Mutual Images is an annual, double-blind peer-reviewed and transcultural research journal, established in 2016 by the scholarly, non-profit and independent Mutual Images Research Association (MIRA), and registered under the ISSN 2496-1868. Its field of interest is the analysis and discussion of the ever-changing, multifaceted relations between Europe and Asia, and between specific European countries or regions and specific Asian countries or regions. A privileged area of investigation concerns the mutual cultural influences between Japan and other national or regional contexts, with a special emphasis on visual domains, media studies, the cultural and creative industries, and popular imagination at large.
Mutual Images Journal by Mutual Images Research Association is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. All images must have signed permission by the copyright owner on file with us in order to be included. This includes images to which you hold the copyright. Images that contain identifiable persons must have a statement of release signed by the person whose image will appear in your article. Authors are responsible for providing such authorisations if requested. Mutual Images allows the author(s) to hold the coypright of his/her/their creation(s) without restrictions. Mutual Images permits and encourages authors to post items submitted to the journal on personal websites or institutional repositories both prior to and after publication, while providing bibliographic details that credit, if applicable, its publication in this journal. Mutual Images has no submission charges, nor article processing charges (APCs).
Digitization has made nearly every aspect of human life computable, and specifically, by way of computation and increasingly clever algorithms, the creation of any image is possible. The application of this technology towards any image and sonic media, combined with speed and mass communications could lead to a form of totalitarianism, the loss of history, and the end of truth.
Copyright (c) 2026 Shawn Lawson https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The Wonderful, Fluorescent, Massive World of Tiny Invisible Things: Creating transformative science stories for children. A collaboration between science and creative arts
This article is a case study of a creative practice research project which aims to address the lack of representative science content for children by creating animated hybrid documentary science stories for ages 10-12 featuring a diversity of scientists (especially women) as protagonists which can in turn influence STEM career choices. The case study is in two parts, first the development and research methodology of the pilot and second, the plans for a larger-scale research project. The project expects to generate new knowledge pioneering a novel model of science communication translating complex contemporary scientific research visual data into engaging animated narratives, enhancing diversity and scientific visual literacy for children. Outcomes are an education-focused series and associated teaching assets for broadcast and use in the classroom.
Copyright (c) 2026 Rachel Landers https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Languages of Visual Arts: from Venetian Bas-reliefs to Nucleosynthesis, Pulsars, and Beyond
Can researchers use honest, beautiful, and accurate visual strategies to communicate something that is not visible? Especially with phenomena that are just theoretical concepts, or that are too small or too distant in time or space. Art related to science can be much more than divulgation (in the sense of conveying “second-hand”, or “cold”, research content). Art can bring the general public straight into the core of state-of-the-art research; in some respects, art can become first-hand research in itself (but, at the same time, verge on the edge of fiction), when striving to convey something that science is still trying to define, or to evoke things from an almost obliterated past. We present here some considerations on the above themes, from two different points of view: by an art-historical researcher and art curator, and by an artist active in science communication. In the first part of this article, Gloria Vallese describes the experience of two art and science exhibitions organized by the Accademia di Belle Arti in Venice, Italy. One of the artworks featured was by Alessia Lorenzi, the other author of this article; her experience in that context, together with other considerations from inside her current scientific visualization practice, is analyzed in the second part of this text. The second part of this article will cover some critical points and strengths of visual communication in science applied to the invisible. Practical examples and solutions will be provided to address the critical points and to reflect on opportunities and responsibilities in these fields.
astronomical knowledge in 13th-century Venice
Copyright (c) 2026 Gloria Vallese, Alessia Lorenzi https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The ever-expanding boundaries of visualization fuel discussions about objectivity and subjectivity in imaging techniques. This paper aims to introduce practical examples from the University of Applied Arts Vienna‘s Science Visualization Lab and spark discussions about the representation, presentation, and translation of humanity's scientific knowledge. Historically rooted in science communication through documentary films, the lab has expanded its creative field to engage recipients more directly. In recent years, the metaphorical 'fourth wall' has been broken down, introducing a wider range of artistic strategies to present essential and universally significant topics for humanity. With these strategies, the lab seeks to bring the world of science closer to various audiences. These visual and other sensory translations of scientific data open up debates in both art and science about the didactic, subjective, or objective nature of art-science presentations. The discussion about the context in which scientific data is presented to audiences is essential for research and development in visualising science.
