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As a fan of anime, I'm always interested in what other fans think of various shows, but I'm more interested in what fans think of the anime industry and themselves. It's a discussion at the meta level, rife with landmine topics that erupt violently upon the utterance of singular, controversial words. For example, lolis, edgy, over/underrated, deconstruction, deep, pretentious, and so on. I'd like to see more discussions beyond specific shows and loaded words, ascending to fan and industry levels. So, here's a basic one:







What are they like in Japan? In the United States? Does a fan of shounen works behave the same in Tokyo as they would in New York? What about anime fans in Brazil? Would they act the same as those in Japan and the states, given their 100,000+ convention attendance records? How would China's and France's anime fans compare to others in discussions revolving around censorship and localizations? How about the topic of import/purchasing difficulties and pirating in the Pacific Islands? Or the definition of anime and the creation of domestic anime-esque works in the Middle East? And, with the advent of today's Internet culture, while we speak different languages, are we able to speak of anime with similar passion and enthusiasm?

Originally written as a Ph.D dissertation, Anime Fan Communities: Transcultural Flows and Frictions, written by Sandra Annett, Assistant Professor of Film Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario, later published this book to better explore the transcultural phenomenon deemed "anime fan communities" with today's networking and communicative feats in mind.

The book itself is divided into its introduction, and the following sections and chapters:

Section I: Animation and the Miraculous Cinema

Chapter 1, "Cartoon Internationale" - The history of animated film, focusing on the United States and Japan with mentions of multiple international efforts

Chapter 2, "World War Cute" - The usage of animation during World War II


Section II: After These Messages: Television Animation in the Age of "Posts"

Chapter 3, "Kid Vid: Children and Science Fiction TV Fandom" - The use of futuristic and science fiction titles to indoctrinate children into a global, homogenized demographic, as well as the portrayal of children in animation between the 1960s - 80s.

Chapter 4, "Channel Surfers: Cowboy Bebop's Postnational Fans" - The birth of anime fan communities in North America and Japan between the 1970s - 90s.


Section III: Online Conversations Across Difference

Chapter 5, "Love at First Site" - A study specifically about the Flash animation series There She Is!! and its multilingual characteristics.

Chapter 6, "World Conflict/World Conference" - A study of Hetalia Axis Powers along with its international controversies.



From here, I'll look into the book in three parts: the introduction with Part I, Part II by itself, and Part III combined with a conclusion portion at the end. With the intent of breaking down the barrier separating fans from scholars and critics, hopefully this'll shed light on what anime fandoms are, where they come from, and what'll become of them in the future.







"Friction is not just about sowing things down. Friction is required to keep global power in motion...Friction inflects historical trajectories, enabling, excluding, and particularizing."

- Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Friction: An ethnography of global connection, 2005

In metaphorically relating friction to the development of global anime communities, the act of fan communities interacting with their respective mediums facilitated the circulation of animated contents from television to internet, from nation to nation, and from fan to fan. As Annett adds, this concept of two "forces," which could represent objects, ideas, bodies of government, and social groups shape the distribution and reception of various works, often colored by specific cultural peculiarities, censorship and communication issues. As a "borderless medium," anime is capable of connecting communities across multiple times and places, illustrating the ability for new media technologies to create new avenues of connection between people. As such, understanding how these fan communities were built and connected globally requires comparing the histories of multiple locations and time periods, which will give insight into how we interact in today's world. From here, Annett addresses two questions: why is anime popular outside of Japan, and do new mass media technologies capable of imprisoning or empower audiences?

First, why is anime popular outside of Japan, or as a more specific question, why is anime popular in America? Annett poses this question, in addition to citing multiple works understanding anime's popularity in America through the eyes of both American and Japanese scholars, of which range back to Frederick Patten's writings in the 1970s. However, Annett notes that this is but one aspect of the greater conversation. This line of questioning implies that anime was primarily a result of Post-WWII cross-culturalization through Disney and Osamu Tezuka. In other words, it implies anime's popularity was a result of Japan/US relations, ignoring the communities forming throughout other parts of the world. Annett briefly reflects on her experiences watching Voltron in Canada in the 1980s, which was a product of a Japanese intellectual property becoming animated in South Korea, relayed in multiple American cities and cable television broadcasting, and a final airing in Canada. It wasn't just two poles placed in Japan and Canada that resulted in anime magically appearing on screen. Rather than asking why anime is popular in specific places, Annett instead asks this: how does anime connect globally? How can anime effect communities locally and globally?

