelion-­like” works, productions that are “intense single-­person
narratives.”1 Many of these anime were related to the shifts in otaku
culture that occurred after Evangelion. These post-­Evangelion works
became a paradigm, where typical SF anime gadgetry were placed in
juxtaposition to adolescent problems.2 But this act of repetition is not
unusual, as most anime are reiterations. Maejima even notes that Evan-
gelion itself worked through the repetition and variation of early SF
and robot anime, deviating from but also citing earlier patterns.3 Here
Maejima cites Okada Toshio’s explanation of otaku favoring a certain
aesthetic, comparing it to the Kabuki practice of sekai to shukō, which
could be translated as a theme or setting (sekai) that is repeated with
minor twists or variations (shukō).4 One may think of Evangelion, then,
as inducing a paradigm shift in that aesthetic, spawning multiple repe­
titions, each with minor variations. However, Evangelion opened up
not only distinct repetitions but also a questioning of the very terms
that were to be repeated. In other words, Evangelion sparked a series of
questions about the identity of anime itself.
As Maejima espouses, sekaikei was birthed from questioning why
Evangelion was so popular.5 Producers and sponsors seemed to be di-
rectly struggling with this question as they attempted to develop works
that would satisfy that demand, and the discourse around sekaikei was
 Anime’s (Anti)Individualism 241

part and parcel of this exploration.6 However, the harsh reactions to

Evangelion’s ending also reveal its failure in a manner that leaves cer-
tain questions unanswered. This perplexing mixture of failure and
success leads one to note that, paradoxically, it may be Evangelion’s
ambiguous position between these two poles that has led to its exten-
sive impact.7 The effect of this is a clear moment of crisis where produc-
ers were grasping to figure out how to reproduce Evangelion without
the negative reaction. To put this in the terms delineated in this study,
sekaikei were the creative result of a consistent questioning of the me-
chanics of Evangelion’s felicity, of pulling apart Evangelion and finding
some model to cite, then working toward or away from that model in
the performance of a sekaikei. In this anime-­esque creativity, interpre-
tation and selection factor into the production of models for anime per-
formance. Therefore, the issues of selfhood that Evangelion opened up
are then engaged with by citing elements of Evangelion in later anime,
in this case, sekaikei.
Although many anime were labeled sekaikei—­from SF to loop
narratives—­not all works made after Evangelion were considered as
such. As Maejima details, many of the works labeled sekaikei focused
on a love story or gakuen (school) romance, a self-­deprecating male
protagonist, a weaponized female protagonist, and/or the strange, un-
explained world-­setting. But these elements were not necessarily al-
ways the determining factors of the genre. Debates about the definition
of sekaikei became more abstract around 2004, when there was a light
novel boom. Eventually, sekaikei were repeatedly described as “works
where there is a focus on the small relations between the male (boku)
protagonist and the heroine (kimi) which are, without any concrete in-
termediary, directly connected to abstract, large problems such as ‘a
world crisis’ or ‘the end of the world.’ ”8 Often, this lack of a “concrete
intermediary” between kimi to boku (you and I) and sekai no owari
(the end of the world) is seen as the removal of society or the nation.9
But such an omission can also be considered a removal of the overly
detailed world-­setting elements (such as complex data on the engineer-
ing of a mecha) common in earlier anime like Gundam and Macross.
According to Maejima, this is done to limit the gadgetry and world-­
setting issues that were abundant in Evangelion in favor of focusing on
the self-­conscious narratives of the protagonist, as well as the love story
between kimi to boku.10
242 Anime’s (Anti)Individualism

Of course, as Maejima notes, many “standard criteria” for sekaikei

do not apply to all the works considered as such, a common problem
in genre analyses. With this in mind, I will be taking up sekaikei as a
genre in the sense that these works are repeating similar problematics,
working through them in their respective anime performances, some-
times in separate ways, sometimes in overlapping ways. As detailed in
prior chapters, anime’s performance facilitates a creativity that embel-
lishes a problem, explored through the tensions between repetition and
variation. The sekaikei genre may thus be seen as a grouping of works
that not only share cited elements but also creatively embellish similar
questions, working through their problematics as they perform them.
As such, the following analysis will not determine whether an anime
is or is not a sekaikei work but rather explore how those performances
engage with issues occurring during that contemporaneous historical
moment.
Therefore, this chapter will be examining how, in an era of increased
visibility of neoliberalism and globalization, sekaikei explored the prob-
lematics of individualism and relations to nationalism. Indeed, sekaikei
arose at a time when discourses on individualism via neoliberalism,
which were already strong around the time Evangelion aired, came to
the foreground in Japan and globally. Furthermore, at this historical
moment, anime’s globalization became impossible to ignore, the in-
crease in production clearly linked to the increase in global demand
and distribution. This returns me to the problematic of local versus
global detailed in chapter 1, which becomes heightened by the nation
branding that culminated in Cool Japan in this same time frame.
Sekaikei struggle with the problematic of anime and other otaku media
representing Japan, of trying to push these subcultural products into a
national role while they are also acknowledged as globally prominent
media. As I will show, sekaikei work through many of the questions
Evangelion opened up, each performance providing a minor variation,
citing and shifting many of the elements of Evangelion as they engage
with issues of individualism and the rise of anime as an acknowledged
global product with a strong relation to Japan.
It is important to note here that Maejima and many of the other
commentators on sekaikei refer not only to anime but also to manga,
light novels, and visual novel games. Maejima sees many of the succes-
sors of Evangelion in light novels and visual novel games—­textual media
 Anime’s (Anti)Individualism 243

that can depict the introspection that is found at the end of Evangelion.
However, the fact that Evangelion, as an anime, was able to produce
such introspection, and that there are sekaikei anime after Evangelion,
implies that it may be more productive to see post-­Evangelion works in
terms of the media mix and how these other media were able to work
with similar anime-­esque conventions. These different media often
perform similar anime-­esque elements and thus produce the image of
inter-­relatability. While the present discussion will focus on anime, it
is crucial to underscore that much of this discussion can apply to these
other media as well. They can comment on and share the same issues
due to their long history of interaction with one another, mutual adap-
tation from one medium to another, shared database of conventional
models for citation, and active effort to (re)perform these models in
their respective mediums in a manner that makes them all easy to rec-
ognize and associate as part of the same media ecology.
With this in mind, instead of discussing a grouping of different otaku
media, I will be examining the three productions most commonly cited
as paradigmatic sekaikei: the anime Hoshi no Koe (or Voices of a Distant
Star, 2002), the light novel series Iriya no Sora, UFO no Natsu (or Iriya,
2001–­3), and the manga Saishū heiki kanojo (or Saikano, 2000–­2001).
The narratives of each of these works feature a weaponized schoolgirl
(the robot pilot Mika in Voices, the mecha pilot Iriya in Iriya, and Chise,
whose body itself is a weapon, in Saikano), an adolescent male pro­
tago­nist who is romantically involved with the schoolgirl (Noboru, also
depicted as an adult, in Voices; Asaba in Iriya; and Shūji in Saikano),
and a world-­setting where there is a war, the cause and enemy of which
is never fully divulged. Despite their initial iterations in different me-
diums, the latter two works received anime adaptions, Saikano as a
thirteen-­episode TV series in 2002 and Iriya as a six-­episode OVA
in 2005. This means that these works were part of a media mix and,
furthermore, that even in 2005 the paradigmatic sekaikei work Iriya
was still relevant enough to warrant an adaptation into an anime. This
chapter will focus on the anime versions of these works.

Sekaikei and (Neoliberal) Individualism

In addition to the first two phases of sekaikei mentioned above—­from
Evangelion-­like works to a formal definition of kimi to boku connected
244 Anime’s (Anti)Individualism

to sekai no owari—­Maejima engages with a third shift in sekaikei when

the discourses move far beyond otaku discussions and into the general
realm of public intellectuals. At this point, toward the end of the first
decade of the 2000s, sekaikei’s structure of individuals and their direct
relation to the world without an intermediary is taken to analyze all of
Japanese society.11 For example, (sub)cultural critic Uno Tsunehiro sees
sekaikei as stemming from an older tradition of thought from the late
­1990s that entertained the possibility of withdrawing from the uncer-
tainty of society and thus tended toward the hikikomori (shut-­ins who
“pull into themselves”). This hikikomori tendency was replaced by a
new thought in the survival-­t ype works of the early 2­ 000s where char-
acters must fight to survive, such as in Battle Royale and Death Note,
in response to the neoliberal reforms of the Koizumi Junichirō admin-
istration (2001–­6; Koizumi retired from parliament in 2009).12 In con-
trast to Uno, I see sekaikei as a different engagement with neo­liberalism
via the figure of the individual. It is precisely because sekaikei tend to
pull into themselves that they interrogate the selfhood of the individ-
ual. In short, the late 1­ 990s and early 2000s do not just overlap with
sekaikei as the remnants of an older thought pattern from the previous
century, as Uno suggests, but continue to be relevant in the first de-
cade of the 2000s, as sekaikei deal with the pertinent issue of neoliberal
individualism.
The idea of individualism under neoliberalism is an issue that was
not isolated to one place but spread throughout the world in advanced
capitalist states from the 1980s onward. This included Japan, where
there was an increase in rhetoric on individualism in the 1990s as part
of a larger movement toward neoliberalism after the economic bubble
burst. As referenced prior, Gabriella Lukács sees this intensification
as part of a shift in certain Japanese media (in particular trendy TV
dramas) toward depictions of lifestyle, emphasizing a “choice” of social
self through consumer practices. This, Lukács contends, connects with
appeals to individualism during this time. For example, Lukács sees
in Prime Minister Obuchi Keizō’s Commission on Japan’s Goals in the
Twenty-­First Century (1999) an attack on the “mass middle-­class soci-
ety as the archenemy of individualism and stresses that egalitarianism
impedes individuals’ willingness to take risks and use their creativity.”
Obuchi called for “systems that are capable of adequately rewarding
‘the efforts of those who take risks and display excellence underpinned
 Anime’s (Anti)Individualism 245

by a pioneer spirit.’ ”13 Such neoliberal attitudes in the 1990s, which fo-
cused on individual choice, responsibility, creativity, and competitive-
ness, can be seen as feeding into the early ­2000s, intensified by the
Koizumi administration.
Under neoliberalism, people are compelled to think of society in
terms of the individual, of personal responsibility, where regulation
becomes seen as a negative, external force upon the individual’s free-
dom. Such an emphasis on illusory autonomy at all cost builds from the
form of the bordered-­whole, denying the importance of the external
social realities that shape the self, one of the common criticisms of neo-
liberalism. At the same time, as mentioned in the last chapter, under
neoliberalism, the individual is moved between constantly shifting
lifestyle trends, constantly assembling and disassembling citations via
consumption to produce a legible self. In other words, there is a clash
between the rhetoric of individualism (a bordered-­whole selfhood) and
the actualities of performing selfhood through a network of points of
external elements. Such discourses about neoliberal ideals of individual
entrepreneurism and competitiveness were espoused locally and glob-
ally. Therefore, sekaikei’s astute focus on individuals and their micro
relationships can be seen as engaging with conceptions of individual-
ism and the disparity between the rhetoric and the actualities of life.
As a side note, I do not want to give the impression that these anime
are actively politically engaged but rather highlight that the discourse of
individualism is so pervasive that it is difficult to get away from, even in
supposedly escapist entertainment like anime and other otaku media.
Indeed, Maejima notes that there is an excess of self-­reflexivity and
questions of the self in the context of otaku culture from 1995 through
to the first decade of the 2000s, and sekaikei are intimately tied to such
inquiries. Maejima even asserts that while sekaikei may have changed
over time, their focus on the problematics of the self (watashi) did not.14
But as sekaikei re-perform elements of Evangelion, I would like to begin
with the seminal series that helped spark this turn toward the self.

Evangelion’s Success and Failure

One of the important impacts of Evangelion, Maejima explains, was
not just that it engaged otaku but that it went beyond the confines of
otaku culture and garnered significant attention outside of that sphere,
246 Anime’s (Anti)Individualism

becoming such a hit that it was something of a (Japanese) societal phe-

nomenon.15 If Evangelion gave birth to an intensity of self-­reflexivity
in anime (and, to an extent, otaku culture, as Maejima avows), it in-
vites the questions Who am I? and, further, What type of self am I?,
questions that are repeatedly asked, often directly by Rei and Shinji,
throughout the series. Evangelion poses these questions against the
backdrop of a local discourse of intensified emphasis on individualism
via neo­liberalism in Japan. Therefore, Evangelion grapples with individ-
ualism and the form of the bordered-­whole, laboring over how to wran-
gle anime characters, who are constituted as citations, into individuals.
With this in mind, Evangelion can be read as contending with dif-
fering types of self. Benjamin Bratton describes something similar in
the contemporary user of technological platforms:

The position of the User then maps only very incompletely onto
any one individual body. . . . The neoliberal subject position
makes absurd demands on people as Users, as Quantified Selves,
as SysAdmins of their own psyche, and from this, paranoia
and narcissism are two symptoms of the same disposition, two
functions of the same mask. For one, the mask works to plural­
ize identity according to the subjective demands of the User
position as composite alloy; and for another, it defends against
those same demands on behalf of the illusory integrity of a self-­
identity fracturing around its existential core.16

Although this describes a historical moment nearly twenty years later,

one can see a similar struggle playing out in Evangelion as the show
attempts to work against the figurative acting tendencies of anime and
create a neoliberal, unified, self-­contained (male)17 individual.
Evangelion’s narrative tends to focus on a regular swaying between
the containment of a human soul through quantifiable data (often dis-
played with fake scientific information on screens and in conversations)
and the inextricably qualitative and interconnected self (often dis-
played through abstract sequences). A rhythm develops as the images
and narrative oscillate between these poles, switching between solidi­
fied identities and identities in crisis. For example, Shinji runs away
only to return to pilot the Eva, and this process later repeats. But this
rhythm may also be seen as an oscillation between different types of
 Anime’s (Anti)Individualism 247

selfhood. As discussed in chapter 6, anime’s figurative performance fa-

cilitates an approach to the self that is different from that of the modern
individual. The modern individual appears to be logically consistent, a
character who is self-­contained within his or her own bodily borders,
maintaining a strict internal–­external separation. But anime’s perfor-
mance of figurative acting affords a different sense of self that is openly
acknowledged as one of sharing codes, where internal and external do
not operate in the same way as the individual, where characters are
composites of preexisting codes, producing particular-­characters. In
a sense, the constant crises of identity and action in Evangelion can be
seen as engaging with figurative acting’s reliance on dispersed elements
to create a self, which clashes with the grounded, contained concep-
tion of bordered-­whole sovereignty that is embodied in the modern
individual.
The contention between the conception of self as an individual-­
character or as a particular-­character is evident in each ending. In both
the TV series and film, the extended dialogues focus on how to think
of each character and what type of self they are, directly asking, Who
am I? While Evangelion is notorious for its approach to such existential
questions, these dialogues may be interpreted as also indirectly asking,
How am I? In particular, these inquiries are evident in the abstract se-
quences in episode 26 of Shinji floating, then walking in a straight line,
repositioned, then morphing into different forms. Here the sequences
play with the potentials of embodied acting as Shinji morphs into dif-
ferent shapes and forms before moving into testing out the potentials
of figurative acting.
This occurs in an infamous scene in episode 26 where the overly
reserved and quiet Rei performs as a loud and outgoing character who
is running late, a personality completely different from the one she
had for the entirety of the series up until that point. Running late with
toast in her mouth and shouting accusatory remarks at Shinji in the
classroom, she performs conventionalized actions of a character type
distinct from her usually somber self. This sequence is framed as one of
many possibilities and produces a character who, in only a few short
minutes, displays a completely different personality through the per-
formance of figurative codes, with very little physical movement em-
ployed at all. The potential for Rei to become this type of character is
always there because she can cite these external codes at any time. The
248 Anime’s (Anti)Individualism

sudden, rapid switching between codes is not only the norm but the
basis of figurative acting’s operations, meaning that the particularity of
the character can become different at any moment, as long as the codes
she performs differ from her usual patterns.
Such a performance would appear to be a violation of Rei’s character
if seen in the modern sense of a self-­contained and internally consis-
tent individual. Such alarming border-­crossing violations of external
and internal in the sense of the individual, and the anarchic suscep-
tibility of particular-­characters to continually take on external codes
and abruptly change, are directly visualized in the film ending. For in-
stance, a gigantic Rei turns into Kaoru (Figure 7.1a), then back into Rei;
later, Rei’s face appears on the mass-­produced Evas (Figure 7.1b). Even
character design is shown as interchangeable—­the last images of Asuka
show her in the same type of bandages that Rei famously wore early in
the series. In these ways, Evangelion seems to try to work through the
problematics of selfhood, struggling with the concept of the individual
versus the potential of figurative acting’s particularity.
Consequently, much of the emotional and psychological tension of
Evangelion settles on issues of boundaries, of bordered-­wholes, of keep-
ing the somatic borders of the body. The bodies of Shinji and Rei merge,
Rei and Kaoru split in half—­even the alternative universe where Rei
is a completely changed character plays with such boundaries. These
boundaries can be easily crossed, as they function differently in figu-
rative acting, where the codes that make up a character are both inside
and outside of them, nonpersonal, existing in multiple places at once.
Evangelion struggles with trying to squeeze the codes into an individ-
ual, resulting in the tensions of the narrative.
Ultimately Evangelion seems to settle on an uneasy acknowledgment
of these apparently irreconcilable types of selfhood. Shinji struggles
with the process of becoming an individual, and the necessity of others
appears in both endings. For instance, in the TV series, as Christopher
Howard notes, “Shinji is finally able to come to the terms of meaning-
less existence not through some transcendental role as ‘world savior,’
but as an autonomous individual able to make his own decision. It is
also clear, however, that this autonomy must be in conjunction with
others as evident in the way his defeat of the Human Instrumentality
Project sees Shinji miraculously surrounded by an applauding cast of
characters from the series.”18
 Anime’s (Anti)Individualism 249

b
Figure 7.1. A gigantic Kaoru turned back into Rei (a); Rei’s face emerging
on mass-­produced Eva units (b) in The End of Evangelion.

Building on Howard’s conclusion, one can see how the TV ending

seems to work through the notion of individualism only to ultimately
embrace the spatial operations of figurative acting. Although the events
witnessed are supposed to be inside of Shinji, thus invoking the in-
teriority of individualism, the other characters also somehow appear
outside of him, evincing the ambivalence of internal and external in fig-
urative acting: they are all both inside and outside of Shinji at the same
250 Anime’s (Anti)Individualism

time. In this sense, Shinji accepts himself as a particular-­character, but

he does not do so in isolation, exposing the necessity of others for his
constitution. The optimistic tone of the ending presents a positive spin
on the failure of his attempt to be an individual.
The film ending of End of Evangelion, however, presents a much
darker take on the failure to become an individual. While the finale
of the movie appears to uphold the bordered-­whole spatial divisions of
the individual, as Shinji ultimately decides to rebuild the walls around
people and reinstate individuality, he returns to an already destroyed
earth. It is as if the enforcement of those internal–­external barriers is
a return to the status quo, which still results in a barren world. After-
ward, Shinji attempts to strangle Asuka, the only other person remain-
ing. This attempted killing may be read as Shinji’s deranged effort to
secure complete isolation as “the final” individual, but in failing to do
so, he leaves the two characters stranded but together.
If the thrust of the anime is the attempt to make Shinji into an indi-
vidual, the success is his affirmation of his singularity in both endings,
which is immediately revealed to be a failure due to the necessary pres-
ence of others: the applause of the other characters in the TV ending
and his “disgusting” (kimochi warui, the last spoken lines) failure to
kill Asuka in the film. Indeed, End of Evangelion leads to an end with
two characters remaining instead of simply leaving the earth empty or
leaving Shinji alone. It resists comfortably landing on an isolated in-
dividual, as anime’s figurative acting is shared—­particular-­characters
gesture to other instances of the codes on other bodies. In a sense, this
leaves anime with the problematics of a self always in need of another,
ending with a kimi to boku at the end of the world. In fact, the final
scene of the film begins with a title card in English with the phrase
“one more final: I need you.” With all this in mind, the harsh reactions
from confused fans can be read as irritation from the quagmire, as they
did not receive a fully formed individual-­character and were harshly
exposed to the chaotic potentials of a particular-­character.
In sum, Evangelion foregrounds an examination of the concept of
selfhood as individual. This is why Evangelion ends, in both the TV
series and film versions, with an extended monologue by Shinji and
abstract and jarring images that attempt to display his interiority. In
other words, it attempts to display a discrete border between internal
and external, trying to make a self that works in accordance with the
 Anime’s (Anti)Individualism 251

form of the bordered-­whole: an individual. This fails because anime

relies heavily (and in Evangelion’s case, infamously) on the citation of
prior iterations, where all codes are shared by virtue of their execu-
tion, and, as such, internal and external operate differently than in the
bordered-­whole. Indeed, these monologues always include the voices
and images of other characters—­there is always an external in the in-
ternal for Shinji, constantly exposing the potential for the failure of
such an endeavor.

Deconstructing Individualism
As Maejima writes, post-­Evangelion works, especially in textual for-
mats, became an “otaku literature” (otaku no bungaku) with an empha-
sis on introspection and interiority.19 It is important to note the term
“literature” used here, and not only because of the textual elements
of the media (light novels and visual novels) that followed—­although
this is what Maejima emphasizes. Evangelion may be seen as spawning
such experiments in textual media because it aspired to “literariness.”
Although literariness can include the avant-­garde, it is often associ-
ated with a modern characterization that performs the same type of
selfhood as embodied acting: an individual with internally consistent
motives that are inner driven and specific to that person, expressed
externally to the outside world. In modern literature, readers often get
personalized views of this interiority through first-­person narration or
are privy to internal motives from third-­person narration. Such tech-
niques are often used to great effect when characters think one thing
and do another, showing the divide between internal and external. This
problematic of the internal and external, of thinking about identity via
the bordered-­whole despite anime’s figurative acting tendencies, is an
ideal vehicle for examining questions of individualism and its clash
with other ways of performing selfhood. This approach is reiterated
in the sekaikei works that followed Evangelion and are examined here.
As Maejima notes, the word sekaikei itself began with connotations
of an intense first-­person narrative, but the word soon came to mean a
story featuring a self-­conscious, introspective male protagonist and his
relationship with another, often female character. One of the oft-­cited
fundamental elements of sekaikei is the micro relationship of kimi to
boku. This may be read as a relationship that explores the idea of the
252 Anime’s (Anti)Individualism

individual in relation to an Other, taking shape through the act of ad-

dress: kimi is the Japanese word for addressing “you” informally, and
boku is the gendered, young male word for “I,” implying that there is a
male “I” addressing a female “you.” Importantly, voice-­over sequences
are abundant in these works, and there is often a sense that the charac-
ters are trying to understand one another, the male character generally
trying to empathize with the difficulties the female character must be
going through while coming to terms with his own personal (and often,
in comparison, seemingly petty) emotional issues.
To engage with such a dynamic, I will turn to Judith Butler’s ap-
proach to establishing an ethics of Self and Other from the stand-
point of a mutual opacity to oneself in her essay “Giving an Account
of Oneself.” Due to spatial limitations, I must condense a complex and
nuanced argument, approaching it through terminology used in this
study and adapting it somewhat for the material at hand. With that
in mind, in the essay, Butler explores how the Other is often formed
through the process of a narrativized address, an “I” making some call
to a “you.” Ordinarily, one might interpret them as two separate indi-
viduals, the “I” in a more prominent position, bringing into existence
the “you” through the act of address. In this sense, this process may be
misconstrued as enacted by two discrete bordered-­wholes: the Self of
the “I” and the Other of the “you,” where the “I” is independently call-
ing out to the “you” in terms the “I” has determined. However, Butler
reveals that the mode of address must be one that explicitly incorpo-
rates the “you” in the “I” in some way, or it cannot function. Even in
self-­narration, the “I” must make itself recognizable through some set
of norms. Put differently, there is some part of the “I” that has the “you”
implicated by that mode of address, where the “I” cannot recognize the
“you” without submitting itself to that norm; the “I” is “both subjected
to that norm and the agency of its use.”20
In this sense, there is always something external to the “I” that is
implicated in its attempt at narration, always some implied “you.” There
must be a “you” hidden in the “I” for it to be intelligible. In this way
there is a mutual sense of opacity to oneself, a constant external ele-
ment that is always present, even if unacknowledged; an unknowability
of ourselves that can be the basis for empathy. In Butler’s words, “I
find that my very formation implicates the Other in me, that my own
foreignness to myself is, paradoxically, the source of my ethical con-
 Anime’s (Anti)Individualism 253

nection to others.”21 With this in mind, one may say that Butler starts
from the form of bordered-­whole individuals and deconstructs it, ex-
posing that the Self and Other are mutually implicated in one another
and that there is in fact a shared interconnection between people, be-
tween the “I” and “you.”
This process can be mapped onto the narrative of the sekaikei anime
Saikano. The series focuses on the ebb and flow of the relationship be-
tween the kimi to boku protagonists of Chise (kimi) and Shūji (boku), as
well as their respective oscillations between crisis and solidified iden-
tity. The series begins with Shūji as Chise’s reluctant boyfriend. He gains
affection for her, but after he has an affair with an older ex-­girlfriend
(Fuyumi), they split up. The two characters stress over their physical
separation and mutual decision to break up while they still hold strong
romantic feelings for one another. The characters go through many
ado­lescent experiences as they try to think through their emotions and
come to terms with one another. However, the drama of their inabil-
ity to be together is predicated not only on a typical romantic “will
they, won’t they” rhythm but also on the intense ethical difficulties
and psychological stressors brought about by war and Chise’s role as
the major weapon in that war. Their micro-­level personal relationships
have consequences for the more macro scale of the war since Chise is
“the ultimate weapon” and her performance as such is connected to
her relationship with Shūji. But the war itself also affects the micro
relationship of kimi to boku, of them individually and as a couple. Their
separate experiences begin to mirror one another: Chise has a romantic
encounter with Fuyumi’s husband and later comforts him romantically
as he dies a blood-­soaked death, and Shūji has a similar experience with
his classmate Akemi at the end of her life. Each traumatic experience
involves a crisis of self and a later resolution of that crisis. This is often
directly performed with Chise momentarily becoming another person-
ality, that of the weapon she both is and has inside her.
As the series progresses, the back and forth of the romantic rela-
tionship between Chise and Shūji culminates in their reunion amid
the intensification of the war, the two running away together and, for
a short period, living as husband and wife. As the series reaches its
conclusion, Chise has the most intense lapse of personality yet, forget-
ting who Shūji is. The weapon part of her finally takes full possession
of her personality even as she cries in response to Shūji’s words, as if
254 Anime’s (Anti)Individualism

she knows him but is not fully present. In these moments, she is both
Chise and not Chise, as if her body retains elements of her previous self,
though her speech and her actions are very different—­an imbrication
of the chaotic potentials of figurative acting, akin to Rei in Evangelion.
Chise’s body even falls apart, her arm separating from her and then
reattaching, showing how, like in Evangelion, somatic boundaries are
not permanent. Shūji still accepts her, embracing Chise sexually as she
shifts between different personalities, fully accepting her capacity to
violate the bounds of individualism. In this sense, Shūji openly affirms
such a selfhood. Something similar also occurs in Iriya with Asaba’s ac-
ceptance of the similarly mentally confused weaponized female char-
acter Iriya, whose design is blatantly reminiscent of Rei.
When the war reaches its close and the world is destroyed, Saikano
concludes with Shūji against a white background, alone in the darkness
at the end of the world, imagining a still pristine world where he and
Chise are together. The white background, abstract ending, and visions
of alternative lives inside one’s mind and heart are direct references
to Evangelion. At the end, it is revealed that Chise is actually inside
of Shūji.22
In short, the Saikano series follows two distinct characters that,
through the rhythmic movements of the series, sustain and then doubt
a sense of selfhood, grow close, then fall apart, and then grow close
again until their relationship culminates in a mutual understanding
where Chise is literally inside of Shūji. In this manner, similar to But-
ler’s exposure of the mutual implication of the “you” in the “I,” there
is an exposure of the fault lines of the bordered-­whole individual. In
fact, the final image is the two characters kissing, literally combining
the two together as divided but linked (Figure 7.2b). In this manner,
Saikano attempts to reconcile the composite particularity of selfhood
produced by anime’s figurative acting with bordered-­whole, individ-
ual selfhood. Furthermore, the (re)performance of Evangelion’s inter­
personal relationships that structurally and physically reorganize the
entire world results in creating another space where only two charac-
ters are left together. But this is not necessarily a happy ending and,
indeed, is a bittersweet conclusion, especially as this is supposedly the
end of the world. I would argue that the acceptance of this type of self in
the midst of a global crisis at the end of these anime’s narratives reveals
how tense this reconciliation is.
 Anime’s (Anti)Individualism 255

b
Figure 7.2. The first and last episodes of Saikano have similar structures,
exemplified by the last images of episode 1 (a) and episode 13 (b) showing
the characters embracing, merged into one figure, on a bright backdrop
after a destructive battle.

Bittersweetness itself is an important affective tone in sekaikei, and it

is the entire thrust of the short anime film Voices of a Distant Star. This
is usually attributed to director and animator Shinkai Makoto, as bitter-
sweet endings would become one of the hallmarks of his later works as
well. Voices is an excellent example of anime-­esque performance and is
256 Anime’s (Anti)Individualism

celebrated as Shinkai’s turning point from amateur to auteur. The short

film employs many anime-­esque elements for an “independent anima-
tion,” deftly performing anime-­esque animation rhythms that switch
between relatively still, lush backgrounds (later seen as a hallmark of
Shinkai’s style, though they were regularly painted by artists at CoMix
Wave studio) and anime-­esque battle sequences. The world-­setting also
harkens back to anime classics such as Gunbuster (1988), where space
battles against alien invaders must be fought by girls in giant robots,
often light-­years away from earth.23 Therefore, like other sekaikei that
lack world-­setting details, this anime makes it clear that it cannot stand
on its own and is understandable only by evoking earlier anime-­esque
elements. Fragments of daily life are juxtaposed to the harsh battle con-
ditions of anime-­esque robot battles, edited into a rhythm of sequences
that are dripping with affect and increase in intensity (and speed of cuts)
as they move toward the bittersweet finale where the narrative forces a
recognition of the impossibility of a happy resolution.
At first it appears that the narrative is premised on this impossibility
of the individual to act since neither character can traverse the vast
distances of space and time to be with the other, and to an extent this
is the case. One of the crucial tenants of the bordered-­whole individual
is the idea of distance between two individual people, and the central
dramatic pivot of the short film is that the two characters are separated
by time and space, thus causing the type of melancholic longing for one
another that is impossible to quell, the bitter of bittersweetness. Yet the
film undercuts this in a number of instances: the first images of the film
show the characters together; the final segments of the film—­which
rapidly switch between landscape images and spectacle-­oriented battle
sequences of the female character in a robot performing Itano circus–­
like missile launches—­oscillate between the characters as they recite
lines of the same sentiment, finally ending with the phrase “I am here,”
spoken by both characters at once. The sweetness of the bittersweet
moment is produced by undercutting their distance in the final mo-
ments of the short anime film by the use of voice. Furthermore, the title
of the film itself self-­reflexively emphasizes this fact: Voices of a Distant
Star highlights the importance of voice itself. For an anime film that is
often credited entirely to Shinkai alone, the final product relies on voice
acting to complete the atmosphere. In sum, the narrative attempts to
enforce individualism but always contradicts itself, as the animation
 Anime’s (Anti)Individualism 257

performance tends toward interconnection, the tension between the

two taut in the rhythm of the short film.