Copyright (c) 2026 Martina Fröschl https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Astro-Animation - How Artists and Scientists Envision the Universe
For several years, students at an art college, working with NASA astronomers, have produced animations inspired by research on black holes, dark matter and more. They can be whimsical or poetic but still constrained by scientific rigour. The animations are used for scientific outreach and are freely available. Our program received a positive assessment through an evaluation we undertook. We are now planning a mobile STEAM exhibition to engage teenagers from underrepresented communities who may not typically consider STE(A)M for their studies. “Science anxiety” has been reported to be a significant barrier to learning. Mixing animation with astronomy can stimulate interest in STEAM, making science engaging in an unconventional way. One component would be activities where participants create artistic responses to astronomy. We undertook a workshop at a local city-run school, specialising in the arts for ages 14-17, to brainstorm the art/science activities. There we gave short scientific presentations leading to art activities: a giant colouring wall with projected celestial phenomena, a stop-motion station, and colouring images of comet 67P to produce an animation. Surveys before and after the activities showed positive responses. The hand of the artist has long been an important concept in animation (Crafton 1991). In a film entitled “The Movements of the Universe”, this concept is adapted to the hands of scientists. Combining animation, filmed interviews at NASA (including a Nobel prize winner), and the scientists’ hands, bring unexpected feelings of dream and humour to the audience. In this paper we explore three different viewpoints of these activities from a scientist, an animator, and an animation student.
Copyright (c) 2026 Laurence Arcadias, Robin H.D. CORBET , Emma BOOTH https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Breaking Stigma and Dispelling Invisibility: Animated Languages for Communicating HIV Disease
Numerous chronic diseases do not involve particular aesthetic indications and, for this reason, are considered "invisible". These diseases represent a large percentage of current ailments and people affected by them tend not to reveal their pathology, because it is stigmatizing. In recent years there has been a significant increase in social campaigns that have made great use of audio-visual artefacts, produced with the aim of educating, informing, raising awareness and giving to patients the possibility of emerging from invisibility. The article aims to focus on communication strategies using animated artefacts to dispel the invisibility of HIV, a virus considered deadly until the early 90s and which still today causes stigma, shame and desire for invisibility for those affected. Non-profit organizations and independent directors have worked on animation projects aimed at conducting information and awareness-raising actions, at suggesting avoiding risky behaviours, and at helping those affected escape from social isolation in which stigma and prejudice have confined them. These projects will be, therefore, selected, sorted and analysed according to the adopted different graphic languages and narrative approaches. The analysis considers the eight categories of communication styles formulated in 2008 by Roberto Bernocchi in the study of the communication artefacts produced as a tool for social awareness, and seeks to identify the linguistic and stylistic most adopted approaches in animated products that deal with the stigma of HIV and AIDS.
Copyright (c) 2026 Vincenzo Maselli https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Visualising medical information for edutainment through animation: a case study of the Diabetes VR experience “A Choice for Life”
Over 10 per cent of the world’s population lives with Type 2 diabetes, making it a significant public health concern. In Singapore, the government launched the “War on Diabetes” in 2016, initiating efforts focused on prevention, early detection, and better disease management. A challenge that remains is promoting informed dietary choices within hawker centres - open-air food complexes central to Singaporean food culture - where diverse offerings can complicate healthy decision-making for diabetes prevention and control. This paper presents a case study of A Choice for Life, a practice-as-research project developing a virtual reality (VR) experience aimed at educating users on making healthier food choices in hawker centres. Drawing on evidence that VR experiences can influence real-world behaviour, the project integrates insights from medical professionals, animators, and game designers. The discussion focuses on the iterative development of the user interface and innovative feedback mechanisms, including emoji responses that reflect the nutritional value of users’ food selections in the virtual setting. Presenting initial findings from prototype testing, it reflects upon the value that immersive experiences hold for the future of diabetes education and plans for the further development of the project.
