text
stringlengths 0
6.56k
| source
stringclasses 11
values |
|---|---|
315 characters' world. With product-portal integration, the product is so strongly tied into creating the narrative, the world, and its characters relationship to both that the products function as pillars, being featured in ways that showcase their designs, backgrounds, and significance to the world and characters of the text. The importance of the product-portal to anime consumption draws upons Scott Lash and Celia Lury's design focus in the “thingification of media,” where mediated goods are turned into consumable material objects through their “aesthetic integrity” or a “discursive unity. ”439 Product-portals invite audiences into deeper experiences outside of the broadcast by connecting the first and second “shifts” of the television series, inviting audiences to consume and perform them through their aesthetic integration into the text and discursive extension into the environment. Thus, product-portal anime like Pretty Cure are heavily reliant on tying the anime's transmedia to users' environments and social lives. To better understand how the construction of Smile Precure! is tied into the Japanese social environment, this chapter will first provide the contextual background from which the anime emerges and has operated for the last ten years. I situate the Pretty Cure franchise within the magical girl genre by tracing the genre's development historically and industrially. Here, we will see how Pretty Cure's depiction of metamorphosis and gender roles coincides with changing developments in Japanese society. In particular, the magical girl anime transforms from a genre with conventional narrative and character tropes to a genre capable of combining and fusing various ideological beliefs, narrative themes, and industrial practices, embodied most emphatically by the genre-bending Smile Precure! This elusion of stable categories and professional boundaries sets up the creative action behind
439 Scott Lash and Celia Lury, Global Culture Industry: The Mediation of Things (London: Polity, 2007), 25. | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
316 the script meetings of Smile Precure! I look at how the series is developed through staff collaboration between producers, directors, and writers, who construct small and large narratives out of characters, worlds, and product-portals. These pre-determined elements provide a platform for writers and directors to work through ideas, form concepts, and create stories. The creative energy affected the research boundaries between participant and observer as well. The longer I observed, the more I was brought into the production of the series, and invested in the quality, accuracy, and completion of a single episode that, in many ways, spoke to my own background and experiences. Finally, I examine the ways in which these creative decisions manifest themselves visually and experientially in the series and its transmedia, and how audiences are brought into the text through the medium of characters and products. Toei's Magical Girls: Sally the Witch to Sailor Moon Toei Animation is considered to be the originator of the first mahō shōjo, or “magical girl,” anime with the 1966 broadcast of Sally the Witch. Adapted from the manga by Yokoyama Mitsuteru, the author of the robot series Tetsujin-28 (1956-66), the show drew on the popularity of the American fantasy sitcom Bewitched with Japanese girls. In an attempt to fill a vacuum in television animation programming that had been theretofore targeted at young boys, the planning department at Toei decided to make a sort of Bewitched-lite for young girls. Yumeno Sally is an 11-year-old princess from a magic kingdom who alights to Earth and befriends two Japanese girls her age. Sally and her assistant, Kabu, are soon fascinated with their friends' lives in a Japanese suburb and become determined to live there. They are granted approval to stay in the human world by their concerned parents, under the condition that they must return to the magic kingdom if | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
317 their identity is discovered. Sally grows fond of her new friends and learns many lessons beyond the realm of magic regarding friendship, loyalty, family, and general humanity. Like the sitcom on which it is based, she also gets into many slapstick antics involving the use of her magic. Eventually, Sally must return to the magic kingdom to become its queen, but not before revealing her powers to her friends when she uses her magic to save their school from a fire. Sally the Witch ran for over 100 episodes, of which the first 17 were in black and white. Toei followed it immediately with Himitsu no Akko-chan (Secret of Akko-chan, 1969-70), adapted from a manga by Fujiko F. Fujio. Akko-chan stars Atsuko, aka “Akko-chan,” an ordinary Japanese girl living with her mother in a small Japanese community. She accidentally breaks her mother' mirror, but a spirit from the mirror is moved by Atsuko's respect toward her mother's possession and rewards her with a “magic compact. ” By chanting a spell when the compact is open, Akko-chan can be transformed into anything she desires. Akko-chan uses the compact to change into various roles to help solve her community's problems. Akko-chan updates and localizes many elements from Sally, namely changing the foreign witch Sally into a more easily identifiable Japanese girl. The slapstick drawings from the manga are also made cuter in the animation. Most importantly, Akko-chan introduces the element of transformation into the magical girl series, where an ordinary girl acquires the power to change herself through the use of a special gadget. Sally and Akko-chan are the two earliest magical girl anime that lay much of the genre's groundwork. Both series are long-running television serials that featured protagonists who are shōjo, or young adolescent girls. With Sally, the protagonist is a majokko, a “little witch” or princess whose magical powers are ordained from her birthright. | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
318 Akko-chan, on the other hand, is a mahō shōjo, a “magical girl” who, through a fortuitous encounter with a magical entity, is endowed with special powers and tasked with living up to them responsibly. Both forms of shōjo are expected to use their magical power for the good of their family, friends, and community, and both often do this through the assistance of magical wands, mirrors, badges, costumes, and cute companions. Akko-chan begins a long partnership with toy company sponsors, such as Bandai, where the toy is featured in some way in the anime and sold in stores to viewers of the show. 440 Sponsors, who collaborate on the show with the animation and television producers, then get audiences to buy these peripheral tools. Magical girl anime frequently become a very long advertisement for its products, largely due to the close entwinement of the sponsor with the show's production and development. 441 The series provides the first use in anime of a studio and television network tie-in, as both anime were produced by Toei and broadcast and sponsored by TV Asahi. Sally and Akko-chan are also two of the first anime series that feature young female protagonists who wield superpowers for the sake of others. They are, in a sense, female superheroes, though they ascribe to traditional gender roles even in their transformations. As Kumiko Saito has argued, the two shows “adapt ideological models of gender from prewar and postwar periods, a rather conservative approach against the potentially subversive symbolism of magic in the era of the women's liberation movement. ”442 Both protagonists are young girls caught in the stage between childhood and adolescent sexuality,
440 A producer at Toei told me that the idea for the show's compact actually came from Bandai, since they reasonably believed that compacts would sell stronger with young girls than toy mirrors. 441 Sally and Akko-chan are also forever connected through the former show's plug of the latter in a short animation that aired immediately after the final episode of Sally. 442 Kumiko Saito, “Magic, Shōjo, and Metamorphosis: Magical Girl Anime and the Challenges of Changing Gender Identities in Japanese Society,” The Journal of Asian Studies Vol. 73:1 (February 2014): 149. | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
319 and before the responsibilities of marriage and motherhood, the period of girlhood that is described as shōjo. Sally and Akko-chan's status as shōjo, then, is a temporary state where magic can be used to escape into fantasy, even if the responsibilities of adulthood wait around the corner as both Sally and Akko-chan limit their own abilities in order to conform to their parents' desires. Sally, for example, is defined by her free and powerful standing in her local community, but reflects her mother's obedient stance towards the patriarchal household of her father when she leaves her free life behind to return to her kingdom and become a princess. Akko-chan is similarly self-limited in her power by gender roles that define her as shōjo. Her transformations are always into non-gendered or explicitly female roles such as a princess or a female teacher. Saito argues that Akko-chan demonstrates characteristics of the hahamono genre of “mother”-centered melodrama that was popular with postwar audiences. 443 Featuring a mother who endures hardship and sacrifices for her loved ones, the genre has its parallels in the character of Akko-chan herself, who eventually sacrifices her own powers to save her father's life. In the following decade, Toei continued to make magical girl anime with tweaks to the original recipe. The magical girls were given several different upgrades to their transformational arsenals, and the plots became considerably more complex. Writers injected romantic and action elements to the storylines, and the heroines' magical prowess grew to the point that many of them were given physical fighting abilities. Shōjo manga became increasingly sophisticated and popular during the 1970s, fueling production of anime targeted towards various age groupings of women that caught on with broader audiences. Some of these offerings were carryovers from other genres popular with male audiences such as sports. For example, Urano Chikako's female volleyball Attack No. 1
443 Ibid, 150. | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
320 (1968-70) and TMS Entertainment's anime adaptation of it originally aimed for a female viewership, but became a crossover hit following the influence of the 1964 Olympics. Many other shōjo manga, however, were popular for themes and plots wholly unexplored in other types of manga. Toei adapted Mizuki Kyoko's melodrama Candy Candy (1975-79) into an anime that captured the life of 20th century America via a long-running serial soap opera. Aided by preselected fans of the shōjo manga, these new anime series did not have to feature magical girls in order for them to have either storylines revolving around female protagonists, or large and devoted female audiences. Toei's transforming girl anime of the 1970s added more adult elements to capitalize on the increasingly diverse audience that was expanding to watch all types of anime. Two such representative shows are Cutey Honey (1973-74), adapted from Nagai Go's manga, and Majokko Meg-chan (Little Meg the Witch Girl, 1974-75), developed in collaboration with Inoue Tomo and Narita Akira's manga. Cutey Honey features Honey Kisaragi, an android with a device within her that allows her to materialize objects out of thin air. Through the device, Honey is able to transform into any number of personae to fit various jobs. Unlike the conservative options of Akko-chan, Honey's transformations were protean, having evolved in order to match the ruthlessness of her enemies, and modish, as existing media of the time propelled women to the forefront of the fashion industry. Thus, her basic fighter persona, Cutey Honey, sported a wild pink hairdo, a bright red leotard, and a sword in place of a princess gown and wand. Little Meg the Witch Girl, on the other hand, continued with the majokko theme of a foreign being visiting earth and learning lessons from other human beings. Megu is a candidate to inherit the queen's throne of the witch world, but is deemed too ill-tempered and impulsive for leadership. She is sent to the | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
321 human world to learn better manners, and winds up staying with the Kanzakis, a family led by a former witch who married a human. Meg gradually learns the warmth and importance of family under the Kanzakis' example. While Meg grows accustomed to her new family, she must also contend with Non, her older rival to the throne. Honey and Meg improve and alter several aspects of the mahō shōjo and majokko formula that Toei had developed for several years. Both shows feature much more physically and sexually active heroines, embodied by their racy opening credit songs penned by composers who were working with popular idols at the time. Honey's transformations, for example, move away from women as homemakers or caretakers and reflect the increased aspirations of women in the labor force, with utilitarian roles ranging from biker or singer, to flight attendant and cameraman depending on the nature of the task at hand. Honey, moreover, dispatches her lecherous male foes with combat skills that would be more at home in the shōnen series its mangaka creator was well known for. Susan Napier has described Cutey Honey and such battling magical girls as a symbol of female empowerment and a counter to the domesticated female in contemporary Japan, though with the caveat that Honey, in particular, is also highly sexualized. 444 Indeed, one of the hallmarks of the 70s Toei magical girl series is that they feature heroines in more scantily clad costumes and in states of near or total undress. Cutey Honey is strongly influenced by the bawdy sense of humor of mangaka Nagai, and the opening credits of the anime show her having her breasts fondled while riding a motorcycle, and in various near nude scenes more for the titillation of young boys than the inspiration of young girls. Meg, inspired heavily by the popularity of Honey, carries this overt display of female sexuality even
444 Susan Napier, Anime from Akira to Howl's Moving Castle: Experiencing Contemporary Japanese Animation (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 73-76. | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
322 further by showing the titular heroine wearing transparent negligees or bathing. These various states of near undress, unessential to the plot but catering to an emerging male audience, can be thought of as some of the first examples of “fan service” for primarily older male viewers. 445 This additional sexual and adult content is part of a general maturation of series' content that recognizes a transformation in audiences for anime or manga series with female protagonists. Cutey Honey was conceived as a media mix from its inception between Nagai's manga studio and Toei Animation, with an anime set to begin its broadcast only a month after the manga was first serialized in girls' magazine Ribon. However, the timeslot that was originally slotted for Cutey Honey went to a different series, and the anime was instead moved to a timeslot that had previously been occupied by shōnen titles such as Nagai's Devilman. 446 As a result, the series' became a “gender cross-over” program, with a target audience changed to that of young boys. Thus, while Cutey Honey is not technically a “magical girl” anime per se, it became one of the first anime series that featured a female protagonist and aggressively sold itself to teenage boys. The series opened female protagonists in anime to not only new audiences, but a more diverse array of themes, topics, and representations. Meg, a sort of spiritual successor to Cutey Honey, is a more traditional magical girl series that nevertheless concerns itself with a number of heavy themes for a children's anime, with episodes centering around topics such as substance abuse and domestic violence. Both shows are emblematic of a general
445 See Keith Russell, “The Glimpse and Fan Service: New Media, New Aesthetics,” International Journal of the Humanities vol. 6 (5): 105-110. 446 Unknown, “Majokko anime daizenshū” (Complete Works of Little Witch Anime), in Toei Dōgahen (Toei Doga Chapter) (Tokyo: Bandai, 1993), 72. | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
323 broadening of the genre of transforming girls, reflecting and incorporating changing social and industrial trends. By the end of the 1970s, the magical girl genre had receded in popularity and declined in the number of total productions. Part of this decline was due to the popularity of realistic, increasingly complex characters and storylines of shōjo manga, such as Ikeda Riyoko's Marie-Antoinette-inspired romance Rose of Versailles and Yamamoto Sumika's tennis drama Aim for the Ace (1973-1980). Toei Animation withdrew from the genre in order to focus on adaptations of popular shōnen manga, ending a fifteen-year run of annual magical girl anime with Magical Girl Lalabel in 1981. Toei's absence opened up the field for other production companies to introduce new takes on the genre. Chief among these are Ashi Production's first television anime series, Mahō Princess Minky Momo (Magical Princess Minky Momo, 1982) and Studio Pierrot's Mahō Tenshi Creamy Mami (Magical Angel Creamy Mami, 1983) two shows that are largely responsible for a renewal of interest in the magical girl genre in the 1980s. The former is heavily credited with being a major influence on the early 1980s “lolicon” boom, or desire from fans for young female characters from manga and anime, while the latter cast its central magical girl as a music idol voiced by the new and relatively little-known real-life idol, Ota Takako. 447 Both shows were notable for their popularity with older male fans and the emerging otaku market, as well as their innovative additions to the aesthetic of magical girl transformations. Minky Momo and Creamy Mami were produced in successive years in the early 1980s, taking advantage of a number of trends that had changed and shaped anime
447 Magical Angel Creamy Mami wasn't the first instance of an anime using an idol's voice or songs, with singer Iijima Mari's voice-acting of the Chinese pop star Lynn Minmay in the television anime series Super Dimension Fortress Macross (1982-83), providing just one example of idol cross-over. But Creamy Mami was the first magical girl anime to so heavily integrate the idol into the story, effectively creating a media mix around the idol's musical performance. | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
324 production into a maturing and viable industry during the 1970s. Robot series such as Mobile Suit Gundam had for years incorporated lengthy transformation sequences for robots, what both animator and fans call the henshin bank, or “transformation bank. ” The bank system transformation sequences fragments the robot, cutting to different angles of the robot's body in order to showcase what also double as the sponsor's main product: toy models. Minky Momo is the first magical girl anime to so heavily feature the sponsor's product in the animation of the show itself in an elaborate bank system transformation sequence. Momo's transformation in each episode from a young girl to an adult professional takes a full 22 seconds and begins with a close-up of the wand that Momo uses to change herself. The camera tracks the wand as its thrown into the air, and then pans down onto Momo as she is transformed into an adult woman. This stock footage sequence is then used week in, week out to showcase the product and its transformative powers. With the introduction of the home video recorder to the domestic consumer market, fans can take in these aesthetic details and sequences again and again. This hallmark of fan-viewing is a major reason for magical girl anime's explosion in popularity during the 1980s with the emerging market of otaku. 448 Toei took these changes and incorporated them into “team” magical girl anime for a new generation of both young female fans with Bishōjo Senshi Sailor Moon (Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon, 1992-97). Toei reentered the magical girl genre with a total media mix between shōjo manga magazine Nakayoshi and toy company Bandai. Mangaka Takeuchi Naoko wrote the original manga, but also worked closely with Toei's animation department so that a television anime series would develop at nearly the same pace. The show reinvented the magical girl genre once again by drawing upon the basic concept of Toei's
448 See Okada, 8. | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
325 Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers and similar live-action sentai series, where a team of several warriors fights together to overcome an evil enemy. 449 Sailor Moon features Tsukino Usagi and several of her middle school classmates as they draw upon the powers of the planets in order to protect the galaxy from an alien force. Each magical girl possesses a different power, personality, color scheme, and role in the team and the series. In addition to their superhero duties, the series takes considerable time to show how the girls must also contend with the daily stresses of Japanese middle school life. Sailor Moon thus combines elements from various series, especially shōnen team and battle series, in order to refresh the magical girl genre. The series ran for five full seasons, spawning a media mix that included manga, books, television animated and live-action specials, video games, and stage musicals. There were several departures from previous magical girl series that related to scale and representation. The magical girl primarily uses magic to directly fight evil forces that threaten the planet, rather than improve herself or her community. The heroines' responsibilities are almost comically scattered and schizophrenic, now having to handle school romances, classroom politics, drama between friends, and responsibilities at home alongside amplified duties of defending the world from demon invaders. Most importantly, each girl's magic is used not to transform herself into a different person or age, but is instead channeled directly into herself for the purposes of physical and psychological strength. Sailor Moon and other “beautiful fighting girl” shows of the same period, such as Ai Tenshi Densetsu Wedding Peach (Love Angel Legend Wedding Peach, 1995-96) and
449 Mangaka Takeuchi said she was directly inspired by Masked Beauty Powatorin (1989-90), itself a heroine-centered spin-off of Toei's sentai series that had been spinning its wheels for several years. See the special broadcast of Fumetsu no sentai hero zenshū (Complete Works of Immortal Fighting Team Heroes), TV Asahi, (Tokyo: ANB, March 21, 1995). | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
326 Maho Tsukai Tai (Magic Users Club, 1996-97) use the figure of the shōjo to fully take on characteristics of other genres. In these new shows, the naïveté of the shōjo is no longer something to escape or graduate from, but is in itself a powerful end that can subvert social norms. This spread of cute culture-embodied in the figure of the magical girl-has been described by Sharon Kinsella as “a kind of rebellion or refusal to cooperate with established social values and realities. ”450 Importantly, unlike the utilitarian transformations of Akko-chan or Honey, the metamorphoses of Sailor Moon are more cosmetic than transformative. The Sailor Fighters transform into more powerful versions of themselves, with enhancements largely fixated on costume changes and the addition of jewelry such as tiaras and wands. Transformation becomes an excuse to take pleasure in cosmetic enhancements and accessorizing the existing youthful body, rather than drastic interior or physical change. While these transformations are displayed in long sequences, with even more emphasis placed on frilly costume changes and sexualized poses, the age and basic proportions of Sailor Moon and her friends changes little. In other words, the cuteness, youth, and positivity of the shōjo persona are now attributes to be amplified through transformation, rather than overcome or elided through emotional or physical maturation. This is what Anne Allison describes as the shōjo's antipathy towards social production and reproduction, where “the shōjo (as both subject and object) has come to stand as the counterweight to enterprise society. ”451 In Sailor Moon, cuteness, in and of itself, becomes a strength, capable of being admired and consumed by multiple fan audiences, from girls who are told to buy the toys and products of the show, to the older male otaku fans who, as the psychologist Saito Tamaki has
450 Sharon Kinsella, “Cuteys in Japan,” in Women, Media, and Consumption in Japan, eds. Lisa Skov and Brian Moeran (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1995), 243. 451 Allison, 139. | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
327 persuasively observed, develop strong emotional attachments to such cute but powerful two-dimensional characters. 452 A New Kind of Magical Girl: Pretty Cure When Sailor Moon ended in the late 1990s, Toei replaced its airtime slot with an original anime series titled Ojamajo Doremi (Bothersome Witch Doremi, 1999-2003). For the first time, the studio created a television anime series without the use of a gensaku, or pre-existing manga property. The gensaku for Doremi would be conceived by Tōdō Izumi, a pseudonym for a creative team in the planning department responsible for coming up with the series concept. 453 Because the studio was not beholden to the copyright of another author, the series' success was largely contingent on the creative abilities of the studio and toy company staff to sell episodes that focused on a primary television audience. Because of this ability to tap into an audience that was not related to a pre-existing manga base, the creators targeted the anime at a much younger audience of girls as young as pre-school, moving the broadcast slot from its evening “golden time” slot to that of Sunday morning. Both content and character designs reflected this shift. The story-about a group of elementary-school witches-was more comical and episodic in its construction, while characters were made more colorful and deformed to convey less realism than its predecessor. These creative decisions would carry over to the production and media mix of Toei's longest-running and most currently popular magical girl anime series, Pretty Cure, beginning with Futari wa Pretty Cure (We Are Pretty Cure, 2004).
