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This class uses Japanese Manga (cartoons) and Anime (animated films) as modern mirrors that reflect the Japanese experience of rapid economic and social transformation over the past 150 years. Starting with the examination of ancient Buddhist drawings and traditional graphic arts that helped shape a uniquely Japanese style of visual expression, in this course we will trace how popular visual texts such as Manga and Anime sketch out a parallel world that is linked both historically and culturally to the “imagined community” of the Japanese nation-state. Taught in English.
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In JAPN 213 we looked at Japanese culture and how it is reflected in anime and manga. Our instructor provided us with various reading material relating to different topics portrayed through the two mediums and quizzed us each week as an assessment of what we have learned from the reading. The two final assessments were a test and presentation (in course work section below). This course satisfied two of my Major Learning Outcomes for Japanese.
One Major Learning Outcome that this class satisfies is MLO 2: Japanese Culture. For this class I learned about a more modern aspect of Japanese culture through translated manga and subtitles anime. One cultural aspect discussed in class was the presence of region in these types of works. We watched a few episodes of various anime to see how religion is portrayed in popular culture. For example, in class two shows we watched were Mushishi and Natsume's Book of Friends which both focused on portraying Yokai, creatures associated with the traditional Japanese religion of Shintoism. This class, as well as JAPN 305, sparked an interest in the religions of Japan, which I would like to learn more about in future classes. Another Major Leaning Outcome was MLO 4: Research and Technology. This outcome was fulfilled primarily during the final presentation, which required a group to research and create a presentation on a certain topic assigned by the teacher. My group's topic was the uniqueness of manga, for which we chose five topics to discuss throughout the presentation: A comparison with American comics, The different genres and audience, Manga magazines, Grey scale vs. color, and Negative perspectives some have of manga readers. |
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