Copyright (c) 2026 Emma Harper, Hannes Rall, Sabrina Wong, Gray Hodgkinson https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Animation as a visual bridge between science and society
Scientific knowledge has always depended on images, especially when it addresses phenomena that escape direct sensory perception. This introduction sketches the privileged yet problematic role of animation in figuring the “invisible” within contemporary science communication, pointing out some connected epistemological and ethical questions. In fact, the increasing visual coherence, realism, and interactivity of animated models can obscure the constructed nature of scientific models, encouraging audiences to read them as direct depictions rather than as mediated arguments. The present special issue of Mutual Images Journal is related to the Marie Skłodowska-Curie project FICTA SciO – Figuring the Invisible (2023–2025), which investigated conventions and tactics of animation for science outreach while advocating transparency as a core communicative value. The introduction outlines the conceptual stakes of the project and presents the seven contributions as complementary inquiries into how animation shapes scientific understanding, visibility, and public trust within contemporary visual culture.
Copyright (c) 2026 Marco Bellano https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
On making things visible. Including ourselves
This editorial introduces a special issue on animation in science communication, situating the contributions within broader debates on mediation, representation, and knowledge production. It highlights three interconnected themes: the instrumental use of animation to translate complex scientific phenomena; the ethical tensions between accuracy, engagement, and transparency; and the collaborative, interdisciplinary practices that underpin contemporary visualisation. The issue also reflects on the epistemological limits of visual representation and the implications of current publishing models. Together, the contributions position animation not only as a communicative tool, but as an epistemic practice operating between science and society.
Copyright (c) 2026 Marco Pellitteri, Maxime DANESIN, Manuel Hernández-Pérez https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
A Living Space Under the Sign of the Rhythms of Nature: Kyoto in The Old Capital by Kawabata Yasunari
Yasunari Kawabata’s The Old Capital offers a profound meditation on the relationship between nature, tradition, and the human spirit. Set in Kyoto, the novel transforms the city into a symbolic and aesthetic landscape through which themes of impermanence, seasonal rhythm, and cultural identity are explored. The present study tries to emphasize the way in which, out of the desire to lament the loss of tradition, in his novel whose original title is Koto, Yasunari Kawabata creates an idealized image of the old imperial capital, giving it the value of a keeper of the most authentic values of the Japanese ethos as well as that of a symbol of aesthetic concepts such as mono no aware, the fleeting beauty, wabi sabi, the rustic, imperfect and desolate beauty, or ma, the beauty of the empty space, which were generated by a deep awareness of the transient beauty of nature. The vegetal element that perhaps best characterizes the Japanese identity always tried hard by the forces of nature occupies a central place in Kawabata's novel, encompassing its tradi-tional meanings as a symbol of renewal, but also that of the impermanence of beauty and fragility of life. By analysing key motifs such as seasonal festivals, natural imagery, and spatial motifs, this paper argues that tradition in The Old Capital is not portrayed as rigid or static. Rather, it emerges as a fluid and evolving presence, continuously reinterpreted through individual memory by the novel’s characters acting like true keepers of tradition. It also puts forward an interpretation that aligns with Rodica Frentiu’s analysis of Kawabata’s poetic sensibility, where nature, seasonality, and the aesthetics of impermanence become part of a lived experience rather than abstract symbolism.
Copyright (c) 2025 Sabina Maria Sava https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Cherry Blossoms and Sweet Sentimentalism: The Sakura Song Boom in the 2000s and its image of Japaneseness
In the 2000s, Japan experienced a major trend in pop music known as the ‘Sakura Song Boom,’ featuring songs associated with cherry blossoms (sakura). Even 20 years later, these songs remain popular. This essay examines four songs from this boom and the cultural phenomenon itself, analysing two commercial web articles that emphasise the image of cherry blossoms, strongly linked to Japan and its people. The essay explores the supposed Japaneseness and nation-alism in these articles. By examining song lyrics, advertising, and circulation, this study investi-gates whether a collective image of cherry blossoms exists in these songs and their social function. The essay also explores why cherry blossoms became popular in the 2000s. Cherry blossoms sym-bolise changes and transitions in contemporary Japanese society due to their association with spring events, such as the start of the fiscal year, school terms, and graduation ceremonies. The songs depict protagonists’ sentimental emotions triggered by these changes. The essay reveals how the songs and the boom conveyed common performances of sentimental emotions and col-lective identities, reinforcing Japaneseness and nationalism featured in the articles.