Global Anxieties
There is another dimension to anime’s shifts in the mid-­1990s to the
end of the first decade of the 2000s that is not often acknowledged
in academic engagements: global expansion. This period was crucial
because in the late 1­ 990s anime’s global popularity became impossi-
ble to ignore. Pokémon (1997–­present) and Sailor Moon (1992–­97) were
globally popular, and works like Dragon Ball Z (1989–­96) and Gundam
Wing (1995–­96) were gaining prominence and recognition outside of
Japan. Furthermore, although not TV anime, Ghost in the Shell (1995)
became an internationally renowned art-­house SF classic, Princess
Mononoke (1997) was globally successful, and Spirited Away (2001) at-
tained Best Animated Feature at the Academy Awards in 2003, a rec-
ognition of anime by the more globally dominant media industry of
Hollywood. All this spurred a sudden spike in demand for anime, both
locally and globally, causing anime’s production numbers to increase.
During this period of increased production, many of the anime
made were attempting to emulate Evangelion’s profitability. In this
sense, as Maejima asserts, the time period between 1995 to the mid-­
2000s saw many experiments that sought to either produce high-­
quality young-­adult series (Escaflowne, 1996; Cowboy Bebop, 1998) or
follow Evangelion’s more experimental elements in the latter half.24
What occurred was an explosion of creativity as many anime tried
to imitate the success of Evangelion, either in remaking it (Gasaraki,
1998–­99; Dual! Paral­lel Trouble Adventure, 1999; RahXephon, 2002) or
following its high concept themes (Revolutionary Girl Utena, 1997; Se-
rial Experiments Lain, 1998). On the other hand, production numbers
increased so rapidly that there were also many works that were not very
successful. In this sense, anime at this time were engaging with the
problematic of anime’s performance of identity, directly embellishing
the problem of the anime-­esque, deciding whether it was somewhat
like Evangelion’s latter section (experimental) or a compelling drama
of high production quality. Both approaches engage with the issue of
repetition but perform it in different directions, struggling to figure out
which models to perform.
258 Anime’s (Anti)Individualism

In addition, much of this increase in production was fueled by de-

mand from outside of Japan, and because of this sudden need for more
labor to maintain production, reliance on overseas subcontractors was
also on the rise.25 Sometimes, whole episodes were produced outside
of Japan, as local studios could not keep up with orders.26 Among the
companies that were infamous for becoming heavily caught up in this
frenzy was Gonzo, the central studio that produced Saikano. In fact,
a significant portion of the series was produced in South Korea, with
studios such as Dr Movie, Sung San, and G&G Entertainment credited,
along with several South Korean animators.
As the surge of creative production increased, global distribution
of anime increased as well in the early 2­ 000s. Consequently, with the
acknowledgment of anime and other otaku media as popular and prof-
itable outside of Japan, anime were suddenly brought to the foreground
as representative of Japanese culture globally. This was an abrupt shift:
otaku and anime were stigmatized for most of the 1990s, then were
thrust into official recognition and given the responsibility of repre-
senting the nation globally. Anime swiftly moved to the forefront of
the nation-­branding campaigns that would become Cool Japan in the
2000s, becoming acknowledged as Japanese culture, with otaku media
entering the realm of acceptable consumption material.
As Lamarre notes, this is one of the straightforward narratives of
otaku’s shift from rejection to “recognition and success,” a shift that
is perhaps most evident in the 2005 live-­action film, Densha Otoko.27
The film features an awkward but charming otaku who, with the sup-
port of an anonymous community on the internet, transforms himself
to successfully court an upper-­class Japanese woman. It is important
to note that the otaku’s transformation toward social legibility and
acceptance is figured in terms of lifestyle change, whereby he con-
sumes more fashionable clothes and foods while retaining his relation
to otaku subculture. Although otaku are certainly still discriminated
against in Japan, it is difficult not to read this film’s narrative as a
turning point toward wider acceptance, or at the minimum acknowl-
edgment, of otaku and otaku media like anime on the national stage.
Indeed, the internet community, as portrayed in the film, can be seen
as representing the national imagined community that both helps and
is helped by otaku. In fact, the troubled lives of the internet commu-
 Anime’s (Anti)Individualism 259

nity are themselves shown as healed as the otaku is accepted by his

love interest. In other words, the otaku’s success becomes the national
community’s success.
However, this transformation is about not only domestic change
but also global relations. As shown in other chapters, this sudden shift
stemming from foreign demand sparked government interest in the
potential for anime and other otaku media to boost diplomatic and
economic development. Indeed, in 2005 through to 2007, Asō Tarō, a
self-­proclaimed manga fan, was Minister of Foreign Affairs and made
statements like, “We want pop culture, which is so effective in pene-
trating throughout the general public, to be our ally in diplomacy . . .
one part of diplomacy lies in having a competitive brand image, so to
speak.”28 Consequently, anime was increasingly accepted as Japanese
national culture within Japan, but, as if part of the terms of such a tran-
sition, anime had to represent Japan on an economic and diplomatic
mission across the world.
As the number of anime productions increased and anime’s dis-
tribution and reputation spread outside of Japan, anime became more
directly connected to Japan as a nation in its discourses—­for example,
in the now outdated term “Japanimation.”29 In the early ­2000s, with
the lost decade of economic stagnation continuing into the new cen-
tury, the external enthusiasm for Japan’s popular culture incited a more
explicit state promotion of anime as Japanese culture. But, as noted
prior, this nation branding has neoliberal undercurrents, as it appears
hands-­off locally, focusing on global promotion of Japan’s creative in-
dustry for financial gain to compete in the world’s free market while
actually having local effects. Therefore, one can see a tension between
global and local (with subcultural transformed into the national) under
neoliberalism and the reconfiguring of the cultural industries for com-
petition in the global economy, with anime at the forefront.
In these conditions, anime identity underwent shifts that involved
local and global tensions. In terms of production, the anime indus-
try tried to follow the success of Evangelion with constant production
in part fueled by foreign demand, facilitating an increase in the num-
ber of anime and different approaches to anime-­esque performance.
In terms of national identity, the anime subculture was becoming ac-
knowledged as part of Japanese national culture but was mobilized to
260 Anime’s (Anti)Individualism

represent Japan globally and promote economic growth and diplomatic

favor. These issues may also be read for in the sekaikei arising around
this time.

Micro–­Macro, Local–­Global Tensions

Maejima describes how the “lack of a world-­setting” in sekaikei marks
a shift away from the “narrative consumption” pattern that Ōtsuka
Eiji discusses toward the “database consumption” that Azuma Hiroki
theorizes, where details about fanciful world-­settings are not well ex-
plained but are considered a matter of course.30 This would also in-
clude elements from Evangelion that were repeated without need for
explication, such as giant robots and beautiful fighting (or weaponized)
girls.31 This may be read as a movement toward further convention-
alization, the sedimentary force of the elements found in Evangelion
becoming stronger structural models for anime production. Therefore,
many of the conventions that began to be consistently seen as part of
the sekaikei genre were involved in this process of identity negotiation.
The repetition of these elements was supposed to define what was suc-
cessfully anime-­esque or, in this case, “Evangelion-­like.”
In certain ways, Evangelion adeptly engages with the problematics of
micro–­macro tensions, where the micro is intimately tied to the macro.
With a signature approach to compositing and editing, Evangelion is
one of the clearest examples of anime-­esque animation rhythms that
lead all the way to the extreme differences between hectic movement
and nonsensical imagery in the finale. These spectacles, which do not
necessarily follow rational logic, are juxtaposed to the relatively still
images shown during monologues and introspective conversations
where Shinji grapples with his selfhood. These frenetic external spec-
tacles oscillate to calmer, internal examination, becoming intimately
connected in the finale of the film since the ambiguous outcome of
Shinji’s introspection decides the world’s fate. Ultimately, Shinji and
Asuka are left alone on a beach after the destruction of all the other
world-­setting elements (Eva mecha, Angels, NERV, etc.). In this sense,
there is a particularly intense connecting of the micro to the macro; the
micro level of personal conflicts directly correlates to the macro level
of the world’s conflicts. Thus, in Evangelion there is an explicit relation
of personal relationships between individuals to the larger scale of the
 Anime’s (Anti)Individualism 261

world itself, which also allows for imagining the reverse: the macro
affecting the micro.
Sekaikei latched onto these tensions between the micro and macro.
As works that engage with Evangelion by repeating select elements, it
is interesting that they tend to have repetitive narrative structures. For
example, the structure of the first and last episodes of both Iriya and
Saikano are similar. Iriya’s first and last episode end with Asaba and
the weapon-­piloting Iriya trapped in a military area where Asaba must
release Iriya to the military; Saikano’s first and last episodes end with
Chise fighting a difficult battle and imagery of the couple embracing
with a light backdrop, as in Figure 7.2. Both Iriya and Saikano feel far
flatter than Evangelion because of their lack of abstract imagery, opt-
ing instead for austere imagery and movement into the character it-
self, especially in Saikano. In Saikano’s final episode, while the scale of
the conflict has risen to its highest progression (the final battle for the
fate of the whole world), everything flattens into the main character
of Shūji, the fate of the world left ambiguous. This ending seems to
have dismal but opposing views on the individual’s capacity to affect
the global: the all-­powerful Chise has the potential to invoke large-­
scale but destructive change, whereas Shūji feels powerless.
The war for the world also takes its toll on the psyche of both kimi to
boku characters in Iriya. Like in Saikano, the characters in Iriya wield
a difficult type of power: both female characters are capable of mas-
sive destruction, and the romantic crises of these female characters are
directly related to their relationships with the male character, giving
him an extraordinarily key role in the global conflict despite his lack
of physical or military strength. This is even brought to the foreground
of the narrative when the military tells Asaba that they used him to
manipulate and motivate Iriya to continue to fight as the sole pilot for
the powerful weapon to defend earth.
With that in mind, I would suggest that micro–­macro tensions can
also be read as engaging with the dynamics of anime as local/micro
(Japanese) on the global/macro stage. Kimi to boku and sekai no owari
became intimately linked in relation to the crisis of anime becoming
less about the local subcultural market and more about other global
markets—­or rather, the tension caused between anime as Japanese
and anime as global. Otaku products suddenly shifted from a derided
subcultural niche within Japan to representing Japan globally. Such
262 Anime’s (Anti)Individualism

tensions become visible in these sekaikei because, although the struc-

ture of the narrative emphasizes an intimate connection between in-
dividual relationships and the world itself, the specter of the nation is
still evident.
Indeed, it is tempting to read into the hardships experienced by
the characters in Saikano and Iriya as related to images of wartime
Japan: the eating of rations, the closing of institutions, the stories of
people enlisting to protect lovers, a complex array of feelings toward
the army (contempt, appreciation, admiration, hopelessness, the awe
and fear of military technology), and the dire situation of impending
defeat. Furthermore, rhetoric such as “fight for your nation” (as in epi­
sode 7 of Saikano) and the duty to serve a greater military cause are in
the backdrop of these works. Broadly, there is a sense of mobilization of
oneself for and with the military, with an implication of service to the
(nation) state. My point here is not to connect these works directly to
wartime Japan, but rather to show how the nation is still involved in the
background in relation to the military, and the complexity of feelings
associated with such connections is in the narrative, even if the nation
itself does not visibly play a key intermediary role. This ambiguity can
be considered in relation to the complex slippage between “local as sub-
cultural” to “local as national” since anime is called upon to represent
Japan globally.
In addition, there is a similarity between Evangelion, Iriya, and
Saikano in that large military organizations are forcing immense bur-
dens on adolescents, giving them great responsibility and power—­
another relation to neoliberalism’s rhetoric of individualism. The latter
two series are clearly citing that same format in their performances;
however, their contexts are different since anime at that time were be-
coming increasingly seen as cultural products for export in the service
of Japanese nation branding. As Maejima notes, the main characters
in Iriya are both used by the military, thrown aside after their useful-
ness is exhausted, and in this context, the tragic end of their romance
has more complex undertones.32 Iriya’s ending, where Iriya willfully
goes off to die in battle after stating she will fight for the male protago­
nist, may be read as an apprehensive acceptance of the increased utili-
zation of otaku media in nation branding. These military organizations
are not painted in a favorable light. Instead, the shows highlight the
 Anime’s (Anti)Individualism 263

ethical ambiguities of their blatant exhausting of the girls as weapons

of war, their exploitation of the only means to prevent the end of the
world. This puts a lot of sudden responsibility onto these characters.
When seen in the context of anime’s shift toward being a global rep-
resentative of Japan, these anime may be read as working through the
tensions involved in that transition.
Therefore, many of the ethical issues these anime bring up regarding
war can also be applied to anime’s transition toward representing Japan
globally. Can and should anime and otaku media broadly be mobilized
as representative of Japan in the global marketplace? Furthermore, how
does this line of questioning relate to the exploration of selfhood so
prevalent in these anime? Following from this, on one level the tensions
between individualism and a more interconnected self may be read as
grasping for alternative modes of selfhood in the face of the increased
visibility of neoliberalism and globalization. On another level, many of
the identity issues seen in both Saikano and Iriya—­where the female
characters forget who they are, mistake the identity of a character, call
out for another character in delirium, confuse the current moment with
the past, and/or have profound doubt about fundamental changes in an-
other character’s personality due to their stress—­may also be applied to
the self-­doubts and identity crises of anime itself as it transitioned to an
openly global media-­form. These anime were clearly citing Evangelion
as a model, so this repetition and mistaken identity fits, as it came at a
time when many anime were self-­reflexively repeating similar elements.
Furthermore, since sekaikei is contemporaneous with the rise of
moe girls as a dominant trend in anime, it is also tempting to read
the female characters’ struggles with identity crises and their roles as
weapons operating at a global scale as an allegory for anime’s rise to
officially compete in the global economy on behalf of Japan, dovetailing
with what Saito Kumiko notes as a broader shift toward a “feminine
image of Japanese pop.”33 In consideration of this, the self-­doubting
male protagonist may be read as part of the supposedly male otaku
subculture that is conflicted about this shift, ultimately coming to
terms with the female protagonist’s role as mobilized weapon and, al-
legorically, anime’s rise to global media through its new mobilization
as representative of Japan—­a conclusion achieved at great (emotional,
physical, environmental, etc.) cost. This is no simple acceptance nor is
264 Anime’s (Anti)Individualism

it a direct endorsement. As Saito notes about contemporaneous tran-

sitions in the magical girl genre, these gendered shifts are fraught with
complexity and ambivalence.
Exploring this reading reveals the tension between micro and macro
scales within the context of anime’s relatively sudden transition from
a niche subcultural product to an accepted national and supposedly
global media-­form that must work toward resuscitating the nation.
This is a reading situated in the Japanese sociocultural context, which
is already filled with local–­g lobal tensions that result in an uneasy,
bittersweet acceptance of the type of globality eventually endorsed by
Cool Japan. Anime is a perplexingly global media but ultimately seen
as local, in the sense of a subculture now made national, as Japanese.
This may even be seen as a pragmatic trade-­off since elevating the pre-
viously denigrated media (and otaku consumer with it) grants it a ten-
tative acceptance as nationalized media-­form even as it is mobilized as
global media, with Japanese otaku seen as the de facto authorities on
the media despite their still marginalized status.
In a sense, then, to stretch the meaning of the word sekai in sekaikei,
one may see it as “world,” implying “global.” Indeed, sekaikei makes the
global scale an integral part of the genre itself, an element that is regu-
larly (re)performed. In this view, the sekaikei genre—­from kimi to boku
and sekai no owari to other narratives produced in various mediums—­
and the wide range of theoretical and fan discourses about it, searches
for an identity in light of its acknowledged globalization. As Lamarre
observes, many of the theoretical works on otaku (which then develop
into sekaikei discourses) arose at precisely the moment otaku media
like anime and manga became globally prominent. However, theorists
ultimately slid into locating otaku media’s emergence in a “Japanese
postmodernity.”34 The focus in this chapter has been on kimi to boku
and sekai no owari anime, but as stated prior, though anime and manga
were at the forefront of Japan’s pop cultural nation branding, other
otaku media were also included in this shift toward nationalizing the
subculture, which was spurred on by their increasingly visible global
recognition. Taking such global dimensions into consideration, one can
read the confusion, experimentation, and constant search for a defini-
tion of sekaikei as part of a negotiation for a sekaikei (here translated
as “global-­t ype”) otaku media, but one that is still somehow Japanese.
 Anime’s (Anti)Individualism 265

After Sekaikei
The discourses on neoliberalism and its connections to globalization
and emphasis on individualism are far-­reaching, and sekaikei’s success
both in Japan and globally may be seen as a testament to its engagement
with such issues. As Jason Read asserts, “neoliberal power works by
dispersing bodies and individuals through privatization and isolation,”
and “it is not just an ideology that can be refused and debunked, but is
an intimate part of how our lives and subjectivities are structured.”35 In
consideration of this, sekaikei can be read as resisting the demands of
neoliberal individualism because they detail the intimate mechanics of
the very performance of self, which relates to others through repetition.
As detailed in the previous chapter, individualism under neoliber-
alism appears to be enacted by the mechanisms of figurative acting in
lifestyle performance. Similarly, sekaikei do not exclude the individual
even as they embrace figurative acting, as may be seen in their tendency
to pull into themselves. This has traditionally been read as hiding from
the world, and Uno reads it as a delusional attempt to escape neoliber-
alism. But the depressive tone, bittersweet notes of “pulling into one-
self,” and complete world destruction the characters attempt to avoid
seem to address the complexities of the self under neoliberalism quite
aptly, for neoliberalism is implacable in its insistence on there being no
alternative to individualism. Thus, pulling into oneself is an engage-
ment with the only thing possible in a society of individuals: your own
self. This brings individualism to its radical conclusion, which appears
to be isolation. In addition, the bleakness of the narratives displays a
comprehension of the totalization of neoliberal selfhood: there is no
other world left. At the same time, while characters appear isolated,
they regularly reveal the necessity of others in their figurative acting.
In this way, pulling into oneself is an acknowledgment of needing to
attend to the intimate operations of constituting selfhood: moving into
the individual Self only to find Others already there.
Although it is supposedly the progenitor of sekaikei, the Evangelion
franchise itself marked a shift in sekaikei as it moved out of trend by
the end of the first decade of the 2000s via an increased reliance on
typical modes of figurative acting. One can see this shift, as Maejima
notes, in the differences between the original series and the New Evan-
gelion films that began in 2007. For example, in the original Evangelion
266 Anime’s (Anti)Individualism

series, there is a scene of Rei smiling at the end of episode 6, where her
expression looks strange and awkward. It provides the impression that
she is uncomfortable smiling, showing a momentary lapse into individ-
ualized, embodied expression. However, in the same scene in the New
Evangelion film (2007), the smile appears to be a refined performance
of a standard figurative expression from anime. It is not an embodied
expression but a citation from anime’s now more solidified structural
models. In another example, in the second New Evangelion film (2009),
when Eva-­01 goes berserk, instead of displaying the primal savagery of
the Eva through embodied performance as in episode 19 of the original
series, Eva-­01 performs figurative movements for a robot battle, going
so far as to perform the famous “atomic punch” where the forearm is
shot like a missile, which dates back to 1970s super-­robot anime. This
performance of the atomic punch is a very specific iteration but a cita-
tional performance nonetheless, not the individualized, primal move-
ments of the berserk Eva from the original series.
This shift toward a more open acceptance of figurative acting may
have happened because anime’s identity crisis became subdued toward
the end of the early ­2000s. With the peak of anime production occur-
ring in 2006, then dropping only to rise once more in the years after-
ward, anime’s identity became further solidified as the repetitions and
citations increased, providing more of a sedimentary force to later it-
erations. Therefore, the figurative acting codes became stronger struc-
tural models, harder to deviate from, even for the New Evangelion. This
movement toward codified figurative performances in the New Evan-
gelion films may also be seen as the anime’s engagement with different
issues from what spawned sekaikei.
In Maejima’s view, as the term sekaikei spread out from otaku dis-
courses into more theoretical discussions that addressed society at large,
and as the genre moved across media and discourses and became in-
creasingly repeated, it lost its dynamism. For Maejima, sekaikei was
the result of discourses about sekaikei that examined the impact of
the original Evangelion and its emphasis on self-­reflection. An over-
abundance of definitions led to works engaging with those definitions,
which then led to further discourses on using and defining sekaikei.
The embellishing of the questions of sekaikei became hardened, so-
lidified into a genre, a model that was difficult to deviate from. In this
study’s terms, the repetition of its elements made it a more forceful
 Anime’s (Anti)Individualism 267

structural model for further citation. The “end of sekaikei,” for Maejima,
would occur toward the end of the 2000s and into the next decade,
when elements of sekaikei then spawned other genres and tendencies
that, on their own, engaged with issues in different ways or dealt with
separate issues entirely.36
While Uno sees a new intensity of neoliberalism with Koizumi’s re-
gime in the early ­2000s that resulted in different subcultural genres,
one may see these as a different set of work-­throughs for the prob-
lematics of the time. The “decisiveness-­ism” of survival-­t ype anime like
Death Note (where characters must be active or they will be killed)
may also be seen, as Uno argues, as another variation on the issues
of individualism explored by Evangelion. However, these shows go in
a different direction than sekaikei and do not interrogate individual-
ist selfhood with such focus but rather follow through with its con-
sequences. By the time Cool Japan became solidified at the end of the
2000s, anime was already widely acknowledged as a “Japanese cultural
product gone global,” and the problems of the individual (otaku sub­
culture) and the world (anime as a global media) were eschewed in
favor of works that focused on survival narratives directly emphasizing
individuals and their competitive capacity or works that tied anime to
a location in Japan (anime pilgrimages) instead of the ambiguities, the
successes and failures, of Evangelion’s approach to addressing selfhood
and micro–­macro conflicts.
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 9 8 0

Anime’s Dislocation

Place-­Focused Anime
Among the successors to sekaikei anime are works that featured and
sometimes focused on actual locations in Japan, displaying depictions
of those real places instead of fictional settings that generally resemble
places in Japan. Though there were previous examples of place-­focused
anime, these recent works participated in a boom of “sacred pilgrim-
ages” (seichijunrei) around the late 2000s. For example, there are a few
locations in Saitama for such place-­focused tourism that were featured
in the hit Lucky Star (2007). For Maejima, this is a backlash against the
first-­person self-­reflexivity of sekaikei and the limits of the abstracted
kimi to boku and sekai no owari structure, resulting in a focus on the
details of particular places.1 One may also read this movement as con-
nected to anime’s move toward representing Japan and Japanese cul-
ture both locally and globally. Subsequently, some of the problematics
of sekaikei in relation to the individual and the global, and/or the na-
tional and the global, become resolved in favor of creating a yearning
for an indexical relation of anime’s world-­settings to actual locations
in Japan.
Place-­focused anime continue to be popular in Japan, having devel-
oped into a whole industry around tourism to areas that were used as
the basis for backgrounds within anime productions.2 The popularity
and prevalence of anime tourism are not isolated to Japan, as there are
places around the world that have been either featured in or used as the
basis for a setting in a popular anime. This includes Jiufen in Taiwan,
which is rumored to be one of the places that inspired the backgrounds
in Ghibli’s Spirited Away, and New York City, the setting for the anime
and manga Banana Fish (2018). But there is no denying that many, if not
the majority, of places for anime tourism are located in Japan. Many are
less ­than famous, almost ordinary places like street corners, railroad

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270 Anime’s Dislocation

crossings, and old school buildings. Such inclusions of commonplace

real-­world locales became part of place-­focused anime tourism toward
the end of the first decade of the 2000s, specifically with the success of
Lucky Star in 2007. This came at precisely the time that the initiatives
of Cool Japan—­which tried to anchor anime in Japan even as it aimed
to disperse it globally—­became more apparent and widespread both
inside and outside of Japan, overlapping with promotions aiming to
increase inbound tourism to Japan. One could interpret this movement
highlighting quotidian Japan as a reaction to the now obvious globali­
zation of anime, as an effort to quell the ambivalence in anime’s media-­
form by grounding the images with a supposedly indexical relation to
places in Japan. This can be seen as attempting to mask the insecurities
of place, a crisis that resolves itself by hiding how the image of a place is
produced and instead highlighting what is represented.
As detailed prior, anime’s conventions may not be explicitly ac-
knowledged as containers of Japanese culture, but their repetition
becomes recognizable as anime-­esque, part of a media-­form that has
been promoted as contemporary Japanese culture. In many cases, the
recognizability of these conventions makes them anything but inert,
as their performance is predominantly seen as representative of a Japa­
nese cultural product. Despite this, approaches to anime as a vehicle
for discussing Japan tend to focus on representational and narrative
readings over considerations of media-­form and, in turn, on the direc-
tors (and scriptwriters) at the top of the production hierarchy as the
agents of enunciation. From this perspective, place-­focused anime help
make the media-­form even easier to accept as simply another mode of
representing Japan.
But recent place-­focused anime can be read as doing more than sim-
ply accepting anime as a Japanese cultural product or emphasizing na-
tional homogeneity of locales. Indeed, the focus on obscure, quotidian
places forces an acknowledgment of the difference and distinctiveness
of those places in relation to other areas in Japan and the world. Fur-
thermore, if one explores how these places are depicted, that is, the
performance of anime’s media-­form, a different dynamic is exposed.
In approaching the performance of anime’s media-­form, one finds the
enactment of certain configurations of spatiality—­that is, manners of
organizing or situating ourselves within space and time—­concomitant
with contemporary modes of globalization.3 As noted in earlier chap-
 Anime’s Dislocation 271

ters, this tends to be governed by a tension between anime as Japanese

and anime as global, which occurs on multiple registers. But the perfor-
mance of anime’s media-­form also affords other potentials. By examin-
ing the configurations of spatiality and their connection to animation,
even place-­focused anime can be seen as enacting the problematics of
dislocation. They are apparently situated in a particular location yet
also displaced due to their relation to iterations elsewhere. What re-
sults is anime enacting depictions of place that are constituted through
connections to other places in its very performance in and of anima-
tion, encapsulating the frictions of globalization, with different anime
providing distinct engagements with this problematic of dislocation.

Dislocation in Anime’s Performances

The spatiality of dislocation I will be focusing on has already been
hinted at in previous chapters, as it is evident in many elements of
anime-­esque performance. For instance, as discussed in chapter 6,
one of the most prominent and recognizable elements of anime-­esque
performance is figurative acting, where characters utilize a repertoire
of preestablished conventionalized codes to display their emotion. I
would like to draw attention to how the figurative acting performed in
anime produces characters who are largely made up of citations of pre-
existing codes that exist outside of them. Because the codes in anime
characters are cited—­that is, are external to the characters performing
them—­there is an inside–­outside dynamic whose distinctions become
thoroughly blurred. The performance of character becomes something
of an accumulation of different types of codes and the frequency with
which they are cited from anime’s figurative acting repertoire or data­
base. Enacted on the body of a specific character, a combination of cited
codes is what produces a personality. It is difficult to concretely isolate
an enactment of a code to that singular instance, as its very operations of
legibility are sustained by its recognizable relation to earlier instances
by other characters in different anime or other media. There is thus
a tension between the situated moment of these cited codes and the
other, external instances of their enactment.
This produces a spatiality with a definitive relation to prior, external
iterations of codes, as well as a particularized enactment of codes for
characters in specific spaces at specific moments. In other words, there is
272 Anime’s Dislocation

a combination of different times and locales of earlier and even contem-

poraneous enactments of those codes that are externally present but
also employed in that particular location. This is a very different spatial
organization than the concrete grounding that has been inherited from
modernity, such as the individual who is singular and maintains a dis-
crete inside and outside, afforded by the form of the bordered-­whole.
Anime’s media-­form and enactment of characters may be described as
engaging with the problematic of dislocation, whereby characters are
enacted in particular spatiotemporal locations but at the same time
connected to a network of instantiations of the elements that afford
their constitutions.
A different example may better elaborate the type of spatiality of
dislocation I am trying to articulate: the Itano circus. To recapitulate,
for Lamarre, the missile barrage in the Itano circus relates to a type of
compositing of the multiplane image afforded by cel animation’s utili-
zation of layers. In this case, there is an engagement with what he calls
the “exploded view/projection” when the force of the moving image is
distributed across the flat plane of the image, creating a structure of
depth that differs from Cartesian one-­point perspective: “the controlled
quasi-­orthogonal structural ‘explosion’ of elements across the image
surface.”4 The swerving movements of the missiles, as they converge
and diverge on the moving target, produce an emergent depth through
their manipulation of the layers across the image’s surface. The missiles
veer in and out of Cartesian one-­point perspective, suggesting but also
perverting it. The sequence thus produces emergent depth by engaging
with technical solutions to the issues of compositing the multiplane
image. It is but one example of a larger tendency where movement into
depth is replaced by density of information, where “structures of ex-
ploded projection emerge to place a material limit on dispersion and
flatness, generating temporary fields of potential depth associated with
lines of sight.”5
In sequences like this, the movement of the projectiles flattens the
hierarchy of the image generally associated with modernity. Lamarre
notes that, distinct from Cartesian one-­point perspective, this “shows
how something can be taken apart or put together.” The potential
depths operate as fields, functioning similarly to the dynamics of in-
formation retrieval where viewers skim and scan, and the potential
depths, “if pursued, promise to generate links and connections.”6 In-
 Anime’s Dislocation 273

terestingly, episode 7 of Macross Frontier displays this dynamic, show-

ing a close-­up of the pilot’s eyes scanning for targets that the missiles
then track. In a similar fashion, anime viewers become an “interactor
who intermittently situates herself within the assemblage, adopting
the angle of different components. This is not so much viewing posi-
tions as lines of sight . . . that constitute different trajectories across the
assemblage,” implying “a capture of the multiplicity within unity . . .
an inherent oscillation between . . . dispersion and capture.”7 As such,
the viewer scanning this moving image does not sustain “a one-­point
structuration to produce depth with distinct positioning.”8 Addition-
ally, Lamarre notes that the Itano circus sequences he describes may be
considered “poised at a moment of technological transition, from the
nation-­centered military–­industrial complex to transnational flows of
information,” which could provide a point of departure for exploring
how this relates to globalization.9
To do so, and to return to the dynamics of enacting characters in
anime, I would like to connect this to some of the observations of Paul
Virilio, who describes a shift in the problematic of actors due to the
global reach of certain technologies. Traditionally, the rapid shifts be-
tween characters and lives that actors would portray invited the ques-
tion of Who am I? In this problematic, there is a layering or doubling
on the body of the actor, where the actor as person is inhabited by the
character, and confusion between the two clashes with modern, individ-
ual identity, which is presumably, idealistically singular. But due to the
contemporary difficulty of orienting oneself in space, Virilio suggests
that this question is in the process of getting transformed into Where
am I? This is in part because technologies, both communication-­and
transportation-­oriented, now circumnavigate and interconnect the
globe at speeds that seem to render all locations (even on the earth’s
surface itself) difficult to sustain as concretely grounded.
In other words, in this historical moment, suffused with technolo-
gies and globalized on multiple levels, there is a distinct problematic
of how and where to situate ourselves. Classical concepts of time and
space have become confused by our contemporary modes of percep-
tion through technology, where a livestream can muddy past recording,
present viewing, and future responses into a singular now that can be
interacted with in real time from any place on or above the planet
without any physical displacement from the current location: “motion
274 Anime’s Dislocation

on the spot instead of motion in space.”10 Therefore, the actor (or tech-
nology user) is overlaid with a multitude of temporal and spatial coordi­
nates, producing dislocation. Thus, it is not so much the literal question
Where am I? that is considered by users but rather the problematic the
question opens up (of how and where to situate oneself) that is impor-
tant to consider in this historical moment. With this in mind, one may
view the performers and their performances of anime’s media-­form
as engaging with the difficulty of becoming concretely situated in the
current era, especially in consideration of the transnational flows of
globalization.

Theatricality
I would like to pause for a moment to explore the more classical (that
is, modern) notion of the actor that Virilio describes in the quandary
Who am I? and how this relates to a certain conception of theater and,
subsequently, modern spatiality. For these purposes, I will initially turn
to the work of William Egginton, who sees the manifestation of a type
of spatiality as integral to the transition to modernity and the subse-
quent development of the individual and nation-­state in Europe. For
Egginton, this occurs through shifting dynamics of theatrical perfor-
mance and the specific demarcation of the space of the stage, the actor,
and the viewer. A discreet division is created for the space of represen-
tation (the stage and actors) and individuals (viewers), where the actor
performs in a separate space from that of the viewer. This fundamental
shift in spatiality further affords a way to theatrically identify with the
larger nation-­state as a whole:

Individuals are capable of believing in emotional bonds with

people they have never met, in honoring a prince whose pres-
ence they have never felt, and participating in a public debate
about a society that concerns their private interests precisely
because these other people, this prince, and this public debate
occupy an imaginary (i.e., not real) but viable space in which
they too can interact via the intervention of their avatars or
characters. They can, in other words, identify theatrically with
rulers, laws, unknown friends, ideas, their nation, without ever
once encountering those entities face to face. . . . Theatrical
 Anime’s Dislocation 275

identification, then, is the mode by which theatricality subtends

the actual formation of the superindividual entity known as the
[modern] state.11

Translating this into the terms used here, modern spatiality can be
seen as afforded by the form of the bordered-­whole: the space of repre-
sentation that enables modern (individual) subject formation dividing
viewer from stage and actor and allowing for an imaginary identifica-
tion via this division—­a formal configuration that, on a larger scale,
even affords the discrete boundaries of nation-­states.
This is a fundamentally modern mode of existence, which Egginton
insists is still at play in our era. Indeed, as shown in other chapters, the
nation-­state and individualism continue to intertwine, especially in re-
lation to creative industries like anime on the global stage. At the same
time, I would suggest that anime’s performance of media-­form points
toward a different type of spatiality, that of the abovementioned dislo-
cation that disrupts those clear spatial divisions and instead embodies
the tensions of contemporary globalization. This only becomes clear
by paying attention to the interplay between the medium of animation
and the conventionality of anime’s performances.
With this goal in mind, I will start with an exploration of a different
conception of theatricality, this time Samuel Weber’s description of
the medium of theater.12 Weber is concerned with conceptualizing the
medium of theater, where he observes a great unease about space and
time. Indeed, the idea of medium as “between” or “middle” is itself an
invocation of locating an event spatially and temporally.13 For Weber,
the idea of theater as medium finds a particularly important articu­
lation in staging and acting. According to Weber, stages are always in
their current locale and off somewhere else, but they are also stages
in the temporal sense of moving toward something else, localizations
that are always haunted by earlier instances, other stages. To be staged
(i.e., to be performed onstage, to enact in the locale par excellence of
the medium of theater) implies a connection to other instances and an
uneasy relationship to reality.14
Acting takes on a similar disjointedness in regard to space and
time. For Weber, acting is very different from action, which connotes
a completeness that acting supposedly only imitates. Instead, acting
“is intrinsically open and indeterminable, determinable only with re-
276 Anime’s Dislocation

spect to the space-­time of its enunciation.”15 In this sense, one may see
the embodied performance long dominant in the modern tradition,
with its thrust toward naturalism and enactment of individualism, as a
strategy to hide this type of theatricality, to give the illusion of a singu-
lar real and grounded event that originates from the individual. Figura-
tive acting, however, sustains itself via reiteration, with the same code
sometimes being performed by two different actors in the same vicinity
at the same moment, highlighting the repeatability and interrelations
Weber describes as theatrical.
In sum, staging and acting, crucial components of what may be
considered the medium of theater, are divided between but linked to
the here and now and some other space and time. Thus Weber’s theat­
ricality is not necessarily isolated to the physical material of a stage or
actor but rather invokes the problematics of the self-­identical and the
multiple in the singular. Theatricality as medium insists on a tension
involving repetition that plays itself out in each performance. Weber’s
description of theatricality becomes “that which challenges the ‘self’ of
self-­presence and self-­identity by reduplicating it in a seductive move-
ment that never seems to come full circle.”16 In this sense Weber’s theat-
ricality deals with spatiality and its relation to reality: the unease about
the stability of staging and acting in their spatiotemporal location.
As discussed in prior chapters, there is a similar tension in the itera­
tions of anime-­esque elements, such as character designs and expressions,
that must reference prior designs and expressions to be recognizable but
cannot be redundant or too distorted and thus unsellable. In this man-
ner, every anime keeps itself in a taut and tense relationship with prior
anime, citing earlier instances while keeping some specificity in its cur-
rent instantiation. One may describe anime performance as theatrical in
the sense that Weber defines it, as a constant tension between situated
enactment and its continual dislocation to other times and places.
In consideration of this, to return to Virilio’s observations on the
shift in the actor’s questions under globalization—­from Who am I? to
Where am I?—­the tensions underpinning this transition can be com-
prehended via the abovementioned notions of theatricality. Egginton’s
conception of projected identification via spatial organization (Who
am I?) is in a tense relationship with Weber’s ideas of the continual
displacement of the self-­identical in each iteration (Where am I?). These
 Anime’s Dislocation 277

two notions of theatricality exist together in this current era of glo-

balization, one never subsuming the other. As anime’s performance of
media-­form itself enacts a problematic of dislocation, it is also rife with
these theatrical tensions. Anime’s theatrical performances are in and of
animation, so it is important to properly attend to the particularities of
that medium, which itself intersects with these notions of theatricality.

