Otaku studies

Debido a que ya es imposible encontrar esta investigación sobre las entonces "nuevas" tribus urbanas locales, me pirateé a mí misma. Aquí les cuelgo mi publicación sobre las juventudes dosmileras y su diversidad estética, social y política de ese Chile pre Lady Gaga, que colindó con la Revolución Pingüina. Este librote que analiza la emergencia de la única tribu urbana propia chilena, "los pokemones", como las llamadas "peloláis", los "visuals", los "emos" y los "flaytes", fue publicado por Editorial Planeta en el año 2009 en la ciudad de Santiago de Chile.

Kacsuk, Zoltan, 2021. The Making of an Epoch-Making Anime: Understanding the Landmark Status of Neon Genesis Evangelion in Otaku Culture. In: José Andrés Santiago Iglesias and Ana Soler Baena, eds. Anime Studies: Media-Specific Approaches to Neon Genesis Evangelion. Stockholm: Stockholm University Press, 215-246. DOI: https://doi.org/10.16993/bbp.h.

The popular culture of Japan draws and consolidates fans from various geographical domains and multiple backgrounds. Its engagingly rich heredity and culture is much diverse and proliferates around comics (manga), games, animation (anime) and music. These various sub genres of Japan’s popular culture and the various terminologies associated with them and their audiences frame Western fandom. Cosplay (“costume play”) is a fan culture that has an active camaraderie where fans create their costumes which are inspired by fictional characters from comics, games, animation and music. Cosplay is a fine blend of both its origin terms: “costume” and “play” since a cosplayer portrays characteristics of both these words – dressing up as a fictional character and also enact the character’s life and situations with full realization that they are trying to capture the life of someone, temporarily, who does not exist in reality. In this process happens a blurring of reality, entry into the world of fiction, a creation of new identity through this narrative resulting in the birth of an entirely new persona which is supreme in itself. (Dorfman, 2007) According to Judith Butler, the practice of enacting various identities, genders and switching between them and trying new ones or performing multiple identities, like in Cosplay, allows individuals to redefine, discover, stretch and enhenhance their own sense of identity. Thus cosplayers slip in and out of identities by switching between costumes and perform their persona by enacting the “play”. Thus the concept of identity is in a constant influx where public and private realms merge creating a sense of fragmentation and decentered self giving rise to multiple conflicting identities.
This is a postmodern concept in all senses by creating a hyper-reality where there is a disruption of the dominance of high culture by popular culture formulating a hybrid culture. This signifies that we are living in the postmodern space of virtuality which defines hobbies and connections and we ourselves are unsure of our own structured identity defined by societal norms. In this technology driven age cosplay also allows a certain form of escapism and interaction with the physical world through conversion of hobbies from a screen-centric medium to a concrete physical world.

Agnès Giard, « “Jouer” au pervers. Amour pour la 2D et radicalité au Japon », L'ethnographie, 3-4 | 2020, 28 octobre 2020. URL : https://revues.mshparisnord.fr/ethnographie/index.php?id=519
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ABSTRACT: Playing “Pervert”. 2D Love and Radicality in Japan
In Japan, the industry of emotional commodities provides video game users or manga readers with attractive and charming creatures as tools to fill their heart and fulfill their fantasies. It is significant that these characters – kyara – are being developed on a rapidly expanding scale which mirrors the economic crisis. They mainly target the market of men and women who refer to themselves as otakus, i.e. consumers of "2D" partners. Held accountable for the low birth rate, otakus engage in fictitious romance or sex relationships as a means to construct their identity and to express a feeling of inadequacy with social expectations: a lot of them believe that it has become impossible, or pointless, to create a family. Is this why they are involved in romantic/sexual relationships with media mix characters? What is the meaning of this "preference" given to imaginary beings? By examining the way otakus build their discourses and adjust them to current events, my goal is to question the very notion of "radicality" in the context of a subculture that is extremely revealing of the tensions pervading contemporary Japanese society.
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RÉSUMÉ 
Il existe au Japon une industrie en plein essor de créatures séduisantes ou charmantes, élaboré-es comme autant de propositions visant à combler l'absence de l'autre. Dans ce pays-leader en matière de simulacres émotionnels-ces personnages appelés kyara s'inscrivent de façon significative dans une logique de développement commercial en contexte de crise et concernent, principalement, le marché très porteur des hommes et femmes qui se désignent comme otakus, c'est-à-dire comme adeptes de partenaires affectifs et sexuels « en 2D ». Longtemps tenu-es pour responsables de la dénatalité, les otakus font de leurs amours fictives un outil de construction identitaire et le moyen d'exprimer un sentiment d'inadéquation avec les attentes sociales : beaucoup estiment en effet qu'il est devenu impossible, ou vain, de fonder un foyer et avoir des enfants. Est-ce la raison pour laquelle ils s'investissent dans des relations fantasmatiques avec des personnages issus de jeux vidéo et de manga ? A quoi rime cette « préférence » affichée pour des êtres imaginaires ? En examinant la façon dont les otakus construisent leurs discours et les ajustent à l'actualité j'espère questionner la notion même de « radicalité » dans le contexte d'une sous-culture extrêmement révélatrice des tensions qui parcourent la société japonaise contemporaine.

