I
Am Robot & Proud
Plastic Beings, Intelligent
Metals & Beautiful Worlds in Japanese Animation
Proposed outline for book, 2000 >>
Snaphot
I
Am Robot And Proud is an exploration of the wonderfully
complex and beautifully disorienting world of Japanese animation.
This expansive & mind-blowing book delves deep into
the chaos of meaning gorged by Japanese animation's mutation
of Eastern/Western themes, images and sounds. Read this
book & navigate the postwar shockwaves which still propel
Japan's mass media. Ride cultural currents of animation,
manga, cinema & music which embody some of the most
explosive ideas to ever be contained within any pop culture.
I Am Robot And Proud is neither an academic
text, nor a scant journalistic glance at Japan's ‘freakishness’.
The information & critical insight it contains result
from fifteen years of author Philip Brophy's research into
Japanese postwar pop culture. The lively text is aimed at:
(i) those who have gleaned the weirdness of Japanese animation
but could not uncover rhyme or reason for the weirdness;
and (ii) those who already know and revel in that very weirdness.
Exploiting the current fascination with modern Japan, the
book fuses funky vernacular idioms, transcultural and post-human
imaginings, and electrifying concepts born of a technological
and audio-visual awareness. The flow of the text is designed
to be giddy, sensory, exhausting. Analysis is melted into
observation; critique is dispersed into sensory accounts;
and overview is displayed as an expansive plateau for further
investigation. The reader will be stimulated with revelations
of the wild world of Japanese animation.
Words:
90,000
Format: text with images
6 chapters @ 15,000 words
Plus bibliography, filmography, netography
Categories: animation, cinema, pop culture, media, cultural
studies
Pitch
Asian
and Pan-Pacific postwar cultures are no longer confined
to their territories on the global map. They progressively
invade, transgress and envelop Euro and Anglo societies.
Consequently, our underst&ing of pop culture is being
transformed in strange and compelling ways. For some –
and for the young in particular – an unlikely contentment
blankets the chaos released by collisions between East and
West. If one is instinctively attracted to all that is manifest
by the postmodern condition, one can understand the so-called
collapse of meaning as a flowering of new possibilities
and permutations.
This is not news – nor does one have to undertake
a course to know it. Time has well passed for the need to
analyse pop culture, as if it is a frustrating closed system
of signs. Pop culture is too pervasive, rampant, eclectic
and multiple to be unravelled and remade into an academic
macrame pot holder. Yet this is not a generation gap –
it's a cultural gulf, wherein the collapse of meaning is
refreshing and stabilizing. Read the signs on the maps drawn
throughout the 90s: Psychotronic Films, Something Weird
Video, Incredibly Strange Films, Weirdo, Amok Resources,
High Weirdness By Mail, Space Age Bachelor Pad Music, Rotten.com,
Scum Culture, Grindcore, Illbient, Trip Hop, Hard Floor,
Goa Trance, Happy Hardcore, Dirty Disco, Glitch Techno.
Weirdness is viewed as pleasing, engaging, exciting.
Japanese postwar pop culture stands as the ground zero of
this mutative phenomenon. Somewhere between the mid-40s
nuclear decimation of old world Hiroshima and the early-60s
electronic reconstruction of new world Tokyo lies a dimensional
warp. The new and the old fold into each other, forever
defining Japanese fabric as a hybrid polymer of exacting
tradition and radical invention. Smell the old in Japan
- it shines like new; rub the new - it sounds old. Sense,
experience, comprehension and meaning are melded into a
living sensurround which can make you feel simultaneously
engulfed and detached in its urban and rural terrains. Japan
- that fascinating 'empire of signs' - can be imagined as
a transcultural hologram, sent to us in the West as a concentrate.
It comes in a hydraulic anti-gravity capsule, labelled in
five languages: "the taste of meaning". Drink
it and you will understand the free-floating collapse of
meaning, the pleasure of weirdness, and the heady flowering
of new permutations in the communication of culture.
Japanese animation - "anime" - and Japanese comics
- "manga" - are the most immediate and potent
signs of Japan's postwar pop culture. Just watch and listen
to a random fifteen minutes of any (non-US-dubbed) Japanese
animation on current release and you're bound to be overwhelmed
by its otherworldliness. You will encounter a different
gravity, an unlikely atmosphere, an unexpected climate.
Tangible one moment, it melts into a strange texture the
next. Once caught by its ocular excess and sonic gestalt,
your sense of the imaginable future is radically changed.
The growth in Western fans over recent years testifies to
the addiction these worlds induce. And you too can be easily
snared by the sexy danger of it all, as you stand before
a world of paranormal engines, metallic succubi & cute
weapons. Dive in - things become viscous, shiny, loud. This
is the appeal, the fascination, the allure of Japanese animation.
Now is the time to put this into words - to touch a rash
of cultural indentations rendered by the hyper-fungal spread
of Japanese animation over the last thirty years. I
Am Robot And Proud is a sensorial critical text,
designed to allow one to feel the spongy deeper levels of
meaning in Japanese animation - without reducing it to familiar
terrain. Ultimately, Japanese animation is enduringly strange
and microcosmically weird. Scanning and dissecting over
100 titles, I Am Robot And Proud exacts
& proclaims the confounding cultural difference that
produces plastic beings, intelligent metals & beautiful
worlds.