The Animatic Apparatus

With this in mind, I would like to turn to Deborah Levitt’s notion of
animation as an an-­ontological medium that “must always create a
world” and consequently “is not tethered to a grounding model.”17 For
Levitt, this makes animation explore a type of simulacrum18 that does
not replicate reality but is an encounter with images that “have left the
realm in which a reality principle holds sway.”19 In this sense, anima-
tion as a medium has the capacity to “implicitly themat[ize] whatever
codes of realism it chooses to deploy (or subvert).” She also notes that
“conventions within animation itself have developed in different genres
and national traditions of animation, and where these are used without
comment, they also become ‘invisible.’ ” At the same time, animation
still has the ability to “comment on conventional codes of figuration
and representation, as well as to reflect upon the existential, perceptual
coordinates they conventionally represent.”20
From this point of departure, Levitt conceptualizes the “animatic
apparatus,” which refers to how a cultural system of power “produces
forms of life as it imagines them.”21 With the onset of the current era
where the medium of animation is so widespread in our lives, the no-
tions of life are no longer grounded in the human body as in live-­action
cinema but are displaced into virtualizations of life where “image-­
body-­life are always passing into or out of existence.” Because media
products “do not just represent, but also conceive and produce affective
configurations,” Levitt asks “if all life from the cellular to the organ-
ismic to the planetary levels is not autonomous, but interdependent,
how do conjugations of images and other beings engender emergent
forms?”22 While this line of inquiry may appear to have strayed from
the questions at hand, one may interpret Levitt’s theorizations as an
exploration of the modes of existence afforded in an age of animation’s
278 Anime’s Dislocation

prevalence and global interconnections. With this in mind, an ap-

proach similar to Levitt’s can be applied to the theatricality of anime’s
performance and the production of place in anime.
What Levitt describes as the contemporary animatic apparatus
“always tends toward merging and exchanging image space and body
space” between media space and “real” space.23 This interdependence
of spaces stems from the dimensions of simulacra that Levitt describes
of animation as a medium and resonates with Weber’s theatrical en-
gagement with repetition as evinced by anime’s reliance on convention.
Indeed, Levitt’s usage of simulacra extends to replication and repetition
but does not reproduce images of reality. Instead, a separate dynamic
unfolds, where situating oneself on concrete ground becomes difficult.
In the performance of anime’s media-­form, one can find a similar un-
ease with grounding space itself, corresponding with the tensions of
theatricality between multiplicity and unity, between repetition and
variation in the citations of conventions. Through this constitutive pro-
cess, anime performance fuses different times and different locations
of previously enacted iterations as a combination of citations in their
current placement. This type of spatiality, enacted in the performance
of anime’s media-­form, has an ambivalence to internal and external,
where dispersal and unity are held in an uneasy tension and the prob-
lematic of dislocation is concomitant with contemporary globalization.
Certainly, in the current era the virtual and real appear to collapse
from a modern perspective, but in actuality, according to Levitt, an-
imation deals with an entirely different order of reality, an animatic
regime where it “is as impossible to establish boundaries here between
intimate spaces and media spaces as it is to establish where images end
and bodies begin, where truth or the real might reside.”24 This can be
quite disorienting and wearying. In this context, there is a “particular
response to the an-­ontological dimension of the contemporary world,”
specifically “the impulse to do anything to restore a ground, to establish
borders, to build walls, to deny others and otherness entrance to an en-
closed, fortified space. In other words, the impulse to produce a strong,
nationalist, identitarian politics.”25 Indeed, the recent trend of moving
toward the security of the nation-­state can be read as a drive to return
to the familiar form of the bordered-­whole and its seemingly concrete
grounding in reality, in some sense (re)engaging with Egginton’s notion
of modern theatricality. The contemporary animatic apparatus, then,
 Anime’s Dislocation 279

can be seen as resulting in a clash between the two notions of theatri-

cality: a theatrical self that Egginton describes, with spatial distinctions
but viable identifications between actors onstage and the audience, and
the theatricality of iterability that Weber conceives where spatiotempo-
ral location is always displaced.
Such theatrical tensions between a space of representing reality and
the constant deferral of that space in the an-­ontology of animation are
also apparent in some influential studies of anime. For instance, Susan
Napier notes the tensions between the representations of Japan in anime
and the endless possibilities provided by anime’s medium of animation,
which affords it global “statelessness.”26 More recently, Christopher
Bolton asserts that anime in general “move us back and forth between
accepting a represented reality and questions or interrogating the rep-
resentation itself,” in no small part due to its media-­form.27 In another
vein of thought, Lamarre’s conceptualizations of animation through
anime may address some of these an-­ontological tensions: “not only do
[animated] characters break with the photographic ontology implying
contact with an actually existing (or once existing) person or thing or
place but they also usually imply multiple sources. . . . This departure
from received photographic conventions that ground representation
in reality may lead to an anxious compensatory drive to ground ani-
mation in some external reality.”28 For anime, such compensatory acts
include buying real-­world character goods and making pilgrimages to
the actual locations that were the “sources” of the animated world.
This coincides with the abovementioned crisis of needing to ground
anime due to globalization, which is seemingly resolved through an
emphasis on places in Japan: as Cool Japan attempts to anchor anime
to Japan even as it projects anime globally, there is also a rise in anime
that have a place-­focused setting and are part of local tourist initiatives.
But, as Lamarre notes, “the challenge of anime lies in its refusal of the
sort of cultural mediation that begins with fixed cultural i­ dentities. . . .
[In its distributive visual field of exploded projection] relations to oth-
ers would not conform to the received identities and positions.”29 In-
deed, exploring the mechanics of how the animated images of places
are performed in anime reveals an unease about a preconceived nation-
ally grounded conception of place, which relates once more to Weber’s
notion of theatricality.
One can find a similar unease toward a grounding of space and time
280 Anime’s Dislocation

in the performance of anime’s media-­form, which relies so heavily on

conventionality in both character acting and, on a larger scale, sus-
taining anime’s recognizability generally. For anime, this corresponds
to the tensions of theatricality between projections of national spatial
identifications and the repetition and variation in the citations of con-
ventions in the an-­ontological medium of animation. It is through this
latter constitutive process that anime performance fuses times and lo-
cations of previously enacted iterations as a combination of citations in
their current placement. For instance, even when actualized in a spe-
cific anime character’s figurative performance, this selfhood is distinct
from the modern individual. Instead of the individual, whose localized
inside/outside boundaries forge identities that easily align with the spa-
tiality of the “superindividual” of the nation-­state, anime’s particular-­
characters may have very different relations to the notion of locality in
general. Inside and outside become blurred, where each iteration links
beyond the space of its enactment, extending beyond singular charac-
ters, episodes, and even studios and various media. In consideration
of this, anime’s spatiality allows a different conception of place and
relations to it under globalization.

Producing Places
While above I have focused on dislocation in the performance in ani-
mation, it is worthwhile to extend this discussion to the performance of
animation as well. Up until now I have been engaged with a conception
of (dis)location in terms of spatiality (a structured mode of conceiving
of space), but I would now like to turn to the mechanics of anime’s
enactment of place-­focused productions to detail how place operates
in regard to anime. Here, the constitution of place can be seen as a per-
formance that engages with theatricality in the two ways conceptual-
ized by Egginton and Weber. On the one hand, the production of place
resembles Egginton’s theatricality—­where there is a projection on de-
marcated space for representation—­because anime tends to be seen as
representing Japan, which is afforded by the spatiality of the bordered-­
whole and subsequently the nation-­state. Place becomes self-­evident,
with strict internal and external boundaries. On the other hand, the
enactment of place can be seen as similar to Doreen Massey’s concep-
tion of a “global sense of place.” For Massey, place is more than a static
 Anime’s Dislocation 281

location and becomes transformed by layers of history that stem from

different locales, an intersection of a variety of materials and peoples
coming from disparate and nearby areas, whose specific combination
and interaction make and re-­make the place in question.30 In terms
of form, this may be seen as a more networked manner of consider-
ing place. Thus, in some ways, Massey’s global sense of place relates
more to Weber’s theatricality because the various elements of that one
locale are (dis)placed from other locales, a composite of multiple oth-
ers, affirming a specificity while deferring to other locales as the place
transforms.
As shown in earlier chapters, such a form of the network operates
in the performance of anime’s media-­form, which entails a similar
dynamic of spatiality to Massey’s notion of place. Instead of focusing
exclusively on Japan, paying closer attention to the materiality and
conventionality of performing anime’s media-­form reveals a trans­
national network in its production processes. As detailed in the earlier
chapters, Tokyo functions as the central node in a larger Asian pro-
duction network, making anime’s transnationally produced images a
media heterotopia. But the performance of anime’s conventions makes
the different locales involved in production invisible. In other words,
the material traces of transnational production are masked by the fe-
licitous performance of anime-­esque conventions. Indeed, one may say
that the performance of anime’s media-­form nearly erases the diversity
of its images, implying a singular point of origin (Japan) when in fact
there are often a variety of locales involved beyond Japan.
In this way there is a geopolitical clash in the claim to media-­form.
Anime’s media heterotopia is not without hierarchies, and multiple
tensions can arise from this formation. Among them is the issue of
whether it is possible to conceive of a new geography to engage with
this transnational dynamic, which in turn relates to the spatiality of
dislocation. Thus, contrary to the tendency to take for granted that
anime is a Japanese cultural product, a complex politics of spatiality
and place intersects with the framework of the nation, in conflict with
the transnational flows that define this moment of globalization, all
enacted through the performance of the media-­form of anime.
Yet this heterotopic conception of anime can be easily overwritten
when one sees a plethora of anime that represent places in Japan. While
the focus on places in Japan may be interpreted as an acceptance of
282 Anime’s Dislocation

anime as a Japanese national media-­form, forcing an almost indexical

relation to sites in Japan, it is possible to entertain an alternative read-
ing: these place-­based backgrounds force attention away from Tokyo
as the media capital and instead disperse attention toward quotidian
locales, focusing on how the local (even if within Tokyo) is produced in
contradistinction from the national. Indeed, the majority of these pil-
grimage sites are not the symbols of the nation, but of obscure daily life,
of overpasses, sidewalks, and waterways. This can be seen in the anime
series Tamako Market (2013), set in the fictional Usagiyama Shopping
Arcade, which is ostensibly based on the Demachi Masugata Shopping
Arcade in Kyoto. Not particularly famous for any other reason than its
inclusion in the series, many of the people not living in the immediate
area travel there to see the real-­life setting of the anime. The actual
shopping arcade in Kyoto even has a small case filled with notebooks
with messages from domestic and foreign fans who have come to visit
this otherwise unknown location.
While such scenes of the local are susceptible to being folded into
the image of the national, their specificity—­this is not just the building
shown in the anime, but the angle the background image was based
on—­can also be read as an insistence on the particularity of that lo-
cale, forcing one to question the exact boundaries of this place (is it the
city, the nation, or this specific location?) and the process of constitut-
ing place in general. For instance, the images of these places are not a
precisely photographic depiction, as they are often painted or digitally
altered to appear uniform in relation to the characters. The background
artists perform a production of the location in consideration of the con-
ventions of the anime media-­form. As Levitt notes, when animation
produces a “representational scenario,” it does so by “copying the con-
ventions of realism, typically the conventions of cinematographic real-
ism,” but because such images must always be produced from a blank
slate, “all animation is always a meta-­discourse on the conventions of
realist representation . . . it’s always showing us its own construction of
perceptual verisimilitude.”31
This is almost literally enacted, as place-­focused anime do not show
the entirety of the place itself but sections of it that are selected, com-
posed, and reconstituted in anime’s media-­form. In this sense, these
images of place can be seen as fitting Massey’s sense of place as com-
posite. In addition, these backgrounds are juxtaposed to other settings,
 Anime’s Dislocation 283

some entirely fictional, others from distant or relatively close-­by places

that are edited together to create the illusion of a unified world-­setting
for the characters. In Tamako Market, though the fictional Usagiyama
Arcade does resemble the actual Demachi Masugata Arcade, there are
very few images that directly copy the real-­life setting. Furthermore,
many of the stores featured in the anime are completely fictionalized
or made to appear geographically closer to the arcade than they actu-
ally are, such as the public bath, which is featured prominently in the
series but does not exist in the actual area in Kyoto. Online, fans even
post comparisons between the original place and the anime setting,
comparing the two, making sure that viewers notice both the similari­
ties and the differences. Here one can see a tension of place play out in
anime, a theatrical ambivalence toward securing a location through the
performance of anime’s media-­form—­of projecting a sense of concrete
spatial organization in the modern sense in tense relation to the dis-
placement of the arbitrarily arranged composite.
However, as noted above, the most common approach to interpret-
ing anime is to neglect the tension of anime’s performance in and of
animation and the tensions between actual-­locale and fictional-­locale
in favor of grounding anime in Japan. To be clear, I am again not dis-
suading such readings, as Japan is so important to anime and such
analyses often provide important insights. But such readings tend not
to address the animatic regime at play, eased by the relation of anime’s
media-­form with Japan and the images of locations in Japan on display.
Even on a production level, anime’s places are dislocated by their per-
formance outside of Japan. For instance, the prominent production com-
pany Biho, which specializes in anime-­esque backgrounds, employs
many Vietnamese artists and even has a subsidiary studio there, mean-
ing that many places featured in popular anime that are supposedly
representative of Japan may actually have been animated in Vietnam.
Tamako Market itself had many South Korean staff from Studio Blue
working on the backgrounds. Consequently, the performance of place
in anime can be seen as, instead of a local place that is represented in
anime and then globalized, a transnational network that manifests the
performance of the image of a locality, aligning with Massey’s global
sense of place.
Given these dynamics, how can one conceive of the decades of anime
production that has occurred transnationally, including the production
284 Anime’s Dislocation

of place-­based anime? Furthermore, what happens when place-­based

anime are performed outside of Japan? If anime made outside of Japan
can be indistinguishable, visually at least, from those made within
Japan, concerns about mimicry, creativity (in the modern sense of
original or culturally unique), hybridity, and authenticity come to the
foreground. Moreover, what are the implications on established con-
ceptions of locality and place when something self-­identical to anime,
which is supposed to be Japanese, becomes repeated elsewhere? Can
these works be considered to represent place in the same way anime
that feature Japanese places are? With anime as currently identified—­a
part of Japanese culture with a global presence—­this becomes imbued
with geopolitical implications, calling into question the spatial founda-
tions whereby cultural production itself is conceptualized, which is so
often nation-­based.

Anime Out of Place

Many of the dynamics of the performance of anime’s media-­form that
are usually invisible in Japan-­based, place-­focused anime are fore-
grounded in the recent omnibus film Shikioriori (Flavors of Youth; Sì shì
qīngchūn, 2018), an openly transnational anime production that features
three short films depicting life in different places in China: Shanghai
(Shanghai Koi, directed by Haoling Li, president of Haoliners), Guang-
zhou (Chiisana Fashion Show, directed by Takeuchi Yoshitaka), and
Hunan and Beijing (Surprise, directed by Xiaoxing Yi). These places
are all depicted in the characteristic style of the studio CoMix Wave
Films—­with detailed, painterly backgrounds and nostalgic, often bitter-
sweet undertones—­made famous by works directed by Shinkai Makoto,
such as the 2016 hit Your Name, popular in both China and Japan.
Here, the example of the promotional materials for Shikioriori may
be illuminating. The film is presented as a coproduction by Chinese
studio Haoliners, with their studio Emon in Tokyo, and Japanese stu-
dio CoMix Wave, also located in Tokyo. On a promotional Japanese
website, all three directors provide short comments about their films.
In his statements, Li discusses how, for those of his generation, the tra-
ditional Shanghainese architectural style consisted of “family homes”
of closeness and warmth, but “just like eras, people disappear, and
these Shanghainese buildings are little by little torn down.” Takeuchi,
 Anime’s Dislocation 285

noting a trip to Guangzhou, describes “modern, brand new buildings”

juxtaposed to “areas that maintained the scenery of an older era” and
remarks on the rapid speed of change, “as if the changing of eras was
represented in an image [of the landscape].”32 Yi notes how his short
was based on a story he wrote when he first arrived in Beijing and was
reminiscing about his hometown. Yi explains that, though he had re-
ceived offers to film this story in live-­action cinema, when he heard of
this project he decided to try directing and adapting his story into an
anime (the word used is anime, not “Japanese anime”). It should also be
noted that directors Li and Yi are both part of the generation in China
that grew up with anime.
These are brief paragraphs, but certain themes are evident. Li and
Takeuchi focus on the effect of shifts in the landscape, and Yi appears
to see anime as the preferred media-­form for the adaptation of his
work. Taken as a whole, it is evident how modernity (in its conflict
with the traditional) and its expression in anime are intertwined here
in a manner that is, although promotional, revealed to be meaningful
to the Chinese and Japanese producers, published with the presumed
recognition that it would resonate with viewers. To draw on these state-
ments taken at face value, anime’s creativity is appealing because it is
germane to the contemporary form of modernization China is under­
going: moving toward a creative, rather than industrial, economy.
Anime’s creativity is decidedly late­or postmodern, engaging with the
problematics of (re)combination and citationality, and, due to its reli-
ance on conventions, it fits well with the regularity of output required
in the competitive field of global media. In consideration of this, using
anime’s media-­form to depict places in China is appealing for its ability
to work through issues that are of local concern.
That said, it is necessary to delve further into the transnationality
at play here. As far as I can find, there are no official Chinese-­language
versions of the above Japanese press release, only unofficial translations
on blogs and news sites. One may presume that not publicizing the pro-
duction in Chinese is to further authenticate it as focused on the Japa-
nese market. Put differently, the film appears to court Chinese as well
as global audiences through Japan via the comments by producers in
Japanese. This strategy is replicated in other marketing materials. For
example, despite having Chinese-­and Japanese-­language dubs, many
of the English-­language promotional articles and official international
286 Anime’s Dislocation

trailers feature the Japanese version, sometimes including the theme

song used to promote the film, which is also in Japanese.33 Such authen­
ticating acts actually reaffirm Japan’s centrality to anime, even as they
are transnational gestures. This type of transnationality is difficult to
place under current frameworks, forcing one to come to terms with
anime’s media heterotopia and reconsider how to conceptualize crea­
tive production under current modes of globalization, where the two
nations are clearly visible at once.
In this context, it is interesting to note that this anime film was pro-
moted as a production by Japanese studio CoMix Wave and Chinese
Haoliners (which owns Emon), making it almost an inverse of the more
prominent structure of transnational production. In this case, two of
the Chinese directors and writers are at the top of the hierarchy of
production, and much of the animation was done in Japan, with some
work done in Korea (though this wasn’t acknowledged in the film’s pro-
motion). This reversal of the usual imagined production hierarchy also
resonates with the anime’s performance of place. In each section of the
film, Shikioriori is insistent on its setting in China, depicting the shift-
ing landscape of China’s modernization but following the convention of
recent place-­based anime that showcase places in Japan by focusing on
minor, quotidian moments and locales rather than grandiose images
directly associated with the national.
Both the Hunan and Shanghai short films have scenes that display a
nostalgia for earlier places: the Hunan section laments the closing and
then reopening of a particular restaurant and the bittersweet nature
of the passage of time, with backgrounds that show recently modern-
ized places and their older versions from the narrator’s hometown; the
Shanghai film shows the transitions and demolition of the old, stone-­
walled sections of the city and an ironic miscommunication that causes
two adolescents to part ways, only to be reunited after the newly reno-
vated sections open. These bittersweet stories and the lush visual style
they are presented in are trademarks of CoMix Wave. While this is
one studio’s style of enacting the conventions of anime, it is still very
recognizably an anime regardless of its insistence on a Chinese cultural
backdrop. For instance, the Shanghai section features many narrative
tropes commonly employed in anime, such as an intense focus on en-
trance exams and a miscommunication that sends a romance awry.
Furthermore, its characters operate through figurative acting. One of
 Anime’s Dislocation 287

the film’s final shots is of a character performing anime’s conventional

smile of arched eyes and a tilted head, which is also used throughout
the film (see Figure 8.1).
In some ways, one can interpret this performance of anime’s media-­
form as attempting to express the particularities of a place, becoming
the invisible conduit through which to read its distinctive content. In
overly optimistic terms, one can see anime as a universal (or, at the
minimum, shared in East Asia) media-­form to the extent that one can
simply focus on the place that is represented. This is similar to seeing
place-­based anime as directly portraying Japan, except that this uni-
versalization of anime estranges it from its exclusive relation to Japan.
Here anime becomes the intermediary between China and the world,
especially because Shikioriori is distributed globally by Netflix. In this
view, these works are very clearly about the particulars of place in
China (specifically food, lifestyle, and architecture), just via the anime
media-­form.
Yet, it is hard to regard anime’s media-­form as entirely invisible in
Shikioriori because, at minimum, it has to be acknowledged in some
manner as anime-­esque to be declared either universal or closely re-
lated to Japan, especially because the film attempts to authenticate it-
self via Japan. Therefore, the film’s depictions of places do not really
present singular national locales as such. Instead, Shikioriori provides
a transnational image of what C. J. W.-­L . Wee calls an “urban-­modern
Asia” that “functions as a major expression of a shared commonality-­in-­
difference.”34 Though Wee is addressing East Asian live-­action cinema
openly produced transnationally in the late 1­ 990s and early 2000s, his
analysis can apply to anime. For Wee, the “central commonality is the
ongoing growth of urban-­modern lifestyles,” while “the differences are
not only linguistic and national-­cultural differences, but also the dif-
ferences of the historico-­political struggles to become modern in the
first place.”35 These images of a new, urban-­modern Asia “offer points
of transnational connection within the region and a means of generat-
ing the sale and circulation of cultural products that can negotiate the
zones of national-­cultural differences.”36 With this in mind, Shikioriori
may appear to align with Kuan-­Hsing Chen’s vision of inter-­referencing
across Asia to grasp shared experiences and local distinctions of the
processes of modernity, albeit with an emphasis on the national and
the depiction of urban-­modern lifestyles.
a

b
 c

d
Figure 8.1. Anime-­esque conventional codes for smiling (b, c) and direct
depictions of Shanghai (a, d) from Shanghai Koi in Shikioriori.
290 Anime’s Dislocation

From this perspective, the depiction of the lifestyle of a fashion

model in Guangzhou in Chiisana Fashion Show is of particular interest.
The only film with a Japanese director, this short portrays the strug-
gles of an established fashion model who supports her younger sister
through her modeling. Through the trope of the popular idol whose
success gets disturbed by a younger contender and eventually physi-
cally hurts herself to keep her position at the top (a pattern enacted by
Sheryl and Ranka in Macross Frontier, for example), Chiisana Fashion
Show portrays an urban-­modern lifestyle that resonates with depictions
in other anime and in other media. And with the animation performed
in the branded style of CoMix Wave—­an anime studio celebrated
for its depictions of places in Japan that famously become spots for
place-­based anime tourism—­it is easy to relate these images of China
to those usually associated with Japan. The effect is concomitant with
what Wee observes of East Asian coproduced cinema: “a shared aspi-
ration for a common urban-­modern lifestyle [that] offered one possible
way by which to narrativize and spatially conceive the commonality-­
in-­difference of the New Asia.”37
In this case, there is a careful balance that needs to be attained,
where the details of place are particular to these Chinese locales but
effectively expressed in anime’s media-­form. In other words, the recog-
nizable anime-­esque tropes and conventions usually associated with
Japan are performed on a background of places in China. Chinese cities
are thus presented as containing the same imagery and affective mo-
ments as those commonly displayed in anime and other media about
already modernized, urban Japan. Once more, anime’s media-­form
is not invisible because it has to be acknowledged as anime-­esque in
some way to be perceived as either universal or closely related to Japan.
Here, what allows one to see a “commonality-­in-­difference” and points
to Japan and the transnational is not the represented content, which is
clearly about Chinese cities, but the media-­form.
At the same time, Shikioriori appears to operate in line with the
projection of soft power, not of Japan but ostensibly of China. In this
sense, even as Shikioriori tries to create a sense of nostalgia for the
particulars of Shanghai, Hunan, and Guangzhou, the very media-­
form of its exposition betrays the tensions of dislocation, of how
easy it may be to see Japan overlaid on the Chinese landscape. Yet
 Anime’s Dislocation 291

S­ hikioriori is not Japan’s view of China, nor does it place Japan in

China. That said, the very dynamics of dislocation are enmeshed with
the national even as they gesture beyond it because the dislocation
itself is premised on anime’s relation to Japan. Consequently, the dis-
location Shikioriori performs becomes more visible due to the seem-
ingly out-­of-­place media-­form of “Japanese anime” depicting Chinese
modernization. Therefore, it is not only modernity that is visible but
also the intersection of globalization with the accompanying spatial-
ity of dislocation. Judgments of performance in terms of both quality
and authenticity shoot off in both directions, back and forth from
China and Japan: how felicitous is the performance of media-­form,
and how accurate is the depiction of these Chinese cities? Indeed,
highly polished, non­polluted imagery of the cities can be interpreted
either as a continuation of CoMix Wave’s characteristic style of anime
or as an overt attempt to present a clean urban image, erasing any
sense of pollution.
While Shikioriori initially appears to be a theatrical performance in
Egginton’s sense, of projection and identification spatially organized in
a manner that allows the envisioning of the nation-­state, anime’s media-­
form tends to move it toward something like Weber’s theatrical dis-
placement across national borders. In this sense, an ambivalence arises
out of the inability to actually place these short films, inviting questions
about whether any element is represented because of the actual place it
is from or because of anime’s commitment to reiterating conventions
that are ostensibly from Japan. Therefore, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and
Hunan each become theatrically dislocated. Additionally, based on the
actualities of its production, Shikioriori is a highly transnational work
that invites consideration beyond an inter-­national framework, where
one nation is situated inside another. A more media heterotopic ap-
proach is required, which necessarily reorganizes modern conceptions
of place toward this border-­crossing dynamic. However, the work still
seems to emphasize the national, with China in focus and anime-­esque
Japan as the point of reference. In these ways, Shikioriori engages a
complex problematic, revealing a spatiality of dislocation on multiple
levels and a transnationality where two nation-­states are highlighted at
once, with Japan still somehow prominently present despite the explicit
portrayals of places in China.
292 Anime’s Dislocation

Dislocating Differently
For much of this book, I have paid more attention to the tendency of
anime’s transnationality to engage with its relation to Japan, whereby
the anime-­esque signals Japan, even when outside of it in works like
­Shikioriori, which actively attempts to authenticate itself via its produc-
tion in Japan. In this manner, despite Shikioriori’s open trans­nationality
and overt depiction of Chinese cities, it still centralizes Japan in its
anime performance. Here, however, I would like to examine an anime
performance that seems to embrace other patterns of spatiality, em-
phasizing the potentials of a decentralized network. While central-
ized and decentralized networks tend to coincide, it is worthwhile to
explore another example of anime’s performance of media-­form that
tends toward a more heterarchical sense of dislocation: the 2017 anime
King’s Avatar (Quánzhí Gāoshǒu; Masutā obu sukiru zenshokukōte).
Before introducing the series, it is relevant to note that King’s Ava­
tar is open about its transnationality in a way that is distinct from
Shikioriori. The voice acting is done entirely in Chinese, and there are
currently no Japanese-­language or English-­language dubs, implying
a different positioning. Importantly, it garnered significant attention
online from English-­speaking fans and some attention from Japanese-­
speaking fans, proving that anime does not always have to be marketed
in direct relation to Japan. That said, as noted in chapter 1, the most
popular English-­language anime list site, MyAnimeList.net, provides
only English and Japanese as title categories, forcing a relation to Japan
that the anime’s marketing itself does not. It is also not even listed in
the Anime News Network database, ostensibly because it is not made
in Japan, although they have featured articles on the series. But that
does not mean its production is not transnational in any manner. In-
deed, although King’s Avatar’s central studio, B.CMay Pictures, is lo-
cated in Shanghai, and many of the associated companies appear to be
located in China, the studio Colored Pencil Animation (itself partly
owned by Tencent) has a studio in Japan that worked on part of the se-
ries. Interestingly, as Nakafuji Rei reported, when Colored Pencil Japan
was forced to outsource work locally due to budgetary issues and sent
in unsatisfactory animation, the studio in China returned it, saying the
quality was not up to standard.38 Taking its production history into ac-
 Anime’s Dislocation 293

count, King’s Avatar opens up the idea of an alternative center of trans-

national anime production outside of Japan, in this case, in Shanghai.
Hence, in terms of its visuals, King’s Avatar is very exacting in main-
taining the expectations of mainstream anime, deftly performing the
media-­form while never hiding the fact that it is in Chinese and about
characters in China. In addition, King’s Avatar employs many common
combinations of anime conventions, specifically those of the battle-­
oriented action genre that feature characters in game worlds. The series
begins when a highly respected professional player of the online game
Glory, Ye Xiu, is forced out of his leading team. Made to hand in even
his prized in-­game avatar One Autumn Leaf, Ye Xiu quickly finds him-
self in a nearby internet café that allows people to play Glory. Becom-
ing the night-­shift manager there, Ye Xiu decides to continue playing
Glory but this time start from scratch and make a new avatar. As an
unstoppably powerful player, Ye Xiu’s new avatar quickly gains some
fame, defeating bosses and other characters in impressive displays of
gameplay prowess that astonish those watching. Throughout Ye Xiu’s
journey, he meets many players, some of whom become friends, oth-
ers ambivalent acquaintances, and others rivals, a common pattern in
anime narratives. With well-­drawn character designs (many influenced
by videogame character designs, which are themselves anime-­esque),
the characters travel through the online world and embark on adven-
tures as Ye Xiu gains levels and builds a new team of friends.
One of the highlights of the series is the action sequences, which
(re)perform the anime-­esque elements expected of shōnen (or more
broadly, action-­oriented) anime. For instance, episode 13 deftly performs
the convention where two characters are locked in a fantastical battle
with complex animated sequences of attacks rhythmically interspersed
with relatively still scenes of dialogue between two separate characters
explaining the strategy and background of the fight. Also included in
the battle is a common trope where the characters are moving so fast
they become beams of light that clash against one another, producing
an effect something like the Itano circus missile barrage. Addition-
ally, the anime consistently uses anime-­esque figurative expressions,
from arched eyes for happiness to white circle eyes of shock. Like
the repeated figurative codes of anime’s actors, just on a larger scale,
this anime is distinct but linked to other iterations, identifiable in its
294 Anime’s Dislocation

particulars but also related to other anime. In these ways, King’s Avatar
deftly performs its identity as anime.
But interestingly, the series sets its very plot in motion on the con-
cept of (mis)taken identity. Ye Xiu is forced to give up his online avatar,
and when he begins his new job as a night manager at the internet café
and admits that he is the famous One Autumn Leaf, the manager does
not believe him because One Autumn Leaf is something of a celebrity
in esports. All this occurs in the first episode, making it central to the
narrative of the series. Interestingly, King’s Avatar even acknowledges
the importance of recognizability through performance. For instance,
although the schism between avatar and player allows different ­players
to hide behind other avatars (which happens a few times in the series),
the techniques of performance can be seen as influenced by other play-
ers’ styles or reveal a player’s identity. This occurs in episode 7 when
Ye Xiu and his opponent both suspect each other’s player identity de-
spite them using different avatars than they are known for. This hap-
pens again in episode 15, when Ye Xiu plays as a substitute for someone
else in an exhibition match. Although he plays a different avatar, his
performance of difficult moves identifies him as Ye Xiu to the intra­
diegetic audiences watching the match.
Because Ye Xiu demonstrates that an avatar’s statistics don’t matter
as much as the skill of the player performing with that avatar, the series
also plays with another common action anime trope: that there are no
limits, in this case in regard to who can play and the technical me-
chanics of the game. This trope relates to what Selen Çalik Bedir calls
“(re)play” whereby ostensibly predictable patterns, such as the habitual
breaking of limits in action-­oriented anime, are turned into a game-­like
experience that “evokes interest in the audience as to how victory will
be gained (instead of if victory will be gained).”39 Indeed, part of the
joy of watching King’s Avatar is in seeing how Ye Xiu defeats his oppo-
nents, even though it is clear he will never lose. Bedir conceives of this
engagement with the extreme predictability imposed on narratives as
a “(re)playing of anime,” an enactment of the game-­like in a media-­and
information-­saturated world: “(Re)playing anime rests on knowing that
anything can happen in such (emotionally organized) limitless worlds
where every character is a potential hero, or more specifically within
the playspaces of ambiguity that the medium creates in its own way,
 Anime’s Dislocation 295

