Magic As Metaphor In Anime

Since its inception as an art form, anime has engaged with themes, symbols and narrative strategies drawn from the realm of magic. In recent years, the medium has increasingly turned to magic specifically as a metaphor for a wide range of cultural, philosophical and psychological concerns. This book first examines a range of Eastern and Western approaches to magic in anime, addressing magical thinking as an overarching concept which unites numerous titles despite their generic and tonal diversity. It then explores the collusion of anime and magic with reference to specific topics. A close study of cardinal titles is complemented by allusions to ancillary productions in order to situate the medium's fascination with magic within an appropriately broad historical context.

English painter John William Waterhouse (1849–1917) communicates his aesthetic vision through his use of color. Throughout his career, he experimented with color as an element with seemingly spatial qualities. His works have an unusual formalism—figures and settings often appear not merely realistic but somewhat hyperreal. Yet paradoxically Waterhouse’s works border on the abstract, prioritizing chromatic features over content. They invite us to focus on colors—and through them line, shape, texture and rhythm—in much the same way as works by Kandinsky, Klee, Matisse or Pollock.

Essays on the post-modern reception and interpretation of the Middle Ages. Though Studies in Medievalism has hosted many essays on gender, this is the first volume devoted specifically to that theme. The first part features four short essays that directly address manifestations of sexism in postmedieval responses to the Middle Ages: gender substitutions in a Grail Quest episode of the 2023 television series Mrs. Davis, repurposed misogyny in the last two episodes of Game of Thrones (2011-19), traditional gender stereotypes in Capital One's credit card commercials from 2000 to 2013, and "shaggy" medievalism in Robert Eggers' 2022 film The Northman. The second part contains ten longer essays, which collectively continue to demonstrate the ubiquity of gender issues and the extraordinary flexibility of approaches to them. The authors discuss the misogynistic sexualization of Grendel's mother in Parke Godwin's 1995 fantasy novel The Tower of Beowulf, in Graham Baker's 1999 film Beowulf, in three episodes from the television series Xena: Warrior Princess, and in Robert Zemeckis's 2007 film Beowulf; gender substitution in David Lowery's 2021 film The Green Knight and in Kinoku Nasu's and Takashi Takeuchi's anime series Fate (2004-); female authorship of three early-nineteenth-century plays about court ladies' medieval empowerment; extraordinary violence in medievalist video games; nationalism in fake nineteenth-century medievalist documents and in contemporary online fora; racial discrimination in video gaming and in Jim Crow literature; and the condemnation of racism in Maria Dahvana Headley's 2018 novel The Mere Wife.

Ranging from Chretien de Troyes to Shakespeare, this study proposes that the chivalric romance is characterized by a centerless structure, self-conscious fictionality and a propensity for irony. The form is tied to historical reality, yet represents the archetype of imaginative literature, declaring its fictional status without claiming to embody fixed truths. Through use of irony, the chivalric romance precludes conclusive interpretations, inviting readers to inhabit multifold fantasy worlds while uncompromisingly showing that an ideal world is only a fiction. Thus the reader is enjoined to confront the suspension of truth in their own lives.

Hayao Miyazaki has gained worldwide recognition as a leading figure in the history of animation, alongside Walt Disney, Milt Kahl, Tex Avery, Chuck Jones, Yuri Norstein and John Lasseter. In both his films and his writings, Miyazaki invites us to reflect on the unexamined beliefs that govern our lives. His eclectic body of work addresses compelling philosophical and political questions and demands critical attention. This study examines his views on contemporary culture and economics from a broad spectrum of perspectives, from Zen and classical philosophy and Romanticism, to existentialism, critical theory, poststructuralism and psychoanalytic theory.

Once a favorite of mainly art house audiences, Hayao Miyazaki’s films have enjoyed increasing exposure in the West since his Spirited Away won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature in 2003. The award signaled a turning point for Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli, bringing his films prominence in the media and driving their distribution in multiple formats. This book explores the closing decade of Miyazaki’s career (2004–2013), providing a close study of six feature films to which he contributed, including three he directed (Howl’s Moving Castle, Ponyo and The Wind Rises). Seven short films created for exclusive screening at Tokyo’s Ghibli Museum are also covered, four of which were directed by Miyazaki.

Written in straightforward, jargon-free language, A Concise Dictionary of Comics guides students, researchers, readers, and educators of all ages and at all levels of comics expertise. It provides them with a dictionary that doubles as a compendium of comics scholarship. A Concise Dictionary of Comics provides clear and informative definitions for each term. It includes twenty-five witty illustrations and pairs most defined terms with references to books, articles, book chapters, and other relevant critical sources. All references are dated and listed in an extensive, up-to-date bibliography of comics scholarship. Each term is also categorized according to type in an index of thematic groupings. This organization serves as a pedagogical aid for teachers and students learning about a specific facet of comics studies and as a research tool for scholars who are unfamiliar with a particular term but know what category it falls into. These features make A Concise Dictionary of Comics especially useful for critics, students, teachers, and researchers, and a vital reference to anyone else who wants to learn more about comics.

Frances Hodgson Burnett published numerous works for an adult readership, but she is mainly remembered today for three novels written for children: Little Lord Fauntleroy (1886), A Little Princess (1905) and The Secret Garden (1911). This volume is dedicated to The Secret Garden. The articles address a wide range of issues, including the representation of the garden in Burnett's novel in the context of cultural history; the relationship between the concept of nature and female identity; the idea of therapeutic places; the notion of redemptive children in The Secret Garden and Little Lord Fauntleroy; the concept of male identity; constructions of 'Otherness' and the redefinition of Englishness; film and anime versions of Burnett's classic; Noel Streatfeild's The Painted Garden as a rewriting of The Secret Garden; attitudes towards food in children's classics and Burnett's novel in the context of Edwardian girlhood fiction and the tradition of the female novel of development.