Link to my YouTube Playlist:

Link to my Reddit Account.

For my final post, I thought I’d go back and experience a classic anime film which I had never seen before. I finally decided on the 1995 film, Ghost in the Shell, a film which would serve to influence the future of both Japanese and ultimately, global science fiction. Additionally, the reason I wanted to watch the film was that I was aware it had significant overarching philosophical themes messages and wanted to see how they were communicated. Once again, I filmed a vlog which allowed me to give a proper overview of the film, communicating how I felt about the film, and sharing some of the trivia and interesting facts from behind the scenes.

Ghost in the Shell follows the government agency Section 9’s hunt for a mysterious hacker known as the Puppet Master, following lead android characters, Motoko Kusanagi and Batou. The overarching philosophical themes prevalent in the text include the themes of sex/gender identity and self-identity in a technologically advanced world. Personally, I found that these themes and messages were extremely relevant in our society where we are still struggling to achieve and define privacy laws in our digital age, and also as we attempt to save our planet from the destruction it’s suffered from human hands.

I admit that the film wasn’t what I expected. I didn’t expect it to be so mature, and in fact I learned that the film itself takes on a significantly more mature design than the manga it was based on which shows comedic facial expressions and situations. The mature design certainly assists in allowing the audience to take the plot and ideas presented more seriously. In addition, although I didn’t mind, there wasn’t as much action as I would have expected. Instead the plot was driven by human conversation, and a lot of the world was described through lengthy scenes illustrating the environment. In an interview with the Onion, director Mamoru Oshii describes the reasoning for this in a statement which awarded me a lot of respect for the man,

“…a lot of audiences and producers and companies are expecting me to make films with a lot of action. They all know that I’m very good at action scenes, but I tend to not use many, so they’re all frustrated with me every time I make a movie. But I do that intentionally. Yes, if I do a movie with a bunch of action, it’s going to be a lot more successful than the types of movies I’m making right now. The producers often say, “Instead of using all these philosophical phrases, why don’t you change this into an action scene?” But I don’t do that. I intend to continue to make these movies.”

My experience on Reddit this week served to cement my findings, allowing me to demonstrate how to properly make use of Reddit. Firstly, in a similar fashion to last week,  when sharing my vlog with r/anime, the community downvoted the video. When examining twhat content I’ve posted which has succeeded, the original content which succeed were the cosplay photos I took, the Totoro photo achieving over 200 upvotes. In addition, the other posts which have proven to be successful were my discussion posts, something which I served to prove again this week when I asked r/anime, in relation to Ghost in the Shell, to share and suggest the anime they believe had the most poignant messages. The post received 35 upvotes and garnered over 80 comments.

Thus, once again, I believe an effective idea to reflect on in conclusion is Sheridan‘s question where he prompts that autoethnography asks, “will this research help others cope with or better understand their situations?” My experience on Reddit, and in addition my experience as a new YouTuber allowed me to examine both situations. Ultimately, I learned that Reddit is a fabulous place to spark conversations, find new ideas, and discover new content, given that there are so many communities filled with people able for discussion. However, when it comes to posting original content, I found that images which are easy to consume succeeded, where my vlogs did not attract much traffic. Additionally, when posting content, I found that you have to pick which sub-reddit to post your content wisely. I also learned that the best way to garner attention to my vlogs was through my pre-established social media sites which allowed me to share my content with a network who was already aware of me. I personally found that my weakness was that I could have posted content more regularly, something I will attempt to rectify in the time before the Digital Artifact is due. I personally didn’t anticipate how much time it would take to make the videos, editing usually serving to take up a whole day. Only as I continue to use Reddit, and continue to make more content for my YouTube channel will I learn more about these online platforms, bringing forth Julius Caesar’s famous quote,

Experience is the teacher of all things.

– Anthony.

References

Robinson, T, “Mamoru Oshii”, A.V. Club, Pub. Sep 15, 2004, http://www.avclub.com/article/mamoru-oshii-13890

Sheridan, R , “Autoethnography: Research as Participant”, http://ricksheridan.netmar.com/auto/

Last Saturday I attended Oz Comic-Con in Sydney. I’m planning on both vlogging about the experience, and will then be creating a short film documenting the experience of myself and my team as part of our group assignment.

In this post I’ll be discussing my experience with cosplay on Reddit, and at the convention. However, before I begin I’d like to share a simple plan of my research and post plan for the next few weeks:

• Week 8: Cosplay & Convention Culture – Oz Comic-Con
• Week 10: Gender Representation in Japanese Anime and Manga – Kill La Kill
• Week 11: Political Messages in Utopian/Dystopian Anime and Manga – Ghost in the Shell

Anime Inspired Cosplay at Oz Comic-Con: Levi, Attack on Titan (TR,) Piccolo, Dragon Ball Z (TL,) Asuna and Kirito, Sword Art Online (BR,) Ira Gamagori, Kill la Kill (BL.)

The Japanese term cosplay, short for costume play, (costumed roleplay,) originally referred to period dramas and historical plays which required period appropriate clothing. The term gained currency in Japan since the 1970s to describe the practice of dressing up as characters from anime, manga and pop culture. The subculture was inspired by the practice of masquerade which featured prominently at U.S. Science Fiction Conventions. Japanese academic Daisuke Okabe explains that cosplay took off in Japan with the introduction of hit series such as Mobile Suit Gundam in 1979, and Urusei Yatsura in 1980. Today the subculture has been gladly embraced by communities all around the world, fans donning colourful purchased pre-made, or handmade garments in order to publicly express their love and commitment to their fandoms. For a full timeline of cosplay, follow this link.