Hiroki Azuma es uno de los pensadores sociales más interesantes y lúcidos de nuestra época y sin embargo ha pasado bastante desapercibido en el mundo occidental hasta 2009, cuando Jonathan E. Abel y Shion Kono decidieron traducir a lengua inglesa una de sus obras principales; “Otaku: Japan’s Database Animals”, escrita originalmente en 2001, de la cual aún no existe versión en castellano.
La obra, muy concisa, de menos de 150 páginas, refleja de forma incisiva las particularidades de la sociedad y la juventud japonesas del momento, en concreto de los grupos “otaku”; lo que los anglosajones llamarían “geeks” y los hispanohablantes “frikis”.
Estos colectivos han cobrado especial importancia en los últimos años en todo el mundo y su impacto social puede verse claramente en las tendencias cinematográficas, televisivas, literarias, y en general de ocio a nivel global. Han fomentado nuevas formas de consumo y han colonizado la red como espacio propio. Por todo ello, resulta de especial importancia revisar una obra de estas características, en la
que Azuma nos enseña la base y el funcionamiento interno de este movimiento, en su vertiente oriental.

Zizek's famous quote; a popular Japanese manga about a University club full of "slash" enthusiast females plus one cross-dressing  and very confused boy who shares their enthusiasms... What is the author up to? Let us throw pop post-Lacan pasta at the wall and see what sticks!

Better to just read it in the original form at:
https://heartsoffuriousfancies.wordpress.com/2014/03/16/genshiken-ch-95-97-as-a-symptom-of-man/

...as the print to pdf'd pdf looks atrocious!

Once you get past the fannish first part discussing the story-in-progress, you get to the pop-post-Lacan stuff, wherein I try to build a case that the author is working up an odd approach to the decentered subject and the creative process. And one that is heavily influenced by popular cultural discourse that uses post-Lacanian concepts (Did not Dr Saito Tamaki recommend this manga back in 2006?)

The "comic" (manga) can be read in fan-translated English and other languages on various grey sites across the net. Append "read" to a Google search naming it and enjoy.

For the early community of Spanish otaku, manga and anime were “expressions of Japanese art,” comparable to painting and literary masterpieces.1 Their veneration of these genres, their close relation with the industry, and their influence in the construction and development of the current state of affairs surrounding manga and anime in Spain cannot be properly understood without insight into the history of the Spanish otaku community’s development throughout the 1990s. The voice of fandom can be heard in manga and anime conventions and read in the nonprofit fanzines they created. The role of otaku associations should not be underestimated either, since they not only contributed to the dissemination of manga and anime but also endeavoured to minimize the effects of censorship and bans that these examples of Japanese popular culture faced during their first steps into the Spanish market.
Most research on manga and anime in the Spanish context revolves around such topics as fansubs and scanlations, the present state of affairs of the anime and manga industry, and literary criticism of animated master- pieces and their adaptations into different formats and languages. However, little attention has been paid to the origins of the Spanish fan revolution through the prism of otaku literature from the 1990s, the nature of the Spanish otaku community, and otaku interaction with these cultural products and the industry in that period.
This essay details the rise of Spanish manga and anime fandom in the 1990s, which has been largely overlooked in Anglophone and Japanese- language studies of anime fandom to date. How did the fan revolution originate? When did Spanish otaku start translating manga for their fellow fans? Where did they express their opinions? And, last but not least, how did some otaku manage to start their careers in the manga and anime industry, result- ing in the current state of affairs? These are the main questions this essay addresses regarding the otaku phenomenon in the Spanish context. This discussion of Spanish otaku may be useful in shedding light onto other topics currently under discussion in fan studies.

Un análisis antropológico que aborda la práctica del cosplay como una forma de diálogo que tienen los miembros de comunidades de fans (fandom) de anime y manga en la ciudad de México con su objeto de afición, explorando los procesos de producción, re-producción, construcción y re-construcción de sentido por y dentro de la comunidad de fans. Este trabajo se construye a partir de las siguientes condiciones presentes en el fenómeno: la naturaleza lúdica-participativa de las comunidades de fans, la función simbólica de la cultura pop japonesa como objeto de afición, el uso del disfraz como medio de expresión y el cuerpo como terreno de acción.