Second, are fan communities imprisoned or empowered by the media they consume? In the former, it relates to Disney's monopolization of the field of animation internationally. Comparing it to Pokemon's boom in the 90s, this lends to a sort of "cultural diplomacy," where audiences are passively subjected to cultural messages of another country, in turn having effects in the economic and political world. Scholarship in general, however, argues against this idea, instead describing anime as a grassroots phenomenon occurring in pocket communities independent of real-world nuances. Anime, under this argument, exist as fantasy worlds for escapism and serve to empower fans through liberation and freedom.

Anime Fan Communities, however, argues for neither. Anime fans, as Annett explains, are neither corporate sheep nor radicals forming utopian villages globally. Instead, Annett sees anime fan communities as intersections of multiple cultures, serving to circulate or block information and emotion. It's not a matter of the self and everyone else, nor is it a hierarchical relationship between fans and industry. It's a reciprocal relationship between people within the local, national, and international level through information technology.


To prove this, Annett uses the term "transcultural animation fan community" to describe people from any personal background engaging with each other through some shared interest, in turn negotiating the differences in their social and historical contexts. This includes the creation of both professional and fan content, blogging, conventions, competitions, and so on. This, however, also brings up symmetric and asymmetric opinions on issues such as racism and homophobia, demonstrating anime's lack of inherent liberating qualities. Anime is bounded by real world issues, serving to both establish communication between communities and set them apart. As Annett argues, "changes in material media technologies and in geopolitical conditions across time have a strong impact on the kinds of individual viewing positions and collective communities that can form around animation."

From there, she defines "transcultural animation fan community" as individual words and concepts. Transcultural is described as the common ground between different contexts, such as similar age groups, education levels, and type of media consumed. Animation, as a less complex term, is the art of depicting movement through drawing, which is then subdivided by tools and technology.

Fan is the portion with the most focus, where the word "fan" is examined through both a Japanese and Western perspective. The word fan, associated with the word "fanatic" which is linked to social and psychological pathology, is linked to the formal second person pronoun otaku, which literally means "your residence," or someone that spends a majority of their time at home engaged with some obsession. Just as image of the dangerous fan was used to the describe Mark David Chapman, the murderer of John Lennon, the word otaku between was also used to describe serial child-murderer Tsutomo Miyazaki. The difference here is "fan" being used to describe the mental state of an individual or group, while "otaku" is treated as a symptom of generational shifts occurring with the "shinjinrui" or "new type people" - the postwar Japanese generation.

Lastly, community, although broad and is either meaningless or has too many meanings derived from local contexts. As such, instead of giving a strict definition, the word serves as a concept that has meaning when operating in certain situations, such as the meeting of fans from different cultures.








As a meaty introduction to the rest of the book, Annett firmly establishes her stance in getting fans and scholars on the same page through treating anime fandom as a global cultural phenomenon, unrestricted by geographical boundaries yet constrained by cultural contexts. In other words, two different fans from two different countries could have different views on politics, sexuality, religion, and so on, but still watch and enjoy the same anime. Treat the term "transcultural fan communities" as a group in which people from many national, cultural, ethnic, gendered, and other personal backgrounds find a sense of connection across difference, engaging with each other through a shared interest while negotiating the frictions that result from their social and historical contexts. It's the idea that people from all walks of life are able to find an overlapping interest and engage in it, resulting in conflicts brought about by differing backgrounds.

Take for example, whether Light or L was right in Death Note or if Serial Experiments Lain's interpretation of connectivity and technological presence in modern society is received differently depending on the person. This could also go broader, such as the receptiveness of sexual content and the usages of ethnic stereotypes. Or, it could be something quite simple, such as if Asuna Yuuki or Sebastian Michaelis, when treated as a waifu/husbando, is done for similar reasons no matter what the country.

From what I understand though, anime fan communities are founded on the basis of non-place, where anonymous transitory space (new communication technologies) can facilitate the development of anime communities. Yet, such communities are comprised of individuals with differing backgrounds. In this however, does "friction" occur by virtue of having fans of different backgrounds existing within the same transitory space? Do fans talk, converse, and argue at such high levels just by having open communication? Are such discussions derived from fans with no relation to what they're fans of?

At this point of the book, there are few references to specific genres and time periods, much less specific titles - understandable for an introductory chapter. Still, one concern I have is the differing mindsets of fans of specific time periods, styles, genres, tones, creators and specific titles. In treating the anime fan community as an entity comprised of pocket communities focused around their respective works, does this allow for the creation of new cultures based around titles? In other words, what distinguishes a fan of Fairy Tail and a fan of Bleach? Where are the overlaps? What role does experience within the animated medium play in characterizing the given fan? What happens if an anime develops a dedicated fan base, producing theories and lore beyond the creator's own intentions? Can any of these supersede real world cultural backgrounds and create cultures within themselves? Would these be the subcultures synonymous with aforementioned Utopian societies, the corporate sheep blindly consuming whatever is produced from the anime machine, a transcontinental collection of communities comprised of unspecific backgrounds with similar interests, sub-societies existing under the blanket term "anime fan" whose tastes distinguish them from one another, individuals that exist together through happenstance, or something else entirely?







