Abstract
Europe, as a cluster of cultural elements related to nations, cities, and historical periods, has experienced different representations and recreations in Japanese animated series and films (anime) in the form of European (or European-like) settings. The following article discusses the creation, aesthetic appeal, and uses of these contents. First, tracing a theoretical retrospective that displays the different concepts and conceptions used to understand these contents, to then focus our study in reviewing the European settings of some of the main anime productions that contain this kind of contents: the 1970s shōjo manga and anime series (comics and tv anime series addressed to girls), the Nippon Animation-originated so-called “Meisaku” group of series, and more “singular” cases, such as Miyazaki Hayao’s films. The review carried out shows the use of different sources and intense fieldwork by Japanese creators to recreate particular visions of European (or European-like) settings and the narrative and communicative strategies or even commercial implications of these settings according to the genre, demographics, and media specificity of each project.
Highlights
Anime; Iconography in audio-visual media; Genres; Settings; Manga; Themes in motion pictures; Europe; Miyazaki Hayao; Shōjo; Media pilgrimage
Shōjo series of the 1970s: Local sensibilities through foreign dramas Our first category are the 1970s shōjo series, a group of manga and anime series that made a recurrent use of European settings and depictions of European cultures, which are remarkably frequent in the framework of anime productions both in the form of anime adaptations from original manga or in influencing the production of original anime works
As we have briefly introduced in previous sections, this idea of “authorship” and its implications on the recreation of specific contents and settings is remarkably interesting to understand the European setting in more “singular" anime productions, like Miyazaki’s movies and, by extension, Studio Ghibli’s), were the European-like settings can be seen as a trait of this “Ghibli brand"
Summary
ISSUE 1 – Between Texts and Images: Mutual Images of Japan and Europe ISSUE 2 – Japanese Pop Cultures in Europe Today: Economic Challenges, Mediated Notions, Future Opportunities ISSUE 3 – Visuality and Fictionality of Japan and Europe in a Cross-Cultural Framework ISSUE 4 – Japan and Asia: Representations of Selfness and Otherness ISSUE 5 – Politics, arts and pop culture of Japan in local and global contexts ISSUE 6 – Mediatised Images of Japan in Europe: Through the Media Kaleidoscope ISSUE 7 – Layers of aesthetics and ethics in Japanese pop culture. SCIENTIFIC BOARD Marco BELLANO, Department of Cultural Heritage, University of Padova (Italy); JeanMarie BOUISSOU, International Research Centre, European Training Programme Japan, Sciences Po CERI (France); Christian GALAN, Centre of Japanese Studies (CEJ), INALCO, Paris (France); Marcello GHILARDI, Department of Philosophy, University of Padova (Italy); Winfred KAMINSKI, formerly Faculty of Media and Media Education (IMM), TH Köln (Germany); Pascal LEFÈVRE, LUCA School of Arts, Campus Sint-Lukas Brussels (Belgium); Boris LOPATINSKY, Centre de recherche en études philologiques, littéraires et textuelles, Université Libre de Bruxelles (Belgium); Ewa MACHOTKA, Department of. University of Jerusalem (Israel); ŌTSUKA Eiji, The International Research Center for Japanese Studies, Kyōto (Japan); José Andrés SANTIAGO IGLESIAS, Department of Fine Arts, University of Vigo (Spain); WONG Heung Wah, School of Modern Languages and Literature, The University of Hong Kong (China). Representations of Europe in Japanese anime: An overview of case studies and theoretical frameworks
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