Cross-Referential Transmedia Narrative and the Virtual Corporeality of Character/Cast

Translator's Introduction

Akiko Sugawa-Shimada is Professor at the Graduate School of Urban Innovation at Yokohama National University, Japan, and President of the Japan Society for Animation Studies. She specializes in popular culture theory, audience studies, and fan studies of anime, manga, cosplay, contents tourism, and 2.5-dimensional theater, investigating the dynamics of pleasure and politics that challenge and confound boundaries of gender, bodies, dimensions, and temporality. Sugawa-Shimada has authored many books and articles on anime, manga, and cultural studies both in Japanese and English, including Shōjo to mahō: Gāru hīrō wa ikani juyō sareta no ka (Girls and magic: How have girl heroes been accepted?) (2013), winner of the 2014 Japan Society of Animation Studies Award; Contents Tourism in Japan (2017, co-edited), "Rekijo, Pilgrimage and 'Pop-spiritualism': Pop-culture-induced heritage tourism of/for Young Women," in Japan Focus (2015); "Playing with Militarism in/with Arpeggio and Kantai Collection: Effects of Shōjo Images in War-related Contents Tourism in Japan," in Journal of War and Culture Studies (2018); and "Emerging '2.5-dimensional' Culture: Character-oriented Cultural Practices and 'Community of Preferences' as a New Fandom in Japan and Beyond," in Mechademia: Second Arc (2020).

2.5-dimensional culture refers to the practices of recreating the fictional or virtual world of anime, manga, and games into the real world and enjoying the ambiguous boundary between fiction and reality. These include live-action adaptations of anime and manga, as well as performances of voice actors as characters, practices of cosplay, contents tourism, maid cafes, VTubers, and virtual idols. 2.5-dimensional culture is structured through the practices of transmedia adaptations that center on characters, the development of visual technologies, interactive social media, and fan participation. Sugawa-Shimada's most recent book, 2.5 jigen bunka ron: Butai kyarakutā fandamu (2.5-dimensional culture: Stages, characters, fandom) (2021), takes up the 2.5-dimensional theater in particular, tracing the history and mechanisms of the enjoyment of blurred boundaries between virtual and real through focusing on the genre of theater and musicals to examine the characteristics of 2.5-dimensional theater and 2.5-dimensional culture at large. The following article is an excerpt from Chapter 2 of 2.5 jigen bunka ron. It comes after a section on actors and audiences for television series and 2.5D theater, and shifts the focus to 2.5D musicals.

Cross-Referential Transmedia Narrative and the Virtual Corporeality of Character/Cast

AKIKO SUGAWA-SHIMADA

Musical Adaptations of Anglophone Comics and Animation

So far, I have demonstrated the connections and commonalities between the actors in special-effects [tokusatsu] television series and 2.5-dimensional (hereafter 2.5D) theater as well as their reception, consumption, and use by audiences and fans. What, then, exactly is the generative ground for the audiences' or fans' recognition of 2.5D space, the world in which reality and fiction blend together? To comparatively analyze this sense of the 2.5D, let us begin by examining the corporeality of stage productions based on American and European comics and animation.

The most notable examples of musical adaptations of Western comics and animation are the Broadway musicals produced by Disney Theatrical Production, based on Disney's animated films, such as Beauty and the Beast (1994), The Lion King (1997), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1999), Tarzan (2006), The Little Mermaid (2008), Aladdin (2011), and Frozen (2018). Many of Disney's animated films are already created as musicals; thus, the transition from the film to the theater format was smooth, due to the "techniques cultivated through running the shows in theme parks."¹ The familiar songs from the films are taken up as musical numbers. In addition, outside of Broadway, Pinocchio was adapted into a straight play in London in 2017.

There is a long history of theatrical adaptations of popular comics and animation. Non-Disney musical adaptations include The Addams Family (2010), based on the comic strip series of the same title; It's a Bird . . . It's a Plane . . . It's Superman...