Nesta pesquisa procuramos investigar a animação japonesa como uma máquina para compreendermos como a copresença evolucionária de outros seres — técnicos e animais — potencializa outras compreensões sobre o humano. Com esse posicionamento, procuramos demonstrar como o humanismo, além de se constituir como um modelo filosófico, científico e civilizacional, também propôs uma visão estética sobre o humano. Para realizar uma abertura dessa herança, procuramos traçar uma genealogia do humano e dos objetos técnicos em correlação. A compreensão do anime como uma máquina parte da teoria de Thomas Lamarre, em conjunto com as teorizações de Gilbert Simondon, Félix Guattari e Gilles Deleuze. O viés da análise tem o pressuposto de que, se a construção da animação se dá por layers, ou camadas que misturam diferentes técnicas e perspectivas visuais, poderíamos dizer que elas revelam a suis generis de pensamento em ação na animação. O humano também é pensado como uma construção, assim a relação de explosão do humanismo e da implosão do antropocentrismo visa desterritorializar o humano nos seus componentes teóricos e poéticos. O surgimento da teoria pós-humanista foi inicialmente pavimentado graças à desterritorialização posta sobre o humano no pós-estruturalismo. Para aprofundar esse argumento partimos da herança em Nietzsche e Derrida até autores pós-humanistas como Donna Haraway, Cary Wolfe, Rosi Braidotti e Stefan Herbrechter. Após estabelecermos um panorama da animação de ficção científica no Japão, iremos nos debruçar na análise das animações Rebuild of Evangelion 3.0: You Can (Not) Redo (2012) dirigida por Hideaki Anno e Ghost in the Shell: Innocence (2004) dirigida por Mamoru Oshii. De uma maneira geral a pesquisa foi dividida em três seções: pós-humanismo e techno-poética, máquina anímica e visões explosivas do humano. Na primeira, procuramos evidenciar uma genealogia do humano com atenção à sua coevolução e historicidade com os objetos técnicos, estabelecendo relações entre regimes de pensamento e estese. A segunda seção diz respeito às configurações da máquina anímica, suas relações com a tradição estética japonesa e com elementos da estética humanista, tal qual a perspectiva cartesiana. Procuramos demonstrar a existência de outros modelos visuais como uma abertura da heterogênese da máquina. A terceira seção é na qual iremos analisar as visões explosivas do humano na animação japonesa através das categorias analíticas propostas por Lamarre. Nossa hipótese é demonstrar como a máquina anímica poderia permitir uma heterogênese pós-humana através da dobra comunicacional do intervalo anímico. / In this research, we seek to investigate Japanese animation as a machine to understand how the evolutionary coo presence of other beings — technical and animal — enhances new understandings about the human. With this position, we try to demonstrate how humanism, besides constituting itself as a philosophical, scientific and civilizational model, also proposed an aesthetic vision about the human. To open this inheritance, we traced the genealogy of human and technical objects in correlation. The understanding of anime as a machine starts with the theory of Thomas Lamarre, together with the theorizations of Gilbert Simondon, Felix Guattari and Gilles Deleuze. Our analysis approach has the assumption that if the construction of the animation is made of layers that mix different techniques and visual perspectives, we could say that they reveal the suis generis of thought in action in the animation. We affirm that the human is a construction, so the relation of humanism explosion and the implosion of anthropocentrism aims to deterritorialize the human in its theoretical and techno-poetic components. The emergence of post-humanist theory has a debt to the deterritorialization put on the human in the post-structuralist theory. To deepen this argument we start from the inheritance in Nietzsche and Derrida to posthumanist authors like Donna Haraway, Cary Wolfe, Rosi Braidotti and Stefan Herbrechter. After we stablished an overview of science fiction animation in Japan, we will focus our analyses with the animations Rebuild of Evangelion 3.0: You Can (Not) Redo (2012) directed by Hideaki Anno and Ghost in the Shell: Innocence (2004) directed by Mamoru Oshii. In general, the research was divided into three sections: posthumanism and techno-poetics, the animetic machine and explosive visions of the human. In the first, we try to show a genealogy of the human with attention to its coevolution and historicity with the technical objects, establishing relations between regimes of thought and aesthetic. The second section concerns the configurations of the animetic machine, its relations with the Japanese aesthetic tradition, and elements of humanistic aesthetics, such as the Cartesian perspective. We try to demonstrate the existence of other visual models as an opening of the heterogenesis of the animetic machine. The third section is where we will analyze the explosive visions of the human in Japanese animation through the analytical categories proposed by Lamarre. Our hypothesis is to demonstrate how the animetic machine could allow a post-human heterogenesis through the communication fold of the animetic interval.

