In the previous blog post, which you can read here, I explored the popular, South Korean live streaming platform: V Live. I discovered what the application is used for, by whom, and overall, what a platform like it means for Korean media and fan culture both locally and internationally.  This is part two, where I will analyse and narrate my own personal experience, and to therefore understand and reflect on the experience of using a South Korean, social media app for the first time.

As I explained in part one, due to being primarily invested in western media growing up, I was not exposed to social media applications and platforms that were prevailing overseas. Overall, I was largely unaware of media and popular culture outside of the US, UK, and Australia. It was not until my friends and I were introduced to the BLACKPINK ‘DDU-DU DDU-DU‘ music video, that we were…

Japanese animation and the entirety of the medium is something that I am not overly familiar with, so when I heard that we would be watching Akira (1988) in class, I was excited. Growing up between England and Australia, the media that I consumed was overly ‘western,’ and only came out of Hollywood. It was only during Japanese language class in High School that I watched my first anime, Spirited Away (2001). I remember feeling as though it was different to anything I had ever watched before, and the foreignness of the elements of Japanese culture in the film, intrigued me.

Since then, I have had very little further interaction with anime or media from Japan at all. Only occasionally watching films and series’ recommended from family members and friends who avidly engage with the medium. So whilst watching the film, I was already coming in with a perspective and…