Japanese culture. Anime and manga.

Ishinomori Shōtarō (石ノ森 章太郎) provided the blueprint for the rewriting of history in Japanese graphic art.  In Japan the hyperbole of his name ‘forest of stone’ is also synonymous with a plethora of other superlatives.  Ishinomori not only wrote the prototype for the first gakushū (学習) manga on economics , defined a new graphic genre in the process and thus paved the way for ‘serious’ manga to enter the educational discourse in Japan, but also holds the Guinness Book World Record for the most pages drawn by a single artist; totaling more than 128,000 pages. As if this was not enough, Ishinomori raised the bar by almost single-handedly penning the first comprehensive history of the Japanese Archipelago in his magnum opus Manga Nihon no Rekishi (マンガ日本の歴史; Manga A History of Japan). This voluminous compendium marks an attempt at historiographical analysis of Japanese history from its ancient ancestral roots right up to the contemporary world.  Despite the transcultural renaissance of manga on a global scale the neglect of his work from the discourse of Japanese cultural representation is somewhat surprising. 

Whereas books on the likes of Tezuka Osamu and the lesser known but still influential Yoshihiro Tatsumi have been highly appraised recently,  Ishinomori,  - usually labelled as a science fiction manga artist - as one of the founding fathers of the modern manga media is hardly discussed in the Western press. With this contradiction in mind this paper will evaluate the position of Ishinomori’s graphic analects of Japan in comparison to several other archetypes of graphic histories such as Yokoyama Mitsuteru’s Sangokushi (Romance of the Three Kingdoms, 1971-1986), Tezuka Osamu’s Hi no tori (Phoenix, 1978-1995) and Mizuki Shigeru’s Comikku Showa-Shi (Hereafter: Comic History of Shōwa, 1988-1989). The paper will demonstrate how Ishinomori’s representation of Japanese history in manga constitutes a new form of literacy that enables the visualisation of historical artefacts in relation to contentious issues of Japanese identity and memory formation.

El presente artículo analizará la película "Liz and the Blue Bird" (2018), la cual presenta la tensión en la relación de Nozomi y Mizore, mejores amigas que deberán practicar una pieza musical que tocarán en conjunto para el concurso escolar de bandas, a la vez que deberán elegir el camino que tomarán terminado el colegio. Para ello se abordará la obra a partir de la perspectiva del shojo bunka, el continuum lésbico y la esperanza utópica.

Fecha de publicación: 26/04/2020
Link web: https://www.sugoi.com.pe/camino-a-la-adultez-shojo-bunka-esperanza-utopica-liz-and-the-blue-bird/

In ninth art, hikikomori and NEET turned into a storytelling inspiration for many works: manga such as Welcome to the NHK, Mēteru no kimochi and Asano Inio’s works; in the Italian production, some examples are Zerocalcare’s works or Habitat by Raffaele Sorrentino. In this paper, we analyse these social phenomena and how the private space is represented in comics, reflecting changes in social context. (Text in Italian) http://ojs.unica.it/index.php/between/article/view/3254/3038

Mazinga, Goldrake, Jeeg… sono questi i robot più noti al pubblico italiano che ha iniziato a scoprire i protagonisti di queste serie animate a partire dalla fine degli anni Settanta. Ma chi c’era in precedenza? Quali personaggi sono stati partoriti dalla fervida fantasia dei giapponesi prima di quel periodo? Qual’è l’origine di questa passione tutta nipponica? Quali sono gli antenati di questi eroi che hanno saputo conquistare intere generazioni? Il libro fornisce una risposta a tutte queste domande ricostruendo un pezzo di storia della cultura pop giapponese troppo spesso dimenticato e erroneamente poco considerato.

Japan has increasingly become a source of inspiration in many creative fields: from manga illustrations, street fashion, and contemporary art; to storytelling devices such as the 'Rashomon effect' in Hollywood movies, decluttering lifestyle techniques inspired by Japanese minimalist aesthetics, and even food such as kyaraben. According to Dolores Martinez, " underlying various processes of adaptation and transformation lies a common desire to somehow make art one's one, sparked by an engagement with the ideas contained in the Japanese source products. " Japanese aesthetics, such as kawaii, is shaping the worlds' influencers in art, design, fashion, gaming, and movies. Contemporary artmaking has progressed through many forms, and the current fascination of many young artists is a hybrid combination of the globalizing influences of East and West, technology, and collective and personal memories. This symposium aims to consider the growing influence of Japanese popular culture on contemporary visual arts, trace the process of how it has crossed cultural boundaries, and provide an insight into the dynamics of how culture, memory, and technology can affect the way we view and construct things in the present and future. The School of Cultural and Creative Studies at Aoyama Gakuin University in collaboration with Mutual Images Association invites individual and group submissions of abstracts that engages in substantial scholarly examinations of the visual arts that have been influenced by Japanese popular culture including, but not limited to comic books, manga,

