Today, comic art is the favorite reading fare for millions of Asians, and is a government-sanctioned, value-added product, as in the case of Korean and Japanese animation. Yet not much is known about Asian cartooning. Themes and Issues in Asian Cartooning uses overviews and case studies by scholars to discuss Asian animation, humor magazines, gag cartoons, comic strips, and comic books. The first half of the book looks at contents and audiences of Malay humor magazines, cultural labor in Korean animation, the reception of Aladdin in Islamic Southeast Asia, and a Singaporean comic book as a reflection of that society’s personality. Four other chapters treat gender and Asian comics, concentrating on Japanese anime and manga and Indian comic books.

For military cartoonists the absurdity of war inspires a laugh-or-cry response and provides an endless source of un-funny amusement. Cartoons by hundreds of artists-at-arms from more than a dozen countries and spanning two centuries are included in this study--the first to consider such a broad range of military comics. War and military life are examined through the inside jokes of the men and women who served. The author analyzes themes of culture, hierarchy, enemies and allies, geography, sexuality, combat, and civilian relations and describes how comics function within a community. A number of artists included were known for their work with Disney, Marvel Comics, the New Yorker and Madison Avenue but many lesser known artists are recognized.

Animation has had a global renaissance during the 1990s, and nowhere is this more evident than in Asia. With the exception of China and Japan, most Asian nations are relatively new to this art form. Over the last decade, countries such as Taiwan, South Korea, the Philippines, and Thailand, as well as China, have acted as major offshore production plants for North American and European studios. One of the spurs for this increase in activity has been the global growth of terrestrial, cable, satellite, and video systems, all demanding large menus of programming, including animation. A second spur has been the exceptional popularity that Japanese animé has enjoyed across Asia, Europe, and the United States. Despite these developments, there has not been corresponding growth of a serious literature covering industrial and aesthetic issues about Asian animation, and the small amount of work that has been produced has not been published in English. Animation in Asia and the Pacific provides the first continent-wide analysis, delving into issues of production, distribution, exhibition, aesthetics, and regulation in this burgeoning field. Animation in Asia and the Pacific also offers vignettes of the fascinating experiences of a group of animation pioneers. The historical and contemporary perspectives derive from interviews, textual analysis, archival research, and participation/observation data.

Grand in its scope, Asian Comics dispels the myth that, outside of Japan, the continent is nearly devoid of comic strips and comic books. Relying on his fifty years of Asian mass communication and comic art research, during which he traveled to Asia at least seventy-eight times and visited many studios and workplaces, John A. Lent shows that nearly every country had a golden age of cartooning and has experienced a recent rejuvenation of the art form. As only Japanese comics output has received close and by now voluminous scrutiny, Asian Comics tells the story of the major comics creators outside of Japan. Lent covers the nations and regions of Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, the Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam. Organized by regions of East, Southeast, and South Asia, Asian Comics provides 178 black-and-white illustrations and detailed information on comics of sixteen countries and regions—their histories, key creators, characters, contemporary status, problems, trends, and issues. One chapter harkens back to predecessors of comics in Asia, describing scrolls, paintings, books, and puppetry with humorous tinges, primarily in China, India, Indonesia, and Japan. The first overview of Asian comic books and magazines (both mainstream and alternative), graphic novels, newspaper comic strips and gag panels, plus cartoon/humor magazines, Asian Comics brims with facts, fascinating anecdotes, and interview quotes from many pioneering masters, as well as younger artists.

This new inter-disciplinary book is the first comparative, case-based analysis of media panoply in (and out of) Asia today. Examining what the authors call the "media/tion equation", the contributors demonstrate the multiple links between media, society and culture, and advance the claim that media is the key means through which Asians experience, understand, effect and are affected by the worlds containing them. Exploring a relatively neglected principle in cultural studies - that context counts - medi@sia highlights how the experiences of those encountering media messages differ depending on social, economic, politial and ideational conditions. Balancing social, cultural and media theory with empirical research, the essays in this collection provide a better understanding of the complex relationship between media and people’s practices, values and behaviour in contemporary Asia.

