Manga Dreaming

Abstract

Japanese anime (animation) and manga (comics) challenge prevailing Western ideas of what animation should be (Leonard, 1995; McCarthy, 1993; Staros, 1995; Yang, 1992; Haden-Guest, 1995). They engage Western viewers/readers in a way that alters perceptions of identification and subjectivity, disrupting the comfort and stability of an identity rooted in concepts of ‘humanity’. These ‘assaults’ often occur during violent and sexual scenes, which is the focus of my study. I have specifically selected the cyberpunk genre within anime and manga to explore the potential pathways offered within these violent and provocative texts.

This is a study about the politics of the human body, the construction of masculinity and femininity, and the ruptures created by the cyborg body (Haraway, 1991; Springer, 1991; Neal, 1989; Pyle 1993) – with its aesthetics of masochism, violence and eroticism. Influenced by Queer and Feminist theory, it is also a study about the politics of difference and origins (Kristeva, 1980 & 1984; Helen (Charles), 1993; Williams, 1990) which have been projected onto the cyborg body, a difference which is situated between human and non-human, male and female, organic and machine, and displays the tenuous and porous nature of these categories. My study asks whether the cyborg serves as a motif of radical liberatory freedom (Haraway, 1991) or whether its subversive characteristics have been co-opted to serve patriarchy and reinforce traditional masculine and feminine ideals of ‘normality’ (Springer, 1991; Jackson, 1981). It incorporates postmodern theory (Bishop, 1992; Brophy, 1995; Docker, 1994; Ross, 1989); literary theory (Jackson, 1981; Kristeva, 1980 & 1984); animation theory (Cholodenko, 1991; Kaboom, 1994; The Life of Illusion Conference, 1995) and current screen theory (Pyle, 1993; Shaviro, 1993; Studlar, 1985).

This thesis is divided into two sections. The first part problematises my approach to a familiar text, yet one that is very different due to its Japanese origins. I map the previous research and strategies within this field in academic and fan communities, and then detail a brief history of anime and manga, from its origins in Japan to its appropriation by the West. I do this primarily to contextualise manga and anime and avoid characterising these media as ideologically innocent texts that occurred overnight, heralded by the anime Akira.

The second part discusses the cyberpunk genre within anime and manga. This is a violent and provocative study in which I aim to disrupt and problematise issues of the body as they relate to the cyborg identity and expose both the conservative and subversive tensions operating within this genre. It is a mapping of sexual bodies, violent machines and fragmented notions of personal identity, gender and humanity, which have been strewn over the postmodern landscape of these cyberpunk texts. To this end, I shall analyse the manga Ghost in the Shell and anime AD Police, as well as their grim depiction of a cyberpunk future intricately intertwined with contemporary fears over technology, gender, and sexuality.

The cyborg body of the anime and manga text and image demands new ways of engagement by academics. This thesis attempts to chart some of the possible ‘cross-over’ points which are driving a dramatic and far-reaching paradigm shift (Shaviro, 1993) – to articulate alternative conceptualisations of pleasure and resistance which exist with reactionary and conservative strains.

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Introduction

The circuitry of the machine suddenly reaches a point where red corpuscles swarm in a hazy mist of visceral intimacy. So, with deliberate action, the body becomes vulnerable to an intense, uncertain, and ambiguous struggle towards an end as open and multiple as the forms that attack it. The tension and anxiety of the body bleed into the boundaries of identity, gender, and perception, heralded by the sound of the action-violence-sexual dynamics of the twin themes of the destruction and apocalypse of the hentai (pervert) and the freedom and liberation of the kawaii (cute). But who controls and commands these images?

The body is merging with the machine, and my reaction is one of wanting to belong to this technology while at the same time scrambling away from the consumption of flesh and chrome in a frenzy of visceral confusion. I am seduced, not coerced, by the image of the cyborg body; I want to be a part of it.

The anime cyborg offers a seductive portrayal, providing an intimate understanding of many of the dilemmas characteristic of postmodernism, expressed through the images of Japanese anime (animation) and manga (comic books). It is about how I relate to the images produced by the animated apparatus of anime, as well as the drawn pictures in manga. It is a study flirting with concepts of postmodernism, the politics of the body, the construction of identity, and the aesthetics of masochism.