Índice e introducción de la tesis. En caso de requerir el documento completo: https://forms.gle/YeZwHWJs15p9rk2z8

Resumen: En los últimos años, la industria del manga no sólo se ha convertido en un fenómeno cultural de gran proyección internacional, sino que también ha dado lugar a un amplio movimiento de aficionados que ha llegado a constituir su propia sub-cultura, la llamada cultura otaku. En este artículo se pretende repasar la historia del manga desde una perspectiva social, poniendo especial atención en la evolución de la cultura otaku desde el surgimiento del manga moderno hasta la actualidad. Palabras clave: Otaku, manga, cultura, historia, sociedad. Abstract: In recent years, the manga industry has not only become a cultural phenomenon of great international projection, but also has given rise to a large fan movement that has come to constitute its own sub-culture, the so-called otaku culture. This article aims to review the history of manga from a social perspective, paying special attention to the evolution of the otaku culture from the emergence of modern manga to the present day. Introducción. El manga es uno de los ámbitos de la cultura pop más reconocidos, tanto en Japón como en el resto del mundo. A pesar de ello, no siempre se le ha concedido gran importancia dentro del estudio de la sociedad japonesa y su cultura. Desde la importante figura de Osamu Tezuka hasta las convenciones masivas que celebran los aficionados de muchos países, propongo un repaso por la historia del manga centrado en la evolución tanto de la industria como de sus públicos y, en este contexto, averiguar cuál es la percepción que los japoneses tienen del manga y de sus aficionados, los otaku, y cómo ésta ha evolucionado desde que era un producto cultural autóctono hasta que trascendió las fronteras de todo el mundo.

Since the emergence of manga and anime fan conventions in 70s Japan, the various fandoms and communities now known under the umbrella term of "otaku" have always flirted with queer modes of representations. It is said that the biggest fanzine convention in the world, the Comic Market, was born in 1975 when gathering both male and female fans of Hagio Moto's shôjo manga. i While the homoerotic fanzine scene supported by young women and the science fiction animation scene uniting mostly male amateur animators had some issues to figure out how to coexist, the diverse spectrum of otaku fandoms nevertheless stabilized during the late 70s' spatial convergence of the shôjo manga revolution with the anime boom. ii The exploration of homosexual romances in shôjo manga indeed met in fanzine events and bookstores the growing production of science fiction animation and paraphernalia. iii There, male and female otaku expressions formulated different strategies to reinvent alternative modes of gender representation and existence. For these reasons, otaku fandoms have been from a very early point accustomed with discourses reflecting on the norms of heteronormativity, a perspective that has also transpired within the academic scholarship tackling the otaku phenomenon.

Prior to the individual analysis of language in this study, I was part of a group examining three anime, all (generally) categorized as “action” according to their plots: Cowboy Bebop (1998), Outlaw Star (1998) and Blue Seed (1994). All three anime were from the 1990s, and all three had the same young adult male to adult male target audience. Since this research is specific to the action genre, it does not by any means possess the same gender speech patterns as other anime. All three anime creators were male, target audiences were male, and situations and plot are far different from other genres, for which there are many (e.g. romance, horror, “slice-of-life” and comedy). This particular study had an even slimmer scope as it focuses only on the anime Blue Seed. Blue Seed is not strictly an action anime as it also includes supernatural elements in the form of the Aragami (could be considered horror), and a blossoming romance between the male and female lead protagonists and a couple of the side characters as well.

The author investigates the lolicons in the digital age by looking at social, political, and psychological factors that might explain interest in the subculture. There is also consideration of legal restrictions and their effectiveness by looking at economics and how frequently lolicons appear in social media. This investigation is important as the topic of pornography is controversial as a right of free speech, and the Supreme Court views are discussed.

In an age where Silicon Valley continues to dictate what it means to innovate a painless future, knowledge and enjoyment are fertile breeding grounds of political contestation. But it’s not exactly democracy. Instead, we are controlled through tools and platforms that turn us into data for the profit of billionaires. Control has become so playful that we carry it in our pockets, as we continue to crave for likes and followers through expressing shared hatred towards the other in our cute little online circles. Because on the internet today, everything is cute: from selfie filters to gamified metrics on social media, from Tinder matches to racist memes on 4chan. Amidst all this cuteness, hate crimes continue to take more and more lives each day.
Through a psychoanalytic interrogation of the intersections of online culture, sexuality, and politics, Bonni Rambatan and Jacob Johanssen explore such horizons at the limits of capitalism. Combining a predominantly Lacanian approach with the thoughts of critical theorists such as Hiroki Azuma, Byung-Chul Han and Mari Matsuda, as well as the work of thinkers and poets Audre Lorde and Richard Siken, Event Horizon examines how capitalist ideology functions in our current moment—and, more importantly, how it breaks down.