Copyright (c) 2025 Teppei Fukuda https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Sonic Seasons: Musical Representation of Nature in Tōru Takemitsu’s Film Music
Japanese seasonal culture, rooted in natural environment and artistic traditions, perme-ates daily life and art forms, including the film music of Tōru Takemitsu (1930–1996). A nature enthusiast, Takemitsu themed nearly half of his works—including his nearly 100 film scores—around seasonal imagery. Seasonal elements in his film music extend beyond titles and scenes to metaphoric narrative functions. This paper analyses how seasonal culture shapes Takemitsu’s compositional techniques (texture, harmony, timbre, orchestration) and his use of music to depict seasons on screen. Focusing on four films—A Song of Early Spring (1969), Dear Summer Sister (1972), Glowing Autumn (1973), and Winter (1972)—it applies film music theory and Japanese seasonal aesthetics, with detailed analysis of “Dear Summer Sister”. The study reveals Takemitsu’s unique integration of seasonal symbolism into cinematic storytelling.
Copyright (c) 2025 Mohan Xie https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Subversive imagology of the ecoscape: an ecocritical analysis of Ibuse Masuji’s Kakitsubata (1951) and Taguchi Randy’s Zōn ni te (2013)
The relationship between Japanese people and nature is one of a strong bond in sev-eral respects. On the one hand, the symbiotic relationship between the Japanese and Japan's nat-ural environment has shaped cultural aspects of the philosophical and religious matrix, such as the Shintō and Buddhist rituals. On the other hand, the unpredictable character of nature manifests in earthquakes, tsunamis, and floods that have characterized the country for centuries. Eventually, in the global imagination, Japan is associated with cherry blossoms or autumn foliage, expressing an aesthetics of life’s fragility in its fleeting passage. This image metaphorically describes nature as both friendly and hostile. What happens when this image is subverted by anthropogenic inter-ference that corrupts the ecosystem and its connection with human beings? Radioactive contami-nation has troubled Japan twice. First, the double atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki annihilated the topography of the two cities. More recently, the nuclear accident at Fukushima Daiichi turned a flourishing agricultural region into a graveyard of radioactive waste. Neverthe-less, literature gives us evidence of nature fighting back. In Kakitsubata (1951), Ibuse Masuji por-trays a crazy iris, blooming out of season. With Zōn ni te (2013), Taguchi Randy presents a revital-ized nature, more thriving than ever, despite the soil contamination surrounding the nuclear power plant. This contribution adopts an ecocritical perspective to analyze an alternative view of the Japanese seasonal imagery depicted in literature. The aim is to investigate how the imagology that associates Japan with a sublime, untouched country (jitsuzō) is far from the truth of a contam-inated environment (jittai) which struggles to restore its unspoiled sublimity.
Copyright (c) 2025 Veronica De Pieri https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Dressed by Nature, Adorned by Design: Seeing and reading the Seasons with Kimono
Various studies of Japanese arts and crafts have brought evidence that objects designed in Japan materially and aesthetically reflect the characteristics of the country’s climate and its peo-ple’s appreciation of nature. The kimono is no exception, with numerous demonstrations showing that in its very conception, modes of production as well as in the way it is coloured and patterned, Japanese nature is present, through a literal or symbolical connection with the seasons. By looking at specific modes of kimono production as well as pattern designs that match the iconic “four sea-sons of Japan”, artistic inspirations and newly “imported” seasons, this article proposes to visually survey the different ways seasons are harmoniously or at times paradoxically expressed in kimono design. In addition, poems and passages from novels that have a connection with kimono will be examined, furthering the deep connections between design, Japanese culture and the life of the people who are “seasoning the seasons” in and with kimono.
