Japan's Anime and Cyberpunk Genres
Anime films are cartoons, usually from Japan, with adult subject matter. Despite the prevailing American view that cartoons are for children, Japanese view anime as a legitimate art form that is appropriate for adult viewing. Anime subjects vary widely from soap opera drama, to medieval adventures, to science fiction. Many of the sci-fi anime films exhibit traits that are common to the cyberpunk ethic.
Cyberpunk as a genre seems to defy a precise definition, but several common themes can be used to exemplify what ideals the "movement" represents. This movement is a new view of the world, one in which neither apocalypse nor utopia is presented. Those involved in creating cyberpunk show the current global situation, only much more so. They extrapolate from current events and take it to a higher degree. Almost everything in their fictional worlds is recognizable to modern readers, only they have projected technology and events into a future that is possible.
The creators of anime present views of the future that are often very similar. Big robots, crowded metropolises, and powerful corporations are all commonplace. The Tessier-Ashpool mega-corp of Neuromancer can be likened to GENOM, a multinational corporation from Bubblegum Crisis. The Tessier-Ashpool artificial intelligences, Wintermute and Neuromancer, quitely amassed power and eventually changed the world. This idea of technology out of control is mirrored in GENOM's escaped Boomers. Boomers are pretty much Terminator endoskeletons, but even more bulky. Occasionally, one would escape and wreak havoc on the surrounding city. Both the novel and the anime film examine the social ramifications of technology beyond human intervention. And while it is true that Gibson's take on it is much more subtle, watching a Boomer get blown up by a cyberbabe in power armor can be pretty rewarding in its own right.
A Boomer cocks his head, small optical relays click. He almost grins. A split second later, a helicopter is going down in flames.
...he sees that the dark wavelike phenomenon was a wave of blood ... a miniaturized gatling gun ... whirs around. (Stephenson, 361)
The feelings evoked by these two passages are similar. Although the first quote was my pitiful attempt to paraphrase the animated action of Bubblegum Crisis; you can clearly see that directors of anime seem to share literary cyberpunks' fascination with cool tech. The Boomer's gun that spews zillions of rounds of superheated death is reminiscent of Stephenson's depleted uranium Reason gatling gun.
-Nara’s Buddhist temples were another result of cultural diffusion, Buddhist began in India in 500s B.C.E. about 1,000 years later, it came to Japan from China by way of Korea.
.... By comparison, Pixar contrives a more exultant ending. Humanity has now been restored to earth, and the two robotic companions, Eve and Wall-E, fall in love as the story ends. In conclusion, humans being overly dependent on technology can be evident in both dramatic stories; this is because the authors overstress the extravagant yet possible outcome due to overuse of technology. “It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity” (“Brainy Quotes” 1).
Society has made many vast advances over the past 50 years. Technology is one of the biggest industries that has made the most dramatic changes. Everyone loves new technology, so much that it almost takes over his or her lives. Ray Bradbury is a sci-fi author that seemed to have predicted the future of society and technology in his short stories. In most of his short stories, however, he criticizes what technology can become, and recognizes the problematic effects that can come with too much technology. Through Ray Bradbury’s short stories, he makes it apparent that his concerns with technology and modern day society are that technology has the ability to isolate people, advancing too fast can have catastrophic consequences and society could
The Seven Samurai directed by Akira Kurosawa uses many film techniques and features of the Japanese samurai film genre to engage and influence the viewing audience. The Japanese samurai film genre focuses on the physical martial arts, and is very similar to American westerns. These films are usually set in the Tokugawa era and the main characters are samurai, or Ronin. The Seven Samurai is a stereotypical Japanese samurai movie set in the Tokugawa era about a village full of farmers who hire seven samurai to protect their village from a group of bandits. Kurosawa has used many features of a typical samurai film in The Seven Samurai such as the use of the katana, the samurai were usually clean cut and are seen as socially superior and that the endings were usually described as ‘bittersweet’ as life goes on in the face of tragedy.
On a rooftop near O,Connoll Bridge A republican sniper lay watching. he gets shot at by the car.
When William Gibson's futuristic novel Neuromancer was first published, it seemed farfetched that technology could reach the level of sophistication he described. Science fiction movies have since repeated and expanded upon this theme, portraying corporate anxieties and paranoid fears of people to be controlled by aliens, man-made machines and artificial intelligence. Neuromancer takes us into the subculture of cyberpunk, a dystopia of an amoral society ruled by abstract powers. Gibson creates a world of fear and terror where technology permeates this futuristic world into its smallest detail and instead of serving humanity, rises to become its ruler and God.
