A group of war orphans entered my life in 2007 when I was in Liberia working as the sound recordist for a documentary crew. I spent five months with them at their home, a rural Liberian orphanage named Rainbow Town. The boys at the orphanage often told me stories. During free time, we sat under the canopy outside their dorm and talked. The stories, which ranged from horrific accounts of war to playful tales of spiders and goats, fascinated me. With each story the boys narrated, a new illustration formed in my imagination. By the time I left Liberia, I had a pocketbook full of magical characters and events (See Appendix A). The boys' stories, which blend nonfiction with fantasy and folklore, are the inspiration for my 3D animation short, Dolo: Journey of the Lost Tapes. In this paper, I tell the stories behind the creation of the animation, share personal production experiences, and discuss the theoretical and historical influences that shaped my work. I conclude by discussing Dolo's significance and the work that I plan to do on the piece in the future.

This thesis examines shifting relations of labour, creativity, and political economy in the context of commercial animation production in contemporary Tokyo. Based on 12 months of fieldwork in the Japanese animation industry (2009-2010), the ethnography of the thesis is centred on young animation makers whose lives are fraught with persistent job insecurity and socio-economic precariousness. Contrary to celebratory narratives of the global success of anime, found in both Japanese media discourses and the literature of Japanese studies, these professional young workers live on the socio-economic fringe of mainstream Japanese society. Despite such instability, labour discourses in the animation industry are notable for their highly aspirational quality, which appears to be based on global liberal discourses of self-realisation through the pursuit of dreams in the labour market. Commercial animation production in the Japanese industry entails a complex division of labour in which animation makers are, at the root, divided between managers and creators. This management-creative relation structures the primary context of commercial production. Thematically, the thesis engages mainly with three research literatures in anthropology: the anthropology of creativity, the anthropology of work, and Japanese ethnography. The analytical locus is built on the perspective of young entry-level managers, with whom I worked during fieldwork and who were on the lowest strata of the workplace hierarchy. Through the detailed ethnography of animation production - one of Japan's premier creative industries - the thesis examines creative processes of animation making within the terms of work and labour. In so doing, it engages critically with the social and economic structures of commercial animation production, and explores the lived dimension of labour on the production floor. Methodologically, this means combining the perspectives of political economy and phenomenology by situating the micro-processes of animation making firmly in the industry's social and economic relations of production. I pay particular attention to the ways in which shifting social and cultural discourses of labour in Japan intersect with global liberal ideologies, such as creativity and self-realisation, in the context of commercial animation production. The major focus of the thesis is therefore to explicate what it is that makes these young animation makers, despite adverse conditions of labour, retain their aspirations to pursue the profession of animation making.

This postgraduate thesis called "Gender, Identity and Sexuality in Japanese Anime", will be dealing with the depiction and grasping of the meaning of gender, sexuality and identity and the overcoming of their traditional borderlines in Japanese anime. The meaning of the word "gender" in this thesis, is primarily referring to it's original meaning, typically used with reference to social and cultural arrangements of gender roles rather than biological differences between sexes, which is how the word "gender" is often misused. This thesis will primarily be an in-depth research of the diverse interpretation of gender, sexuality and identity in Japanese animated film from an anthropological point of view, incorporating history, tradition and social development in Japan, ranging from its very first mythological beginnings up to present day. Japanese animated film is characterized by its broad range of genres and it's diversity, which is derived not only from the richness of its own unique culture and way of thinking, but also by adopting western concepts, which are then moulded together and joined in a new original form. This manner of adopting certain aspects from other cultures and their uniting with Japanese tradition and culture created a rich fertile ground for growth of new concepts of gender, sexuality and identity. It is also thanks to this aspect, that Japanese anime has obtained a huge enthusiastic and devoted fan base all around the world. The aim of this thesis is to illuminate the background of the emergence of different concepts of gender, sexuality and identity in Japanese anime and to point out these aspects in individual film and series productions, which best depict these different concepts.