Copyright (c) 2025 Lucile Druet https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Echoes of Nature: Exploring Sensibility Across Japanese Culture, Literature and Artistic Expression
This volume of Mutual Images Research Journal is a collective analysis of seasonal im-agery in Japanese society. As we witness the shifting landscapes and moods mirrored in nature’s transformation, we are reminded of the profound parallels between the sea-sonal cycle and the transience of life. In embracing the beauty of each season, from the cherry blossoms (sakura) marking the arrival of spring, to the role of haiku and visual and performing arts in conveying Japanese sensibility towards nature, the present vol-ume intends to showcase the Japanese worldview through the spectrum of nature. In Japan, the changing seasons hold [...]
Copyright (c) 2025 Rodica Frentiu, Florina Ilis, Oana Birlea, Ciliana Tudorica, Ioana Toșu https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Dear readers, Welcome to Mutual Images Research Journal, no. 12, our yearly collection of academic writings that in every issue focus on one or, sometimes, two themes, developed in an array of coordinated articles. We enjoyed titling this instalment “New season(s) for Mutual Images Journal” playing on the fact that, on the one hand, this issue really marks a new beginning of sort for the journal, as we briefly explain in the following lines of this Editorial; and also because, on the other hand, the entire issue hosts the proceedings [...]
Copyright (c) 2025 Marco Pellitteri, Maxime DANESIN, Manuel HERNÁNDEZ-PÉREZ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Okada Toshiki and Japanese Theatre – Peter ECKERSALL, Barbara GEILHORN, Andreas REGELSBERGER & Cody POULTON (eds)
Since emerging on the scene in the 1990s, influenced especially by the work of Hirata Oriza, playwright Okada Toshiki has written dozens of works, a selection of which have toured throughout the world. Okada Toshiki & Japanese Theatre tells the reader that “he is the only Japanese theatre artist of his generation to have a significant international career and his work is known widely in Europe, North America, Asia and Australia” (1). Okada’s work encompasses colloquial yet troubled language, slowed tempos coupled with abstract physical scores, rich visual and aural designs and collaborations, and close engagement with events such as the Iraq War, precarious employment, the 2011 disasters, and post-Anthropocene modes of dramatic exploration. The book [...]
Copyright (c) 2024 Justine Wiesinger https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Animating the Spirited: Journeys and Transformation – Tze-yue G. HU, Masao YOKOTA & Gyongyi HORVATH (eds)
Tze-yue G. Hu, Masao Yokota and Gyongyi Horvath edited an impressive anthology in 2020, Animating the Spirited: Journeys and Transformations, to examine the relationship between the concept of “the spirited” (or “the spiritual”) as part of our essence as humans and humanistic productions, especially all aspects of animation industries. T.-y. G. Hu is an independent educator and scholar-author based in Northern California with book publications such as Culture and Image-Building (University of Hong Kong Press, 2010). Her background in the healing arts programme provides [...]
Copyright (c) 2024 Fanhao Zhan https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Tobacco Packaging Design in China, Thailand, and New Zealand: A Comparative Study
Packaging design has received much interest from the academic and industrial worlds. Numerous studies have shown that packaging significantly impacts purchase intent, product satisfaction, and repeat purchases. However, to some extent, tobacco packaging is not used to fulfil its consumer target’s demands or increase the repeat purchase rate. By contrast, it has the official duty to discourage tobacco use, as it is a highly regulated business. Nevertheless, tobacco manufacturers do their best to find the last opportunity to advertise on tobacco boxes because the packet is their final or only marketing or advertising tool in many countries. Thus, tobacco packaging design could be the most challenging advertising practice in many nations because two contradicting advertising contents (persuasion and dissuasion) emerge in one medium simultaneously. In this paper, I comparatively content-analysed 65 popular cigarette brands from China, Thailand, and New Zealand to find out how tobacco companies use cigarette packaging to communicate with their customers. The results suggested that Chinese tobacco packaging is highly market-oriented and emphasises the use of traditional Chinese cultural elements. Conversely, tobacco packaging in Thailand and New Zealand focuses on health communication. But warning labels in the two countries are platitudes. The results also indicate that although policy factors have had a positive impact on tobacco packaging in terms of its discouraging function and contributing to tobacco control over the past decades, there is a need for policies to be tailored to the socio-cultural context. Efforts should focus on improving tobacco packaging from the perspective of smokers’ psychology. This adjustment is deemed necessary due to the declining effectiveness of current tobacco packaging control policies in reducing smoking rates in recent years.