A new sub-culture, “Rotten Culture (腐文化) ”, evolved from Japanese Boys’ Love (BL) manga, has rapidly spread in China and dramatically influenced many areas of Chinese artistic creation. “Rotten Culture” is an extension of Boys’ Love, which indicates that Boys’ Love elements not only existed in manga, but emerged in anime, movies, TV series, and so on. As a start of an analysis of this phenomenon, this thesis will focus on the core of “Rotten Culture”, Boys’ Love, which exists in Chinese manga and web fiction. The central issues addressed by this thesis are: exploring the circulation of Boys’ Love from Japan to China; examining the aesthetics and themes of some of these works; and analyzing the motivations that explain why such a huge amount of people, both professional and non-professional, have joined in creating Boys’ Love art works. / Graduate

Submitted by Cláudia Bueno (claudiamoura18@gmail.com) on 2016-03-02T19:40:57Z No. of bitstreams: 2 Dissertação - Genis Frederico Schmaltz Neto - 2013.pdf: 3507314 bytes, checksum: eec5eb509427325b1c0c4796bd62a6b8 (MD5) license_rdf: 23148 bytes, checksum: 9da0b6dfac957114c6a7714714b86306 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Luciana Ferreira (lucgeral@gmail.com) on 2016-03-03T12:32:27Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 2 Dissertação - Genis Frederico Schmaltz Neto - 2013.pdf: 3507314 bytes, checksum: eec5eb509427325b1c0c4796bd62a6b8 (MD5) license_rdf: 23148 bytes, checksum: 9da0b6dfac957114c6a7714714b86306 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-03-03T12:32:27Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 Dissertação - Genis Frederico Schmaltz Neto - 2013.pdf: 3507314 bytes, checksum: eec5eb509427325b1c0c4796bd62a6b8 (MD5) license_rdf: 23148 bytes, checksum: 9da0b6dfac957114c6a7714714b86306 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013-02-27 / Anime are japanese narratives that blend the art of manga to film productions, and has become the subject of discussion in academia by particularizing the Nipponese pop culture or the fantastic reception from the West, making it about 60% of its programming in television channels open. Drawing on the Anthropology of the Imaginary postulated by G. Durand, based in Semiotics discourse practiced by A. J. Greimas and his followers, as well as studies of postmodernity by M. Maffesoli, this dissertation took the symbolic structures as corpus of discursive anime Death Note. The narrative tells the journey of Light Yagami, a young student from Japan who finds a notebook belonging to a Japanese reaper named Ryuk, where names are written may have manipulated their deaths. The images of anime break with moral paradigms when your central character seems to violate the archetypal hero and enter the building of a new constellation of statements that connect the notion of justice, while that allow merge the West. Questioned as myths and what shape or reframe the narrative, and how they reflect a cultural imaginary Japanese, using it for the mitodologia and semiotics of passions. They came up to the mythical traits of Siddharta, Adam and Paradise Lost when analyzed Mouse Yagami, the main character, the mythical traits of Our Lady, Eve, Lilith and Isis when analyzed Misa Amane, and traces of mythic Trickster, Prometheus inverted and Apollo when analyzed shinigami Ryuk. These images mean or fail to mean in contemporary society, highlighting the plurality of new thinking being built on what we call postmodernity. / Animês são narrativas japonesas que mesclam a arte de mangás a produções cinematográficas, e tem se tornado objeto de discussão no meio acadêmico seja por particularizar a cultura pop nipônica ou pela fantástica receptividade por parte do Ocidente, tornando-se aproximadamente 60% de sua programação em canais de televisão aberta. Valendo-se da Antropologia do Imaginário postulada por G. Durand, alicerçado a Semiótica Discursiva praticada por A. J. Greimas e seus seguidores, bem como dos estudos da pósmodernidade de M. Maffesoli, esta dissertação tomou como corpus as estruturas simbólicas discursivas do animê Death Note. A narrativa conta a jornada de Yagami Raito, um jovem estudante do Japão que encontra um caderno pertencente a um ceifeiro nipônico chamado Ryuk, onde nomes que forem escritos podem ter suas mortes manipuladas. As imagens desse animê rompem com paradigmas morais quando seu personagem central parece violar o arquétipo do Herói e se inserir na construção de uma nova constelação de enunciados que enlaçam a noção de Justiça, ao mesmo tempo em que se permitem mesclar ao Ocidente. Questionou-se como e quais mitos configuram ou se resignificam na narrativa, e de que forma eles refletem um imaginário cultural japonês, valendo-se para isso da mitodologia e da semiótica das paixões. Chegaram-se-se aos traços míticos de Siddharta, Adão e o Paraíso Perdido quando analisado Yagami Rato, o personagem principal; aos traços míticos de Nossa Senhora, Eva, Lilith e Isis quando analisada Misa Amane; e aos traços míticos de Trickster, Prometeu invertido e Apolo quando analisado o shinigami Ryuk. Perceberam-se como tais imagens significam ou deixam-se significar na sociedade contemporânea, evidenciando a pluralidade de um novo pensamento sendo construído no que chamamos pós-modernidade.