452 See Saito Tamaki, Beautiful Fighting Girl, trans. Keith J. Vincent and Dawn Lawson (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011). 453 The name is a portmanteau assembled from Toei Dōga's old company name, and their animation studio located in Ōizumi, Tokyo. | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
328 Futari wa Pretty Cure was the first in a lineage of Pretty Cure titles, with the tenth and newest title being Go! Princess Pretty Cure (2015). Pretty Cure took the concept of Sailor Moon and Ojamajo Doremi and added several features, while also refining the Toei formula into a model that could be replicated in subsequent series. Futari wa Pretty Cure revolves around two middle-school-aged girls who are granted magic powers to combat the forces of the dark. The girls have two very different personalities, but find ways to communicate and work together when they transform, using special communes and bracelets, into powerful warriors called “Cures. ” This basic story formula has changed little in the years following, with new series incorporating minor changes such as the number of girls, types of items, and thematic conflicts. Smile Precure!, the ninth Pretty Cure series, is no different. Five girls from the same middle school are recruited by the magic fairies Candy and Pop to protect the magical kingdom of Marchenland from the evil lord Pierrot. He sends his subordinates to Earth to absorb the “bad energy” of humans in order to resurrect his ultimate form. The girls are granted the powers of the legendary warriors Pretty Cure in order to fight and “purify” these invaders using their powers, but they are able to harness these powers to the greatest degree when they are all together and in a positive state. If their relationships or mental states have been strained in the episode, then their physical strength will suffer until they can reconcile their conflict during the course of battle. They fight and overcome many opponents throughout the fifty episodes of the series, acquiring items and treasures that give them additional strength and abilities. Eventually, the five Pretty Cures work together to defeat Pierrot and bid a tearful farewell to Candy and Pop, who return to the magic kingdom from whence they came. | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
329 The basic premise of Pretty Cure combines elements from both Sailor Moon and Ojamajo Doremi to appeal primarily to a target audience of young female viewers and a barely acknowledged audience of older otaku male fans. The series borrows from Sailor Moon's sentai model of fighting teams, as the story features middle-school heroines who must work together to stop an evil force from conquering the world and enslaving its people. Pretty Cure's stories contain a strong fairy tale influence, with the world populated by villains such as witches, wolfmen, and Japanese yōkai demons. Unlike Sailor Moon or Doremi, each season of Pretty Cure features a different cast of main characters, meaning that no cast ever demonstrably ages. 454 Content is similarly reflected in the visual design of the series, as characters are deformed and colorful in a similar way to Doremi, though more or less so depending on the season, its staff, and its cast of characters. On the other hand, a major difference with Pretty Cure from its predecessors is the inclusion of hand-to-hand combat scenes, what is typically a hallmark of male-oriented shōnen series. From the late 1990s, more shōnen manga and anime began to introduce fighting female characters into theretofore male-dominated casts, itself a carryover from the “battling babes” of adult-oriented anime and manga of the 1980s. Pretty Cure recognizes this audience, as well as the changing preferences of a female audience that has absorbed both shonen and shōjo series from a young age. The heroines now are capable of elaborate martial arts moves and physical attacks in addition to magical spells, with the resulting show featuring frenetic and violent battles between the Pretty Cure warriors and the villains in the vein of an action-packed shonen series. This is largely by design, as the
454 The characters from Sailor Moon or Ojamajo Doremi, on the other hand, progress through four or five grade levels during the course of their series. | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
330 director for the first series, Nishio Daisuke, was the director for the long-running battle anime Dragon Ball and all of its feature-length animated films. Possibly the most significant difference is in the role the shōjo protagonists play within the story itself. Unlike the highly-sexualized heroines of Sailor Moon, the physical dimensions of the girls more closely match their middle-school background, as they are represented as smaller, less fully-proportioned, and less sexualized in their wardrobe choices than in previous magical girl series. The girls now wear spandex leggings in place of the bare long legs of Sailor Moon, and their transformations no longer strip them down to a near-nude state. Some of this deformity of character reflects changes made in Doremi to target a younger audience, but Pretty Cure has a more contemporary bent, as characters are often designed to reflect the modern wardrobe of their target audience of girls from the ages of three to fourteen. This lack of sexuality is also inscribed in the premise of the series, as the Pretty Cure girls rarely form romantic attachments to the opposite sex. Where the shōjo was defined by her sublimation to patriarchal authority or heteronormative romance, there are now very rarely any romantic plotlines in Pretty Cure, and the few that appear are resolved quickly or are unreciprocated. Men in general have very little presence in the world of Pretty Cure; fathers are often absent or deceased, and male peers are often rendered embarrassingly inadequate when put alongside the do-it-all heroines. Unlike Sailor Moon, with its recurring deus ex machina in the form of the heroic and masculine Tuxedo Mask, the shōjo protagonists of Pretty Cure are equipped with the requisite combat skills needed to dispatch foes without the help of any male authority figures. This elevation of the self-reliant shōjo reflects attitudes towards the changing social status of women in Japan in the 1990s. Miyadai Shinji has theorized that the shōjo is a | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
331 passive form of resistance to the “endless everyday,” the loss of hope in a bright future that characterizes the outlook of many young men and women beginning in the late 1980s. 455 Miyadai observed that in an deep economic recession and spiritual desolation, shōjo were best equipped to not only survive, but thrive. In the liminality of the shōjo, one could escape not only responsibility, but also the march of history and the stress of reality. As Michael Marra observes, “These girls had no illusions (and, thus, no delusions)-only the knowledge of how things actually are. They had learned from girl comics (shōjo manga) that no boy was ever there to save them in some romantic fashion, and that sex free of love was pleasant. ”456 Miyadai's resistance was more passive than active-revolving around the term mattari, or “taking it easy”-and thus are not totally appropriate to analyzing the Toei magical girl and its narratives that hedge on responsibility to community, friends, or family, but the Pretty Cure heroines' conflicts are now entirely resolved through female self-reflection and action. In a world without reliable men, the female protagonists of Pretty Cure retain their feminine appearance, but are stripped of their sexuality and endowed with masculine attributes to cope with problems both quotidian and apocalyptic. Similar to the various magical girl anime of past decades, much of this transformation is a response to industrial innovations and audience tastes. Kumiko Saito argues that magical girl anime are no longer a genre at all, but rather, “a code that binds certain ideological values and advantages attributed to the shōjo identity in contemporary Japan. ”457 Some scholars, such as Akiko Sugawa, argue that this collapse of gender distinctions has resulted in a new form of female superhero very different from
455 Miyadai Shinji, Owarinaki nichijō wo ikiro: Ōmu kanzen kokufuku manyuaru (Live the Endless Everyday: A Manual to Completely Overcome Aum) (Tokyo: Chikuma Shōbo, 1995), 18-21. 456 Michael Marra, Essays on Japan: Between Aesthetics and Literature (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 213. 457 Saito, 157. | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
332 superwomen in Western cartoons in pop culture, that of a “powerful but cute and nurturing superheroine. ”458 Saito, on the other hand, suggests that men embracing these new superheroines signify male resistance to conservative “gendered responsibilities,” such as having a career and creating/supporting a family. 459 The flexibility and evolution of the magical girl code/genre is a good example of Rick Altman's “semantic/syntactic/pragmatic” approach to constructing film genres. Semantic conventions-such as witches, demons, wands, furry assistants, and magic kingdoms-are shaped by a syntax that arranges these conventions into coherent narratives. Altman argues that this semantic/syntactic relationship can be shaped by a pragmatic approach including institutions and audiences. Genre in this formulation is organized to “serve diverse audiences diversely,” recognizing that not all participants in the construction and consumption of a film or anime share or are served equally in their interests. The magical girl's adaptation to the demands of various creators, studios, networks, as well as the desires of diverse audiences, signals the ways in which multiple age and gender demographics have shaped and continue to shape the genre's construction. As Altman notes, when “the diverse groups using the genre are considered together, genres appear as regulatory schemes facilitating the integration of diverse factions into a single social fabric. ”460 Thus, many forms of long-running anime today reflect and organize audience desires and ideological values according to the various genre tropes that are shaped according to both production and reception. The magical girl genre, particularly through the change of the role and reception of the shōjo, is a way to see how the domestic audience
458 Akiko Sugawa, “Children of Sailor Moon: The Evolution of Magical Girls in Japanese Anime,” Nippon. com, 26 Feburary 2015 < http://www. nippon. com/en/in-depth/a03904/> (26 February 2015). 459 Saito, 161. 460 Rick Altman, Film/Genre (London: British Film Institute, 1999), 208. | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
333 reacts and is bound by contemporary social structures. This last point is crucial, for Smile Precure! embodies many of the ways in which anime today, and always generally has been, made with a Japanese audience in mind. The building of Smile Precure! is designed to target the domestic audience in methods that previous fantasy shows only alluded towards. Building Character As explained in the chapter four, the planning committee at Toei establishes most of the characters, settings, and premises nine months to a year before a show is set to air, well before the writers, producers, and directors get together to construct even a single episode. The direction of a new Pretty Cure series is often determined based on what did and didn't work in the previous year's series. The success of a series is always dependent on the type of show being produced, but with Pretty Cure, the priority is the briskness of merchandise sales. Sales and ratings for the previous year's show, Suite Precure! (2011-12), had dropped a bit compared to series past, so producers were determined to go back to a narrative recipe that had worked in the past: more characters. As Umezawa Atsutoshi, the producer of both Suite Precure! and Smile Precure!, explained to me: “[The idol group] AKB48 is popular now with young girls, so we wanted to include as many heroines as possible so that fans can choose which girl they like or identify with most. ”461 Regardless of the faithfulness of this claim, what is important to note is that producers attempt to frame Smile Precure! in terms of an idol group that has achieved popularity primarily with both grade-school girls and a subset of middle-aged men and women. If it could not be all things
461 The claim that Smile Precure is emulating AKB48 is slightly dubious, since the story has a brigade of five Pretty Cure warriors, whereas the ubiquitous idol group has forty-eight singing girls representing the city of Tokyo, flanked by several hundred more girls scattered around major cities across the country. Smile Precure!, moreover, uses the same cast of characters, and is designed by the same character designer, as a Pretty Cure series that had aired to great critical and commercial acclaim five years prior, suggesting that producers were merely putting a new spin on an old idea. | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
334 for all people, the new series was determined to be an important thing for a few key groups, particularly the young girls and older men who comprise the fans of AKB48. Once the concept of the series was established, Smile Precure! was simultaneously pitched to the potential sponsors and co-creators of the show: the Osaka-based broadcasting network Asahi Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) and the ad agency Asatsu DK (ADK). This triangle of media companies is the seisaku iinkai of Smile Precure! The companies share the costs in their own ways for agreements that benefit them all. Such partnerships have become particularly necessary for anime production following the collapse of the bubble economy and video rental market, as private investors are much less willing to finance low-rated anime shows and direct-to-video productions. In the case of Pretty Cure, ABC paid for a broadcast slot at a lucrative time and day, while ADK represented the interests of Bandai Namco, a company which specializes in games and toys for children, and which produced toys based on the characters and world of Smile Precure! The toys that appear in the show are largely decided, designed, and distributed by Bandai Namco, though Toei does provide their own suggestions based on the series concept. When I first sit in on a script meeting for Smile Precure! in February at a small office located just outside of Toei Animation's Oizumi studios, they are already over three months into writing scripts for the series. Meetings take place in the evenings and always near the studio, since the series directors must be on site at nearly all hours to supervise production and inspect the work of the staff. They also need to be close in order to relay changes or immediate requests from producers after meetings. The full seisaku iinkai is represented by Toei producers Umezawa Atsutoshi and Hasegawa Masaya, as well as a producer each from ABC and ADK. All four, save for the newly employed Hasegawa, had | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
335 worked on Suite Precure, and all were determined to deliver a redeeming hit based on their experience the year before. Series director Otsuka Takashi sits in the center of the room to corral the various interests. Otsuka had worked at Toei for several years as an episode director and key animator for previous Pretty Cure episodes, as well as serving as the director for several Pretty Cure feature-length animated films. This would be his first project as a series director. To Otsuka's left is Yonemura Shoji, the lead writer for the show and a veteran of various anime series and male-oriented tokusatsu team action series. With the advice and suggestions of the production committee, he would be responsible for writing many of the penultimate episodes and organizing the various episodes into a coherent narrative. Scattered around the room are four other writers who take on the duties of writing various episodes throughout the year, one of whom, Narita Yoshimi, has been on every Pretty Cure writing staff since the series began. At the beginning of each week's meeting, the series' business numbers are delivered. The producer for ABC, Matsushita Hiroyuki, shares the week's television Video Research ratings, similar to the United States' Nielsen ratings. He explains the performance of the series in comparison to previous weeks, as well as previous series during the same week in different years. Smile Precure! has started off with high ratings, though the producer warns that vacation weeks are looming and to expect lower ratings. He warmly cautions everyone to not read too much into them, since children will likely be missing episodes to vacation with family. The producer for ADK, Sasaki Reiko, reports the week's merchandise sales figures as a representative of Bandai Namco. Though Candy (the toy mascot and fairy guardian of the show) is not selling as well as expected, hopes are high for the Smile Pact, the featured transformation device for the Pretty Cure heroines of the series | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
336 in the shape of a makeup compact, which will be released later that week. The show's characters will be showcasing these various items in question through appearances in the coming week's episode. Once these announcements are out of the way, a schedule is passed out which breaks down all forty-nine of Smile Precure's episodes. While Smile Precure! has a running storyline, most of the episodes begin and conclude without the audience needing any information of a previous episode. This is largely done through organizing the episodes according to characters and their development. Each episode has a character assigned to it, and that character becomes the focal point of the episode's narrative arc. The theme and description of the episode are then tailored to each character and their personality. For instance, an episode revolving around a device that shrinks people into the size of an ant was chosen to feature the lead heroine. The creators shrunk both the lead heroine and Candy, in order for their relationship to grow stronger during a time of crisis and panic. Another episode set to air during the national exam week features the scholastically gifted Pretty Cure, who has a personal crisis where she questions the meaning of study. The episode is organized around her growth, and how she comes to appreciate school for helping her to learn about herself and her friends. Characters inhabit the story arc of single episodes without affecting the integrity of the larger storyline. Fans can follow the anime even if they miss an episode or two, but fans who faithfully watch each episode can see subtle changes in how characters behave and interact with one another. Premises, holidays, special guests, and other events are thus tailored to the specific personalities, backgrounds, and characteristics of each of the show's five main characters. | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
337 Character designer Kawamoto Toshie designed the five Pretty Cures-Miyuki (Cure Happy), Akane (Cure Sunny), Yayoi (Cure Peace), Nao (Cure March), and Reika (Cure Beauty)-as well as the villains and minor characters of the series. Throughout the process, the producers and series director provided suggestions well before anything else in the series was decided. As series director Otsuka put it, “Kawamura's designs aren't satisfying my wishes; she's satisfying the wishes of everyone involved. Or rather, the characters are molded based on what we agree is the best direction for them. If someone has a good idea, we say, 'Ah, that's better, let's go with that. ' Character designs are not about pleasing everyone, but using everyone's ideas to get the best possible result. ”462 Kawamoto had worked on Yes! Pretty Cure 5 (2007-08), designing a similar cast of five main girls, and said she was drawn back to Pretty Cure for “the desire to create something original, since much of the industry is derivative of other existing properties. ”463 With Smile Precure!, she made the colors for each character brighter and emphasized their hair and wardrobe. Based on their personalities, she also created settei for their poses, expressions, and gestures. As the characters backstories were written, she had to go back and change some aspects of her original designs. For instance, she changed the expression of the lead heroine Miyuki once she found out that the character's premise was that she had transferred to the school and had yet to make any friends. Upon hearing Miyuki's voice actress at the first voice recording session, however, she went back to the proverbial drawing board. “She spoke so quickly,” said Kawamura. “Through that first observation, I was able to get a good sense of Otsuka-san's tempo for the character. ”464 Kawamura's statements and her process of creating the Pretty Cures show how the creation and design
462 Otsuka Takashi, interview by the author, February 2014. 463 Kawamura Toshie, Kawamura Toshie: Toei Animation Works (Tokyo: Ichijinsha, 2012), 152. 464 Yoshioka Yu, “Character Designer: Kawamura Toshie (Tokyo: Gakken Mook, 2013), 90-91. | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
338 of original characters is dynamic, changing repeatedly from the conceptual design through the continuous addition of details and ideas. Based on the small suggestions and contributions of a variety of parties, the design of the character will shift to reflect these ideas. The character design, then, is the product of a number of voices and visions, contingent on Kawamura's ability to catalogue, deconstruct, and synthesize them into a unique reflection of the whole. Product-Portal Integration During the script meeting, a second schedule is distributed which has different columns and categories for the featured “Cure Decor” and other goods of the week. Instructions are written for how to use the toys in the episodes, based on what Otsuka, Yonemura, and the various producers decide would best work without appearing unnatural. Cure Decors, for example, can be shaped like animals, food, fruit, cosmetics, dress, and other everyday objects, and all have a small ribbon with a heart-shaped jewel attached. There are sixty-four in total, and all are stored in divots inside a pink storage trunk called a Decor Décor, or placed inside the Smile Pact, a pink and white compact-like device with a pink ribbon on top. The Pact opens up to reveal a recess to place the Cure Décor pieces to activate different powers, as well as seven round lights in the colors of the rainbow. Inside the top of the lid is a small, circular mirror. Staff must be familiar with these toys and how they will be dispersed in the anime series. An understanding of characters and their creation can only partly explain how anime creation is collaborative, and how anime within the media mix corrals the resources of its participants. While characters guide how each episode is structured, toys and items organize the structure of the entire series' narrative arc, | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
339 functioning like connective tools in the importance attached to them, their designs, and their roles in the series' progression. Product placement in film and television can be obtrusive or well-integrated, though the product itself often has little bearing on the characters or story. It is always done in order to satisfy a sponsor, whether it is thrown in innocuously like a fast food beverage, or highlighted for its performance like a Bond luxury car. Ellen Seiter has documented how toys function within the programs for boys' and girls' cartoons in the United States, with complex episodes structured around toy figurines from My Little Pony and Ghostbusters. 465 With anime, such products appear every week and rely on consistent exposure in order to generate sales, so the anime creators and advertising representative work together to best integrate these products into the show in ways that are similarly central to the narrative. In Smile Precure!, Cure Decors are special magic pieces that can be used to revive the queen of Marchenland. They were stolen by Pierrot and placed in the noses of clown-like monsters called Akanbe. The Decors are used to power the Smile Pact, the Pretty Cures' main transformation device which changes them from middle-school classmates to a team of fighting magical girls. In order to transform, the girls open their Pact and place the ribbon-shaped elemental Cure Decor inside the recess. The Pact also grants powers to the Pretty Cures, gathering their fighting spirit and channeling it into energy in which the Pretty Cures perform their finishing moves. As the central transformation device, it is featured in every episode in loving detail, as well as during commercial breaks, retailing for 3,980 yen.
