ANIME-FYING SHAKESPEARE : ADAPTATION AND COMMODIFICATION OF SHAKESPEARE IN JAPANESE POPULAR CULTURE (original) (raw)

Hello Sha-kitty-peare?: Shakespeares Cutified in Japanese Anime Imagination

Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies, 2016

Hello Sha-kitty-peare? Shakespeares Cutified in Japanese Anime Imagination ryuta minami a b s t r a c t The first decades of the twenty-first century witnessed a great proliferation of partial adaptations of and references to Shakespeare and his works in Japanese manga comics and animation films. Such heterogeneous and fragmentary pieces of Shakespeare range from literal or visual quotations from his plays to sacrilegious cute recreations of the playwright himself. This essay not only analyzes the diverse ways of animating Shakespeare's texts seen in two recent animated films, Romeo x Juliet (2007), and Zetsuen no Tempest ["The Blast of Tempest"] (2012), but also considers transmutations of Shakespeare himself in animated films such as Romeo x Juliet and Horizon in the Middle of Nowhere (2011), where the playwright is both demystified and cutified in the current fashion of manga-animation characters. This essay also explores the ways in which the fans of such manga comics and animated films (are often expected to) collaborate and interact with each other to recognize and interpret Shakespearean texts in those works via blogs and fan sites on the Internet. How Shakespeare haunts the contemporary Japanese imagination is expounded through the analyses of manganized and animated texts that bear "the signature of the Thing 'Shakespeare'" (Derrida 25).

Toward " Reciprocal Legitimation " between Shakespeare's Works and Manga

In April 2014, Nihon Hoso Kyokai (NHK: Japan Broadcasting Company) aired a short animated film titled " Ophelia, not yet ". Ophelia, in this animation, survives, as she is a backstroke champion. This article will attempt to contextualize the complex negotiations, struggles and challenges between high culture and pop culture, between Western culture and Japanese culture, between authoritative cultural products and radicalized counterculture consumer products (such as animation), to argue that it would be more profitable to think of the relationships between highbrow/lowbrow, Western/non-Western, male versus female, heterosexual versus non-heterosexual, not simply in terms of dichotomies or domination/subordination, but in terms of reciprocal enrichment in a never-ending process of mutual metamorphoses.

SHAKESPEARE AND MANGA: A STUDY OF TRANSCULTURAL AND TRANSMEDIAL ADAPTATION OF SHAKESPEAREAN DRAMA

IMPACT : International Journal of Research in Humanities, Arts and Literature ( IMPACT : IJRHAL ), 2018

The practice of adapting a play into comic book widely differs from other forms of adaptations. Like for the mostly adapting platform, a film – for those, adapting a Shakespeare drama usually requires an abbreviation of the original and transforming the dialogues and other texts into words. The postmodernistic notion of comic books is highly reflected through the multi-configurationally flexible, fluid and re-modification of the source. One of the modern era's remarkable mutations is the Shakespeare manga. The manga emancipates from the original context. Manga Shakespeare is a series which takes inspiration from Shakespearean dramas. Manga refers to the unique art-style conforming to Japan. The series focuses on the models of the plays, rather than the original context. This instance proves the fact that Shakespearean works exist as audiovisual framework which can be acclimatized into modern modes. Especially when manga is an art form developed in the contemporary ages, and whose nature and cultural context is very vibrant to transfigure Shakespearean drama into something entirely different. However the advantage of the fluidity of manga allows itself to reconfigure four hundred years of western theatrical plays into a bridge between post-modern and early modern modes. Shakespearean Manga can be considered as one of the most recent additions in a series of multidimensional Shakespearean adaptations.

Animated Canons The Canons of Animation between the East and the West

Forum Editrice Universitaria Udinese, 2011

A crucial premise to this work is that we do not consider animation as a cinematographic “genre” or as a film technique. We can observe that many genres and many techniques exist within animation, which consequently must be recognized as cinema on its own, the twin brother of “live-action” cinema (Bendazzi, 1999). If we think about animation as a full language we can also see that it uses different canons when it speaks with its audience. These canons follow different rules or conventions (palette, animation style, subject matter, soundtrack, characterization, etc.) which are supposed to make them recognizable. In this work we will attempt to clear whether it is possible to distinguish between western and eastern traditional canons in the field of animation and to disentangle the different thematic and esthetic elements. To draw a line here, we will carry out a comparative analysis of the American and the Japanese tradition. However, we would like to point out that what we do not want to foster the classic contraposition between American and Japanese animation, which is, in our opinion, a false problem. We remain, in fact, convinced that the real contraposition, with regard to Japanese and American traditions, is not between anime and cartoons but between TV animation and cinema animation. We also would like to point out that the attempt to make Japanese and American animated canons explicit is not purely academic, but is functional to underline how elements drawn from two different traditions have been collected and re-organized in new and original canons which are recognizable in the Chinese animated audiovisual products. Taking some successful domestic animation series as examples, we focus on the narrative and stylistic differences of Chinese animation models with respect to the more developed Japanese and American ones. As mentioned previously, although in the imaginary culture the Japanese and American animation production and narration models appear to be in opposition to each other, it is possible to distinguish a number of common points not only between these two traditional animation models but also an increasing hybridization of narrative and aesthetic patterns which characterise the Chinese animation as well. In our analysis we call attention on a number of Chinese animation series that are successful domestically and internationally. On one side, the large success these series meet with the audience cannot be explained only by the large supports the Chinese government is providing to this sector, but it relies mainly on the market demand, which includes the use of narration and production characteristics, which are typically considered Chinese

