Dr. Stevie Suan

Title of paper: Anime’s Multiple Globalities: From Stylistics to Transnationality.

Affiliation: Hosei University, Tokyo, Japan

Abstract: Anime, often glossed as “Japanese animation,” is widely acknowledged as a particular type of animation that is a significant part of the global media landscape. But not “all animation from Japan” seems to qualify as “anime proper” in the local, Japanese subculture as well as the global fandom. In fact, it is a specific style of animation that is recognized as anime, which goes beyond individual works and production studios. It is this recognizable “anime style” which is seen as a sign of both Japanese culture and globalization: a local-global tension of “Japanese subculture gone global.”

But is there another way to consider anime’s globality? Attending to anime’s style actually enables the consideration of different modes of spatial organization that are concomitant with the contemporary era of globalization. “Anime’s style” might be considered as a media-form, the interplay between material, medium, and convention, the repetition of which constitutes the very recognizability of anime as a particular type of media. From this perspective, the processes of enacting this media-form reveals a very different sense of globality, whereby what is supposedly “Japanese animation” is actually animated through a transnational network of production across Asia. This network is, however, centralized, with Tokyo as the de facto privileged node. Moreover, it is the performance of the media-form that both enables and hides the transnationality of the final image.

But this performance also affords a third type of globality, whereby the “origin” of Japan is not required as a qualifying factor as long as the stylistics (media-form) are enacted sufficiently. In this sense, a more decentralized, heterarchical globality of cultural production comes into view, one not necessarily isolated to one place of “authentication.” Ultimately, it is all three of these modes of globality operate in tandem in the performance of anime’s stylistics.

Biography: An Assistant Professor at Hosei University’s Faculty of Global and Interdisciplinary Studies, Stevie Suan holds a doctorate from the Graduate School of Manga Studies at Kyoto Seika University and a masters in Asian Studies from University of Hawai‛i at Mānoa. His main area of expertise is in anime aesthetics through which he explores various modes of existence. In his recent research, he utilizes performance/performativity theory and media theory to approach issues of area studies (Japan studies and Asian studies), using anime as an example of the shifting currents of cultural production and consumption in our moment of globalization. Such research will be published in his upcoming book, Anime’s Identity: Performativity, Media-form, and Transnationality, forthcoming from University of Minnesota Press (2021).

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