the konaka kouka

[KUMIKO SATO]

Please excuse my long response.  Honestly, I wasn't sure how my comment caused Anne's response, but I tried to clarify my assumptions that probably originate from the post-70s Jap. pop culture.  I hope this helps in some way!   Kumiko

--------------------------------
Anne, your comments on genre have touched on what I've been wondering.  Recently I've had some opportunities to talk with film studies people (I'm a CompLit person who actually has little connection with cinema studies), which made me notice the deep gap between cinema studies' understanding of genre and mine.  I grew up immersed in Japan's manga/anime/tokusatsu/videogame culture, and my concept of genre seems to have been formed according to those popular media of the post-70s Japan.  As a grad student, of course I know what genre means in literature and film, but what surprised me is that many critics seem to assume existing classifying systems are applicable to Japan's contemporary popular media, without much considering the categories that already condition its production systems, like giant robots and sports.  Thus what perplexes me is cinema studies' somewhat dialectical reading of "emerging genres" or "emerging media" of the non-West contrasted to Hollywood, or at least!
 Western, cinema, in spite of the fact that what appear like "emerging" are often the most traditional genres in Japanese popular culture.  

Regarding the fluidity of genres and media, I thought it is primarily reflecting the form of production and consumption...  Anime, for instance, has never been an independent category, constantly adopted from, or into, manga and games.  There are many like Konaka Chiaki, who has worked on tokusatsu, anime, live-action TV drama and film, regardless of genres, ranging from Ultra Man to horror and magical girls.  Most anime in the 70s were planned and produced by manga writers.  The typical 80s directors/animators like Oshii and Anno treat live-action drama as a form of anime (or vice versa).  I suppose film people already know directors like Miike, Nakano Hiroyuki, and Ishii Katsuhito use anime-like camera works and CG.  So what I'm trying to say is that there were production lines and consumer categories, but it's unclear to me whether they were genres.  When genre parodies began to appear, like Gunbuster and Macross in the early 80s, it was perhaps obvious that those genres we!
re simultaneously formed and deconstructed.

My another response to your idea of konaka effect is that the awareness of the "director" has been very weak in TV series of anime, tokusatsu, etc.  Anime fans from the 80s, for example, watch TV anime by identifying which scene or character is created by which animator, as exemplified by such concepts as Itano scenes (missiles and explosions animated by Itano Ichiro), Tomino zerifu (impressive phrases written by Tomino Yoshiyuki), Sadamoto characters, and Anno's robot moves.  Considering this otaku culture of identifying styles, techniques, characters, and voices, pinpointing Kotani's horror techniques is one of the most fundamental things the fan audience might do.  This otaku culture probably emerged between the late-70s and the early 80s.  I know academic people always ask who the director of a whole film is, but many fan viewers and creators are probably thinking about the author of each technique.  I took this classifying system for granted, but it may be part of the gap!
 I've been feeling.

Kumiko Sato