Breakdown
Part
1:
MONSTER ISLAND - The Remnants of Japan
The destruction principle in GODZILLA & the Toho movie
legacy; rebirth & animism in Sigeru's yokai manga &
KITARO; mystical monsters in NINJA SCROLL, OGRE SLAYER &
WICKED CITY; the 'other side' & dimensional walls in
3 X 3 EYES, DEVIL HUNTER YOHKO, SHOTEN DOJI & COMBUSTIBLE
CAMPUS GUARDLESS; portraying symbolic existence in LEGEND
OF THE FOREST & POM POKO; imagining worlds in Tezuka's
STORY OF A STREET CORNER & JUMPING; fantastic studies
in ecology in Miyazaki's NAUSICA, TOTORO & PRINCESS
MONONOKE; elegy & memory in PLEASE SAVE MY EARTH, A
WIND NAMED AMNESIA, TOMBSTONE FOR FIREFLIES & NIGHT
ON GALACTIC RAILROAD; tectonic plates, catastrophe &
impermanence in the Japanese psyche.
Part 2:
TOKYO MEGALOPOLIS - The Rebuilding of Japan
Rebuilding Tokyo for AKIRA; space junk in the GUNDAM cycle;
urban issues & sociological mapping in Oshi's PATLABOR
cycle & GHOST IN THE SHELL; cyborg class difference
in BATTLE ANGEL ALITA & GREEN LEGEND RAN; mutant historical
panoramas in KIKKI'S DELIVERY SERVICE & PLASTIC LITTLE;
haunted zones in DOOMED MEGALOPOLIS, DEMON CITY SHINJUKU
& SILENT MOEBIUS; the phallic versus the wombic &
other hysterical architecture in the UROTSUKI DOJI cycle;
interior design, urban facade & spectacular sites in
Japanese architecture.
Part 3:
THE CHARM OF RUIN - Atoms As They Sound
Asynchronism & principles of shock waves in AKIRA; neumonics
& resonance in GIANT ROBO; surface disturbance &
the revealing of energy in TOTORO; linear energy lines versus
spherical explosions in the UROTSUKI DOJI cycle; past sonic
perception; mood, timbre & placement in MERMAID FOREST/SCAR;
silence in ONLY YESTERDAY & TALES OF GENJI; sound design
in VAMPIRE PRINCESS MIYU; the BLADERUNNER legacy & ambient
scoring in AKIRA & NAUSICA; Idol Singers & Japanese
Pop music in MACROSS - DO YOU REMEMBER LOVE, BUBBLEGUM CRISIS/CRASH
& ZILLION; sound as density, silence as space, sonic
calligraphy & the role of phonemes in Japanese society.
Part
4:
WAR IN POCKET - Atoms Put To Use
Wonderful machinic control in GIGANTOR & GIANT ROBO;
the MOBILE SUIT / GUNDAM phenomenon; impossible scale in
FIVE STAR STORIES; machine fetishism & technical extremism
in MOLDIVER, CULTURAL CAT GIRL NIKKU NIKKU & GUNSMITH
CATS; mega-body control in METAL FIGHTER'S MIKU; utilitarian
design & distopian software corruption in PATLABOR,
DOMINION: TANK POLICE, BLACK MAGIC MARIO & ROUJIN Z;
biped machines, human interfaces & the 'mecha' craze
in Japanese robotics.
Part 5:
MAKE-UP! - Inside The Body Electric
Ocular excess & racial physiology in Tezuka's early
manga; postwar traumatization & 'kawaii' style in child
care in SPACE FIREBIRD 2772 & SONG OF APOLLO; slips
in puberty in MARVELLOUS MELMO; moebius transexuality in
PRINCESS KNIGHT & The Takarazuka Review; abject polysexuality
in ANGEL COP; genetic confusion in DNA, BLUE SEED &
GENOCYBER; gender confusion in RANMA 1/2; un/clothing &
un/covering in BUBBLE GUM CRASH/CRISIS, CUTEY HONEY &
SAILOR MOON; beyond physical limits in FIST OF THE NORTH
STAR, VIOLENT JACK & GUYVER; defining sexual difference
in GALL FORCE, RHEA GALL FORCE & GALL FORCE NEW ERA;
shifting degrees of pornography in CREAM LEMON CLIMAX &
SENSUALIST; 'garage kit' mania & the Japanese fascination
with puppets.
Part 6:
HYPER DOLL - Beyond The Body Genetic
Amazing origins of ASTRO BOY in manga, TV & animation;
Tezuka's reinvention of the body in DOROBO, BLACK JACK &
M.R.; existential dilemmas for cyborgs in ARMITAGE III,
Ai CITY & AD FILES; gendered machines in HYPER DOLL,
APPLESEED & GHOST IN THE SHELL; amok science & the
collapse between man & machine in BAOH, CYBERNETICS
GUARDIAN & GENOCYBER; psychic links in DANGAIO, the
ICZER cycle & NEON GENESIS EVANGELION; cataloguing &roid
philosophy in ROBOT CARNIVAL & MEMORIES; anthropomorphism,
neoteny & the 'chiba' phenomenon in Japan's self-image.