In this essay I will discuss the shift into the moe period which came in the mid-1990’s by first examining two anime franchises: Mobile Suit Gundam (1979) and Neon Genesis Evangelion (1997). Secondly, I will observe the psychological roots of moe in fantasy. Through examining these two anime, which come from the mecha (machine) genre, I will analyze the enormity of the moe shift and how it has altered and caters to the lives of its modern otaku audience.

This article examines the temporal and phenomenological philosophies of Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, and Paolo Virno, specifically in relation to the transmedia franchises of the Japanese game studio, Type-Moon. Against linear, national, and majoritarian grand narratives of the historical, the otaku artists, writers, and developers responsible for the Fate series postulate whether it is possible to harness the intense and affective forces described by Jay Lampert as "the Joan of Arc effect" in the blink of an eye or in the palm of your hand. Through a philosophical and formal analysis of three spinoff series from the Fate franchise, this article investigates how Type-Moon's deployment of the "anime machine" encourages its viewers and users to see and feel the abundance of flowing "nomadic memories" or counter-historical visions from the perspective of minor populations. Through this highly embodied and tactile experience of transhistorical (un)becomings, Type-Moon's series offer a deterritorialized, post-national world-image of the otaku database which mediates between the overloading affects of becoming-woman and the digitally encoded logic of transversal through the frames, windows, interfaces, devices, platforms, and bodies that constitute Type-Moon's vibrant anime ecology.

In the aftermath of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster of 3/11, one disputed issue has been the acceptance of precedent nuclear energy policies among the wider population, despite Japan being a country of high seismic risk and a nation that experienced atomic bombing on its population during World War II. This paper investigates how the transmedia constellation of the mangaesque intersecting manga, anime, pop-art, governmental educational characters and youth subcultures has been strategic in domesticating contested meanings of nuclear related issues, as well as being deeply informed itself in its ground-breaking stages (Astroboy-Tezuka Osamu, Barefoot Gen-Nakazawa Keiji, Little Boy-Murakami Takashi) by these issues, contributing ultimately to their naturalisation and hegemonic reproduction from ‘below’.

Objetiva-se compreender o processo de produção e consumo do rádio virtual denominado de rádioweb a partir da prática fã dos otaku. Para tanto, faz-se um levantamento das principais emissoras virtuais de conteúdo radiofônico pensadas e produzidas por membros do fandom otaku brasileiro. Utiliza-se os conceitos de Convergência, Cultura Pop e Prosumer, para compor a base de dados que contribui no entendimento do consumo da Cultura Pop Japonesa. Aplica-se a pesquisa bibliográfica seguida de coleta de dados através da ferramenta da plataforma Google - Google PageRank. Faz-se, uma organização dos dados coletados para permitir a compreensão das categorias: Periodicidade, Portabilidade, Navegabilidade e Interatividade no objeto de estudo apresentado: as Rádiosweb Otaku.

This paper was presented to Mechademia’s Vol. 14.2: “New Formulations of the Otaku”, guest ed. Susan Napier, call of papers on January 1st, 2021 and reject by Mechademia’s Editors-in-chief on March 13th, 2021. The publication of this paper is made for the purpose of disseminate my academic work and open the debate on the criteria that these kinds of publications use to accept or reject the contributions they receive. Specially, when a work calls into question the arguments of their own collaborators: Patrick W. Galbraith, Sharon Kinsella and Ôtsuka Eiji.

Ante la dificultad de los otaku para conseguir los bienes importados tan ansiados debido a la suba del dólar, entre otros factores socioeconómicos y una posición sarcástica frente a la actualidad social del país, esta subcultura se convierte en caldo de cultivo para posiciones ideológicas liberales y libertarias. Así, potenciales candidatos como José Luis Espert, e inclusive la introducción del economista Javier Milei o el conservador Agustín Laje, son referenciados a través de distintos soportes en las comunidades otaku. Sueños de katanas y serpientes, sueños de mercado y libertad. Los otaku, fans del manga y del anime, según la investigadora en tecnología Mizuko Ito, conforman una de las subculturas online más grandes del mundo. Estos fans construyen comunidades basadas en el consumo de la cultura pop japonesa bajo todos sus productos: manga, anime, videojuegos, figuras, merchandising oficial, bandas sonoras, vestimenta de los personajes; los cuales se importan desde Japón. En la Argentina, se realizan convenciones otaku cada fin de semana, principalmente en la ciudad de Buenos Aires. Asimismo, los otaku argentinos publican a diario miles de posteos en redes sociales, en los grupos de Facebook Otakus de Buenos Aires y Jigoku Eventos. ¿Qué buscaría un partido político en una subcultura nutrida de la industria cultural como los otaku? Votantes que se sientan interpelados en consignas cosmopolitas, como afirma el plan orgánico del Partido Libertario:

La globalización suele entenderse como la “occidentalización” del mundo, sin embargo, esto no es así. En el marco de este suceso se generan otras dinámicas como la que se analiza en este ensayo, la latinización del anime y manga, productos culturales provenientes de Japón y el surgimiento de la subcultura otaku, todo lo anterior, gracias a los procesos constantes de desterritorialización, reterritorialización e hibridación.