Copyright (c) 2024 Xiaolong Zhang https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Horror and the Cube Films: An unlikely medium for the negotiation of Nationalist-Cultural ideologies
Over the past several decades, scholarship has come to recognise the unexpected significance of horror cinema ventures as both culturally and politically relevant. One of Canada’s greatest horror film successes was Vincenzo Natali’s 1997 psychological thriller Cube that metaphorically explores the suffocating nature of vocational social relations under the conditions of a patriarchal military-industrial capitalism. So innovative was its premise that US interests quickly acquired the rights to produce and distribute Cube 2: Hypercube (2002) and Cube Zero (2004), but they were just as quick to reformulate the most subversive critique of the original film. Two decades later, in 2021, Japanese producers released a remake of the original film (which was so popular there), although it also re-coded the thematic critique, just as the American sequels had done. With this group of films across three national production traditions arises an opportunity to “detect shifts in the ideological constellation”, as Slavoj Žižek has argued, by “compar[ing] consecutive remakes of the same story” (2011, p. 61). Following primarily Herbert Marcuse’s understanding of political repressive tolerance, this article demonstrates the way in which constructions of cultural identity are negotiated across national traditions in the age of globalisation. Cube and its follow-ups demonstrate the nationalist-inflected limits of critical expression in the way that each subsequent film attempts to re-focus and re-code the horrors of the narrative machine in order to assert their own nationalist sensibilities threatened by the cultural levelling effect of globalisation in an age of transnational cinema distribution.
Copyright (c) 2024 David Christopher https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The bias on characters’ visual traits in Japanese animation and the misconceived “transnationality” of anime
In the dynamics centred on East Asian cultural output, a special place is occupied by Japan’s production (namely, comics and animation, or manga and anime respectively) and the distribution and widespread consumption of this vast output around the world. Despite the interpolations many anime series or films faced when exported, a specificity of the medium was/is usually recognised by foreign audiences. However, issues often unfold in the reception of anime’s visual codes, which entail problematical aspects in the grasping of the narratives and an underlying dimension of what I shall here call “graphic politics”. Today, the visual-narrative logics of anime characters’ physiognomies, and therefore, the motivations and intentions of their creators, are still largely misinterpreted based on culturally-inflected interpretations; this gives us clues on what the audiences of anime are, what they expect and draw from anime’s stories, and what this means for a global politics of anime as a medium of expression and a creative output. In this article, through the description of visual examples and established, or, at times controversial, scholarship in the field, I discuss the persistence of wide misunderstandings in the cultural politics of anime’s design and its impact on the reception of anime’s intentions globally. Among the collateral effects of this misunderstanding, a technical and moral justification to call (or imply as) “anime” animations designed and produced outside of Japan by non-Japanese authors seems to be emerging in the global discourse, thus privileging a fabricated idea of anime as just a “form” over anime as also and mainly a Japanese cultural artefact, in a momentous process of progressive dilution of the Japan-embedded characteristics of the animations made in Japan.
Copyright (c) 2024 Marco Pellitteri https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Be a part of the narrative: How audiences are introduced to the “free choice dilemma” in the interactive film Bandersnatch
The first major interactive film on Netflix with live-action scenes was Bandersnatch, released in December 2018. Bandersnatch offers viewers a unique viewing experience distinct from traditional cinema, as it provides the viewer with multiple choices within the narrative trajectory. Digital interactive media technologies have become increasingly popular due to public demand for interactive engagement and a democratisation of text control. There is a social desire to deprive the author of total control over the story; to co-create stories using imagination while adhering to formal limitations and structures; to play with the text as an incomplete form; for the ability to rearrange the story’s order, alter its quality, and other such things. These meet the audience-creative user’s needs and satisfaction (Cover, 2004). Where personal emotions can be invested and free choice can be exercised in cyberspace, the emergence of interactivity as a kind of audience engagement is a robust culturally rooted desire. This article attempts to understand and analyse the uses and gratifications experienced by the audience during the interactive viewing process. However, digital participation proves to have limitations. Through a case study of the interactive film Bandersnatch, this paper explores how the interactivity and the features of video games can be used to give users so-called “free choice,” but that can actually be frustrating and ultimately offer only the illusion that the audience has any significant control over the story. In the end, the decisions made by the audience offer some relevant affordances to the interactive user but eventually proceed to reinforce the ideological control from the production team.
