Skip to Main Content

Anime's Media Mix: Franchising Toys and Characters in Japan

Online ISBN:
9781452947525
Print ISBN:
9780816675494
Publisher:
University of Minnesota Press
Book

Anime's Media Mix: Franchising Toys and Characters in Japan

Published:
1 March 2012
Online ISBN:
9781452947525
Print ISBN:
9780816675494
Publisher:
University of Minnesota Press

Abstract

This book shows that anime is far more than a style of Japanese animation. Beyond its immediate form of cartooning, anime is also a unique mode of cultural production and consumption that led to the phenomenon that is today called “media mix” in Japan and “convergence” in the West. According to the book, both anime and the media mix were ignited on January 1, 1963, when Astro Boy hit Japanese TV screens for the first time. Sponsored by a chocolate manufacturer with savvy marketing skills, Astro Boy quickly became a cultural icon in Japan. He was the poster boy (or, in his case, “sticker boy”) both for Meiji Seika’s chocolates and for what could happen when a goggle-eyed cartoon child fell into the eager clutches of creative marketers. It was only a short step, Steinberg makes clear, from Astro Boy to Pokémon and beyond. The book traces the cultural genealogy that spawned Astro Boy to the transformations of Japanese media culture that followed—and forward to the even more profound developments in global capitalism supported by the circulation of characters like Doraemon, Hello Kitty, and SuzumiyaHaruhi. It details how convergence was sparked by anime, with its astoundingly broad merchandising of images and its franchising across media and commodities. It also explains, for the first time, how the rise of anime cannot be understood properly—historically, economically, and culturally—without grasping the integral role that the media mix played from the start.

Contents
Close
This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

Sign In or Create an Account

Close

This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

View Article Abstract & Purchase Options

For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription.

Close