465 See Ellen Seiter, Sold Separately: Parents and Children in Consumer Culture (New Jersey: Rutgers, 1995). | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
340 Other Cure Decors grant the girls items, accessories, and abilities when set into the Smile Pact. A list of Cure Decors is passed out, displaying the first sixteen Cure Decors to appear in the series; their look and name are supplied, but their incorporation is left up to the writers. A specific Cure Decor is assigned to each episode for the Pretty Cures to collect, and more elaborate and expensive new products are introduced as pivotal plot points where the Cures gain a significant new ability or access to a once restricted area. The products to the series are thus essential to organizing the trajectory of the series narrative. Many of these toys, such as Cure Decors, are collectible, while others, like the cute mascot Candy, are endlessly customizable. This is a hallmark of girls' toys that Seiter claims distinguishes them from boys' toys, where “color and design features (style) are the realm of diversification among objects that are essentially similar. ”466 With the Cure Decors, each writer is told to integrate a Cure Decor into the week's episode. Sometimes, this results in an object or ability that is crucial to defeating the villain of the week, while in other cases, the Decor is simply a token reward for victory. What's required from staff is that Decors be integrated into the plot and visually displayed within the anime. To take a more concrete example, the show's cute fairy mascot, Candy, is literally shaped for narrative integration. Candy is the Pretty Cures' guardian and support, but she is also a stuffed animal commodity and is thus featured alongside the Pretty Cures in nearly every episode. A set of diagrams is passed out during a meeting, detailing a dozen different hairstyles for Candy. Her stuffed animal has a pair of ears which can be shaped and molded like a hairstyle according to the tastes or whims of the child who owns it. Various hairstyles are displayed in the diagram where Candy's ears are up, down, off to one side, in ponytails, pigtails, bobs, or weaves. These concepts will appear on
466 Seiter, 155. | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
341 Candy at various points in the first several episodes, not simply to encourage children to beg their parents for Candy, but to continually provide them with ideas on how to play with her or design her (see figure 23). Candy is, in fact, a Trojan horse designed to get children to constantly upgrade her with the latest fashions and accessories from the television show. Another diagram is passed out which shows a special hairdryer and brush that helps with styling her hair in all of the cumbersome designs featured in the show; Miyuki shows how to use the hairdryer to mold her friend's fuzzy ears. Concept art for necklaces, dresses, and mini-tiaras are also passed out, all of which will be incorporated at some point into the design of the characters. As the show progresses, Candy's role in it becomes deeper, tied to the characters through various goods that are utilized in the anime episodes. Eventually, Candy becomes integral to the plot as a sort of sixth Pretty Cure and princess of the magical Marchenland. 467 Figure 23: Candy, shaped to play While the team of writers might use some of these objects in the story, their visual incorporation is up to series director Otsuka to make all of these products fit seamlessly into the anime's world and alongside its characters. When I first meet Otsuka, he appears
467 In a possible attempt to enable success by association, she is even voiced by the same actress as Pikachu, the star critter for the global smash hit anime and video game franchise, Pokémon. | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
342 too young to be in charge of such an important series for Toei. But Otsuka had already been at Toei Animation for nine years before finally getting his series directorial debut, working continuously on nearly every previous Pretty Cure series. He also directed three Pretty Cure feature-length animated films, and knew the previous characters and premises of Pretty Cure better than just about any director who had previously helmed the show. His experience would be helpful in knowing what had and hadn't worked in the past both creatively and commercially. He has a restless and humorous personality that stemmed, he claims, from his upbringing in Osaka, a city where brashness and comedy among people are more commonplace than in Tokyo. His energy was fitting for a position that involved such a countless number of tasks. When I ask him about how he handles the various interests in the show's production, he says that remaining objective is what keeps him leveled: It's not really about what I want, to be honest, it's about what I feel is right for the anime. When I draw animation for One Piece, I might put in some drawings that reflect my style, but for the most part, I'm keeping to the source material. It's not my job to alter the manga to what I think is better. It's the same for Pretty Cure. Pretty Cure is an anime for children as young as kindergarten, and it has its own traditions. It would be selfish of me to impose something from anime that only I like. I love horror, and if I put in horror stories all the time, I might love it and think, 'Wow, this is so great!' But the anime's fans won't like it, and the show won't sell any toys. Individuality has its place, but that doesn't mean that it's a virtue in and of itself in every anime. 468
468 Otsuka Takashi, interview by the author, February 2014. | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
343 Otsuka hits on the commercial aspect of “successful” anime: total individuality is not necessarily a good thing. His early exposure to Pretty Cure in many ways conditioned him to see the anime as a combined advertisement from an early age. Sasaki Reiko, the representative for ad agency ADK and one of the producers of the series, tells me Otsuka is rare in this respect. “Many directors become obsessed with telling their own story for the show and forget about their responsibility to the sponsor. Otsuka's talent lies in his ability to express himself while also incorporating the sponsor in interesting ways. He's very mature for a young director. ”469 During a break in the meeting, Otsuka and Sasaki get together to look at the early concept art for a toy clock that is still in development. The clock will be released around the middle of September, but the details of its design need to be ironed out months in advance. It will be an expensive toy, equipped with an LED display that shows the time, and playable mini-games when a particular Cure Decor is placed in a recess. How the clock will be incorporated into the show is still undecided, though it will likely be an item that provides the Pretty Cures with a new ability or enhanced transformation. Its design will be important going forward, particularly in order to find a balance between how the clock's aesthetic design will satisfy the goals of both the toy company and the animation department. Otsuka and the producer look over the clock's blueprint. It has wings on the side, but Otsuka says these should be trimmed. “These will be difficult to show when the clock is sideways,” he says. He sketches onto the design to show how he best thinks the clock can be changed, though this is just a suggestion; ultimately, the decision lies with toy company Bandai, but the designers understand that in order for their product to be best displayed, the animators' opinions are important. Otsuka turns to Yonemura, the head
469 Sasaki Reiko, interview by the author, March 2012. | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
344 writer for the show. “How are we going to use this again?” Yonemura looks intently at the concept art. “It could be a way to attack the opponents. Maybe once they put a special Cure Decor in there, the clock creates a massive energy wave. ” Otsuka, Yonemura, and the producer from ADK brainstorm different ideas for the clock's use. Ultimately, it is decided that the clock will channel the spiritual energy of the Pretty Cure warriors into creating a more powerful attack, where the LED display becomes a sort of control panel for the clock's power. After the meeting is over, Otsuka will go back to the studio to relay these decisions to the directors, animators, and artists who will work on putting these products into future episodes of the show. Despite the care put into placing the toys and mascots tastefully within the arc of the story, the same subtlety does not apply to the visual style of the products within the anime itself. The products are displayed in ostentatious detail using special digital effects, high frame counts, and sweeping camerawork. They are most prominently showcased in transformation sequences for the Pretty Cures, lengthy scenes that are repeated in virtually every episode and comprise what is traditionally called the anime's “bank system,” where entire sequences of animation are reused from episode to episode in order to trim costs and reduce the material and human resources needed to make new animation. By using the bank system every episode for the scenes of metamorphosis, the same product can also be featured week in and week out. The space of the metamorphoses are abstracted, focusing attention on the transforming body as it is fragmented in ways similar to transformation scenes in robot anime such as Mobile Suit Gundam, where man-powered robots shifted shapes into various military vehicles and aircraft. | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
345 The first shot in Pretty Cure's transformation sequences are not of the girls, but of the transformation device itself, the Smile Pact. The girls open the Pact and place a Cure Decor into the Pact's recess, transforming it into a magic device which the girls use to transform each segment of their body. The subsequent shots in the sequence all revolve around the Pact and its transforming powers, as each shot showcases a limb being transformed through the Pact's powers. The visual treatment of the Pact differs from the rest of the episode's animation in its use of computer-generated animation to render the contours and movement of the Pact as close to the real toy Pact as possible. The Pact's sound effects in the transformation sequence, such as the clicking sound when the Pact opens or the fairy voice that projects from the Pact when a Cure Decor is placed in the recess, are also identical to the sounds that the toy Pact makes in real life. This fidelity to the original product goes beyond product placement and into the realm of product glorification, making the gadget-toys stand out in appearance, as well as shot number and length, from the rest of the episode. For these sequences, the products manage to eclipse the characters and are yet framed by their reaction to them. The toys become product-portals on two levels: they transport characters into the space of transformation, and they transport the anime's world into viewer's social environment by incorporating the toy's visual and aural design. The transformation sequence's “bank” featuring these product-portal transformations has steadily increased its duration throughout the years, but also its quality and detail, to the point that the transformation sequences for the complete team of Pretty Cures in Smile Precure! lasts just over two minutes. This increased detail evinces the idea that the transformation sequences-and by extension, the products-are the most important | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
346 segments in the Pretty Cure series, given their visual and technical prominence in every single episode. The bank itself has become something of a point of obsession for fans, and a point of pride for creators. 470 Ever since Minky Momo, scenes of character metamorphosis in magical girl anime have grown longer and longer, featuring the product and its transformative effects in exquisite detail. The sequences are given to veteran animators, who typically draw the layouts and key frames entirely on their own, and the scenes are opportunities for such animators to display their skills and create vivid animation unfettered from the rest of the episode's narrative. Where a typical anime episode is between 2500 and 3500 drawings, the complete bank for the collective members of Smile Precure! uses over ten thousand drawings. Narratively, the transformation bank also comes at a pivotal moment in each episode. Anime typically divides its episodes into two segments-A parts, which comes before the commercial break, and B parts, which come after it. With Smile Precure!, the A part is devoted to drama and relationships between characters, while the B part revolves action-oriented climaxes that resolves these dramatic incidents. Thus, the transformation bank comes at the narrative moment in the episode that signifies action and resolution. Its repetition is designed to condition viewers to appreciate and associate these products with instant pleasure that signal the beginning of relief and release. As numerous historians have documented, the business model of anime changed during the 1980s to account for sales of personal videos and, eventually, digital video discs that were sold to fans of particular anime. Okada Toshio has posited that the obsessive attraction to specific characters
470 The construction of an attractive transformation bank can be framed in the form of Bourdieu's concept of “cultural capital,” where animators gain industrial value through their authorship of such sequences. Though the sponsor does not require the bank to be a certain length, animators have viewed this segment as an area to display their technical skills. The amount of drawings becomes an area of bragging rights, with some bank animators tweeting their final drawing count to their followers. | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
347 emerged during this period, when fans could watch their favorite series repeatedly and, most importantly, pause the image to linger over details that had theretofore been ignored through television consumption. 471 Thus, in economic, narrative, and emotionally satisfying terms, the bank transformation sequence is the “money shot” of the entire episode. The product-portals in Pretty Cure-the Smile Pacts, Decors, and Candy mascots-are used to connect characters to audiences on multiple registers. While the series is marketed and targeted to pre-pubescent girls, the incorporation of genre tropes from robot and battle anime allowed magical girl series to appeal to a greater degree to older male audiences. These lengthy sequences are dreamlike, allowing young girls to envision the potential of fantasy and identity transformation, but are also repeatedly watched and consumed by older male fans who labor over the animated details of the fragmented female body. Many of the animators are aware of this older audience, and some of the animators themselves likely comprise this audience to a certain degree. However, every animator I spoke to claimed that they were animating the show for young female viewers. While male fans might incidentally find themselves attracted to the various pleasures of Pretty Cure, the anime is marketed towards and is extraordinarily popular with young girls who purchase the products that finance its production. In their portrayal and employment in the text of the anime episode, product-portals and their transformation sequences in Pretty Cure are a reminder of this dual fandom, where pleasure is gained in multiple forms beyond the consumption of the product itself. Uchiawase: Anime's Writer's Room When the schedules are put away and the toy details ironed out, the staff begin going over scripts for episodes. Using the raw materials provided by the characters and
471 Okada, 8. | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
348 licensed merchandise, the writers find ways to combine these two important elements in order to create stories that have value and meaning for their audiences. While the lead writer pens the first two or three episodes of a given series, the rest of the episodes are distributed to a team of writers on standby. Typically, each writer will take turns writing an episode over a period of about three to four weeks. The meetings are set up to determine the direction of the episode, check on the writer's progress, make revisions and edits to scripts, and approve a final script for storyboarding by the episode's director. Otsuka, Yonemura, and the producers all weigh in on the script and suggest or demand changes when each version has been completed. Among the meetings I observed, there was never a perfect script upon the first submission. While some scripts need fewer revisions than others, scripts normally go through three to five versions before being finally approved by the director, lead writer, and producers, all of whom have contributed in some way to the shape of the final draft. The crafting of a script is thus a laborious undertaking, created in isolation but perfected in collaborative discussion. These meetings are called uchiawase, which literally translates to “knock around and exchange. ” In these spaces, episodes are constructed from ideas that are kicked around and swapped between all participants. Writers for original anime meet in uchiawase to create stories together every week for upwards of a year or more. Such a long production schedule means that while animation production processes might be standardized, the creativity of idea generation can come from the diversity of the participants involved. These teams work through problems that might arise, while also placing limits on each other's creative work through the demands of their respective audiences. Script meetings can show us that the creation of anime is an ongoing collaborative project, wherein the value of ideas is more important | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
349 than the particular status or authority any participant might possess. There are certainly differences in hierarchical power or status uchiawase. For example, while the creative decisions were mostly left to Otsuka, this does not necessarily mean that he has final say with any particular decision. This is usually left to the two producers of sponsors ABC and ADK, whose concerns regarding ratings or products are less suggestions than instructions. Gender, also, does not matter as much as experience; while the lead writer, Yonemura Shoji, has the most authority on the scripts, Narita Yoshimi commands the most respect in the room for her experience working on every single Pretty Cure series since its inception. The drafts for her scripts rarely go through extensive revision. Before every meeting begins, scripts are circulated to the other staff members so that everyone is on the same page when the meeting begins. Because of this team-centered approach, all writers are encouraged to come every week, even if they don't have a script that they will be presenting or revising. Not everyone can stay on top of the reading assignments every week, but the expectation is that anyone should be able to contribute to help improve the script. When the meetings begin, each writer waits his or her turn until the director pulls up the writer's script and begins a dialogue. For Smile Precure!, Otsuka and Yonemura first give their impressions and concerns with the episode's premises, and then the individual writer gives their own impressions. Most of the time, the writers will just agree any suggestions, but if a suggestion is not clear, then the writers will follow up with questions of their own. Where products and items guide the series' larger structure, individual episodes nearly always revolves around characters. A key question that is always asked is if the story is consistent with how the particular character behaves. When the characters interact, | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
350 their actions must present their personalities as efficiently as possible. One script, for example, revolves around a summer festival and the characters Nao (Cure March) and Yayoi (Cure Peace). Otsuka takes issue with a point in the script, emphasizing how the tomboyish Nao is someone who helps out in physical ways, as opposed to the more fragile Cure Peace. “Let's come up with some more natural scenes, some fun scenes, to convey their personalities here,” he says. The writer suggests that Nao could bang a taiko drum, a role traditionally given to men at Japanese summer festivals, to convey her physical strength. Yayoi, on the other hand, has been established as a sort of otaku-type character who loves manga and drawing cartoons. The writer suggests Yayoi could draw up posters and flyers promoting the summer event. Otsuka, Yonemura, and the producers are satisfied with the ideas, though Otsuka also prods the writer to come up with something more original. “We need to figure out interesting ways of showing how they participate,” Otsuka reminds her. While Otsuka and Yonemura generally have the most control over creative decisions involving characters, what makes uchiawase significant is the relative democracy of how ideas are generated within its space. Unlike the American television model of creative brainstorming called the “writer's room”-which is a highly private space for the writing team of a television series-directors, producers, and occasionally animators are present in the uchiawase, and they all can participate in the process of generating ideas for any given episode (see figure 25). The lead director or writer might best understand the characters personalities, behaviors, and relationships, but they are still interpreted in different ways by the particular creators involved. Debates occasionally break out over a specific line a character uttered, and some writers spend a full hour asking questions about | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
351 the character's background in order to write the resolution to an episode. Otsuka generally catches vague or unclear script narration or descriptions, but if the episode directors feel something is ambiguous or vague in the script-such as a character's emotions at a particular moment, the design of a new enemy, or a new location in the show's world-then they will attend the beginning of the meeting to hash out any creative ambiguities with the scriptwriter. Often, the directors bring their unfinished storyboards and ask for additional details from the writer of the script until they feel satisfied enough to continue with the rest of the episode's storyboards. Figure 24: Creators examine the episode's settei in the uchiawase In practice, there is a negotiation process that happens in the uchiawase, as ideas come from different places and for different priorities. Koichi Iwabuchi has diagrammed how Japanese producers seek to make their works “culturally odorless” for global export, referring to how Japanese media circulates transnationally through the elision of cultural signs. 472 Surprisingly, most ideas in the meeting come with the Japanese audience particularly in mind. The series' uchiawase functions as a calculating machine, endlessly replicating with each episode offering variations on cultural themes and domestic tie-ins.
