A study of fan culture: adolescent experiences with animé/manga doujinshi and cosplay in Taiwan

Fan culture has become a significant arena for communication studies, but art educators and researchers haven't paid enough attention to it. Such research is important because anim?/ manga fandom, as a subculture, has an enor mous influence on youngsters. This study is an exploration of youth anim?/manga fan culture from the viewpoints of six adolescents who are anim?/manga fan artists. The focus is on the participants' experiences, opinions, and val ues in making manga doujinshi (self-published comic fanzines), cosplaying (costume play), and participating in fan activities. This study has the potential for understanding youth anim?/manga fans, their fan art and subculture, and ultimately, for providing insights to allow art educators to bridge the gap between mainstream school cul tures and adolescent subcultures. Introduction: Re-viewing Fan Culture Fan culture, the body of people who are fans of pop culture, has been an active and widespread feature in postmodern society, but the diversity of its genres and dynam ics of its forms make it difficult to paint an accurate picture of fan culture as a whole (Bacon-Smith, 1992). Fandom, in fact, is a multicultural territory, where each fan community subscribes to its own unique media substances, values, and contexts. Young people have their own fan cultures, as a part of youth subculture in general, and many of them are little known or com pletely unknown to most of us. Although numerous youth fan activities have be come increasingly public, they are still per ceived as "a psychological symptom of a presumed social dysfunction" and one who becomes involved in them is perceived as "an image of the pathological fan" (Jenson, 1992, p.2). For instance, the hip-hop sub culture or the anim?/manga1 fan culture is associated with violence, drugs, and exotic obscenity, and so causes a great deal of social anxiety and moral panic in society (Kinsella, 2000; Njubi, 2001). According to Jenkins (1992a), fans may not be the "cultural dupes, social misfits, and mindless consumers" that they have been labeled (p. 23). Rather, fans are able to digest the media texts that they con sume so as to produce their own artworks and be creative on their own terms (Jen kins, 1992a, 1992b). This phenomenon can apparently be seen at anim? conven tions, at which anim?/manga fan arts like manga doujinshi2 and cosplay3 are cel ebrated and circulated. These two forms of anim?/manga art are mostly the products of anim?/manga fans' responses to their favorite manga or anim? texts. Originating in Japan, anim?/manga fandom has grown into an important so cial and cultural phenomenon there and throughout Asia, especially in Taiwan, Ko rea, Hong Kong, and mainland China. Even the United States has been caught up in this cultural wave (Wilson & Toku, 2004). Some art educators and researchers have been fascinated by anim?/manga's unique fan culture, featuring millions of visual im ages, fictional characters, and broad spec trum of signs and signification invented by and circulated among young people (Chen, 2003a; 2003b; Wilson, 2003; Toku, 2004; Wilson & Toku, 2004). Anim?/manga is so powerful that its influence can even seen in children at early ages. Through a series of research studies (1998; 2001; 2006), Toku explored the strong influence of manga over Japanese children's graph 14 VISUAL ARTS RESEARCH ? 2007 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois This content downloaded from 157.55.39.203 on Thu, 20 Oct 2016 04:16:20 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms ic narratives. Wilson and Toku (2004) put it into perspective: "Art educators need to understand what's happening in Asia, how it's spreading to the West, and its implica tions for art and visual cultural pedagogy" (p. 94). This paper attempts to understand why anim?/manga fans are so passionate about this mass-mediated artwork. It also looks for meanings that dedicated young fans may have found participating in this subculture. The Research Site: Anim?/Manga Fan Culture in Taiwan In the last decade, Taiwan's anim?/manga fan culture has rapidly grown and changed from an unacceptable small undercurrent of society to a popular social state (Chen, 2003a). Such a dramatic development did not happen at once but was accelerated gradually, yet speedily, by the fast-growing industry of Japanese anim? and manga. For years, about 95% of anim?/comics sales in Taiwan have been translations of Japanese anim?/manga, and this Japa nese dominance continues today and will probably remain in the near future. Put dif ferently, Taiwan's anim?/manga fan culture has to do mainly with Japanese anim? and manga, and even fans' sociocultural activi ties conform with those of Japanese culture. Such Japanese influence became appar ent when the anim?/manga conventions, Comiket and Comic Market were introduced in Taiwan in 1997. In Taiwan, these anim?/ manga conventions are called ComicWorld or Doujinshi Sales Convention. ComicWorld has paved a new avenue for doujinshi hob byists to display, exchange, and sell their self-published fanzines and manga-related products (Chen, 2003b). Like Japanese Comiket or American an im? conventions, the convention in Taiwan consists of a doujinshi sale and a cosplay in two different sections. For many fans, cosplay is the soul of an anim?/manga convention and a most important opportu nity to transform their fantasies into reality by playing and dressing up in costumes of their favorite anim?/manga characters. Be yond imitating characters with costumes, most fans insist that a cosplayer should speak in the character's words, act in the character's ways, think the character's thoughts, and assume the anim?/manga character's soul. In other words, they are expected to attempt to bring their favorite anim?/manga characters into life. Cosplay is an opportunity for anim?/ manga fans to dress up for playing their favorite characters from such sources as animation, mangas, video games, science fiction stories, and fantasy. According to Santoso (1998), "In the U.S. and in Europe, cosplay is solely restricted to costuming of Japanese characters from anim?, manga and gaming" (p. 1). However, in Taiwan, cosplay includes playing characters from three sources: (a) Japanese anim?, man ga, and video games, (b) Japanese visual rock bands,4 and (c) Taiwanese traditional puppetry. The sophistication of the costum ing is amazing. It is if these simulated ani m?/manga characters have actually come to life. Such performance is not simply the result of many hours of hard work on cos tuming but also the result of anim? fans' in fatuation with their favorite characters, an infatuation that drives them to play these fantasy characters so well (Chen, 2003b).