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Anime is (Not) Cult: Gainax and the Limits of Cult Cinema

Anime is (Not) Cult: Gainax and the Limits of Cult Cinema

Update: 2017-11-22
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Japanese anime, a global phenomenon and a locally powerful industry, has a tendency to be viewed outside Japan in relation to its extreme content, lending it a ‘cult’ air. Through such discussions, it becomes easy to paint all anime as ‘cult’ without ever considering the wider implications of this Euro-American concept for Japanese media texts. Therefore, in this talk, I revisit the relationship between cult and anime in order to examine how and when the term might be useful, taking an industrio-historical view of the relationship between cult and anime. Gainax, one of Japan’s foremost anime companies presents a useful focus for this analysis. Formed out of an amateur collective to become one of the most (in)famous companies in anime history, Gainax has helped to make anime a global phenomenon. Moreover, the founders of Gainax have gone on, in some cases, to become important voices in the debates around how to conceptualise anime. By re-examining the competing discourses around anime and the idea of ‘cult’ media I argue for a more meaningful association between cult and anime. In essence, I argue that cult has only a limited usefulness in relation to anime, despite the fact that our early and main way of defining anime has been through its Euro-American ‘cultification’. This seminar took place at Oxford Brookes University on 22 November 2017.
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Anime is (Not) Cult: Gainax and the Limits of Cult Cinema

Anime is (Not) Cult: Gainax and the Limits of Cult Cinema

Europe Japan Research Centre