Rediscovered Classics of Japanese Animation
Rediscovered Classics of Japanese Animation

Author: Maria Chiara Oltolini

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2024-01-25

Total Pages: 211

ISBN-13: 1501389890

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Rediscovered Classics of Japanese Animation is the first academic work to examine World Masterpiece Theater (Sekai Meisaku Gekijô, 1969-2009), which popularized the practice of adapting foreign children's books into long-running animated series and laid the groundwork for powerhouses like Studio Ghibli. World Masterpiece Theater (Sekai Meisaku Gekijô, 1969-2009) is a TV staple created by the Japanese studio Nippon Animation, which popularized the practice of adapting foreign children's books into long-running animated series. Once generally dismissed by critics, the series is now frequently investigated as a key early work of legendary animators Isao Takahata and Hayao Miyazaki. In the first book-length examination of the series, Maria Chiara Oltolini analyzes cultural significance of World Masterpiece Theater, and the ways in which the series pioneered the importance of children's fiction for Japanese animation studios and laid the groundwork for powerhouses like Studio Ghibli. Adapting a novel for animation also means decoding (and re-coding) socio-cultural patterns embedded in a narrative. World Masterpiece Theater stands as a unique example of this linguistic, medial, and cultural hybridisation. Popular children's classics such as Little Women, Peter Pan, and Anne of Green Gables became the starting point of a full-fledged negotiation process in which Japanese animators retold a whole range of narratives that have one basic formula in common: archetypal stories with an educational purpose. In particular, the series played a role in shaping the pop culture image of a young girl (shôjo). Examining the series through the lens of animation studies as well as adaptation studies, Oltolini sheds new light on this long-neglected staple of Japanese animation history.

Rediscovered Classics of Japanese Animation
Rediscovered Classics of Japanese Animation

Author: Maria Chiara Oltolini

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2024-01-25

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 1501389882

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Rediscovered Classics of Japanese Animation is the first academic work to examine World Masterpiece Theater (Sekai Meisaku Gekijô, 1969-2009), which popularized the practice of adapting foreign children's books into long-running animated series and laid the groundwork for powerhouses like Studio Ghibli. World Masterpiece Theater (Sekai Meisaku Gekijô, 1969-2009) is a TV staple created by the Japanese studio Nippon Animation, which popularized the practice of adapting foreign children's books into long-running animated series. Once generally dismissed by critics, the series is now frequently investigated as a key early work of legendary animators Isao Takahata and Hayao Miyazaki. In the first book-length examination of the series, Maria Chiara Oltolini analyzes cultural significance of World Masterpiece Theater, and the ways in which the series pioneered the importance of children's fiction for Japanese animation studios and laid the groundwork for powerhouses like Studio Ghibli. Adapting a novel for animation also means decoding (and re-coding) socio-cultural patterns embedded in a narrative. World Masterpiece Theater stands as a unique example of this linguistic, medial, and cultural hybridisation. Popular children's classics such as Little Women, Peter Pan, and Anne of Green Gables became the starting point of a full-fledged negotiation process in which Japanese animators retold a whole range of narratives that have one basic formula in common: archetypal stories with an educational purpose. In particular, the series played a role in shaping the pop culture image of a young girl (shôjo). Examining the series through the lens of animation studies as well as adaptation studies, Oltolini sheds new light on this long-neglected staple of Japanese animation history.

WE HEREBY REFUSE
WE HEREBY REFUSE

Author: Frank Abe

Publisher: Chin Music Press

Published: 2021-07-16

Total Pages: 164

ISBN-13: 1634050312

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Three voices. Three acts of defiance. One mass injustice. The story of camp as you’ve never seen it before. Japanese Americans complied when evicted from their homes in World War II -- but many refused to submit to imprisonment in American concentration camps without a fight. In this groundbreaking graphic novel, meet JIM AKUTSU, the inspiration for John Okada’s No-No Boy, who refuses to be drafted from the camp at Minidoka when classified as a non-citizen, an enemy alien; HIROSHI KASHIWAGI, who resists government pressure to sign a loyalty oath at Tule Lake, but yields to family pressure to renounce his U.S. citizenship; and MITSUYE ENDO, a reluctant recruit to a lawsuit contesting her imprisonment, who refuses a chance to leave the camp at Topaz so that her case could reach the U.S. Supreme Court. Based upon painstaking research, We Hereby Refuse presents an original vision of America’s past with disturbing links to the American present.

Anime Architecture
Anime Architecture

Author: Stefan Riekele

Publisher: National Geographic Books

Published: 2020-11-17

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 0500294526

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An unrivaled visual guide to the cityscapes and buildings of the most celebrated and influential anime movies. Anime has been influencing cinema, literature, comic books, and video games around the world for decades. Part of what makes anime so popular are the memorable and breathtakingly detailed worlds designed by the creators, from futuristic cities of steel to romantic rural locales. Anime Architecture presents the fantastic environments created by the most important and revered directors and illustrators of Japanese animated films, such as Hideaki Anno, Koji Morimoto, and Mamoru Oshii. Unprecedented access to vast studio archives of original background paintings, storyboards, drafts, and film excerpts offers readers a privileged view into the earliest stages of conception, development, and finished versions of iconic scenes from critically acclaimed movies such as Akira, Ghost in the Shell, Metropolis, and more. Revealing the secret creative processes of these major anime studios, Anime Architecture is perfect for anyone touched by the beauty and imagination of classic anime, offering inspiration for artists, illustrators, architects, designers, video game makers, and dreamers.