472 Iwabuchi, 27. | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
352 One way in which Smile Precure! is constantly tied to Japan is through a near-obsessive linkage of episodes to holidays and events celebrated in Japan. Themes for episodes are frequently made out of traditional Japanese holidays such as seijin no hi, or “coming of age day,” the school festival period, and even Western holidays popular in Japan such as Father's Day and Christmas. Once a particular holiday is decided upon for an episode, a character is matched who is most appropriate to parse its meaning. For example, Yayoi, who has been raised by a single mother, is paired with the “Father's Day episode” to bring out the backstory of her deceased father. Similarly, products would appear in episodes and release in stores during high shopping periods such as the spring and summer back-to-school seasons, as well as the fall season before Christmas and New Year's Day. The aforementioned magic clock, for example, is timed to release for the Christmas shopping season as the most expensive toy in the series to date. Smile Precure!, set in a world that is strikingly similar to contemporary Japan, is adept at attaching itself to both the product and seasonal calendars of the year in order to best direct audience flows and interest, though this simultaneously limits the series' exposure and effectiveness to a strict Japanese broadcast schedule. Another way in which Smile Precure! negotiates its various corporate interests is through the incorporation of media or celebrity tie-ins. Producers from ADK are consistently concerned with the appearance and integration of merchandise, but other producers attempt to contribute to stories through personal or business connections. In one situation, ABC producer Matsushita has a personal relationship with many famous comedians due to the corporation's Osaka-based operations and affiliations with comedy talent agencies, so he offers to have two well-known comedians guest appear in an episode | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
353 and even voice act their own characters. The comedians are popular with children, especially in the Osaka area where ratings for Pretty Cure are at an all-time high. The decision is enthusiastically welcomed since the celebrities can organically be incorporated into an episode about the school festival, where Japanese comedians frequently make surprise appearances. In another situation, one of the Toei producers proposes a plug for the Kyoto Uzumasa Eiga Mura, a theme park produced and operated by Toei based on the mythology and architecture of its films of feudal era Japan. If an episode mentions the Eiga Mura by name and even includes backgrounds of the park itself, then the Eiga Mura can promote the show in its parks as well. Obviously, the benefit here lies with Toei's cross-promotional strategies, so the other producers must sign off on the agreement. The writers, however, view it as a creative opportunity to set an episode entirely in the confines of the Eiga Mura and feature an episode about filmmaking and within a historical period setting. Episodes are always written with an imaginary audience of diverse parents and their children in mind. Writers must be incredibly open-minded about taking suggestions, as pleasing the requests of corporate superiors does not necessarily translate to creating interesting stories (one might think they are mutually exclusive!). Most suggestions by producers and directors are met with little resistance by staff, and writers with “stubborn” reputations are less likely to be invited back on future series. Any moments of creative tension are typically related to issues of self-censorship. Since Smile Precure! is a show targeted at children and broadcast on Sunday mornings, content that could potentially lead to claims from angry parents is heavily regulated. In one script, ADK producer Sasaki takes exception to an episode built around ghosts, arguing the show's story is too scary for children. Yonemura, the episode's writer, disagrees, and the two have a lengthy debate | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
354 about what is not only appropriate, but healthy for children to watch. In the end, the producer's requests are heeded and Yonemura must change his story. Content is frequently parsed for its psychologically damaging effects on children. In another instance, ABC producer Matsushita objects to an episode that revolves around the game of suica wari, a popular summer activity where children wear blindfolds and take turns attempting to smash a watermelon with a bat. The producer says that parents of blind children will call in to complain that the show is being insensitive to their families. Otsuka strongly objects to this idea, saying, “We can't do anything if we're always worried about complaints from angry parents. ” In the end, however, suica wari is written out of the plot and the writers must come up with another game for the characters to play. The same type of control applied to dialogue as well, with producers on all sides wary of any lines that suggest negativity, such as death or bullying. In both instances, producers viewed themselves as gatekeepers of sensitive content for children with physical or mental handicaps. Such self-censorship is ultimately not conducive to producing series that realistically portray a range of themes and issues, but the producers argue that such regulation is necessary so that the shows do not attract negative media attention. “We have a responsibility to the art,” Hasegawa tells me, “but also a responsibility to the company and the employees who work on the show. If our show is cancelled because of some perceived offense, then that's a lot of people out of a job because we were too stubborn or insensitive. ”473 Producers can act as content watchdogs, ensuring that the series is clean and accessible to the biggest potential audience, while offending as few as possible. If the staff is firmly behind the decision and a claim arises regardless, then it is up to the producer to fight for the integrity of the series on the staff's behalf. When something is too crucial to
473 Hasegawa Masaya, interview by the author, July 2012. | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
355 the plot and can't be written out? Sometimes, a subtitle will scroll across the screen telling children not to mimic these actions at home. More often, the moral lessons will be written into the scripts, with the wholesome characters themselves turning towards the camera or each other, expressing the wrongness of the action, and condemning the person doing it. Such deference varies according to the episode, and who is deemed to have the requisite experience to possess authority in the room. When the writer or director doesn't know how to proceed with a story development, everyone in the room gets a shot at attempting to solve the problem so that the writer can go home and develop the script. Such deliberations show the collaborative nature of the brainstorming process, where anyone “stuck” or suffering from writer's block can be provided with ideas from a bevy of sources. Some of these deliberations go on for well over an hour, where finding the right plot twist or resolution can take considerable time and thought from everyone in the room. The show's creators, while ostensibly protecting their assets from claims and lawsuits, attempt to show sensitivity towards diversity within the Japanese audience, eschewing content that might hurt children with physical or social disabilities, and even children from different regions of Japan. There are two examples where Smile Precure! breaks from the Pretty Cure lineage to show domestic and foreign difference within the series' world. While Pretty Cure typically sets its world in a facsimile of a typical Japanese suburb of Tokyo, Smile Precure! is the first Pretty Cure series to set its story in a version of contemporary Japan that incorporates different regions. The series takes an active interest in more local Japanese cultures, and attempts to display difference at the local and global levels through episodes themed around exploring and learning from different cultures. The crafting of such episodes reveals a different process of negotiation in the staff hierarchy, | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
356 where everyone in the room can be tapped for new ideas based on different backgrounds and experiences. In the first example, Smile Precure! makes the culture of the western Kansai region visible in the world of the anime. There are two episodes set in Osaka prefecture, largely due to sponsor ABC's roots in the area and its heavy promotion of Smile Precure! on regional network programming. 474 The setting extends to the representation of characters as well; one of the five Pretty Cures is Hino Akane, aka Cure Sunny, the first Pretty Cure from the Osaka region whose parents run an okonomiyaki (Japanese pancake) shop, a regional specialty. A model and voice actress from the Kansai prefecture plays Cure Sunny for added authenticity, frequently ad-libbing or altering lines when she feels them appropriate to her character's personality. Series director Otsuka is also from Osaka, and staff members frequently point to his restless personality and offhand jokes as being characteristic of Osakans. Smile Precure! makes many concessions to the Osaka audience, and Otsuka ensured that the Osaka dialect, vocabulary, and culinary habits were represented through the characters in the seminal episodes set the region. Having such a heavy Osakan presence in the staff is beneficial for the show and its approach to incorporating and representing different cultures within Japan, though its incorporation into the show simultaneously highlights the idea of a homogenous Japanese national body. The inclusion of Osakans in the show stands in contrast to forms of cultural “erasure” in media, what Chiara Ferrari has described as “domestication” through, for example, Italian dubbings of The Simpsons or The Sopranos that seek to erase multicultural
474 The largest Pretty Cure store in the country happens to be in Osaka, where the series has been hugely popular for years. | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
357 identities or ethnic markings when such foreignness becomes problematic. 475 Issues with portraying stereotypes, however, do arise. Osakans in the series are typically portrayed as comedians, as happy-go-lucky figures, and as straight shooters who are more blunt and direct with their speech than their more refined Tokyo rivals. To limit such stereotypes, staff members defer to the Osaka-born authorities who can deliver what they believe to be the most accurate portrayal of their lives. This can result in more sensitive depictions of Osakans, and the stereotypes described are considered positive, but regional stereotypes are nonetheless written in to mark such characters as “others” in comparison to the rest of the Pretty Cures, who are not ascribed any particular birthplace or voiced with any recognizable dialect. Thus, while the inclusion of an Osakan in the cast and trips to Osaka and Kyoto serve to portray Japan's regional and cultural variation, the other episodes reemphasize a Japanese center that smooths over such differences. In the second example, my own involvement in the construction of such an episode on “foreigners” reveals how ideas about difference are indeed drawn from sources with experience, but also how they are then managed, nurtured, and contained. The uchiawase is at a standstill; nearly an hour has passed, and no one can come up with an idea for the central conflict for the script. The premise for the episode in question is for a “summer romance,” a rarity in the world of the asexual Pretty Cure. Akane, aka the Osakan Cure Sunny, must develop a crush on a boy at her school, but her affections will go unrequited. Through her experience, however, she learns (and teach young children) the lasting value of falling in love and experiencing the pangs of separation. The staff, though, has considerable difficulty coming up with a love interest for Akane, as the character must be
475 See Chiara Ferrari, Since When is Fran Drescher Jewish? Dubbing Stereotypes in The Nanny, The Simpsons, and The Sopranos (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2011). | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
358 Akane's age and a good match for her somewhat headstrong personality. Eventually, director Otsuka asks me for my opinion. I say the character should be someone from outside the school and a little different from the other students, particularly since Akane herself is from Osaka. As soon as I finish my thought, ABC producer Matsushita yells out, “A foreigner!” (Gaijin da!). The room exclaims and then laughs, realizing they had found a perfect solution to their dilemma: Akane would fall in love with a foreign exchange student. The completed story, written by Narita Yoshimi, is about the relationship that develops between Akane and Brian Taylor, a smiley foreign exchange student from England who is obsessed with Japanese culture. Brian visits the school of the Pretty Cure students and Akane becomes responsible for showing him around the campus. She takes him to various campus clubs, and later, her family's restaurant, where she feeds him her family's homemade okonomiyaki. She teaches him words in the Osakan dialect, and he also shares words with her in English. Brian and Akane become closer as they share more experiences, but she becomes dismayed when he says he'll need to return to his country the next day. Feeling betrayed, she avoids him until Pierrot's henchman attacks her in an attempt to absorb the energy of lovestruck humans. She defeats the henchman and realizes that her time with Brian was memorable and valuable, even if their budding relationship ended prematurely. With the assistance of her friends, she rushes to the airport to see him off. The episode ends in the airport terminal, with Brian and Akane sharing a teary farewell. The script goes through few revisions, but I am repeatedly asked for my input on the accuracy of Brian's dialogue. I proofread the script and hand back my corrections for any phrases or words that are grammatically incorrect or sound awkward. The writer feels that England would be a better native country for the gentlemanly Brian, so my | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
359 nationalistic insistence that he be American is refused. Otsuka has me pose for several pictures for the design of Brian, as the character designer models the character based on my basic features. In the end, Brian retains my glasses and tousled hair, but is given freckles, blue eyes, and blondeness to make him look more “foreign” than my less exotic countenance (see figure 25). To show his enthusiasm for Japan, moreover, he is given a t-shirt that had the words “no problem” (daijoubu) scribbled in large-type font on the front, a shirt that I neither own nor would wear in public. Figure 25: Bryan Hartzheim vs. Smile Precure's Brian Taylor My assistance in creating Brian also extended to the voice acting sessions, where I work with Brian's voice actor to get the timing and delivery of his dialogue correct, both in English and in Japanese. The voice actor for Brian, Kakihara Tetsuya, grew up in Germany and spoke some English, so he possesses some knowledge about different English accents. While we fail miserably to give Brian a proper English accent, we do find a good balance in the delivery of his imperfect level of Japanese so that it does not sound like a total mockery of foreigners speaking non-native Japanese, a problem common to other anime | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
360 productions. We also change some of his dialogue to include more English colloquialisms and phrases when the situation is appropriate. 476 As Ian Condry has documented in his own brief participation as a voice actor in an anime-recording session, the process of creation provides a mysterious energy that fuels people to work for reasons beyond monetary gain. 477 This energy is what fuels the collaboration of anime, where ideas can take preference over roles in the production hierarchy. The assembled construction of Brian shows the dynamism behind the creation of characters in anime, where a story about a student love-interest can change into a lesson in international relations. At the same time, the construction of Brian also provides an example of how global communication can be both embraced and managed in a Japanese production environment. Brian is created through a collaborative environment of foreigners and Japanese. His introduction into the series fosters cultural exchange and encourages communication with non-Japanese. On the other hand, his foreign features are manufactured and exaggerated, and his status as a romantic partner (and a permanent citizen) is subdued and ultimately disqualified. This transnational production at the local level would suggest that the episode is neither for Japan or the West, but something in between, as what Koichi Iwabuchi describes as “a symptom of the shifting nature of transnational cultural power in a context in which intensified global cultural flows have decentered the power structure and vitalized local practices of appropriation and consumption of foreign cultural products and meanings. ”478 In the end, difference is made more manageable and consistent within the nation's population. The simultaneous
476 There are several examples I noted when I went over the script with the voice actors and directors. The frequent use of the word “delicious,” for example, was changed to “brilliant. ” 477 See Condry, 161-184. 478 Iwabuchi, 35. | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
361 representation and containment of Brian displays the production team's desire to have it both ways, with cultural contradictions emerging as a result. One of the ironies behind the creation of Brian is that, as a half-Japanese American, I am hardly an example of the typical foreign-born exchange student. But because of this position of having consumed Japanese media in the United States while growing up, I can speak with some experience on the notion of a bi-cultural spectatorship. My assistance and suggestions are enlisted at several stages of the creation process, from approving the English dialogue of the script to helping voice actors with their English-language lines. Part of this motivation might be economically motivated, as I am asked for my opinions at various points during my observation about English-language titles for new special abilities for the Pretty Cure fighters, the attractiveness of new products introduced in the fall, and subtitles for the Smile Precure! feature-length animated film's international release. Another part of this, however, is an attempt to manufacture foreignness in as accurate a way as the animation is drawn or the backgrounds are rendered. A cynical view might take this construction as simply another way to avoid claims from foreign parents, and the episode at times ends up reinforcing the cultural expectations and stereotypes of the Japanese audience, such as the supposed chivalry of Western men. But such fissures are at least opened from collaborative work and the exposure to alternative viewpoints, cultural differences, and the possibilities of their portrayal. Experiencing Pretty Cure How does this collaboration-between animators, writers, producers, sponsors, and even participant-observers-affect the construction of the episode itself? What does the viewer ultimately experience when watching an episode of Pretty Cure? On its surface, | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
362 each episode of Smile Precure! tells the story of the Pretty Cures as they bond, grow, and realize their full potential in order to defeat the evil lord Pierrot. However, visually and thematically this is only part of the presentation. Every episode of Smile Precure! ties into an extensive branch of media that is designed to extend the experience of Pretty Cure past its broadcast slot, and to incorporate itself into the organization of its audience's lives. This is, in essence, how the media mix works with an anime that has at its base a corporate sponsor with a product every bit as important as the animated show itself. Smile Precure! creates several alternate venues that invite active participation of the young girls who comprise its audience. These facets are incorporated into each Smile Precure! television episode, subtly and nefariously encouraging children and their parents to continue the Pretty Cure experience when the episode's broadcast has finished. This program-commodity connection is designed to fit into an all-day, everyday Pretty Cure loop of constant programming and alternative texts that pick up and supply its audience with details of its world. Producers at Toei constantly asked me why Pretty Cure has failed to catch on with an American audience in the way that Dragon Ball or Pokemon have. One large reason is that the creators of the show underestimate the success they have had designing an anime so well for a particular local market. As previous sections on Pretty Cure product integration and script construction display, the franchise's transmedia is constructed to maximize its effectiveness for a domestic, tuned-in audience. Watching a Pretty Cure episode will only partly make sense to a viewer who is not familiar with or exposed to these alternative texts and how they work in tandem with the anime episode and its interruptions to create a more active Pretty Cure experience for the typical fan. | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
363 First, products tie fans to the world of the show through their placement inside the television episode and are reinforced through advertisments that screen during the episode. Viewing the television program as both unified in its text and paratexts relates to what Nick Browne has called studying the “supertext” of television. Browne argues that each television program is a segment that includes the program and its introductory and interstitial material, chiefly announcements and advertisements. In Browne's view, these segments are then organized into a schedule of “day parts” that form the programming schedule. This programming schedule, in its entirety, is what forms the supertext of television and “determines the form of a particular television program and conditions its relations to the audience. ”479 The supertext, in the most pessimistic estimations, can organize itself around its viewers' daily schedule, attack them with ads, and drain them of will or resistance to consumerism. Japanese programming similarly organizes itself according to broadcast content, and segments geared towards children such as Pretty Cure air on weekend mornings or early on weekday evenings. However, looking at anime via its television supertext misses the organized, meticulous, and targeted collective work that is going on within the television anime segment. The individual segments of a typical Japanese television program can achieve a particular unity since, unlike countries with strict regulation regarding advertising towards children, such as Europe's EU Audiovisual Media Services Directive, Japan has very little restriction when it comes to advertising products to children. 480 One reason for the lack of government regulation on advertising to children is
479 Browne, 588. 480 Carol Gaumer and Amit Shah, “Television Advertising and Child Consumer: Different Strategies for U. S. and Japanese Marketers,” The Coastal Business Journal 3:1 (Spring 2004): 30-31. Also see John | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
364 that parents in Japan more often watch shows together with their children. Hence, the commercials in general are less pushy and have lower degrees of “pester” power. Commercials, then, are able to tie in to the program in more integrated ways that are less overt than the “hard sell. ” The close relationship between program and advertisements results in a less disrupted experience of the program, coming closer to what Ross Melnick, in the context of theatrical film exhibition in the silent era, has termed the “unitary text” to describe how various ancillary media experiences were integrated into the viewing of films at theatrical venues. According to Melnick, the unitary text is “programmed by an exhibitor, not an advertising sales department, and was routinely but not always narratively or aesthetically linked. ”481 However, even the idea of a “unitary text” is imprecise when describing how the anime broadcast segment works through its collective integration of media text, paratexts, and product portals. The anime broadcast aims for an even more integrated or unified experience based on merchandise that connect the text and its interruptions, coming closer to a definition of a text that subsumes all media into its thirty-minute broadcast. One might call this type of program a “convergence text,” as such programs typically subsume the text and its interruptions under the same aesthetic designs, as a part of the same narrative thread, and in service of ancillary media that is designed to extend the experience of the program into alternative social spaces beyond a single theatrical venue. All media-toys, films, events, and the anime episode itself-converge in the text of the broadcast itself, singularly designed to display the fruits of its various sponsors and creators.
Sherry, Bradley Greenberg, and Hiroshi Tokinoya, “Orientations to TV Advertising Among Adolescents and Children in the US and Japan,” International Journal of Advertising 18 (1999): 233-250. 481 Ross Melnick, American Showman: Samuel “Roxy” Rothafel and the Birth of the Entertainment Industry (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), 15. | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
365 Unlike the unitary text, the anime's convergence text incorporates the advertisement into the text itself through products. As if integrating products into the show wasn't advertisement for the product enough, anime programs flood the commercial breaks with products that feature the characters of their own series. For series with a heavy sponsor footprint such as Pretty Cure, this usually means that the commercial breaks at the beginning, middle, and end of the episode features various merchandise associated with Bandai Namco and other smaller sponsors. When and where these commercials air during the series broadcast is usually left up to the sponsor, but since the sponsor is so heavily incorporated into the planning and production of Smile Precure!, the broadcast of commercials are specifically timed to air during product release periods. The experience of watching the convergence text, then, is largely one that masks interruptions, smoothing over breaks in the program through aesthetic designs that incorporate the particular style, themes, and motifs of the program, its characters, and the matching product-portals. One way that commercials mask interruptions during Smile Precure! is by filling in narrative and visual gaps in order to smoothly guide fans to the toys once an episode is complete. A good example of this is the thirtieth episode of the television series. 482 This episode aired during the middle of the series third cour, which makes it just over halfway through the series entire run. In this episode, the Pretty Cure girls take a trip around the world through a mysterious library that is able to transport them anywhere they like. During their travels, they collect the final Cure Décor. Upon completing the Decor Décor collection, a magical clock materializes. The girls look at the clock in puzzlement before the episode concludes, the answer to the clock's riddle to continue in the story the
482 “A Voyage Around the World Through the Door of Books! (Honno tobira de sekai isshuudairyokou), Smile Precure!, TV Asahi (Tokyo: ANB, September 9, 2012). | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
366 following week. Little do the girls know, the timepiece is the Royal Rainbow Clock, a device that will revive the Royale Queen of Marchenland. It is also the most expensive product that has been created for Smile Precure! and an electronic toy that will integrate the Cure Decors that fans have been collecting in their own Decor Décors. The episode concludes without any sense of narrative closure, leaving viewers without an answer to the mystery of the clock, but the narrative resolves itself in the advertisements for the program. When the episode ends on a medium shot of the clock, the scene is immediately followed by a close-up shot of the toy version of the Royal Rainbow Clock. The camera pans out, revealing a near-identical clock that was featured at the end of the anime episode. The commercial essentially picks up where the episode leaves off, with the unexplained function of the Rainbow Clock becoming the topic of the advertisement. Child actors, dressed in the garb of the Pretty Cures, show how to use the Royal Clock by embedding a special Cure Decor in its receptacle. Once the clock is “activated,” the Pretty Cures appear with new costumes and wands, indicating the clock has given them powered-up special abilities. The commercial concludes by telling children that the clock can be used to transmit signals to the Smile Pact of their friends, effectively connecting it to other product-portals that have appeared in similar advertisements, and which continue to be employed within the anime's narrative (see figure 26). | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
367 Figure 26: Transport/transform-from anime to ad to reality Commercials for Smile Precure! reference back to the series while simultaneously incorporating the viewer into the space of the text. If the anime uses near identical rotoscoped models of toys in order to better reference the products, then the commercials use the same audiovisual language of the television anime in order to more closely tie the products to the characters. The activation of the clock, for example, recalls the transformation sequences of the Pretty Cures, where the clock is suspended in a rainbow-colored space in order to better emphasize the product's features. The digital effects that surround the clock-sparkles once the Cure Decor is placed, trails of light that follow the child's movements-also call back to the anime's enhanced digital effects processing and compositing that makes up the transformation bank. Once activated, the clock emits a recording of the Pretty Cure warriors incanting a magical enchantment, though the spell has yet to appear in the show since the clock itself is yet to be activated. The use of child actors, | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
368 rather than animation here, is notable. The commercial spurs fans to purchase the toy for themselves in order to take over for the retired “first shift” of the program, actively extending the characters' lives through the product-portal's bridging of the program and the living rooms of child viewers. The act of play becomes deeper as a result; through plugging in their own Decors, the commercials suggest children take an active role in figuring out the mystery of the Royal Clock and enacting the Pretty Cures' adventure when the broadcast has concluded. The interruptions of Smile Precure!'s convergence text are not limited to commercials. In order to prod children into continuing the experience of the television broadcast, announcements provide notice to children for various events external to the anime. For most television anime broadcasts with product-portals, these announcements come at the beginning and end of the program in the form of opening and ending credits. These title sequences are usually places that provide animators with some breathing room, trimming three to four minutes off an episode's running time with elaborate musical intro and ending montages. Such intros and ending themes are typically used to introduce the characters of the anime, while also showing who worked on the show in the staff credits. While these could be considered the flashy equivalent of a book's dust jacket and bibliography, with Smile Precure!, opening and ending themes become areas that provide entry points into alternative texts such as movies and shows. The Pretty Cure franchise has two animated feature films a year, one featuring the characters from the new series, and another featuring assorted characters from all the previous Pretty Cure series. The opening of Smile Precure! cuts in scenes from these films when their release date approaches in | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
369 order to encourage children to see the films, all without having to purchase advertising space during the commercial breaks. 483 The films themselves tell stories about the characters set in alternate universes, and while they share the same producer, head writer, and voice actors, they otherwise have separate casts of directors and animators. What the films have become famous for is using the Pretty Cure characters to create event-based theatre, where fans attend to watch the film, but also to receive a gift called a Miracle Light that will figuratively shine help on the characters in the film. Theater staff pass out Miracle Lights-colorful, handheld plastic flashlights-to the audience when they enter the theater. At the beginning of the film, a clip of Candy screens before the film begins, breaking the fourth wall and cautioning the audience to turn on their lights when the Pretty Cures “need the audience's strength. ” When the pivotal moment in the film arrives, the Pretty Cures call out to their “friends” to turn on their lights and lend the girls their strength (see figure 27). This invitation to help the girls is reinforced within the film's mise en scene, as countless people and creatures around the world are suddenly empowered with identical lights that transfer their energy to the heroine of the film, Miyuki. When all the energy from the lights of the audience and characters is “collected,” Miyuki transforms into her ultimate powerful form-an enlightened figure whose energy eradicates the villain instantly and restores life to the desiccated earth around her. Using the lights in this way helps child fans believe they are part of the Pretty Cure universe, imagining their powers are contributing to the outcome of the story and the fates of their favorite characters. It also has the added benefit of helping parents keep unruly kids attentive and quiet while they wait for their opportunity to use the gadget.
