Introduction

Recently nothing has inspired more interest and attention in studies of Japanese and global popular culture than fans and fan activities, and the word otaku has entered both the popular and scholarly lexicons. But like other commonly used terms, we tend to naturalize words like "fan" and "otaku"—to assume we know all that they denote, connote, include, and exclude. In our need to identify and to find community, we lump common (mis)conceptions into a subject we call otaku. But in truth, we otaku are a vast multiplicity of subjects, practices, and texts that have gathered speed and are now fanning out in massive waves of morphing production and exchange. Constantly innovating, creating, performing, and consuming new iterations of this "style," this family of forms, narratives, and characters is sutured together by the conceptual threads of Art Mecho, the term we use to describe the visual and narrative forms that extend from Japanese anime and manga and that have now vaulted onto the global stage to be transformed over and over again in local sites and citations.

As Thomas LaMarre wrote in this volume's call for papers: "Terms like 'fan' and 'otaku' have been mobilized for a wide range of reasons in a wide variety of discourses, from gender studies to inquiries about technology and sociality. We think that the exploration of fan activities and otaku phenomena is crucial to understanding the contemporary world of transnational image and information flows, as well as the transnational formation of concepts and discourses. In keeping with our mission to forge links between different communities of knowledge and to challenge the conventional channels for the flow of information, in Mechademia 5 we propose a challenge to the [Begin Page ix] received understandings of fans. We would like to challenge quasi-anthropological and pseudo-sociological readings in which the identity of 'fan' or 'otaku' is presumed in advance as a fixed object of knowledge." We have all seen these unproductive readings in condescending journalistic works where the identity of "fan" or "otaku" is assumed: the geeky but newsworthy Other. In contrast, the present volume conceives "fanthropologies" not as a pat anthropology of fans but as an exploration of landscapes and subjects that challenge received frameworks and ideas.

The call asked authors to consider the "social and historical construction of fans or otaku as an object of knowledge" from which new insights have emerged. From the many fine essays submitted, we chose several that rise to that challenge. The zones of activity treated in these essays range from manga and anime fansubs and copyright issues to dolls and Rococo style. They include a remarkable photo essay on the emerging art of cosplay photography, a biographical manga of a doll-fan, and an insightful discussion of Akihabara by a scholar disguised as a tour guide disguised in a cosplay costume. The response to our call for papers was so strong that the editors decided to continue the discussion in a follow-up volume, Mechademia 6: User Enhanced, to be published in 2011. Mechademia 6 will present essays focused on alterations fans bring about through the reception of these performances and processes—the sometimes startling changes in landscapes, bodies, and subjectivities that become part of their fan identities.

Mechademia 5: Fanthropologies is divided into four sections. The first, "Sites of Transposition," focuses on transformative processes applied to texts, textual subjects, fans, and ideas about fans. The essays in the second section, "Patterns of Consumption," range from Ōtsuka Eiji's influential theory of narrative consumption to Kon Satoshi's narratives about consumption. The third section, "Modes of Circulation," discusses fansubs, scanlations, 2channel, and Akihabara's otaku tours. Finally, "Styles of Intervention," the fourth part, examines forms of militance and resistance (aligned variously along political, economic, national, and gender lines) possible in and through fan studies.

An exciting review section in this volume sparkles with cogent and critical discussions of emerging works, complementing these with a reflexive glance back in a special multipart review of Evangelion 1.01. Mechademia 5 concludes with a fascinating dialogue between associate editor Thomas LaMarre and Patrick W. Galbraith in the トレンド or "Trends" section, a wide-ranging discussion that...