Japanese society in the 1990s and 2000s produced a range of complicated material about sexualized schoolgirls, and few topics have caught the imagination of western observers so powerfully. While young Japanese girls had previously been portrayed as demure and obedient, in training to become the obedient wife and prudent mother, in recent years less than demure young women have become central to urban mythology and the content of culture. The cultic fascination with the figure of a deviant school girl, which has some of its earliest roots in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, likewise re-emerged and proliferated in fascinating and timely ways in the 1990s and 2000s. Through exploring the history and politics underlying the cult of girls in contemporary Japanese media and culture, this book presents a striking picture of contemporary Japanese society from the 1990s to the start of the 2010s. At its core is an in-depth case study of the media delight and panic surrounding delinquent prostitute schoolgirls. Sharon Kinsella traces this social panic back to male anxieties relating to gender equality and female emancipation in Japan. In each chapter in turn, the book reveals the conflicted, nostalgic, pornographic, and at times distinctly racialized manner, in which largely male sentiments about this transformation of gender relations have been expressed. The book simultaneously explores the stylistic and flamboyant manner in which young women have reacted to the weight of an obsessive and accusatory male media gaze. Covering the often controversial subjects of compensated dating (enjo kôsai), the role of porn and lifestyle magazines, the historical sources and politicized social meanings of the schoolgirl, and the racialization of fashionable girls, Schoolgirls, Money, Rebellion in Japan will be invaluable to students and scholars of Japanese culture and society, sociology, anthropology, gender and women's studies.

Anime is a quintessentially Japanese form of animation consisting of both hand drawn and computer-generated imagery, and is often characterised by colourful graphics, vibrant characters, and fantastical themes. As an increasingly globalising expression of popular art and entertainment, and distributed through cinema, television, and over the internet, anime series and films have an enormous following, not only in Japan but also in Asia. This book provides a comprehensive survey of the historical development, industrial structure, and technical features of Japanese animation and of the overall dynamics of its globalisation in key contexts of the Asian region. Specific chapters cover anime’s production logics, its features as an ‘emotion industry’, and the involvement of a range of Asian countries in the production, consumption, and cultural impact of Japanese animation.

Written for Tusculum College students, this guidebook will help you to navigate the often-confusing and tangled paths of academic writing. From your freshman composition sequence through your senior seminar course, you should plan to use the strategies taught in this book to complete a variety of writing assignments including rhetorical analyses, standard arguments, research papers, annotated bibliographies, and proposals. Each chapter will walk you through the steps necessary to navigate these different writing types. Additionally, you will be introduced to the writing process, including methods of prewriting, drafting, revising, and editing. This process will help you in any kind of writing you undertake.

Current characters in children’s entertainment media illustrate a growing trend of representations that challenge or subvert traditional notions of gender and sexuality. From films to picture books to animated television series, children’s entertainment media around the world has consistently depicted stereotypically traditional gender roles and heterosexual relationships as the normal way that people act and engage with one another. Heroes, Heroines, and Everything in Between: Challenging Gender and Sexuality Stereotypes in Children's Entertainment Media examines how this media ecology now includes a presence for nonheteronormative genders and sexualities. It considers representations of such identities in various media products (e.g., comic books, television shows, animated films, films, children’s literature) meant for children (e.g., toddlers to teenagers). The contributors seek to identify and understand characterizations that go beyond these traditional understandings of gender and sexuality. By doing so, they explore these nontraditional representations and consider what they say about the current state of children’s entertainment media, popular culture, and global acceptance of these gender identities and sexualities.

With contributions by Leonie Brialey, MJ Clarke, Roy T. Cook, Joseph J. Darowski, Ian Gordon, Gene Kannenberg Jr., Christopher P. Lehman, Anne C. McCarthy, Ben Owen, Lara Saguisag, Ben Saunders, Jeffrey O. Segrave, and Michael Tisserand The Comics of Charles Schulz collects new essays on the work of the creator of the immensely popular Peanuts comic strip. Despite Schulz's celebrity, few scholarly books on his work and career have been published. This collection serves as a foundation for future study not only of Charles Schulz (1922-2000) but, more broadly, of the understudied medium of newspaper comics. Schulz's Peanuts ran for a half century, during which time he drew the strip and its characters to express keen observations on postwar American life and culture. As Peanuts' popularity grew, Schulz had opportunities to shape the iconography, style, and philosophy of modern life in ways he never could have imagined when he began the strip in 1950. Edited by leading scholars Jared Gardner and Ian Gordon, this volume ranges over a spectrum of Schulz's accomplishments and influence, touching on everything from cartoon aesthetics to the marketing of global fast food. Philosophy, ethics, and cultural history all come into play. Indeed, the book even highlights Snoopy's global reach as American soft power. As the broad interdisciplinary range of this volume makes clear, Peanuts offers countless possibilities for study and analysis. From many perspectives--including childhood studies, ethnic studies, health and exercise studies, as well as sociology--The Comics of Charles Schulz offers the most comprehensive and diverse study of the most influential cartoonist during the second half of the twentieth century.