Chapter I: Animation and the Miraculous Cinema

Divided into two sections, this part surveys the history of film and cinema in relation to Japan:

1. Cartoon Internationale
2. World War Cute







The first commercial piece of cinema was first screened in Paris on December 28, 1895. By 1897, it had spread to every single continent (sans Antarctica of course), screening in Alexandria, Bangkok, Bombay, Buenos Aires, Osaka, and Sydney. In Osaka, photographer Asano Shirō imported a motion-picture camera and began filming in 1897, with the rest being history.

Well, almost. Russian playwright and screenwriter Leonid Andreyev described film as a medium capable of adapting, communicating, and overtaking cultures. In part, he exalted film as an ingenious new medium capable of transcending time and space. This also implies its heavy political and political baggage, as well as its links to imperialism. With animated film, it had the ability to shape and move the world as well, along with the ability to abstract and portray that motion in animated form. From here, the illusion of life is created through artists and animators. Annett then cites "Katsudō Shashin" (c. 1907) as one of the earliest known works of Japanese animation where, with 50 frames and 3 seconds, the foundation for anime was laid. This is compared to "Fantasmagorie" (1908), a French film that's much more visually vivid and active.

Between the two, as Annett notes, "Katsudō Shashin" features a distinctly Japanese boy writing in Japanese while "Fantasmagorie" is abstract, has no written dialogue or on screen text, and takes from the visual language of American film producer J. Stuart Blackton's blackboard short "Humorous Phases of Funny Faces" (1906). One has a specific audience made with the intent to demonstrate new technologies, while the other has an international audience with the intent to evoke an emotional response. Both, however, are characterized by being animated through similar technologies, possessing creators who made their films with intent, and the presence of viewers whom the films are directed towards.

Annett uses reflexivity to describe this linkage of animation, creator, and viewer within a fictionalized world that then gives attention to its own fictionalized representation of technologies and social realities. It's a reflection of the animation upon reality and animation upon itself. As such, "reality" is created when animation, fictionalized worlds, and the real world inform each other through a series of reflection and self-reflection.

From here, Annett then elaborates on multiple animated works from across the world, attempting to disprove the thought that all animation derived from Disney, or that any pre-1941 animated work was Disney animation. She cites "The Apostle" (1917) from Argentina, "The Adventures of Prince Achmed" (1926) from Germany, "The New Gulliver" (1935) from the Soviet Union, and "Princess Iron Fan" (1941) from China as quick examples of works predating or occurring around the time Walt Disney Productions going public, establishing itself as a proper company.

An interesting moment occurred with the Fleischer Brothers though, whom were children Polish-Jewish immigrants who moved to New York in 1887. They began producing silent cartoons in 1918 up until 1929 when they established Fleischer Studios and began producing cartoons with sound, specifically Betty Boop, their most famous character who debuted in 1930. At the time, she was characterized as a "short-skirted, jazz-singing heroine" with distinct sexual appeal, though her shorts regarded as children's entertainment regardless. Her shorts also had allusions to other cultures, such as apparent references to Yiddish cinema and the Fleischer's Jewish backgrounds, as well as a multitude of racial and gender stereotypes, though their inclusions as commentaries on their contextual perceptions or if they were done out of ignorance can be argued.

As an example of an early intentional blending of multiple cultures through animation though, her short "A Language All My Own" (1935), which was made in appreciation of Betty Boops Japanese audience, an was made with the Japanese audience in mind. Her song here was not only made to bring people around the world together, but was performed in Japanese with help from Japanese exchange students in America, as well as featuring non-comedically portrayed audience members wearing detailed kimono and hairstyles as opposed to the stereotypical conical hat (though still bucktoothed and homogeneous as per the Asian stereotype). From initial Yiddish elements to New York to a collaboration with Japan, this was an example of what animation has accomplished even before Disney.

Of course, Annett acknowledges that in a few years, World War II would break out, turning attempts at international collaboration through animation into animated propaganda full of pro-war racism and nationalism. It's unfortunate, but it must also be acknowledged.