with its own tools, at a given time, and recombining salvageable narra-
tive elements in new ways if desired.”40
Therefore, building on Bedir’s conclusions, one can see how King’s
Avatar presents the recognizable anime-­esque approaches to (re)
play, with an emphasis on a perpetual engagement with limits. Read
through the framework of this book, the limits do not have to be iso-
lated to the intradiegetic and can extend to the anime-­esque conven-
tions themselves. In the present study’s terms, Bedir’s theorization of
(re)play can be interpreted as a tangible example of the problematic
of performing anime’s identity in the tensions between repetition and
variation and of maintaining recognizability while avoiding redun-
dancy, reaching toward uniformity as it seeks out diversity. In this
sense, King’s Avatar not only felicitously performs the anime-­esque
but also literally (re)plays these conventions as it articulates its identity
as anime. Here, the emphasis on the virtuosity of performance in the
narrative can be overlaid onto the fidelity of performing anime-­esque
conventions. In this perspective, King’s Avatar may also be read as
seeking to break out of the imposed limits of the spatial grounding of
anime in Japan as it displays its virtuosity in enacting the anime-­esque
and, in effect, engages with the problematic of dislocation. In consid-
eration of this, King’s Avatar, which felicitously performs the anime-­
esque, tends to eschew anxieties over spatially grounding the self in
concrete locales and instead transposes its problematics of dislocation
toward other concerns.
Indeed, while the world-­setting occasionally displays recognizable
sections of Shanghai, the focus is squarely on the online and off-line
dynamics of esports gaming culture in China. King’s Avatar may thus
initially seem to fall into the same tendency as Shikioriori, engaging
the theatricality of Egginton and projecting something of the spatial
organization of the national (China). However, this may not be the case.
One review of the series notes that the interaction between online and
off-line worlds is actually what sets King’s Avatar’s world-­setting apart
from other recent anime yet also relates it to them. Interpreted as dis-
tinct from the isekai genre, where characters often get trapped inside
complex game-ic worlds, King’s Avatar involves a game world but in-
cludes depictions of both off-line and online worlds. In this sense, even
its innovations make sense in an anime-­esque way, as attention is paid
296 Anime’s Dislocation

to variation of a repeated anime-­esque trope, thus connecting it to so-­

called Japanese anime genres.41 That said, this does not mean that there
is no cultural specificity to King’s Avatar’s esports world-­setting, and
some of the nuances of the story become difficult to grasp without that
cultural knowledge. Yet, this culture does not have the same specific,
indexical relation to a supposed grounding in a precise “real-­world
place” that the locations in Shikioriori present.
Therefore, one may interpret the stage of the internet café as the
access point for the game, which in turn becomes another stage that
then affects the real world. In this sense, King’s Avatar evinces a strong
tendency toward Weber’s theatricality of displacement. In fact, the
anime succinctly displays the tensions of dislocation, with most of the
action occurring either in various locations in an online game or in one
location in the real world: the internet café. This overlaps with Virilio’s
notion of “motion on the spot,” which in turn connects to the disloca-
tion of anime-­esque performances in general, whereby each iteration is
always deferred to other enactments through their relations.
Interestingly, the internet game is positioned as a place that has his-
tory but is also a place to start over, giving people a chance to forge new
connections and renew themselves. The game thereby functions as a
stage for (re)performing the self, facilitating the anime to maintain an
engagement with the classical actor’s question of Who am I? even as
it regularly sways toward the Where am I? problematic. For instance,
Ye Xiu seems to want to stay anonymous, and many sequences involve
people trying to find where he is online in-­game. At the same time,
Ye Xiu’s flamboyant gameplay performances effectively identify him as
the celebrity esports player in the real world, as in episode 15 when he
performs a difficult move at a public tournament and fans immediately
recognize him. Here, the self of the character becomes the locus of ac-
tion, completely divided but also linked: character as player, character
as avatar. Characters’ selves are both avatar and player but are separate
enough that other players can use their avatar. There is thus an indis-
tinction (in Lamarre and Merleau-­Ponty’s sense) between player and
avatar, which is all the more pronounced because of the performance
of anime’s media-­form both online and in the real world. Like Shiro-
bako, where anime characters reference themselves to produce more
anime-­esque facial expressions, because the Glory game world and the
 Anime’s Dislocation 297

real world utilize the same anime-­esque codes to express selfhood,

there is an implied degree of equivalence between them despite their
divide. Whether online or in the real world, though costumes change,
most of the characters share the same facial designs and hair styles,
and all express with the same anime-­esque figurative acting codes (Fig-
ure 8.2). Still, there is not always a direct parallel between the designs
of the player and avatar—­some have different hairstyles while others
have completely different designs not possible in the real world—­and
players often use different avatars, swapping them or playing them in
secret. Therefore, the performance of self is not located in a single body
but can transfer, dislocate, and move from point to point, linking with
others as they play their avatars. Any player could use any avatar (one
character could be anywhere: Where am I?). At the same time, a play-
er’s performance may identify him or her (this avatar is specifically that
person: Who am I?).
All of this intersects with how, in King’s Avatar, the online world
affords the forging of new selfhoods but is also interdependent with
the real world, directly visualizing what Levitt sees as the merging and
exchange of media space and body space in the animatic era. This is
exemplified by Ye Xiu and other characters’ roles as esports celebri-
ties whose popularity in the game world imparts popularity in the real
world. After Ye Xiu leaves his famous avatar and team behind to re-
start, he forges new networks of friends and enemies as he (re)plays the
game, reestablishing his and his new avatar’s celebrity in the process.
This consequently individualizes him, as it establishes a new celebrity
that later connects to his past identity, relating to the Who am I? ques-
tion. At the same time, embracing the networked tendency of figurative
acting, Ye Xiu and his cohorts are not only dislocated via the expression
of anime-­esque codes but also intradiegetically across the real world
and online game world of Glory. In this sense, the dislocation of the
characters occurs because of the anime-­esque conventions utilized to
perform particular-­characters—­which dislocate them in terms of ref-
erencing other instances in other characters—­a long with the spatial
relation between avatars and players and the online and real worlds.
This makes the characters’ selves distinct but linked, emphasizing the
Where am I? problematic as they exist across avatars and players as well
as across media spaces and real spaces.
a

b
 c

d
Figure 8.2. Anime-­esque figurative codes performed in King’s ­Avatar
by Ye Xiu (a, b) and other characters, in-­game (a, c) and in the real
world (b, d).
300 Anime’s Dislocation

In addition, though it seems player skill means more than avatar

levels, there are a few moments that strongly suggest the game’s agency
on the player. For example, in episode 8, Ye Xiu advises a younger, un-
derperforming player to switch classes, as a different avatar’s class may
better suit his personal play style, which the character does to some
success. It implies that a player must adjust to the game, and the game
in turn builds up the player. This is somewhat similar to Lamarre’s ob-
servations in his analysis of avatars in the .hack series, which function
as something between individualized players projecting elements of
their real-­world personality and nonpersonal dispositions—­the avatar’s
own qualities that are not a projection of someone’s unique personality.
For Lamarre, the avatar in .hack is “the site of assembly of polarized
tendencies, which makes it also feel able to produce something new, a
middle that is both and neither.”42 This complex dynamic via the enact-
ment of selfhood (where the indistinction between player and avatar
intersects with figurative acting) and the sense of virtuosity of game
performance overlaps with King’s Avatar’s performance of anime and
the transnationality it exemplifies.
In consideration of this, to return to Bedir’s sense of (re)playing
anime and limit breaking, there is a transformative potential in King’s
Avatar’s view of virtuosity in performance. While Ye Xiu tends to be
relatively self-­assured in his performances, other characters he takes
under his wing go through the conventional lapses in confidence and
accompanying identity crises that are common in anime narratives,
which directly connect to their capacity to perform well in the game.
But each time, Ye Xiu guides them, helping them gain confidence that
they will improve with practice, which often does occur. Moreover,
Ye Xiu beginning as a new character and quickly gaining a following
due to his practiced skill implies that virtuosity of performance can
be recognizable and rewarded, even if the avatar is different. In this
sense, the anime seems to emphasize a meritocratic approach to per-
formance, whereby it is characters’ skills that allow them a sense of
identity and accomplishment. To push this interpretation a little fur-
ther, King’s Avatar can be read in terms of the more idealistic approach
to conventionality, copying, and performativity that I have alluded to
across this book: by embracing the radical, mimetic potentials of an-
ime’s media-­form, its iterability cannot be easily contained or smoothly
aligned with exclusive (national) cultural ownership. It does not neces-
 Anime’s Dislocation 301

sarily matter who performs or where the performance occurs as long as

it adheres to the anime-­esque structural model in a felicitous manner.
From this perspective, the anime appears somewhat optimistic that
this is not a transnationality performed through Japan or over Japan
but rather something more open, less exclusively tied to a single nation,
undercutting modern worldviews of cultural production.
Although such an idealistic vision where performance is judged only
by its felicity may initially appear attractive, this isn’t always the case
in practice. For instance, an English-­language article on King’s Avatar
reassures readers in its title that “Tencent’s Chinese eSports anime is
really anime but also extremely eSports.” Although the word “Japan”
is not mentioned in the short article, because “Chinese eSports” is so
prominently featured it is not hard to interpret the “non-­Japaneseness”
of the anime as necessitating an assurance of its fidelity to the media-­
form.43 Another article on the show notes that “each country has its
own basic style or flavor of animation” and that anime from Japan is the
most prominent of Asian animations. However, the article calls King’s
Avatar a pleasant surprise from Chinese animation, even introducing
it as a counterpart to so-­called Japanese anime.44 In such ways, the uni-
versalizing gesture of performing anime away from Japan, even with-
out any marketing to authenticate it as Japanese, still somehow relates
back to Japan. Hence, it is not an exaggeration to say that despite King’s
Avatar’s relatively conservative performance of anime’s media-­form—­
that is, its tendency to keep out experimentation beyond established
performance models—­it still must battle with its association to Japan,
in contrast to works like Ping-­Pong, which are highly experimental in
their character design but do not have to prove their authenticity due
to their acknowledged origin in Japan. That said, the first article does
call King’s Avatar “really anime,” and the second praises it for its qual-
ity as an anime series and its enjoyable engagement with anime-­esque
character types and tropes.
All this taken into consideration, not isolated to these articles, the
emphasis on elements like Chinese esports and Chinese animation
implies that there may be an estranging element in the otherwise fe-
licitous performance of anime’s media-­form, painting King’s Avatar as
something like a hybrid work. Although King’s Avatar does bring in
elements of a local esports culture, it sticks so closely to anime-­esque
models (sources ostensibly from Japan) that it does not appear hybrid
302 Anime’s Dislocation

in the traditional sense, instead gravitating toward the hybridity that

comes with accusations of mimicry—­a charge Shikioriori attempts to
dissuade by positioning itself as authentically related to Japan. King’s
Avatar, on the other hand, appears to be a copy, downplaying diver-
gence in favor of repetition—­a creative act, but not in the modern sense
of originality. In this perspective, King’s Avatar is hybrid in the sense
that it is indistinct, dissolving boundaries as it plays with semblance;
it links to earlier iterations even as it articulates its particularity. Yet
this type of hybridity is often derided because it exposes the imitabil-
ity of something supposedly culturally specific. Indeed, King’s Avatar
reveals a hybridity that operates via mimicry in the same manner that
all anime are: keeping close to a performance model yet always being
particular in its enactment to make it distinct from its sources. This
performance foregrounds the creativity in mimicry, of repeating and
re-­performing, breaking limits as mimicry works within them.
To draw this back to King’s Avatar’s articulation of itself as anime,
the only reason a divide is emphasized between this work and so-­
called anime proper is its relation to China and thus the inter-­national
framework. But as I have tried to show throughout this book, anime has
always been transnational, and each performance is in some sense en-
gaging with the decentralized dynamic of the network. From this per-
spective, the indistinction of King’s Avatar—­that is, the dissolving of
a perceived strict division of borders between Self and Other, between
player and avatar, between Chinese anime and Japanese anime while
not erasing distinction completely—­is simply drawing more attention
to the decentralized operations of anime’s transnationality, inviting
a more heterarchical transnational view of the anime-­esque “coming
into common” in East Asia and beyond. In many ways, King’s Avatar
gestures toward the transcultural potential of the anime-­esque to dis-
locate media beyond established coordinates, hinting at something
shared in (re)playing and (re)performing, affording, if not endorsing, a
selfhood that is distinct but linked to others across media spaces and
real spaces.

Anime’s Complex Spatiality

While each anime will have its own distinct performance of disloca-
tion, what can be said about the general patterns of anime’s spatiality?
 Anime’s Dislocation 303

To return to Levitt’s conception of the simulacrum of animation as a

medium, images of quotidian Japan appear to be desperate responses
to Cool Japan, attempts to ground anime in a place-­based reality that
it fundamentally cannot be grounded in. This is exacerbated by the
global spread of anime. The anxiousness of globalization is reflected
in this push toward indexicality. Here, once more, the problematic of
dislocation occurs, an endless pursuit of attempting to become situ­
ated. Anime’s performance of media-­form enacts these tensions of
dislocation, specifically in regard to globalization, whereby it becomes
increasingly difficult to securely become located and grounded as sub-
jects in the classical, modern sense.
While Egginton’s theatricality points to a mode of spatiality inher-
ited from the modern period, I have tried to delineate the operations of
a different type of spatiality, one prominent in contemporary globali­
zation. Anime’s performances tend to operate closer to Weber’s the-
atricality, where there is an unease and tension about spatiotemporal
situatedness, even when an enactment is in some sense situated in that
instantiation. This does not necessarily mean that anime’s spatiality
is overtaking the modern one but that, in the contemporary moment,
these two may appear in varying degrees, as seen in both anime ana-
lyzed: anime as the (in)visible medium to represent China or any other
place in Shikioriori and anime’s performance of media-­form directly
depicting a dislocation across stages (online and/or real) in King’s Ava­
tar. Therefore, I have tried to draw attention to the tension between
the two theatricalities in the performance of anime’s media-­form (one
never subsuming the other), which come into conflict and conflation
with the dynamics of the transnational, whereby anime cannot seem
to escape its relation to Japan, even as it moves beyond those national
boundaries. Put in other terms used in this book, the modern tends
to embrace the form of the bordered-­whole, grounded in a location,
with an inside and an outside; the dynamics of dislocation in anime’s
media-­form operate through the form of network, where inside and
outside, from the modern point of view, become thoroughly blurred as
disparate points connect across vast distances.
For anime, this seems to imply both the point-­to-­point and
one-­to-­many/many-­to-­one operations of networks that Lamarre de-
tails, whereby there is a clear instantiation of a localized point that
is specific (many-­to-­one) but that also connects to a variety of other
304 Anime’s Dislocation

instances (point-­to-­point) as it itself becomes a site for citation and

relation elsewhere. This also means that all these dynamics can coin-
cide and clash at the same time, each occurring in different degrees.
Indeed, the one-­to-­many operations, like those of the transnational
production network, can give the impression that the “one” is Japan
(the centralized network overlapping with the bordered-­whole of the
nation-­state). This seems to be the case with Shikioriori, which fore-
grounds the nation-­state(s), keeping Japan central to anime, even as it
opens it up to the transnational as a means to view China, bouncing
back and forth between these two points. At the same time, the many-­
to-­one and point-­to-­point dynamics intimate that there is something
more shared across established boundaries, a transcultural potential of
“something coming into common.”45
This makes anime like King’s Avatar somewhat harder to place. King’s
Avatar is deeply concerned with virtuosity of performance, reaching
out to the decentralized transnationality of the anime-­esque, even as it
evinces another center of anime enactment outside of Japan. Yet con-
ceiving of King’s Avatar as notable in such a regard is contingent on
conceiving anime as a primarily Japanese cultural product—­otherwise
the crossing of those borders would not be noteworthy. The bordered-­
whole nation quietly operates in the background, even as those bound-
aries are breached. Oddly, this brings the more radical potential of the
decentralized iterability of anime further into focus: a transcultural
media-­form that is difficult to contain within a simplistic framework
of national ownership. Anime’s performance of media-­form thus does
not insist on the neat, ordered world of the nation-­state, for, as detailed
above, anime explores a difficult, complex spatiality, enacting the dif-
fering dislocation(s) of globalization.
In this perspective, anime’s global expansion is far more than
the spread of Japanese culture to different nations. The issue is com-
pounded by works like Shikioriri and King’s Avatar that focus on places
outside of Japan, highlighting the media-­form and its dynamics of dis-
location. However, these operations are not necessarily unique to such
openly transnational productions, as they only make one more aware
of an already existing dynamic, presenting more obvious engagements
with dislocating place(s). This ambivalence to grounding place is cru-
cial to consider, not only for its evincing of a non-­indexical relationship
to reality but also because it reveals inherent issues with the idea of
 Anime’s Dislocation 305

projecting soft power, which is founded on the spatiality of the modern

nation-­state. As Shikioriori and King’s Avatar exemplify, such ambiva­
lence overlaps with the current dynamics of transnationality, where
a more media heterotopic view is required. The spatiality enacted
through anime’s performances of its media-­form may be examined as
a particular historical mode of existence. Afforded by such a spatiality,
this mode of existence can engender different forms of selfhood, differ-
ent relations to the nation-­state, and different approaches to place and
geography altogether, a reorganization of how to conceive of ourselves
and the world.
This page intentionally left blank
 Conclusion
Anime’s World

Anime’s Performance of Media-­form

In some ways, this work has been an effort to highlight the potential in
repetition through performative convention while still acknowledging
its oppressive capacity. In Levine’s words, “Modernity is in thrall to
innovation. Think about how we tell the history of art and literature
and technology all as stories of breaks and disruptions. We celebrate
the innovators as heroes. At the same time, modernity ushered in one
of the most terrifying kinds of repetition. . . . For many theorists since
the nineteenth century, art alone is the force that can break through
the deadening routines of modern existence.”1 While repetition can
imply a sense of obedience, of keeping within the same sphere, it can
also imply something that endures. Indeed, Levine asserts that repe-
tition is also about maintenance, about sustaining something, often a
criterion of health (e.g., maintaining nutritious eating habits). Further-
more, as Gerald Rauning alludes to, in spite of the history of compul-
sive conformism and assimilation, there is a potential to conceive of a
“non-­pliable similarity” that can be resistive.2 In this sense, repetition,
especially as convention, is both controlling and difficult to control.
Such a notion of repetition also implies a reluctance to ownership, as
what repeats is not easily contained. Moreover, it can be the basis of a
sense of commonality and sharing.
At the same time, it is equally as important to stress that even the
most rigid repetition involves a difference. Repetition can only occur
through difference—­iterations must be different, or they would not be
repetitions. Difference is involved in each repetition and can be pro-
ductively engaged with, revealing diversity and distinction, as well as
creating an opportunity for transformation, difficult though it may be.3
Here, strangely, repetition has a destabilizing capacity as well. Indeed,

9 307 0
308 Conclusion

repetition can facilitate disruption, such as in semantic satiation, the

playful game of repeating a word so many times it begins to sound
absurd. Repetition of language can be accumulative and gain meaning,
but in a short period can deteriorate into incoherence by rapid, redun-
dant repetition.
With this in mind, I tried to conceptualize anime’s identity not as
working under a static set of properties or borders but as working
within a field of restraint while still allowing for fluidity and open-
ness to change—­anime as interconnected and dynamic. While I have
stressed the importance of anime’s repetition, reiteration, and a reluc-
tance to deviate from structural models, each enactment still carries a
sense of motion, of difference inserted into each enactment. Anime’s
identity is a constant negotiation, relating to and contingent on prior
instances as it seeks out new connections.
The performance of anime’s identity takes on a global dimension
because the media-­form has come to be closely identified with Japa-
nese culture, even as its spreads around the world. In Japan, anime was
once considered a vulgar subculture product, but from the 1990s and
increasingly in the first decade of the 2000s, it was promoted through
nation branding as representative of Japan. Anime was presented as a
product that could expand globally to provide economic growth, com-
peting on the global stage, a role it continues to this day. The reconfig-
uring of anime from a subcultural media to a national media of global
prominence occurred concurrently with an intensification of global
neoliberalism and its promotion of creative industries and individual-
ism. But even against this backdrop, anime’s media-­form has the po-
tential to produce other modes of selfhood well ­aligned to the practices
of everyday life in this globalized world. Anime thus becomes the site
where the tensions of the global, national, and subcultural intersect,
intertwining with conceptions of the individual as anime coincides
with other mechanics of performing selfhood, all appearing enmeshed
in the conditions of neoliberalism. Anime engage these complexities
in their many performances, enacting modes of existence, perception,
and expression that are well attuned to this moment of globalization.
While the anime-­esque has the potential to undercut notions of
cultural ownership, there is also a strong tendency to associate it with
Japan. This book has tried to account for these two poles by attending to
the transnational (where the national has not vanished entirely), but it
 Conclusion 309

is a difficult network to navigate. Slipping too far into the transnational

or global risks eliding anime of any sense of specificity, and ground-
ing anime too concretely in Japan prevents it from crossing borders
in a transformative manner, locking it in stasis. There is no denying
that the anime-­esque signals Japan, but a performative view of media-­
form enables some degree of balance. The felicitous performance of
conventions affords decentralized transnational possibilities while the
material actualities of that performance centralize Japan. Even there,
however, a reexamination of the one-­to-­many in favor of a many-­to-­one
dynamic can help (re)integrate the transnational labor that sustains
anime’s media-­form. This book has been an effort to explore the po-
tentials of cultural production beyond the nation, of a creativity pre-
mised on repetition to engage with forms in a manner that allows for
exploration of the tensions of globalization and neoliberalism. As this
view of anime takes shape, perhaps so do alternative notions of cultural
production, geography, and identity on the global stage.
This becomes all the more pertinent as we face the most pressing
global issue: ongoing environmental destruction and the catastrophe
of climate change. This is something that crosses all human borders as
weather patterns change, deforestation enables winds to carry toxins and
dust across previously blocked swaths of land, and the oceans bring pol-
lution and radiation to locations across the globe. This forces a radical re-
consideration of issues of the local, national, regional, and global, as well
as the ethics and interactions between nonhuman and human actors.
It invites a rethinking of fundamental stances and how interactions on
various scales are engaged with and thought through, from the micro to
the macro, from inside to outside. As a globally promi­nent media-­form,
anime and its particular performances provide fertile ground for further
explorations of these dynamics.

Enacting Selfhood
This book, especially the later chapters, focuses on the 1990s and the
first decades of the 2000s, an era when there was an intensification of
neoliberalism in Japan. But this is not isolated to Japan or that time
period; it appears that we are still squarely in an era where policies,
discourses, and concepts of neoliberalism are globally prevalent. With
an emphasis on personal responsibility and entrepreneurial creativity,
310 Conclusion

neoliberalism idealizes individualism, which is a model that many

media perform and are judged by.
For much of modernity, the individual was considered the ideal of
characterization, the standard by which characters, both real and fic-
tional, were judged; individuals were complex but had internally con-
sistent logic, bordered-­wholes whose interiorities were glimpsed in
great art. Such characters are part of the conventions of modern natu-
ralism, which presumes a universal sense of realism and verisimilitude
in characters when they are actually just another type of performance.
Intriguingly, the effects of global neoliberalism have produced different
actualities that conflict with the individualistic ideal.
As discussed in chapter 6, individuals under neoliberalism often
perform their identities by choosing a lifestyle via products. To make
their lifestyles legible, they must cite different products as they swerve
between individualism (choosing products and a look) and particu-
larity (arranging mass-­produced products in specific combinations,
personally following certain trends and not others). Often this is al-
ternatively exhilarating and exhausting, a fatigue contracted as people
oscillate between different identity coordinates. This is all exacerbated
by globalization, with its plethora of multidirectional flows of people,
goods, capital, technology, and media to traverse. Ultimately, the per-
formance of self through lifestyle happens when the bordered-­whole
and the network coincide. On the one hand, the bordered-­whole indi-
vidual is thought to arise out of the selection of external objects and
trends utilized to express selfhood. On the other hand, the very meth-
ods of that performance, like the particular-­character constituted by
figurative acting, tend to operate like a network, linking all those ob-
jects together to form a compound self.
Anime, as a product that rose to its current global prominence under
the intensification of neoliberalism, performs an aesthetic well suited to
this environment. However, the characters in anime tend to use fig­urative
acting, where images of codified expressions, often still or with minor
movements, swiftly shift to other images of a preexisting expression, cre-
ating an (in)distinct set of such citations. Each character is composed of
a particular enactment of a changing set of codified expressions that cite
past performances. These shared codes operate and sustain themselves
by reiterating their externality to the performer, creating a very different
dynamic between internal and external from that of individualism.
 Conclusion 311

However, I do not want to imply that the self of figurative acting is

entirely inclusive; it is exclusionary in its own way, at the minimum of
those who do not understand the codes. Figurative acting is not univer-
sal, and there are various figurative repertoires or databases through-
out even the animated world (e.g., anime vs. Looney Tunes). In this
sense, figurative acting produces its own type of discrimination, but it
is not necessarily isolated to geographic or individual corporeal loca-
tions. There is also a rigidity about the degrees of deviation from the
performance models that are seen as acceptable. However, anime, as a
system of performed conventions, up until now, is not necessarily so
strict that it would not include other codes at times. The dynamics of
this depend on the felicity of those performances, meaning that new
codes can always be folded in.
Yet, there is also the danger that these performances will only be
considered legitimate by those authorized to perform the codes. This
is where Japan comes in, where care must be taken not to deny the
pervasiveness of those codes within Japan but also to avoid advocating
the national origin of a performer/performance as the authenticator of
such enactments. Moreover, it is crucial not to deny the necessity of
iterative performances (often executed by outsourced animators) that
are needed to sustain the recognizability of those codified expressions.
Indeed, anime is one of the few globally prevalent media that offer al-
ternative approaches to selfhood, and one must be careful not to let this
particularity slip into nationalized exceptionalism.
With all this said, figurative acting provides a new point of depar-
ture for an alternative view of selfhood that is not necessarily isolated
to humans. There must be other ways to account for agency and diver­
sity in the constitution of selfhood without relying on the framework
of neoliberal individualism, and anime’s brand of figurative acting
presents one such approach. Since figurative acting creates particular-­
characters drawn from shared, preexisting codes, the selfhood of such
characters becomes a constantly shifting network of codes. Anime’s
figurative acting implies an interconnected element to the idea of a self
that is reliant on this network of prior and future iterations.
Such a conception of selves interconnected via a network is some-
times directly engaged with in anime narratives. This was abstracted
and surrealistically employed in Evangelion, as mentioned in chapter 7,
but it is more concretely visualized in the two most recent Macross
312 Conclusion

b
Figure C.1. Visualization of linkages with the capacity to connect and con-
trol in Macross Frontier (a) and Macross Delta (b).

productions, Macross Frontier and Macross Delta, both of which dis-

play multiple images of characters linked through memories and/or
interconnected by a jagged network of light that traverses great dis-
tances in space (Figure C.1). In this sense, figurative acting in anime
signals a recognition of interconnectivity among people that expands
globally, across time and space and, in its usage in Macross, even across
species. The implications of such a selfhood and how it relates to actual
 Conclusion 313

networks of interconnectivity is worth exploring in this globalized era.

This may provide an alternative approach to issues of identity that could
engender different types of relations among people, places, and objects.
However, it should be stressed that in both Macross series, these net-
works, which extend across whole galaxies, have the capacity to con-
nect and control people, to unite and oppress. With such cautions in
mind, considerations of the networks around us can aid in reconsider-
ing issues of the local, national, transnational, regional, and global, of
subjectivity itself and the ethics and interactions between nonhuman
and human actors. It invites a rethinking of how forms are engaged,
what they can give rise to, the potentials they afford, and, crucially, how
they afford those potentials.

Global Inflections
In consideration of anime’s tendency to slip beyond traditional notions
of spatial organization, it is worthwhile to trace these dynamics to ex-
plore the globality and transnationality it affords. To begin, one of the
popular conceptions of anime’s globality tends to align with nation
branding and the inter-­national institutionalizations of global (official)
distribution that present anime as a national cultural product. As ad-
dressed prior, the bordered-­whole of the individual formally mirrors
that of the modern nation-­state, which is reflected in the cultural pro-
duction and nation branding that map artistic creativity onto nations.
Such a view is quite prominent in the contemporary moment, when it is
increasingly obvious that anime is global while its identity as Japanese
is still very much the standard reading of anime. Indeed, Cool Japan
promotes a view of anime as Japanese popular culture gone global (an
inter-­national view), affirming the primacy of the nation-­state even as
it evinces the permeability of its boundaries. In this framework, anime
becomes Japanese culture, even outside of Japan; we read anime in an-
other country as Japanese culture in another country. Anime becomes
a signifier of Japan even as it is a symbol of globalization, as something
from the external other now inside this country.
But the relationship between Japan and other locations is not one
of participation and exchange across borders but rather of one-­way ac-
cess, from Japan to the world.4 Anime is read as in and from Japan, and
Japan becomes the arbiter of what is and is not anime, even outside of
314 Conclusion

Japan. This makes it difficult to see anime as something more trans-

national, even as anime extends beyond the nation in multiple direc-
tions. Indeed, as I have tried to show, soft power does have its effects,
harnessing the transnational to be contained within the national as it
pushes anime into the global spotlight. This effect is so great that even
works like Shikioriori, which are ostensibly about places in China, seek
to authenticate themselves as anime via their relation to Japan.
Rather than outright dismissing this sense of anime’s globality, I
wanted to explore how this globality was constituted and, in the pro-
cess, reveal its contradictions and anxieties, exposing tensions that are
emblematic of contemporary globalization. Such an internal–­external
examination of anime’s local–­global tensions shows how even some-
thing focused outward (globally) can have local effects, just as some-
thing focused inward (locally) can have global inflections. This tension
becomes all the more intense in the context of Japan because anime is
something global but also Japanese. Therefore, local pilgrimage sites all
over Japan must grapple with an influx of anime tourism from across
the nation and the world by emphasizing sites’ distinctness from other
places. One can connect this tourism boom to the relatively recent
anxiety regarding anime’s globality, which encouraged an indexical
relation between images in anime and pilgrimage sites. Anime tend
to settle on images of prosaic Japan but broadcast them to the world.
While these images can be folded into the national very easily, they can
also fit into local and global frameworks. Using an anime poster, for
example, to promote a tourism site can be seen as a movement toward
the local, sometimes over the national, while also being an acknowl-
edgment of the global dimensions of anime and tourism in general.
However, despite the prevalence of these local–­global tensions, as
Lamarre has noted, “there is still great reluctance to acknowledge the
global address of Japanese entertainment . . . we need to consider how
modes of address can be at once local and global and to address actual
processes of universalization.”5 Taking up Lamarre’s call for consider-
ing the local and global at once, anime’s global address may be exam-
ined in the manner Butler explores in the mutual implication between
an “I” and a “you.”6 As detailed in chapter 7, the “I,” even when giving
an account of itself to a “you,” must in some way make itself intelligi-
ble to the “you” or will fail to make itself recognizable as an account
 Conclusion 315

at all. Therefore, the “you” is somehow implicated in the “I” itself. If

anime is to be seen as addressing a global “you,” and in so doing gives
an account of “I” as Japan, it must do so in terms that are intelligible to
global audiences.
These are not only recognizable genre codes from other media cul-
tures that disclose anime’s globality. Increasingly, anime’s own media-­
form and its performance of anime-­esque elements make it recognizable
as a distinct category of media, one that is supposed to be Japanese. Yet,
if anime is to be intelligible to a global audience, it implicitly acknowl-
edges the shared nature of such anime-­esque elements beyond simple,
one-­way streams of exportation, a mutual intelligibility in the audiences
of anime’s performances. Audiences around the world can understand
and even reproduce anime-­esque elements, implying ani­me’s global-
ity. Moreover, as seen in chapter 1, the internalization of an external
element is even present in the shifting meanings (or, more precisely,
negotiation between internal and external meanings as the subcultural
definition gets risen to a national level) of the word anime in Japan as
it leans toward emphasizing late-­night anime like the global definition
does.
These late-­night anime and their media mixes support the larger
otaku (sub)culture, especially in areas like Akihabara and Otome-­
Road in Ikebukuro, which are both tourist destinations within Japan
for foreigners. Beyond those destinations, as Annett details, contempo-
rary anime fandom is filled with transcultural interactions that occur
across the globe and online.7 Indeed, as Lamarre contends in a dialogue
with Patrick Galbraith, “the otaku mode is not entirely localizable, and
thus entails a constant deterritorialization”; otaku are “transnational
at heart.” In this sense, otaku and anime fans in general from different
parts of the world may have more in common in relation to anime than
nonviewers within their own neighborhood. Lamarre continues:

If we look at the otaku phenomenon in terms of the emergence

of a new mode of social existence that is related to transforma-
tions in capitalism and in technologies, then the enthusiastic
reception of Japanese otaku activities in other sites around the
globe is not so surprising . . . otaku cultures are not primarily
316 Conclusion

a matter of nations communicating with nations, but of locales

communicating via the global.8

Following this, fan-­produced works based on anime may be seen as en-

gaging with media practices that are not exclusively Japanese but rather
more global. In fact, with overseas fans like Ilya Kuvshinov (character
designer, Ghost in the Shell: SAC 2045) and Chengxi Huang (animation
director, Boruto) now performing prominent roles on major franchises,
the oft-­remarked cycle of fan producers to professional producers of
otaku in Japan also takes on global dimensions.