483 This is important for Toei, since the films don't push products and involve the sponsors far less than the television series. The revenues for the films are important to Toei's bottom line. | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
370 Figure 27: Miracle light movie bonuses-incorporating/incentiving play While the opening theme to the series plugs the movies, the ending theme is tied closely into live shows that feature actors who perform in the costumes of the Pretty Cures. The ending to all Pretty Cure television anime episodes features a two-minute song and dance sequence performed by the Pretty Cures. The sequence is fully rotoscoped, meaning that animators trace and color over the recorded movements of motion-captured actresses. The result is a mimetic realism similar to the computer-generated detail in the ornate transformation bank sequences, only in this case applied to the movements of the characters rather than product-portals. Though the decision leads to an uncanny element where the characters large animated heads eerily protrude from the more realistic proportions of their bodies, the rotoscoping is intentionally employed in order to let actors and children perform the dance themselves in preparation for the Pretty Cure live shows that tour the country. In these shows, the costumed characters perform a thirty-minute skit that is akin to a live version of an anime episode. Their voices for the characters are supplied by the voice actors and actresses of the actual anime, so that the show can be performed anywhere in the country. At the beginning of the show, the performers teach the audience members a special chant that will help the Pretty Cure performers when they need “energy” from the audience. At periodic moments, the performers call out to the audience | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
371 to cheer them on in order to defeat the villains in the show. At the end of the show, the performers dance the anime's ending theme alongside the audience members. Through the shows, the characters undergo their final transformation: that of idols who not only sing and dance, but leave the screen to enter the physical reality of the viewers. The shows highlight the ability of the characters to go beyond the confines of the anime through their designs and voices, transporting them around the country through scripted routines, manufactured costumes, pre-recorded performances, and any available open stage convenient for parents, typically in and around department stores. Within the text's announcements, the shows (and movies) acknowledge the spectator, referencing the audience at the beginning of the event and asking for their direct participation at specific cues. By inserting themselves obliquely into the anime itself through its ending theme, moreover, they cycle back into the world of the anime, reinforcing their indexical relationship to the world of the Pretty Cures and the Japanese social environment. The convergence text of the anime plays this pivotal role of referencing the anime's various ancillary textual appendages to the everyday environment of its viewers, conditioning them for potential future media and product consumption. Conclusion As the Pretty Cure franchise has continued and the world of the anime has expanded upon its original series, the films now display dozens of Pretty Cures who seemingly co-exist within the same world. These “All Star” movies feature the newest cast of Pretty Cures, but all come together to lend their powers to battle against the forces of evil. Viewers are constantly reminded of the previous troupes of magical girls, who might fade from the spotlight of a national broadcast but nevertheless find an annual venue to | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
372 perform as a background dancer. For young viewers, the Pretty Cures are ostensibly all around us, taking pictures, shaking hands, striking poses, and communicating directly with fans in scheduled meet and greets. Like mascots at Disneyland, they serve to bridge the gap between the show and reality for the young audience in a way that literally holds their hands, but one does not need a ticket to enter a fantasyland to greet them. They are part of a transmedia environment that puts them into quotidian spaces such as parks, zoos, culture centers, department stores, malls, town halls, and hotels. Such is the ordinary, everyday quality of the media mix in Japan, where characters are conceived in boardrooms, expanded in production meetings, screened in broadcasts, and finally move into the spaces of our social environment. The multiple ways in which Smile Precure! is able to tap into these various spaces not simply to communicate, but to guide fans towards participation is unique to the medium of anime, with its broad cross-media flows, heavily integrated sponsorship, and, most importantly, its malleable and migrating characters. The presence of such televisual participation applies to television broadcasting in Japan more generally, as television shows have various ways of directly acknowledging the spectator through textual “help. ” For example, Japanese television overflows with telop, or titles onscreen that headline or summarize topics under discussion. Their use in Japanese variety shows can be a clarifying device, making clear any speech that is difficult to decipher for older or foreign viewers, but also as an interpreting or commentating dialogue, emphasizing certain parts of speech or quotes through different sizes, colors, and animations of fonts. As Aaron Gerow points out, rather than aiming for criticality, telop are there mostly to make sense of material for | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
373 the audience in order to draw and keep viewer attention for the sake of advertisers. 484 Telop are one ubiquitous way that television acknowledges viewer participation, only to corral it and organize it for the sake of focusing eyeballs. The anime's media mix is, similarly, a commodifying strategy that demands participation not just for the sake of continued ratings, but for purchasing and participating in any of the ancillary media of its manga and anime. In the case of Smile Precure!, since this commodification is built directly into the text and branches out into alternate media forms, sustained attention can result in more than just high ratings. 485 Unlike the transmedia of Toriko, which spreads as a media form linearly from the manga into the hands of anime creators and dojinshi fan artists, the media mix of Pretty Cure is centered in the hands of the anime studio and its sponsors. 486 The process of Pretty Cure's creation is heavily planned and worked through by teams of creators so that its eventual centrifugal explosion will spawn various appendages. But in contrast to Henry Jenkins' conception of “transmedia storytelling,” where the alternative media texts reference a main story and creative an additive experience, or “spreadable media,” where a text gains its audience through networks (whether they are professional or fan networks), the media mix of Pretty Cure and similar product-portal anime series references all other media from the seisaku iinkai within its central text. This text harkens back to everything in the settei: the characters, premises, and products.
484 See Aaron Gerow, “Kind Participation: Postmodern Consumption and Capital with Japan's Telop TV,” in Television, Japan, and Globalization, eds. Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto, et al. (Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan Press, 2010), 117-150. 485 Toei, for example, has increased its revenues from licensed merchandise, live events, and films in the past several years despite falling birthrates in Japan since the early 2000s. In 2010, for example, live events accounted for nearly three percent of all revenues. See Masuda, Motto wakara anime business (Understand the Anime Business More) (Tokyo: NTT Shuppan, 2011): 213-215. 486 There are indeed dojinshi of Pretty Cure written by fan artists, though their presence is marginal and their works and ideas rarely get incorporated back into the anime in any form. | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
374 As Will Brooker states, it is “worth asking whether these narratives of digital mastery are, at their most obvious, little more than advertising; and, at their most insidious, a training for the contemporary subject's role within 21st-century capitalism. ”487 But beyond commoficiation, the elements of the media mix can branch out of the narrative and create entirely new experiences through the force of the characters and the originality of the products. The media mix-through the organization of elements by a collaborative group of creators-is able to commodify this viewer involvement within the experience of the text, but its ancillary media is playful and participatory in the form of toys and events. This creates a different relationship to the commodity, where characters are ever-present and existing in the background of daily life.
487 Will Brooker, “Now You're Thinking With Portals: Media Training for a Digital World,” International Journal of Cultural Studies 13:6 (2010): 571. | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
375 Chapter 6: Conclusion-Anime/Manga Transmedia Futures What are the processes that undergird creative media production in Japan? This dissertation has attempted to provide an answer to this question through ethnographic fieldwork into Japan's manga and anime industries and close analyses of concomitant transmedia texts. Together, this analysis maps the collective authorship that surrounds the production of contemporary media in these industries today. By focusing on the production of shōnen and shōjo texts in commercial outlets such as Shueisha's Weekly Shōnen Jump and Toei Animation Studies, this study shows how two different media franchises in Japanese production can be organized, managed, and distributed through social networks of mangaka, assistants, editors, and readers, as well as institutional networks of professionals including animators, directors, scriptwriters, voice actors, and producers. These networks produce texts that are then open to “multiple use,” dispersed into the hands of other producers through databases of elements, or converge in a “media mix,” centralized through production committees and spun through product-portals. The resulting transmedia reflects the similar creative preoccupations within manga and anime: an ability to construct media worlds through the production and management of compelling characters. This concept of character-based multiplatform media stands in contrast to Hollywood conceptions of transmedia, which tend to emphasize the additive nature of multiple media to the overall narrative of the original property, be it a movie, video game, or comic book. This emphasis on narrative and “storytelling” tends to reflect a preoccupation with film production in America, where individuals and their texts are valued for the stories they are able to tell, whether they be part of a festival Q&A or a closed pitch session. The value of storytelling has become part of industry lore, where | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
376 workers both above and below the line tell stories and assess storytelling ability in order to evaluate the abilities of peers. This point was driven home during my first quarter at UCLA as a graduate student, when I took a class with superproducer Peter Guber titled, “Studios vs. Independents. ” Expecting to hear explainations for production distinctions between studio-based film production and independently-financed filmmaking, classes instead consisted of Guber inviting respected professionals from a variety of fields to tell industry war stories. The various guests talked about how their ability to charismatically regale their subjects got deals, signed stars, and influenced audiences. The class was eventually retitled to “Navigating a Narrative World,” more closely aligned with what Guber believed and reiterated to be the key component for success in the media world from which he drew his considerable experience. But such was rarely the case in Japanese media, based on my observations and discussions with various media professionals. While mangaka were and continue to be praised for their clever story construction, and scriptwriters from especially popular series are in demand for the next hit script, stories were merely one important element within a larger organziation of media based on characters. Virtually every aspect of the animation process revolved around how characters would affect or be affected by the rest of the series. Even manga, which is raided by media producers for its masterful stories and not necessarily for its art or direction, had compellingly designed or emotionally unique characters at the center of their narratives and worlds. Characters became the platform that tied transmedia artifacts together, and the close, individual contact with a stream of talented authors is what gave them their particular drives and personalities when those same authors were interested in the project. | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
377 Of course, not all manga or anime has characters that are compelling, just like not all films have well-told stories. The mechanics of mass industrial production-as well as the plain fact that talent and time is not equitably distributed in any industry-means there is more bad than good, and a project that gets everyone interested or involved to the same degree is as rare in anime or manga as it is in Hollywood. This was a large reason for my focusing so intently on two established, successful industrial examples in Weekly Shōnen Jump and Toei Animation, which have decades of experience honing specific models of transmedia creation and strong reputations for good working environments. This was especially the case with regards to the latter, where a number of workers told me that the studio, for all of its frustrating budgetary and and sponsorship issues, went to considerable lengths to provide workers with a living wage both in Japan and in the Philippines. This cannot be said for the rest of the manga industry, and especially for the anime industry. Japan's print industries for years resisted the incursion of digital reading formats for traditional print media such as newspapers and magazines. But with increasing adoption of digital consumption practices in Japan, this has rapidly reversed, with the publishing industry and most manga magazines, aside from Weekly Shōnen Jump, losing readership from dwindling circulations. 488 On the other side, with improvements in digital animation technology has come increased expectations for animation quality. While the barriers to making animation are lower than ever, the expectations placed on workers' skills and schedules has become higher and higher. It is not a rare occurrence for animators and project coordinators to collapse or suffer health problems from consecutive weeks of
488 According to the Research Institute for Publications, All Japan Magazine, Book Publisher's, and Editor's Association, this decline has been gradual, though the drop accelerated in 2008, when total annual sales dropped below 2 trillion yen in comparison to a peak of 2. 65 trillion in 1996. See Japan Foundation, Practical Guide to Publishing in Japan (Tokyo: Japan Foundation, 2014), 8-9. | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
378 overwork. 489 Job security is also no less stable, with virtually the entire production staff is employed through long or short-term contracts, managed by a group of slightly more stable, but similarly underpaid salaried producers and project coordinators. As workers who are continually employed on contracts, but also seeking to climb the ranks professionally, both young mangaka and animation workers are part of both a precariat and aspirational culture. Thus, while the conditions at Toei suggest an working environment at its potentially must constructive, other studios in more perilous shape have workers who cannot afford such luxuries, and working environments that remind them of this very fact. With the industry reeling from the collapse of the home video market in 2007, studios are scrambling to find new models of commodification that can sustain a workforce for future generations. This pressure to keep with the times has unsurprisingly affected the production of Weekly Shōnen Jump and Toei Animation's staff and content. Shōnen Jump has responded by gradually incorporating more digital social media into the fabric of the social network of its magazine and increasing the pace of available content. While the ankēto system remains, works are accepted through digital submission and published in digital-only formats, such as the Young Jump Web Comics. Submissions to the regular manga magazine that do not go on to collect prizes in the magazine's contests are published online, where they can at least be displayed. Other formats, such as Jump+, choose notable chapters from classic or popular manga every week and allow readers to access them online for free. The entire Weekly Shōnen Jump magazine, moreover, is now simultaneously published in North American in an English-translated digital format, the first weekly manga magazine of its
489 In fairness to the anime industry, work-life balance is aproblem in society in general, to the point that there is a Japanese word, karōshi, which translates to “death from overwork. ” This seems to affect the creative arts more severely. In one mobile games company, I personally witnessed people collapse out of their chairs from exhaustion. | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
379 kind in the English language. Editors are now slowing taking into account the verdicts of both Japanese and English language audience reception when deciding whether to continue with the serialization of a given manga. Editors also now conceive of ways to more directly and frequently connect readers to creators. Oda Eiichiro's One Piece features the Shitsumon wo boshu suru (Taking Questions Now), or SBS Corner. The SBS Corner is a question solicitation forum where readers send in questions through mail or online, to which Oda answers by revealing various facts about the story that are not apparent through the manga chapters. Readers are even invited to contribute with facts about the world of their own; for example, fans were able to determine the birthdays of certain characters in the manga, with Oda's blessing. One Piece also now has a Twitter handle operated by the editing or publicity department, occasionally engaging with fans as representatives of Oda and placing the SBS function in a more interactive forum. Toei Animation, ever the innovators, have responded to changing digital viewing platforms by increasing their exposure to different markets through various partnerships. They have contracted with the anime cable broadcast station Animax to showcase their classic series on the network. This exposes new viewers to their massive library of television anime, which is continously being remastered and re-released in expensive, collectable Blu-Ray boxsets. They have also begun broadcasting new anime on the web-streaming platform Nico Nico Dōga, choosing to air the 20th anniversary edition of Sailor Moon online every other week, rather than the typical magical girl's morning slot reserved for Pretty Cure. Other partnerships include one with Marvel Studios and the Japanese anime version of The Avengers. The co-production is equally beneficial for the American | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
380 comics studio, since it increases its exposure in the Japanese market through a production that appeals more to Japanese children conditioned on anime designs and narratives. Producers have continued to try and find innovate media mix models for anime and commodity tie-ins. Majin Bone (2014-15), a media mix created with Bandai Namco and Shueisha, refashions the card-battling system of Digimon for gaming arcades. Toei produces the television anime, while a manga based off of the series runs in Shueisha's brother publication, Saikyo Jump. Murata Yusuke, who has serialized several series in both Shōnen Jump and Young Jump Web Comics, provides the character designs for the anime, while Bandai Namco designs the card game that is played out in both arcades and the series itself. Meanwhile, many of the staff members from the series are taken straight from the production of Toriko, which ended its broadcast in April of 2014. While the network of Toei is not as stable as the sort of family environment crafted by Studio Ghibli and its permanent staff of animators, many of Toei's directors, writers, and animators who finish on one production at the studio frequently find themselves on the next one. Conditions for such contracted animation workers are expected to significantly improve in the next several years at Toei, as the studio (and its wonderful animation gallery) where decades of animators trained their workers and honed their craft, and the site where I conducted much of my observation, is being torn down for the construction of a brand new, state-of-the-art facility to be opened by 2017. The new studio will likely be the largest and most technologically advanced animation studio in East Asia. Both Shueisha and Toei have responded to not only changes in digital technology, but also changing strategies and trends within Japanese KF transmedia that are even more democratic and participant-based. Idol-based media mix, such as that of IDOLMASTER | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