<p><!-- /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0cm; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";} @page Section1 {size:612.0pt 792.0pt; margin:70.85pt 70.85pt 70.85pt 70.85pt; mso-header-margin:36.0pt; mso-footer-margin:36.0pt; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --></p><p>Japanese presence on the global cultural market has steadily been increasing throughout the last decades. Fan-communities all over the world are celebrating the Japanese culture and cultural identity no longer seems bound to the local. This thesis is an empirical study which aims to examine the transnational flow of Japanese popular culture into Sweden. The author addresses the issue with three research questions; what unique dimensions could be ascribed to Swedish anime-fandom, what is appealing about Japanese popular culture and how is it influencing fan-audiences? To enable deeper understanding of the phenomenon, a qualitative research consisting of semi-structured telephone-interviews and questionnaires, was conducted with Swedish fans of Japanese popular culture. The results presented in this thesis indicate that the anime-community in Sweden possesses several unique dimensions, both in activities surrounding Japanese popular culture and consumption and habits. Japanese popular culture fills a void that seems to exist in domestic culture. It is different, and that is what is appealing to most fans. Anime and manga have inspired fans to learn about the Japanese culture, in some cases, Japanese popular culture has in a way “japanized” fans – making them wish they were born in Japan.</p><p> </p>

Through an analog between film and memory, I argue contemporary Japanese visual media constantly remediates this relationship in order to develop a more inclusive, plastic indexicality that allows media without direct material contiguity access to an indexicality not typically attributed to it. Amidst the early twenty-first century shift from old, mechanical media to new, electronic media, each Japanese text engages the West through intercultural discourses and intracultural responses, just as Japan has continually encountered the West since its forced opening by Commodore Perry in 1853. The plasticized indexicality figured by contemporary Japanese visual media implies the plastic nature of abstracted referents such as memory. I examine these issues through three texts, each representing three different contemporary Japanese visual media forms: the live-action film, After Life (Kore-eda Hirokazu, 1998), the anime film, Millennium Actress (Satoshi Kon, 2003), and the manga, Black Butler (Yana Toboso, 2006-ongoing). Each text remediates film and memory as analogs in ways particular to their own medium to refigure indexicality as inclusive of their own medium, revealing a cultural discourse wherein contemporary Japanese visual media engage with abstracted realities such as memory. By plasticizing and abstracting the index through its remediation of film and memory, contemporary Japanese visual media reveal visual media's, especially anime's and manga's, ability to relate to culture. Their refigured index is inclusive of all visual media, allowing each the opportunity to index subjective memory and experience. After Life introduces this possibility by privileging its memory-film recreations as a higher fidelity index to memory than documentary, though documentary's remediation informs this index. Both Millennium Actress and Black Butler extend After Life's inclusive possibilities to suggest that their painterly realities are not divorced from reality, but rather representative of its decentered reception as subjective experience and memory. As media technology extends human beings, through new media such as the internet, it also abstracts us from certain material interactions such as reading paperback books or speaking to friends rather than texting them. Contemporary Japanese visual media suggest that as old media make way for new media, we should readjust our preconceptions about media's relations to culture, for as our world becomes digitized, even animated, the painterly realities found in film, anime, and manga bear more relevance than ever to how we construct our worlds, inside Japan and across the world.