Shifting Transnationalities
The local–­g lobal tensions described above are one way of examining
anime’s globality, but I also wanted to delve into how this view is com-
plicated by two types of transnationality that operate in tandem, some-
times conflicting, sometimes coinciding: the centralized transnational
network of anime’s production and the decentralized transnational op-
erations of anime-­esque performance and creativity. As they both work
through the form of the network, the centralized and decentralized
tendencies come to the fore in varying degrees. Anime is always filled
with border-­crossing flows that split directions because of its transna-
tional history of development, citationality in the anime-­esque, and
animating processes.
Though I have tried to emphasize that all anime are transnational,
throughout this book I have focused on what would be commonly la-
beled “Japanese anime,” that is, works that are considered to be from
Japan even though there was transnational labor involved in their pro-
duction. Currently, anime’s transnational production tends toward a
centralized network with Tokyo as the media capital; yet the very fact
that anime can be performed outside of Japan evinces that it is not
exclusive to Japan, hinting at a more heterarchical potential. Indeed,
anime performance itself is sustained by point-­to-­point citations that
cross-­reference one another in each reiteration. In this way there is al-
ways an underlying decentralized network in anime performance, even
if it is not easily visible.
With this in mind, my focus on certain anime and their relation to
Japan to explore anime’s transnationality does not imply that anime
 Conclusion 317

can only relate to Japan or that there can be no other centers of anime
production. There is still much more to be explored in the growing
number of anime made largely outside of Japan, especially those made
explicitly for the rapidly expanding market in China, works that them-
selves may gesture to the decentralized potential of anime like King’s
Avatar. In conjunction with this, as more attention is paid to anime’s
Chinese audiences, in Japan and elsewhere, there may be a shift in the
current organization of anime’s transnational production. Since the
China–­Japan Film Co-­production Agreement was signed in 2018, there
may be greater integration between Tokyo and already established pro-
duction nodes like Shanghai. There are already partially or completely
Chinese-­owned studios in Tokyo and South Korea, and Shanghai could
also become a central node of transnational anime production. In
fact, some staff from Japan already head abroad to contribute to certain
projects.
In any case, as more anime are made largely outside of Japan, media-­
form will become all the more important as visual, aural, and narrative
conventions emphasize the recognizability of these new works to ear-
lier examples, further entrenching certain anime-­esque conventions
over others to prove that they are in fact “real anime” and continuing
the process of negotiating anime’s identity in each performance. These
anime radically undermine established notions of cultural production
and ownership grounded in the nation, embracing a creativity that
relies on repetition and minor variation rather than departure from
trend. Since the anime-­esque can only be enacted through those very
citational operations, these works just make these dynamics more visi­
ble, overtly linking across national borders. Ironically, the result is the
capacity for invoking transnational transformation through iterative
enactments. In this way, something more decentralized in the perfor-
mance of media-­form comes to the foreground, where anime can be
imagined beyond Japan, even if, for the moment, the relationship to
Japan seems inescapable. Indeed, there are examples like Shikioriori,
which is aimed at a more global audience through Japan, but also King’s
Avatar, which appears aimed at the domestic Chinese audience since
it was initially not readily available on other platforms and didn’t ap-
pear with other language dubs (although eventually King’s Avatar ap-
peared on YouTube with English subtitles, opening up further layers of
transnationality).
318 Conclusion

But such developments do not have to be conceptualized by trading

in one nation for another by approaching these as “Chinese anime” or
raising the scale to an East Asian ownership of the media-­form. Even
domestically focused anime like King’s Avatar (which had parts of the
production done in Tokyo and sent to Shanghai) are transnationally
produced works of an already transnational media-­form. The series
Yiren Zhixia (Hitori no shita, 2016–­18) is sometimes seen as a Chinese
anime or promoted as a Chinese-­Japanese production with Emon as
the central studio, a Chinese source novel and director, and Japanese
animators. But it also involved Namu Animation, a Korean company,
and many Korean animators. To give another example, Tōng Líng Fēi
(2016), which is ostensibly produced in China, also features Korean
studio names in the credits, making it another transnational product.
Thus, to state it crudely, even so-­called Chinese anime are often just as
transnational as Japanese anime; the main difference is that their pro-
duction network formation is centralized outside of Japan.
To stress the point, I am not trying to say that there should be a
Chinese anime category but rather that anime-­esque works largely pro-
duced outside of Japan will also need to be considered via the media
heterotopic view proposed in this book. They can reveal new configu-
rations and networks—­even productions ostensibly aimed mainly at
domestic markets are also always transnational, just in different ways.
Therefore, as anime made outside of Japan becomes increasingly ac-
knowledged globally, I would suggest careful (re)consideration of cate­
gorizing tendencies. I would avoid labeling them Chinese anime (and
thus highlighting anime without any adjective as Japanese) or seeing
these as knock­offs when citation is the very means of existence for
anime in general. After all, this facilitated so-­called Japanese anime’s
production taking place partially outside of Japan for decades. Clas-
sifying anime by “country of origin” obscures the decentralized and
transcultural potentials of anime, which has its own distinctive spatial
dynamics and politics to contend with. Although the brevity of phras-
ing can certainly be useful for didactic purposes, I have largely resisted
labeling these anime by their “country of origin” in an effort to explore
different frameworks for analyzing media in this era of globalization.
 Conclusion 319

Clashing Forms, Complex Regionality

Anime is constantly changing, and subsequently, the anime-­esque and
our relations to it will also shift over time. But, for the moment, in the
ways described throughout this book, a performance of the anime-­esque
can sustain any number of the following interpretations at once to vary-
ing degrees: a commentary on Japan (but not exclusively); Japanese cul-
ture abroad; an exploration of selfhood and/or place (not only in Japan);
a transnational product with Tokyo (or elsewhere) at the privileged cen-
ter of development and production; an aesthetic that must be learned
and enacted through repeated citation, producing a recognizable but
ever-shifting repertoire that is shared across borders; a particular per-
formance of selected citations, in specific circumstances with certain
materials. Subsequently, anime broadly can be seen as an intricate mix-
ture of national, transnational, and global elements: anime is to represent
Japan but also be global, filled with unease at its transnational equivocal-
ity as it gestures beyond Japan, across Asia and elsewhere.
By way of conclusion, it is worthwhile to consider how the above-
mentioned dynamics intersect with recent discussions on regionaliza-
tion and media platforms in ways that resonate with the notions of
regionality explored in chapters 3 and 5. Undeniably, media platforms
like Bilibili and Netflix are increasingly important players in anime’s
distribution and production—­crucial actors in anime’s continued glo-
balization. This is all the more important to consider because there is
an increased affiliation with particular platforms in and across cer-
tain regions, as Marc Steinberg and Jinying Li contend.9 In their view,
“along with platforms comes a form of regionalization, a localization to
a particular milieu, country, or region, through a deliberate exclusion
of other countries and regions, as well as through more benign forms of
circumscription by users and platform managers.”10 Such a geography
does not easily align with established conceptions of regions, produc-
ing a new media geography that is “somewhere between local, national,
supranational, and global, depending on the platform in question.”11
They draw on Lamarre’s discussion of media process geographies, where
platforms “produce regions—­not simply technological regions (as in
geoblocking) but also geocultural regions, produced by the medial ef-
fects of ‘something coming into common’ (as Lamarre puts it).” For
Steinberg and Li, “platform based distribution circulates tremendous
320 Conclusion

amounts of contents, products, and transactions, which actualize the

transmedial-­transnational processes that, in turn, produce a feeling of
regional affinity, intimacy, and proximity.”12
Interestingly, Condry calls anime “a kind of portable creative plat-
form (glossed as characters and worlds)”13 and sees it as a “genera-
tive platform for creativity.”14 In the terminology used here, one may
see Condry’s understanding of an anime platform as the database of
anime-­esque conventions that are cited to bring anime into existence.
While Condry’s conception of platform is somewhat different from
the type of platform Steinberg and Li are discussing, it is worthwhile
noting this overlap of terminology in consideration of regionality. If
one follows Condry and sees anime as a platform for a type of collab-
orative creativity and overlays this onto Steinberg and Li’s conception
of regions produced through platforms, then the processes of anime’s
transnational production would constitute a type of regionality.
Indeed, Steinberg reaches the same conclusion riffing on Condry’s
view of anime as platform in regard to the online streaming and social
networking platform Niconico Video (a hub for anime and manga fan
activity on the Japanese-­language internet) and other, similar chat apps
across East Asia. Steinberg underlines Niconico Video’s precarious
labor practices—­such as relying on unpaid, user-­generated content—­
and how some commentators, specifically Hamano Satoshi, see such
platforms as manufacturing methods that could represent “an export-
able, iterable mode of creative contents production destined to move
around the East Asian region, marking itself as a Japanese cultural-­
industrial export.”15 As for other chat apps, Steinberg describes their
similarities as platforms involving a “noncollobrative coproduction” of
“borrowing and mimicry” across apps that results in similar experi-
ences. The cumulative effect is a distinctive type of regionality that does
bring “something into common” but isn’t evenly or neatly overlaid on
established notions of regional geography. They still work with national
frameworks, with each app focusing on a national market, but also act
as “mediators between nation and transnational capital.”16 Thus, Stein-
berg outlines a complex and uneven regionality via platforms in East
Asia while highlighting that some commonality does come into view.
With this in mind, anime as a media-­form, performed in repetition
by skilled laborers in disparate locales, working through and with dif-
ferent materials, connected via the regular enactment of certain con-
 Conclusion 321

ventions, and operating under transnational hierarchies, can be seen as

generating regionality in its transnational production, a performance
that involves something “coming into common.” In this region, anima-
tors execute anime-­esque performances, repeating similar codes and
practices via a decentralized network of anime’s media-­form. From this
perspective, something beyond the bordered-­wholes of nations comes
into relief. But the actualities of the transnational production system
reveal a network where Japan is central, maintaining a hierarchal po-
sition as the locale where much of the creative labor and planning oc-
curs, accentuated by the widely accepted identity of anime as Japanese.
I would also like to note that the regionality I am sketching is spe-
cifically built from anime, and a map of the regionality from other
contemporary media would look considerably different. In fact, Japan
would not necessarily be in the center in many cases. As Leo T. S. Ching
asserts, accompanying the increase in neoliberalism across Asia and
“the incorporation of the Chinese economy and South Korean popu­
lar culture into world economy and global cultural industry,” Japan is
no longer exclusively at the center of Asian regionalism, and there is a
more “multi-­polar configuration.”17 Indeed, one transnational media
alone does not a region make, and anime is but one part of larger re-
gional and global flows of images, media, capital, people, commodities,
and technologies.
But anime-­esque media are very visible across Asia, and given anime’s
long history, there is certainly something regional about its trans­
national production, distribution, and consumption in Asia. Anime-­
esque media is also one of the remaining spheres where Japan is still
seen as a world-­leading producer, which, as Iwabuchi points out, dis-
rupts the hegemony of the United States as the main source of global
media.18 Consequently, the regionality of anime involving the central-
ized network with Tokyo as the media capital is all the more important
for Cool Japan’s nation branding, an instance where the centralized
network form works to the convenient advantage of the bordered-­
whole form of the nation-­state, as it is easy to confuse the centrality of
Tokyo in the network with Japan as a whole.
Due to this emphasis on Japan, there is a clear diversion of assem-
bled transnational and global flows, shunting them within the national
framework. In Lamarre’s words, “national sovereignty may constrain
the assembling but cannot contain it.”19 On one level, anime’s media-­
322 Conclusion

form tends toward the point-­to-­point operations of a decentralized

network, evincing the potential for what Lamarre calls “nonpersonal
possession,” in this case something transcultural and shared. On an-
other level, the actualities of anime’s transnational production tend
toward the one-­to-­many and many-­to-­one dynamics of a centralized
network, with the central node in Japan or, more precisely, the media
capital of Tokyo. Although this book has stressed the many-­to-­one op-
erations of animators across Asia participating in performing anime,
the general tendency when examining anime’s transnational pro­
duction network (when it is even acknowledged) has been to emphasize
the one-­to-­many operations, with Japan in control and the outsourced
labor as merely following Japanese direction. Part of what sustains
this reading is how this entire complex dynamic tends to be framed
through the bordered-­whole of the nation-­state, with Japan acting
as the de facto locus of “everything anime.”
Here, the tension between the bordered-­whole and networks play
out in such a way that anime’s decentralized media-­form is material-
ized through a centralized production network, one that obfuscates
itself in favor of the bordered-­whole of the nation-­state. The “Made in
Japan” branding obscures the transnational labor involved in anime
production, which is simultaneously enabled and masked by the con-
sistency of performing anime-­esque conventions. This obscuration of
the labor of transnationally produced media and most other products is
widespread under global neoliberalism. As Neferti X. M. Tadiar has de-
tailed, much of the discourse on neoliberalism leaves out the global cir-
cuits of production and labor that are “subjects at risk,” the disposable
labor that is indispensable in the global economy and the transnational
flow of capital.20 In the case of anime, those at risk are the animators:
their performances are visible in the final product watched globally,
but their acknowledgment is often lost to dominant discourses about
anime’s identity as Japanese. Both inside and outside of Japan their
livelihoods are precarious—­many of them are freelancers, working for
meager pay with low job security and high rates of burnout. It is this
group that performs the labor of the animation, enacting many of the
elements seen composited in the final images on-screen. But despite
the production of images in different places in Asia, most anime, even
those mainly produced outside of Japan, flow through Japan at some
point in the process. This multi-­locational process produces the het-
 Conclusion 323

erotopic images viewed as anime, the tensions of disparate locales of

production composited within a single frame.
But the coming into common produced by this network of produc-
tion is by no means a static or consistent geography within the bordered-­
whole region of Asia (wherever those lines are drawn). Focused on large
metropolises, there are many gaps in this region of production, a geog-
raphy that is guided by networks, with holes and hierarchies involved.
Not only do Japanese companies contract labor outside of Japan, but
foreign-­owned studios and high-­ranking foreign animators work in
Tokyo. This transnationality reaches across Asia, from East Asia (South
Korea, China, Taiwan) into Southeast Asia (Vietnam, Thailand, and the
Philippines) and parts of Europe (e.g., the Austrian animator Bahi JD)
and elsewhere. These networks are not neatly or evenly dispersed. For
example, there are nowhere near as many anime contributors in Eu-
rope as there are in Asia, and not all countries in Asia host anime stu-
dios even though they have many anime fans (an example is Sri Lanka,
where there are fans but no official animators).
Moreover, since anime’s production is sustained by felicitous ex-
ecution of the anime-­esque, it must be imitable. Consequently, this
network can expand beyond its current locales of production. This imi­
tability is, in fact, the very means by which anime itself operates, with
each iteration relating to others and maintaining its recognizability as
a media-­form. Therefore, the enactment of anime’s media-­form tends
to interconnect people and materials in ways that violate the classical
borders of the modern, of the internally homogenous inter-­national or
the supranational regional (Asia), engendering complex networks that
link across large swaths of the globe through the iterative, citational
performances of the anime-­esque.
This page intentionally left blank
 Acknowledgments

No work is ever accomplished alone, not least of all an academic book.

A whole array of institutions, scholars, students, technologies, and
media (among other things) had to come together to provide the op-
portunity, tools, thoughts, and space to allow this book to come to fru-
ition. Though I cannot possibly name or thank everyone involved, I am
deeply indebted to them all.
To begin, I must first thank Jaqueline Berndt. For many years she
has supported and guided me, most directly during the time I spent as
her doctoral student at Kyoto Seika University. Indeed, this very book
was built from my 2018 doctoral dissertation under her advisement.
Jaqueline introduced me to a new world of intellectual thought, pro-
vided me with different tools and techniques to think with, and in the
process completely changed my view on anime and manga. Through
her guidance and encouragement I was finally able to articulate many
of my ideas on anime in a way I was not capable of before. But it was
not just academic mentorship that Jaqueline provided me, as she intro-
duced me to her network of scholars inside and outside Japan and gave
me both the support and opportunities to carve out my own view on
anime in academia.
As head of the Graduate School of Manga Studies, Jaqueline also
facili­tated an open and welcoming environment for a large group of aca­
demic researchers and practitioners from a variety of places and fields to
engage in work on anime, manga, and games. I encountered a very tal-
ented cohort of young scholars there who also studied under her (or were
working on their postdoctoral research) who, like Jaqueline, inspired
me and provided new goals to aspire to. The discussions in Jaqueline’s
seminars and our viewings were incredibly rich and made a sustained
mark on my own thought, many of their ideas reflected in these pages. I
was always learning from everyone, from the history of anime and otaku
fandom during the viewing sessions with Kobayashi Sho to discussions

9 325 0
326 Acknowledgments

on the state of the animators in the industry with Morishita Toyomi. I

still think fondly back to the in-­depth discussions over lunch with José
Andrés Santiago Iglesias, the many feedback sessions I had with Zoltan
Kacsuk, and, of course, the debates well into the night in Demachiyanagi
with José, Selen Çalık Bedir, Olga Kopylova, Alba G. Torrents, and others
who lived in the area. Takeuchi Miho, also part of the cohort, was always
willing to discuss teaching manga in the classroom and was extremely
generous with her time to help “native-­check” my Japanese. In these ways
and others, the education spilled out of the seminar into daily life. Selen,
in particular, provided significant input, always willing to listen to my
new thoughts over lunch, providing me with feedback, and inspiring a
whole new set of ideas to ponder on the way home. Another member
of the extended community of anime and manga researchers in Kyoto,
Omar Yusef Baker, was always open to listening to my thoughts and
helped me put my ideas in order.
There were many others at Kyoto Seika University that I must also
thank, including Satow Morihiro, Maeda Shigeru, Sugaya Mitsuru, Ina
Shunsuke, and Tsugata Nobuyuki. In particular, Morihiro and Shigeru
provided stimulating feedback and were both long supporters of my
work. In fact, Shigeru was my advisor more than a decade ago when I
first began my interest in academic anime research, and he guided me
through to the completion of my doctorate.
I am also grateful to the greater Kyoto intellectual community. These
include, but are not limited to, Yoshida Hiroshi, Kitano Keisuke, Ma-
suda Nobuhiro, Martin Roth, and Yoshioka Hiroshi, all of whose events
were incredibly thought provoking. In addition, the Kyoto International
Manga Museum has always been welcoming to me and my research.
Ōya Yasunari, Saika Tadahiro, and Sookyung Yoo were always friendly
and informative, willing to collaborate and help on new projects.
I also want to thank the Japan Society for Animation Studies (JSAS),
in particular Ishida Minori, Sugawa-­Shimada Akiko, and Joon Yang
Kim who were always encouraging of my research and approaches.
Joon Yang’s constructive comments and support helped shape this
book at multiple stages—­insights and guidance that I am deeply appre-
ciative of. At one fateful JSAS conference at Niigata University, I had
the privilege of seeing the keynote speeches by Marc Steinberg, Sheuo
Hui Gan, and Kitano Keisuke, which left me inspired and motivated to
draw on their ideas. Marc has also been very supportive over the years,
 Acknowledgments 327

and his own research has provided much of the stimulus for many of
the conclusions of this book.
In Tokyo, Hosei University’s Faculty of Global and Interdisciplinary
Studies provided me with a new institution and colleagues, all of whom
were incredibly kind, allowing me to design and teach new classes that
helped organize and develop some of my ideas. In my transition to
Tokyo, Bryan Hikari Hartzheim helped me understand the city while
providing thoughtful discussions on anime and its complex industry. I
am grateful to Thiam Huat Kam as well, with whom a chance encoun-
ter at AnimeJapan led to many productive discussions. Brett Hack was
also helpful and always presented fascinating new work at the confer-
ences where we would meet across Japan.
Frenchy Lunning also deserves special mention for her support of
my research and for continuing to encourage me from my very early
days in academia at one of the first Mechademia conferences in Min-
neapolis. Her energy and enthusiasm for the material were contagious,
and the opportunities she has provided me, along with many stimulat-
ing and insightful conversations, have helped frame my thoughts and
given me new directions to explore.
Jason Weidemann at the University of Minnesota Press was very
accommodating, allowing the book to take the shape it needed. This
book would not have been possible without his engagement, along with
the efforts of the rest of the University of Minnesota Press staff. This
includes Zenyse Miller, who kindly attended to my many questions
throughout this process, as well as Sarah Barker for her precise copy
edits. I would also like to thank the two reviewers who read the first
draft of this manuscript and provided invaluable feedback.
Lastly, I thank my family, Francine Lichtenstein Suan, Senyu Suan,
and Aviv Suan. Without their lifetime of support and their attention to
fostering my interests, this would not have been possible, as it sustained
me through all the years of research, moving across institutions and
places. It is in this respect, among countless others, that my wife, Miku
Akiyama, to whom this book is dedicated, aided me in the most crucial
ways. She helped me to pursue this project with full support and was
always, without hesitation, willing to watch another episode of anime
with me.
This page intentionally left blank
 Notes

Introduction
1. Association of Japanese Animations (AJA), Anime 100 shūnenkinen—­
“anime nekusuto 100” supesharumūbī [nihon no animēshon 122 sakuhin wo
ikkyo shōkai] (The 100th anniversary of anime—­anime NEXT 100 “special
movie” [an introduction to 122 Japanese animations]), 2019.
2. Lynzee Loveridge, “Watch 100 Years of Anime Flash by in Just 15 Min-
utes,” Anime News Network, accessed December 26, 2017, https://www
.animenewsnetwork.com/interest/2017-12-26/watch-100-years-of-anime-flash
-by-in-just-15-minutes/.125504.
3. Jaqueline Berndt, “Anime in Academia: Representative Object, Media
Form, and Japanese Studies,” Arts 7, no. 4 (2018): 1–­13. Berndt builds off of
Michael K. Bourdaghs here.
4. Christopher Bolton, Interpreting Anime (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 2018), 24.
5. Thomas Lamarre, The Anime Machine: A Media Theory of Animation
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009).
6. Rayna Denison, Anime: A Critical Introduction (London: Bloomsbury
Academic, 2015), 52.
7. Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto, “The Difficulty of Being Radical: The Discipline
of Film Studies and the Postcolonial World Order,” boundary 2 18, no. 3 (1991):
242–­57.
8. For a brief overview, see Karen Ressler, “Harmony Gold’s Macross, Mos­
peada, Southern Cross Licenses Still Expire in 2021,” Anime News Network,
accessed May 27, 2020, https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2017-09
-14/harmony-gold-macross-mospeada-southern-cross-licenses-still-expire-in
-2021/.121372.
9. Steve Neale, “Questions of Genre,” in Film Genre Reader III, ed. Barry
Keith Grant (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003), 189–­91.
10. Jaqueline Berndt, “Facing the Nuclear Issue in a ‘Mangaesque’ Way: The
Barefoot Gen Anime,” Cinergie 2 (2012): 149.
11. Association of Japanese Animations, “Anime sangyō repōto 2019”

9 329 0
330 Notes to Introduction

(Report on the animation industry, 2019), 5, https://aja.gr.jp/download/anime

-industry-report-2019-summary.
12. Ian Condry, The Soul of Anime: Collaborative Creativity and Japan’s
Media Success Story (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2013), 185.
13. Caroline Levine, Forms: Whole, Rhythm, Hierarchy, Network (Prince-
ton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2015), 6.
14. Levine, 5.
15. Levine, 3.
16. Levine generally calls this form “whole,” or alternatively “bounded
container” or “bounded whole.” I have simply called it “bordered-­whole” to
highlight the form as maintaining a particular barrier that facilitates the pro-
duction of an internal and external.
17. Levine, Forms, 114–­15.
18. Levine, 6.
19. Thomas Lamarre, The Anime Ecology: A Genealogy of Television, Anima-
tion, and Game Media (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2018), 4.
For imagined communities, see Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities:
Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1985).
20. See also Alexander R. Galloway, “Networks,” in Critical Terms for Me-
dia Studies, ed. W. J. T. Mitchell and Mark B. N. Hansen (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 2010), 280–­96.
21. Lamarre, Anime Ecology, 10.
22. Manuel Castells, “The Space of Flows,” in The Rise of the Network Soci-
ety, 2nd ed. (Cornwall: Blackwell Publishers, 2000), 407–­59.
23. JungBong Choi, “Of the East Asian Cultural Sphere: Theorizing Cul-
tural Regionalization,” China Review 10, no. 2 (Fall 2010): 111.
24. Kōichi Iwabuchi, “Undoing Inter-­national Fandom in the Age of Brand
Nationalism,” Mechademia 5: Fanthropologies 5 (2010): 89.
25. Such identity formations not only connect to the larger scale of national
communities but also overlap with the conception of individuals and how they
are represented. Here, I turn to William Egginton, who sees the manifestation
of a particular type of spatiality as integral to the transition to modernity and
the conception of the individual, discussed in chapter 8. See William Eggin-
ton, How the World Became a Stage: Presence, Theatricality, and the Question
of Modernity (New York: State University of New York Press, 2003), 146–­47.
26. Anna Tsing, “The Global Situation,” Cultural Anthropology 15, no. 3
(n.d.): 338.
27. See also Choi, “Of the East Asian,” 114.
28. Tsing, “Global Situation,” 330.
29. Kuan-­Hsing Chen, “Tekuchi Yoshimi’s 1960 ‘Asia as Method’ Lecture,”
Inter-­Asia Cultural Studies 13, no. 2 (2012): 317–­24.
 Notes to Introduction 331

30. Kuan-­Hsing Chen, Asia as Method: Toward Deimperialization (Durham,

N.C.: Duke University Press, 2010), 249–­50.
31. Chen, 253.
32. Ani Maitra and Rey Chow, “What’s ‘In’? Disaggregating Asia through
New Media Actants,” in Routledge Handbook of New Media in Asia, ed. Larissa
Hjorth and Olivia Khoo (London: Routledge, 2014), 20.
33. Maitra and Chow are drawing on Bruno Latour’s work on actor-­network
theory and, as such, use the term “actants,” but here, for terminological consis-
tency, I will use “actors.”
34. Sandra Annett, Anime Fan Communities: Transcultural Flows and Fric-
tions (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 2.
35. Annett, 3–­6.
36. Annett, 7–­9.
37. Daisy Yan Du, Animated Encounters: Transnational Movements of Chi-
nese Animation, 1940s–­1970s (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2019), 23.
38. Nina Glick Schiller, “Transnationality,” in A Companion to the Anthro-
pology of Politics, ed. David Nugent and Joan Vincent (Malden, Mass.: Black-
well, 2007), 456.
39. David Bordwell, Narration in the Fiction Film (Madison: University of
Wisconsin Press, 1985).
40. Levine, Forms, 29.
41. Steve Neale, Genre and Hollywood (London: Routledge, 2000); Leger
Grindon, “Cycles and Clusters: The Shape of Film Genre History,” in Film
Genre Reader IV, ed. Barry Keith Grant (Austin: University of Texas Press,
2012).
42. Neale, Genre and Hollywood, 17–­18. Neale is citing Alan Williams and
Tom Ryal.
43. Andrew Tudor, “Genre,” in Film Genre Reader III, ed. Barry Keith Grant
(Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003), 8.
44. For such a study, see Denison, Anime.
45. Mark B. N. Hansen and W. J. T. Mitchell, eds., Critical Terms for Media
Studies (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), xi.
46. Hansen and Mitchell, xvii.
47. Hansen and Mitchell., xxii.
48. Hansen and Mitchell, xiv.
49. Deborah Levitt, The Animatic Apparatus: Animation, Vitality, and the
Futures of the Image (Winchester, U.K.: Zero Books, 2018), 59.
50. Lamarre, Anime Machine.
51. Lamarre, 196.
52. Lamarre, 201.
53. Lamarre, 203.
332 Notes to Introduction

54. Lamarre, 206.

55. Marc Steinberg, Anime’s Media Mix: Franchising Toys and Characters
in Japan (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012); Olga Kopylova,
“Media Mix as Adaptation: Anime, Manga, Light Novels” (PhD diss., Kyoto
Seika University, 2016).
56. Steinberg, Anime’s Media Mix, 6.
57. Lamarre, Anime Ecology, 243.
58. Jaqueline Berndt, “Manga, Which Manga? Publication Formats, Genres,
Users,” in Japanese Civilization in the 21st Century, ed. Andrew Targowski,
Juri Abe, and Hisanori Kato (New York: Nova Publishers, 2016), 124–­25.
59. Hiroki Azuma, Otaku: Japan’s Database Animals, trans. Jonathan E.
Abel (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009).
60. Lamarre, Anime Ecology, 82. See also Karen Barad, “Posthumanist
Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter,”
Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 28, no. 3 (2003): 801–­31.
61. David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 2005), 2, 69.
62. Makoto Itoh, “Assessing Neoliberalism in Japan,” in Neoliberalism: A
Critical Reader, ed. Alfredo Saad-­Filho and Deborah Johnston (London: Pluto
Press, 2005); Tomiko Yoda, “A Roadmap to Millennial Japan,” in Japan After
Japan: Social and Cultural Life from the Recessionary 1990s to the Present, ed.
Tomiko Yoda and Harry Harootunion (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press,
2006), 16–­53; Gabriella Lukács, Scripted Affects, Branded Selves: Television,
Subjectivity, and Capitalism in 1990s Japan (Durham, N.C.: Duke University
Press, 2010).
63. Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism, 79.
64. Jason Read, “A Genealogy of Homo-­Economicus: Neoliberalism and the
Production of Subjectivity,” Foucault Studies, no. 6 (February 2009): 25–­36.
65. Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Global-
ization (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996).
66. Richard Schechner, “Performance Studies: The Broad Spectrum Ap-
proach,” in The Performance Studies Reader, ed. Henry Bial (London: Rout-
ledge, 2004).
67. Richard Schechner, Performance Studies: An Introduction, 3rd ed.
(London: Routledge, 2013).
68. J. L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1962).
69. Jacques Derrida, “Signature Event Context,” in Margins of Philosopy
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982).
70. Judith Butler, “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in
Phenomenology and Feminist Theory,” Theatre Journal 40 (1988): 519.
71. Butler, 525.
 Notes to Chapter 1 333

72. Judith Butler, Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative (New

York: Routledge, 1997).
73. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity
(New York: Routledge, 1990).
74. Judith Butler, Undoing Gender (New York: Routledge, 2004), 15.
75. Schechner, Performance Studies, 36.
76. Clifford Carlson, “What Is Performance?,” in The Performance Studies
Reader, ed. Henry Bial (London: Routledge, 2004), 73.
77. Laikwan Pang, Creativity and Its Discontents: China’s Creative Indus-
tries and Intellectual Property Rights Offenses (Durham, N.C.: Duke University
Press, 2012), 172.
78. Teri Silvio, “Animation: The New Performance?,” Linguistic Anthropol-
ogy 20, no. 2 (2010): 426–­27.
79. Donald Crafton, Shadow of a Mouse: Performance, Belief, and World-­
Making in Animation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013).
80. Hye Jean Chung, “Media Heterotopia and Transnational Filmmaking:
Mapping Real and Virtual Worlds,” Cinema Journal 51 (2012): 87–­109.
81. Pang, Creativity and Its Discontents.
82. Ursula K. Heise, “Plasmatic Nature: Environmentalism and Animated
Film,” Public Culture 26 (2014): 303.

1. Anime’s Local–­Global Tensions

1. Caroline Levine, Forms: Whole, Rhythm, Hierarchy, Network (Prince-
ton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2015), 24–­27.
2. Caroline Levine, “From Nation to Network,” Victorian Studies 55, no. 4
(Summer 2013): 656.
3. Kōichi Iwabuchi, “Undoing Inter-­national Fandom in the Age of Brand
Nationalism,” Mechademia 5: Fanthropologies (2010): 89.
4. Ryōtarō Mihara, Kūru japan wa naze kirawareru no ka: “nekkyō” to “re-
ishō” wo koete (Why is Cool Japan hated? beyond ‘enthusiasm’ and ‘cynicism’)
(Tokyo: Chuo Koron Shinsha, 2014).
5. Sandra Annett, Anime Fan Communities: Transcultural Flows and Fric-
tions (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 100.
6. Recent research suggests viewers recognized anime’s difference from
other types of animation at the time; cf. Fabienne Darling-­Wolf, Imagining
the Global: Transnational Media and Popular Culture Beyond East and West
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2015).
7. Jonathan Clements, Anime: A History (London: British Film Institute,
2013), 216.
8. Tadashi Sudo, Dare ga korekara no anime o tsukuru noka: chugoku shi-
hon to netto haishin ga okosu shizuka na kakumei (Who will make anime in
334 Notes to Chapter 1

the future? the quiet revolution caused by Chinese capital and internet distri-
bution) (Tokyo: Seikaisha, 2017).
9. For ease of discussion, I have kept it simple here, though other elements
are involved, such as what products (like Blu-­rays) and distribution methods
(like TV or streaming) are allowed.
10. Hiromichi Masuda, Motto wakaru anime bijinesu (Further understand-
ing the anime business) (Tokyo: NTT Shuppan, 2011), 167.
11. Association of Japanese Animations, “Anime sangyō repōto 2019” (Re-
port on the Animation Industry, 2019), 6, https://aja.gr.jp/download/anime
-industry-report-2019-summary_.
12. See Marc Steinberg and Jinying Li, “Introduction: Regional Platforms,”
Asiascape: Digital Asia 4 (2017): 173–­83.
13. Here I am using the terminology from Clements in English and Mihara
in Japanese (hikōshiki).
14. “Crunchyroll Premium Plans,” Crunchyroll, accessed May 10, 2021,
https://www.crunchyroll.com/welcome?from=topbar&return_url=https%3A//
www.crunchyroll.com/#plans.
15. Mihara, Kūru Japan.
16. McGray, Douglas, “Japan’s Gross National Cool,” Foreign Policy 130
(May/June 2002): 44–54.
17. Michal Daliot-­Bul and Nissim Otmazgin, The Anime Boom in the
United States: Lessons for Global Creative Industries (Cambridge, Mass.: Har-
vard University Press, 2017). See chapter 5.
18. Iwabuchi, “Undoing Inter-­National Fandom,” 92.
19. Iwabuchi.
20. Karen Ressler, “Japan’s Animation Marketplace Hits Record High for 5th
Consecutive Year,” Anime News Network, November 28, 2018, https://www
.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2018-11-28/japan-animation-marketplace-hits
-record-high-for-5th-consecutive-year/.140070.
21. Sudo, Dare ga korekara no anime, 47.
22. “Anime,” Anime News Network, accessed January 17, 2017, https://www
.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/lexicon.php?id=45.
23. “anime, n.3,” OED Online, updated March 2021, https://www.oed.com/
view/Entry/248729?rskey=WsNUqd&result=3&isAdvanced=false.
24. See Sheuo Hui Gan, “To Be or Not to Be: The Controversy in Japan over
the ‘Anime’ Label,” Animation Studies 4 (2009); Nobuyuki Tsugata, “Anime to
ha nani ka” (What is anime?), in Anime-­gaku (Anime studies), ed. Mitsuteru
Takahashi and Nobuyuki Tsugata (Tokyo: NTT Shuppan, 2011), 3–­23.
25. “Dai 1-­kai anime to animēshon no chigai” (The first: the difference
between anime and animation), Anime!Anime!, February 17, 2008, https://
animeanime.jp/article/2008/02/17/2787.html.
26. Tsugata, “Anime to ha nani ka,” 4–­11.
 Notes to Chapter 1 335

27. Tsugata, 21.

28. Tsugata, 33.
29. Thiam Huat Kam, “The Common Sense That Makes the ‘Otaku’: Rules
for Consuming Popular Culture in Contemporary Japan,” Japan Forum 25
(2012): 151–­73.
30. Tsugata, “Anime to ha nani ka,” 22.
31. Tsugata, 9.
32. Tsugata, 20.
33. Zoltan Kacsuk, “Re-­examining the ‘What Is Manga’ Problematic: The
Tension and Interrelationship between the ‘Style’ Versus ‘Made in Japan’ Posi-
tions,” Arts 7, no. 3 (2018): 2.
34. Tsugata, “Anime to ha nani ka,” 42.
35. Kukhee Choo, “Playing the Global Game: Japan Brand and Globaliza-
tion,” in Asian Popular Culture: The Global (Dis)Continuity, ed. Anthony Y. H.
Fung (New York: Routledge, 2013), 217–­20.
36. Choo, 220.
37. Nobuyuki Tsugata, Nihon no anime wa nani ga sugoi no ka (What is
amazing about Japanese anime?) (Tokyo: Shōdensha, 2014), 33, 168. Tsugata
dates this even further back, stating that “anime” (written in English) as “Japa­
nese animation” became a single “brand” in Japan and abroad after the revela-
tion of the high sales of Ghost in the Shell in 1996.
38. See, for instance, Thomas Lamarre, “Otaku Movement,” in Japan After
Japan: Social and Cultural Life from the Recessionary 1990s to the Present, ed.
Tomiko Yoda and Harry Harootunion (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press,
2006), 388.
39. Tsugata, “Anime to ha nani ka,” 10.
40. Daliot-­Bul and Otmazgin, Anime Boom in the United States. See chap-
ter 5.
41. Thomas Lamarre, The Anime Ecology: A Genealogy of Television, Ani-
mation, and Game Media (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2018),
183. See also Choo, “Playing the Global Game,” 216; Daliot-­Bul and Otmazgin,
Anime Boom in the United States, 139.
42. Kōichi Iwabuchi, Recentering Globalization: Popular Culture and Jap-
anese Transnationalism (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2002), 72.
43. Omar Yusef Baker, “The Symbolic Annihilation of ‘B/blackness’ in
Eiichiro Oda’s One Piece” (“Manga Nexus: Movement, Stillness,” Media, Kyoto
International Manga Museum: Mechademia Asian Conference, 2018). See also
Daliot-­Bul and Otmazgin, Anime Boom in the United States, chapter 4.
44. Alexander Zahlten, “Doraemon and Your Name in China: The Compli-
cated Business of Mediatized Memory in East Asia,” Screen 60, no. 2 (2019): 313.
45. Choo, “Playing the Global Game.”
46. Choo, 218, 220.
336 Notes to Chapter 1

47. Gan, “To Be or Not to Be,” 40.

48. Rayna Denison, Anime: A Critical Introduction (London: Bloomsbury
Academic, 2015), 137–­38.
49. It should be noted that AnimeJapan charges vendors a participation fee.
Anyone that can afford the fee can put up a booth, but the costs can be quite
high, producing a barrier for art animation or smaller, experimental studios.
Consequently, AnimeJapan is dominated by the large industry players like
Kadokawa and Toei Animation. While not intentionally excluding more ex-
perimental animations, the high cost of entry effectually prevents alternative
animation studios from entering, producing an image of anime that mainly
includes late-­night commercial animation. This differs from the Tokyo Inter-
national Anime Festival, which was cheaper and easier for smaller productions
and producers to participate in. I appreciate Toyomi Morishita for bringing
this to my attention.
50. Denison, Anime, 147–­48.
51. Association of Japanese Animations, “Anime sangyō repōto 2019.”
52. Daisuke Kikuchi, “West-­Inspired Anime Chief Propels Polygon Pic-
tures to Success,” Japan Times, June 5, 2016, https://www.japantimes.co.jp/
news/2016/06/05/national/west-inspired-anime-chief-propels-polygon-pictures
-success/.
53. Personal correspondence with Thiam Huat Kam, April 2017.
54. Sudo, Dare ga korekara no anime, 39–­41.
55. Nissim Otmazgin, “A New Cultural Geography of East Asia: Imagin-
ing a ‘Region’ through Popular Culture,” Asia-­Pacific Journal: Japan Focus 14
(2016): 7–­8.
56. Clements, Anime, 183.
57. Clements, 185.