Desde que la humilde Type Moon saco su primera novela visual, Tsukihime (2000), la empresa comenzó a ser, no solo conocida por su calidad en el publico otaku, sino que también trascendió las barreras y cautivo a un mercado mucho más grande como fueron los jugadores ocasionales. Es con el juego Fate /Stay Night (2004) Dan el salto a dejar de ser una empresa doujin a convertirse en un verdadero gigante de los videojuegos japoneses. La Franquicia Fate cuenta con innumerables cantidades de juegos, cerca de 10 animes, dos de ellos considerados de culto, 4 universos alternativos, y varias reescrituras en novelas ligeras y juegos para celular, en particular, el gigantesco Fate Grand Order que cristaliza todos los universos alternativos, spin offs y personajes que Kinoko Nasu, el creador y escritor de Type Moon no pudo acomodar en otros proyectos. El uso de la historia en esta franquicia es más que interesante, puesto que prácticamente todos los personajes conocidos como “servants” son personajes históricos, desde el Rey Arturo hasta Wu Zetian, la última emperatriz de China. Si bien en los primeros juegos el ambiente histórico solo estaba acotado a los personajes, es con la novela y anime Fate Zero y el videojuego y anime Fate Grand Order donde el peso de la historia no solo se vuelve en forma de prohombres históricos, sino también en el contexto donde se desarrolla las aventuras. Así, el jugador y el televidente pasean por la Francia medieval en plena guerra de los 100 años, el Imperio Romano y la Antigua Babilonia, y conocen a protagonistas de mitos e historia. Este paseo está lejos de ser 100 histórico, porque la serie es una serie de fantasía y el elemento fantástico y mágico se hacen presentes constante mente, construyendo un universo donde la trama de lo real y lo factible (la historia) y lo fantástico (la magia y la mitología) se mixturizan en clave otaku. Esto último es importante, los personajes históricos no solo sufren la moeización, sino también la idolización: El Rey Arturo, por ejemplo, es retratada como una joven rubia adolescente, extremadamente bella, de carácter duro y estomago sin fondo. No es la única que se transforma en una versión moe. Pero lo interesante de este proceso es como aun al torcer las dimensiones de lo factico, el peso histórico sigue estando. El objetivo de este trabajo, será mostrar cómo se dan esta relación entre lo moe y lo histórico.

Following Casey Brienza's call for drawing on Japanese "otaku theory" in order to further comics studies, the present article demonstrates how the wider interrelated discourse around anime, manga, and otaku can be productively related to fields such as Western fan studies. Focusing on Azuma Hiroki's book <i>The Birth of Game-like Realism</i> this paper both highlights the theoretical richness of works which have yet to be translated into English, and emphasizes the importance of manga research – in this case Itō Gō's book <i>Tezuka is Dead</i> – beyond the confines of manga/comics studies. Building on a novel reading of Azuma's framework introduced in the present article the now mostly overlooked tension in fan cultural practices pointed out by Henry Jenkins in <i>Textual Poachers</i> in relation to Pierre Bourdieu's concepts of pure and popular aesthetic disposition is reexamined. Drawing on the framework of game-like realism, this paper introduces the imagination-oriented aesthetic disposition, and demonstrates how this disposition could account for the mix of characteristics found in fan practices. The relevance of such a reevaluation of Bourdieu's possible contribution to fan studies lies in the potential to move beyond the currently dominant frameworks of psychology and psychoanalysis when addressing the problem of fantasy and reality in relation to fan engagement.