The value of literature in the contemporary age is a controversial issue. The challenge posed by the interpretation of this era is expressed by the provocative remarks of critics such as Karatani Kōjin and Suzuki Sadami maintaining that after the 80s modern "pure" literature died (History and Repetition, 2012; The Concept of "Literature" in Japan, 2006). Reading Karatani and Suzuki's comments as merely provocative, signifying that a form of literature has died, this study enquires into how literature (and the arts) have changed and found new ways of expression after the historical break of 1989. The dissertation offers immediacy as a possible answer. Immediacy is a theme, a literary device stressing the present moment submerging clear notions of past and present. The precondition for immediacy is an ideological vacuum, experienced by characters across age groups and genders, where they do not share social ideologies or collective purposes. In this isolation, they concentrate only on their local realities, on what they perceive directly (physically and emotionally), acting quickly and repeatedly in the absence of critical thought. The constant action is often carried out in response to corporeal stimuli, specifically violence and sex, that grant immediate gratification in the vacuum. However, at the core characters indulging in immediacy long for inter-personal connections. Building a community based on critical thought and mutual understanding is the solution to escape from immediacy. The dissertation explores manifestations of immediacy in contemporary Japanese literature and popular culture (manga and anime) published or broadcast between 1995 and 2011. Through the analyses of cultural theories, literature by Takahashi Genichirō, Taguchi Randy and Hirano Keiichirō, and influential works in manga and anime (Neon Genesis Evangelion, Psycho-Pass and Shingeki no kyojin), it shows the theme's relevance and discusses how it contributes to the broader fields of contemporary Japanese literature and popular culture. By doing so, the dissertation also provides a study of the current artistic panorama in Japan, one that is often neglected critically, but that speaks of its culture with great force and imagination.

In the end of 1860 Japan faced a bloody civil war. The 200 year old Tokugawa Shogunate lost its power to the emperor and the Meiji period started. Before that the land was draw in to a civil war. Ronin samurais from all of Japan was gathering in the capital. Some of the were shouting for heaven's revenge and with it the ment the emperor´s. On the other side was the samurais still loyal to Tokugawa. One of the Shoguns loyal soldier’s history still echoes, the Shinsengumi or newly selected corps. These soldiers are still being used in movies, manga and anime to tell about a dark time in Japan's history. This essay will discuss how anime is using historical persons and their historical period. Also, why they are choosing to create a character with traits and talents. Also try to understand the purpose of historical use in anime. The discussion about manga and animes purpose have been on topic before, but not in combination with how they use historical facts. Cecilia Trenter and Pelle Snickars book with theories in how movies are taking parts of history and make new use out of it. Anime and manga are a big part of Japanese culture and the theories about them are important to understand this study. To do that i used Mark. W. McWilliams and Thomas Lamarres and their discussion about the importance of see through the layers of this creations.

Perfect Blue is an anime (Japanese animation) film directed by Kon Satoshi released in 1997. The film revolves around a female idol (a pop star) named Mima who quits her career as an idol to become an actress. She gradually loses her mind, as the pressures from her acting career, her managers, fans and a stalker catch up to her. Perfect Blue touches on the blurring line between fiction and reality, the objectification of women (and idols) as mere products, and the role of women in the idol industry. It is also a stark critique of the hegemonic masculinity and the gender roles that are imposed on women in Japanese society. This thesis presents anime as an important pop culture phenomenon with a massive influence worldwide. The thesis examines the gender stereotypes propagated by this phenomenon and proposes a that Kon’s work is different compared to other anime. This work compares how gender roles are portrayed in the different versions: The Japanese original and the US English subtitles and dubbing. Methodologically, the analysis relies on close observation of the use of the Japanese first and second person pronouns and sentence-final particles in the characters’ language, since “the use of these features is known to be highly gender-dependent” (Hiramoto 2013, 55). This study comes to the conclusion that the subtitles and the dubbing provide a relatively close rendering of gender of the Japanese text, even if the linguistic resources of English do not allow for the translation of gendered Japanese pronouns and sentence-final particles. This means that the subtitles and dubbings maintain the feminist message Kon wanted to give in his film. The study concludes by stressing the importance of taking into account the use of specific pronouns and sentence-final particles when translating Japanese, as these particles are gender-loaded. It also emphasises the importance of being critical of anime’s hegemonic masculinity, and argues that Kon goes against hegemony by portraying a strong and independent female character.