2. Anime’s Dispersed Production

1. Thomas Lamarre notes something similar in “Otaku Movement,” in
Japan After Japan: Social and Cultural Life from the Recessionary 1990s to
the Present, ed. Tomiko Yoda and Harry Harootunion (Durham, N.C.: Duke
University Press, 2006), 389.
2. For an overview of the problems of auteur theory in regard to TV anime
production, see Sheuo Hui Gan, “Auteur and Anime as Seen in the Naruto
TV Series: An Intercultural Dialogue between Film Studies and Anime Re-
search,” in Manga’s Cultural Crossroads, ed. Jaqueline Berndt and Bettina
Kümmerling-­Meibauer (New York: Routledge, 2013), 220–­42.
3. Bryan Hikari Hartzheim, “Pretty Cure and the Magical Girl Media
Mix,” Journal of Popular Culture 49, no. 5 (2016): 1059–­85.
 Notes to Chapter 2 337

4. Shintarō Matsunaga, Animētā no shakaigaku: shokugyō kihan to rōdō­

mondai (The sociology of animators: occupational norms and labor issues)
(Tokyo: Mie University Press, 2017).
5. Ian Condry, The Soul of Anime: Collaborative Creativity and Japan’s
Media Success Story (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2013).
6. Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-­
Network-­Theory (Oxford: Clarendon, 2005), 52–­53.
7. Gan, “Auteur and Anime,” 238. Gan also advocates for relabeling “lim-
ited animation” as “selective animation” to emphasize the craftmanship in-
volved. However, I stayed with the established term to keep a consistent ter-
minology for didactic purposes.
8. I appreciate Tsugata Nobuyuki pointing this out in personal
correspondence.
9. Harvey Deneroff, “ ‘We Can’t Get Much Spinach!’ The Organization and
Implementation of the Fleischer Animation Strike,” Film History 1 (1987): 2.
10. One of the major peculiarities of animation production organized
within Japan is that voice-­overs are usually done after the penciling stage of
the animation is produced.
11. Mitsuteru Takahashi, “Animēshon ni okeru jinzaiikusei” (The personnel
training for the animation industry), in Animegaku (Anime studies), ed. Mit-
suteru Takahashi and Nobuyuki Tsugata (Tokyo: NTT Shuppan, 2011), 274.
12. Thomas Lamarre, The Anime Machine: A Media Theory of Animation
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009), 192.
13. See Marc Steinberg, Anime’s Media Mix: Franchising Toys and Charac-
ters in Japan (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012).
14. Matsunaga, Animētā no shakaigaku, 19.
15. Diane Wei Lewis, “Shiage and Women’s Flexible Labor in the Japanese
Animation Industry,” Feminist Media Histories 4, no. 1 (2018): 115–­41.
16. Japan Animation Creators Association, Animeshon seisakusha jitta­
ichosahokokusho 2015 (2015 Report on the status of animation producers), 2015,
http://www.janica.jp/survey/survey2015Report.pdf?site=pc%3Ca+href%3D.
17. Condry, Soul of Anime, 10–­13.
18. Condry, 48.
19. Condry, 10–­13.
20. Hartzheim, “Pretty Cure,” 1075.
21. Matsunaga, Animētā no shakaigaku, 30.
22. Matsunaga, 94.
23. Hartzheim, “Pretty Cure,” 1070.
24. See Steinberg, Anime’s Media Mix.
25. Lamarre, Anime Machine, 200–­204.
26. Joon Yang Kim, “South Korea and the Sub-­ E mpire of Anime:
338 Notes to Chapter 2

Kinesthetics of Subcontracted Animation Production,” Mechademia 9: Ori-

gins (2015): 90–­103.
27. Donald Crafton, Shadow of a Mouse: Performance, Belief, and World-­
Making in Animation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013).
28. Tadashi Sudo, Dare ga korekara no anime o tsukuru noka: chugoku shi-
hon to netto haishin ga okosu shizuka na kakumei (Who will make anime in
the future? the quiet revolution caused by Chinese capital and internet distri-
bution) (Tokyo: Seikaisha, 2017).
29. Kim, “South Korea and the Sub-­Empire,” 91.
30. Lamarre, Anime Machine, 145.

3. Anime’s Media Heterotopia

1. Fabienne Darling-­Wolf, Imagining the Global: Transnational Media
and Popular Culture Beyond East and West (Ann Arbor: University of Michi-
gan Press, 2015), 143.
2. Jungbong Choi, “Of the East Asian Cultural Sphere: Theorizing Cul-
tural Regionalization,” China Review 10, no. 2 (Fall 2010): 116.
3. Choi, 123.
4. Choi, 110.
5. Choi, 115.
6. Choi, 124.
7. Choi, 123.
8. Manuel Castells, “The Space of Flows,” in The Rise of the Network Soci-
ety, 2nd ed. (Cornwall: Blackwell Publishers, 2000), 440–­48.
9. Caroline Levine, Forms: Whole, Rhythm, Hierarchy, Network (Prince-
ton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2015), 112; Caroline Levine, “From Na-
tion to Network,” Victorian Studies 55, no. 4 (Summer 2013).
10. Levine, “From Nation to Network,” 657.
11. Levine, 659.
12. Hye Jean Chung, “Media Heterotopia and Transnational Filmmaking:
Mapping Real and Virtual Worlds,” Cinema Journal 51 (2012): 109.
13. Thomas Lamarre, “Regional TV: Affective Media Geographies,” Asia­
scape: Digital Asia (2015): 112–­13.
14. Chung, “Media Heterotopia,” 109.
15. JungBong Choi, “Of Transnational-­Korean Cinematrix,” Transnational
Cinemas 3, no. 1 (2012): 6–­7.
16. Hikari Hori, Promiscuous Media: Film and Visual Culture in Imperial
Japan, 1926–­1945 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2017), 166.
17. Daisy Yan Du, Animated Encounters: Transnational Movements of
­Chinese Animation, 1940s–­1970s (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2019),
56–57, 58–66.
 Notes to Chapter 3 339

18. Joon Yang Kim, “Critique of the New Historical Landscape of South Ko-
rean Animation,” Animation: An Interdisciplinary Journal 1, no. 1 (2006): 65.
19. Annett, Anime Fan Communities, 26.
20. Eiji Ōtsuka, “An Unholy Alliance of Eisenstein and Disney: The Fascist
Origins of Otaku Culture,” Mechademia 8: Tezuka’s Manga Life (2013): 276.
21. Marc Steinberg, Anime’s Media Mix: Franchising Toys and Characters
in Japan (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012), 24.
22. Steinberg, 17.
23. Steinberg, 7.
24. Fusanosuke Natsume, Tezuka Osamu wa doko ni iru (Where is Tezuka
Osamu?) (Tokyo: Chikuma, 1995), 140–­58.
25. Marc Steinberg, “Copying Atomu,” Mechademia 8: Tezuka’s Manga Life
(2013): 127–­36.
26. Daisuke Sawaki, “Nihon animēshongaido robotto anime-­hen” (Japanese
animation guide: the history of robot anime), in Media geijutsu jōhō kyoten
konsōshiamu kōchiku jigyō, ed. Ryūsuke Hikawa (2014), 7. https://mediag.bunka
.go.jp/article/robotanimation-1143/.
27. Patrick Galbraith and Thomas Lamarre, “Otakuology: A Dialogue,”
Mechademia 5: Fanthropologies (2010): 366.
28. Sandra Annett, Anime Fan Communities: Transcultural Flows and Fric-
tions (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 131.
29. Rayna Denison, Anime: A Critical Introduction (London: Bloomsbury
Academic, 2015), 48.
30. Lamarre, “Regional TV,” 130.
31. Michel Foucault, “Of Other Spaces,” Diacritics 16, no. 1 (Spring 1986): 25.
32. Choi, “Of Transnational-­Korean Cinematrix,” 7.
33. Joon Yang Kim, “South Korea and the Sub-­Empire of Anime: Kines-
thetics of Subcontracted Animation Production,” Mechademia 9: Origins
(2015): 93.
34. Jonathan Clements, Anime: A History (London: British Film Institute,
2013), 189.
35. Clements, 197.
36. Mitsuteru Takahashi, “Animēshon ni okeru jinzaiikusei” (The personnel
training for the animation industry), in Animegaku (Anime studies), ed. Mit-
suteru Takahashi and Nobuyuki Tsugata (Tokyo: NTT Shuppan, 2011), 270.
37. Kukhee Choo, “Hyperbolic Nationalism: South Korea’s Shadow Anima-
tion Industry,” Mechademia 9: Origins (2015): 146–­47.
38. Kim, “South Korea and the Sub-­Empire,” 93; “Outline,” Toei Animation,
accessed January 22, 2019, http://corp.toei-anim.co.jp/en/outline/affiliated
_companies.
39. Clements, Anime, 189.
40. Kim, “South Korea and the Sub-­Empire,” 93.
340 Notes to Chapter 3

41. Masuda, Dejitaru ga kaeru anime bijinesu (Anime business, changed by

digitalization) (Tokyo: NTT Shupan, 2016), 8.
42. Association of Japanese Animations, “Anime sangyō repōto 2019” (Re-
port on the Animation Industry, 2019).
43. Tadashi Sudo, Dare ga korekara no anime o tsukuru noka: chugoku
shihon to netto haishin ga okosu shizuka na kakumei (Who will make anime
in the future? The quiet revolution caused by Chinese capital and internet
distribution) (Tokyo: Seikaisha, 2017), 79.
44. Clements, Anime, 189.
45. Kenta Yamamoto, The Agglomeration of the Animation Industry in East
Asia (Tokyo: Springer, 2014), 145.
46. Hao Ling Li, “Kiei no anime seisakukaisha (emon) nihon honkaku san’nyū
kara mieru mono to wa? daihyō torishimariyaku Li Gōryō ga kataru” (Emerging
animation production company Emon, what can be seen from full-­scale entry
into Japan? Representative director Li Hao Ling talks), Anime!Anime!, 2016,
https://animeanime.jp/article/2016/12/22/31884.html.
47. Yamamoto, Agglomeration of the Animation, 54.
48. Yamamoto, 146.
49. Ian Condry, The Soul of Anime: Collaborative Creativity and Japan’s
Media Success Story (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2013), 14.
50. Chung, “Media Heterotopia,” 90.
51. Chung, 92.
52. Kim, “South Korea and the Sub-­Empire,” 99.
53. Choo’s examples are from the 1970s. See Kukhee Choo, “Hyperbolic
Nationalism: South Korea’s Shadow Animation Industry,” Mechademia 9: Ori­
gins ( 2015): 144–­62.
54. Chloé Paberz, “Communities of Craftsmen: Reflections on Japanese
Manga and South Korean Manhwaga,” Mechademia: Materialities Across
Asia 12, no. 2 (2020): 6–­23.
55. Yamamoto, Agglomeration of the Animation, 32.
56. Richie Marquez, “Exclusive Interview with 9Lives Animation Stu-
dio: Doing Outsourcing Work for Anime!,” 2017, https://farfromanimation
.com/2017/10/13/exclusive-interview-with-9lives-animation-studio-doing
-outsourcing-work-for-anime/.
57. Clifford Carlson, “What Is Performance?,” in The Performance Studies
Reader, ed. Henry Bial (London: Routledge, 2004); J. L. Austin, How to Do
Things with Words (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1962).
58. Choo, “Hyperbolic Nationalism,” 154.
59. Masuda notes the commonality of this. See Masuda, Dejitaru ga kaeru
anime bijinesu, 9.
60. Jennifer Sherman, “Twitter Reacts to My Sister, My Writer TV Series’ De-
teriorating Animation,” Anime News Network, January 22, 2019, https://www
 Notes to Chapter 4 341

.animenewsnetwork.com/interest/2018-10-19/twitter-reacts-to-my-sister-my
-writer-tv-series-deteriorating-animation/.138336.
61. Li, “Kiei no anime seisakukaisha.”
62. Nobuyuki Tsugata, Nihon no anime wa nani ga sugoi no ka (What is
amazing about Japanese anime?) (Tokyo: Shōdensha, 2014), 53.
63. Jennifer Sherman, “Study: Animators Earned US$28,000 on Average in
Japan in 2013,” Anime News Network, 2015, https://www.animenewsnetwork
.com/news/2015-05-15/study-animators-earned-usd28000-on-average-in-japan
-in-2013/.87762.
64. Yamamoto, Agglomeration of the Animation, 39.
65. Yamamoto, 63.
66. Yamamoto, 93.
67. All cost of living from crowdsourced data at numbeo.com, accessed Au-
gust 9, 2017.
68. See Marquez, “Exclusive Interview with 9Lives.”
69. Lamarre, “Regional TV,” 110–­11.
70. Chung, “Media Heterotopia,” 93.
71. Many of these companies are difficult to find information on, and some
credited studios have since gone under.
72. Malaysia and Indonesia have recently been discussed as the newest
countries for outsourcing, but I could not find reliable data on studios there.
73. Michael Curtin, “Between State and Capital: Asia’s Media Revolution
in the Age of Neoliberal Globalization,” International Journal of Communica-
tion 11 (2017): 1381.
74. Here Chung is referencing Vivian Sobchack and Hye Jean Chung, “Me-
dia Heterotopias and Science Fiction: Transnational Workflows and Trans­
galactic Spaces in Digitally Composited Ecosystems,” in Simultaneous Worlds:
Global Science Fiction Cinema, ed. Jennifer Feeley (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 2015), 90.
75. C. J. W.-­L . Wee, “Imagining the Fractured East Asian Modern: Com-
monality and Difference in Mass-­Cultural Production,” Criticism 54, no. 2
(Spring 2012): 208.
76. Lamarre, “Regional TV,” 94.
77. Condry, Soul of Anime, 110–­11.
78. Lamarre may call this “a multiplication of centers.” See Thomas La-
marre, The Anime Ecology: A Genealogy of Television, Animation, and Game
Media (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2018), 148.

4. Anime’s Citationality
1. Thomas Lamarre, The Anime Machine: A Media Theory of Animation
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009), xxii.
342 Notes to Chapter 4

2. Douglas B. Holt, “Why Do Brands Cause Trouble? A Dialectical Theory

of Consumer Culture and Branding,” Journal of Consumer Research 29 (2002):
70–­90.
3. Thomas Lamarre, The Anime Machine: A Media Theory of Animation
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009), 186.
4. This resembles the problems that other otaku works discuss, as ex-
amined in Hiroki Azuma, Gemuteki riarizumu no tanjō: dōbutsukasuru po-
sutomodan 2 (The birth of game-­like realism: postmodern animalization 2)
(­Tokyo: Kodansha, 2007).
5. Thomas Looser, “From Edogawa to Miyazaki: Cinematic and Anime-­ic
Architectures of Early and Late Twentieth-­Century Japan,” Japan Forum 14
(2002): 310.
6. Brian Ruh, “Conceptualizing Anime and the Database Fantasyscape,”
Mechademia 9: Origins (2015): 170–­71.
7. Howard Saul Becker, Art Worlds (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1982).
8. Marc Steinberg, Anime’s Media Mix: Franchising Toys and Characters
in Japan (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012), 17.
9. Judith Butler, “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in
Phenomenology and Feminist Theory,” Theatre Journal 40 (1988): 519.
10. Jonathan D. Culler, Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics and
the Study of Literature (London: Routledge, 2002), 5.
11. Hiroki Azuma, Otaku: Japan’s Database Animals, trans. Jonathan E.
Abel (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009), 42.
12. Donald Crafton, Shadow of a Mouse: Performance, Belief, and World-­
Making in Animation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013), 36.
13. Crafton, 35; quoting Richard Schechner, Performance Studies: An Intro-
duction (New York: Routledge, 2006), 28–­29.
14. Steve Neale, Genre and Hollywood (London: Routledge, 2000).
15. Lamarre reads Azuma’s description of the database as one without hori-
zons or limits; see Lamarre, The Anime Machine, 275.
16. With the recent rise in CG animation, studios like Polygon Pictures
build literal databases of facial expressions which can be called on and ad-
justed as needed, much like the cel bank system. See Roland Kelts, “CG Gains
a ‘Real’ Foothold in Anime,” Japan Times, February 20, 2016, https://www
.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2016/02/20/general/cg-gains-real-foothold-anime/.
17. Ruh sees this as part of the dynamics of the database fantasyscape; see
Ruh, “Conceptualizing Anime and the Database,” 173.
18. For example, the ninth episode of South Park’s 2013 season. In a short
sequence, the Japanese president of Sony, in Japanese, thanks Kenny for his
support of their PlayStation 4 product, giving him an amulet which provides
him with the powers to become Princess Kenny. This sequence parodies many
 Notes to Chapter 5 343

anime-­esque elements, giving Kenny anime eyes and turning him into a mag-
ical schoolgirl princess, employing these anime-­esque elements in connection
with Japan.
19. Lamarre, Anime Machine, 314.
20. Lamarre, 311.
21. Lamarre, 100.
22. Judith Butler, Undoing Gender (New York: Routledge, 2004), 15.
23. Lamarre, Anime Machine, 122.
24. Lamarre, 141.
25. Lamarre.
26. Lamarre, 135–­36.
27. Lamarre, 135.
28. Lamarre, 298.
29. Leger Grindon, “Cycles and Clusters: The Shape of Film Genre History,”
in Film Genre Reader IV, ed. Barry Keith Grant (Austin: University of Texas
Press, 2012).
30. See chapter 1 in Rayna Denison, Anime: A Critical Introduction (Lon-
don: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015).
31. Michal Daliot-­Bul and Nissim Otmazgin, The Anime Boom in the
United States: Lessons for Global Creative Industries (Cambridge, Mass.: Har-
vard University Press, 2017), 115.

5. Anime’s Creativity
1. Anthony Y. H. Fung and Vicky Ho, “Animation Industry in China:
Managed Creativity or State Discourse?,” in Handbook of Cultural and Crea­
tive Industries in China, ed. Michael Keane (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2017),
276–­92.
2. Alf Rehn and Christian De Cock, “Deconstructing Creativity,” in The
Routledge Companion to Creativity, ed. Tudor Rickards, Mark A. Runco, and
Susan Moger (London: Routledge, 2009), 226.
3. Justin O’Connor and Gu Xin, “A New Modernity? The Arrival of ‘Crea­
tive Industries’ in China,” International Journal of Cultural Studies 9, no. 3
(2006): 273.
4. Laikwan Pang, Creativity and Its Discontents: China’s Creative Indus-
tries and Intellectual Property Rights Offenses (Durham, N.C.: Duke University
Press, 2012), 32–­33.
5. Steve Neale, Genre and Hollywood (London: Routledge, 2000), 18–­20.
6. Neale, 19; citing Gunther Kress and Terry Threadgold, “Towards a So-
cial Theory of Genre,” Southern Review 21, no. 3 (1988): 219.
7. Neale, 20.
8. Rehn and De Cock, “Deconstructing Creativity,” 223.
344 Notes to Chapter 5

9. Rehn and De Cock, 224.

10. Thomas Osborne, “Against ‘Creativity’: A Philistine Rant,” Economy
and Society 32, no. 4 (2003): 507.
11. Rehn and De Cock, “Deconstructing Creativity,” 223.
12. Rehn and De Cock, 229.
13. Pang, Creativity and Its Discontents, 29.
14. Pang, 35.
15. Pang, 29.
16. O’Connor and Xin, “A New Modernity?,” 274.
17. O’Connor and Xin, 275.
18. O’Connor and Xin, 274.
19. O’Connor and Xin, 278.
20. O’Connor and Xin.
21. Fung and Ho, “Animation Industry in China,” 283–­85.
22. Fung and Ho, 290.
23. Fung and Ho, 280.
24. Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994).
25. Rupert Cox, “Introduction,” in The Culture of Copying in Japan: Critical
and Historical Perspectives, ed. Rupert Cox (London: Routledge, 2008), 1–­17.
26. Thomas Lamarre, “Regional TV: Affective Media Geographies,” Asia­
scape: Digital Asia (2015): 94.
27. Pang, Creativity and Its Discontents, 172–­79.
28. Rehn and De Cock, “Deconstructing Creativity,” 226.
29. Rehn and De Cock, 226.
30. Cox, “Introduction,” 9.
31. Pang, Creativity and Its Discontents, 22.
32. Pang, 172.
33. These are self-­published small runs of works that use published charac-
ters in different stories, costumes, and styles. Pang, Creativity and Its Discon-
tents, 179.
34. Pang, 179.
35. Pang, 162.
36. Pang, 174.
37. Tze-­yue Hu, Frames of Anime: Culture and Image-­Building (Hong Kong:
Hong Kong University Press, 2010), 142.
38. Hu, 145.
39. Matsunaga, Animētā no shakaigaku, 128.
40. Paberz, “Communities of Craftsmen.”
41. Hao Ling Li, “Kiei no anime seisakukaisha (emon) nihon honkaku san’nyū
kara mieru mono to wa? daihyō torishimariyaku Li Gōryō ga kataru” (Emerg-
ing animation production company Emon, what can be seen from full-­scale
entry into Japan? Representative director Li Hao Ling talks), Anime!Anime!,
 Notes to Chapter 6 345

accessed June 12, 2017, 2016, https://animeanime.jp/article/2016/12/22/31884

.html.
42. Tadashi Sudo, Dare ga korekara no anime o tsukuru noka: chugoku shi-
hon to netto haishin ga okosu shizuka na kakumei (Who will make anime in
the future? the quiet revolution caused by Chinese capital and internet distri-
bution) (Tokyo: Seikaisha, 2017), 24–­25.
43. It should be noted that this information comes from the Anime News
Network, where all these companies are listed under the heading “Japanese
Companies.”
44. For example, Sudo Tadashi notes how the “Japanese style” of anime may
affect the regulations a work would be subjected to in China. See Sudo, 50.
45. Zoltan Kacsuk, “Re-­examining the ‘What Is Manga’ Problematic: The
Tension and Interrelationship between the ‘Style’ versus ‘Made in Japan’ Posi-
tions,” Arts 7, no. 3 (2018): 1.
46. Bhabha, Location of Culture, 123.
47. Here Kacsuk is referencing manga. Kacsuk, “Re-­examining the ‘What
Is Manga,’ ” 13.
48. Kukhee Choo, “Hyperbolic Nationalism: South Korea’s Shadow Anima-
tion Industry,” Mechademia 9: Origins (2015): 146.
49. Choo.
50. Choo, 148.
51. Choo, 158.
52. Choo, 154.
53. Importantly, there are voice actors who are not ethnically Japanese,
such as Romi Park, who work in Japan.
54. Sudo, Dare ga korekara no anime, 48.
55. Pang, Creativity and Its Discontents, 5.
56. Pang.
57. Kuan-­Hsing Chen, Asia as Method: Toward Deimperialization (Durham,
N.C.: Duke University Press, 2010); Kōichi Iwabuchi, “East Asian Popular
Culture and Inter-­Asian Referencing,” in Routledge Handbook of East Asian
Popular Culture, ed. Koichi Iwabuchi, Eva Tsai, and Chris Berry (New York:
Routledge, 2016), 24–­33.
58. Pang, Creativity and Its Discontents, 174. Pang is referencing Jeremy
Rifkin, The Age of Access: The New Culture of Hypercapitalism, Where All of
Life Is a Paid-­for Experience (New York: Putnam, 2000).
59. Pang.

6. Anime’s Actors
1. Ursula K. Heise, “Plasmatic Nature: Environmentalism and Animated
Film,” Public Culture 26 (2014): 303.
346 Notes to Chapter 6

2. Heise, 308–­9.
3. Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex”
(New York: Routledge, 1993); Anthony Elliott, Identity Troubles: An Introduc-
tion (London: Routledge, 2016).
4. Clifford Carlson, “What Is Performance?,” in The Performance Studies
Reader, ed. Henry Bial (London: Routledge, 2004).
5. Judith Butler, “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in
Phenomenology and Feminist Theory,” Theatre Journal 40 (1988): 519.
6. Donald Crafton, Shadow of a Mouse: Performance, Belief, and World-­
Making in Animation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013), 15–­23.
7. Crafton, 36.
8. Crafton, 36–­48.
9. Crafton, 23.
10. Crafton, 26.
11. Crafton, 22.
12. Crafton, 40.
13. Crafton, 48.
14. Michel Foucault, “Technologies of the Self,” in Ethics: Subjectivity and
Truth, ed. Paul Rabinow, vol. 1 (New York: The New Press, 1997), 223–­53.
15. Crafton, Shadow of a Mouse, 44.
16. Crafton, 37–­41.
17. Crafton, 39.
18. Deborah Levitt, The Animatic Apparatus: Animation, Vitality, and the
Futures of the Image (Winchester, U.K.: Zero Books, 2018), 10.
19. Levitt.
20. Levitt, 12.
21. Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern, trans. Catherine Porter
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993).
22. Crafton, Shadow of a Mouse, 46.
23. Crafton, 47–­48.
24. Crafton, 41–­42.
25. Crafton, 23.
26. See Hiroki Azuma, Gemuteki riarizumu no tanjō: dōbutsukasuru posuto-
modan 2 (The birth of game-­like realism: postmodern animalization 2) (­ Tokyo:
Kodansha, 2007).
27. Crafton, Shadow of a Mouse, 42. Crafton cites David Graver, “The Ac-
tor’s Bodies,” Text and Performance Quarterly 17, no. 3 (1997): 223.
28. Eiji Ōtsuka, Kyarakutā shōsetsu no tsukurikata (How to make character
novels) (Tokyo: Kodansha, 2003); Eiji Ōtsuka, Sengo manga no hyōgen kūkan:
kigō-­teki karada no jubaku (The expressive space of post-­war manga: the curse
of the semiotic body) (Tokyo: Hōzōkan, 1994).
 Notes to Chapter 6 347

29. Thomas Lamarre, The Anime Machine: A Media Theory of Animation

(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009).
30. Marc Steinberg, Anime’s Media Mix: Franchising Toys and Characters
in Japan (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012), 6.
31. See Lamarre, The Anime Machine, 288; Lamarre, “Regional TV,” 98.
32. Lamarre, “Regional TV,” 103; Lamarre references Shiloh Whitney, “Af-
fects, Images and Childlike Perception: Self–­Other Difference in Merleau-­
Ponty’s Sorbonne Lectures,” PhaenEX 7 (2012): 185–­211.
33. Here I am taking influence from Derrida’s approach to language.
34. Judith Butler, Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative (New
York: Routledge, 1997).
35. There is always an affective valence to these movements.
36. Crafton, Shadow of a Mouse, 27–­28.
37. Teri Silvio, “Animation: The New Performance?,” Linguistic Anthropol-
ogy 20, no. 2 (2010): 426–­27.
38. Go Ito, Tezuka izu deddo: hirakareta manga hyōgenron he (Tezuka is
dead: postmodernist and modernist approaches to Japanese manga) (Tokyo:
NTT Shuppan, 2005).
39. For example, though using a different typology of acting, Olga Kopylova
provides an interesting analysis of the different types of gestures in Gankutsuō
and how they work with the unique textures in the distinctive animation of
the anime series. Of course, such differentiation practices apply to other forms
of animation as well. See Olga Kopylova, “Media Mix as Adaptation: Anime,
Manga, Light Novels” (PhD diss., Kyoto Seika University, 2016), 198–­211.
40. International Skating Union (ISU), “Program Components—­Single
Skating, Pair Skating, Ice Dance,” accessed December 9, 2019, https://www.isu
.org/figure-skating/rules/sandp-handbooks-faq/17596-program-component-
chart-id-sp-2019-20/file.
41. Silvio, “Animation: The New Performance?,” 430.
42. Diedrich Diederichsen, “Animation, De-­Reification, and the New Charm
of the Inanimate,” E-­Flux 36 (July 2012): 4.
43. Diederichsen.
44. Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globali­
zation (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996).
45. Diederichsen, “Animation, De-­Reification, and the New Charm,” 9.
46. Diederichsen, 7–­8.
47. Gabriella Lukács, Scripted Affects, Branded Selves: Television, Subjec-
tivity, and Capitalism in 1990s Japan (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press,
2010), 8.
48. Diederichsen, “Animation, De-­Reification, and the New Charm,” 9.
49. Diederichsen, 7–­8.
348 Notes to Chapter 6

50. C. J. W.-­L . Wee, “Imagining the Fractured East Asian Modern: Com-
monality and Difference in Mass-­Cultural Production,” Criticism 54, no. 2
(Spring 2012): 203.

