Craig J Norris

Introduction

This web site contains information about manga and anime in Australia. It is also an online portfolio of my research into the cross-cultural appropriation of manga and anime in Australia. This site is both a resource for general information on some of the key manga and anime forms that have become popular in Australian fan communities as well as a portfolio of my current research in this area.

My Aim

My main interest here is to show the way fans embark on 'identity projects' through manga and anime. These 'identity projects' involve fans constructing a space to explore issues such as gender and culture. I have been most interested in the emphasis fans place on manga and anime's 'difference' from Western entertainment as it relates to these identity projects. That is, the way fans explore alternative identities, cultures, and life-styles through particular manga and anime. In my PhD dissertation I argue that a key reason why many Western fans and scholars perceive manga and anime as 'different' is its 'Japaneseness'. There are two key questions I focus on:

1. how can we analyse the significance of the Japanese origins and context of manga and anime?
2. and, would the 'identity projects' that fans construct be possible without an appreciation of manga and anime's Japaneseness?

I have explored these questions in terms of a number of key forms within manga and anime including cyberpunk, bishōnen (beautiful boys), otaku (fans), and texts that have had their Japaneseness softened such as Astro Boy. In my PhD thesis I discussed the way in which these manga and anime forms offer different spaces for fans, scholars, and cultural industries to contest, rework, and reiterate the cultural value of manga and anime.

The Fan Boys and Geek Girls that ate Tokyo

This is an extract from the first academic paper I gave. The paper was called 'Otaku' without a cause: Australian fans of Japanese animation and manga. It was presented at the Objects of belonging: Consumption, culture and identity conference, University of Western Sydney, 1997. It sums up the imagining that motivated me to pursue this type of research.

"I was imagined into the 21st century by Japanese animation and manga.  It provided me with a language which assaulted the banality of contemporary existence, it opened a doorway through which global blueprints for the destruction of the world were revealed to me.  The millennium never seemed so tangibly close or terrifyingly real.  A colonising American voice spoke through the animated body of the Japanese babe, the Brooklyn accent thick against the ocular excess of the eyes.  Finally the Japanese flesh was made global in an illicit marriage between the translatable text and the economic quest for markets and opportunities.  But this bastard child of an American voice and Japanese cells owes no allegiance to its masters.  It is open to active, resistant counter-narratives, new imaginings by a wild and active viewing/reading audience.  Imaginings which offer flights of fantasy that are far advanced from the lumbering political and national responses to the broadening global flows of culture, finance, media and people."

This web site was last edited on:

22/04/2004

The material presented in this web site is copyrighted in the name of Craig Norris and cannot be used or reprinted without the author’s permission. Anyone interested in reprinting or using material in this web site can contact Craig Norris at: craigjnorris at yahoo.com.au