Review: Mechademia
I’ve finally finished reading Mechademia: Emerging Worlds off Anime and Manga. This is the first volume of an annual publication for anime, manga and the fan arts. As the name suggests it promotes an academic view of these topics, which I think is a wonderful idea.
The variety of topics is pretty wide - anywhere from how globalization affects the spread of these japanese art forms to the world and conversely how the impact of external culture impacts Japan to cosplay and the Superflat art movement. I found most of the subjects quite interesting, the problem for me was that it is an academic publication. Which is problematic in general, since its whole goodness stems from its academic basis. But, I guess that’s the trouble with life, it just ain’t perfect.
If this quote is meaningful and interesting to you then Mechademia is definitely a must read:
Real complexity, and identity, lies at the level of the surface, not some prior interiorized point of origin. Identity, in other words, is emergent. Reality itself, authenticity, and real complexity thus lie at the surface, and in this sense can be thought of as “flat.”
If it isn’t meaningful, it may still be a worthwhile read. I’m definitely glad I bought it and read it - while I definitely didn’t agree with some of what was said it provides a genuinely interesting perspective. While it strays into ivory-tower-land periodically, some essays much more so than others, overall I think it’s quite readable for the motivated lay-person. A lot of deep thinking has gone into what the attraction is for these now mainstream art forms and how they are growing increasingly important in worldwide pop culture.
Some of the essays I wish were longer (some of them, I kind of wish were shorter..), like the one discussing the assessment of interactivity in video game design. It tries to provide a framework for evaluating video games in a context outside of the one provided by other less interactive media critique. While I’m not sure I bought into a lot of what he was saying, it was too short, I think for him to get into any depth of discussion and I would like to have gotten more out of it.
On the flip side, I found the essay on Superflat a bit much for me. Super academic it was tough to get through and it was one of the longest topics in the book. Sadly it was one of the ones I was most looking forward to, I don’t love the art (although I think I’ll still check out the Dalek show at Jonathan Levine’s), I wanted to get a sense of the philospohy behind it. While I can now clearly see that there is a significant wealth of ideas behind it, I have only a pretty superficial understanding because I could only read certain keywords in that piece. I found it frustrating, but that’s the perils of reading an academic book in a field that you aren’t in.
Overall if you are interested in these topics it might be worthwhile to pick up Mechademia.