This paper will be talking about the life and works of Hayao Miyazaki. It will provide an in-depth review of some of his most popular films. The review will include some important cultural values in Japan and how they are reflected in the films. It will show how Miyazaki has included some of his personal criticism about the problems of Japan during the time of the production of his movies like environmental disasters, civil wars and etc. The paper mainly focuses on environmental disasters. Some of the limitations may include not being able to review all of the aspects of every single film because of the lack of resources.

Mangás (histórias em quadrinhos) e animes (desenhos animados) japoneses são uma excelente fonte de contato com a cultura japonesa e, apesar de sua extraordinária e crescente popularidade no Ocidente, ainda são pouco considerados como formas artísticas de expressão adequadas ao estudo e divulgação de uma determinada cultura. Este artigo procura mostrar as características desses gêneros, sua relação com a cultura japonesa e algumas influências que têm hoje em dia sobre a cultura ocidental.

The popular culture of Japan draws and consolidates fans from various geographical domains and multiple backgrounds. Its engagingly rich heredity and culture is much diverse and proliferates around comics (manga), games, animation (anime) and music. These various sub genres of Japan’s popular culture and the various terminologies associated with them and their audiences frame Western fandom. Cosplay (“costume play”) is a fan culture that has an active camaraderie where fans create their costumes which are inspired by fictional characters from comics, games, animation and music. Cosplay is a fine blend of both its origin terms: “costume” and “play” since a cosplayer portrays characteristics of both these words – dressing up as a fictional character and also enact the character’s life and situations with full realization that they are trying to capture the life of someone, temporarily, who does not exist in reality. In this process happens a blurring of reality, entry into the world of fiction, a creation of new identity through this narrative resulting in the birth of an entirely new persona which is supreme in itself. (Dorfman, 2007) According to Judith Butler, the practice of enacting various identities, genders and switching between them and trying new ones or performing multiple identities, like in Cosplay, allows individuals to redefine, discover, stretch and enhenhance their own sense of identity. Thus cosplayers slip in and out of identities by switching between costumes and perform their persona by enacting the “play”. Thus the concept of identity is in a constant influx where public and private realms merge creating a sense of fragmentation and decentered self giving rise to multiple conflicting identities.
This is a postmodern concept in all senses by creating a hyper-reality where there is a disruption of the dominance of high culture by popular culture formulating a hybrid culture. This signifies that we are living in the postmodern space of virtuality which defines hobbies and connections and we ourselves are unsure of our own structured identity defined by societal norms. In this technology driven age cosplay also allows a certain form of escapism and interaction with the physical world through conversion of hobbies from a screen-centric medium to a concrete physical world.

This paper focuses on the manga Oyasama monogatari, produced by the new religious movement Tenrikyō on the life of its foundress, Nakayama Miki, otherwise known as Oyasama. In particular, it draws attention to Nakayama’s life as the Divine Model (Hinagata) to be followed, and how her figure as a divine being is represented in the manga in an attempt to create a closer connection between her and Tenrikyō’s members. The paper analyzes the manga in relation to the group’s doctrine as expounded in two of the group’s major scriptures, the Tenrikyō kyōten (The Doctrine of Tenrikyō) and the Ofudesaki (Tip of the Divine Writing Brush).

Hernández-Pérez, M. (2021). Media Contents and Fan Memories: Experience and Performance in Tourist narratives. Paper presented at the VIII - International Research Workshop “Mutual Images”. JAPAN PILGRIMAGES Experiences and motivations behind cultural and spiritual peregrinations from and to East Asia, Kyoto, Ryukoku University. https://mutualimages.org/2020/12/02/program-mutual-images-8th-international-workshop/

Zizek's famous quote; a popular Japanese manga about a University club full of "slash" enthusiast females plus one cross-dressing  and very confused boy who shares their enthusiasms... What is the author up to? Let us throw pop post-Lacan pasta at the wall and see what sticks!