Japanese presence on the global cultural market has steadily been increasing throughout the last decades. Fan-communities all over the world are celebrating the Japanese culture and cultural identity no longer seems bound to the local. This thesis is an empirical study which aims to examine the transnational flow of Japanese popular culture into Sweden. The author addresses the issue with three research questions; what unique dimensions could be ascribed to Swedish anime-fandom, what is appealing about Japanese popular culture and how is it influencing fan-audiences? To enable deeper understanding of the phenomenon, a qualitative research consisting of semi-structured telephone-interviews and questionnaires, was conducted with Swedish fans of Japanese popular culture. The results presented in this thesis indicate that the anime-community in Sweden possesses several unique dimensions, both in activities surrounding Japanese popular culture and consumption and habits. Japanese popular culture fills a void that seems to exist in domestic culture. It is different, and that is what is appealing to most fans. Anime and manga have inspired fans to learn about the Japanese culture, in some cases, Japanese popular culture has in a way “japanized” fans – making them wish they were born in Japan.

This study explores the responses of twelve fifth graders to Japanese pictorial texts - manga (Japanese comics), anime (Japanese animations), kamishibai (Japanese traditional visual storytelling), and picture books - and their connections to Japanese culture and people. This study took place Cañon Elementary School in Black Canyon City in Arizona. The guiding research questions for this study were: How do children respond to Japanese pictorial texts? and What understandings of Japanese culture are demonstrated in children's inquiries and responses to Japanese pictorial texts? The study drew on reader response theory, New Literacy Studies, and multimodality. Data collection included participant-observation, videotaped/audiotaped classroom discussions and interviews, participants' written and artistic artifacts, ethnographic fieldnotes, and reflection journals. Results revealed that children demonstrated four types of responses including (1) analytical, (2) personal, (3) intertexual, and (4) cultural. These findings illustrate that the children actively employed their popular culture knowledge to make intertextual connections as part of meaning making from the stories. They also showed four types of cultural responses including (1) ethnocentrism, (2) understanding and acceptance, (3) respect and appreciation and valuing, and (4) change. This study makes a unique contribution to reader response as it examines American children's cultural understandings and literary responses to Japanese pictorial texts (manga, anime, kamishibai, and picture books).

This dissertation examines the role that animation plays in the formation of transcultural fan communities. A “transcultural fan community” is defined as a group in which members from many national, cultural, and ethnic backgrounds find a sense of connection across difference, engaging with each other through a mutual interest in animation while negotiating the frictions that result from their differing social and historical contexts. The transcultural model acts as an intervention into polarized academic discourses on media globalization which frame animation as either structural neo-imperial domination or as a wellspring of active, resistant readings. Rather than focusing on top-down oppression or bottom-up resistance, this dissertation demonstrates that it is in the intersections and conflicts between different uses of texts that transcultural fan communities are born. The methodologies of this dissertations are drawn from film/media studies, cultural studies, and ethnography. The first two parts employ textual close reading and historical research to show how film animation in the early twentieth century (mainly works by the Fleischer Brothers, Ōfuji Noburō, Walt Disney, and Seo Mitsuyo) and television animation in the late twentieth century (such as The Jetsons, Astro Boy and Cowboy Bebop) depicted and generated nationally and ethnically diverse audiences. Exactly how such diversity was handled varied according to the specific animation producers, distributors, and consumers involved. And yet, all of these cases exemplify models of textual engagement and modes of globalization that have a continuing influence today. Building on the basis of twentieth-century animation, the third part of the dissertation illustrates the risks and potentials that attend media globalization in the Internet era of the early twenty-first century. The web media texts There She Is!! (2003) and Hetalia: Axis Powers (2006) are analyzed alongside results from a survey of animation fans conducted online and at fan events in Canada, the United States, and Japan between July 2009 and September 2010. This dissertation thus demonstrates the different ways of living together in the world generated by the global crossings and clashes of social life and mediated imaginaries today.

