In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • Introduction
  • Stevie Suan

The initial idea for this issue of Mechademia was to explore how attending to materiality (and medium) would reveal the transnationality of media in/across/from Asia. While the works in this issue do not explicitly take on more radical approaches to materiality (like that of Jane Bennett’s “vibrant matter”), material is by no means seen as inert. Rather, it is considered as active (or at the very least resilient), producing interactions with consequences that have important implications should one follow their chain of effects. The articles in this issue utilize this point of departure either to engage with how certain cultural objects enact and enable some actions or viewpoints or to explore formal approaches to examining those objects and their dynamics.

It is also worth noting the emphasis on conventionality in conjunction with the material in the articles that follow. Many of the works examined here are part of “popular cultures” that embrace the often- derided repetitious practice of conventionality. In the context of considering materiality, there is a much longer tradition in the examination of the “high arts” to valorize those specific works that bring our attention to the dynamics of human and material. In such instances, these art works are praised for their uniqueness, as they actively raise our understanding of these interactions in a manner strikingly different than other works of a similar type. In other words, the stand out examples of “art” are made to stand out due to their distance from common conventions as employed in works of that type. Thinking through the inverse of this, we might wonder not just about the specificity of these stand out works but how other more conventional objects hide (or display in ways we have not yet discovered) their materiality. Thus, we might think of material in correspondence with convention, as the conventional must always be worked through the material, where the two inform one another. In this sense, materiality is taken to also include repeated material practices. This may initially seem out of step with trending conceptions of materiality. However, the development of recent transmedial approaches have brought into focus the striking resemblance of the myriad objects in the media mix, each object born of very different materials and technologies, inviting us to realize the overlap of conventions as it simultaneously calls attention to the variety of materials and mediums involved. [End Page 1]

This is important to consider as anime, manga, and games studies have, after many years, become increasingly recognized as specific fields of research, and we can now contribute back to the fields we sprung from through our own innovations. In a sense, media specifics such as materiality and conventions, along with the interactions between those media, are what separate our objects of study from those of other disciplines; it is their exploration that is precisely what we have to offer, especially to fields like media studies. But this specificity is also highly associated with particular spatial and cultural coordinates. Notably, in the study of anime, manga, and games, we have to contend with certain geographical elements, whether implicitly or explicitly. For instance, anime and manga (and some types of games) are very deeply associated with Japan, yet we find their production, distribution, and consumption across the globe and, in particular, across Asia. We thus have to consider the local particularities and institutionalized disciplinary structures that bring our study of these media into contact with the methodologies of area studies, in this case Japan studies, and more prominently Asian studies, in general.

With this in mind, it is also worth pointing out that this issue by no means intends to represent all of Asia (nor could it possibly be expected to do so). However, there is a marked focus not only on East Asia but most conspicuously on Japan. This was not the intention of the editors but an organic outcome from the submissions, which were heavily weighted toward Japan. There was an earnest effort made to be as inclusive of other areas of Asia as possible, but part of the process of editing a journal is to work within the bounds of the materials received and the topic...

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