381 (2005-ongoing) and Love Live (2012-ongoing), are one form of media mix where the initial creative decisions are placed in users' hands. Fans vote for the characteristics that they want in animated idols, who then go on to star in television anime series and live-concert performances featuring either the voice actresses for the characters, or a massive stage with a hologram performer mimicking the movements of a dancer backstage. This sort of live, event-based theatre is something that both manga and anime production companies have strived for in their transmedia, though now find themselves having to play catch up due to rapidly evolving audience tastes and production models. Nevertheless, the older models remain, updated to take advantage of recycled content. Yokai Watch (2013-ongoing), for example, is a new media mix created by the manga publisher Shogakukan (Doraémon), the animation studio OLM (Pokémon), and game producer and publisher Level-5. While the manga and video game for the series was released in 2013, it was not until the following year, where the television anime began its broadcast, when sales for the series' other media spiked. The series used the triangle of media to ultimately help the entire franchise float. The games have sold over four million copies now in Japan alone, marking the franchise as the biggest game-related media mix since Pokémon, with the potential for Western saturation if all media are exported and localized simultaneously. Yokai Watch combined the strategies of multi-use manga transmedia, using the anime to drive the manga and games' sales, and anime's media mix, using the anime broadcast for product portals that showcase the game's qualities. And it did all this with the content of yokai, traditional Japanese monsters that have not warranted popular media attention since Mizuki Shigeru's 1960s manga and anime, Gegege no Kitaro. | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
382 As producers scramble to find or recycle ideas, even the industry itself has begun to provide fodder for manga and anime narratives. Readers have increasingly wanted to know not only the daily lives of mangaka, but also the entire chain of production, and this has created a demand for insider knowledge that has often been supplied by mangaka themselves. Fujio F. Fujiko's autobiographical Manga Michi (1970) was the first such manga to chronicle the manga duo's careers to adulthood, but new manga go into painstaking detail with regards to these production environments. Ohba Tsugumi and Obata Takeshi's Bakuman (2008-12), about two high school students who decide to become mangaka together, diagrams the inner workings of Shueisha, using the real names, job statuses, and even likenesses of the Weekly Shōnen Jump editorial board as characters in the manga. The series was adapted by J. C. Staff and broadcast on NHK as a sort of educational series about working life in the manga industry. Anime production has also gone under the microscope with Shirobako (2014-15), an anime that chronicles a fictional anime production company in Mushashino City, an area known for its cluster of animation companies. The series lampoons and pays homage to several well-known figures in the industry. The show exaggerates the chaos of anime production for dramatic effect, but also takes time to detail the processes of anime production as the characters embark on their careers in the anime industry. Animators also followed each episode closely, frequently commenting on Twitter on the reality or fantasy of the series, and starting several debates about the salaries and conditions of anime workers. The series initial DVD and Blu-Ray sales set records for the year, indicating that there is a market for the media mix to not only commodify its audiences, but also its creators. | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
383 Despite this salient fact that the media mix exists to commodify its audience, these same audiences undoubtedly derive benefits from engaging and identifying with characters. Creators make characters who continue to resonate with the lives and reflect the experiences of a domestic audience. Characters, even divorced from the anime, can provide guidance to children in times of confusion, or comfort to children who have experienced trauma. In the final episode of the Smile Precure!, the Pretty Cures have been emotionally and physically exhausted by the strength of Pierrot. Their homes have been devastated and the landscape is dry and barren, devoid of the life that once populated it. Refusing to accept that their friends and family are gone, the girls begin to weep uncontrollably. Within their tears, they find an additional reservoir of strength, banding together to defeat Pierrot with a final, powerful attack. Upon victory, the landscape is restored to its fertile state and their homes and families are revived. However, the Pretty Cures must part with Candy, who will return to her fairy kingdom of Marchenland. Waving farewell to Candy, the girls let forth with another torrent of tears, revealing that whatever they have regained cannot replace what they have lost. The episode subtly evokes the tragedy of the March 11 earthquake, where countless families lost their loved ones in an event that, to the survivors who experienced it, surely seemed like the end of the world. Smile Precure! was made, and concluded, with a sentiment of healing in mind. 490 As illustrated in the introduction to this dissertation, publishers and studios mobilized dozens of characters shortly after the devastating earthquake and tsunami of
490 Producer Umezawa remarked: “After the Great East Japan Earthquake, we thought that this is a time to band together, rather than go it alone. That's why we thought of having five Precures this year. We wanted to have as many as possible so we could do it 'with everyone. '” See Yoshioka Yu, Smile Precure! Complete Fan Book (Tokyo: Gakken Mook, 2013), 94. In another interview he also stated, “The year 2011 was a very sad and trying year for Japan. To leave this sad and trying time and go towards a brighter future, we need to band together, sweat together, don't forget to smile, and try our best. Hence: Smile Precure!” | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
384 2011 to send messages of hope and encouragement to victims of disaster-hit areas. During the course of the production of Smile Precure!, the voice actresses of the Smile Precure! heroines were themselves mobilized and asked to give their support to survivors in order to mark the one-year anniversary of the event. The actresses gave messages of encouragement to children in the radiation-plagued area of Fukushima, telling them to “never give up” and to “always smile. ” Their voices were used to give life to short animated messages of the Pretty Cures, expressing solidarity with victims still living in shelters months after the initial waves. Toei sees no return on these comforting messages, which take time and money to animate and voice, but every producer and animator I talked to viewed this sort of volunteer work as their duty. In their multi-authored and collectively sutured forms, the characters of the media mix can't exist if they don't speak to anyone. | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
385 Bibliography Aikawa Kenichi. Eizō enshutsu no kyōkasho (Manual for Visual Direction). Tokyo: Genkōsha, 2011. Akahoshi Masanao. “Toei Dōga no kenkyu” (Toei Animation Research). In Zusetsu Terebi Anime Zenshō (Complete Book of TV Animation: Illustrated), edited by Misono Makoto. Tokyo: Hara Shobō, 1999. Akiko Sugawa. “Children of Sailor Moon: The Evolution of Magical Girls in Japanese Anime. ” Nippon. com. 26 Feburary 2015. < http://www. nippon. com/en/in-depth/a03904/> (26 February 2015). Akita Takahiro, “Koma” kara “firumu” e: manga to manga eiga (From “Panel” to “Film”: Manga and Manga Films). Tokyo: NTT Shuppan, 2005. Allen, Kate and John Ingulsrud. Reading Japan Cool: Patterns in Manga Literacy and Discourse. Lanham: Lexington, 2009. ---. “Reading Manga: Patterns of Personal Literacies Among Adolescents. ” Language and Education 19, no. 4 (2005). Allington, Daniel. “'How Come Most People Don't See it?' Slashing The Lord of the Rings. ” Social Semiotics 17, no. 1 (2007). Allison, Anne. Millennium Monsters: Japanese Toys and the Global Imagination. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007. ---. Precarious Japan. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013. Altman, Rick. Film/Genre (London: British Film Institute, 1999. Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Spread and Origins of Nationalism. London: Verson, 1986. Anderson, Chris. “The Long Tail. ” Wired, October 2004. ---. “Free! Why $0. 00 is the Future of Business. ” Wired Magazine, 25 February 2008. Anderson, Joseph L. and Donald Richie. The Japanese Film: Art and Industry. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982. Andrews, Dudley. Concepts in Film Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984. | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
386 Aoyama, Tomoko. “Male Homosexuality as Treated by Japanese Women Writers. ” In The Japanese Trajectory: Modernization and Beyond, edited by Gavan Mc Cormack and Yoshio Sugimoto. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Azuma Hiroki. Otaku: Japan's Database Animals. Translated by Jonathan E. Abel and Shion Kono. Tokyo: Kodansha, 2001. ---. Geemuteki riarizumu no tanjo: Dobutsukasuru posutomodan 2 (The Birth of Game-like Realism: The Animalizing Postmodern 2). Tokyo: Kodansha, 2007. Bagdikian, Ben. The New Media Monopoly. Boston: Beacon Press, 2004. Beer, Lawrence Ward. Freedom of Expression in Japan: A Study in Comparative Law, Politics, and Society. Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1984. Bennett, James and Niki Strange. “Linear Legacies: Managing the Multiplatform Process. ” In Making Media Work: Cultures of Management in the Entertainment Industries, edited by Derek Kompare, Avi Santo, and Derek Johnson. New York: New York University Press, 2014. Bernardo, Nuno. Transmedia 2. 0: How to Create an Entertainment Brand Using a Transmedial Approach to Storytelling. Dublin: be Active Books, 2014. Bolter, Jay David and Richard Grusin. Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999. Brooker, Will. “Now You're Thinking With Portals: Media Training for a Digital World. ” International Journal of Cultural Studies 13, no. 6 (2010): 553-573. Brown, Steven T., ed. Cinema Anime: Critical Engagements with Anime. New York: Palgrave, 2006. Browne, Nick. “The Political Economy of the (Super)Text. ” In Television: The Critical View 4th edition, edited by Horace Newcomb. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. Bruns, Axel. Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond: From Production and Produsage. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2008. ---. “Produsage: A Working Definition. ” Produsage: From Production to Produsage: Research into User-led Creation Content, 21 March 2007. <http://produsage. org/produsage> (22 March 2015). Burgess, Jean. “User-Created Content and Everyday Cultural Practice. ” In Television as Digital Media, edited by James Bennett and Niki Strange. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011. | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
387 Caldwell, John. Production Culture: Industrial Reflexivity and Critical Practice in Film and Television. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007. ---. “Second Shift Media Aesthetics: Programming, Interactivity, and User Flows. ” In New Media: Theories and Practices of Digitexuality, edited by Anna Everett and John T. Caldwell. New York: Routledge, 2003. ---. “Convergence Television: Aggregating Form and Repurposing Content in the Culture of Conglomeration. ” In Television After TV: Essays on a Medium in Transition, edited by Lynn Spigel and Jan Olsen. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004. ---. “Stress Aesthetics and Deprivation Pay Systems. ” In Behind the Screen, edited by Petr Szczepanik and Patrick Vonderau. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Clarke, M. J. Transmedia Television: New Trends in Network Serial Production. New York: Bloomsbury, 2012. Clements, Jonathan and Helen Mc Carthy. The Anime Encyclopedia: A Guide to Japanese Animation Since 1917, revised and expanded edition. San Francisco: Stone Bridge Press, 2006. Clements, Jonathan. Anime: A History. London: British Film Institute, 2013. Condry, Ian. Hip Hop Japan: Rap and the Paths of Globalization. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006. ---. The Soul of Anime: Collaborative Creativity and Japan's Media Success Story. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013. ---. “Anime Creativity: Characters and Premises in the Quest for Cool Japan,” Theory, Culture and Society 26 (2009). Corkill, Edan. “Is a National Manga Museum At Last Set to Get Off the Ground?” Japan Times, 14 June 2009. Crafton, Donald. Before Mickey: The Animated Film 1898-1928. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1984. Denison, Rayna, Woojeong Joo, and Hiroko Furukawa. Manga Movies Project Report 1: Transmedia Japanese Franchising. University of East Anglia: Arts and Humanities Research Council, 2014. du Gay, Paul ed. Production of Culture/Cultures of Production. London: Sage/Open University Press, 1997. | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
388 Deuze, Mark. Media Work. Polity, 2007. Dower, John W. Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1999. Eiren (Motion Picture Producers Association of Japan). <http://www. eiren. org/> (8 January 2015). Eisner, Will. Comics and Sequential Art. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1985. Fan-Yi, Lam. “Comic Market: How the World's Biggest Amateur Comic Fair Shaped Japanese Dōjinshi Culture. ” Mechademia 5 (2010): 232-248. Ferrari, Chiara. Since When is Fran Drescher Jewish? Dubbing Stereotypes in The Nanny, The Simpsons, and The Sopranos. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2011. Foucault, Michel. “What is an Author?” In Critical Theory Since 1965, edited by Hazard Adams and Leroy Searle. Tallahassee: University Press of Florida, 1986. Fuller, Matthew. Media Ecologies: Materialist Energies in Art and Technoculture. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2005. Furniss, Maureen. Art in Motion: Animation Aesthetics. New Barnet: John Libbey Publishing, 1998. Furukawa, Hiroko. “Interview: Fukashi Azuma (TV Tokyo). ” Personal interview, 5 September 2011. Furuya Toru, Hero no koe: Hyūma to Amuro to Boku no seiyū jinsei (Hero's Voice: Hyūma, Amuro, and My Life as a Voice Actor). Tokyo: Kadokawa Shoten, 2009. Futoshi, Koga. “Melies wa itsu kara shirarete ita no ka: Nihon ni okeru Melies kotohajime” (When Melies Was Recognized: On Melies' Beginnings in Japan). In Nippon eiga no tanjo (Birth of Japanese Film), edited by Iwamoto Kenji. Tokyo: Shinwasha, 2011. Galloway, Alexander. The Exploit: A Theory of Networks (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007. Gamson, Joshua. “Stopping the Spin and Becoming a Prop: Fieldwork on Hollywood Elites. ” In Studying Elites Using Qualitative Methods, edited by Rosanna Hertz and Joshua B. Imber. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 1995. Garnam, Nicholas. “A Personal Intellectual Memoir. ” Media, Culture, and Society 27, no. 4 (2005): 469-493. | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
389---. “Political Economy and Cultural Studies: Reconciliation or Divorce?” Critical Studies in Mass Communication 12, no. 2 (1995): 60-71. Gaumer, Carol and Amit Shah. “Television Advertising and Child Consumer: Different Strategies for U. S. and Japanese Marketers. ” The Coastal Business Journal 3, no. 1 (Spring 2004): 26-35. Gerow, Aaron. Kitano Takeshi. London: British Film Institute, 2008. ---. “Kind Participation: Postmodern Consumption and Capital with Japan's Telop TV,” In Television, Japan, and Globalization, edited by Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto, Eva Tsai, Jung Bong-Choi. Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan Press, 2010. Gitlin, Todd. Inside Prime Time. New York: Pantheon, 1983. Gochenour, Philip. “Distributed Communities and Nodal Subjects. ” New Media & Society 8, no. 1 (2006). Gomery, Douglas and Benjamin M. Compaine. Who Owns the Media?: Competition and Concentration in the Mass Media Industry. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2000. Graeber, David. Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value: The False Coin of Our Own Dreams. New York: Palgrave, 2001. Gray, Jonathan and Derek Johnson, eds. A Companion to Media Authorship. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013). Gray, Jonathan. Show Sold Separately: Promos, Spoilers, and other Media Paratexts. New York: New York University Press, 2010. Gunning, Tom. “The Cinema of Attractions: Early Film, Its Spectators, and the Avant-Garde. In Early Cinema: Space, Frame, Narrative, edited by Thomas Elsaesser and Adam Baker. London: British Film Institute, 1990. Harris, Marvin. “History and Significance of the Emic/Etic Distinction. ” Annual Review of Anthropology 5 (1976): 329-350. Hartley, John, ed. The Creative Industries. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2004. Havens, Timothy, Amanda Lotz, and Serra Tinic. “Critical Media Industry Studies: A Research Approach. ” Communication, Culture, and Critique 2, no. 2 (2009): 234-253. Henderson, Felicia. “The Culture Behind Closed Doors: Issues of Gender and Race in the Writer's Room. ” Cinema Journal 50, no. 2 (Winter 2011): 145-152. | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
390 Hesmondhalgh, David and Sarah Baker. Creative Labour: Media Work in Three Cultural Industries. New York: Routledge, 2011. Hill, Erin. “Hollywood Assistanting. ” In Production Studies: Cultural Studies of Media Industries, edited by Vicki Mayer, Miranda J. Banks, and John T. Caldwell. New York: Routledge, 2009. Hills, Matt. Triumph of a Time Lord: Regenerating Doctor Who in the 21st Century. London: IB Tauris & Co., 2010. Hirano, Kyoko. Mr. Smith Goes to Tokyo: Japanese Cinema Under the American Occupation, 1945-1952. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institute, 1992. Hoshiyama Hiroyuki. Hoshiyama Hiroyuki no Anime Scenario Kyōshitsu (Hoshiyama Hiroyuki's Anime Scenario Classroom). Tokyo: Raichosha, 2007. Hotta Junji. Gainax Interviews. Tokyo: Kodansha, 2005. Hu Tze-yue. Frames of Japan: Culture and Image-Building. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University press, 2010. ---. “The Animated Resurrection of the Legend of White Snake in Japan. ” Animation 2 (March 2007). ICv2. “Highlights from the ICv2 White Paper. ” 30 October 2014. <http://www. icv2. com/articles/news/30062. html> (12 December 2014). Ito Go. Tezuka izu deddo: hirakareta manga hyōgenron (Tezuka is Dead: Postmodernist and Modernist Approaches to Japanese Manga). Tokyo: NTT Shuppan, 2005. ---. “Interview: Ito Go. ” In The Moe Manifesto, edited by Patrick Galbraith. Singapore: Tuttle, 2014. Ito, Mizuko. Fandom Unbound: Otaku Culture in an Interconnected World. New York: Yale University Press, 2012. Iwabuchi, Koichi. Recentering Globalization: Popular Culture and Japanese Transnationalism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001. ---. “Undoing Inter-National Fandom in the Age of Brand Nationalism. ” Mechademia 5 (2010): 87-96. Iwatani Toru. “Foreward. ” In Video Games Around the World, edited by Mark J. P. Wolf. Cambridge, MA: MIT press, 2015. | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
391 Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO). “Japan Animation Industry Trends. ” JETRO Japan Economic Monthly (June 2005). <http:/www. jetro. go. jp/en/reports/market/pdf/2005_35_r. pdf> (4 January 2015). Japan Foundation. Practical Guide to Publishing in Japan. Tokyo: Japan Foundation, 2014. Japan Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry. Cool Japan Initiative 2014. <http://www. meti. go. jp/policy/mono_info_service/mono/creative/file/1406Cool Japan Initiative. pdf> (12 February 2015). Jenkins, Henry, Sam Ford, and Joshua Green. Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture. New York: NYU Press, 2013. Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press, 2006. ---. “Revenge of the Origami Unicorn. Confessions of an Aca Fan. 12 December 2009. <http://www. henryjenkins. org/2009/12/the_revenge_of_the_origami_uni. html> (25 March 2011). Johnson, Derek. Media Franchising: Creative License and Collaboration in the Culture Industries. New York: New York University Press, 2013. Johnson, Frank and Ollie Johnson. The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation. New York: Abbeville Press, 1981. Jones, John Philip. “What Does Effective Frequency Mean in 1997?” Journal of Advertising Research 37, no. 4 (July 1997): 14-17. Kadokawa Haruki. Wa ga tōso: Furyō seinen wa sekai wo mezasu (My Struggle: A Juvenile Delinquent Aims for the World). Tokyo: East Press, 2005. Kadokura Shima. Manga nō no kitaékata (How to Train the Manga Mind). Tokyo: Shueisha, 2010. Kano Seiji, ed. Nippon no animation wo kizuita hitobito. The People Who Built Japan's Animation. Tokyo: Wakakusa Shobō, 2004. Kapell, Matthew Wilhelm and John Shelton Lawrence, eds. Finding the Force of the Star Wars Franchise: Fans, Merchandise, and Critics. New York: Peter Lang International Academic Publishers, 2006. Kasza, Gregory. The State and the Mass Media in Japan 1918-1945. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Kawamura Toshie. Kawamura Toshie: Toei Animation Works. Tokyo: Ichijinsha, 2012. | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