This dissertation examines the role that animation plays in the formation of transcultural fan communities. A “transcultural fan community” is defined as a group in which members from many national, cultural, and ethnic backgrounds find a sense of connection across difference, engaging with each other through a mutual interest in animation while negotiating the frictions that result from their differing social and historical contexts. The transcultural model acts as an intervention into polarized academic discourses on media globalization which frame animation as either structural neo-imperial domination or as a wellspring of active, resistant readings. Rather than focusing on top-down oppression or bottom-up resistance, this dissertation demonstrates that it is in the intersections and conflicts between different uses of texts that transcultural fan communities are born. The methodologies of this dissertations are drawn from film/media studies, cultural studies, and ethnography. The first two parts employ textual close reading and historical research to show how film animation in the early twentieth century (mainly works by the Fleischer Brothers, Ōfuji Noburō, Walt Disney, and Seo Mitsuyo) and television animation in the late twentieth century (such as The Jetsons, Astro Boy and Cowboy Bebop) depicted and generated nationally and ethnically diverse audiences. Exactly how such diversity was handled varied according to the specific animation producers, distributors, and consumers involved. And yet, all of these cases exemplify models of textual engagement and modes of globalization that have a continuing influence today. Building on the basis of twentieth-century animation, the third part of the dissertation illustrates the risks and potentials that attend media globalization in the Internet era of the early twenty-first century. The web media texts There She Is!! (2003) and Hetalia: Axis Powers (2006) are analyzed alongside results from a survey of animation fans conducted online and at fan events in Canada, the United States, and Japan between July 2009 and September 2010. This dissertation thus demonstrates the different ways of living together in the world generated by the global crossings and clashes of social life and mediated imaginaries today.

As the deities known as Inari, foxes are vital to the religious and cultural landscape of Japan. Inari are given little consideration in the academic study of Japanese religions in English, despite their overwhelming presence and popularity in Japan. This is, in large part, due to the privileging of a Protestant definition of religion in the academic study of religion. Animating Inari addresses this lack of consideration by seeking to better understand Inari in Japan, particularly through the contexts of contemporary Shintō and popular worship (which are also severely underrepresented in scholarship). In order to explore Inari on the ground, this project is situated in the context of Fushimi Inari Taisha, the headquarters of Inari worship located in Kyoto. This project investigates the anime (animated television series), Inari, Konkon, Koi Iroha (or Inakon), which depicts Fushimi Inari Taisha through the life of a young girl, named Inari, and her relationship with the deity, known as Uka. In conjunction with my own experience at this shrine, I use Inakon as a tool with which to consider the popular aspects of Shintō, particularly as visible through Inari worship. By examining Inari worship, the characters and themes of Inakon, and the presence of fox characters in other Japanese popular media, it is apparent that Inari’s popularity is in large part due to the warm relationships they have with Japanese people and how they respond to their everyday concerns. This is in direct contrast to the more nationalistic leanings of the Jinja Honchō (National Association of Shintō Shrines), which is too often privileged in the academic study of Shintō at the expense of popular worship. Inari reflect the more popular concerns of contemporary Shintō: the connections and intimate bonds that exist between people, as well as the deities. By highlighting the functions of and attitudes towards Inari, especially in contrast to Jinja Honchō, it becomes clear that Inari resonate with Japanese on a profound level.