Continuing my work in building a comprehensive list of published English-language scholarship on Japanese animation and comics, the anime/manga industry, and the activities of anime/manga fans around the world, I have now completed the Annual Bibliography for 2012. It contains 93 individual titles – among them, eight new books, including the highly regarded and well-reviewed Anime’s Media mix: Franchising Toys and Characters in Japan and Passionate Friendship: The Aesthetics of Girl’s Culture in Japan, Mostly Manga: A Genre Guide to Popular Manga, Manhwa, Manhua and Anime (a “selection and readers’ advisory guide” aimed specifically at public librarians working to introduce Japanese comics and animation into their libraries’ collections), an excellent collection of essays by Western and Japanese scholars on otaku culture, at least fifteen individual essays on topics related to anime/manga appearing in edited collections, and over fifty articles in peer-reviewed scholarly journals.
The titles of these essay collections and journals again give an excellent indication of the sheer breadth of the “field” that now welcomes research and scholarship on anime/manga
- Arts Marketing: An International Journal
- Journal of Media and Religion
- Linguistics and the Study of Comics (book)
- Popular Culture and the State in East and Southeast Asia (book)
- Science Fiction Film, Television, and Adaptation: Across the Screens (book)
- World Literature Today (journal)
The full 2012 Bibliography appears below. As with all editions of the Annual Bibliography of Anime and Manga Studies, it is likely that this list is not complete. Recommendations or suggestions for additional entries to add are always welcome!
The Bibliography is also available and permanently archived as a separate page. Any new titles I locate will be added to the archived page only.Annual Bibliography of Anime and Manga Studies – 2012
Books — Reference Guides — Essay Collections — Book Chapters — Journal Articles
Books
Cavallaro, Dani. Art in anime: The creative quest as theme and metaphor. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co.
Cavallaro, Dani. CLAMP in context: A critical study of the manga and anime. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co.
Cavallaro, Dani. Kyoto Animation: A critical study and filmography. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co.
Shamoon, Deborah. Passionate friendship: The aesthetics of girl’s culture in Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
Steinberg, Marc. Anime’s media mix: Franchising toys and characters in Japan. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Thomas, Jolyon Baraka. Drawing on tradition: Manga, anime, and religion in contemporary Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
Reference Guides
Beaty, Bart H. and Stephen Weiner (Eds.). Critical survey of graphic novels: Manga. Ipswich, MA: Salem Press.
Kalen, Elisabeth. Mostly manga: A reference guide to manga, manhwa, manhua, and anime. Santa Barbara, CA: Libraries Unlimited
Essay Collections
Mechademia, Volume 7: Lines of Sight.
Mechademia: An Annual Forum for Anime, Manga and Fan Arts is a unique ongoing “monographic series” of essay collections. Every year’s volume has an individual subtitle, is based around a specific theme, and features a selection of original essays, translations of materials that have already been published in Japanese, and non-academic content such as manga, photography, and other creative works.
Ito, Mizuko, Okabe, Daisuke, & Tsuji, Izumi (Eds.). Fandom unbound: Otaku culture in a connected world. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Book Chapters
Archer, Arlene, and Huang, Cheng-Wen. Uncovering the multimodal literacy practices in reading manga and the implications for pedagogy. New media literacies and participatory popular culture across borders (pp. 44-60). New York, NY: Routledge.
Birk, Hanne. Pink cats and dancing daisies: A narratological approach to anime and film versions of The Secret Garden. A hundred years of The Secret Garden: Frances Hodgson Burnett’s children’s classic revisited (pp. 105-124). Goettinger, Germany: V&R Unipress GmbH.
Bouissou, Jean-Marie. Popular culture as a tool for Japanese ‘soft power’: Myth or reality? Manga in four European countries. Popular culture and the state in East and Southeast Asia (pp. 46-64). New York: Routledge.
Bramlett, Frank. Linguistic codes and character identity in Afro Samurai. Linguistics and the study of comics (pp. 183-209). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Choo, Kukhee. Nationalizing ‘cool’: Japan’s government global policy toward the content industry. Popular culture and the state in East and Southeast Asia (pp. 85-105). New York: Routledge.
Cohn, Neil. Framing attention in American and Japanese Comics. In Naomi Miyake, David Peebles, & Richard P. Cooper (Eds.). Building bridges across cognitive sciences around the world: Proceedings of the 34th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Sciences Society (pp. 240-245), Austin, TX: Cognitive Sciences Society.
deWinter, Jennifer. Neo-bushido: Neomedieval anime and Japanese essence. Neomedievalism in the media: Essays on film, television, and electronic games (pp. 83-102). Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press.
Ellis, William. Fairy tales as metacommentary in manga and anime. Marvelous transformations: An anthology of fairy tales and contemporary critical perspectives (pp. 503-508). Peterborough, Canada: Broadview Press.
