The Anime Machine: A Media Theory of Animation

425 Pages·2009·10.2 MB·English

by  Thomas Lamarre

The Anime Machine
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T h e
A n i m e
M a c h i n e
A Media Theor y of Animation
THOMAS L AMARRE
University of Minnesota Press
Minneapolis
London
Part I reworks material previously published in “From Animation to Anime: Drawing
Movements and Moving Drawings,” in Between Cinema and Anime, special issue of
Japan Forum 14, no. 2 (2002): 329–67, and “The Multiplanar Image,” Mechademia 1:
Emerging Worlds of Anime and Manga (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
2006), 120–44. Part II includes sections based on “Otaku Movement,” in Japan after
Japan: Rethinking the Nation in an Age of Recession, ed. Tomiko Yoda and H. D.
Harootunian (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2006), 358–94. Part III reworks an
argument initially presented in “Platonic Sex,” animation: an interdisciplinary journal
1, no. 1 (2006): 45–60 and 2, no. 1 (2007): 9–25.
Copyright 2009 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Published by the University of Minnesota Press
111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290
Minneapolis, MN 55401-2520
http://www.upress.umn.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lamarre, Thomas
The anime machine : a media theory of animation / Thomas Lamarre.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8166-5154-2 (hc : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8166-5155-9 (pb : alk. paper)
1. Animated films—Japan—History and criticism. I. Title. II. Title: Media
theory of animation.
NC1766.J3L36 2009
791.43'340952—dc22
2009026475
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
The University of Minnesota is an equal-opportunity educator and employer.
16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
The damming of the stream of real life,
the moment when its flow comes to a standstill, makes itself felt as reflux:
this reflux is astonishment.
—Walter Benjamin, What Is Epic Theater?
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CONTENTS
Preface ix
Introduction: The Anime Machine xiii
Part I. Multiplanar Image
1. Cinematism and Animetism 3
2. Animation Stand 12
3. Compositing 26
4. Merely Technological Behavior 45
5. Flying Machines 55
6. Full Animation 64
7. Only a Girl Can Save Us Now 77
8. Giving Up the Gun 86
Part II. Exploded View
9. Relative Movement 103
10. Structures of Depth 110
11. The Distributive Field 124
12. Otaku Imaging 144
13. Multiple Frames of Reference 155
14. Inner Natures 166
15. Full Limited Animation 184
Part III. Girl Computerized
16. A Face on the Train 209
17. The Absence of Sex 221
18. Platonic Sex 234
19. Perversion 242
20. The Spiral Dance of Symptom and Specter 252
21. Emergent Positions 265
22. Anime Eyes Manga 277
Conclusion: Patterns of Serialization 300
Notes 323
Bibliography 351
Index 367
PREFACE
T HIS BOOK PRESENTS A THEORY OF ANIMATION, unabashedly cen-
tered on Japanese animations, which are commonly particularized and
grouped under the loose heading “anime” or even “Japanimation.” At
the same time, this book is about “how to read anime.” In fact, it was the dif-
ficulties that I confronted trying to read anime that led me in the direction of
animation theory.
When I began teaching courses on Japanese mass culture in the early 1990s,
not only were there few Japanese animation titles available on video with sub-
titles but also research on animation and anime was relatively rare. In the course
of the 1990s, the situation changed dramatically. Animation surged on a number
of fronts with the rise of digital animation; the increasing use of computer imag-
ery in films; tie-ins and overlaps between video games, film, and animation; and,
needless to say, the global boom in popularity of Japanese animations, launched
in part through the exchange of VHS copies among fans internationally and
then spurred with the rise of the Internet and file sharing. Research on anime
has appeared in the wake of this surge in the popularity of Japanese animations,
coeval with a new awareness of the ubiquity and centrality of animation. It is not
surprising, of course, that research and scholarship follow cultural booms. It is
the nature of criticism to follow, and the question of criticism is how to follow
and where to intervene in the flow.
What has surprised me about research on Japanese animations and anime
is the general lack of interest in animation as such, in animation as moving im-
ages. The bulk of anime commentary ignores that its “object” consists of moving
images, as if animations were just another text. Such a treatment of anime as a
ix