I witnessed and participated in this subculture last Saturday at the Sydney Exhibition Centre – an event which certainly can be seen as one of the highlights of 2014 for me. I created a Flickr album where I posted all of the photos I took of amazing cosplayers. It was simply inspiring to see so many people who had gone through so much hard work in order to bring these characters to life – the woman dressed as Levi in the above image explaining that the accessories she made for her costume took over a day and a half to assemble. Inspired by the cosplayers I witnessed earlier in the year, I too decided to put some time and money into my costume, assembling an outfit of Oswald Cobblepot, The Penguin. I personally felt the effort was rewarding, the positive looks, smiles, and kind and flattering words that I received from the crowd on the day were priceless.

This week on Reddit I chose to both examine the sub-reddit r/cosplay, and participate in it. Before posting I read the submission guideline’s carefully, afraid of being criticised for misconduct. Earlier when I initiated my venture, I quickly learned that r/cosplay was updated frequently, and that posts could get lost quickly. I posted one image which received 12 upvotes, contenting me. Despite sharing that image with r/cosplay, I chose to share an image of my favourite cosplayer of the day, a woman dressed as Totoro, with r/ghibli in order to see how the niche sub-reddit focused on Ghibli would receive the image. I was absolutely surprised to receive over 200 upvotes, the image receiving over 1900 views on Flickr, quickly climbing to the top page of the sub-reddit, demonstrating the perks of posting decent content to the right sub-reddit.

Have you ever been to a convention? Did you cosplay? Leave a comment and let me know, and also, please feel free to suggest any anime or manga you might know of that might suit my future topics.

– Anthony

 EDIT: (Later Addition) Here’s my vlog where I describe my experience in more detail. A short documentary will be created soon with the footage we compiled for our group assingment.

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Before I continue to detail my experience on Reddit, I’d first like to outline the methodology involved in my approach, detailing how my research of Japanese Anime and Manga corresponds with, and is guided and framed by, the concept of autoethnography.

Autoethnography is an approach to research and writing that seeks to describe and systematically analyze personal experience in order to understand cultural experience… Thus, as a method, autoethnography is both process and product.

– Ellis, Addams, Bochner, ‘Autoethnography, An Overview.’

As Ellis explains, autoethnography combines the forms of autobiography, and ethnography – the process encouraging me to describe my personal experiences with Japanese Manga and Anime, whilst sharing the experience with other members on Reddit, my chosen site of interest. Thus, my investigation will incorporate two cultural experiences, the cultural experience of Japanese texts, and the cultural experience of participating in Reddit.

In order to successfully apply this method into my investigation I’m making the effort to participate weekly in the cultural experience by both watching anime and reading manga, and then by participating in discussions on Reddit I have also been posting questions in order to spawn discussion, allowing others to share their experiences, a process which also helps to expose myself to brand new texts. I’ve so far been successful, I’ve asked r/manga about the worst manga they’ve ever read, the post receiving 108 comments, and also asked r/anime about the most emotional anime they’ve ever seen, receiving 38 comments with many interesting contributions.

In my future reflective blog posts I plan on adhering to Sheridan’s “autoethnography prompts” questions which serve as a useful way to frame my process of investigation across the next few weeks, and a useful way to prompt a deeper response to my experience. In the coming weeks I plan to generate more discussion on Reddit, and plan to look into some of the texts suggested to me in the discussions, writing about my experiences with them.

Finally, this weekend I’m going to Oz-Comic Con, an interesting experience which I’m sure will serve to inspire me during my investigation.

References

Ellis, C, Adams, T & Bochner, A 2011, “Autoethnography: An Overview”, Forum: Qualitative Social Research, vol. 12, no. 1, accessed 11th Sept 2014, found: http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs1101108

Sheridan, R , “Autoethnography: Research as Participant”, accessed 11th Sept 2014, found:http://ricksheridan.netmar.com/auto/

As part of my auto-ethnographic exploration of anime and manga, I’ve decided to base the majority of my experience on Reddit, “the front page of the internet.” This will give me the opportunity to not only interact with the communities discussing these topics, but also make a bit of an experience for myself, exposing myself to new content, and furthering my understanding of the platform, helping me to assist others to understand the platform.

The reason I chose to look into Reddit is because I believe it’s a valuable platform to understand. As Tornoe states in his journal article, Reddit 101:

“Reddit, with its large readership and thousands of user-controlled subcategories, is quickly becoming an important tool for journalists to understand and master. Not only is it a potential treasure trove of human interest stories and local news leads, it should also be part of every newsroom’s social media strategy to drive Web traffic.”

This week I took that dive into Reddit, and I can freely admit that I felt mildly apprehensive doing so. This was because firstly, although I’ve ‘lurked’ on Reddit for a few years, I’ve never actually properly participated. Secondly, I was aware that on Reddit, if you don’t share content that the community likes you can both be ‘downvoted’ to hell, or receive colourful criticism from anonymous community members.

My first step was to make an account. I named it “OneSummersDay,” named after the beautiful opening theme from Spirited Away. I then searched for a range of sub-reddits, subscribing to r/anime, r/manga, r/japan, r/otaku, among a few others.

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