Better to just read it in the original form at:
https://heartsoffuriousfancies.wordpress.com/2014/03/16/genshiken-ch-95-97-as-a-symptom-of-man/

...as the print to pdf'd pdf looks atrocious!

Once you get past the fannish first part discussing the story-in-progress, you get to the pop-post-Lacan stuff, wherein I try to build a case that the author is working up an odd approach to the decentered subject and the creative process. And one that is heavily influenced by popular cultural discourse that uses post-Lacanian concepts (Did not Dr Saito Tamaki recommend this manga back in 2006?)

The "comic" (manga) can be read in fan-translated English and other languages on various grey sites across the net. Append "read" to a Google search naming it and enjoy.

The main objective for which I write this essay will be to make a reflection of how Japanese culture influences on Western culture and vice versa through two of its most representative artistic forms: manga and anime.
To this day, there are many people who know the manga or the anime thanks to the great series that carry years of history and recognition. The techniques have changed, thanks to the technological progress. But the essence of the manga and anime remain since, it is a deeply rooted in the Japanese custom.

Isayama Hajime’s Shingeki no Kyojin (Attack on Titan 2009–present, hereafter SnK) has gained huge resonance since its first release, a popularity by no means limited to Japan, and enhanced by the high-quality animation series by the same name (2013–present), directed by Araki Tetsurô (first season) and Koizuka Masashi, which has followed from the manga storyline. Without doubt, this success is due to a gripping narrative, focusing on fierce fights between the apparently invincible titans and the numerous characters that aim to save humanity, whose different aesthetic and behavioural characteristics unfailingly appeal to very mixed audiences. In this sense, there are three very notable features of SnK. First, the female characters subvert, redraw or re-interpret stereotypes about femininity both aesthetically and behaviourally, and they can be read as queer. Second, the text presents a lesbian subtext that enriches the narrative in queer terms. Ultimately, the ability of some main ch...

La industria de animación japonesa ha ido evolucionando con el paso de los años a través de períodos significativos o artistas relevantes. En la actualidad, cuando se habla de animación japonesa, diferentes nombres pueden aparecer en la mente del espectador, pero, indudablemente, el Studio Ghibli gana cada vez más popularidad y, entre sus producciones, las de Hayao Miyazaki. El presente artículo realiza un análisis de la banda sonora original compuesta por Joe Hisaishi para la película titulada El viaje de Chihiro. Se busca pues, mediante una revisión de la industria musical para animación del país nipón, establecer los rasgos de estilo del compositor, además de exponer las características que cumple la música en dicho género. De esta forma se pretende indagar tanto en la obra de Miyazaki como en su relación con la banda sonora y el efecto que generan ambas en el espectador.

For the early community of Spanish otaku, manga and anime were “expressions of Japanese art,” comparable to painting and literary masterpieces.1 Their veneration of these genres, their close relation with the industry, and their influence in the construction and development of the current state of affairs surrounding manga and anime in Spain cannot be properly understood without insight into the history of the Spanish otaku community’s development throughout the 1990s. The voice of fandom can be heard in manga and anime conventions and read in the nonprofit fanzines they created. The role of otaku associations should not be underestimated either, since they not only contributed to the dissemination of manga and anime but also endeavoured to minimize the effects of censorship and bans that these examples of Japanese popular culture faced during their first steps into the Spanish market.
Most research on manga and anime in the Spanish context revolves around such topics as fansubs and scanlations, the present state of affairs of the anime and manga industry, and literary criticism of animated master- pieces and their adaptations into different formats and languages. However, little attention has been paid to the origins of the Spanish fan revolution through the prism of otaku literature from the 1990s, the nature of the Spanish otaku community, and otaku interaction with these cultural products and the industry in that period.
This essay details the rise of Spanish manga and anime fandom in the 1990s, which has been largely overlooked in Anglophone and Japanese- language studies of anime fandom to date. How did the fan revolution originate? When did Spanish otaku start translating manga for their fellow fans? Where did they express their opinions? And, last but not least, how did some otaku manage to start their careers in the manga and anime industry, result- ing in the current state of affairs? These are the main questions this essay addresses regarding the otaku phenomenon in the Spanish context. This discussion of Spanish otaku may be useful in shedding light onto other topics currently under discussion in fan studies.

