allison's reading shelf

Good Morning Blog, One of the first things I noticed in this movie was the collection roles of identities presented. For example, take Glico.Glico was born in China, so part of her identity is Chinese. She now lives in Japan, so another part of her identity is Japanese. And finally, she lives in Yentown, which has its own identity as Yentown. Many other characters in the movie also share this “Third” identity.  Even though Glico has three cultural identities, she really only identifies with two: Chinese and Yentown. Interestly, Yentown, though it is in Japan, is not considered Japanese by the Japanese natives due to its overwhelming large population of foreigners. Identity is something that is fluid, but the Japanese here have created borders on what it means to be “Japanese.” This is the same thing with one of the other characters in the movie, the man who proposed the idea of “Third Culture.” The man has American parents yet he was born in Japan. He has grown up livi...

In Osamu Tezuka’s manga, Astro Boy, the reader is brought into the future where humanity lives side-by-side with robots. Tezuka’s manga comes after WWII after Japan had to suffer from the hands of technology from the atomic bomb. Instead of representing the effects of technology as dangerous, or destructive, instead, Tezuka chooses to emphasize humanity in technology in the manga. The effects of technology are represented positively. Through different artistic techniques, Tezuka not only humanizes Astro Boy in his story but also humanizes all robots that live in human society. In the first opening pages, the readers are shown the society in which humans and robots coexist together. As robots continue to become more intertwined with them, they become more human in order to fit into society. For example, on page 14 on the first panel, the scientists put skin on the robots in order for them to further emulate people. The robot is drawn with a human-like face and body. In comparison...

Healing With Cooking Good Morning Blog, I have just finished reading Kitchen, and I absolutely loved it. I really enjoyed the “sweetness” in her writing, or as Ann Sherif says, “[Banana Yoshimoto] handles serious subjects with a remarkably light hand or even, as many critics have noted, a studied nonchalance.” (279). Also, there was something about the symbolism of the kitchen and food that made me really love this novel, too. Before reading this novel, I didn’t realize the significance of meals in this novel; this element helped to play a large role in the healing of the characters. To begin, when Mikage stays over the summer with Yuichi and Eriko, she gathers everyone together with her home-cooked meals. Even when everyone has such differentiating schedules and they hardly get the chance to see each other, “[I]t was because of my cooking that the three of us ate together as often as we did…” (57) This is the time that all three of them can come together, bond, and eat like...

Good morning blog, I know that a lot of other people have already written about the passage of time in AKIRA but I would like to voice my opinions on the subject, too. As mentioned in the Scott McCloud book, Understanding Comics, the passage of time in comics is fluid and moves in unique ways. On page 95 of McCloud, the author goes more into this by showing a panel where time flow changes within the panel. I think it is interesting to note that time doesn’t really exist in comics, or at least not in the same linear way as a movie or animation. It is with the author’s artistic choice to choose how long time will move within their panels. This is especially the case with AKIRA. AKIRA is filled with many scenes that depict action and suspense and the author helps to elevate those moods with the passage of time within the panels.   One of the scenes I would like to take a look at is on page 222 and 223 of AKIRA; this is the scene where we get a first look at Akira’s “bunk...

Good Evening Blog,  Before taking this class, I’ve never really gotten the chance to critically think and analyze comics and manga before. When I've read comics and manga in the past, I really just paid attention to the story and the pretty art. But, after reading Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics, I’ve come to realize that like all other art forms, there are deeper reasons why a comic artist chooses to draw in a certain style and how they choose to present their ideas.  This is especially true in Tezuka Osamu’s Astro Boy. The way that Osamu has chosen to use specific techniques in his panel-to-panel has helped to bring out crucial points in his manga. In McCloud’s book, he names 6 different types of paneling that are used in comics and manga: moment-to-moment, action-to-action, subject-to-subject, scene-to-scene, aspect-to-aspect, and non-sequitur. I feel that one of the best scenes in Astro Boy is Tobio’s death. Not because Tobio died, but because the way that ...

Good Morning Blog (おはようございます)! As I was reading Yoshio Sugimoto’s The Cambridge Companion to Modern Japanese Culture, I became intrigued by the different complex layers of Japanese culture. Specifically, I wanted to dive in a bit more about the more “hidden” elements of Japanese culture and also look at how Japanese culture influences pop culture in America.  In The Cambridge Companion to Modern Japanese Culture, Yoshio Sugimoto goes over in what exactly defines Japanese culture. As someone that lives outside of Japan, it was interesting to see that the author made a point that Japanese culture isn’t as homogenous as originally thought by foreigners. Like many places around the globe, Japan has multiple dialects and inhabits different ethnic groups, such as the Ainu people, which are completely different from the Yamato minzoku/Wajin people. The difference between these “hidden” aspects of Japanese culture and the ones that we (foreigners) typically see as Japanese culture i...