This collection charts the terrain of contemporary Japanese animation,
one of the most explosive forms of visual culture to emerge at the
crossroads of transnational cultural production in the last twenty-five
years. The essays offer bold and insightful engagement with animé's
concerns with gender identity, anxieties about body mutation and
technological monstrosity, and apocalyptic fantasies of the end of
history. The contributors dismantle the distinction between 'high' and
'low' culture and offer compelling arguments for the value and
importance of the study of animé and popular culture as a key link in
the translation from the local to the global.