Cyberpunk is, as its authors would have it, a revolutionary new genre. The Movement is made up of radical new authors breaking from traditional SF ideology and prose. The style evokes a sense of fear and paranoia while overloading the reader with information. Aside from these indefinable feelings evoked by the genre, cyberpunk contains several concrete, identifiable themes in every story. The central theme is about fringe characters -- outsiders -- living in a grimy, seedy world ruled over by huge, all-encompassing megacorporations. The megacorps permeate the world of these characters with an impersonal, hopeless aura. One can either work for them as a wage-drone in mediocrity, or against them as against gods in a pitiful fight to outwit them. The cyberpunk world is completely overwhelmed, infused, and inundated by corporate technology such as decks, the Matrix, "prosthetic limbs, implanted circuitry, cosmetic surgery, genetic alteration" (Sterling xiii), and artificial intelligences. The megacorporate philosophy that everything can be bought and sold, like the technology that is bought and sold, makes human life cheap and worthless. Technology has replaced humans, much like machines today have already replaced workers on the assembly line.
Cyberpunk is supposed to be the vision of a new technological world. However, the negative portrayal of the integration of technology and society is a fundamental tenet of the literature. This presents a pessimistic view of scientific advancement. The genre’s dark tones, seen repeatedly in Neuromancer, emphasize the bleak images throughout the futuristic fiction. The constant conflict between the individual and a technologically advanced society is a major theme as it stresses man’s insignificance. These characteristics are interwoven into the fabric of cyberpunk and form a bleak image of science fiction and the future. Gibson is very vague when describing the specific architecture and nuances of technology used in the designs of the futuristic objects. This lack of definite details is due to the fact that cyberpunk literature resists the concepts of technology.
The terms anime, manga, and otaku have become common parlance in the American media, no longer explained or defined in parentheses. Anime conventions are held nearly every weekend somewhere in the U.S. chain and independent book, video, and DVD stores devote ever expanding plots of valuable floor space to products shipped in from Japan. Public and school libraries stock their shelves with anime DVDs and manga Paper backs. (69)
Kawaii is a fast growing phenomenon worldwide. Kawaii by translation just means cute. This phenomenon first emerged in Japan. The cute culture is so surprising due to the fact that it is so different from the roles and the typical Japanese look which is that of the Japanese Salaryman. It is also extremely different from the lifestyle of the Salaryman. Other than the Kawaii look there have also been various subcultures that have recently emerged that aim to subvert the mainstream culture this include the Gothic Lolita which is the cute look mixed into a goth as well as the Ganguro girl which resembles a Malibu Barbie with light hair and extreme tans.
Neuromancer, a book that brings the belief of the future to life, speaks of the use of technology and how advanced it will be. Gibson illustrates a place of dystopia, where everything is dark and full of despair. There seems to be no control over people and who they kill. The place were all dystopia occurs is in cyberspace. The opening line seems to be Gibson's way of preparing the reader for what is to come; "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel."(Gibson 3) Here one sees the imagery that Gibson uses. He begins by bringing death and dismay in to the readers mind. One can picture a television that is black and fuzzy because the channel is not tuned in, the way the sky is. This is nothing like our sky; blue and bright. Rather like that of a gloomy rainy day, black and not appealing. Further in the book Gibson talks where the people live and sleep, places called "coffins." He describes the coffin's size, "the r...
The Golden Age of Japanese cinema was the product of postwar Allied occupation, a classical vertically integrated studio system, technical innovations in cinematography, and ingenious directors, set against a backdrop of 1950s political and cultural realignment.
A common element of genuine cyberpunk writing found in Neuromancer, is Gibson's depiction of the futuristic society and the people who live in it. Once again, Gibson uses the present issues of government and nuclear tension to predict society's future. In Neuromancer, this results in a world ruined by nuclear war. However, the people living in the society continue to survive in the world for personal benefit, or just for the sake of living. Gibson shows an example of this with his characters in Neuromancer.
In Conclusion William Gibson created a cyberpunk/ postmodernism tale that has blurred not only the physical state between mechanics and human anatomy, but has as well blurred the line between the natural and virtual world. He is making the reader contemplate how both software and hardware have influenced the natural world. Gibson’s fictional world would have not been possible without the existence of software and hardware, that is why the distinction between them is very crucial and play a different part within the text. Without these two things, the reader would not be able to comprehend and relate to Gibson’s view on how our society is interlocking with the advances of technology and the normality of today will no longer exist in the future.
Within the mediums of popular culture, the representation of women has often been controversial, due to the use of their gender and the attitudes toward them. In a majority of anime themes, the women have been drawn for their sensuality and sexuality constraints. Their role was to be dominated by their male counterparts. It has reinforced the stereotypical role of women which is the passive and sensitive role. Why is popular culture important? It influences the thoughts of the people and shapes their attitudes and behaviours.