Copyright (c) 2024 Hanxue Zhang https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Video Gaming and Narratives of Love as a potential stance of cultural-political meaning in current societies: A study of It Takes Two, 2021
In 2021, arriving shortly after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and the social distancing it required, a creative co-op video game, It Takes Two, created by Swedish developer Hazelight Studios and published by American gaming giant Electronic Arts, gained huge popularity on a global scale, including unexpected success in the Chinese market. Although the game is not officially available in China, has no publishing license, and no official promotions, still half of its sales come from China. The game is based on a divorce-themed story, and by integrating cooperative gameplay mechanisms, it enables players to engage in constructing their own “narrative of love” that reflects and coincides with specific cultural indicators. Bringing the dynamics of marriage and divorce to the forefront, the game has generated enormous discussion in mainstream Chinese online platforms, and drew attention to political-cultural notions of what it means to be married and then to struggle and go through the (emotional, practical, and legal) divorce process. The aim of this article is to approach video games such as It Takes Two as a cultural form that should be understood as part of our politics as citizens and individuals in a broad sense, and as part of a wider and more complex connection we have with each other and with society (Street, 2007). Drawing on an analysis of the function of gameplay mechanics in relation to video game setting and structure, this study provides a discussion of the visual and narrative representations of an ostensibly “typical” universal love and divorce issue within the sociocultural context of a Western family, and examines how Chinese audiences make sense of such “lessons” and ideology, and how they work (or might not work) for them. It Takes Two raises awareness of and questions about how games can elicit emotional responses and deep reflection in real life for its players about the vicissitudes of marriage (and love relationships in general) and the culturally specific, at times legal, and broadly visual political implications of their successful or disastrous unfolding.
Copyright (c) 2024 Xin Yao https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Introduction – On politics of visual media
"The visual" is the dominant social mode of modern media in what some have come to call the “post-literate age” of international mass media distribution and cultural hegemony. Media images are suffused with culturally-inflected visual meaning at both their points of production and moments of reception. But their very ubiquity, or mere “commonality”, often results in the dismissal of their political significance. In terms of [...]
Copyright (c) 2024 David Christopher, Marco Pellitteri https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
From Dungeons & Dragons to Dragon Quest: Cultural dialogue and material shifts
Arguably one of the most popular genres in today’s video game market is the Japanese role-playing game (JRPG). The distinguishing traits of the genre are often a matter of debate. The final decision on whether something is a JRPG usually relies more on general feelings than on rigid criteria (Mallindine 2016). However, one shared trait among the exponents of the genre is that they find its roots in Western tabletop role-playing games, such as Dungeons&Dragons (1974). As a matter of fact, Dungeons&Dragons served as an inspiration for many other role-playing games (RPGs). One such example is Wizardry (1981), which, together with Ultima (1981), was among the most successful computer role-playing games of its time (Barton & Stacks 2008). The two games served as the beginning for long-spanning series, which enjoyed wide success in Japan (Adams 1985), where the RPG genre as a whole was soon integrated, through various platforms, into the local media ecology (Steinberg 2015). Wizardry in particular was also among the games which influenced Horii Yūji (Horii 2018a. 2018b) to create Dragon Quest (1986), one of the earliest examples of JRPG. This article seeks to draw a connection between Dungeons&Dragons and the early JRPGs. First, I compare Dungeons&Dragons, a tabletop RPG, to its most well-known digital counterparts of the time, Wizardry and Ultima. By doing this, I expose the differences between ‘pen and paper’ and ‘screen and software.’ Then, I observe the differences between Wizardry, Ultima, and Dragon Quest in terms of both aesthetics and gameplay, in order to understand how Japanese developers and distributors negotiated the concept of RPG for the Japanese market. In both comparisons I consider how characters, avatar, gameplay, and narrative are mediated by the platform and the cultural milieu hosting them.