Inquietudes y cuestiones sociológicas clásicas y contemporáneas 70 Las franquicias Azur Lane y Kantai Collection tienen dos puntos en común, el uso de figuraciones humanas híbridos entre bishojos y barcos de la Segunda Guerra Mundial y el uso de la historia como argumento narrativo en sus juegos. En este artículo me interesa comparar como la historia es usada por ambas franquicias, una, Kantai Collection enfocada en la tragedia de la Armada Imperial Japonesa, tiene un profundo talante militarista que, en primera mano, no es rastreable en el juego en sí, sino en el entorno del jugador, la animación y en las redes sociales relacionadas. En este caso, se analiza a través de dos trabajos cuyas visiones contrapuestas se complementan para comprender esta visión histórica. Azur Lane por el contrario se enfoca en la guerra naval tomando personajes de cara país que lucho en el conflicto, y toma una postura mucho más demagógica, pero a la vez, más activa en el uso de la historia, señalando lugares y hechos históricos y también una postura con respecto a la guerra y a los enemigos. Esto último no es más que una cristalización de la querella japonesa y china con respecto a la historia y con respecto a los sucesos acontecidos por dichas naciones tanto en el periodo imperial japonés como en la actual guerra comercial. Esto se traduce también en una guerra de otakus por el amor de sus personajes. PALABRAS CLAVE: Militarismo-Anime-Videojuegos-Historia japonesa-Historiografía. The franchises Azur Lane and Kantai Collection has two points in common: The use of the human figuration hybrid between bishojo and WWII Battleships and the use of the history as a narrative argument for their games. In this article I am interested in a comparison of the uses of history in both franchises. One, Kantai Collection focused in the tragedy of the Imperial Japanese Navy, with a deep militaristic view that, in one hand, has no trace of them in the main game, but appears in the player environment, in the animation, and social media related. In this case, the review travel between two works with opposed conclusions, but complementary issues for the compression of the case. Azur Lane in contrary, is focused in naval warfare with characters of every country that fought in the conflict and has a very demagogic historical view but so much active in the use of the history marking out places, battles and historical situations and build a historical position about the war and the enemy. This item there is no more than a crystallization of the Japan-Chinese complaint about history and the events of the imperial Japanese period in both nations and the actual commercial war. This is traduced in an open otaku war for the characters. * Profesor Superior en Historia por la Universidad de Buenos Aires. Miembro Fundador de la Red de Investigadores del Manga y Anime. Trabaja las relaciones entre memoria histórica, historiografía y representaciones históricas en el manga y anime desde 2012. Introducción: El Fantasma Gris que ronda por el Pacifico U na mujer, de aproximadamente 18 años, de pelo gris largo, con un sombrero con visera con el logo de la marina norteamericana. Vistiendo una camisa blanca, con charreteras y una corbata negra, una falda muy corta, medias bucaneras ligadas con un cinto en cada muslo y unos extraños zapatos dice, en japonés "¿Cuantos barcos más debo hundir?". En sus manos, carga un arco donde se aprecian el puente, la cubierta y la antena de un portaviones. En su capa, negra y larga lleva las siglas ENT 6, como también se puede apreciar en la cubierta del portaaviones en el arco: EN. La mujer es el CV-6 Enterprise, el barco de guerra más condecorado de la segunda guerra mundial y el barco con mayor cantidad de bajas registradas en ese conflicto, ahora, convertida en una Bishojo, mitad mujer, mitad barco. Una heroína doliente de una franquicia media-mix originaria de China, pero con diálogos en japonés, con alcance mundial gracias a servidores en inglés y que cuenta una historia ya conocida del Teatro del Pacifico, tomando como punto de vista a nuestra heroína Enterprise (Enty, para los jugadores) Que perdió a sus dos hermanas en menos de un mes (El CV-5

Update: Pr0n hounds searching these terms have now started searching this version. As a result, for Jan 2016, I am now in the top %4 of Academia.edu's most searched-for researchers. Cut it out! No pr0n here dammit. Grow Up, get a life, get out more and meet real human beings! Gehhhh..

For the few of you who are actually curious about outre searches on the interwebs, this is what happened:

A blog about manga and anime that deals with desire and identity and throws critical-theory-ish papers at manga and anime by way of example. Who reads this thing and what were they looking for when they found it?

A dump of all the captured search terms for 2.5 years of my wordpress blog. Raw data, of a sort. Hmmmmm.

Note that Google's new habit of https-ing searches means that most of the search terms are not captured, so the sampling is partial and skewed.

The pdf might look awful, Original can be found at:
https://heartsoffuriousfancies.wordpress.com/2015/07/24/my-new-found-popularity/

Tesis de licenciatura de la Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia - Unidad Chihuahua. Aborda el estudio descriptivo de los jóvenes admiradores del anime, manga y la cultura pop japonesa en la ciudad de Chihuahua, México. Describe y analiza los procesos de globalización cultural generados desde Oriente y la creación de sentido a través del juego del disfraz (cosplay) y el idiolecto otaku.

/ This bachelor thesis adresses the study of Otaku culture in Chihuahua, north of Mexico. Here, processes of cultural globalization generated form Japan are described and analyzed, as well as sense-making through the game of costume-play (cosplay).

