Another spring, and another term over! When so much time goes by, it becomes impossible to sum up all the individual things that have happened. So instead, here are some general reflections on how I've changed my perspective and opened up my life in the last year.

Because you know what? I feel like I’ve found some sort of secret key for joyful living this year. I thought that yesterday as I walked to a jazz band rehearsal. (I'm in a jazz band now. True story.) I felt like I’d found the secret to happiness. But when I tried to pin it down, it eluded words, or came out too simple. “I just do what makes me happy!” Yes, that’s it! And not it, not entirely. The entire “it” can’t be captured. It’s a feeling of going down the right path, knowing what I do is for the best, living authentically. Just…living.

( Secret to Happiness below. Caveat: YMMV )

A couple of weeks ago, I went to the always-enjoyable SGMS/Mechademia conference on Japanese popular culture in Minneapolis. (Hi to everyone who was also there!) I heard that some people on Twitter were interested my presentation, so I decided to post it here. (Hi Twitter folks, if you've made it here!) Then work and life jumped up in my face yelling "Me, me! Look at me! SO important! Must do now!" And the days passed, and...

At any rate, better late than never! Text below the cut, and you can also see the slides here: Trust me, it makes more sense with the slides.

( Aca-fan Service )

It's Saturday, which means time for book reviews! And since I just finished Ian Condry's new book The Soul of Anime a couple of weeks ago, here are some thoughts. Note: thoughts may be oriented towards my own personal usage. YMMV. RSVP. TTYL. Etc. ;)

( The Soul of Anime )

Just a quick post to promote a wonderful project!

Masaaki Yuasa (Tatami Galaxy) and Oshii Mamoru (Ghost in the Shell) want to make a short animated film about S&M wrestling called "Kick-Heart." It looks rough and edgy and funny and heartwarming all at once. But this is not the sort of project that is easy to get funding for. In fact, at a panel on "Anime Art and Industry" at this year's School Girls and Mobile Suits conference, screenwriting Dai Sato talked about how hard it is for animators to do original, experimental projects in the current economic climate, which makes investors very conservative in what new projects they pick up. Because animation is a low-paid, labour-intensive venture, it's hard for new animators to get a start while still making a living, and even harder for established directors to do satisfying projects and not work themselves to death. In his view, anime as an art form could be dead within 20 years due to such adverse conditions. But, he said, innovative projects can succeed through alternative channels like crowd-sourcing.

Case in point: this Kickstarter project. I became a backer a few weeks ago, and it's been really great. I get daily email updates with pictures of the evolving character designs and messages from the staff. When the project is funded, I'll get a free digital subbed download of the film. Since the funding rewards were just upgraded today, I'm delighted to learn I'm also getting a postcard, poster, and higher-quality download too. I'm almost tempted to add another 10.00 and get the DVD, newly available at the 30.00 donation level.

My point is that even the style or subject matter aren't to your taste, if you're an anime fan you should seriously think about supporting it to help create a space for high-quality experimental animation. This drive runs until Oct. 31. There are just two weeks left in the campaign, and they still need about 500,000 dollars. So to support this great effort, go to the link below, and you'll be directed to pay easily through Amazon.com. Happy crowdsourcing!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/production-ig/masaaki-yuasas-kick-heart

Aaaand there goes the summer. Wow. Now that I'm home again, I can't even begin to summarize everything that happened in Japan, everything that's happened in my life. So instead I'll look back by looking forward, and just do my acafannish thing.

One of the major reasons I went to Japan this summer was the chance to lecture at Wako University, in Ueno Toshiya's class on Deleuze and Guattari's A Thousand Plateaus. I had free run of the massive tome, but it wasn't hard to pick a topic: I am fascinated by their theory of the Body without Organs, which is in short a surface or circulation of desire that is not yet fixed to a single object. I can't explain why, but this idea touches me deeply, like something I have always known and never been able to express. I felt a similar mysterious attraction to the virtual idol Hatsune Miku: the feeling of encountering a series of strangely impersonal yet deeply affecting images of an almost too-literal BwO. So, I decided to read one in the other, both through each, for the lecture. Based on the class' reaction, I think the example really worked to illustrate a difficult concept! To get all I can out of a topic I'm passionate about, I also proposed to expand the lecture through fan studies for presentation at the School Girls and Mobile Suits/Mechademia conference in September.

I'll be reworking the lecture for presentation in the next few weeks. So, I thought I'd post the presentation abstract here to get my brain -and this blog- started again. This, so far, is the idea:

"What Can a Vocaloid Do?: The Kyara as Body without Organs"

This paper explores the intersections between "kyara," desire, and fan production by reading the Vocaloid idol Hatsune Miku through Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s theory of the "Body without Organs" (BwO).

The first section explains the elusive BwO through three keywords: desire, intensity, and (de)stratification. It shows how Deleuze and Guattari understand desire not as a lack but as an immanent creative force, generating freely-circulating intensities. In contrast to criticisms of the BwO as apolitical abstraction, however, I bring out the vital social implications that arise when the BwO is organized or stratified in embodied practice.

To illustrate a BwO in practice, I turn next to the example of the kyara or character in anime, manga, light novels and related media. Here I discuss the difference between the kyara of the media-mix industry and the traditional "I" of the Japanese "I-novel," comparing their modes of subjectivity and desire, their media temporalities, and the ways they build up or break down strata of identity and social hierarchy.