Copyright (c) 2024 Andrea Mariucci https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Composer Kajiura Yuki and neo-medieval anime soundtracks
This study semiotically interrogates the historical imaginary evinced in the neo-medievalist musical topoi found in Kajiura Yuki’s distinctive music for anime, which is easily recognised by its eclectic mix of sounds and styles gathered from across the globe. Her early scores employed a compositional method practised in Japanese popular music since the 1990s, which treated the creative act as a process of musical curation. This technique is evident in Kajiura’s handling of medieval Gregorian chant, which - as she has explained in interviews - she did not learn from studies in music history but rather from the German band Enigma and their hit album MCMXC a.D. from 1990, where samples of chant were mixed with Euro dance pop and French rap. The anime Noir from 2001 contains an excellent example of her approach, combining chant-based vocal tracks with energetic dance rhythms. Enigma used chant to call on modern neo-medieval tropes that highlight the pleasures of mysticism, religious devotion, and sexuality freed from morality, and Kajiura has replicated this imagery in Noir, making chant the symbol of an ancient criminal order that both worships and overtly sexualises femininity as embodied by the main female characters. Kajiura’s later style expands the technique of the Gregorian chant-influenced sound she developed in her earlier works: shifting away from Latin lyrics to her invented nonsense language of “Kajiurago” (literally “the language of Kajiura” in Japanese), with her ethereal chant delivered primarily by female voices. This shift is partially due to her collaboration with FictionJunction and Kalafina and is also a reflection of the strong female anime protagonists. Her signature sound enlivens the soundscapes of both Fate/Zero (2011) and the blockbuster anime, Demon Slayer (2019). The track “Brace up and run!” opens each episode of the latter, highlighting female voices chanting Kajiurago as a musically haunting reminder of the otherness of the past.
Copyright (c) 2024 Stacey Jocoy, Heike Hoffer https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Editorial – Continuing research in a time full of sound and fury
Dear readers, students, fellow scholars, welcome to this eleventh instalment of Mutual Images Journal, titled “On politics of visual media” after the main section of this present piece. If only we had known [...]
Copyright (c) 2024 Maxime Danesin, Manuel Hernández-Pérez, Marco Pellitteri https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Joy Hendry is today a leading Japanese studies scholar and anthropologist, recompensed with the Order of the Rising Sun, who founded and presided over several major research associations over the past decades. However, at the time this story starts (as it is a story Hendry is writing in this book), she is a young woman starting her fieldwork for a doctorate. She had mastered the Japanese language already, but many aspects of Japanese daily life, especially in a retired rural area such as the small village of Kurotsuchi (Kyushu), elude her – as it did for most foreign academics in the 1970s. Written during lockdown due to the pandemic, Hendry narrates [...]
Copyright (c) 2022 Aurore Yamagata-Montoya https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The Values in Numbers: Reading Japanese Literature in a Global Information Age – Hoyt Long
The Values in Numbers: Reading Japanese Literature in a Global Information Age by Hoyt Long (Columbia University Press, 2021) sets out with two aims: to ask what computational methods might bring to the acts of reading and studying Japanese literature; and to open up the Digital Humanities, which in the United States have been dominated by the English language, to alternative insights, challenges, and solutions that arise when the objects of analysis are Japanese texts. The book’s opening sets [...]
Copyright (c) 2022 Vicky Young https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
When the World Laughs. Film Comedy East and West – William V. Costanzo
While film genres have risen or declined along with the times and its trends, according to Aldredge (2019), comedy has remained steady in high popularity through all the years since 1910, which is practically to say throughout the whole history of cinema as an industry. Furthermore, it can be said that comedy stands as the second genre in the number of films produced. Furthermore, it can be said that comedy stands as the second genre in number of films produced when considering only a single genre tagging. However, [...]
Copyright (c) 2022 Jose Montaño https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0