The manner in which manga can reflect and influence readers’ gender perceptions has been a frequently researched issue. This article is an attempt to consider those questions through language, a traditionally less-examined element, in order to shed new light on how male and female characters are used in manga. To do so, I use a linguistic corpus of ten popular shōjo-manga and shōnen-manga to look at (1) how much of the text found in speech bubbles was spoken by male and female characters; and (2) how many characters were seen. With regards to approximately 80% of all text, the corpus shows that shōnen-manga are extremely skewed towards male characters, compared to shōjo-manga, which is more balanced between female and male characters. While many more characters appear in shōnen-manga, the majority are male. Furthermore, only two female characters in all of the shōnen-manga series account for more than 10% of text, whereas all the shōjo-manga have male characters accounting for over 12%.
In examining why this might be, I suggest that the focus on interpersonal relationships – including both friendship and romance – in shōjo-manga may lead to a smaller cast of characters and better balance between male and female characters. However, with authors usually writing for their own gender, I also maintain that it is related to differences in the roles of women and men in Japanese society. These distributions also have an impact on characterization itself, particularly in regards to the use of gendered speech patterns. With insight from Kinsui’s yakuwari-go, or role-playing language (2003), I specifically argue that the results predict that shōnen-manga will use more stereotypical speech, particularly in depicting female characters. In offering supporting evidence for this hypothesis, I suggest that this may affect how readers engage with the characters, thus creating different types of reading experiences within the genres. Through this discussion, it will become clear that linguistic data can shed light into how characters are manipulated in manga on a variety of levels, thus appealing to its potential as a legitimate and unique approach to manga research.

Keywords: manga, language, gender, characters, corpus linguistics

Vivid in Japanese art and imagination are creatures that are at once ghastly and humorous. The Japanese word yokai generally refers to a range of supernatural beings such as ghosts, demons, monsters, shapeshifters, tricksters, and other strange kinds of creatures. While their status is commonly described as supernatural, they exist or appear in the natural, human world. Today, yokai are wildly popular in Japan. They are prevalent across contemporary entertainment genres such as manga (“comics”) and anime (“animation”) series, horror movies, and video games, and they also manifest as the subject of related material culture objects like game cards, character t-shirts, cuddly plushies, and collectable gashapon capsule toys. This diverse array of yokai imagery and materiality is deeply rooted in the past. Yokai images and their stories are enduring, and there is no question that what we see in hot commodities today is closely aligned with traditional Japanese folklore. Yokai: Ghosts & Demons of Japan explores yokai and their popularity in Japan through multiple perspectives of yokai: what they are, their associated tales, how people engaged with or interpreted yokai in different contexts, and why they remain so popular in Japan. The contributors to this book are among eminent scholars, creators, and promoters of various aspects of yokai culture. The interdisciplinary nature of this book’s presentation vibrantly illustrates yokai from different angles, allowing for a broad view of their cultural scope in Japan. In addition, the contributors delve into popular culture themes, connecting traditional folklore, folk art, and imagery to trends in Japan as well as in the United States.
Contributors: Felicia Katz-Harris, Komatsu Kazuhiko, Noriko Tsunoda Reider, Satoko Shimazaki, Michael Dylan Foster, Adam Kabat, Kagawa Masanobu, Zack Davisson, Yumoto Koichi, & Kono Junya.

Dream states, virtual identities, shadow selves, psychological deformations of space and time and many more – these are the cinematic narratives that the Japanese animator Satoshi Kon spectacularly created. When dealing with a permissive medium such as animation, termed by the American theorist Paul Wells as extending the limits of both imagination and human consciousness (1998), and following the idea of a specific form of animation that is anime (Japanese animation), which creates a blending of reality and fantasy in what Susan Napier termed the fantasyscape (2001), one must wonder what the underlying stake is for the future of narrative. Also, in a moment when the database as concept is considered a new form of fan consumption (Azuma, 2009) and, even, a new cultural form (Allan Cameron, 2009), thus transforming the way narrative is performed and consumed, anime researcher Brian Ruh went even further in analyzing anime as sustaining the formation of a global database fantasyscape (2014). The current paper proposes to explore the concept of database in connection to narrative, identity and anime. Thus, the paper will start with the representations of identity in relation to space, time, the real and the virtual, while using the operational concepts of modular narratives (Allan Cameron, 2009) and remediation (Bolter & Grusin, 1999) in analyzing Satoshi Kon's Perfect blue (1997) and Paprika (2006). Is the database an exploration or a reaction to contemporary anxieties? Is it a reaction to the liquid modernity and the fragmented self (Zygmunt Bauman, 2013)? Is it a symptom or a warning for all of the above?

