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[adiva_calandia]

Which Supernatural Character Are You?

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\o/ HELL YEAH.

So I think I'm gonna write one of my final papers on kabuki and noh influences in anime, specifically using either Princess Mononoke or Spirited Away as a case study. I'm sure I'm not the first person to think of this, of course, and I'll be going looking for other analyses along those lines -- but in the meantime, while I binge on anime on a gorgeous summer day research, anyone of the scholarly anime fans on my f-list have any resources I should look at?

Comments

[aisforamy]

AW...I wanted to be Bobby. I got to be Dean instead...which is still pretty damned cool, but it's not Bobby.

[camwyn]

I got Bobby too!

... and then I went on and took the Lost character one and got Ben Linus. WTF.

[gramarye1971]

I'm very hard pressed to think of any good scholarly books on anime, unfortunately. Certainly nothing that I'd recommend. Most of the books fall into the two old traps: (1) they're written by academics who aren't anime fans, or (2) they're written by anime fans who aren't academics. Susan Napier, for instance, tried her best, but I've read better and more insightful LJ posts that analyse anime series. You're better off looking at scholarly analyses of kabuki and noh, and then using those analyses to look at the films. I'm not up to date on the latest articles, but I'm willing to bet that the same holds true there.

[adiva_calandia]

Really! I would've expected more over the last few years -- especially now that America's jumping on the bandwagon with stuff like Avatar.

Anyhoo -- you're probably right about looking at the historical scholarship first and then applying it. Maybe I can break new ground. *grin*

[gramarye1971]

My roommate and I talk about this a lot, seeing as how we're both academic-types who've been into anime for quite a while now. Mechademia and its related links are about as good as you're likely to find, and even then you have to do a lot of sifting to get through the drek and locate the insightful stuff. One of the big nonscholarly English-language anime magazines, Newtype USA, just folded a few months ago after a five-year run.

I'm sure there's good writing out there, but you're probably not going to find it in the usual sources. ^^;;

[newredshoes]

Is it possible to sidestep the anime question by just talking about it in terms of long-form animation, or is it more important that you're focusing on anime? See, I don't categorize Miyazaki as anime -- but then, I know zilch about the genre, so I can't really talk.

[jothra]

...out of curiosity, why not?

[gramarye1971]

*also looks curious*

[newredshoes]

I think it's because I don't know much about anime, honestly. When I first found out about it, I was pretty biased against it -- the people I knew in high school who liked anime didn't impress me, and beyond a few other feature length movies, I've still only seen a very few scattered episodes of maybe two or three series.

So, to answer your question, I think it's because initially, I found Miyazaki incredibly beautiful, visually and story-wise, and haven't quite reconciled my croc-brain reaction with the intellectual understanding that yeah, from what I know now (mostly based on friendslist squee), anime can be freaking incredible.

[gramarye1971]

*nodnods* I understand that line of thought. I know that I tend to look at Miyazaki films in their own separate subgenre, so while they're still 'anime' in my mind they're distinct from your standard magical-girl series and your standard fighting-with-giant-robots series and your standard tentacle-monster-WTF pr0n. ^_^

For that matter, as with any other genre, there's a lot of crap drifting around when it comes to anime. I've watched more than my fair share of it at times. I keep a little list of series and movies that I'd show to people who've never seen anime before or who are only minimally exposed to the genre -- my gateway drugs, as it were.

[jothra]

Gotcha. I tend to classify anime as 'any animation made in Japan'.

[adiva_calandia]

No, it's definitely the anime form I'm interested in, as one of Japan's largest, most popular cultural works. I suppose I could go watch, say, Utena or Inu-Yasha or another series, but I think a contained example like a film will be easier to deal with -- and I'm pretty sure I can already see the ties to classical Japan and Japanese mythology in Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke.