ABSTRACT
Media and cultural studies specialist Koichi Iwabuchi has called Japanese popular culture "odor free," implying that it lacks cultural specificity in its visuals and content. This chapter argues the contrary, that Japanese popular culture, specifically animation and its related medium of manga graphic novels, is imbued with clearly culturally specific elements. One of the greatest creators of richly detailed, aesthetically entrancing alternative realities is the animator Hayao Miyazaki of Japan's Studio Ghibli. Animation as a clearly non-realistic medium takes this even further. Combined with fantasy, the medium offers a safer space to negotiate challenging events, anxieties and memories than the closer and perhaps more threatening spaces of realism and live-action can do. The alternative realities offered through animated fantasy films produced in Japan create worlds not simply of escape but also avenues for therapeutic engagement to work through both personal and supra-personal issues.
