Serializing accumulation: Resident Evil and the synchronization of Hollywood cinema and Japanese television

Abstract

How does the tendency toward series reboots, sequels, and remakes in contemporary Hollywood intersect with television’s capacity for serialization? How does the logic of promotion in transmedia entertainment connect to television’s ability to perform simultaneity in relation to other forms of screen media? This article will describe and analyze how the Resident Evil films have been broadcast on Japan’s Asahi TV network throughout the 2010s, focusing on how the week-after-week programming of the films acts as a case for demonstrating how transmedia serialization brings into relief qualities of narration and aesthetics within the context of convergent screen industries and global media production. Focusing on the concept of accumulation, this article will argue how the mode of viewing invited by Asahi TV’s mode of presentation is one that can be addressed both in terms of how viewers make sense of complicated networks of meta-textual continuity and of how convergent media forms rely on practices of simultaneity in media consumption.