Endo, Yukihide. A semiotic morphology, anime body disproportion, and storytelling. Semiotics 2012: Semiotics and new media (pp. 119-123).
Fujii, Hisashi. Is ‘poverty’ or ‘affluence’ the reality?: Towards consideration of ‘living in the regions’. Pop culture and the everyday in Japan: Sociological perspectives (pp. 218-246). Victoria, Australia: Trans Pacific Press.
Kijima, Yoshimasa. Why make e-moe-tional attachments to fictional characters?: The cultural sociology of the post-modern. Pop culture and the everyday in Japan: Sociological perspectives (pp. 149-170). Victoria, Australia: Trans Pacific Press.
MacWilliams, Mark. Religion and manga. Handbook of contemporary Japanese religions (pp. 595-628). Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.
Mihara, Tetsuya, et al. A metadata-centric approach to a production and browsing platform of manga. The Outreach of digital libraries: A globalized resource network (pp. 87-96). Heldelberg, Germany: Springer.
Pirkle, Michelle. Deja vu all over again? Cowboy Bebop’s transformation to the big screen. Science fiction film, television, and adaptation: Across the screens (pp. 164-175). New York: Routledge
Suter, Rebecca. Human and superhuman in contemporary Japanese girls’ manga. What is the human?: Australian voices from the humanities (pp. 82-100). Melbourne, Australia: Australian Scholarly Publishing.
Journal Articles
Abdul-Wahab, Juliana, and Anuar, Mustaffa. Global media product and construction of “Japanese identity”: A case study of anime on Malaysian television. Jurnal Komunikasi, Malaysian Journal of Communication, 28(2), 1-19.
April, Keisha. Cartoons aren’t real people, too: Does the regulation of virtual child pornography violate the First Amendment and criminalize subversive thought? Cardozo Journal of Law and Gender, 19(1), 241-272.
Bainbridge, Jason, & Norris, Craig. Madman Entertainment: A case study in ‘by fans for fans’ media distribution. Media International Australia, 142, 5-15.
Briel, Holger. The drawn-out diaspora: Manga on the shores of the Other. International Journal of Comic Art, 14(2), 368-384.
Brown, Morris and Rankin-Brown, Maria. From samurai to manga: The function of manga to shape and reflect Japanese ideology. Japan Studies Review, 16, 75-92.
Bryce, Mio. Outside stories: Manga on the margins. Metro: Australia‘s Film & Media Magazine, 171, 132-135.
Bryce, Mio, & Plumb, Amy. Mushishi: Post modern representation of otherness in and outside human bodies. International Journal of the Humanities, 9(11), 111-120.
Bukh, Alexander, Reception of the revisionist historical manga in Japan: A case study of university students. Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 13(4), 623-638.
Chow, Kenny. Toward holistic animacy: Digital animated phenomena echoing East Asian thoughts. Animation: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 7(2), 175-187.
Clements, Jonathan, & Ip, Barry. The Shadow Staff: Japanese animators in the Tōhō Aviation Education Materials Production Office 1939-1945. Animation: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 7(2), 189-204.
Cohn, Neil, Taylor-Weiner, Amaro, & Grossman, Suzanne. Framing attention in Japanese and American comics: Cross-cultural differences in attentional structure. Frontiers in Cultural Psychology, 3, Article 349.
Cooper-Chen, Anne. Cartoon planet: The cross-cultural acceptance of Japanese animation. Asian Journal of Communication, 22(1), 44-57.
Doerr, Zephra. Abridged series and fandom remix culture. Transformative Works and Cultures, 9.
Ehrlich, Linda. Ningyō: An homage to the films of Kawamoto Kihachirō. Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema, 3(2), 117-138.
Exner, Nina. Anime-zing in North Carolina: Library views of anime fans. North Carolina Libraries, 70(1), 28-34.
Frohlich, Dennis. Evil must be punished: Apocalyptic religion in the television series Death Note. Journal of Media and Religion, 11(3), 141-155.
Gibbs, Christy. In the eye of the beholder: Bishounen as fantasy and reality. Refractory: A Journal of Entertainment Media, 20.
Gibson, Alicia. Atomic pop! Astro Boy, the dialectic of enlightenment, and machinic modes of being. Cultural Critique, 80, 183-204.
Gill, Tom. “Chiko,” “A View of the Seaside,” and “Mister Ben of the Igloo”: Visual and verbal narrative technique in three classic manga by Yoshiharu Tsuge. International Journal of Comic Art, 14(2), 169-190.
Greenberg, Marc. Comics, courts & controversy: A case study of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. Loyola of Los Angeles Entertainment Law Review, 32(2), 121-186.
Heinze, Ulrich. Time travel topoi in Japanese manga. Japan Forum, 24(2), 163-184.
Horbinski, Andrea & Leavitt, Alex. Even a monkey can understand fan activism: Political speech, artistic expression, and a public for the Japanese dôjin community. Transformative Works and Cultures, 10.