392 Kelts, Roland. Japanimerica: How Japanese Pop Culture Has Invaded the West. New York: Palgrave, 2006. Kelty, Christopher. Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008. Kern, Adam. Manga from the Floating World: Comicbook Culture and the Kibyōshi of Edo Japan. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2006. Kinder, Marsha. “Hot Spots, Avatars, and Narrative Fields Forever. ” Film Quarterly 55, no. 4 (2002). Kinema Junpo Eiga Sōkō Kenkyū-sho (Kinema Junpo Film Integration Research Office). Anime producer no shigotoron (On the Profession of an Anime Producer). Tokyo: Kinema Jumpo-sha, 2011. Kinsella, Sharon. Adult Manga: Culture and Power in Contemporary Japanese Society. London: Routledge, 2000. ---. “Cuteys in Japan. ” In Women, Media, and Consumption in Japan, edited by Lisa Skov and Brian Moeran. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1995. Kishimoto Masashi, Naruto Vol. 6. Tokyo: Shueisha, 2001. Kobayashi Miki. Saint Seiya Pia. Tokyo: Pia, 2012. Komiketto Junbikai. Komikku maaketto 30's fairu: 1975-2005 komikku maaketto sanjū shūnen kinen shiryōshu taisei (Comiket 30's File: Commemorative Collection of Documents for Comiket's Thirtieth anniversary, 1975-2005). Tokyo: Komiketto, 2005. Kondo, Dorinne. Crafting Selvess: Power, Gender, and Discourses of Identity in a Japanese Workforce. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990. Krauss, Ellis S. Broadcasting Politics in Japan: NHK and Television News. New York: Cornell University Press, 2000. Krugman, Edward P. Consumer Behavior and Advertising Involvement. New York: Routledge, 2007. Kusakawa Sho. Terebi anime 20-nen shi (A Twenty Year History of TV Anime). Tokyo: Rippu Shobō, 1981. Kōkoku yōga jiten (A Dictionary of Advertising Terminology). Edited by Nikkei Kōkoku Kenkyūjo. Tokyo: Nikkei Keizai Shinbunsha, 1978, 2005. | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
393 Lamarre, Thomas. The Anime Machine: A Media Theory of Animation. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009. ---. “The First Time as Farce: Digital Animation and the Repetition of Cinema. ” In Cinema Anime: Critical Engagements with Anime, edited by Steven T. Brown. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. Lano, Jamie Lynn. The Princess of Tennis. Sparkler, 2014. ---. “The Honeymoon is Over. ” In Living Tall in Japan. 1 August 2013. <http://www. jamieism. com/1629/japan/working-as-an-assistant-on-the-prince-of-tennis-p24> (8 August 2013). Lash, Scott and Celia Lury. Global Culture Industry: The Mediation of Things (London: Polity, 2007. Latour, Bruno. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Laurier, Eric and Chris Philo. “The Region in the Boot: Mobilizing Lone Subjects and Multiple Objects. ” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 21, no. 1 (2003): 85-106. Levi, Antonia. Samurai from Outer Space: Understanding Japanese Animation. New York: Open Court, 1998. Mangaka Assistant Story (28 April 2005) <http://blog. goo. ne. jp/yes-de1> (4 December 2014). Manovich, Lev. The Language of New Media (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2002). Marra, Michael. Essays on Japan: Between Aesthetics and Literature. Leiden: Brill, 2010. Masuda Hiromichi. Anime business ga wakaru (Understand the Anime Business). Tokyo: NTT Shuppan, 2007). ---. Motto wakara anime business. (Understand the Anime Business More). Tokyo: NTT Shuppan, 2011. Matsui, Midori. “Little Girls Were Little Boys: Displaced Femininity in the Representation of Homosexuality in Japanese Girls' Comics. ” In Feminism and the Politics of Difference, edited by Sneja Marina Gunew and Anna Yeatman. Halifax: Fernwood, 1993. | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
394 Matsutani Soichiro. “Manga no media mix to seisaku iinkai hōshiki no genjō” (Manga's Media Mix and the Present State of the Production Committee System). Tsukuru (May 2007): 41-46. Mayer, Vicki. Below the Line: Producers and Production Studies in the New Television Economy. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011. Mc Carthy, Helen. Hayao Miyazaki: Master of Animation. Berkeley, CA: Stone Bridge Press, 1999. ---. The Art of Osamu Tezuka: God of Manga. New York: Abrams Comicarts, 2009. Mc Clelland, Mark. “Why are Japanese Girls Comics Full of Boys Bonking?” Refractory: A Journal of Entertainment Media 10 (December 2006): 1-14. Mc Cloud, Scott. Understanding Comics. New York: Harper Collins, 1993. Mc Gray, Douglas. “Japan's Gross National Cool. ” Foreign Policy 130, May/June (2002). Melnick, Ross. American Showman: Samuel “Roxy” Rothafel and the Birth of the Entertainment Industry. New York: Columbia University Press, 2012. Mes, Tom. “Interview: Satoshi Kon. ” In Midnight Eye, edited by Tom Mes and Jasper Sharp. 11 February 2002. <http://www. midnighteye. com/interviews/satoshi-kon/> (4 January 2014). Meyer, Vicki, Miranda J. Banks, and John T. Caldwell, eds. Production Studies: Cultural Studies of Media Industries. New York: Routledge, 2009. Mikami Koji. “Anime seisaku shuhō to gijutsu” (Anime Production Methods and Techniques). In Anime-gaku (Anime Studies), edited by Takahashi Mitsuteru and Tsugata Nobuyuki. Tokyo: NTT Shuppan, 2011. Miller, Toby and Nitin Govil. Global Hollywood. London: British Film Institute, 2001. Minakawa Yuka. Nippon dōga no kōbōshi: Shōsetsu Tezuka gakkō (Rise and Fall of Japanese Animation: The Story of the Tezuka School) Vol. 1. Tokyo: Kodansha, 2009. Misono Makoto, ed. Zusetsu terebi no anime zenshō (Complete Book of TV Animation: Illustrated). Tokyo: Hara Shobō, 1999. Mitsuya Makoto. Shōnen Jump Shihon shugi (Shōnen Jump Capitalism). Tokyo: NTT Shuppan, 2009. | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
395 Mittel, Jason. “Forensic Fandom and the Rise of the Drillable Text. ” Spreadable Media Blog. 17 December 2012. <http://spreadablemedia. org/essays/mittell/#. VK9Ucs ZLd GI> (28 December 2012). Miyadai Shinji. Owarinaki nichijō wo ikiro: Ōmu kanzen kokufuku manyuaru (Live the Endless Everyday: A Manual to Completely Overcome Aum). Tokyo: Chikuma Shōbo, 1995. Miyamoto Hirohito. “Manga ni oite kyarakuta ga 'tatsu' towa douiukotoka” (What it Means for Characters to “Stand” on Their Own). In Nihon jidō bungaku (Japanese Children's Literature) 3-4. Tokyo: Komine Shoten, 2003. Miyao, Daisuke. “Before Anime: Animation and the Pure Film Movement in Pre-war Japan. ” Japan Forum 14, no. 2 (2002): 191-209. Miyazaki Hayao. Starting Point: 1979-1996. San Francisco: VIZ Media, 2009. Mochinaga Tadahito. Animation nicchū kōryūki (A Chronicle of Sino-Japanese Animation Cultural Exchange). Tokyo: Toho Shoten, 2006. Mori Yasuji. Mogura no uta: Animator no jiden (The Mole's Song: An Animator's Autobiography). Tokyo: Animage Bunko V, 1984. Morishita Kozo. Toei Animation 40-nen Funtōshi: Anime Dragon Ball, Saint Seiya, Transformers wo tegaketa okoto (Toei Animation and 40 Years of Struggle: The Man Who Wrestled with the Anime of “Dragon Ball,” “Saint Seiya,” and “Transformers). Tokyo: Ichijinsha, 2010. Motomiya Hiroshi. Tennen mangaka (A Natural Cartoonist). Tokyo: Shueisha, 2003. Murakami Takashi, ed. Super Flat. Tokyo: MADRA Publishing, 2000. Nader, Laura. “Controlling Processes: Tracing the Dynamic Components of Power. ” Cultural Anthropology 38 (1997): 711-737. Nagaike, Kazumi. “Perverse Sexualities, Perverse Desires: Representations of Female Fantasies and Yaoi Manga as Pornography Directed at Women. ” U. S.-Japan Women's Journal 25 (December 2003): 76-103. Nakai Yoshinori. Shōgaigeneki, kajibano mangashigotojutsu (Lifelong Service, Manga Work Skills in the Fire). Tokyo: Wani Books, 2012. Nakano Haruyuki. Manga sangyōron (Theory of Manga Industry). Tokyo: Chikuma Shobo, 2004. | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
396 Namco Bandai Holdings. Financial Highlights for the Fiscal Year Ending March 2014. 8 May 2014. Napier, Susan. Anime from Akira to Howl's Moving Castle: Experiencing Japanese Animation. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. Napier, Susan. Anime from Akira to Howl's Moving Castle: Experiencing Contemporary Japanese Animation. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. Naples, Michael. Effective Frequency. New York: Mc Graw-Hill, 1979. Newcomb, Horace and Amanda Lotz. “The Production of Media Fiction. ” In A Handbook of Media and Communications Research, edited by Klaus Bruhn Jensen. New York: Routledge, 2002. Newcomb, Horace, ed. Encyclopedia of Television. New York: Routledge, 2004. “New Entity in Works to Promote Cool Japan Themes for Export. ” Japan Times, 5 March 2013. Nippon Animation. 25 Shūnen Kinen Nippon Animation Zensakuhinshū (25th Anniversary Memorial: Nippon Animation Complete Works Collection). Tokyo: Planet Publishing, 2001. Nishimura Shigeo. Saraba, waga seishun no Shōnen Jump (Farewell, the Shōnen Jump of my Youth). Tokyo: Gentosha, 1997. Oda Eiichiro and Shimabukuro Mitsutoshi. “Jisshoku! Akuma no mi” (Read Food! The Devil's Fruit). In Weekly Shōnen Jump No. 17 (2011). Ogasawara Yuko. Office Ladies and Salaried Men: Power, Gender, and Work in Japanese Companies. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1998. Oguro Yuichiro. Plus Madhouse 04: Rintaro. Tokyo: Kinema Junpō-sha, 2009. Okada Toshio, Otakugaku nyūmon (Introduction to Otaku Studies). Tokyo: Shincho Bunko, 1996. Omori Maki. “Gender and the Labor Market. ” Journal of Japanese Studies 19, no. 1 (1993): 79-103. Onozuka Kenta. Chōgōkin no otoko (The Super Alloy Man). Tokyo: Ascii Shoten, 2009. Oono Shigeru. Sundei to Magajin: Sōkan to shitō no jūgonen (Sunday and Magazine: The 15 Years from Launch to Mortal Combat). Tokyo: Kobunsha, 2009. | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
397 Orbaugh, Sharlyn. “Busty Battlin' Babes: The Evolution of the Shôjo in 1990s Visual Culture. In Gender and Power in the Japanese Visual Field, edited by Norman Bryson, Maribeth Graybill, and Joshua Mostow. Honolulu: Hawai'i University Press, 2003. Oricchio, William. “Television's Next Generation: Technology/Interface/Culture/Flow. ” In Television After TV: Essays on a Medium in Transition, edited by Lynn Spiegel and Jan Olsson. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004. Oricon Research Group. “2014 First Half Market Report. ” <http://biz. oricon. co. jp/info/half_report_2014_book. pdf. > (12 December 2014). Ortner, Sherry. “Studying Sideways: Ethnographic Access in Hollywood. ” In Production Studies: Cultural Studies of Media Industries, edited by Vicki Mayer, Miranda J. Banks, and John T. Caldwell. New York: Routledge, 2009. Osmond, Andrew. Satoshi Kon: The Illusionist. Berkeley, CA: Stone Bridge Press, 2009. Osmond, Andrew. “A Ton of Work (Jimmy Murakami Interview). ” Manga UK, 4 March 2012 <http://www. mangauk. com/?p=3656> (2 March 2015). Otsuka Eiji. Teihon monogatari shōhiron (A Theory of Narrative Consumption: Standard Edition. Tokyo: Kadokawa, 1989. ---. Sengo manga no hyōgen kūkan (The Space of Expression in Postwar Manga. Kyoto: Hozokan, 1994. ---. Kyakuta mēka (Character Maker: Six Theories for a Workshop on “Creation”). Tokyo: Ascii Media Works, 2008. ---. “World and Variation: The Reproduction and Consumption of Narrative,” Mechademia 5 (2010). Otsuka Yasuo. Sakuga asemamire (Sweat-drenched Animation) expanded edition. Tokyo: Bunshun Ghibli Bunko, 2013. Pallant, Chris. Demystifying Disney: A History of Disney Feature Animation. New York: Continuum, 2011. Peters, Ian. “Genki Dama Save the World”: Japanese Popular Culture, Globalization, and Relief Efforts. In Media Res. 25 April 2011. <http://mediacommons. futureofthebook. org/imr/2011/04/25/genki-dama-saves-world-japanese-popular-culture-globalization-and-relief-efforts> (25 April 2011). Peterson, Richard and N. Anand. “The Production of Culture Perspective. ” The Annual Review of Sociology 30 (2004): 311-334. | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
398 Philips, Andrea. A Creator's Guide to Transmedia Storytelling: How to Captivate and Engage Audiences Across Multiple Platforms. New York: Mc Graw-Hill, 2012. Phillips, Susanne. “Characters, Themes, and Narrative Patterns in the Manga of Osamu Tezuka. ” In Japanese Visual Culture: Explorations in the World of Manga and Anime, edited by M. W. Mac Williams. New York: M. E. Sharpe, 2014. Powdermaker, Hortense. Hollywood, the Dream Factory: An Anthropologist Looks at Movie-Makers. Boston: Little Brown, 1950. Prough, Jennifer. Straight from the Heart: Gender, Intimacy, and the Cultural Production of Shōjo Manga. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2011. “Publication Index Annual Report 2008. ” All Japan Magazine and Book Publishers' and Editors' Association at the Research Institute for Publications. <http://www. jetro. org/trends/market_info_manga. pdf> (6 March 2011) Raiku Makoto. “Shogakukan wo teiso” (Suing Shogakukan), Raiku Makoto no kyō konogoro (Raiku Makoto's Today, These Days) 6 June 2008. <http://88552772. at. webry. info/200806/article_2. html> (4 December 2014). Richard, Brigette Koyama. One Thousand Years of Manga. Paris: Flammarion, 2007. Ruh, Brian. Stray Dog: The Films of Mamoru Oshii. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. ---. “Conceptualizing Anime and the Database Fantasyscape. ” Mechademia 9 (2014): 164-175. Russell, Keith. “The Glimpse and Fan Service: New Media, New Aesthetics,” International Journal of the Humanities 6, no. 5: 105-110. Saito Nobuhiko. Manga no idenshi (Manga's Genetics). Tokyo: Kodansha, 2011. Saito, Kumiko. “Desire in Subtext: Gender, Fandom, and Women's Male-Male Homoerotic Parodies in Contemporary Japan. ” Mechademia 8 (2011): 171-191. ---. “Magic, Shōjo, and Metamorphosis: Magical Girl Anime and the Challenges of Changing Gender Identities in Japanese Society. ” The Journal of Asian Studies 73, no. 1 (February 2014). Saito, Tamaki. Beautiful Fighting Girl. Translated by Keith Vincent and Dawn Lawson. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011. Schiller, Herbert. Mass Communications and American Empire. New York: Westview Press, 1992. | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
399 Schodt, Frederik. Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics. New York: Kodansha, 1983. ---. Dreamland Japan. Berkeley, CA: Stone Bridge Press, 1996. Seiter, Ellen. Sold Separately: Parents and Children in Consumer Culture. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1995. Seki Hiromi. “Animation sangyō: hitto no himitsu” (Animation Industry: The Secret of a Hit). 12 October 2014. Serashina Shuichiro. “Interview with Horie Nobuhiko. ” Studio Voice 2 (2008): 22-26. Shamoon, Deborah. Passionate Friendship: The Aesthetics of Girls' Culture in Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2012. Sharp, Jasper. Historical Dictionary of Japanese Cinema. Lanham: Scarecrow Press, 2011. Sherry, John, Bradley Greenberg, and Hiroshi Tokinoya. “Orientations to TV Advertising Among Adolescents and Children in the US and Japan. ” International Journal of Advertising 18 (1999): 233-250. Shimabukuro Mitsutoshi. Toriko Vol. 1. Tokyo: Shueisha, 2008. ---. Toriko Vol. 4. Tokyo: Shueisha, 2011. ---. Toriko Vol. 20. Tokyo: Shueisha, 2012. ---. Gourmet Hunting Book (Tokyo: Shueisha, 2011) ---. Toriko 29. 5 (Tokyo, Shueisha, 2014). ---. Toriko mini fukusei genkō book!! (Toriko Mini Reprinted Manuscript Book!!). Tokyo: Shueisha, 2013. Shimada Takashi. Kajiba no shigotoryoku. The Power of Work in the Fire. Tokyo: Wani Books, 2012. Shimizu Isao. Zusetsu manga no rekishi (An Illustrated History of Manga). Tokyo: Kawade Shobō, 1999. “Shōgakusei hakusho” (Elementary School White Paper). Gakken. March 2013. <http://www. gakken. co. jp/kyouikusouken/whitepaper/201303/index. html> (4 December 2014). | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
400 Shueisha Shōshi (Shueisha Short History). <http://www. shueisha. co. jp/history/history1. html> (12 December 2014). Smoodin, Eric. ed. Disney Discourse: Producing the Magic Kingdom. New York: Routledge, 1994. Smythe, Dallas. Dependency Road: Communications, Capitalism, Consciousness, and Canada. Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing, 1981. Steinberg, Marc. Anime's Media Mix: Franchising Toys and Characters in Japan. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012. Stingray and Nichigai Associates eds. Anime sakuhin jiten (Dictionary of Animation Works). Tokyo: Nichigai Associates, 2010. Sugiyama Taku. “Terebi anime no zenshi: Toei chōhen anime no jidai” (A Pre-History of TV Anime: The Era of Toei's Feature-length Anime). In Zusetsu Terebi Anime Zenshō (Complete Book of TV Animation: Illustrated), edited by Misono Makoto. Tokyo: Hara Shobō, 1999. Sunrise. Sunrise Anime Super Data File. Tokyo: Tatsumi Shuppan, 1997. Suzuki Shinichi. Anime ga sekai wo tsunagu (Anime Connects the World). Tokyo: Iwanami Junior Shinsho, 2008. Tada Makoto. Kore ga anime business da (This is the Anime Business). Tokyo: Kosaido, 2002. Takahashi Mitsuteru. “Animation ni okeru jinzai ikusei (Training Human Resources in Animation). In Anime-gaku (Anime Studies), edited by Takahashi Mitsuteru and Tsugata Nobuyuki. Tokyo: NTT Shuppan, 2011. Takahashi Ryosuke, “Anime enshutsuron-Anime ni okeru enshutsu, matawa kantoku towa” (On Anime Direction: Regarding Anime Direction and Directors). In Anime-gaku (Anime Studies), edited by Takahashi Mitsuteru and Tsugata Nobuyuki. Tokyo: NTT Shuppan, 2011. Takahashi Yoji and Akiyama Masami eds. Kodomo no shōwashi, Shōwa 10-20 (Shōwa Children's History, Shōwa 10-20), Bessatsu taiyō (Taiyō supplemental volumes). Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1986. Takahashi Yoji and Yonezawa Yoshihiro, eds. Shōjo manga no sekai I, Kodomo no shōwashi, Shōwa 20-37 (The World of Shōjo Manga: Shōwa Children's History, Shōwa 20-37), Bessatsu taiyō (Taiyō supplemental volumes). Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1991. | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
401 Takata Manabu. “Sekai no otaku miryoku intel ga ninki anime to korabo: 400 okuen ichiba tsukutta 'Mahō Shōjo Madoka Magica” (The Appeal of World Otaku, Intel Collaborates with Popular Anime: The 40 Billion Yen Market that “Puélle Magi Madoka Magica” Built). In Nihon Keizai Shimbun, 9 July 2013. Takekuma Kentaro, “Hitome de wakaru 'keiyū zukan'” (Simple Guide to Understanding “Graphic Symbols”). In Manga no yomikata (How to Read Manga), edited by Inoue Manabu. Tokyo: Takarajimasha, 1995. Takemura Mana. Majokko Days (Magical Girl Days). Tokyo: Bug News Network, 2009. Takeuchi Osamu. Manga hyōgengaku nyūmon (Introduction to Manga Expression). Tokyo: Tsukuma Shobo, 2005. Tanaka Ema. “Industrial Structure of 'Japan Cool': Co-Existence of Media-Mix and Diversity of Contents by Production Committee Systems in Japan. ” The Journal of the Japan Association for Social and Economics Systems Studies (October 2009). ---. “Industry Structure of Media Mix. ” In Kontentsu sangyōron: Konkō to denpa no Nippongata model (Theory of Contents Industry: A Japanese Model of Mixture and Circulation), edited by Deguchi Hiroshi, Tanaka Hideyuki, and Koyama Yūsuke. Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 2009. Tapscott, Don and Anthony D. Williams. Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything (New York: Portfolio, 2006). Tarkus and Kagami Toshiharu. “Saint Seiya Omega Special. ” Figure King No. 170 (April 2012). The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan. “Policy Speech by Minister of Foreign Affairs Taro Aso to the 166th Session of the Diet. ” 26 January 2007. The Sanseido Dictionary. <www. sanseido. net/sp/> (29 October 2014). Tobin, Joseph, ed. Pikachu's Global Adventure: The Rise and Fall of Pokémon. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004. Toei Animation. Toei Animation 50-nen shi, 1956-2006: Hashiridasu yume no saki ni (Toei Animation 50th Anniversary, 1956-2006: Beyond the Running Dreams). Tokyo: Deko, 2006. Toei Dōga. “Majokko anime daizenshū” (Complete Works of Little Witch Anime). In Toei Dōgahen (Toei Dōga Chapter). Tokyo: Bandai, 1993. Tokyo Movie Shinsha. TMS Anime Super Data File. Tokyo: Tatsumi Shuppan, 1999. | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
402 Tomofusa Kure. Gendai manga no zentaishō (The Full Picture of Contemporary Manga). Tokyo: Futabasha, 1997. Toriyama Akira and Oishi Naho. “Dragonball ossu! Kaettekita Son Goku to nakamatachi!! Senpen” (Dragon Ball, Hey! The Return of Son Goku and His Friends!! First Half). In V-Jump! 5/6 (May 2009). Tsugata Nobuyuki, Nihon animeeshon no chikara: hachijūgo nen no rekishi o tsuranuku futatsu no jiku (The Power of Animation: Two Axes Running Through 85 Years of History). Tokyo: NTT Shuppan, 2004. ---. Animation gaku nyūmon (Introduction to Animation Studies). Tokyo: Heibonsha, 2005. ---. “Research on the Achievements of Japan's First Three Animators. ” Asian Cinema 14, no. 1 (2003): 13-27. ---. “Anime no rekishi” (The History of Anime). In Anime-gaku (Anime Studies), edited by Takahashi Mitsuteru and Tsugata Nobuyuki. Tokyo: NTT Shuppan, 2011. Tsuji Masaki. TV Anime no seishunki (The Early Days of TV Anime). Tokyo: Jitsugyo no Nipponsha, 1996. Tungate, Mark. Ad Land: A Global History of Advertising. London: Kogan Page, 2007. Turow, Joseph. Media Systems in Society: Understanding Industries, Strategies, and Power. New York: A. B. Longman, 1992. Ueno Koshi. “Shōhin no bunka-ka arui wa kōkoku to shite no eiga” (The Cultural Transformation of the Commodity, or the Film as Advertisement). In Scenario 36 (November 1980): 11. Umakoshi Yoshihiko. Umakoshi Yoshihiko: Toei Animation Works. Tokyo: Ichijinsha, 2011. Unknown author. Kodomo no akahon-Soku aku manga wo tsuku (Children's Red Books-An Attack on Vulgar Manga). Shūkan Asahi, 4 April 1949. Wada-Marciano, Mitsuyo. “Global and Local Materialities of Anime. ” In Television, Japan, and Globalization, edited by Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto, Eva Tsai, and Jung Bong Choi. Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, 2010. Watanabe Yumiko. “Seishōnen mangakara miru yaoi” (Looking at Yaoi from the Perspective of Boys' and Young Men's Manga). Eureka 29, no. 7 (2007): 69-76. Shueisha. Weekly Shōnen Jump No. 19. 21 April 2014. | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
