Katsuhiro Otomo is a Japanese manga artist, screenwriter, animator and film director. He is best known as the creator of Akira, in terms of both the original 1982 manga series and the 1988 animated film adaptation. He was decorated a Chevalier of the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2005, promoted to Officier of the order in 2014, became the fourth manga artist ever inducted into the American Eisner Award Hall of Fame in 2012, and was awarded the Purple Medal of Honor from the Japanese government in 2013. Otomo later received the Winsor McCay Award at the 41st Annie Awards in 2014 and the 2015 Grand Prix de la ville d'Angoulême, the first manga artist to receive the award. Otomo is married to Yoko Otomo. Together they have one child, a son named Shohei Otomo, who is also an artist.
Otaku is a Japanese word that describes people with consuming interests, particularly in anime, manga, video games, or computers. Its contemporary use originated with a 1983 essay by Akio Nakamori in Manga Burikko. Otaku may be used as a pejorative with its negativity stemming from a stereotypical view of otaku as social outcasts and the media's reporting on Tsutomu Miyazaki, "The Otaku Murderer", in 1989. According to studies published in 2013, the term has become less negative, and an increasing number of people now identify themselves as otaku, both in Japan and elsewhere. Out of 137,734 teens surveyed in Japan in 2013, 42.2% self-identified as a type of otaku.
The history of anime can be traced back to the start of the 20th century, with the earliest verifiable films dating from 1907. Before the advent of film, Japan already had a rich tradition of entertainment with colourful painted figures moving across the projection screen in utsushi-e (写し絵), a particular Japanese type of magic lantern show popular in the 19th century. Possibly inspired by European phantasmagoria shows, utsushi-e showmen used mechanical slides and developed lightweight wooden projectors (furo) that were handheld so that several performers could each control the motions of different projected figures.
In Japanese popular culture, lolicon is a genre of fictional media in which young girl characters appear in romantic or sexual contexts. The term, a portmanteau of the English words "Lolita" and "complex", also refers to desire and affection for such characters, and fans of such characters and works. Associated with unrealistic and stylized imagery within manga, anime, and video games, lolicon in otaku culture is understood as distinct from desires for realistic depictions of girls, or real girls as such, and is associated with the concept of moe, or feelings of affection and love for fictional characters as such.
In Japanese popular culture, a bishōjo, also romanized as bishojo or bishoujo, is a cute girl character. Bishōjo characters appear ubiquitously in media including manga, anime, and computer games, and also appear in advertising and as mascots, such as for maid cafés. An attraction towards bishōjo characters is a key concept in otaku subculture.
Superflat is a postmodern art movement, founded by the artist Takashi Murakami, which is influenced by manga and anime. However, superflat doesn't have an explicit definition because Takashi Murakami does not want to limit the movement, but rather leave room for it to grow and evolve over time.
Moe, sometimes romanized as moé, is a Japanese word that refers to feelings of strong affection mainly towards characters in anime, manga, video games, and other media directed at the otaku market. Moe, however, has also gained usage to refer to feelings of affection towards any subject.
Takashi Murakami is a Japanese contemporary artist. He works in fine arts media as well as commercial and is known for blurring the line between high and low arts as well as co aesthetic characteristics of the Japanese artistic tradition and the nature of postwar Japanese culture and society, and is also used for Murakami's artistic style and other Japanese artists he has influenced.
Aya Takano is a Japanese painter, Superflat artist, manga artist, and science fiction essayist. Aya Takano is represented by Kaikai Kiki, the artistic production studio created in 2001 by Takashi Murakami.
Weekly Dearest My Brother is a series of six bishōjo-centered manga booklets that were released weekly for a short time in Japan. The manga would come packaged with a limited edition plastic-figure assembly kit, designed by Ohshima Yuki, of the featured character of the week. These figures of small-breasted prepubescent girls helped to expand the niche market of lolicon and also placed Ohshima in high esteem among figure collectors in Japan due to the high level of detail and clever portrayals. Some of Ohshima's figurines are reproduced by Takashi Murakami.
