When attention is paid to the ways characters perform and are performed in anime narratives, it becomes apparent that there are certain regularly utilized approaches to the character acting widespread in anime’s animation. Two of the most prominent modes of performance have been called embodied acting and figurative acting. Each uses distinct techniques to act out a specific character’s personality and, in the process, imply different notions of selfhood. This chapter examines the specific utilization of embodied and figurative acting in Yūri!!! on Ice and how these interrelated modes of performance dovetail with the narrative. Through its balancing of embodied and figurative modes of performance, the anime moves between an individualized self whose interior is expressed externally and an open acknowledgment of the interrelation of external others in the performance of self and gender.

Within the last two decades, the specialized term “chara” has gained recognition for denoting fictional beings that seem typical for Japanese popular media. Usually, a distinction is made that charas – distinguished from “characters” – are somehow independent of the narrative. Since the term emerged in a variety of different discourses, however, it serves many contradictory functions. This chapter maps different ways to conceptualize the protagonists of Japanese popular culture as charas with regard to the popular franchise Demon Slayer (Kimetsu no Yaiba). It introduces four relevant oppositions: “consequentiality versus cartoonishness,” “representational realism versus ludic realism,” “narrative consumption versus database consumption,” and “authorized works versus secondary productions.” What connects all these vastly different meanings of charas and the respective “other sides of narrative” is a shared interest in characters not as parts of closed, fictional stories or worlds but as nodal points of historically changing media practices and conventionalized modes of imagination and participation.

Since the middle of the 20th century, manga and TV anime have developed in parallel, borrowing from one another on practically every level from narrative content to expressive devices. Their productive exchange on the level of style has been facilitated by their shared material basis, the line drawing. This material homology could even blur the boundary between the static and the animated image, with anime borrowing and reproducing the dynamism of manga drawings. At the same time, movement inherent in the drawing and movement of the drawing are both intrinsically bound to the graphic style. This chapter addresses the relation between the movement of the anime and manga image and certain stylistic parameters (such as iconic abstraction, visual density, and quality of the line), providing a new vantage point on aesthetic and material connections between the two media forms, as well as on the ongoing evolution of TV anime.

This chapter takes a studio-centered approach to examining the relationship between the genre of science fiction (sci-fi) and anime production, using the animation studio Gainax as a case study. While Gainax became internationally celebrated in the mid 1990s through the creation of the smash hit Neon Genesis Evangelion (Shinseiki Evangelion, 1995–96), the studio’s growth during the “first anime boom” of the 1980s was much more precarious. Before its foundation, Gainax relied on the collective activities of sci-fi institutions for promotional marketing and professional labor. The studio’s pre-history and survival is an inflection point between the institutions of broad sci-fi fans and creators in the 1970s, and anime and manga otaku, or superfans, in the 1980s. Considering the historical precarity of Gainax, this chapter is framed around the frenzied organizations that comprised Gainax before it was established as GAINAX: the licensing store General Products and the production company Daicon Film. By analyzing Gainax’s business origins before it became incorporated as a studio, some of the ways in which the anime industry integrated sci-fi institutions become visible.

In Japan, the management of anime series as intellectual properties has developed over a long-time span, growing into a sophisticated system of transmedia serialization professionally known as the “media mix.” Content derived from well-established anime series, however, is not exclusively developed to promote spin-offs and merchandise notoriously associated with fans and otaku subcultures. In a changing domestic market, it is increasingly exploited to add value to products and services in unprecedented commercial spheres, including drinks, tourism, and urban requalification. By taking the 40th anniversary of Mobile Suit Gundam as a case study, this chapter reflects on recent trends in anime licensing, providing a brief introduction to their effects on what might be called “extended” anime distribution. Through this perspective, it becomes possible to identify a series of apparently unrelated phenomena that are nonetheless connected to the aging of anime series and the changing demographics of their consumers.

This chapter provides an overview of manga usage in Japan. First, it traces the contours of the production side and the historic structuring function of print magazines, as well as their connections to anime. Second, the chapter delves into readership, consumption, and use. Issues of agency make room for a discussion of publications produced and distributed outside official commercial channels but in dialogue with them, and the Comic Market as their biggest sales-spot event. Third, the chapter exposes how different standards of regulation allowed eroticism to spread throughout manga and related media and material forms in Japan. Assumptions about consumption are unsettled through the example of Weekly Shōnen Jump, even as assumptions about production are disrupted through the suggestion that women are the majority of erotic manga artists today. Final thoughts are given on friction in the global circulation and reception of manga, which presents both challenges and opportunities for manga studies specifically and comics studies generally.

The electric guitar has long been a symbol of artistic prowess and cultural rebellion, primarily associated with male guitar legends such as Jimi Hendrix, Eddie Van Halen, and Jimmy Page. This prevalent gender disparity in electric guitar culture has perpetuated the belief that men not only pioneered its creation but have also historically dominated it. However, this perception is challenged by the notable contribution of women to the field. From iconic figures such as Memphis Minnie and Sister Rosetta Tharpe, to trailblazers such as Jennifer Batten and Bonnie Raitt, women have defied conventional expectations related to gender, culture, and class, while utilizing their guitars as instruments of personal expression. This investigation delves into the contributions, struggles, and achievements of women players, shedding light on their vital role in shaping the history of the electric guitar. It is conducted through the lens of guitarist Sue Foley, who sought inspiration from these heroines to light her own path while navigating the rugged landscape of electric guitar culture. Foley has invested decades of research into interviewing female guitarists, studying and learning the styles and methods of many of the pioneering women guitar players, while pursuing her career as a professional blues guitarist and recording artist.

The electric guitar is often presented as a novel but straightforward solution to a particular problem: amplification. It is remarkable, then, that histories of the instrument focus mainly on the iconic six-string itself. No electric guitar is complete without an amplifier, and no companion to the electric guitar is complete without a corresponding history of electronic amplification. This chapter is about certain tendencies and possibilities that have existed around electric guitar amplification. It covers the historical development of the amplifier, focusing less on a loudness teleology than the instrument’s social and political construction. It also discusses the history of amplification in relation to recent scholarly interests in signal chains and supply chains. The chapter concludes with a discussion of electric guitar amplification and the problem of electricity—suggesting that the power of the amplifier has never been found in loudness alone.

This chapter outlines key developments in effect pedal history since the format’s inception in the 1960s. Centered around fuzz, overdrive, delay, and modulation effects, this chapter considers the technology’s role in how electric guitarists understand tone. Additionally, this chapter details the emergence of more recent playing styles explicitly centered around liberal effect pedal use, especially involving granular or micro loopers. By exploring these various technologies and performance techniques, this chapter suggests that guitar pedals produce not only musical sounds but also knowledge about musical sounds.