As young people in Japan worry about their future prospects, the allure of escaping to a nostalgic past seems to be just the ticket. Anime airing today are taking viewers away from the capitalist drudgery of the big city to the simple life of a rural Japan that exists only in a dreamworld of nostalgic escapism.
As the fallout for Activision Blizzard continues in the wake of allegations of sexual harassment and mistreatment of women in the workplace, one has to wonder if anything will actually change in the games industry.
5 seconds, using just 30 frames of animation, is all it takes to show a deep and intimate connection between two characters in the anime Wonder Egg Priority. The beauty of limited animation focuses attention and causes the viewer to reflect on the scene before them.
With the US Military increasing its presence in the world of streaming, it is generating concern that recruitment via Twitch should not be tolerated. But, this latest effort only serves to highlight how insidious the Military Entertainment Complex is in all realms of pop culture.
Layering the past, present, and future on top of one another, 2006 anime Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni plays with time to critique stuffy traditions and also opens up its world infinitely to iteration. Postmodernity at its finest.
Japan lags behind when it comes to LGBTQ+ rights, and navigating the legal waters towards recognition for transgender individuals is particularly harrowing. Hourou Musuko presents a heartfelt story of a boy who wants to be a girl, and the struggles transgender Japanese youth face.
When a classic game is remixed by fans, it challenges the long standing relationship between consumer and producer. Creating new ways to enjoy media objects gives power to fans to become producers themselves, flipping the script on power relations and creating solidarity in fan communities.
When game companies expand their reach into new markets, there are politics involved. Sometimes those politics involve going along with an authoritarian regime, and when companies make bad decisions to curry favor with said regime, it is our responsibility as consumers to let them know they are wrong.
“You have a choice when it comes to your bedding options. Don’t you deserve a good night’s sleep? If you want to wake up feeling refreshed, choose the Rito-feather bed. At 80 Rupees a night, this luxurious option is sure to impress, and leave you feeling great.” Sure, this may just be one of many choices you make in Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, but why do game economics line up so well with the capitalist systems we inhabit every day?
The expansive digital horizon allows for fan interaction to occur anywhere and in any way. Looking at how digital spaces are used to build fan communities, we see different approaches that create different fan experiences.
Understanding the language of a series is vital when trying to connect with it on a deeper level. Making sense of the visual grammar and syntax of Monogatari is no easy feat. Linguistic language pairs with visual language in a complex dance and only when you look closely at both together do you realize how powerful they are when they move as one.
Many game scholars attribute the main theoretical impetus behind games to failure, as we progress and succeed, we also fail. Dark Souls takes this theory of failure and combines it with rhetoric and mechanics to create a beautiful web players must traverse, as they embark on their own personal journey of failure. The unavoidable failure built into Dark Souls' mechanics presents a unique opportunity to explore the rhetoric of failure and its effect on the player.
Fanservice is often dismissed as only existing for titilation and pandering to fans. However, if deployed with skill and purpose, fanservice can be a powerful narrative device. Such is the case with the Monogatari series. Part two of the Deconstruction Monogatari series looks at how fanservice powers its female characters.
The 1998 classic, Resident Evil 2, received the remake treatment this year and some changes were made to the game that reflect modern tech culture. Through wearable technology, the Umbrella Corporation is able to constantly monitor and control their employees. This is biopower at its finest.
The Monogatari series is the perfect anime to deconstruct and examine its elements in detail. The solipsistic geography driven by the protagonist Araragi Koyomi asks the viewer to question if our unreliable narrator is presenting an objective world to us or if this anime world bends to the whims of our protagonist.
Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is a sharp departure from the series traditional formula. Even before playing the game, the box art hints at a journey into the sublime, and the overwhelming magnificence of video game worlds.
San Diego Comic-Con is the largest event of the year for all things nerdy, which should be Heaven for geeks everywhere. But with a pro-corporate agenda and active exploitation of fandom, the convention appears to be nothing more than the glittering façade of Hell’s capital.