Chiho Aoshima is a Japanese pop artist and member of Takashi Murakami's Kaikai Kiki Collective. Aoshima graduated from the Department of Economics, Hosei University, Tokyo. She held a residency at Art Pace, San Antonio, United States in 2006.
Katsuya Terada, is a Japanese illustrator and cartoonist from the town of Tamano, Okayama. His alias is the portmanteau Rakugakingu. Terada's prolific visual arts practice uniquely straddles the lines between manga, fine art, and digital design. His work ranges widely from highly-detailed comics and novel illustrations to expressive, futuristic character designs for video games and anime. Terada posts actively on Facebook as Katsuya "t e r r a" Terada, as well as on his web blog terra's book.
Neo-pop is a postmodern art movement of the 1980s and 1990s.
The Daicon III and IV Opening Animations are two 8mm film anime short films that were produced for the 1981 Daicon III and 1983 Daicon IV Nihon SF Taikai conventions. They were produced by a group of amateur animators known as Daicon Film, who would later go on to form the animation studio Gainax. The films are known for their unusually high production values for amateur works and for including numerous references to otaku culture, as well as its unauthorized appropriations of the Playboy Bunny costume. Usage of the songs "Runaway" by Bill Conti as well as "Twilight" and "Hold On Tight" by English rock band Electric Light Orchestra were also unauthorized.
Mr. is a Japanese contemporary artist, based in Saitama Prefecture, Japan. A former protégé of Takashi Murakami, Mr.'s work debuted in both solo and group exhibitions in 1996, and has since been seen in museum and gallery exhibitions in Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya, Hong Kong, Seoul, Daegu, Paris, New York, Minneapolis, Chicago, Miami, Jerusalem, Los Angeles, and London.
The Otaku Encyclopedia is a 2009 encyclopedia written by Patrick Galbraith and published by Kodansha which provides an overview of anime and manga topics, and interviews and profiles of important people in Japanese fandom.
Alexandra Munroe, Ph.D., is a curator, Asia scholar, and author focusing on art, culture, and institutional global strategy. She has produced over 40 exhibitions and published pioneering scholarship on modern and contemporary Asian art. She organized the first major North American retrospectives of artists Yayoi Kusama (1989), Daido Moriyama (1999), Yoko Ono (2000), Mu Xin (2001), Cai Guo-Qiang (2008), and Lee Ufan (2011), among others, and has brought such historic avant-garde movements as Gutai, Mono-ha, and Chinese conceptual art, as well as Japanese otaku culture, to international attention. Her project Japanese Art after 1945: Scream Against the Sky (1994) is recognized for initiating the field of postwar Japanese art history in North America. Recently, Munroe was lead curator of the Guggenheim’s exhibition, Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World, which the New York Times named as one of 2017’s top ten exhibitions and ARTnews named as one of the decade’s top 25 most influential shows. Credited for the far-reaching impact of her exhibitions and scholarship bolstering knowledge of postwar Japanese art history in America and Japan, she received the 2017 Japan Foundation Award and the 2018 Commissioner for Cultural Affairs Award, both bestowed by the government of Japan.
Minako Nishiyama is a Japanese contemporary artist whose works have dealt with cultures, customs, and the representations of young females in Japanese media and popular culture. Her work is identified with an initial stage of the artistic transformation of post-modern Japanese "cute culture" in which cute images were appropriated and used for critique.
My Lonesome Cowboy is a sculpture created in 1998 by Japanese artist Takashi Murakami. Produced during Murakami's so-called "bodily fluids" period, the 9.45 ft-tall (288 cm) statue depicts an anime-inspired figure ejaculating a large strand of semen. Like its companion piece Hiropon, My Lonesome Cowboy is an example of superflat art, an art movement founded by Murakami in the 1990s to criticize Japanese consumer culture. The sculpture is noted as among Murakami's most famous works.
Hiropon is a sculpture created in 1997 by Japanese artist Takashi Murakami. Produced during Murakami's so-called "bodily fluids" period, the 7.33 ft tall statue depicts an anime-inspired figure expelling streams of breast milk from her nipples. Like its companion piece My Lonesome Cowboy, it is an example of superflat art, an art movement founded by Murakami in the 1990s to criticize Japanese consumer culture.