403---. Weekly Shōnen Jump No. 50. 24 November 2014. Wells, Paul. Understanding Animation. New York: Routledge, 1998. West, Mark I., ed. The Japanification of Children's Popular Culture. Lanham: Scarecrow Press, 2008. Westney, D. Eleanor. “Mass Media as Business Organizations: A U. S.-Japanese Comparison. ” In Media and Politics in Japan, edited by Susan J. Pharr and Ellis S. Krauss. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1996. Whitehill, Arthur. Japanese Management: Tradition and Transition. London: Routledge, 1991. Williams, Raymond. Television: Technology and Cultural Form. New York: Routledge, 1974. Willis, Paul. Learning to Labor: How Working Class Kids Become Working Class. New York: Columbia University Press, 1981. Wolf, Mark J. P. Building Imaginary Worlds: The Theory and History of Subcreation. New York: Routledge, 2012. Wollen, Peter. Signs and Meanings in the Cinema. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1969. Wyatt, Justin. High Concept: Movies and Marketing in Hollywood. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994. Yamaguchi Katsunori and Watanabe Yasushi. Nihon Animation Eigashi (A History of Japanese Animated Films). Osaka: Yūbunsha, 1977. Yamaguchi Yasuo ed. Nihon no anime zenshi (Complete History of Japanese Animation). Tokyo: Ten Books, 2004. Yamamoto Eiichi. Mushi Pro no kōbōki: Ani meita no seishun (Chronicle of Mushi Pro: The Youth of Ani Meita). Tokyo: Shinchōsha, 1989. Yokohama Yuji, “'Shinseiki Evangelion' in okeru monogatari seikai no kōsei: Media Mikkusu sakuhinron no kansei” (The Narrative World and Composition of Evangelion: The Possibility of Media Mix Work Theory). Nihon Bungaku, January (2006): 51-86. Yomoda Inuhiko. Manga genron (Principles of Manga). Tsukuma: Tsukuma Shobo, 1994. Tatsumi Yoshihiro. A Drifting Life. Montreal: Drawn and Quarterly, 2009. | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
404 Yoshimoto, Mitsuhiro, ed. “Introduction. ” Television, Japan, and Globalization, edited by Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto, Eva Tsai, and Jung Bong Choi. Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, 2010. Yoshioka Yu. “Character Designer: Kawamura Toshie. ” In Smile Precure! Complete Fan Book. Tokyo: Gakken Mook, 2013. ---. “Producer: Umezawa Atsutoshi. ” In Smile Precure! Complete Fan Book. Tokyo: Gakken Mook, 2013. “Yume wo kanaeru konkūru” (Dreams Come True Contest), Japan Association for Financial Planners, 24 March 2010, <https://www. jafp. or. jp/about/news/files/newsrelease20100324. pdf> (4 December 2014). Zanghellini, Aleardo. “Underage Sex and Romance in Japanese Homoerotic Manga and Anime. ” Social & Legal Studies 18, no. 2 (June 2009). | Inside the Media Mix0ACollective Creation in Contemporary Manga and Anime.pdf |
1 | N o v e l -S m i l e P r e C u r e Novel | Smile PreCure Novel - All Chapters English.pdf |
2 | B l u r b Writer : Kobayashi Yuji Illustration : Kawamura Toshie ISBN: 978-4-06-314878-7 Ten years have passed. Miyuki is a shop assistant at a bookstore, and Akane is working at her parents' okonomiyaki shop. Yayoi is a popular manga artist, Nao is a soccer team coa ch, and Reika is a teacher at a middle school. Five girls are seemingly living peaceful days at first glance, however, they began to realise something is wrong with this world. That... is the Story of Despair crafted by Joker... Kukukukuku... Ladies and gentlemen, the Story of Despair has already begun! Revived Once More by Joker's Words, Pre Cure... | Smile PreCure Novel - All Chapters English.pdf |
3 | T a b l e o f C o n t e n t s Table of Contents: Chapter 1-Hoshizora Miyuki ------------------------------------------ 004 Chapter 2-Hino Akane ----------------------------------------------- 032 Chapter 3-Kise Yayoi ------------------------------------------------ 053 Chapter 4-Midorikawa Nao ------------------------------------------- 076 Chapter 5-Aoki Reika ------------------------------------------------ 098 Final Chapter-The Greatest Smile -------------------------------------- 126 Extra Section-Glossary----------------------------------------------- 162 | Smile PreCure Novel - All Chapters English.pdf |
4 | C h a p t e r 1 -H o s h i z o r a M i y u k i Chapter 1-Hoshizora Miyuki Somewhere out there, there was once a 2nd-year middle school s tudent named Hoshizora Miyuki-an always optimistic girl who love d happy things and believed that happiness would surely be waiting so long as she had a perfect smile ready on her face. Miyuki had moved to the wonderful town of Nanairogaoka. Hurrying to school so she wouldn't be late on her first day, she encountered a mysterious picture book flying in the sky. From inside the picture book appeared a fairy named Candy. Candy had been sent on a mission to save the land of fairytales, Märchenland, from the Bad End Kingdom's plan in giving it the worst possible ending. To stop this from happening, she came to Earth to find the legendary warrior s, Pre Cure. But then one of the generals of the B ad E nd Kingdom appeared -Wolfrun. The generals' goal was to paint the hearts of people in despair to gather Bad Energy, and use t hat power to revive the sealed Emperor of E vil, Pierrot. To achieve this, they stole the source of Märchenland 's power of happiness, the Cure Decors, and changed them into Red Noses. Those noses could create the horrifying Akanbe, monsters that would go on a violent rampage. To protect Candy, Miyuki summoned up enough courage to transform into the legendary warrior, Pre Cure. She turned out to be one of the Pre Cure Candy ha d been searching for, and her name was Cure Happy. After a splendid job defeating the Akanbe, Miyuki and Candy started looking for the other four Pre Cure together. Cure Sunny was the always cheerful and brilliant sun-Hino Akane. Cure Peace was talented at drawing and love d heroes-Kise Yayoi. Cure March was always playing it straight as the ace of the Girls' Soccer Club- Midorikawa Nao. Cure Beauty was the Student Council President, gifted in both looks and smarts -Aoki Reika. The five girls from the same class joined forces to fight against the generals of the Bad End Kingdom: Wolfrun, Aka ōni and Major īna, as well as the monsters they created one after another. If they could purify the Red Noses that create the Akanbe and recover every stolen Cure Decor, the imprisoned ruler of Märchenland, the Royal e Queen, could be revived to save her land. ~~~~ The Cures' hideout was i n another dimension called the 'Mysterio us Library', where fairy tales from all around the world were gathered. Its booksh elves were connected with others throughout the entire world, allowing Miyuki and the others to warp to any place they imagined. | Smile PreCure Novel - All Chapters English.pdf |
5 | C h a p t e r 1 -H o s h i z o r a M i y u k i The girls combined their strengths to overcome many hardships, but when they ha d finally finished collecting all the Cure Decors, the leader of the Bad End Kingdom's generals appeared-Joker. He kidnapped Candy and stole all but one of their hard-earned Cure Decors. The five Pre Cure headed to the Bad End Kingdom to gether with Candy's big brother, Pop. They fought the generals to finally take back their friend and the Cure Decors, and transformed into their new 'Princess Forms', which helped them successfully beat back the revived Pierrot. However, even though all the Cure Decors were present, the Royal e Quee n would not awake from her slumber. That was because she had granted all her power to the Pre Cure in order for them to use their Princess Forms-it was the best, the only thing, she could do. In order to gather new Cure Decors and to stop the evil generals' scheme in Pierrot's complete revival, the five Pre Cure kept on fighting. ~~~~ One day, the core of Pierrot came flying from outer space-the final battle against the Bad End Kingdom had begun. At the end of an intense fight, Wolfrun, Aka ōni and Major īna were touched by the Pre Cure's purifying kindness, restoring them back to their fairy forms. To everyone's surprise, the three generals were originally from Märchenland all along. Afterwards, the five overcame a dire battle against the vile Bad End Pre Cure, and finally challenged an enormous Pierrot, who absorbed Joker to complete his revival. However, Pierrot was incredibly powerful. If they were to have any hope in defeat ing him, the five girls would have to use the last of their power, but that would come at the cost of never seeing Candy and Pop ever again. But even so, they confronted him with all their might, in order to save both Märchenland and Earth. Candy also changed into Roy ale Candy to lend her strength to the Pre Cure. As it turn ed out, Candy was actually the next Queen of Märchenland. And just like that-Pierrot vanished, peace returned to Märchenland, and it was said that all the fairies lived happily ever after. In the world where harmony ha d returned, Miyuki, Akane, Yayoi, Nao and Reika... each of them begun to walk their o wn stories. Towards a twinkling, shining future... Although they were supposed to be separated after that, Candy unexpectedly showed up. By wishing upon the stars with all her heart, she was able to come back to Miyuki and her friends again. And so Miyuki and her friends ha d opened the curtains to a new story. The five lights guiding to the future-what kind of brilliant world could be waiting for them? | Smile PreCure Novel - All Chapters English.pdf |
6 | C h a p t e r 1 -H o s h i z o r a M i y u k i * * * “Hey, in the story, what happens next ?” I come back to my senses, raising my head from the picture book. The one who asked the question was Yoshimi-chan. Evening is a busy time when the store gets crowded; from salarymen returning from work to a few high school students on their way home would drop in for a quick visit. She comes here sometimes to listen to my clumsy storytelling. While her mom is out shopp ing, the girl is killing time. No, the expression 'killing time' isn't exactly right. Yoshimi-chan 's eyes get big and round, gazing at the picture book that I'm reading, The Greatest Smile, while firm ly lending an ear. I thought no-one was listening to me-it makes me glad that's not true. “Worried about what comes after? What do you think happened, Yoshimi-chan? To the five Pre Cure, and to the future of this world... ” “Mmm, I dunno. ” “There isn't anything after-that's the end of story. ” “Awww... Keep going, I'm getting nervous. ” Yoshimi-chan unhappily puffs her cheeks. It's only natural-she's visited here many, many times, believing that there must be a definite continuation to the story. Hoping to persuade Yoshimi-chan, I gaze into her tranquil eyes. “But the Pre Cure might be fighting somewhere right now. S omewhere in this world, for us... ” “Really!?” Yoshimi-chan's eyes beco me wider and wider. “Onē-chan, how do you know that? Could it be... you've met the Pre Cure?” Waiting for exactly that question, I bring my face closer to Yoshimi-chan. And then, I show her the nameplate worn on my chest. On it, it says: ' Nanairogaoka Station-Front Bookstore, Hoshizora Miyuki'. “Mi-yu-ki... ” Yoshimi-chan read the name out loud, round ing her eyes to take a long, hard look at my face. Like a kid meeting Santa Claus, she's so full of wond er and excitement that she can barely speak. “You, Onē-chan? The main character of this story... Onē-chan, you're Cure Happy?” “Be sure to keep it a secret from everyone. ” When she places a finger on th at mischievous smile on her lips, Yoshimi-chan tightly closes her mouth and nods. “Okay. It's our secret!” Looking at Yoshimi-chan's pure and innocent smile, it greatly warms my heart. When I see children with such merry faces in front of me, I can forget about the hardshi ps of working as a bookstore assistant, even if it's just for a little bit. | Smile PreCure Novel - All Chapters English.pdf |
7 | C h a p t e r 1 -H o s h i z o r a M i y u k i However, in that moment, an intruder slips in to ruin our private conversation. “Liar. There's no way the Pre Cure actually exist in this world. ” I hadn't noticed how long he had been there, but it came from a boy apparently from the same kindergarten as Yoshimi-chan, who stood up with a horrid grin on his face. One time, I saw him do something in this store -a friend of mine was reading a picture book when this boy snatched it away, making him cry. Without caring for Yoshimi-chan's loss for words, the boy ke eps talking. “That sor t of picture book, it's just a plain ol' made-up story. I should know. My whole kindergarten's doing a drama club like that. It's all a derushion, a derushion. ” Despite his young age, he know s the proper use of a word as hard as 'delusion'. That point was at least worth a n honest compliment. However, that kind of attitude towards Yoshimi-chan is unacceptable. I say to him, “Hey, that isn't a nice thing to say. One day, when you're in trouble and miserable every now and then, the Pre Cure might come to help you. But for a child who keeps saying such mean things... they won't come to help, you know. ” “Liar. When will the Pre Cure come to help?” “Well... I'm sure someday... ” “In what month, on what day and at what time, how many times has the Earth turned ?” Hrrrm, this boy is a real pain. “It's not a lie !” Yoshimi-chan shout s impatiently. The customers in the store are also startled and turn in our direction. “Because, the lady here is Cure Happy! Right? On ē-chan!” Uh-oh. Yoshimi-chan, even though you promised to only keep it a secret between us... The boy stares at me without so much as blinking. He's somehow giving me a bad feeling about this. “Ehhh? On ē-chan, a Pre Cure? If you're really a Pre Cure, transform and show us. Come on, hurry up!” Huh? Bef ore I kno w it, it feels lik e all the eyes in the store are fixated on me. Given the situation, I have no choice but to make an excuse. “Ehehe, I can't transform without any bad guys around. ” Although I stick my tongue out with a smile, the boy refuses to back down. “See ! I knew you were lying ! Even though you're a grown-up, you believe in those kind of derushions ! You're really childish. ” At that moment, hearing a woman's voice call out, 'Yoshimi!', I lif t my head. Yoshimi-chan's mom has turn ed up with a smile on her face after having finished her shopping. “Mama!” Yoshimi-chan rushes to return to her mother wi th a brilliant smile, but then turns around to face towards me. “Onē-chan! Bye-bye! See you tomorrow! ” | Smile PreCure Novel - All Chapters English.pdf |
8 | C h a p t e r 1 -H o s h i z o r a M i y u k i I smile and wave back, too. As Yoshimi-chan join hands with her mother, they leave the store. Judging by their mood, I'm sure they wi ll come back again tomorrow to Kids Connect Square and no doubt listen to my storytelling. When I look back, the boy from before is caught by the scruff of the neck by his mother again as always, ready to leave the place. As he's being pulled by his mother, his face firmly turns in my direction, going “bleeeh ” with his tongue sticking out. Despite my bitter smile, I wave to the boy. Even if he' s a horrible kid, a customer is a customer. I hope they also come back here again... Breathing a sigh, I look back at Kids Connect Square. With the children gone, the carpet 's surface is now silent. While tidying up the messy books, and staring a t the cover of that one book, I couldn't help but smile. So many fairytales and fantasies-all of them depict my favourite happy endings. ~~~~ My name is Hoshizora M iyuki. I'm 24 years old. I 've love d picture books and stories ever since I was a child. About two years ago, I got a part-time job here at the Nanairogaoka Station-Front Bookstore. My fondness for picture books greatly appealed to the store manager, and I was given the responsibility of tak ing turns in the children's books corner. Whenever there was time, I would read a picture book to the children at Kids Connect Square. Is it a wonderful job? Yeah, I really think so. But the truth is, it wasn't a job the store asked me to do, and rarely do I get any thanks from anyone. So it's more like volunteering. However, for me it' s a time of utmost bliss when a child take s an interest in picture books these days. It makes me happy to look back on my childhood. The way Yoshimi-chan yelled today, it was almost like seeing my old self. Even though she come here often, today is the first time I ever got the chance to talk to her. I'm sure that a continuation of the picture book is on her mind, making her nervous, and then she found the courage to take that first step without any doubts. I was also really shy when I was small; I couldn't talk to anyone by myself at the time. That's why... I can easily understand how Yoshimi-chan feel s. Even if there was just one today, I want to make lots of children love picture books and stories, and have them wishfully feel the possibility of fantasy. No matter how tough a reality waits for us, if we keep believing, one day an ultra-happy future will... ~~~~ “Hoshizora-san!” The store manager's voice calls out, snapping me back to my senses. The middle-aged female manager, with a grumpy face similar to a vice principal straight out of a manga, is standing next to the register, glaring at me intens ely. In fact, all the bookstore employees call her 'vice principal' as a nickname, and it's becaus e of | Smile PreCure Novel - All Chapters English.pdf |
9 | C h a p t e r 1 -H o s h i z o r a M i y u k i that they straighten their backs when passing by in front of her. Of course, I'm no exception. I answer 'Yes!' and stand up like a middle-schooler when mentioned, quickly heading toward where the manager stands. Once we've entered the meeting room nex t to the cash register, the store manager says a few words: “Please have a seat. ” And just like that, I'm urged to sit at the other side of the table. The eyes behind the manager's glasses shine eerily. Now, it begins. The usual lecture... “Hoshizora-san, please tell me what you were doing earlier. ” “Well, bonding with the children at Kids Connect Square... ” “I am asking what you were doing SPECIFICALLY. ” “Reading picture books! Even if it was just for one child, I was hoping to make her love lots of books... ” “That does not matter. The charm of books... are their ability to educate the children who will all shoulder the future-a terribly wonderful thing. You personally volunteered for the activity, while aptly fulfilling your work as staff of a c ommon bookstore. Would you say you approve of that ?” “Yes! Thank you so much. T hanks to everybody's help, Kids Connect Square was a success... ful in that it did not go so well. But sometimes children would drop by, picking out picture books to take in their hands. This is also because of the store manager's kind consideration that... ” “However, as staff of the bookstore, you should be aptly fulfilling your duties... have you forgotten that arrangement ?” The manager's expression gradually becomes stern. Ahh, this is an unpleasant pattern. “The sales of children's books have continue d to fall rather than grow. Despite the fact you have volunteered to continue reading for several months now... ” “I am so sorry. I wi ll try to work harder. So... ” “Your hard work is not the problem. You... what kind of books have you been reading all this time ?” “What kind of books, you ask... ?” I had in my hand The Greatest Smile picture book, fiddling with it on top of my knee. “You were reading a picture book that is not for sale. Am I correct ?” I resigned myself, taking out and present ing The Greatest Smile on the table's surface. The manager's face becomes even sterner. “What is this?” | Smile PreCure Novel - All Chapters English.pdf |
10 | C h a p t e r 1 -H o s h i z o r a M i y u k i “Wel l, it is a picture book called The Greatest Smile. ” “We are not selling this, correct?” “... Yes. But, it is a very good picture book. It would be a nice opportunity to get children to know ab out the brilliance of the story-” “Hoshizora-san, I have heard you talk about that book on occasions. I also understand that it is quite important to you. A picture book of memories drawn by yourself when you were a middle school student... is that right?” “Yes... ” It's just as it sounds, this book was hand made by me. Both t he drawings, and the writing-I was still in middle school when I yearned to make it myself. Only one copy exist s in this world-my very own picture book. That's why the protagonist's name is Hoshizora Miyuki, the same as mine. “I know very well you have a strong emotional attachment to that book. The desire to pass down the story to children is quite a wonderful thing. However, this place is neither a kindergarten nor a daycare. It is the Nanairogaoka Station-Front Bookstore. It is your job to sell books. Please perform unrelated activities outside of business hours. ” Giving me no room to object, the manager keeps on talking without missing a beat. “Generally, your work has been undeniably sloppy. Despite having already been working here for two years now, you can barely manage the cash register... Evidently, it is too late for that. Just take pride and appreciation in being an employee of the historic Nanairogaoka Station-Front Bookstore. ” “... Okay. ” Feeling disheartened, I went back to the children 's book s corner, and after setting The Greatest Smile down on a stool in Kids Connect Square, I start to organize the bookshelves. The store manager's lecture is still ringing in my ear s. The conversation with her seem ed reasonable, and I also understand that what I'm doing extends outside the sort of work a bookstore assistant should do. Getting scolded like this today again... it isn't the first time. In spite of that, I can definitely say this picture boo k is a very speci al existence to me. The Greatest Smile... it's a precious book that opened up my life. The way that I am today, it's no exaggeration to say that it' s because this picture book exists. Since... since... ... hm? In the middle of organizin g the shelves, I stare at The Greatest Smile left over at Kids Connect Corner. On the front cover, there i s a crude drawing depicting the five Pre Cure. Fantasy has infinite possibilities. Ever since the creat ion of this picture book, whenever I'm in pain, whenever I'm sad, it would help me encourage myself to overcome all kinds of difficulties. Fantasy -it is the greatest strength you can use to save yourself. | Smile PreCure Novel - All Chapters English.pdf |