This essay will approach the topic of cuteness by examining the controversial subject of erotic and pornographic fan-art featuring the cute characters of the hit animated television series My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (2010-Present) created by adult male fans, popularly known as Bronies. A fascinating phenomena in the history of pop-culture fandoms, Bronies, who The Washington Post characterizes as the “unusual demographic of mostly 20-something, mostly [heterosexual] white men” who unabashedly love a show about big-eyed, candy-colored ponies made for elementary-school aged girls, have sustained an astounding amount of media coverage in the past five years following their emergence. Such widespread and long term media coverage has thrust the Brony fandom into the public eye and transformed them, as journalist Emily Manuel of the Global Comment puts it, into “figures of fascination and derision in equal measures.”

Among such commentators the most popular assertion, made by both supporters and detractors, is that these adult male fan’s affection for My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic should be understood as an indication of shifting and generally more egalitarian attitudes among young men with regards to the gendering of pop-culture media.
   
However, I will argue that such a view is at best naïve being derived from wishful thinking and an inadequate understanding of Brony fandom, its origins, influences, history, and practices – most notably the creation, circulation, and “use” of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic erotic and pornographic fan-art featuring the show’s cute female equine characters. In making this argument, I will adopt an intertexual approach thinking alongside a combination of American and Japanese scholars including Hiroki Azuma, Henry Jenkins, Setsu Shigematsu, Joanne Hollows, and Toru Honda, contending that Bronies’ explicitly sexual attraction to the cute characters of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is better understood as an American manifestation of a cultural phenomenon previously recognized in Japan as moé (萌え); originating in 1970s and 80s otaku (i.e. geek) culture in which adult male fans become sexually attracted to the cute fictional female characters found in various pop-culture media such as anime and manga. Like the ponies from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, the cute female characters who inhabit “moé culture” are often anthropomorphized versions of such things as animals, machines, or even world nations and typically originate from children’s anime and manga, thus necessitating fans who wish to explore sexual encounters with such characters to do so through the medium of fan-art or fan-fiction.

Moreover I will contend that it precisely the “animesque” style of Hasbro’s current My Little Pony series which has made it a prime target for such erogenous imaginings as evident by both Bronies’ summary rejection of all prior non-anime influenced iterations of the My Little Pony brand outside the current Friendship is Magic incarnation and manga critic Itō Gō’s contention that it is only the cute aesthetic unique to manga and anime which possesses the natural eroticism necessary to titillate the imaginations of these fans.

Furthermore this understanding of Brony fandom also explains the media’s persistent interest in and often conflicted embracement of the Bronies since any manifestation of “moé culture” can be seen as acting in opposition to what queer theorist Lee Edelman identifies as the all-pervasive American ideology of “reproductive futurism” which views the ultimate aim of adult life, love, and marriage as the production and upbringing of children. However as psychoanalyst Tamaki Saitō notes, because fans, like Bronies, maintain a “persistent attraction to [the] ‘transitional objects’” of childhood – such as cute characters in the form of cartoons and toys – such individuals effectively blur the lines between the cultural categories of childhood and adulthood resulting in them being viewed as an impediment to the narrative of “reproductive futurism” with the logic being that since such individuals are, for all intents and purposes, still children themselves they are clearly neither capable nor prepared to have and properly raise children of their own.         

Using the theoretical insights of the aforementioned scholars in understanding Brony fandom as an American manifestation of moé in conjunction with the statistical analysis of psychologists Patrick Edwards and Marsha H. Redden (“the nation’s premiere bronyologists”), and my own ethnographic research into the Brony community along the East Coast and from Texas to Chicago, I will argue that what one finds at work amongst Bronies is not an embracement of a more egalitarian view of pop-culture media but rather an attempt to establish what cultural anthropologist Patrick W. Galbraith calls “a space of autonomous [male hetero-]sexuality” via the colonization and sexualization of a show originally intended to empower young girls, an aim which can be seen as both sexist and fundamentally narcissistic in nature, though the question remains if this is necessarily a negative.

Compreendemos o Turismo Otaku como um recorte do Turismo Cultural tendo em vista o interesse dos turistas otakus com a cultura tradicional e pop japonesa. Identificamos a gênese desse segmento no Japão no qual os otakus (fãs da cultura pop japonesa) deslocam-se a fim de conhecer os lugares retratados nas animações japonesa (animê). Embora imagens do Brasil não sejam comumente veiculadas nos animês, identificamos que o grupo otaku pode realizar turismo para ter contato com seus pares e com produtos do pop japonês, sendo a mais comum a participação em eventos animês. Assim, o objetivo desse artigo é analisar as práticas turísticas dos componentes do grupo otaku por meio de uma revisão bibliográfica exploratória que aponte caminhos para a construção do segmento do Turismo Otaku. Para tal, abordaremos o que é entendido por Turismo Otaku no Japão e no Brasil, suas aproximações e distanciamentos, quem são esses viajantes e como se constituem.

