This is the second in a three part series on Cyberpunk by Mike Dillon. Part One is here. Cyberpunk literature is written by and written for a generation that occupies “a truly science-fictional world” (Sterling 1986, xi), producing work that...
This is the first in a three part series on Cyberpunk by Mike Dillon The last decade has seen a startling growth in the demand for Japanese consumer culture. A weariness of recycled material, paired with wartime anti-Americanism in general...
Here is another installment from my student essays from my Japanese popular culture class last year. This one is from Brendan Callum. From time to time there are motifs and symbols that come to represent or signify a certain genre....
In her master's thesis submitted to the East Asian Studies Center at USC, Annie Manion argues that among college students in the US, anime has become one of the most important drivers of interest in Japan and Japanese language study....
Is Disney trying to intentionally sabotage the release of Miyazaki Hayao's films in the USA? Deborah Shamoon pays a visit to Howl's Moving Castle, and finds her stay lacking......
The Matrix continues to be great fodder for transnational cultural ping-pong. While the Matrix creators acknowledge their debts to Japanese anime culture with Animatrix, Japanese fans re-domesticate the Matrix again with Matrix re-enactments. Now, UK anime fandom has brought...
Mike Dillon examines .hack//SIGN, an anime miniseries that aired in Japan between 2002-03, directed by Mashimo Koichi and written by Ito Kazunori and Omoda Akemi. What follows is an analysis of the cyberpunk themes explored within its story, and a...
Japan may lead the world in animation, but it's not generally known for live action sci fi films, or at least serious ones for adults (Godzilla notwithstanding). Budgetary restraints are probably one reason, but advances in computer animation could change...
Kiku Day has a scathing review of Lost in Translation in UK's Guardian. Day's review echoes some of the critique in Jane's mostly favorable chanpon.org review and the complaints aired by others and myself in the comments on Jane's review....
We've had some friendly disagreement on Chanpon over Lost in Translation, a movie that plays with the jerky hipness of neon Tokyo. Was it honoring Japan from a foreigner's eye? Or using foreignness to excuse cheap jokes? The recent film...
Ugh. I expect better from the BBC. "Captured by the Samurai"? "Bashido"? What, this news was so critical they couldn't wait for a fact-checker? But we can all expect more silliness along these lines as we count down to the...
<a href="http://www.alfrex.co.jp/z4_e.html">action figure</a> http://theater.nifty.com/zatoichi/ <a href="http://www.walkerplus.com/tokyo/latestmovie/mo1891.html">preview</a>
Fans of the Matrix in Japan took the legend and made it their own. Pictures and video clips have circulated the web quickly, showing brilliantly conceived Matrix movie enactments. For sale in the United States, the Animatrix is a collection...