Hori, Hikari. Views from elsewhere: Female shoguns in Yoshinaga Fumi’s Ooku and their precursors in Japanese popular culture. Japanese Studies, 32(1), 77-95.
Inouye, Yasuyo. Manga and libraries in Japan. FAIFE Spotlight.
Jackson, Paul. NoitaminA: Animation through the looking glass. Metro: Australia’s Film & Media Magazine, 171, 128-131.
Katsumata, Hiro. Japanese popular culture in East Asia: A new insight into regional community building. International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, 12(1), 133-160.
Kihachiro, Kawamoto. A puppet’s life. International Journal of Comic Art, 14(1), 525-529.
Landa, Amanda. Mechanized bodies of adolescence: Weaponized children, national allegory, and Japanese anime. Red Feather Journal: An International Journal of Children’s Visual Culture, 3(2), 16-33.
Lee, Hye-Kyung. Cultural consumers as “new cultural intermediaries”: Manga scanlators. Arts Marketing: An International Journal, 2(2), 131-143.
Lunning, Frenchy. The kyara, the shôjo, and the strange trace. International Journal of Comic Art, 14(2), 225-238.
Madeley, June. Transnational transformations: A gender analysis of Japanese manga featuring unexpected bodily transformations. Journal of Popular Culture, 45(4), 789-806.
Martin, Fran. Girls who love boys’ love: Japanese homoerotic manga as trans-national Taiwan culture. Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 13(3), 365-383.
Nakagaki, Kotaro. Expanding female manga market: Shungiku Uchida and the emergence of the autobiographical essay. International Journal of Comic Art, 14(1), 236-250.
Niu, Han-Jen, Chiang, Yung-Sung, & Tsai, Hsien-Tang. An exploratory study of the otaku adolescent consumer. Psychology & Marketing, 29(10), 712-725.
Norris, Craig. Perfect Blue and the negative representation of fans. Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema, 4(1), 69-86.
O’Malley, Rebecka, & Bryce, Mio. Fantasy can speak the truth: Focusing on the manga series, “Fruits Basket”. International Journal of Learning, 18(9), 81-90.
Ono, Kosei. Saseo Ono in his Nichiyo Hochi days. International Journal of Comic Art, 14(1), 268-282.
Parini, Ilaria. Censorship of anime in Italian distribution. Meta: Translators’ Journal, 57(2), 325-337.
Perkins, Chris. Flatness, depth, and Satoshi Kon’s ethics. Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema, 4(2), 119-134.
Ramasubramanian, Srividya, & Kornfield, Sarah. Japanese anime heroines as role models for U.S. youth: Wishful identification, parasocial interaction, and intercultural entertainment effects. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, 5(3), 189-207.
Roberts, Ian. Genesis of the digital anime music video scene, 1990-2001. Transformative Works and Cultures, 9.
Rustin, Michael, & Rustin, Margaret. Fantasy and reality in Miyazaki’s animated world. Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society, 17(2), 169-184.
Smith, Iain Robert. Sherlock Hound and the transnational. Alluvium, 1(3).
Smith, Michelle, & Parsons, Elizabeth. Animating child activism: Environmentalism and class politics in Ghibli’s Princess Mononoke (1997) and Fox’s Fern Gully (1992). Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, 26(1), 25-37.
Steinberg, Marc. Condensing the media mix: Multiple possible worlds in The Tatami Galaxy. Canadian Journal of Film Studies, 21(2), 71-92.
Suter, Rebecca. Orientalism, self-orientalism, and Occidentalism in the visual-verbal medium of Japanese girls’ comics. Literature & Aesthetics, 22(2), 230-247.
Takekawa, Shunichi. Fusing nationalisms in postwar Japan: The Battleship Yamato and popular culture. Electronic Journal of Contemporary Japanese Studies, 12(3).
Tanaka, Motoko. Apocalyptic imagination in contemporary Japan. Asia-Pacific World, 3(2), 67-82.
Thomas, Jolyon Baraka. Horrific cults and comic “religion”: Manga after Aum. Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, 39(1), 121-151.
Vollmar, Rob. Dark side of the manga: Tezuka Osamu’s dark period. World Literature Today, 86(2), 14-19.
Wang, Sean. Nature or nurture: Perspectives of Japanese manga on an age-old debate. Stanford Undergraduate Research Journal, 11, 35-37.
Statistics
Total entries: 93
Books: 6 (+2 reference guides)
Book chapters: 34
In essay collections on anime/manga: 19
In other interdisciplinary and general essay collections: 15
Journal articles: 51
Total sources: 41
Articles per source: 0.80
The year’s “most popular” journal (International Journal of Comic Art) for articles on anime/manga published 6 articles (12% of the total)
5 journals (12% of the total) published two or more articles, for a total of 16 articles (31% of the total)
36 journals (88%) published only one article on anime/manga (69% of the total).