I previously looked at the history of anime in terms of Gen. Douglas MacArthur's landing, the rush for modernization and the updates to technology and the arts that followed. Here, this was from the perspective of media studies, specifically that of international film. There are three things to draw out of this: the number of countries that created animated works domestically before Disney was established as a country, the use of animation to connect different cultures, and the use of animation to create the illusion of life.

The significance of Disney cannot be understated, yet it also downplays the efforts of other countries, making them seem like they're just following along. While trends and "follow the leader" mentalities exist, acknowledging the efforts of individual countries further highlights their unique characteristics born from specific cultures. After all, the medium wasn't invented by any specific person, nor was it the result of singular works. It was the result of multiple people across the world experimenting with newly introduced technologies.

Also, it's important to note that most of these events occurred before WWII and before animation was used for war propaganda purposes, which later ruined such attempts at international relations.







Animation has the ability to abstract and portray ideas and actions in whatever way the creator wishes. So, when we have Donald Duck in "Commando Duck (1944)" fighting Japanese soldiers disguised as slant-eyed trees commenting on Japan's custom of shooting people in the back, or the character of Momotaro featured in "Momotaro's Sea Eagles" (1943) comically reenacting the bombing of Pearl Harbor, things get...uncomfortable.

In response to people treating animation as children's entertainment, we have examples of works mature for both the eyes and the mind, but what of animated works that are malicious in nature? Also, where does anime lie in this conversation?

Between 1920 and 1930, there were global efforts to try and build international relationships, but the years afterwards tore it all asunder. Focusing on America and Japan for the moment, there were still efforts to appeal to global audience, despite it being for the war. During this time, Annett notes attempts of both countries to appeal to Latin America and South-East Asian countries, in addition to using racist and politically driven films to support their war efforts. This was, after all, a world war, so garnering support from a global audience becomes important.

America and Japan both used anthropomorphized animals to represent different races, through different methods. The American usage revolved around dehumanizing an enemy, making them either intimidating or pathetic. Japan instead uses cute animals to encourage a sense of companionship within the countries under the East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, a unified bloc of Asian countries established by the Empire of Japan whom served as readily available sources of labor. Both, however, used animation to establish national similarities and differences, establishing common grounds through the animated medium.

Annett later goes on exploring American and Japanese propaganda, with a focus on Walt Disney's and Seo Mitsuyo's works. From this section, it's important to note the usage of iconic, recognizable figures and caricature in propaganda to speak on familiar grounds with other nations.






There's not too much to particularly speak on in this section historical aspect, as it's mainly going over the usage of animation during WWII. It does further demonstrate the animated medium's continued usage in representing ideas and connecting different cultures through abstract iconography, but this section mainly serves to establish the grounds for later analysis. With this background information though, this, in some ways, elaborates on anime's tendency to feature cute designs, if just a bit. The aesthetic's origins are more complex than this, but we can see how it even permeates into their war propaganda. It's approachable, visually appealing, gives heightened emotions related to companionship and friendliness, and softens otherwise harsh and explicit content.

However, there is something to be said about the usage of the cute aesthetic with regards to anime. The use of cuteness to distract from or outright excuse questionable actions, even unintentionally, continues to persist in certain titles. For example, the spiteful actions of Sae Kashiwagi from Peach Girl always being accented with cute animal gestures, Kantai Collection portraying WWII ships of the Imperial Japanese Navy as cute girls (as well as rewriting the Battle of Midway amongst other things), and the ending of Accel World. My goodness, that ending.

In some ways, attractive or visually appealing characters find it easier to to excuse themselves from wrongdoings. At a more general level, the cute aesthetic is capable of softening topics and actions that are otherwise offensive, disturbing, enraging, or controversial. In some ways, it serves to make certain topics such as Dystopia and economics more accessible to a broader audience. However, it can be used, as demonstrated in the past and in certain contemporary examples, to manipulate viewers to varying extents.





tl;dr - Summary of the summaries of Part 1


Introduction - Anime fan communities are created by the common ground created by anime linking people with shared interests. Through discussions and debates influenced by by their respective backgrounds, this has shaped anime fan communities overtime until what it has become today.

Me - Then what of subcultures created by fan communities, which are, to an extent, separate from real life?

Chapter 1 - The animated medium has existed and spread throughout the world and connected various cultures before Disney.

Me - Yup.

Chapter 2 - Racist propaganda animated films are racist. They're still trying to speak to people using iconography though, so at least that's still continuing.

Me - The application of a cute aesthetic for malicious reasons, as in to do actual harm, can be tangentially linked to today's anime.




Annett, Sandra. Anime Fan Communities: Transcultural Flows and Frictions. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Print.