Anime’s Multilayered Transnationality: On Three Types of Globality

Anime is often seen as a particular type of animation that signifies both Japanese culture and globalization: a local-global tension of “Japanese subculture gone global.” What is supposedly “Japanese animation” is actually animated through a transnational network of production across Asia, while centralized in Tokyo.

Furthermore, it is the performance of the media form that both enables and hides the transnationality of the final image. Based on his new book  "Anime's Identity: Performativity and Form beyond Japan", Stevie Suan talked about how anime merges theories from media studies and performance studies, introducing innovative formal concepts that connect anime to questions of dislocation on a global scale, creating a transformative new lens for analyzing popular media.

Speaker
Stevie Suan, Associate Professor at Hosei University’s Faculty of Global and Interdisciplinary Studies

Discussant
Jaqueline Berndt, Professor in 'Japanese Language and Culture' at Stockholm University

The webinar was moderated by  Åsa Malmström Rognes, Head of the Asia Programme at UI and Research Fellow at the European Institute of Japanese Studies at Stockholm School of Economics 

This was the 98th Stockholm Seminar Webinar on Japan. The Japan seminar series is jointly organized by the European Institute of Japanese Studies at Stockholm School of Economics, the Asia Programme at The Swedish Institute of International Affairs, the Department of Asian, Middle Eastern and Turkish Studies at Stockholm University and the Swedish Defence University. It features monthly seminars on Japanese economy, politics and society.