7. Anime’s (Anti)Individualism
1. Satoshi Maejima, Sekaikei to wa nani ka: posuto eva no otakushi (What
is sekaikei? otaku history post-­Eva) (Tokyo: Soft Bank Creative, 2010), 27–­28.
2. Maejima, 174.
3. Evangelion cites many media, including Space Battleship Yamato (1974),
Akira (1988), Space Runaway Ideon (1980), Mobile Suit Gundam (1979), and
many others.
4. Maejima, Sekaikei to wa nani ka, 38–­39.
5. Maejima, 13.
6. Maejima, 56.
7. Maejima, 34.
8. Maejima, 174.
9. Maejima, 28.
10. Maejima, 102, 129.
11. Maejima, 215.
12. Tsunehiro Uno, Zeronendai no sōzōryoku (The imagination of the 2000s)
(Tokyo: Hayakawa Shobo, 2008).
13. Gabriella Lukács, Scripted Affects, Branded Selves: Television, Subjec-
tivity, and Capitalism in 1990s Japan (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press,
2010), 8.
14. Maejima, Sekaikei to wa nani ka, 248.
15. Maejima, 33.
16. Benjamin Bratton, “The Black Stack,” E-­Flux 53 (March 2014): 9.
17. It is crucial to note that the focus of exploration is mainly Shinji, expos-
ing an assumption that the individual is identified as male and not female or
another gender. Though examination of the gendered tendencies of individu-
alism is beyond the scope of this study, it is important to note that masculin-
ity is itself interrogated in Evangelion, often commented on as portraying an
“emasculated” or “childish” masculinity.
18. Christopher Howard, “The Ethics of Sekai-­Kei: Reading Hiroki Azuma
with Slavoj Zizek,” Science Fiction Film and Television 7 (2014): 370.
19. This incited the anger of many commentators, though some fans were
drawn to identify with Shinji. Maejima, Sekaikei to wa nani ka, 43–­47.
20. Judith Butler, “Giving an Account of Oneself,” Diacritics 31 (2001): 22.
21. Butler, 37.
22. Maejima, Sekaikei to wa nani ka, 86.
23. Maejima, 87.
 Notes to Chapter 8 349

24. Maejima, 56–­58.

25. Jonathan Clements, Anime: A History (London: British Film Institute,
2013), 216.
26. Masuda, Dejitaru ga kaeru anime bijinesu (Anime business, changed by
digitalization) (Tokyo: NTTshuppan, 2016), 8.
27. Patrick Galbraith and Thomas Lamarre, “Otakuology: A Dialogue,”
Mechademia 5: Fanthropologies (2010): 369.
28. Asō in 2006 as cited in Kōichi Iwabuchi, “Pop-­Culture Diplomacy in Ja-
pan: Soft Power, Nation Branding and the Question of ‘International Cultural
Exchange,’ ” International Journal of Cultural Policy 21 (August 8, 2015): 424.
29. Takahashi, “Animēshon ni okeru jinzaiikusei.”
30. Maejima, Sekaikei to wa nani ka, 107.
31. Maejima, 130.
32. Maejima, 99.
33. Kumiko Saito, “Magic, Shōjo, and Metamorphosis: Magical Girl Anime
and the Challenges of Changing Gender Identities in Japanese Society,” Jour-
nal of Asian Studies 73, no. 1 (February 2014): 158.
34. Thomas Lamarre, “Otaku Movement,” in Japan After Japan: Social and
Cultural Life from the Recessionary 1990s to the Present, ed. Tomiko Yoda and
Harry Harootunion (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2006), 360, 387.
35. Jason Read, “A Genealogy of Homo-­Economicus: Neoliberalism and the
Production of Subjectivity,” Foucault Studies 6 (February 2009): 34–­35.
36. Maejima, Sekaikei to wa nani ka, 219–­32.

8. Anime’s Dislocation
1. Satoshi Maejima, Sekaikei to wa nani ka: posuto eva no otakushi (What
is sekaikei? otaku history post-­Eva) (Tokyo: Soft Bank Creative, 2010), 233.
2. Philip Seaton, Takayoshi Yamamura, Akiko Sugawa-­Shimada, and
Kyungjae Jang, Contents Tourism in Japan: Pilgrimages to “Sacred Sites” of
Popular Culture (Amherst, N.Y.: Cambria Press, 2017).
3. Brian Ruh, “Conceptualizing Anime and the Database Fantasyscape,”
Mechademia 9: Origins (2015): 164–­75. See also Manuel Castells, “The Space
of Flows,” in The Rise of the Network Society, 2nd ed. (Cornwall: Blackwell
Publishers, 2000): 407–­59.
4. Thomas Lamarre, The Anime Machine: A Media Theory of Animation
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009), 122.
5. Lamarre, 134.
6. Lamarre, 136.
7. Lamarre, 141.
8. Lamarre, 136.
9. Lamarre, 139.
350 Notes to Chapter 8

10. Paul Virilio, Polar Inertia, trans. Patrick Camiller (London: SAGE Pub-
lications, 2000), 85.
11. William Egginton, How the World Became a Stage: Presence, Theatri-
cality, and the Question of Modernity (New York: State University of New York
Press, 2003), 146–­47.
12. It should be noted that both Egginton and Weber are quite explicit
about focusing on Western theater, and there is both overlap and divergence
in their writings on these traditions of theater.
13. Samuel Weber, Theatricality as Medium (New York: Fordham Univer-
sity Press, 2004), 388n6.
14. Weber, 185.
15. Weber, 388n3.
16. Weber, 8.
17. Deborah Levitt, The Animatic Apparatus: Animation, Vitality, and the
Futures of the Image (Winchester, U.K.: Zero Books, 2018), 59.
18. Levitt aligns herself with Gilles Deleuze’s conceptions of simulacra over
those of Jean Baudrillard. See Levitt, Animatic Apparatus, 31–­32, 45.
19. Levitt, Animatic Apparatus, 59.
20. Levitt, 64.
21. Levitt, 127n1.
22. Levitt, 28–­29.
23. Levitt, 83.
24. Levitt, 109.
25. Levitt, 112.
26. Susan Napier, Anime from Akira to Howl’s Moving Castle: Experiencing
Contemporary Japanese Animation (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005),
22–­27.
27. Christopher Bolton, Interpreting Anime (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 2018), 96.
28. Thomas Lamarre, The Anime Ecology: A Genealogy of Television, Ani-
mation, and Game Media (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2018),
194–­95.
29. Thomas Lamarre, “Otaku Movement,” in Japan After Japan: Social and
Cultural Life from the Recessionary 1990s to the Present, ed. Tomiko Yoda and
Harry Harootunion (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2006), 390.
30. Doreen Massey, “A Global Sense of Place,” in Space, Place, and Gender
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994).
31. Levitt, Animatic Apparatus, 65.
32. Haoling Li, Yoshitaka Takeuchi, and Xiaoxing Yi, “Story, Shikioriori,”
promotional, accessed June 12, 2018, https://shikioriori.jp/story.html. See also
“Komikkusu uēbu firumu: ‘Kiminonaha’ no seisakukaisha no shinsaku ga konka
 Notes to Conclusion 351

kōkai chūgoku butai no seishun ansorojī” (CoMix Wave Film: a new work by
the production company of “Your Name” will be released this summer. An
anthology of youth set in China), MANTANWEB, February 27, 2018, https://
mantan-web.jp/article/20180226dog00m200027000c.html.
33. For instance, Crystalyn Hodgkins, “Shikioriori Anime Film’s Trailer
Previews Character Voices, Reveals August 4 Opening,” Anime News Net-
work, May 25, 2018, https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2018-05-25/
shikioriori-anime-film-trailer-previews-character-voices-reveals-august-4
-opening/.132001.
34. C. J. W.-­L . Wee, “Imagining the Fractured East Asian Modern: Com-
monality and Difference in Mass-­Cultural Production,” Criticism 54, no. 2
(Spring 2012): 203.
35. Wee, 197.
36. Wee, 203.
37. Wee, 206.
38. Rei Nakafuji, “Chinese Studios Lure Japan’s Struggling Anime Artists,”
April 14, 2020, https://www.ft.com/content/eb3870ee-5fec-4dd2-a664
-36e781971208.
39. Selen Çalık Bedir, “(Re)Playing Anime: Building a Medium-­Specific Ap-
proach to Gamelike Narratives,” Mechademia 12, no. 2 (2020): 57.
40. Bedir, 60.
41. Rebecca Silverman, “The Beginner’s Guide to The King’s Avatar,” An-
ime News Network, June 23, 2017, https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/
feature/2017-06-23/the-beginner-guide-to-the-king-avatar/.117865.
42. Lamarre, Anime Ecology, 310.
43. Chris Higgins, “Tencent’s Chinese eSports Anime Is Really Anime but
Also Extremely eSports,” PCGamesN, accessed May 27, 2019, https://www
.pcgamesn.com/league-of-legends/the-kings-avatar-anime.
44. Silverman, “Beginner’s Guide to The King’s Avatar.”
45. Thomas Lamarre, “Regional TV: Affective Media Geographies,” Asia­
scape: Digital Asia (2015): 94.

Conclusion
1. Deborah Thurman, “Routine Maintenance: Caroline Levine on the
Forms That Sustain,” Center for the Humanities, accessed February 9, 2020,
https://humanities.wustl.edu/news/routine-maintenance-caroline-levine
-forms-sustain.
2. Described in relation to Walter Benjamin, “On the Mimetic Faculty,” in
Gerald Raunig, Dividuum: Machinic Capitalism and Molecular Revolution,
trans. Aileen Derieg (South Pasadena: Semiotext(e), 2016), 150.
352 Notes to Conclusion

3. Judith Butler, “Imitation and Gender Insubordination,” in Cultural

Theory and Popular Culture: An Anthology, ed. John Storey (Harlow: Pearson,
2006), 255–­70.
4. Kōichi Iwabuchi, “Undoing Inter-­national Fandom in the Age of Brand
Nationalism,” Mechademia 5: Fanthropologies (2010): 89.
5. Patrick Galbraith and Thomas Lamarre, “Otakuology: A Dialogue,”
Mechademia 5: Fanthropologies (2010): 366.
6. Judith Butler, “Giving an Account of Oneself,” Diacritics 31 (2001): 22.
7. Sandra Annett, Anime Fan Communities: Transcultural Flows and Fric-
tions (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).
8. Galbraith and Lamarre, “Otakuology,” 370.
9. See Marc Steinberg and Jinying Li, “Introduction: Regional Platforms,”
Asiascape: Digital Asia 4 (2017): 173–­83.
10. Steinberg and Li, 174.
11. Steinberg and Li, 175.
12. Steinberg and Li, 179.
13. Ian Condry, The Soul of Anime: Collaborative Creativity and Japan’s
Media Success Story (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2013), 2.
14. Condry, 16.
15. Marc Steinberg, The Platform Economy: How Japan Transformed the
Consumer Internet (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2019), 206.
16. Steinberg, 231–­32.
17. Leo T. S. Ching, “Neo-­regionalism and Neoliberal Asia,” in Routledge
Handbook of New Media in Asia, ed. Larissa Hjorth and Olivia Khoo (London:
Routledge, 2016), 39, 44.
18. Kōichi Iwabuchi, Recentering Globalization: Popular Culture and Jap-
anese Transnationalism (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2002).
19. Thomas Lamarre, The Anime Ecology: A Genealogy of Television, Anima-
tion, and Game Media (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2018), 139.
20. Neferti X. M. Tadiar, “Life-­Times of Disposability within Global Neo-
liberalism,” Social Text 115, no. 31 (2013): 22–­24.
 Index

acting, 24, 212; animated, 236; char- Amazon, 64, 83

acter, 280; naturalistic means of, animatic apparatus, 277–80
211–12. See also embodied acting; animation, 20, 36, 39, 41, 55, 83, 90,
figurative acting; method acting; 94, 95, 97, 114, 122, 126, 129, 147,
voice acting 197, 271; agglomeration of, 133;
actor-network theory, 52, 89, 119, anime and, 42, 49, 88, 117, 135,
331n33 151, 152, 158, 171, 177, 199, 206,
actors, 97, 331n33; figurative acting 256; an-ontological, 277, 279; art,
codes of, 293; human/nonhuman, 2, 3, 71, 106, 336n49; background,
52, 89, 90, 97, 101, 103, 131, 207, 91, 134, 165; character, 17, 123;
309; self-contained, 228. See also commercial, 2, 3, 61, 73, 74, 85,
voice actors 90, 207; computer-aided, 155,
Aerial Girls, 101–2, 103 204; computer-generated (see CG
aesthetics, 4, 36, 37, 38, 45, 71, 120, animation); digital, 71; diversity
124, 128, 129, 134, 142, 151, 161, of, 204; domestic, 136; embodied
181, 195, 310; anime, 20, 21, 92, acting and, 210, 211; figurative
162; anime-esque, 41; branded, acting and, 218, 230; full, 37, 210,
153; uniform, 91, 155, 173 230, 231; how objects act and,
African Americans, stereotypes of, 203–7; in-between, 91; income
203–4 from, 140–41; key, 91, 105, 112;
agency, 44, 87–90, 150; degrees of, limited, 18, 103, 187, 203, 217–18,
143; dispersal of, 42, 117; layers of, 219, 220–22, 227, 230, 337n7;
113; limits on, 114 medium of, 48, 49, 151, 171, 277,
Agency of Cultural Affairs, 67, 142 278; nonhuman objects in, 204;
Ahiko, Eiji, 231 performance of, 48, 49, 56, 105,
AJA. See Association of Japanese 138, 152, 203, 204, 205, 206,
Animation 256–57, 280, 316; production and,
Akihabara, 18, 72, 315 49, 91, 94, 113, 142, 143, 145, 148,
Akira, 1, 348n3 160, 183, 197–98; rotoscoped, 157;
Aku no Hana, 157, 158 (fig.) standard of, 211–12; techniques,
A-Line, 194 91, 111; types of, 2, 151, 163, 176;

9 353 0
354 Index

unconventional, 157. See also cel of, 65, 188; studies of, 43, 279;
animation survival-type, 267
“Animation: The New Performance?” Anime Contents Expo, 79
(Silvio), 48 Anime Ecology, The (Lamarre), 22
animation directors, 91, 104, 114 anime-esque, 17–21, 19, 20, 24, 34,
animation supervisors, 101, 105 35, 38, 39, 41, 42, 49, 50, 55, 79,
“Animation Supporters,” 142 81, 162, 176, 183, 184, 192, 195;
animator dormitory projects, 142 changes for, 157; domination
animators, 52, 88, 91, 94–95, 96, 98, of, 193; as Japanese, 196; per-
101, 107, 114, 146, 311; Chinese, formances of, 58, 59, 155–59,
1, 130, 132, 194; clean-up by, 140; 171, 201, 255–56, 293, 295, 296,
Filipino, 141; foreign, 135, 177, 315, 316, 320, 323; transcultural
323; in-between, 140; innova- potential of, 302; transnationality
tion and, 140; Japanese, 140–41; of, 304
Korean, 141, 194, 258, 318; many- anime-ic, 155–56
to-one, 322; salary of, 93, 140–41; AnimeJapan, 62, 79, 196, 199; func-
support for, 142; 3D, 104, 106, 111; tion of, 81, 82; participation fee
2D, 106, 111 for, 336n49; promotion for, 80
anime: accepting, 18–19; animation (fig.)
and, 42, 49, 88, 117, 135, 151, 152, Anime Machine, The (Lamarre), 37,
158, 171, 177, 199, 206; art-house, 151
127; authentic, 76, 83, 196, 199, Anime Media Mix (Steinberg), 124
317; Chinese, 75, 189, 192, 195, Anime News Network, 3, 70, 292,
196, 198, 201, 202, 317, 318; clas- 345n43
sifying, 318; concept of, 3, 6, 114, Anime Next 100—Special Movie
117; creative industry of, 179–80; (AJA), 1, 2–3, 19
as culturally odorless, 76–77; animēshon, 71, 72
defining, 2, 3, 51–52, 61, 69–75, Ani Village, 144
78, 81, 147; English-language, Annett, Sandra, 20, 31, 63, 127
292; Euro-American adoption an-ontology, 36, 277, 278, 279
of, 75; foreign appeal of, 129; antennae, 191 (fig.)
global, 75, 76, 271, 275; history anthropocentrism, 203, 206, 208, 211
of, 6, 122; inter-national stasis of, Appadurai, Arjun, 44
66–69; Japan and, 81, 189, 263, Arakawa under the Bridge, 154
286; Japanese, 85, 138, 187, 197, area studies, 3, 6, 28–33
199, 285, 291, 301, 316, 345n44; Artland, 7, 132
Korean, 63, 85; map of, 177; Art Worlds (Becker), 157
place-focused, 57, 58, 269–71, Ashi Productions, 132
282, 284, 287; playing/replaying, “Asia as Method” (Takeuchi), 28
294, 300; popularity of, 18–19, Asō Tarō, 259
74, 257, 283; reading, 50–51, 88, Association of Japanese Animation
313; situating, 28–33; sources (AJA), 1, 64, 79
 Index 355

Astro Boy, 63, 192 Bhabha, Homi, 195, 197

Austin, J. L., 46, 162 Big West, 7, 11, 131, 132
auteur theory, 88 Biho, 130, 132, 134, 283
avatars, 58, 274, 293, 296; analysis of, Bilibili, 64, 319
300; design of, 297; players and, bishōnen characters, 13, 15
297 blackness, 77
Azuma Hiroki, 39, 160, 219, 260, Bloodivores, 194
342n15; assertion of, 188; data- Blu-ray, 66, 334n9
base of, 162 boku, 241, 252, 253
Bolton, Christopher, 4, 279
backgrounds, 36, 91, 112, 130, 134, border-crossing, 26, 48, 88, 114, 128,
140, 154, 163, 165, 256, 269, 282; 202, 248, 291, 309; flows, 119, 316;
anime-esque, 283 route, 74
Bahi JD, 323 bordered-whole, 21, 23, 24–25, 29­30,
Bái Māo, Sunny, 185 31, 33, 59, 63, 74, 75, 88, 118, 146,
Baker, Omar Yusef, 77 147, 178, 245, 246, 248, 250, 254,
Balala Fairies, 196 256, 272, 278, 303, 304, 310, 313,
Bambi, 167 322; body, 210, 211; figurative
Banana Fish, 269 acting and, 251; forming, 275;
Bandai Visual, 131, 132 ­internal/external and, 251; in-
Bangkok, 130; comics/animation in, ter-national and, 61–62, 65; inter-­
83 national map of, 143; nation-­state
Barad, Karen, 39 and, 51, 62, 64, 67, 321; Self/Other
Battle Royale, 244 and, 253; spatiality of, 28, 30, 280;
battle sequences, 13, 230, 256 using, 52, 66, 85, 86
Baudrillard, Jean, 350n18 borders, 27, 121, 165, 248; citations
B.CMay Pictures, 58, 292 across, 185–89; crossing, 30, 53,
Beauty and the Beast, 211 117, 202, 217; disciplinary, 36;
Becker, Howard, 157 discrete, 26; internal–external,
Bedir, Selen Çalik, 294, 295, 300 55, 228; national, 6, 7, 31, 42, 65,
behavior: character, 205; forms of, 66, 118, 303; somatic, 210, 211;
159; restoration of, 47; types of, stylistic, 106, 152
160 Bordwell, David, 34
Beijing, 285; comics/animation in, Boruto, 316
83; film on, 284; production in, brands, 170, 236; anime, 151–55
146 Bratton, Benjamin, 246
Beijing Xie Le Art Company, 130 Brunet, Stanislas, 12, 130, 132, 134
Ben 10, 81 Bubble Period, 10
Berndt, Jacqueline, 3–4, 17, 32, 38 Busan DR, 132
Berserk, 41 Butler, Judith, 46, 162, 314; perfor-
Betty Boop, 167, 225 mativity and, 47, 48; Self/Other
Beyond the Boundary, 153 and, 252, 253
356 Index

capital, 44, 321; media, 282; trans­ mimicry and, 197; mukokuseki
national, 45, 320 and, 77–78
capitalism, 182, 234, 235, 315 Chow, Rey, 29, 331n33
Carlson, Clifford, 48 Chung, Hye Jean, 53, 144; live-action
Castell, Manuel, 119 cinema and, 135; on materiality,
cel animation, 1, 36, 37, 38, 29, 121–22; on media heterotopia,
40–41, 71, 90, 97, 121, 125, 138, 134, 143
155, 157, 159, 167, 272 cinema, 6; animation and, 33;
CG animation, 36, 40–41, 42, 82, 91, kung-fu, 127; live-action, 135, 277,
95, 106, 130, 132, 134, 155, 157, 285, 287
158, 172, 174–75 (fig.), 209, 230; citationality, 163, 180, 184–85, 200,
anime-esque, 158 (fig.); 3D, 40, 285, 316
176, 188, 204 citations, 56, 59, 160–67, 171, 180,
character design, 24, 38, 90, 94, 104, 184–85, 189, 200, 226, 246, 280,
114, 123, 124, 165, 167, 176, 177, 285; decentralized network of,
186, 198, 226, 227, 276; animation 173, 176–78; inter-related, 227;
and, 103; database, 188; focus on, models for, 165, 243; point-to-
203; fundamentals of, 125; inno- point, 316; politics of, 188
vations on, 190–91 (fig.); popular, City Hunter, 192
188; types of, 17 classroom, layout of, 186 (fig.)
characters, 40, 55, 77, 85, 165, 167, claymation, 1, 2, 36
252; animating, 107, 108; develop- cleanup, 91, 96, 105
ment of, 102, 114; distinction of, Clements, Jonathan, 84, 129, 131
224, 226, 228; enactment of, 39, “Clock Cleaners, The,” 210
272; in-game, 298–99 (fig.); intro- codes, 48, 217, 225, 247, 297, 311;
ductions of, 227; performances characters and, 271, 311; citation
of, 48, 49, 203, 226; real-world, of, 56, 207, 225; conventional, 212,
298–99 (fig.); tsundere, 226; types 271, 277; expressions and, 214–16
of, 91, 159, 213, 226 (fig.); external, 248; genre, 315;
Chen, Kuan-Hsing, 28, 29, 287 performing, 225, 227, 233; switch-
Chibi Maruko-chan, 72, 81 ing, 226, 248. See also figurative
Chiisana Fashion Show, 284, 290 acting codes
China as Method (Mizoguzhi), 28 collaboration, 102–3, 113, 147, 199
China-Japan Film Co-production Colored Pencil Animation, 292
Agreement, 317 coloring, 90, 91, 96, 165
Ching, Leo T. S., 321 comics, 83, 84–85
Chisato, Mita, 13 Comiket, 217
Chise, 243, 253, 254, 261 CoMix Wave, 58, 256, 284, 286, 290,
Choi, JungBong, 26, 118–19, 122, 291
128 Commission on Japan’s Goals in the
Choo, Kukhee, 73, 130, 136, 138; on Twenty-First Century (Obuchi),
Japanese/Korean animation, 197; 244
 Index 357

commodities, 31, 45, 125, 170, 231; Cool Japan Office, 67

composite of, 235; culturalization copying, 51, 114, 161, 185, 192, 200,
of, 73, 78 202, 206, 300; creativity and,
commonalities, 160–61, 287, 290, 307 180–84, 193
complexity, 147, 149, 205, 231, 262, Cowboy Bebop, 1, 127, 257
264; transnational, 134 Cox, Rupert, 185
Condry, Ian, 99, 134; on anime, Crafton, Donald, 206, 207; anima-
319–20; collaborative creativity tion performance and, 56, 205; on
and, 89, 147; mass/niche and, 19; Betty Boop, 225; embodied acting
platforms and, 320; storyboards and, 108, 210; figurative acting
and, 97 and, 108; movement and, 211;
consumption, 3, 4, 7, 19, 32, 33, performance and, 48–49, 206;
51, 114, 157, 160, 202, 217, 244, re-performance and, 160
245; cultural, 201; database, 219, creative industries, 180, 182, 183,
260; flow of, 45; global, 73; local, 189, 200; nation-branding of, 201;
68; media mix and, 125; trans­ rubric of, 79
national, 113, 117 creativity, 51, 88, 99, 160, 192, 193,
conventionality, 38, 45, 159, 160, 242, 245, 284, 285; anime, 54–55,
161, 247, 260, 275, 280, 281, 300; 184–85, 189, 196–97, 201, 316;
community and, 202 artistic, 183, 200–201; collabo-
conventions, 42, 138, 147, 148, 149, rative, 89, 147, 320; conception
213, 270; anime-esque, 18, 24, of, 180, 181, 182, 184, 185, 197,
25, 43, 48, 53, 78, 135, 150, 160, 200, 206; copying and, 180–84;
187, 193, 243, 281, 295, 317, 322; entrepreneurial, 309; individual,
design, 126; genre, 126; media-­ 98; notion of, 179–80, 181, 183; as
form, 136, 193–94; narrative, 126; process/praxis, 182
performative, 140, 307, 309, 311; crests, 191 (fig.)
preexisting, 189; repetition of, Critical Terms for Media Studies
152, 160, 189 (Mitchell and Hansen), 36
convergence, 127, 170–73 Crunchyroll, 64, 65, 68, 82
Cool Japan, 2, 44, 52, 57, 62, 75, 129, Culler, Jonathan, 159
179, 196, 242, 264, 267, 270, 279, cultural product, 43, 270, 313; anime
303, 313; anime and, 67, 69, 73, 74, as, 67, 313; popular, 200
78; creativity and, 184; cultural culture, 26, 27, 151, 179, 183, 193,
determinism and, 117; effective- 208, 286; anime, 11, 84, 192;
ness of, 77; failure of, 76; glo- cartoon, 192; dōjin, 192; gaming,
balization and, 43; image of, 67; 295; global, 44, 267; Japanese, 11,
inter-national and, 66, 68; media-­ 43, 52, 59, 66–67, 68, 69, 73, 74,
form and, 79; nation-branding 76, 77, 78, 84, 87, 138, 197, 258,
and, 76, 142, 258, 321; promotion 259–60, 267, 269, 270, 281, 284,
by, 3; transnational flows and, 83 313, 319; media, 62, 315; national,
Cool Japan Fund Inc., 67 44, 74, 76, 142, 200, 202, 259–60;
358 Index

otaku, 11, 43, 240, 245, 246, 315; Chinese, 286; collaboration by,
piracy, 192; popular, 2, 11, 68, 181, 102–3; decision-making and, 101
192, 200, 259, 263, 264, 313 dislocation, 271–74, 278, 292–97,
Curtin, Michael, 144 300–302; dynamics of, 291, 303;
spatiality of, 271, 272, 291
Daejin, 134 Disney, 19, 40, 56, 123, 125, 148, 205,
Daicon IV Opening Animation, 171, 206, 209, 210, 211; animation of,
172 5, 72, 151, 230; embodied perfor-
Daliot-Bul, Michal, 75, 176 mance and, 233; influence of, 124
dance sequences, 207, 226, 231 Disney, Walt, 207
Darling-Wolf, Fabienne, 118 distribution, 3, 7, 18, 19, 32, 33, 51,
databases, 39, 70, 156, 160–67, 311, 84, 90, 114; audiovisual, 119; flow
342n16 of, 45, 65; global, 11, 19, 62, 63, 68,
DC comics, 176 84, 85, 258, 313; mapping, 62–66;
Death and Rebirth, 230 transnational, 113, 117
Death Note, 213, 244, 267 diversity, 45, 49, 51, 54, 153, 162,
De Cock, Christian, 180, 181, 184 180, 204, 281, 295; degree of, 163;
Dein Name (Kermani), 234 producing, 173; recognizability
Deleuze, Gilles, 350n18 and, 16
Delta, 173, 177 dòngmàn, 75
Demachi Masugata Shopping Dragon Ball, 1, 192
Arcade, 282, 283 Dragon Ball Super, 72
Denison, Rayna, 5, 81, 127, 173 Dragon Ball Z, 257
Densha Otoko, 258 Dragon Lancer, 196
Dentsu, 67, 76 DR Movie, 130, 132, 258
Derrida, Jacques, 46, 162, 347n33 Du, Daisy Yan, 31, 123
designs, 170, 192, 193; facial, 297 Dual! Parallel Trouble Adventure, 257
design styles, 91, 124, 167; dubbing, 3, 63, 64, 142, 185, 197, 199,
contrasting/­linking, 166 (fig.) 292
development, 316, 319; economic, Dumbo, 204
182, 259; historical, 181; trans­ dynamic immobility, 38, 39, 125, 218
national, 122–29, 149
deviation, 22, 50, 54, 137–38, 163, ears: bunny, 190 (fig.); cat, 190 (fig.);
187, 196, 311 nonhuman, 188
Dexter’s Laboratory, 176 economic growth, 43, 260, 308
Diederichsen, Diedrich, 234, 235 economics, 41, 43, 76; global, 259;
difference, 46, 270, 307; disruptive, post-Fordist, 26
189; maximizing/minimizing, 48; editing, 41, 68, 91, 92, 105, 129, 218
repetition and, 24 Egginton, William, 57, 274, 275, 276,
directors, 52, 96, 97, 285, 297; 279, 295, 330n25, 350n12; theatri-
cality of, 278, 280, 303
 Index 359

Eisenstein, Sergei, 124, 148, 207 159; codified, 205, 213, 217, 310;
elements: anime-esque, 49, 167, 173, collaborative, 217; cultural, 202;
176, 177, 185, 189, 203, 212, 243, facial, 38, 91, 108, 110 (fig.), 159,
256, 276; citational, 234; repeat- 213, 217, 230; figurative, 109, 212,
ing, 261; shared, 227; structural 217–18, 219, 223, 224, 225, 233,
explosion of, 272; visual, 16 234, 237, 266, 293; materializa-
embodied acting, 108, 206–7, 229, tion of, 209; narratives and, 104;
230; animation and, 210, 211, 228; performing, 209, 223 (fig.), 226,
anthropocentric, 211, 212 232
Emon, 82, 84, 133, 140, 144, 146, 194, external, 107, 147, 224, 248; internal
198, 199, 284, 286, 318 and, 82–86, 117–18, 249, 251
emotional registers, 210; shifts in, eyes, 233; anime-esque, 111, 167,
220–22 (fig.) 168–69 (fig.), 170, 176; arched,
emotions, 210, 252; codified, 219; 213; character, 14 (fig.), 15 (fig.);
movement and, 231; showing, 207, glimmering, 213
213
End of Evangelion, The, 239, 240, 250; FAI, 130
stills from, 249 (fig.) Fantasia, 123, 207
entrepreneurism, 44, 245, 309 figurative acting, 56, 207, 214–16
Escaflowne, 257 (fig.), 217, 220–22 (fig.), 227, 229,
esports, 58, 294, 295, 296, 297, 301 248, 249, 271, 276, 297, 311; ac-
ethics, 121, 252–53, 263, 309, 313 ceptance of, 266; bordered-whole
Evangelion, 20, 43, 67, 165, 216, and, 251; dynamics of, 224; early,
231, 254, 262, 263, 265–66; 225; embracing, 265; lifestyle per-
boundaries/­bordered-wholes formance and, 233–37; particular-­
and, 248; codes and, 248; end characters of, 228; reliance on,
of, 243, 250–51; individualism 265; testing out, 247
in, 267; personal relationships figurative acting codes, 108, 109,
and, 260–61; profitability of, 213, 219, 224, 226, 227, 231, 233,
257; sekaikei and, 239–43; self-­ 247, 266, 293, 297; anime-esque,
reflexivity and, 246; selves in, 311; 298–99 (fig.); performance of,
success/failure of, 245–51, 259; 229–30
successors of, 242–43 Flavors of Youth, 284
Exodus!, 95, 97, 104, 108 form: anime, 7, 17, 20, 21–25; clash-
Expelled from Paradise, 20, 40, 155, ing, 318–23; conception of, 21, 24;
157, 172; animation for, 158–59, media and, 36; rigidity of, 5, 6
175 (fig.); stills from, 158 (fig.) Foucault, Michel, 46, 128, 134, 206
exports, 62, 64, 65, 117, 296, 320 frameworks, 39, 51, 86, 145, 286;
expressions, 38, 45, 56, 129, 229; aesthetic, 203; global, 314; insti-
acting codes and, 214–16 (fig.); tutionalized, 61, 64, 83; inter-­
anime-esque, 157, 176; bodily, national, 83, 85, 113, 124, 146,
360 Index

200, 291, 302; local, 314; national, globalization, 4, 6, 7, 24, 25­26, 28, 31,
124; visual, 55 43, 58, 73, 129, 131, 180, 242, 263,
Free!, 153 264, 265, 273, 276, 277, 278, 280,
freelancers, 91, 96, 131, 322 286, 291, 308, 309, 310, 314, 318;
Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu, 218; stills anime, 20, 51, 270; contemporary,
from, 220–22 (fig.) 27, 33, 275, 303; cultural, 118; dis-
Full Metal Panic! The Second Raid, location(s) of, 304; dynamics of, 27,
153 32, 57; modes of, 270; moments of,
funding, 69, 82, 83, 93, 112, 113, 131 45, 204; postmodern, 26; present-­
Fung, Anthony Y. H., 183 day, 27; problematics of, 51, 61;
symbol of, 313; tensions of, 32, 271;
Gainax, 217 transnational flows of, 274
Galbraith, Patrick, 315 Glory, 293, 296–97
G&G Entertainment, 258 God of High School, 84
gender, 96, 348n17; as performative, Goffman, Erving, 45
46–47 Gonzo, 84, 258
genre, 17, 33, 34, 47, 152, 167, 173, Grindon, Leger, 35
278; anime, 35, 296; as language, “Gross National Cool” (McGray), 67
35; magical girl, 173, 263, 264; Guangzhou, 285, 290, 291; comics/
media-form vs., 35; sekaikei, 20, animation in, 83; film on, 284
240; shōnen, 293; subcultural,
262, 267; as sublanguage, 35 .hack series, 300
geoblocking, 64, 319 hairstyles, 13, 157, 161, 165, 297
geography, 4, 23, 120, 146; cultural, Hamano, Satoshi, 320
119, 309; media process, 121, 319; Hana Pro, 11
regional, 120, 320 Hanazawa, Kana, 185
gestures, 56, 176, 208; codified, 203; Hanil Animation, 112
conventional, 91; facial, 213; Hanyoung Animation, 11
vocabularies of, 205 Haoliners, 82, 84, 194, 199, 284, 286
Ghost in the Shell, 127, 257, 335n37 Hartzheim, Bryan Hikari, 89, 97, 99
Ghost in the Shell: SAC 2045, 316 Harvey, David, 44
“Giving an Account of Oneself” Heise, Ursula, 55, 203
(Butler), 252 Heo, Jong, 112
global, 51, 57, 117, 131, 315; anime as, heterotopia, media, 53, 128, 134, 135,
261; local and, 26, 27, 28; standard 136, 143, 146, 146–50, 156, 200,
view of, 62 281, 286
global economy, 43, 263, 322 hierarchies, 94, 145, 146; production,
global inflections, 40, 85, 126, 177, 53, 100, 114, 140, 286; trans­
313–16 national, 140–42
globality, 30, 33, 56, 313; anime and, historical moment, 43–45, 47, 274
51–52, 61, 64, 86, 151, 314, 315; history, 106, 192; political, 193;
conception of, 87, 121 transnational, 53, 129, 316
 Index 361