My approach here follows Steven Shaviro’s (1993) The Cinematic Body, where he attempts to explore similar concepts about cinema, specifically looking at the works of David Cronenberg, Andy Warhol, George Romero, Fassbinder, and, somewhat surprisingly, Jerry Lewis. I will explore the way the cyberpunk genre in manga and anime uses pornography, violence, and religion for its ends and the portrayal of the futuristic landscapes of the apocalypse and cyberspace and the effects they have on notions of the self and machine, the body and ‘consciousness’. There is a demand for new and different ways for academics to relate to the ‘fantastic’ text. I apply the term ‘fantastic’ in the same manner Rosemary Jackson does in Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion, where she paraphrases Bakhtin:

He (Bakhtin) points towards fantasy’s hostility to static, discrete units, its juxtaposition of incompatible elements and its resistance to fixity. Spatial, temporal, and philosophical ordering systems all dissolve; unified notions of character are broken; language and syntax become incoherent. Through its ‘misrule’, it permits ‘ultimate questions’ about social order or metaphysical riddles as to life’s purpose. … It tells of descents into underworlds of brothels, prisons, orgies, graves; it has no fear of the criminal, erotic, mad, or dead.’ in Jackson, Rosemary Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion. Methuen, London, 1981, p. 151.

To engage with the issues of this text: new formulations and depictions of the human body, new technologies and the dynamics these are creating around notions of fantasy and reality, and the relationship that significant sub-cultural groups like fans (otaku in the case of anime and manga) are establishing between themselves and the text. My aim is not to establish what the ‘right’ answers are to these questions, nor to compel acceptance with the understandings I arrive at, but to convey a sense of the excitement surrounding anime and manga for a Western fan. To describe the intensity of the ambiguity, confusion, and intolerable ‘openness’ that characterises my relationship with these texts and, at the same time, to provoke a questioning and engaging stance requires a diverse yet considered approach.

This thesis seeks to challenge the numerous ‘truths’ of ‘academic authority’, particularly the ‘explaining’ and ‘telling’ of texts rooted in fantasy, such as the cyberpunk texts I am examining. Rather than ‘explaining and telling,’ I propose instead an ‘understanding’ that seeks to express the incommunicability of an image shrouded in silence and shadow — the novelty of Japaneseness from an Anglo-Australian perspective. The texts I will be studying are two of the more intense and grim cyberpunk texts available at the moment: Masamune Shirow’s manga Ghost in the Shell (1995) and the anime OVA AD Police (1993/1994), directed by Kazushige Takano and written by Noboru Aikawa, based on Tony Takezaki’s manga of the same name.

These are amongst the small but growing titles in a rapidly expanding field of cyberpunk anime today. Other Japanese cyberpunk titles that I base my ideas on include Battle Angel Alita, The Guyver, Cyber City Oedo 808, Geno Cyber, Armitage III, Patlabor, Bubblegum Crisis, Appleseed, and, of course, Akira. I employ a postmodern, cross-disciplinary approach to the texts, deliberately cultivating incongruity, difference, and disunion within my thesis to capture and ‘flesh out’ the violence and ‘beyond academic-objectivity’ seduction I observe occurring within anime and manga cyberpunk.

I wish to articulate the strange realm of fascination that captivates me in the anime and manga images. I aim to explore the highly charged space that the anime scene or manga panel creates with its aesthetics of violence and sexuality, which impact upon me in a disturbingly direct and heterogeneous way that dissolves any notions of fixed identity.
Can I capture the “excruciating unresolvable ambivalence” (Shaviro, S., op. cit., p. ix) that characterises the gender-bending, identity-collapsing, viscerally charged strategies of anime and manga cyberpunk? Are they creating a new archetype or rendering a highly charged space onto which contemporary fears are projected and the future possible death of outdated traditions of oppression is enacted? What new ‘language’ is anime and manga cyberpunk provoking us to recognise?

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