Grave of the Fireflies
Grave of the Fireflies

Author: Alex Dudok de Wit

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2021-04-08

Total Pages: 105

ISBN-13: 1838719253

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On its release in 1988, Grave of the Fireflies riveted audiences with its uncompromising drama. Directed by Isao Takahata at Studio Ghibli and based on an autobiographical story by Akiyuki Nosaka, the story of two Japanese children struggling to survive in the dying days of the Second World War unfolds with a gritty realism unprecedented in animation. Grave of the Fireflies has since been hailed as a classic of both anime and war cinema. In 2018, USA Today ranked it the greatest animated film of all time. Yet Ghibli's sombre masterpiece remains little analysed outside Japan, even as its meaning is fiercely contested - Takahata himself lamented that few had grasped his message. In the first book-length study of the film in English, Alex Dudok de Wit explores its themes, visual devices and groundbreaking use of animation, as well as the political context in which it was made. Drawing on untranslated accounts by the film's crew, he also describes its troubled production, which almost spelt disaster for Takahata and his studio.

Promiscuous Media
Promiscuous Media

Author: Hikari Hori

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2018-01-15

Total Pages: 204

ISBN-13: 1501712160

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In Promiscuous Media, Hikari Hori makes a compelling case that the visual culture of Showa-era Japan articulated urgent issues of modernity rather than serving as a simple expression of nationalism. Hori makes clear that the Japanese cinema of the time was in fact almost wholly built on a foundation of Russian and British film theory as well as American film genres and techniques. Hori provides a range of examples that illustrate how maternal melodrama and animated features, akin to those popularized by Disney, were adopted wholesale by Japanese filmmakers. Emperor Hirohito's image, Hori argues, was inseparable from the development of mass media; he was the first emperor whose public appearances were covered by media ranging from postcards to radio broadcasts. Worship of the emperor through viewing his image, Hori shows, taught the Japanese people how to look at images and primed their enjoyment of early animation and documentary films alike. Promiscuous Media links the political and the cultural closely in a way that illuminates the nature of twentieth-century Japanese society.

Classical Japanese Cinema Revisited
Classical Japanese Cinema Revisited

Author: Catherine Russell

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2011-06-16

Total Pages: 98

ISBN-13: 1441107770

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Catherine Russell's highly accessible book approaches Japanese cinema as an industry closely modeled on Hollywood, focusing on the classical period - those years in which the studio system dominated all film production in Japan, from roughly 1930 to 1960. Respectful and thoroughly informed about the aesthetics and critical values of the Japanese canon, Russell is also critical of some of its ideological tendencies, and her analyses provide new insights on class and gender dynamics. Russell locates Japanese cinema within a global system of reception, and she highlights the importance of the industrial production context of these films. Including studies of landmark films by Ozu, Kurosawa and other directors, this book provides a perfect introduction to a crucial and often misunderstood area of Japanese cultural output. With a critical approach that highlights the "everydayness" of Japanese studio-era cinema, Catherine Russell demystifies the canon of great Japanese cinema, treating it with fewer auteurist and Orientalist assumptions than many other scholars and critics.

Demystifying Disney
Demystifying Disney

Author: Chris Pallant

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2011-07-28

Total Pages: 185

ISBN-13: 1441174214

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An innovative critical history of Disney feature animation that uproots common misconceptions and brings fresh scholarly definition to a busy field.

The Story of British Animation
The Story of British Animation

Author: Jez Stewart

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2021-08-26

Total Pages: 193

ISBN-13: 1911239724

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A Sight & Sound Book of the Year Jez Stewart charts the course of this extraordinarily fertile area of British film from early experiments with stop-motion and the flourishing of animated drawings during WWI. He reveals how the rockier interwar period set the shape of the industry in enduring ways, and how creatives like Len Lye and Lotte Reiniger brought art to advertising and sponsored films, building a foundation for such distinctive talents as Bob Godfrey, Alison De Vere and George Dunning to unleash their independent visions in the age of commercial TV. Stewart highlights the integral role of women in the industry, the crucial boost delivered by the arrival of Channel 4, the emergence of online animation and much more. The book features 'close-up' analyses of key animators such as Lancelot Speed and Richard Williams, as well as more thematic takes on art, politics and music. It builds a framework for better appreciating Britain's landmark contributions to the art of animation, including Halas and Batchelor's Animal Farm (1954), Dunning's Yellow Submarine (1968) and the creations of Aardman Animations.

Writing for Animation
Writing for Animation

Author: Laura Beaumont

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2021-06-17

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 1501358642

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Animation is one of the fastest growing mediums in the film and television world – whether it's Frozen or Paw Patrol, Family Guy or Rick and Morty. This book is the definitive guide to storytelling for writers, directors, storyboard artists and animators. Suitable for both the student and the professional, it provides indispensable knowledge on the entire process of writing for animated movies, TV series and short films. The reader will be provided with all the tools necessary to produce professional quality scripts that will start, or further, their career in animation. Beginning with the fundamentals of 'why animation?' this book will lead the reader through a series of principles that will raise the level of their storytelling. These principles are tried and tested on a daily basis by the authors who have a twenty-year track record in the animation industry. Many people are trying to break into the world of writing for animation and a lot of the people who are 'already in' would like to get more work. The reality is that writing for animation is a very specific craft that can be learnt like any other craft. This book will give the reader both the basic and advanced techniques that will put them ahead of the rest of the field.