The Routledge Handbook of Japanese Cinema provides a timely and expansive overview of Japanese cinema today, through cutting-edge scholarship that reflects the hybridity of approaches defining the field.
    The volume’s twenty-one chapters represent work by authors with diverse backgrounds and expertise, recasting traditional questions of authorship, genre, and industry in broad conceptual frameworks such as gender, media theory, archive studies, and neoliberalism. The volume is divided into four sections, each representing an emergent area of inquiry:

"Decentring Classical Cinema"
"Questions of Industry"
"Intermedia as an Approach"
"The Object Life of Film"

This is the first anthology of Japanese cinema scholarship to span the temporal framework of two hundred years, from the vibrant magic lantern culture of the nineteenth century, through to the formation of the film industry in the twentieth century, and culminating in cinema’s migration to gaming, surveillance video, and other new media platforms of the twenty first century.
    This handbook will prove a useful resource to students and scholars of Japanese studies, film studies and cultural studies more broadly.

Published August 2020
Copyright 2021

As multimodal works, comics are characterized as much by their use of language as by the style of their images. Sound effects in particular are exemplary of comics’ language-use, and we explored this facet of comics by analyzing a corpus of books from genres in the United States (mainstream and independent) and Japan (shonen/boys’ and shojo/girls’). We found variation between genres and between cultures across several properties of the content and presentation of sound effects. Foremost, significant differences arose between the lexical categories of sound effects (ex. onomatopoetic:

Yaoi/BL Fandom Survey (only takes 10 mins to complete): https://leeds.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/blfandomsurvey

http://sainsbury-institute.org/news-events/legislating-manga-workshop/

This talk will explore the implications of the Prohibited Images of Children section of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009 for Boys' Love and Yaoi in the UK. The British legislation will be set in context briefly with regard to the legal situation in North America, Australia, Japan and China. Anna is Chair of Qualitative Inquiry in the School of Psychology at the University of Leeds and is author of 'Boys’ Love manga for girls: Paedophilic, satirical, queer readings and English law' in Children, Sexuality and Sexualisation (2015). Her online BL fandom survey can be found at https://leeds.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/blfandomsurvey

Interest in Japanese manga (comics) has increasingly become an important reason for studying Japanese as a second language. As a result, there has also been a trend toward trying to use manga as an educational resource, with claims that it is “realistic” and “easier”. However, with a lack of comprehensive research on language in manga, still much is unknown—a major problem given that understanding how manga function as a medium is essential to utilizing them effectively. By introducing a corpus of eight manga series compiled for linguistic research, this paper considers some of the claimed advantages and disadvantages. To that end, this paper focuses on two points: One, manga’s particular orthographic styles and their effect on ease of reading, and two, realism and stereotypes in gendered speech patterns. While supporting the use of manga as a learning resource, this paper will argue that manga’s linguistic characteristics necessitate more consideration.

It is the intent of this session to shed the spotlight on examples of Nordic-inspired medievalisms and to bring them into ongoing conversations and debates about the reception of the medieval in the post-medieval world. We are especially interested in the reach of Marvel’s versions beyond the United States and how other approaches to the material engage with, react to, or ignore Marvel’s work. In addition, we hope to include coverage of texts from non-Western media (like anime and manga) that have embraced the traditions of the Norse gods in innovative ways.

Interested individuals should submit, no later than 15 September 2018, (1) paper proposal or abstract of approximately 500 words, (2) a 250 to 500-word academic biographical narrative, and (3) a completed Participant Information Form (accessible at https://wmich.edu/medievalcongress/submissions) to the organizers at [email protected] using “More than Marvel” as their subject heading.

In planning your proposal, please be aware of the policies of the Congress (available at https://wmich.edu/medievalcongress/policies).

The films of Hayao Miyazaki drink from a series of fixed and constant influences. In this article we focus on knowing the specific influences that his film Spirited Away (2001) has received in order to understand to what extent the cultural production that Miyazaki is nourished from can intervene in his works. Thus, it is intended to establish relations between audiovisual story and folklore and Japanese tradition.

Los filmes de Hayao Miyazaki beben de una serie de influencias fijas y constantes. En este artículo nos centramos en conocer las influencias concretas que ha recibido su película El viaje de Chihiro (2001) para entender hasta qué punto la producción cultural de la que se nutre Miyazaki puede llegar a intervenir en sus obras. Así, se pretende establecer relaciones entre en relato audiovisual y el folclore y la tradición nipona.

