Anime's media mix : franchising toys and characters in Japan / Marc Steinberg.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Steinberg, Marc, 1977-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Character merchandising--Japan.

Character merchandising.

Character toys--Japan.

Character toys.

Cartoon characters--Japan.

Cartoon characters.

Comic strip characters--Japan.

Comic strip characters.

Animated television programs--Japan--History and criticism.

Animated television programs.

Animated films--Japan--History and criticism.

Animated films.

Comic books, strips, etc--Japan--History and criticism.

Comic books, strips, etc.

Japan.

Physical Description:

xvii, 314 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, [2012]

Summary:

In Anime's Media Mix, Marc Steinberg convincingly shows that anime is far more than a style of Japanese animation. Beyond its immediate form of cartooning, anime is also a unique mode of cultural production and consumption that led to the phenomenon known as "media mix" in Japan and "convergence" in the West. According to Steinberg, both anime and the media mix were ignited on January 1, 1963, when Astro Boy hit Japanese TV screens for the first time.

Steinberg traces the cultural genealogy that spawned Astro Boy to the transformations of Japanese media culture that followed. He also explains, for the first time, how the rise of anime cannot be understood properly-historically, economically, and culturally-without grasping the integral role that the media mix played from the start. Engaging with film, animation, and media studies, as well as analyses of consumer culture and theories of capitalism, Steinberg offers the first sustained study of the Japanese mode of convergence that informs modern global media practices. Book jacket.

Contents:

Introduction: rethinking convergence in Japan

Anime transformations: Tetsuwan Atomu. Limiting movement, inventing anime

Candies, premiums, and character merchandizing: the Meiji-Atomu marketing campaign

Material communication and the mass media toy

Media mixes and character consumption: Kadokawa books. Media mixes, media transformations

Character, world, consumption.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780816675494

081667549X

9780816675500

0816675503

OCLC:

750401392