Anime & Manga Research Papers

My love of anime grew out of my obsession with Robotech as a child. This obsession was sparked again during my last few years of high school by Ranma 1/2 and the growth of anime in the domestic VHS market.

Of course, when I started college, the atmosphere just exacerbated my addiction. UCLA had one of the largest anime clubs in the US. I may be dating myself, but this was the year before Sailor Moon premiered on TV. Anime was still fairly underground and the internet was just budding.

Eventually, I worked Anime & Manga into the academic side of my school life. I took several Japanese, Chinese, and East Asian culture classes and worked my interest into several topics.

While i'm certainly not an expert, my friends convinced me to put my papers up since there is not much academic research done on the subject at the time.
I have included my bibliographies and footnotes so that you can use my sources for research.
PLEASE DO NOT COPY MY PAPERS! You can cite them if you wish, but plagiarism is very wrong. i am putting them up to help you.

Reading about academic research on manga in Kyoto Seika University made me think about college days.

I studied Japanese at UCLA and wrote several manga & anime-centric papers. I spent lots of time and energy asking professors for permission to write about my passion.

Now that I look back at it, I wonder if they gave me higher grades because I wanted to do something out of the norm. Reading the papers now, I can see clearly the rushed bits, written with too little sleep and turned in an hour before the final time limit.

Anyway, I wanted to recommend several books about Japanese culture that I found useful. Of course, it's been a few years since I've had to do research, so these selections are a bit dated. Still, you could do worse than reading these books.

• Dreamland Japan
  Frederik L. Schodt's wonderful book about manga. An EXCELLENT read. Published in 1993, it may be a little dated. I hope that a revised and updated version comes out one day.
• Manga! Manga!: the World of Japanese Comics
  An earlier book by Fred Schodt. Wonderful insights.
• The Encyclopedia of Japanese Pop Culture.
  Filled with tons of obscure and not-so-obscure Japanese popculture information.

I know thousands of young sharp minds are looking at manga more seriously now. I am looking foward to books upon books of new views, opinions and insights into manga, anime, and culture. And I am sure that someone out there is writing about surge in manga reading around the world.

Dear MangaScholar (TM), I would like to point out that there are lots of topics to cover. I would love to read more about:

• Manga and the female mind
• Manga, reality, fantasy, and how readers relate to stories.
• Manga and world culture
  how is it changing the way children and young adults read and view the world.
• Anime and manga - lost in translation?
  How moving from one medium to another changes a story.
• Japan and the rest of the world
  How does Japanese society view the mangawave?
• Bones of the story
  What makes a great genre manga? Shonen, Shoujo, Seinen, ect. What stories have entranced readers? Does it matter what part of the world you are in? How does ones culture influence the popularity of a manga?

Hm, I have manga on the mind. But then, it's always there. In the back of my mind. Hm, like a parasite. Ew.