One among many orientalist[i] stereotypes of Asians is that they are masters of imitation (or adaptation) but lack original creativity (or invention); an assumption which looks ridiculous when one spends just a little time studying any given Asian culture, I would say. Rather, I spot the tendency to imitate (instead of inventing) in modern popular…
Category: Otaku Culture
The No Dating Clause in J-Pop Girl Bands
Take a moment to watch this video. Notice her shaved head? That is a traditional way to show remorse and a desire to repent in Japanese culture, a tradition quite rare for women to practice. So what was her sin? What terrible, despicable thing did she do that warranted a shaved head and this apology?…
Responsibilities of Blogging
This week, lets shift gears. Let’s look at our responsibilities as bloggers and why what we do matters. Blogging is a hobby that comes with responsibilities. The act of writing requires the author to think carefully about the quality of information and what message she wants the reader to leave with. Quality of information is…
Anime Blogging Tools
Blogging requires many different considerations. First, you have to keep track of what is going on in the communities you are a part of. You have to be careful of copyright issues. This is particularly problematic for images since it is very easy to just do a fast image search, right click, and snatch the…
Lolita: Style, Sin, and Soul
Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. -from the book Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov America and Japan give the word lolita different meanings. Most…
Manga Sound Effect Guide
Japanese has around 1,200 onomatopoeia divided into 3 families (Kadooka, 2009.; Inose,n.d. ). That’s around 3x more than English has. Onomatopoeia are words used to represent calls of animals, sounds of nature, sounds of people, and other sounds (Alilyeh & Zeinolabedin, 2014). Luckily, manga doesn’t use all of these sound words. However, it’s common for manga…