The democratization of new media technologies, particularly the software tools though which "content" can be manipulated, has invited a seemingly vast array of modes through which people can express themselves. Conversations in fan studies, for example, cite the novel ways in which new media allow fans to alter texts in the expression of their subcultural needs, while theorizations of media often reverse the paradigm by arguing how advances in technology will revolutionize how we interact with, and hence, know the world. Frequently overlooked are the ways in which these technologies and communities co-construct engagement and the extent to which this engagement spurs novel ways of interaction. This dissertation addresses these problems by theorizing the role of the medium as a ludic negotiation between text and fan, informed--but not determined--by the rules and strictures that construct both these discrete media artifacts and the communities in which these texts circulate. Nowhere are these concerns more evident than in the subcultural realm of anime fan translations, where an eclectic blend of tech-savvy, Japanese language proficient, culturally competent individuals from different backgrounds converge to form groups who have self-nominated themselves to spread anime through timely, efficient, and accurate translations. To be successful, they must navigate multiple linguistic and cultural currents as they move between Japanese and their target language, deftly avoid running aground on the shores that structure the boundaries of container media, all the while remaining mindful of ideological and subcultural discursive shoals as they scan the horizon for alternate paths to their translation goal. These fan translators are, to be less dramatic, limited in the types of translations they can provide by the formal properties of the selected medium, but these limitations should be conceived as a generative process motivating translators to seek novel ways of engagement with the medium to meet both their translation needs and the needs of the communities in which their translations circulate.

Background. As computing power has increased over the years, larger parts of the digital graphics industries are moving towards using real-time rendering for their solutions. The fast iteration and visual response help make the creative processes and communication more accessible in both the desktop and smartphone markets. One noticeably growing area using real-time rendering is the communication between people and audiences using online chat applications with virtual avatars. As humans, social interaction is essential to every aspect of our health. The requirements of remote communications to satisfy the needs of social interaction are facial expressions. Facial expressions involve motion. Thus making real-time rendering mandatory for having facial expressions in computer-generated images. This thesis shows the performance result of having real-time procedural-generated eye features. Objectives. This thesis is based on an experiment by developing a data set of duration for computing different visual aspects of anime eyes, the aim is to help inform the creation of more complete and optimized shader solutions. The objectives of this thesis are to produce a profiling application, produce a collection of eye references, produce a collection of visual eye features, produce shaders based on the collections, and measure the time performance of the shaders. Method. Doing this experiment involves producing a profiling application in the C++ programming language using the OpenGL graphics API. The profiling application can render a set of shaders and measure time metrics. The experiment is executed on two different computers with different specifications. By gathering a collection of eye references from online resources, targeting popular media in the anime style, a collection of visual eye features can be established with common and unique attributes. The collections allow for the creation of a set of shaders that replicate the collected eye features. With the profiling application and shaders, a data collection of time metrics are composed. Results. The final results of the profiling experiment have a collection of 29 shaders representing different eye features. The profiling tests gave the results of how many milliseconds it took for a set number of frames to render each produced shader. This result is shown with the help of two different graphs for each computer that executed the experiment. Deconstructing the resulting data helps to analyze and distinguish interesting aspects. Conclusions. From the result of this thesis experiment, the conclusion can be made that an eye feature by itself is a fast process for the GPU to compute on its own. Aset of eye features combined to create a final eye shader including animation and eye tracking is a valid future work section regarding this thesis experiment.

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Syftet med examensarbetet är att få en bild av huruvida det är möjligt att använda sig av anime som undervisningsmaterial rörande etik och moral. Med hjälp av filmer och en enkätundersökning har detta genomförts. Sammanfattningsvis pekar resultatet på att eleverna verkligen får tillfälle och möjlighet att med hjälp av anime reflektera över etiska och existentiella frågor.