Description
Empires are an element in many SF and fantasy anime including the various Gundam series, Legend of Galactic Heroes, Irresponsible Captain Tylor, and Banner of the Stars. However, in the history of Japan empires are a very problematic concept. For most of its history, Japan’s view of the outside world has been determined by the cultural dominance of China, its small size compared to its geographic neighbors, and threats from the empires of the European nations. The result has been either an enforced cultural isolation or an ultimately disastrous attempt to follow the European colonial empire model. This talk examines the role of empires play in anime and suggests that 1) empires are most often viewed as threatening external forces, 2) anime have a positive view of walls that separate Japan from external cultures, 3) where empires are viewed positively they are a reading of internal warfare between different clans in Japan and the rise of a central government and not a multicultural empire.
The paper “Walls and empires: Japan’s responses to the outside world as reflected in anime” was presented at the Mechademia conference in September 2017. Mechademia conferences (http://www.mechademia.net) are held annually at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and biennially in Asia. An earlier version of the talk was presented at the 2014 meeting of the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts (ICFA). ICFA is an annual scholarly conference devoted to all aspects of the fantastic (broadly defined) as it appears in literature, film, and the other arts. The ICFA is held annually in Orlando, Florida, USA.
Studying Anime 