Japanese Animation and New Media
Week Eight: Chapter Twelve: Otaku Imaging
As prior example suggests, these otaku began to ‘dehierarchize’ the image at the level of production. Anime no longer appeared as a unitary story produced and communicated in a unitary fashion. Instead anime appeared as an assemblage of diverse elements made by diverse talents. Looking at anime in this way, otaku undermined the privilege of, say, the writer or director.
As a result, otaku began to see anime less as a story to be consumed and forgotten and more as an event or world to be prolonged and further elaborated. They also began to see anime less in terms of a finished product and more in terms of how it was made and thus how it might be extended or continued.
Getter Robo is also a good example because the series is about three boys who pilot three warplanes, which combine to form a giant robot. And the robot can combine in three different ways to form three different giant robots.
For a fuller account, see: http://www.generationmech.com/2009/05/28/getter-robo-the-first-transfomers/
In sum, there is a logic of assembly, disassembly, and reassembly that happens both at the level of the animation itself (its technics) and at the level of the featured product (its toys). In effect, anime technics are becoming more and more like ‘transformer’ toy assembly, and transformer toy more and more like anime technics.