　文化庁の「平成１９年度国語に関する世論調査」で約４５％の回答者がマンガを若者言葉に影響をもたらすものとして挙げたように，絵と言葉からなるマンガは一種の言語的メディアと一般に認知されている。しかしながら，マンガ研究の多くは視覚的要素に焦点が置かれていることが多い。ここでは，通常関心の払われることの少ない言語的要素に焦点を定めたい。
　まず，今日一般的になっているマンガにおける文字情報の活用法は決して古くから定着したわけではない。竹内オサム（2005年）によると，現在一般的な文字テキストの多くはストーリー・マンガの発達と共に現れたものであり，ストーリーの時空間的な展開を表現をするのに重要な役割を演じている。また，Rommens（2000年）のように，文字を追わずにページだけを追っていくという読み方が，マンガの読み方として主流だとする主張が多いが，読者はまず文字情報を追う方が優先されるという主張もある。実際，読者に自分が目で何を追っているのかをマジックペンで記してもらうという実験的調査によれば殆ど全員がまず台詞を追っていることが分かった（Allen＆Ingulsrud：2009年）。
　さらに，読者が，マンガを言語的メディアとして受け止めていることも重要である（上の文化庁調査など）。本研究においては，マンガにおける言語の役割に焦点を当てることにより，マンガがメディアとしてどのように機能しているのか観察する。その第一歩として，発表者が作成したコーパスを活用し，基本的な文字テキストの統計を明らかにしながら，文字テキストの分類と分布を観察する。

En este artículo se relacionan algunos de los temas
que suelen movilizarse en el mejor anime
contemporáneo —como los multiversos y los
décadrage temporales— con una teoría del cine
relacionada, a su vez, con los hologramas y el
inconsciente del espectador. Para ello, se analizan
algunas secuencias claves de una película ejemplar
en este sentido: Your Name (Kimi no na wa) de
Shinkai Makoto (2016).

Fully credible to the child’s imagination fantastic futuristic devices: The inventions of Fujiko F. Fujio is a history of the creations of Hiroshi Fujimoto for his Doraemon’s manga. This research summarize Hiroshi Fujimoto biography, as well as the possible influences that led him to create such a unique story. The work lists the gadgets that appear in the albums printed by Planeta DeAgostini, quantifies its use in tables describing each and creates a graphic catalog of these inventions so that there is an accessible compendium of them.
In the annexes the future book layout for print or electronic format is presented, so is the findings in chronological order with images that facilitate a quick search of gadgets, for both scholars and the general public.

Suna no Aquatope (白い砂のアクア トープ) is a new anime by P.A. Works that started airing in the summer season of 2021 (Fig. 1). In a broad sense (to avoid spoilers), the anime focuses on the daily life of the staff working in a small aquarium in Okinawa. Its official title in English is The Aquatope on White Sand and, from this point on, we'll refer to it as Aquatope for simplicity.

In der Erzähltradition des japanischen anime ist das Konzept der künstlichen Lebensform seit jeher ein vielseitig verarbeitetes narratives Konstrukt. Anime reflektiert – neben Aspekten der realwirtschaftlich fundierten Robotik – ebenfalls Momente der gesellschaftlichen Kulturkritik im Bezug auf das Verhältnis von Mensch und künstlichem Leben. Als transkulturales Prinzip ist anime dabei nicht nur ein Reflexionsprinzip einer traditionell japanischen Perspektive, sondern verarbeitet kulturelle Motive und Inhalte einer global vernetzten und multimedialen Weltgesellschaft. Das Verständnis von künstlichen Lebensformen und deren Charakterisierung, wie es im anime reflektiv zur Anwendung kommt, erfährt dabei eine Evolution narrativer Inhalte. Diese Evolution problematisiert nicht nur Angstmotive im Kontext von Mensch-Maschine-Symbiosen, sondern gerade realgesellschaftliche Diskurse: Fragen nach der Konstitution von Identität, Körpern, modernen Formen der Sozialität und das Verhältnis von Geist, Körper, Leben und Personwerdung werden problematisiert. Die Evolution des Cyborgs zeigt am Beispiel des anime Ergo Proxy (2006) einen nächsten Stufenschritt in der Darstellung künstlicher Lebensformen, der über das bisherige Verständnis von Robotern/ Androiden, mecha und Cyborgs hinausgeht – dieser nächste Schritt charakterisiert in aller Deutlichkeit das moderne und ambivalente Verhältnis von Mensch und künstlicher Lebensform.