Animanga Otaku Culture In Istanbul And Berlin

Anime, manga and otaku culture, which drew considerable attention from the world youth culture in the 1990s, was formed within the popular culture wave that emerged in Japan especially after the 1970s, and has achieved its own market internationally within the new world policy of Japan after World War II. The alternative types, colorful and ideal characters and worlds provided has attracted the attention of world youth, academicians, and researchers. As this study focuses on the effects of anime, manga, and otaku cultures on the youth living in Istanbul, it aimed to evaluate this effect within the context of the boundaries of globalization. The fundamental problematic of this study is to evaluate and present this culture with its new, exclusive form of locality as a result of the interactions in each locality. This study was conducted as comparative one, with field studies performed in Istanbul and Berlin within the scope of anime and manga culture, and explains the existence and characteristics of manga and otaku cultures in Istanbul and Berlin through global culture.

In recent years, otaku culture has emerged as one of Japan s major cultural exports and as a genuinely transnational phenomenon. This timely volume investigates how this once marginalized popular culture has come to play a major role in Japan s identity at home and abroad. In the American context, the word otaku is best translated as geek an ardent fan with highly specialized knowledge and interests. But it is associated especially with fans of specific Japan-based cultural genres, including anime, manga, and video games. Most important of all, as this collection shows, is the way otaku culture represents a newly participatory fan culture in which fans not only organize around niche interests but produce and distribute their own media content. In this collection of essays, Japanese and American scholars offer richly detailed descriptions of how this once stigmatized Japanese youth culture created its own alternative markets and cultural products such as fan fiction, comics, costumes, and remixes, becoming a major international force that can challenge the dominance of commercial media. By exploring the rich variety of otaku culture from multiple perspectives, this groundbreaking collection provides fascinating insights into the present and future of cultural production and distribution in the digital age."

Like its predecessors, Directory of World Cinema: Japan 3 endeavours to move scholarly criticism of Japanese film out of the academy and into the hands of cinephiles the world over. This volume will be warmly welcomed by those with an interest in Japanese cinema that extends beyond its established names to equally remarkable filmmakers who have yet to receive such rigorous attention.

The capacity to adapt to external shocks, to resist negative impacts and to evolve to new socio-technical regimes has been increasingly studied in recent years by regional scientists in order to understand the dynamic conditions that create a “resilient territory”. Resilience is a notion imported from the study of ecological systems and other fields of science to the understanding of geographically embedded socio-economic systems. It is a characteristic often connected to a threshold of the socio-economic variety and specialization that facilitates the smooth adaptation to challenges in particular territories. As a result of recent crises, a number of regions are now further investigating this concept, trying to guarantee by planning the adequate conditions for resilience. Resilient Territories: Innovation and Creativity for New Modes of Regional Development contributes to the definition and advancement of the scientific agenda in the topics of regional resilience, innovation and creativity. The stabilization of this research agenda and an informed discussion of different definitions of resilience are crucial for the alignment and engagement of the scientific community in the study of these essential topics. This volume also focuses on informing policy and decision-makers, in various different levels of action, about the advancements of conceptualization in these domains.

Based on a series of case studies of globally distributed media and their reception in different parts of the world, Imagining the Global reflects on what contemporary global culture can teach us about transnational cultural dynamics in the 21st century. A focused multisited cultural analysis that reflects on the symbiotic relationship between the local, the national, and the global, it also explores how individuals’ consumption of global media shapes their imagination of both faraway places and their own local lives. Chosen for their continuing influence, historical relationships, and different geopolitical positions, the case sites of France, Japan, and the United States provide opportunities to move beyond common dichotomies between East and West, or United States and “the rest.” From a theoretical point of view, Imagining the Global endeavors to answer the question of how one locale can help us understand another locale. Drawing from a wealth of primary sources—several years of fieldwork; extensive participant observation; more than 80 formal interviews with some 160 media consumers (and occasionally producers) in France, Japan, and the United States; and analyses of media in different languages—author Fabienne Darling-Wolf considers how global culture intersects with other significant identity factors, including gender, race, class, and geography. Imagining the Global investigates who gets to participate in and who gets excluded from global media representation, as well as how and why the distinction matters.

"A menagerie of mascots and characters inhabit the islands of Japan, cheerfully guiding citizens through all sorts of daily activities and situations. ... The authors ... explore the cultural context of these ubiquitous, hard-working critters and their relationship to anime and manga, commercial characters like Hello Kitty, and the cult of cute, while introducting a host of adorable new best friends you never knew you had."--Book flap.

Given the degree of popular fascination with Gnostic religions, it is surprising how few pay attention to the one such religion that has survived from antiquity until the present day: Mandaism. Mandaeans, who esteem John the Baptist as the most famous adherent to their religion, have in our time found themselves driven from their historic homelands by war and oppression. Today, they are a community in crisis, but they provide us with unparalleled access to a library of ancient Gnostic scriptures, as part of the living tradition that has sustained them across the centuries. Gnostic texts such as these have caught popular interest in recent times, as traditional assumptions about the original forms and cultural contexts of related religious traditions, such as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, have been called into question. However, we can learn only so much from texts in isolation from their own contexts. Mandaean literature uniquely allows us not only to increase our knowledge about Gnosticism, and by extension all these other religions, but also to observe the relationship between Gnostic texts, rituals, beliefs, and living practices, both historically and in the present day.

Ninja Attack! introduces dozens of unforgettable real-life ninja straight out of the annals of Japanese history--many of whom are all but unknown outside their home country. Ninja masters. Solo assassins and operatives. Femme fatales as deadly as they were beautiful. Swordfighters out of legend. And the Shogun and warlords who commanded them. Each individual in this graphic novel is profiled with a full-page manga-style drawing and a dossier brimming with top-secret information, including photos, anecdotes, and dramatic stories of the individuals in action. The book covers ninja clothing styles, the types of weapons that were used, ninja tools, ninja tricks of the trade, and the basics of the ninja diet. It also includes a do-it-yourself tour of ninja related spots in modern Tokyo. Ninja Attack! is everything you always wanted to know about ninja but were too afraid you'd get a shuriken in the eye to ask. Legendary ninja covered in this book include: Prince Shotoku Mochizuki Chiyojo Hattori Hanzo Matsuo Basho Mamiya Rinzo Jiraiya Book 2 of 3 in the Yokai Attack! series. Others include Yokai Attack! and Yurei Attack!.

Achieving near cult status among architectural students around the world, Yoshiharu Tsukamoto and Momoyo Kaijima of Atelier Bow-Wow have built a career confronting the challenges posed by dense urban environments.

What is the function of art in the era of digital globalization? How can one think of art institutions in an age defined by planetary civil war, growing inequality, and proprietary digital technology? The boundaries of such institutions have grown fuzzy. They extend from a region where the audience is pumped for tweets to a future of “neurocurating,” in which paintings surveil their audience via facial recognition and eye tracking to assess their popularity and to scan for suspicious activity. In Duty Free Art, filmmaker and writer Hito Steyerl wonders how we can appreciate, or even make art, in the present age. What can we do when arms manufacturers sponsor museums, and some of the world’s most valuable artworks are used as currency in a global futures market detached from productive work? Can we distinguish between information, fake news, and the digital white noise that bombards our everyday lives? Exploring subjects as diverse as video games, WikiLeaks files, the proliferation of freeports, and political actions, she exposes the paradoxes within globalization, political economies, visual culture, and the status of art production.