A real-life thread on an internet forum started it all. A nerdy otaku meets a girl on a train and posts an urgent query on the web--How the heck do you talk to girls? What should he wear on the date? Where should they go? The forum's response was amazing, and the thread grew incrementally longer as the nerd's relationship with the woman developed. Eventually published in book format to become a best seller, the thread spawned a blockbuster movie, a hit TV series, as well as this heartwarming manga adaptation of an entire internet community rooting for love and romance.
The big day has come! "Train" is out on his date with "Hermess"! But now what? What does he say? What does he do? He's on his own and doesn't have his online support group to guide him through the event. You can be sure that he'll be back on the keyboard to recap it afterward ... and try to figure out what to do next. And why is it suddenly so important for Hermess to introduce Train Man to her special friend?
A real-life thread on an internet forum started it all. A nerdy otaku meets a girl on a train and posts an urgent query on the web--How the heck do you talk to girls? What should he wear on the date? Where should they go? The forum's response was amazing, and the thread grew incrementally longer as the nerd's relationship with the woman developed. Eventually published in book format to become a best seller, the thread spawned a blockbuster movie, a hit TV series, as well as this heartwarming manga adaptation of an entire internet community rooting for love and romance.
A real-life thread on an internet forum started it all. A nerdy otaku meets a girl on a train and posts an urgent query on the web--How the heck do you talk to girls? What should he wear on the date? Where should they go? The forum's response was amazing, and the thread grew incrementally longer as the nerd's relationship with the woman developed. Eventually published in book format to become a best seller, the thread spawned a blockbuster movie, a hit TV series, as well as this heartwarming manga adaptation of an entire internet community rooting for love and romance.
Boys Love Manga and Beyond looks at a range of literary, artistic and other cultural products that celebrate the beauty of adolescent boys and young men. In Japan, depiction of the “beautiful boy” has long been a romantic and sexualized trope for both sexes and commands a high degree of cultural visibility today across a range of genres from pop music to animation. In recent decades, “Boys Love” (or simply BL) has emerged as a mainstream genre in manga, anime, and games for girls and young women. This genre was first developed in Japan in the early 1970s by a group of female artists who went on to establish themselves as major figures in Japan's manga industry. By the late 1970s many amateur women fans were getting involved in the BL phenomenon by creating and self-publishing homoerotic parodies of established male manga characters and popular media figures. The popularity of these fan-made products, sold and circulated at huge conventions, has led to an increase in the number of commercial titles available. Today, a wide range of products produced both by professionals and amateurs are brought together under the general rubric of “boys love,” and are rapidly gaining an audience throughout Asia and globally. This collection provides the first comprehensive overview in English of the BL phenomenon in Japan, its history and various subgenres and introduces translations of some key Japanese scholarship not otherwise available. Some chapters detail the historical and cultural contexts that helped BL emerge as a significant part of girls' culture in Japan. Others offer important case studies of BL production, consumption, and circulation and explain why BL has become a controversial topic in contemporary Japan.
“An astute account of [Tokyo’s] commuter train network . . . and an intellectually stimulating invitation to rethink the interaction between humans and machines.” —Japan Forum With its infamously packed cars and disciplined commuters, Tokyo’s commuter train network is one of the most complex technical infrastructures on Earth. In An Anthropology of the Machine, Michael Fisch provides a nuanced perspective on how Tokyo’s commuter train network embodies the lived realities of technology in our modern world. Drawing on his fine-grained knowledge of transportation, work, and everyday life in Tokyo, Fisch shows how fitting into a system that operates on the extreme edge of sustainability can take a physical and emotional toll on a community while also creating a collective way of life—one with unique limitations and possibilities. An Anthropology of the Machine is a creative ethnographic study of the culture, history, and experience of commuting in Tokyo. At the same time, it is a theoretically ambitious attempt to think through our very relationship with technology and our possible ecological futures. Fisch provides an unblinking glimpse into what it might be like to inhabit a future in which more and more of our infrastructure—and the planet itself—will have to operate beyond capacity to accommodate our ever-growing population. “Not a ‘rage against the machine’ but an urge to find new ways of coexisting with technology.” —Contemporary Japan “An extraordinary study.” —Ethnos “A fascinating in-depth account of the innovations, inventions, sacrifices, and creativity required to ensure Tokyo’s millions of commuters keep rolling. It also provides much food for thought as our transportation systems become increasingly reliant on automated technology.” —Pacific Affairs
Despite the longevity of animation and its significance within the history of cinema, film theorists have focused on live-action motion pictures and largely ignored hand-drawn and computer-generated movies. Thomas Lamarre contends that the history, techniques, and complex visual language of animation, particularly Japanese animation, demands serious and sustained engagement, and in The Anime Machine he lays the foundation for a new critical theory for reading Japanese animation, showing how anime fundamentally differs from other visual media. The Anime Machine defines the visual characteristics of anime and the meanings generated by those specifically “animetic” effects—the multiplanar image, the distributive field of vision, exploded projection, modulation, and other techniques of character animation—through close analysis of major films and television series, studios, animators, and directors, as well as Japanese theories of animation. Lamarre first addresses the technology of anime: the cells on which the images are drawn, the animation stand at which the animator works, the layers of drawings in a frame, the techniques of drawing and blurring lines, how characters are made to move. He then examines foundational works of anime, including the films and television series of Miyazaki Hayao and Anno Hideaki, the multimedia art of Murakami Takashi, and CLAMP’s manga and anime adaptations, to illuminate the profound connections between animators, characters, spectators, and technology. Working at the intersection of the philosophy of technology and the history of thought, Lamarre explores how anime and its related media entail material orientations and demonstrates concretely how the “animetic machine” encourages a specific approach to thinking about technology and opens new ways for understanding our place in the technologized world around us.
Gold, Platina, Mercury, Iron, Lead, Tin and Copper are the amazing androids who combine their unique abilities--and clashing personalities--to fight for justice under the watchful eye of their creator, Doc Magnus. But within the "responsometers" that give them life lies an ancient weapon that can control the very fabric of the world. To keep their scientific secret, Magnus and his Metal Men must mine a mother lode of villains.
