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- Volume 12, Issue 3, 2019
Journal of Adaptation in Film & Performance - Volume 12, Issue 3, 2019
Volume 12, Issue 3, 2019
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Theatrical realism in manga: Performativity of gender in Minako Narita's Alien Street
By Nobuko AnanAbstractThis article examines different conceptions of realism in theatre and manga by focusing on gender performance in Minako Narita's manga, Alien Street (1980–84). It depicts a male actor who plays female roles in realist theatre productions. I argue that the believability of this gender performance stems in part from the conventions of manga realism, where non-realistic signs are used to mark gender distinctions. However, in contrast to these conventions, this manga also highlights the performative nature of gender by revealing how a realist stage forces the performers to cite and repeat the conventional gendered practices. In doing so, Alien Street mixes manga and theatre realism and complicates our understanding of gender conventions.
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Adaptation in Japanese media mix franchising: Usagi Drop from page to screens
More LessAbstractJapanese media franchising is normally discussed in relation to long-running chains of serial transmedia production known in Japan as 'media mix'. I argue that this focus on the biggest of Japanese franchises is over-determining how we conceptualize the flows of adaptation in Japanese media culture. Therefore, in this article, I focus on a short-lived franchise based around Yumi Unita's manga Usagi Drop (literally, Bunny Drop, 2009–11) in order to think about the media mix as a set of relational adaptation processes. In the space of just a few months in 2011, this manga about a young man adopting his grandfather's illegitimate daughter became the seemingly unlikely source of a transmedia franchise that included television animation and live action film. Focusing on such a short-lived cycle of production allows me to reconsider how Japanese franchise media texts relate to one another, and to decentre anime as the defacto core medium in Japanese franchising. Expanding the view of Japanese media mix adaptations, I consider how both internal and external factors can influence media franchising and adaptation practices in contemporary Japan. Retracing the production discourses around the creation of the Usagi Drop franchise therefore allows me to reconsider the concept of media mix as adaptation practice and process in Japan.
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Kouno Fumiyo's Hi no tori ('Bird of the Sun') series as documentary manga: Memory and 3.11
By Linda FloresAbstractFumiyo Kouno's two-part manga series Hi no tori (2014) and Hi no tori 2 (2016) documents the story of a cockerel's search for his missing wife in the months and years following '3.11', the Triple Disaster of 11 March 2011, consisting of the Great East Japan Earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. Both Hi no tori and Hi no tori 2 possess an unusual layout; they are comprised of various elements, including drawings, prose, poetry, statistical data, maps and commentary by the artist. This article argues that in its unique presentation of visual and textual elements, the Hi no tori series employs the medium of documentary comics to negotiate the complex critical spaces in between fiction and nonfiction, past and present, presence and absence, visibility and invisibility and, importantly, between forgetting or the fading of memories (fūka) and reconstruction (fukkō). It examines the Hi no tori series as an adaptation within the medium of comics towards a more accurate and ethical representation of 3.11 and its aftermath.
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Interpretative negotiation with gender norms in shōjo manga adaptations of The Changelings
Authors: Michiko Oshiyama and Kohki WatabeAbstractThe Changelings is a classic work of traditional Japanese literature. In the modern era, it has been adapted into Japanese comics repeatedly. This article examines three shōjo manga, or girls' comics, adaptations of The Changelings published between 1984 and 2018. Taken together, the three manga evidence the different situations in which women were embedded in the 1980s and the 2010s and provide different interpretative alternatives to female readers. Manga adaptations of The Changelings crystallized gender norms in Japanese society and women's responses to and struggles with those norms by taking advantage of the gender-switching plot that originated in the twelfth century.
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Yayoi Kusama, the Modern Alice
More LessAbstractYayoi Kusama's polka dot art and Infinity Mirror rooms have made her one of the most successful artists alive today. Her more than seven-decade-long career has provided ample fodder for scholars to examine her artistic preoccupations. This article considers the scholarly consensus on the role of performance in Kusama's oeuvre and then examines two works, a 1968 happening and a 2013 illustrated book, in which Kusama (1929–present) adapts Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland novels. By adapting Alice, Kusama is able to sharpen themes and symbols that she has deployed since the early days of her career.
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Editorial
Authors: Richard Hand and Katja Krebs
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