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Anime/Manga Readings
Sh-nen and Shojo manga/anime
Sh-nen and shojo differ from each other mainly through the thematic stories they choose to tell. The narratives given in each type of anime or manga are indicative of the audience, where sh-nen gears toward boys, and shojo gears toward girls. The two have some similar aspects; for one, Osamu Tezuka had played a large part in the influence of both as popular manga culture. Not only has Tezuka penned the likes of sh-nen works such as Astro Boy and Kimba the White Lion, he has also been responsible for the shojo manga of Princess Knight. The manga culture owes this man much of its beginnings.
As far as narratives, go, however, sh-nen and shojo differ as easily as apples and oranges. Angela Drummond-Matthews states that the general narrative of boys' manga follows a formulaic turn of the hero's journey. This hero's journey typifies the themes of sh-nen manga and anime, which can then be split into their various genres of adventures (sports, war, action, horror, giant robots, etc.). Through such general themes, it is no surprise that the sh-nen manga industry is much more lucrative, being the largest segment of the manga publishing industry -- most of the themes are so broad that even the female audience has no problem enjoying the stories. Shojo differs in this narrative respect. Other than the fact that its stories are not as heroically epic as its sh-nen counterpart, shojo's...
At its creation in the 1960s, romance was just an added factor, not exactly the major be-all-end-all goal that is in most shojo manga of today. Kukhee Choo relates this observation, stating that contemporary popular stories find that shojo has gone about with moving the image of the female heroine back to a more domestic place: Choo cites Hana Yori Dango and Fruits Basket as examples of the females working as maids in a rich, male establishment.
2. Sharon Kinsella's "Cuties in Japan"
There is much to be said about the popularity of the kawaii ("cute") culture in Japan, which seems to encompass many different products in the nation. Kinsella's "Cuties in Japan" article illuminates the beginnings and reasoning of the emergence of the cute culture, as well as the capitalization of businesses and marketing strategies that cater to the popularity of what is considered cute to the youth of Japan. There are, of course, caveats to this culture; though with the youth's attempt to break away from traditional Japan, the faction against the cute culture will find that opposing it will do very little into eradicating it.
Kinsella has pinpointed the fact that Japanese culture has embraced and cultivated the idea that childhood is an idealized, "otherworldly" notion. In-so-doing, by the 1950s, Disney inspirations brought Japanese culture into a reminiscence of what was believed to be…
Japan Themes in the Anime film, Paprika For the purposes of this paper, the scene of focus is from a Japanese anime film called Paprika. This film was released in 2006, from a prominent studio, Mad House, and a prominent Japanese director, Satoshi Kon, who recently died at age 47. Kon is a well-known director, quite known for his other films, including Tokyo Godfathers. Paprika takes place in a not too distant
Kusanagi Satoshi states that the so called 'anime' phenomenon did not, in fact, rise up all of a sudden within the past few years; in fact, it has been slowly developing over a longer period of time, perhaps from the 1960's onwards. This was the time that very many Japanese shows were in reality produce with such a clearly American style that the final product came to be labeled
Japanese Animation Japan is known for its creative and unique animations. Pokemon, Astroboy and Doraemon are only a few beloved Japanese animation characters. The genre dates back to the early 1900s. The first animated Japanese movie was Kyoto, a tale about a boy in a navy uniform waving. At only 50 frames, the film was considered an innovative breakthrough. In the years to come however, there was very little animation (also
Japanese Anime/Manga A Division of Gender Culture: The Shojo and the Sh-nen Countless arguments have risen about the dividing line of Japanese animation and comics marketing, especially regarding the age and gender groups. When looking at a specific comic or animation on a shelf, one usually examines it and decided then and there whether it is a work specifically geared to girls (shojo) or one targeting an audience of boys (sh-nen). Sometimes
Japanese popular culture has a unique aesthetic, and is completely modern as befits a wealthy industrial society. Comics, known as manga, and cartoons, known as anime are two of the more immediately recognizable elements of Japanese popular culture. Both are long-established entertainment forms in Japan and cover all genres of fiction, not just the children's genre. Indeed, some anime and manga are exceptionally graphic and brutally violent. Whereas manga and anime
Figure 3. Cover art for Miyazaki's Nausicaa DVD set Source: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_t68ar0SFX54/SrvMLVUJMyI/AAAAAAAADy4 / Ol1Z06z6YdE/s400/Nausicaa.jpg The economic success of Nausicaa convinced its producers that the market for their type of work was viable, resulting in the explosion of the global manga and anime markets (Schilling, 1997). Launching Studio Ghibli as a framework in which to produce his theatrical follow-up to Nausicaa, Miyazaki's worked on Tenku no Shiro Laputa, another fantasy adventure story concerning a