From the `Cinematic' to the `Anime-ic': Issues of Movement in Anime

Animation, 2008

She has written on witchcraft in popular television with a focus on the use of speech, magical text and identity, and on issues of identity in anime. Her research interests include the representation of identity and subjectivity in film/television, anime and animation studies, and film/television theory and methodology. Caroline is a member of the editorial boards for

Shakespeare in Japanese Pop Culture

INContext: Studies in Translation and Interculturalism

Adapting Shakespeare’s literary works for introduction into Japanese popular culture has been an act of intercultural translation. Shakespeare and Japanese popular culture, particularly manga [Japanese graphic novels] could be seen as cultural polarities: the West vs. the East, as represented by Japan, a contrast between high culture and pop culture, the canonical vs. the lowbrow. Yet Shakespeare’s works as adapted in manga format do, as this article argues, problematize such hierarchical distinctions. Shakespeare found in manga can be both a challenge and a tribute to his authority, giving him a global and intercultural after-life. The first group of Japanese manga with Shakespearean motifs dates back to the early 20th century. Similar efforts have since continued through to the early 21st century, making manga with Shakespearean motifs a conspicuous, widespread phenomenon as part of Japanese pop culture. The greatest recent contribution in this regard is Manga Shakespeare Series. ...

Japanese Romeo x Juliet as Site of Cultural Cross ‐ Pollination

2017

When Shakespeare’s plays were introduced to Japan at the end of the nineteenth century, the translators knew that, if the performances were to have any significant impact on the audience, the texts had to be rewritten according to the dramatic conventions of traditional Japanese theatre, especially Kabuki and Bunraku. Since then, Shakespeare’s plays have been appropriated across various literary and media forms, more recently as manga and anime, cross-pollinations of Western and Japanese art forms and ideologies. Drawing on Julie Sanders’s concept of appropriation (2006) and Douglas Lanier’s contention that most contemporary foreignlanguage Shakespeare is “post-textual” and rhizomatic (2010, 2014), this paper discusses the 24-episode TV anime Romeo x Juliet (Studio Gonzo, 2007) as a site of interesting interactions between the Japanese and the Western cultural traditions, storytelling conventions, and old and new ideologies. Imbued with Japanese spirituality, transnational politics,...

Animation: A World History. Volume III / Chapters on Japanese animation

Animation: A World History. Volume III: Contemporary Times, 2015

A continuation of 1994’s groundbreaking Cartoons, Giannalberto Bendazzi’s Animation: A World History is the largest, deepest, most comprehensive text of its kind, based on the idea that animation is an art form that deserves its own place in scholarship. Bendazzi delves beyond just Disney, offering readers glimpses into the animation of Russia, Africa, Latin America, and other often-neglected areas and introducing over fifty previously undiscovered artists. Full of first-hand, never before investigated, and elsewhere unavailable information, Animation: A World History encompasses the history of animation production on every continent over the span of three centuries. Volume III catches you up to speed on the state of animation from 1991 to present. Although characterized by such trends as economic globalization, the expansion of television series, emerging markets in countries like China and India, and the consolidation of elitist auteur animation, the story of contemporary animation is still open to interpretation. With an abundance of first-hand research and topics ranging from Nickelodeon and Pixar to modern Estonian animation, this book is the most complete record of modern animation on the market and is essential reading for all serious students of animation history.

Animation: A World History. Volume I / Chapters on Japanese animation

Animation: A World History. Volume I: Foundations - The Golden Age, 2015

A continuation of 1994’s groundbreaking Cartoons, Giannalberto Bendazzi’s Animation: A World History is the largest, deepest, most comprehensive text of its kind, based on the idea that animation is an art form that deserves its own place in scholarship. Bendazzi delves beyond just Disney, offering readers glimpses into the animation of Russia, Africa, Latin America, and other often-neglected areas and introducing over fifty previously undiscovered artists. Full of first-hand, never before investigated, and elsewhere unavailable information, Animation: A World History encompasses the history of animation production on every continent over the span of three centuries. Volume I traces the roots and predecessors of modern animation, the history behind Émile Cohl's Fantasmagorie, and twenty years of silent animated films. Encompassing the formative years of the art form through its Golden Age, this book accounts for animation history through 1950 and covers everything from well-known classics like Steamboat Willie to animation in Egypt and Nazi Germany. With a wealth of new research, hundreds of photographs and film stills, and an easy-to-navigate organization, this book is essential reading for all serious students of animation history.