Ho Chi Minh: comics/animation in, compulsory, 181; deconstructing,

83; production in, 146 251–57; discourses of, 236, 245;
Hollywood, 34, 35, 40, 127, 199, 257 dominant, 237; enforcing, 256;
Hong, Rong, 112 interiority of, 249; multiplying,
Hong Kong, 127; comics/animation 228; neoliberalism and, 235,
in, 83 236, 243–45, 246, 262, 265, 311;
Hori Hikari, 122, 123 rhetoric of, 244, 245; sekaikei
Hoshi no Koe, 243 and, 243–45; self-contained, 207;
Hosoda Mamoru, 87 valorizing, 54
Howard, Christopher, 248, 249 industry, 148; animation, 133; anime,
Hu, Tze-Yue G., 193 35, 50, 79, 83, 84, 85, 89, 91, 94–95,
Huang, Chengxi, 1, 130, 316 96, 99, 129, 134, 152, 155, 202,
Human Instrumentality Project, 259; changes, 76; cultural, 202,
240, 248 321; media, 67, 257; trans­national
Hunan, 286, 290, 291; film on, 284 flows of, 45
Hurd, Earl, 90 innovations, 41, 140, 149, 181
hybridity, 127, 128, 140, 148, 284; intellectual property (IP), 63, 82, 83,
transnational, 123–24 84, 93, 101, 194
Hyōka, 167; still from, 168 (fig.) intellectual property rights (IPR),
hyperindividualism, 236–37 182, 199, 200
interconnections, 29, 56, 118, 147,
identity, 139, 153, 185, 210, 236, 246, 263, 278, 313
280, 294, 310; conceptualizing, internal, 21, 147, 224, 248; external
308; concrete, 184; connected- and, 82­86, 117–18, 249, 251
ness of, 228; cultural, 279, 309; inter-national, 26, 27, 30, 31, 45, 64,
geographic components of, 151; 82, 83, 84, 88, 115, 117–18, 128,
issues of, 51, 300, 313; main- 137, 147, 199; bordered-whole,
taining, 54, 155; mistaken, 263; 61–62, 65; limits of, 85, 86
national, 259; negotiating, 230, IP. See intellectual property
260, 308; performances of, 59, IPR. See intellectual property rights
162; recognizable, 152, 155 Iriya no Sora, 243, 254, 261, 262, 263
idol anime, 1, 13, 15, 35 Isom, Arthell S., 130
Idol Master: Cinderella Girls, The, Itano circus, 172–73, 174 (fig.), 230,
20, 219, 223, 224, 227; narrative of, 256, 272, 273
226; still from, 223 (fig.) Itano Ichirō, 7, 111, 172
Idol Master, The, 1, 2 iterations, 58, 138, 162, 163, 180, 231,
in-betweens, 4, 91 307; distinct, 161; performative,
individual-characters, 228, 247, 250 173
individualism, 44, 51, 56, 88, 90, Ito Go, 228
180, 205, 207, 208, 209, 211, 212, Itoh, Makoto, 44
229–30, 239, 242, 263, 265, 267, Itō Noriko, 231
274, 276, 310; animation and, 233; Iwabuchi, Kōichi, 26, 62, 142, 321
362 Index

“Japan Brand,” 199 294; production of, 293, 318; stills

Japanese International Contents from, 298–99 (fig.)
Festival (CoFesta), 80 Kitano Saburō, 111
Japaneseness, 69, 78, 129, 131, 138, Kizaki, Gamlin, 9
301 KMU Manila Studio, 132, 134
Japan External Trade Organization knowledge, production of, 28, 29, 32
(JETRO), 67 Koizumi Junichirō, 244, 245, 267
Japanimation, 111, 259 K-On!, 153, 217, 227
Japan Media Arts Festival, 67 Kon Satoshi, 87
Jiufen, 269 Kopylova, Olga, 347n39
JM Animation, 132 Kurakawa Hideaki, 112
Joji Namahake, 1 Kuvshinov, Ilya, 316
Jumondo, 194 kyara, 228, 229
kyarakutā, 228, 229
Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress, Kyesung Production, Inc., 132
167–68; still from, 169 (fig.) Kyoto, 66, 144, 282, 283
Kabuki, 78, 123, 212, 240 Kyoto Animation, 144, 153, 154
Kacsuk, Zoltan, 73, 195, 196, 199
Kadokawa, 79, 336n49 labor, 112, 120, 121, 122, 133, 146,
Kam, Thiam Huat, 83 193; animation, 90, 98, 322; cre-
Kamen Rider, 126 ative, 113, 321; division of, 90–91;
kamishibai, 125 overseas, 53, 92, 93, 138–39, 150,
Kanon, 153 180; practices/medium-specific,
Kawamori Shōji, 7, 12 102–3; skilled, 92, 198–99; trans-
Kawamoto Kihachirō, 1, 2 national, 42, 114, 140, 148, 150,
Kemono Friends, 20, 188, 189; still 177, 196, 316, 322; visibility of,
from, 191 (fig.) 138–39. See also outsourcing
Kim, Hong-Hwan, 123 Lamarre, Thomas, 5, 22, 23, 27, 36,
Kim, Joon Yang, 113, 123, 129; 37, 39, 126, 127, 142, 145, 151, 152,
animation boom and, 131; on 170, 171, 172, 218, 224, 264, 296,
subcontracting, 136 315; animation and, 279; avatars
Kim, Se Joon, 130; animation by, 175 and, 300; character design and,
(fig.) 103; Itano circus and, 273; on
Kim, Yong-Hwan, 123 local–global tensions, 214; on
Kim, Yong Sik, 132 manga-to-anime adaptations, 38;
kimi to boku, 241, 243, 250, 251, 253, media process geographies and,
261, 264, 269 121, 319; national sovereignty
King’s Avatar, 58, 292, 297, 301, 305, and, 321; networks and, 303; on
317; anime and, 295, 300; articu- nonpersonal possession, 231;
lation of, 302; displacement and, otaku and, 258; on regionality,
296; esports and, 296; identity of, 184; visuality and, 114
 Index 363

late-night anime, 2, 3, 4, 19, 20, breadth/variety of, 10; characters

44, 65, 71–72, 81, 185, 239, 315, of, 165; formula for, 126; global
336n49 elements of, 11; identity of, 7–13,
Latour, Bruno, 114, 208, 331n33; 16–17; iterations of, 18; love trian-
actor-network theory and, 89, 119 gles and, 6
Lee, Min Bae, 231 Macross: Do You Remember Love?,
Levine, Caroline, 23, 29, 33, 55, 7, 13
330n16; bordered-whole and, 61, Macross Delta, 10, 13, 132; charac-
62; form and, 21, 22, 24, 27, 47; on ters of, 167; production of, 11–12;
genres, 34–35; on modernity, 307; stills from, 15 (fig.), 312 (fig.); style
networks and, 119; social experi- of, 167
ence and, 61 Macross Frontier, 9, 13, 16, 39, 132,
Levitt, Deborah, 208, 282, 350n18; 134, 165, 176–77, 212, 273, 290;
animation and, 277, 303; concep- masculinity in, 10, 214–16 (fig.),
tualization and, 36; materiality 232 (fig.); stills from, 312 (fig.)
and, 37; simulacra of, 277, 278; Macross Frontier: The False Song-
theorizations by, 277 stress, 132, 172; animation from,
Lewis, Diane Wei, 96 174 (fig.)
Li, Haoling, 130, 133, 284, 285 Macross Mecha Manual, 164
Li, Jinying, 319, 320 Macross Plus, 8–9, 131; design style
Liang, Boya, 130 of, 12–13; stills from, 14 (fig.), 15
licensing, 52, 63, 64–65, 82, 83–84 (fig.)
lifestyles: commodity-based, 56; Macross Plus Movie Edition, 172
performance of, 233–37, 265; Macross 7, 9, 16, 132, 164
transnationality and, 236; urban-­ Macross II, 10, 11, 164
modern, 236, 287 Macross Zero, 9, 16, 132, 165, 172
local, 51, 131, 261; global and, 26, Madhouse studio, 134
27, 28, 261; as national, 262; as Maejima Satoshi, 157, 241, 244,
subcultural, 262 262, 267, 269; Evangelion and,
locality, 58, 275, 280, 284, 319 242–43, 245–46; figurative acting
Looney Tunes, 311 and, 265; otaku literature and,
Looser, Thomas, 155–56 251; sekaikei and, 240, 242, 251,
Lucky Star, 153, 269, 270 266
Lukács, Gabriella, 44, 234, 244 Maitra, Ani, 29, 331n33
manga, 2, 17, 40, 52, 65, 73, 75, 78,
macro, 51, 57, 253, 309; micro and, 92, 93, 96, 99, 101, 104, 114, 192,
261, 264, 267 193, 196, 242, 243, 264, 269;
Macross, 20, 35, 50, 111, 131, 164, anime and, 38, 43, 102, 103, 124,
167, 170, 172, 173, 185, 230, 241, 125–26; aural component and,
311–12, 313; animation for, 132; 100; characters of, 39; clean, 79;
battle sequence ending, 13; industry of, 148; pornographic,
364 Index

79; promotion of, 66, 67, 124; 308, 320; complexity of, 58­59; de-
semiotic body of, 229; as technol- centralized, 322; development of,
ogy, 218 122, 124, 148; genre vs., 35; hybrid
manhua, 85, 185 developments of, 146; Japanese,
manhwa, 84–85 196, 282; limits of, 50; national,
Manila: comics/animation in, 83; 52, 75­78, 264; performance of,
production in, 146 57, 114, 146, 149, 193, 274, 275,
many-to-one operations, 120, 148, 277, 284, 291, 292, 296, 301, 303,
303, 309; interrelationship/­ 305, 307–9, 317; representational/
participation in, 149 narrative readings and, 270;
marketing, 2, 32, 73, 81, 137, 154, 157, specificity, 24; transcultural, 304;
188, 198, 202, 235, 285, 292, 301 transnational, 318
markets, 52, 69; global, 263; national/­ media mix, 35, 38, 42, 52, 67, 72, 92,
regional, 62, 82, 83, 84 100, 115, 126, 243; consumption
Marquez, Richie, 137, 141 and, 125; make up of, 94; materi-
Massey, Doreen, 282; global sense of ality and, 101–4; propagating, 39;
place and, 280–81, 283 synergizing, 103
materiality, 37, 45, 281; media mix memes, Chinese/English, 187
and, 101–4; reclaiming, 121–22 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 224, 296
materials, 29, 30, 37, 38, 42, 146, 147, method acting, 205, 207, 208, 209,
150, 281 224
Matsunaga Shintarō, 89, 97–98, 194 methodology, 3, 29, 87, 89, 179
McGray, Douglas, 67 METI. See Ministry of Economy,
mecha, 114, 126, 165, 213, 230, 231, Trade and Industry
241; iteration of, 164 (fig.) micro, 51, 57, 309; macro and, 261,
media, 7, 16, 30, 32, 39, 42, 44, 152, 264, 267
155, 156, 159, 202, 271; anime-­ Mihara, Ryotarō, 62, 66
esque, 25, 83, 321; form and, 36; Mikimito Haruhiko, 12, 170; eyes
global, 20, 21, 85, 114, 263, 264, and, 167–68
285, 308, 321; identity as category mimicry, 183, 195, 196, 199, 284;
of, 51; middle-ness of, 36; otaku, ­creativity in, 302; hyperbolic, 197
43, 94, 243, 245, 258–59, 262, 263, Minister of Foreign Affairs, 259
264; platforms, 319; subcultural, Ministry of Economy, Trade and
308 Industry (METI), 67, 79, 142
media-form, 25, 33–43, 49, 51, 55, 85, Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug & Cat
120, 121, 127, 138, 140, 150, 152, Noir, 176
155, 159, 160, 162, 200, 201, 271, Mitchell, W. J. T., 36
272, 278, 279, 281, 282, 283, 285, Mitsuo, Iso, 231
287; anime as, 24, 40, 45, 47, 50, Mitsuteru, Takahashi, 129
52, 53, 54, 56, 57, 58, 71, 75–78, 79, Miyazaki Hayao, 72, 87, 154, 170–71,
81, 89, 104–11, 122, 129, 135, 136, 192
148, 178, 184, 189, 196, 205, 280, Mizoguchi Yūzō, 28
 Index 365

Mobile Suit Gundam, 1, 348n3; ani- Nam Hai, 194

mation from, 175 (fig.) Namu Animation, 318
Mobile Suit Gundam AGE, 172 Napier, Susan, 279
Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn, 230 narratives, 75, 89, 95, 99, 100, 127, 152,
models, 34, 51, 183, 228; anime-­ 153, 192, 213, 216, 234, 248, 254,
esque, 177, 200, 301; character, 48; 256, 264, 270, 295, 311; animation
citation from, 54, 160, 165, 243; and, 104, 160; character expres-
conventional, 157, 159, 160, 161, sions and, 104; cinematic, 33;
163, 243; production of, 48, 241; developing, 102, 103; first-­person,
structural, 160–61, 161–62, 164, 251; kyarakutā and, 229; looping,
165, 177, 188, 225, 260, 266, 301, 241; self-conscious, 241; struc-
308. See also performance models tures, 17, 85, 91; third-­person, 251
modernity, 27, 28, 33, 45, 181, 182, Naruto, 84
183, 206, 208, 272, 274, 285, 307, nationalism, 31, 44, 86, 123, 124, 242
310, 330n25 nation-branding, 3, 4, 55, 57, 73,
modernization, 182, 183, 285, 286, 142, 182, 242, 308, 313; cam-
290, 291 paigns, 2, 66, 67, 68, 75, 76, 258,
moe-elements, 160, 263 321; neo­liberal undercurrents of,
Momotarō, Sacred Sailors (Momo­ 259; otaku media and, 262; pop
tarō: Umi no Shinpei), 1, 123, 124, cultural, 264
167 nation-state, 20, 21, 22, 26, 27, 33,
Monogatari, 20, 154, 166–67 43, 85, 88, 118, 121, 145, 200–201,
Monogatari Second Season, 165, 262, 274, 278, 305, 313, 322;
166–67; stills from, 166 (fig.) analysis by, 61; bordered-whole
motion, 37, 51, 274; rhythms of, of, 51, 62, 64, 66, 67, 119, 304, 321;
158–59; slow, 209; on the spot, boundaries of, 275; conceptuali­
296; stillness and, 125 zation of, 52; external/internal,
movement, 151, 155, 231; complex, 67; perceived notions of, 87; spa-
18, 158; divergent/convergent, tiality of, 305; superindividual of,
172; emotion and, 231; fight- 280; transnationality and, 291
ing, 230; jerky, 218–19, 227, 230; Natsume, Fusanosuke, 125
minor, 217–18; performing, 207; naturalism, 211, 217, 228, 276
personality and, 208; sensation NBC Universal Entertainment, 82
of, 218; speed of, 209; Western Neale, Steve, 35, 181
audiences and, 211 negotiation, 90, 95–96, 99; identity,
mukokuseki, 76, 77–78 230, 260, 308
Musashino Animation, 94, 96, 99, neoliberalism, 26, 27, 56, 76, 179, 181,
100, 101 234, 242, 259, 263, 309, 321, 333;
Mushi Productions, 92, 125 conditions of, 308; defined, 44;
MyAnimeList.net, 70, 292 global, 236, 308, 310, 322; individ-
My Neighbor Totoro, 231; still from, ualism and, 235, 236, 243–45, 246,
232 (fig.) 262, 265, 311; micro scales and, 44
366 Index

Netflix, 19, 65, 68, 199, 287, 319; otaku no bungaku, 251
anime and, 63, 64, 82, 83 Other, 29, 224, 252, 253, 302; Self
networks, 24, 29, 79, 88, 144, 145, and, 6, 265
160, 227, 310, 318, 322, 323; Otmazgin, Nissim, 75, 83, 176
centralized, 51, 59, 121, 144, 177, Otome-Road, 315
304, 316; complex, 91; config- Ōtsuka Eiji, 142, 217, 218, 229, 260
uration of, 119–20; decentral- outsourcing, 42, 53, 92, 93, 112, 131,
ized, 51, 54, 58, 59, 173, 176–78, 134, 137, 139, 140, 141, 146, 150,
179, 292; interconnective, 313; 180, 183, 192, 192–93, 311
interpersonal–­corporate, 75; “Overseas Expansion of Japanese
point-to-point, 227; production, Anime,” 64
25, 91, 119–20, 129–34, 143, 143 ownership, 68, 121–22, 129, 199, 201,
(fig.), 146, 147, 150, 200, 281, 304, 307; cultural, 300–301, 308, 317;
318; societal, 21; transnational, national, 197, 300, 304
120, 122, 130, 142, 179, 239, 283,
316; visualization of, 312 (fig.) Paberz, Chloé, 136, 193, 194
New Evangelion, 165, 265, 266 Pang, Laikwan, 48, 182, 183, 185,
Niconico Video, 320 202; copying and, 192; IPR regime
9Lives Animation Studio, 137 and, 199, 200
Noblesse, 197 Park, Romi, 345n53
Park, Seong Ho, 132
objects, 29, 48, 147, 235; as actors, Park, Sunghoo, 130
211; animated, 203; anthropo- particular-characters, 228, 229, 236,
morphizing, 211; controlling, 208; 247, 248, 250, 297, 310
external, 235; hybrid, 128; nonhu- particularity, 51, 151, 226, 228
man, 204; shape-shifting, 106 patterns, 150, 193; cultural, 47, 119;
Obuchi Keizō, 244 cycles/clusters of, 35; manga, 193;
O’Connor, John, 180, 182, 183 narrative, 5; pacing, 18, 158; pre-
Ōgon Bat, 130 existing, 224–25; speech, 227
Okada Mari, 96 P.A. Works, 112
One Autumn Leaf, 293, 294 People’s Republic of China (PRC), 12,
one-to-many operations, 53, 120, 69, 82, 131, 132
148–49, 303, 309 performance models, 206, 219, 225,
originality, 160, 180, 184, 302; valo- 227, 228, 235, 257, 301, 302, 311;
rizing, 54, 206 limits of, 237; as suspect, 195–96
Osaka, 144 performances, 45–50; citational,
Oshii Mamoru, 87 162, 177, 226; commonalities in,
otaku, 11, 18, 43, 72, 240, 243, 160–61; dislocations in, 271–74;
245, 251, 258–59, 261, 263, embodied, 205, 206, 207–12, 219,
315; consumption of, 160, 264; 228, 229, 230, 231, 233, 236; felici­
subcultures, 74; success for, 259; tous, 155–59, 188; figurative, 56,
transformation of, 258 205, 206, 212–13, 216–19, 223–28,
 Index 367

229, 230, 231, 236, 247, 266; game- Princess Iron Fan, 123
play, 58, 296; (in)visible, 136–40; Princess Mononoke, 67, 257
lifestyle, 233–37, 265; mechanics Princess Precure, 72, 196
of, 54, 160; quality/authenticity production, 11–12, 18, 19, 27, 33,
of, 138, 202; repetition of, 162; as 84, 112, 140, 144, 149, 150, 155;
restored behavior, 45; theatrical, actualities of, 100, 120; animation
277, 278, 291; transnational, 134, and, 49, 91, 94, 113, 142, 143, 145,
203; types of, 205, 228; uniformity 148, 160, 183, 197–98; anime, 5,
in, 180; virtuosity of, 295, 300, 304 24, 52, 70, 87–90, 90–94, 108, 117,
performance theory, 47, 48–49, 204, 120–21, 130, 132, 172, 179, 187,
205 194, 198, 199; audiovisual, 119;
performativity, 45–50, 54, 151, 160, authorship/agency in, 87–90; cen-
162, 163, 171, 300; compulsory, tralized, 55; character, 226–27;
182; gender, 46–47; theory, 45, 46, conceptualization of, 142–43;
47, 51, 204 crea­tive, 182, 201; cultural, 120,
personalities, 208, 247, 263; develop- 145, 178, 180, 184, 201, 284, 287,
ing, 223 301, 309, 317; domestic, 183;
perspective: Cartesian one-point, facili­tating, 217; geographies of,
171, 172, 272; layers of, 156; 117–22; global, 3, 144; hierarchy
orthogo­nal, 171; transnational, of, 53, 100, 114, 140, 286; labors
121 of, 122, 135; locale for, 53, 70;
Ping-Pong: The Animation, 72, 155, media mix and, 101; methods/­
176, 301 techniques and, 136; mode of,
Pixar, 40, 176 184; multilayered take on, 101;
place, 270, 279; anime out of, 284–87, music, 91; place- focused, 280;
290–91; global sense of, 280–81, popular, 153; prenational, 142;
283; performance of, 286; produc- process of, 96, 99, 105, 110, 114,
ing, 280–84; real-world, 296 145, 147, 197, 281; quantity of, 148;
platforms, 38, 82, 317; creative, regional, 118; regularity of, 184;
319–20; media, 236, 319; stream- style and, 154; subcontracted,
ing, 19; technological, 246 136; system of, 52, 53, 93­94;
players, 296, 300; avatars and, 297; transnational, 3, 16, 25, 32, 33, 59,
design of, 297 88, 89, 112, 113, 114, 117, 118, 119,
“Playing the Global Game,” 77–78 122, 129–34, 142–46, 149, 151,
point-to-point operations, 23, 55, 56, 177, 179, 180, 194, 199, 202, 281,
177, 227, 303, 304; decentralized, 286, 293, 316, 317, 320, 321, 322
149 production assistants, 52, 97, 101
Pokémon, 67, 72, 213, 257 production committees, 84, 92, 93,
Polygon Pictures, 82, 342n16 100, 101
pornography, 79, 81 projectiles, 171; divergent/­convergent
postmodernism, 26, 264 movements of, 174–75 (fig.)
PRC. See People’s Republic of China promotions, 66, 67, 78, 124, 285, 286
368 Index

publicity, 90–94 romance anime, 35

publishers, 52, 92, 96, 100, 101, 144 rotoscope animation, 158 (fig.)
Ruh, Brian, 156, 162
RahXephon, 257 Ruri (Liu Li), 185, 186, 189, 191 (fig.)
Rauning, Gerald, 307
Read, Jason, 44, 265 Saikano, 243, 253, 254, 258, 261, 262,
realism, 71, 210–11, 310; cinema­ 263; structures of, 255 (fig.)
tographic, 282; manga-anime, 217 Sailor Moon, 257
reality, 275; images of, 278; non-­ Saishu heiki kanojo, 243
indexical relationship to, 304; Saito Kumiko, 263, 264
place-based, 303 Satelight, 12, 83, 132, 134
recognizability, 150, 153, 189, 294; Sazaesan, 1, 2, 18, 72
diversity and, 16; maintaining, 295 Schechner, Richard, 45, 47
region, 51, 200, 313; networked, 151 Schiller, Nancy Glick, 31
regionality, 30, 50, 83, 120, 146, 184; School Shock, 20, 185, 187, 189, 195,
complex, 318–23; conception of, 198, 201; stills from, 186 (fig.), 191
119; cultural, 118–19, 180 (fig.)
Rehn, Alf, 180, 181, 184 science fiction, 12, 19, 70. See also SF
Rei, 216, 246, 247, 249 (fig.), 254, 266; anime
character of, 248 script writing, 90, 198
Reikenzan, 194 SDF–1. See Super Dimension
reiteration, 24, 42, 50, 104, 149, 150, Fortress
161, 162, 173, 180, 188, 192, 240, sedimentary force, 161–62, 225
276, 308, 316 sekaikei, 251, 253, 255, 256, 260, 262;
re-performances, 160, 160–67, discourse of, 264; Evangelion and,
170–73, 177, 239 239–43; genre, 20, 56; individu-
repetition, 34, 45, 46, 110, 152, 159, alism and, 243–45; micro/macro
160, 161, 188, 189, 194, 200, 263, and, 261; moe girls and, 263;
276, 307, 308; acts of, 187; blind, popularity of, 57; self-reflexivity
50; difference and, 24; dynamics of, 269; standard criteria for, 242;
of, 35, 50; paradox of, 47; per- success for, 265–67
sistent, 163; variation and, 16, 35, sekai no owari, 241, 244, 261, 264,
104, 153 269
representation, 277; global, 262, 263; Self, 224, 245, 252, 253, 302; con-
realist, 282 ception of, 56, 207, 228, 247;
rhythms, 5, 68, 125, 158, 246, 253, Other and, 6, 265; qualitative/
257, 260; animation, 256; jerky, 37, ­interconnected, 246; technologies
41, 28, 219, 227 of, 206
Robotech: The Macross Saga, 11 selfhood, 50, 56, 58, 204, 206, 227,
robots, 10–11, 35, 126, 173, 213, 230, 229, 233, 234, 240, 244, 260, 280,
240, 256, 266 302; animation and, 212; anthro-
Romain, Thomas, 12, 130, 132 pocentric, 235; bordered-whole,
 Index 369

245; character, 239; enacting, narrative of, 99; production and,

309–13; examination of, 250; 90, 101; stills from, 107 (fig.),
exploration of, 263; expressing, 110 (fig.); uniqueness of, 94–95
297, 310; forms of, 305; individ- shōjo, 13, 15
ualist, 254, 267; neoliberal, 265; Silvio, Teri, 48, 226, 233
performing, 236, 245, 251, 308 Singapore, comics/animation in, 83
self-reflexivity, 95, 217, 245, 246, 256, skills, 44, 89, 97, 98, 106, 136, 138,
269 188, 196, 300; refinement of, 194;
Senjōgahara, 165, 166 (fig.) specialized, 102
Seo, Jung-Duk, 112 smiles, 231–32, 232 (fig.); conven-
Seoul, 130, 133, 141, 144; comics/ tional codes for, 288–289 (fig.)
animation in, 83; production in, social forms, 21, 24
146, 149 software, 41, 111, 121
SF anime, 19, 20, 35, 216, 240, 241, Son Hōken (Haoxuan Sun), 185,
257 186–87
Shaft, 153; style of, 154 South Park, 342n18
Shanghai, 58, 130, 141, 144, 194, 286, sovereignty, 27, 127; bordered-whole,
290, 291, 292, 295; depiction of, 247; national, 321
289–90 (fig.); film on, 284; pro- space, 26, 180; body, 278, 297; media,
duction in, 146, 149, 293, 317, 318 58, 278, 297, 302; real, 58, 278, 297,
Shanghai Hongqiao Animation, 132 302; time and, 273, 274, 275–76,
Shanghai Koi, 284; stills from, 279–80
289–90 (fig.) Space Dandy, 65
Shanghai MCC, 194 spatiality, 145, 271, 280; complex,
ShangJie Animation, 134 302–5; configurations of, 270;
Sheuo Hui Gan, 78, 89 modern, 27, 275; patterns of, 292,
Shikioriori, 20, 58, 284, 286, 287, 289, 302–3; politics of, 281; shifting,
290, 295, 302, 303, 305, 314, 317; 25–28, 274; as theatricality, 57;
dislocation and, 291; Japan/China type of, 278
and, 291; real-world place and, speech-act, 46, 88
296; transnationality and, 292 Spirited Away, 257, 269
Shinji, 240, 246, 247, 249–50, 251, Spirit Pact, 194, 195, 198
348n17, 348n19; Human In- Stanislavski, Konstantin, 209
strumentality Project and, 248; Stanislavskian method, 205, 207, 208
selfhood and, 260 Star Pro, 7, 11
Shinkai Makoto, 87, 255, 284; style Steinberg, Marc, 5, 38, 92, 124, 158,
of, 256 319, 320; limited animation and,
Shin Woo, 132 218; transnationality and, 125
Shirobako, 89, 104, 105, 106, 111, 112, stereotypes, 181, 213; Japanese, 77,
113, 296; analysis of, 52; credit 78; racist, 203–4
and, 96; decision-making and, stillness, 5, 41, 51, 68, 125, 157, 158,
101; facial expressions in, 108; 159
370 Index

storyboards, 90, 97–98, 105, 112, 134; Tamako Market, 282, 283
executing, 98–99 TAP. See Toei Animation Philippines
streaming services, 51, 66, 68, 199, Tatsunoko Productions, 7, 11
334n9 Taylor, Frederick, 208
Studio Blue, 144, 283 Taylorism, 208–9
Studio Deen, 194 techniques, 120, 127, 136; animation,
Studio Ghibli, 1, 72, 153, 170, 232, 269; 152, 157, 170
animation by, 231; style of, 154 technology, 7, 16, 29, 30, 36, 42,
Studio Nue, 7, 11, 12, 131, 132 44, 53, 127, 218, 274, 307, 321;
Studio Rockets, 130 animation, 13, 34–35, 155;
studios, 91, 93, 99, 100, 133, 134, 137, communication-/­transportation-
167, 194, 216, 290, 323; alternative, oriented, 273; digital, 26; military,
336n49; central, 92; fictional, 94; 262; transformation in, 315
multiple, 115 Teen Titans, 176
Studio Suu, 112 Tencent, 64, 82, 83, 194, 292; esports
style, 16, 24, 33, 70, 71; branded, 154; anime by, 301
character, 165, 167; mixed, 156; tensions, 45, 145, 182, 248, 278;
production and, 154; visual, 152, an-ontological, 279; internal–­
154, 155 external, 74; local–global, 52, 56,
subcontracting, 91, 96, 136, 146, 57, 67, 69, 259, 260–64, 314, 316;
258; foreign, 131; multiple, 115; micro–macro, 260–64
reliance on, 131; transnational, Tetsuwan Atomu (Tezuka), 1, 63, 92,
95, 113 122, 167, 192; media mix of, 125;
Sudo Tadashi, 69, 83, 199, 345n44 motion-stillness and, 125
Sūpā Sentai, 126 Tezuka Osamu, 63, 92, 123, 124–25
Super Dimension Fortress (SDF–1), Tezuka Productions, 130
8, 9, 13 theatricality, 76, 274–77, 280, 281,
Super Dimension Fortress Macross, 291, 303; notions of, 276, 277, 279;
The, 7, 9; stills from, 14 (fig.), 15 tensions of, 278
(fig.), 169 (fig.) Third Girls Aerial Squad, The, 95,
Super Dimensional Fortress Macross 99, 100
II: Lovers Again, 8 Thunderbirds, 126
Suppression of the Tengu, The, 123 time, space and, 273, 274, 275–76,
Surprise, 284 279–80
Tin House, 132
Tachinaka Junpei, 231 Toei Animation Philippines (TAP),
Tadiar, Neverti X. M., 322 12, 112, 130, 132, 144, 194, 336n49
TAF. See Tokyo International Anime Tokyo, 58, 66, 89, 121, 130, 141, 179,
Fair 199, 282, 319, 321, 323; as media
Taipei, 130; comics/animation in, 83 capital, 316; production in, 144,
Takeuchi Yoshimi, 28, 284, 285 145, 146, 149, 281, 317, 318
 Index 371

Tokyo Anime Festival, 81 154, 167, 212, 232, 239–40, 249,

Tokyo International Anime Fair 257, 336n2; figurative acting
(TAF), 79, 336n49 in, 233; late-night, 3, 4, 19, 20;
Tokyo Metropolitan Ordinance limited animation and, 203; titles
Regarding the Healthy Develop- for, 19
ment of Youths (Youth Ordinance
Bill), 79 Ultraman, 126
Tong Ling Fei, 197 uniformity, 51, 53, 54, 90, 152, 153,
Toshio Okada, 240 156, 159, 162, 180; multiplicity
tourism, 314, 315; anime, 269, 270, and, 58; sense of, 177
290, 314; place-focused, 269, 270 Uno Tsunehiro, 244, 265, 267
Tower of God, 84–85 Usagiyama Shopping Arcade, 282,
Toyomi Morishita, 336n49 283
transnational flows, 32, 120, 128, Utsumi Hiroko, 96
146, 148, 234
transnationality, 4, 7, 30, 31, 40, 42, Valkyries, 8, 9, 10, 13, 230; develop-
52­53, 55, 56, 85, 93, 95, 111–15, ment of, 164–65; iterations of,
117–18, 131, 134, 137, 139, 142, 164 (fig.); mecha design of, 126;
145, 150, 177, 285, 301, 302, 304, models for, 164, 164 (fig.)
308–9, 313, 314, 315; anime and, Virilio, Paul, 274, 276, 296
20, 24, 51, 89, 125, 127, 138, 148, visualization, 64, 144, 204
180, 192–200, 281, 292, 316; visual style, 72, 154, 159
centralized, 57, 121; decentral- voice acting, 104, 152, 198, 227, 256
ized, 57; dynamics of, 148, 305; voice actors, 95, 96, 100, 198
examples of, 123; layers of, 25, voice-overs, 91, 198, 252
114; lifestyles and, 236; multi­ Voices of a Distant Star, 243, 255, 256
layered, 32, 135; national and,
127; nation-states and, 291; Warner Brothers, 82
placing, 286; production and, 3, Warner Entertainment Japan, 112
25, 32, 33, 59, 88, 89, 112, 113, Weber, Samuel, 57, 296, 350n12; the-
117, 151, 179, 321, 322; shifting, atricality and, 275, 276, 278, 279,
316–18 281, 291, 303
tropes, 187, 290, 293, 294, 296, 301 Webtoon comics, 84–85
Tsing, Anna, 28, 30 Wee, C. J. W.-L., 145, 236, 287, 290
Tsugata Nobuyuki, 71, 72, 73, 140, Whitney, Shiloh, 224
335n37, 337n8 writers, 96, 99, 114, 286
tsundere, 226
Tu, Yong-Ce, 130 Xin, Gu, 182, 183
Tudor, Andrew, 35 Xuyang Animation, 12, 132
Turner, Victor, 45
TV anime, 2, 43, 72, 94, 96, 97, 125, YABES, 112
372 Index

Yamada Naoko, 96 Yoda, Tomiko, 44

Yamamoto, Kenta, 132–33, 137, 141 Yoshimoto, Mitsuhiro, 66
Yamamoto Sayo, 96 Young Woo Pro, 11
Yaoyorozu, 188 Yuri!!! on Ice, 231
Ye Xiu, 293, 294, 296, 297, 298–99
(fig.), 300 Zahlten, Alexander, 77
Yi, Xiaoxiang, 284, 285 Zootopia, 209, 218
Yiren Zhixia, 318
Stevie Suan is associate professor in the Faculty of Global and
­Interdisciplinary Studies (GIS) at Hosei University in Tokyo, Japan.