Finally, as a concrete case study, I consider the virtual idol singer Hatsune Miku and the uses she is put to by major corporations and fan collectives. In asking "What Can a Vocaloid Do?", my paper reformulates Deleuze and Guattari's concept of the BwO in light of today's media environment, and provides a more complex perspective on the Vocaloid phenomenon, beyond the easy celebrations of user empowerment touted by the media giants themselves.

This week, my home university, Wilfrid Laurier Univeristy, is partnering with the University of Waterloo to host Canada's major humanities conference, the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences. Basically, all the individual national scholarly organizations -like mine, the Film Studies Association of Canada- get together an hold their annual conferences at the same time in one place. We'll have over 7000 people this year, which is a massive conference by Canadian standards. (Though it makes me smile to realize what a small fraction of Comiket's 500,000 attendees that is!)

There will be a lot of live blogging and tweeting of this event, but I don't think I'll be one of the avid bloggers. Maybe I'll do a sum-up at the end, especially of the panel on "Anime/Comics: Appropriation and Adaptation." But since this is more an anime blog than an aca blog, I'll keep it low key.

That said, my presentation in a panel on post-cinematic adaptation is half about Satoshi Kon, so I have no problems posting my proposal/abstract here, for anyone who's interested!

( Hugo and Paprika )

Woo, I'm excited! In a fit of initiative, I've finally created an account at Dreamwidth and I think I've configured everything to cross-post. This is the test. If you're an LJ friend of mine who's also on DW and you want me in your Circle, you can find me t/here as "sanet." I'm doing my best to add you if we're already mutual LJ friends and I know your DW username as well.

What else can I say? Yoroshiku onegai shimasu!

Broadcasting live from the heart of Grading Country, it's The Merin Minute, reporting on any and all things me-related! Today's top stories:

Teaching: is done! Both classes wrote final exams this week. Now to deal with the heaps of frantically-scrawled booklets, containing occasional gems of insight and lots of hazardous waste material ("Fritz Lang's Waltz with Bashir." I kid you not.)

Research: is beginning! I'm presenting at the Film Studies Association of Canada conference, held during Canada's massive week-long humanities Congress in May. My paper: "Digital Dreams and the Nostalgia for Cinema in Hugo and Paprika." Looking forward to this one!
I'll also likely be lecturing this summer at Wako University (Japan), in Ueno Toshiya's seminar on A Thousand Plateaus by Deleuze and Guattari. I hope to talk about the Body without Organs and "kyara" or character bodies (possibly in early shounen-ai manga/anime, possibly Hatsune Miku.) It sounds exciting, but I'm nervous about the cost of this summer's Japan research plans, in financial and emotional terms.

Anime: Apollon SQUEEEEE! The first episode of Watanabe Shinichiro's new series Sakamichi no Apollon (Kids on the Slope) actually made me squee out loud. In retrospect, I get the feeling I'm being hooked by a formulaic narrative and typed characters: delicate classical music student Nishimi Kaoru transfers to a new school in backwater Kyushu, where impulsive, jazz-loving bad-boy Kawabuchi Sentarou takes a sudden liking to him. Kaoru is fascinated in return by Sentarou's "drumming." I see the bait there, Watanabe. But I like it, so I'll let the hook sink in and trust you to pull me somewhere good. Also, new music/jazz covers by Yoko Kanno, yay!

Personal: Feeling very "up-and-down" this month: content one day, overwhelmed by anxiety the next. Changes in schedule always upset me, even "positive" changes like the end of term. Still, I'm trying to be gentle and give myself more down-time. I'm drawing again, and writing fiction. Nothing I'd show the world, but it makes me happy.

Blog: Really thinking of switching to Dreamwidth, but see above about the anxiety-provoking effects of change. Any advice on how to switch over easily?

And that was your Merin-Minute. Tune in next time for another exciting installment!

It was my goal this term to post things I've been teaching in my Animation class, as a way of getting back into writing about anime. But now I find it's the works I put on the syllabus that are just slightly out of my range that excite me most. I feel like I'm kind of phoning it in on anime, honestly, since I know the material I'm teaching so well already. But when it comes to things I haven't touched for a while, like the avant-garde stop-motion short films of the Brothers Quay...well, it's fascinating!

To get the class talking about stop-motion, I had them read an article by Suzanne Buchan called "Animation Spectatorship: The Quay Brothers' Animated Worlds" (which conveniently enough you can access in the online journal EnterText). Buchan's aim is to describe how we can experience animation as a world, a haptic, embodied place, in which we "allow ourselves that most pleasurable experience of being moved, intellectually, affectively and emotionally, by what unfolds on screen" (98). It reminded me of my first startling emotional reaction to the Quay's films back in 2009 or '10. I wasn't able to fully articulate it in class, but I will post here some notes I wrote then about being moved by stop-motion.

( The Quays' Uncanny World )

I'd like to write a long, impassioned post on the whole SOPA/PIPA issue that's exploded this week. So many people have already raised their voices to counter the corporate and legislative restriction of the open Internet, but if the rest of us say "Oh, I don't have to do anything now, other people are speaking out," eventually, no one except the most extremist voices on each side will say anything. And that's unacceptable.

Unfortunately, I'm in such an emotional state right now that I'm sure to regret anything I post, and I can't battle that anxiety on top of everything else I have to do this weekend. I just can't find the words.

So, what do we do in times like this? We share animated .gifs and vids, of course! Because sharing is the online way!

[ETA: dammit, embed codes are not working for me today so here are the links.]

TheOatmeal.com protest gif

Nina Paley's "All Creative Work is Derivative