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.

This petition argues that erotic comics are an important cultural record of the way in which diverse sexualities are understood and portrayed, and sexual fantasies explored. An Erotic Comics Anglophone Archive (ErotiCAA) will preserve these works for research by scholars in many different disciplines.

One of the biggest problems facing anyone researching pornography/erotica or comics, and therefore doubly so for anyone researching erotic/pornographic comics, is finding and gaining access to primary materials. So we have decided to have a go at establishing an archive in the UK to collect and catalogue English-language porn and erotic comics.

We intend to approach a number of libraries and research institutions to host and/or fund the archive. Persuading them to support us will be a lot easier if we an show that there is a need for this archive, so to help with that we’ve started this petition.

We’ve already got this kick-ass logo designed for us by Alison Lucy Stone and meetings set up with a couple of big libraries. Help us out by signing the petition? And if you’d like to be more involved, please tweet Dr Anna Madill @UKFujoshi or Dr Jude Roberts @tangendentalism - we’d love to hear from you!

L'éthique otaku : Tous seuls ensemble
(la crise de contact et autres troubles des sens)

Le développement des technologies de la communication a favorisé le développement de nouveaux comportements et de nouveaux usages tout en répondant à des besoins jusque là insatisfaits.
Plus que le culte de l'illusion, le virtuel et ses avatars pourraient permettre de donner à voir et à vivre de nouvelles lectures du réel dont il constitue la part d'humanité qui doute.

Here's an excerpt from my introduction to this issue.

"The queer potential of Japanese popular media in global circulation—particularly manga, anime, and video games, as well as related fan practices—is no secret. The appeal of gender-bending narratives and of often explicit depictions of nonnormative romance and sexuality across these media has led to the establishment of focused fandoms and fan spaces around the world, as well as virtual spaces online in languages such as English, Chinese, Spanish, Arabic, and, of course, Japanese.

This interest in the inherent queerness of some Japanese media has long extended to scholars, many of whom are themselves fans. Perhaps the most prominent example, the manifestly queer female-oriented, male homoerotic boys love (BL) genre that emerged in shôjo manga in the 1970s has long drawn the attention of scholars in- and outside Japan, myself among them.  Other media and fan practices—including those which are overtly queer as well as those which more subtly invite queer readings—have more recently begun to elicit increased academic attention in this context. That this “Queer(ing)” issue of Mechademia attracted some two dozen submissions was, thus, not particularly surprising, though it did make choosing from among them quite challenging. I believe, however, that the six articles selected by members of the editorial board to be featured in this issue offer a strong sense of the diversities of the queerness and queer potential of Japanese media as well as the breadth of scholarly approaches thereto.

...

With the exception of Baudinette’s examination of Filipino fans’ consumption of Thai BL, these essays remain focused on media and fan practices in the context of Japan. As I noted at the outset of this introduction, however, queer media and fan practices of Japanese origin are a global phenomenon. Although Anglophone BL fandom has received some attention this past decade,  and a small but growing number of scholars, including Baudinette and myself, have been working to further scholarship on ways BL has been transfigured in global circulation, starting with Asia,  the project of studying “queer(ing)” Japanese popular media remains in its early stages. In the past year, however, as part of a research projected headed by Fujimoto Yukari and funded by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, I have been traveling to fan sites—primarily fan conventions in North America, East and Southeast Asia, and Oceania, with plans to go to conventions in Europe—to better understand BL, yuri, and other queer representations and fan practices emanating from Japan in various cultural contexts. Our particular focus is on ways these queer media and practices intersect or overlap with local LGBTQ cultures. Our preliminary observations in places such as Taipei and Seoul alongside Mexico City and Montreal, as well as other research to date, suggest that, in addition to giving cisgender heterosexual women and adolescent girls more freedom to explore gender and sexuality, these media and fan spaces make it easier for LGBTQ individuals to explore their own queer identities and queer futures.

With this project in mind, I realized that, to give a fuller sense of the extent of the global impact of these queer media and fan practices of Japanese origin, this issue of Mechademia needed to at least provide glimpses of such queer media and practices around the world. To that end, I solicited what I am labelling “snapshots” of such global queer fan cultures, some of which have never before been written about in this sort of academic context. Although some of the authors are themselves immersed in the fandoms they introduce—as fans, cosplayers, event organizers, translators, and so forth—most snapshot authors are established or early career researchers or graduate students, lending a scholarly frame to their personal experiences.

...

In sum, with the in-depth studies offered in the featured articles alongside these snapshots, this “Queer(ing)” issue demonstrates ways Japanese popular media, particularly manga, anime, and games, and related fan practices can be both queer and queering, helping reshape gender and sexuality in- and outside Japan."