Introduction
Once again, for the next annual list of academic publications on anime/manga, covering 2006, I am breaking it down into two sections. This first one covers articles published in academic/scholarly journals, as well as “journals of opinion”, commentary magazines, and publications sponsored by Japanese government agencies and non-profit organizations. The second will include books and essay collections.
Particularly notable journal articles on anime/manga published in 2006 included Susan Napier’s Matter out of place: Carnival, containment and cultural recovery in Miyazaki’s Spirited Away, in the Journal of Japanese Studies, one of the leading English-language journals in this area, two papers in the Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy – one introducing manga to teachers and the other, arguing that anime can have a distinct benefit for students of Japanese as a foreign language, in-depth studies of Full Metal Alchemist, Haibane Renmei, Memories, Perfect Blue, and Hayao Miyazaki’s Oscar-winning Spirited Away, and several essays, in different publications, on the appeal of “boys’ love” manga and anime to audiences both in Japan and in other countries.
Structurally, 2006 also saw the launch of both Animation: An Interdisciplinary Journal, the first peer-reviewed journal on animation published by a major for-profit publisher (with Platonic sex: Perversion and shojo anime (Part one), by McGill University’s Thomas Lamarre, in the inaugural issue), and the online-only, open access Animation Studies. In the years since, both of these journals have actively welcomed academic articles on Japanese animation, with almost 30 such articles between the two of them.