Anime and Philosophy

by Josef Steiff

  Despite the fear of these changes evident in Western culture, anime tends to embrace bodies in states of “becoming.” Think about Haku in Spirited Away changing from human form to a dragon. This was not portrayed as something to fear, but instead something magical. Our bodies are always changing, always “becoming” something new. We shed and regrow our skin constantly. Our bones remake themselves. We grow. We age. I am literally not the same person I was when I was twelve, but I take comfort in the myth that somehow “I” am a stable entity since I was born, that there is a continuity between the “I” I was and the “I” I am. Somehow, anime does not fear changing bodies the way the West does; instead they see possibilities. Why?

  In her book Anime from Akira to Princess Mononoke, Susan Napier argues that Japanese culture sees possibilities rather than fear in technologies, changing bodies, and the combination of the two due to the collective experience of nuclear bombing. This may seem counterintuitive at first. Wouldn’t the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki make people more fearful of technology and of the harm that technology can do to bodies? But after World War II, Japan was not allowed to develop its military. Money that may go towards military technologies and spending in other countries was used towards developing consumer technologies. This helped to make Japan a technological hub of the world, and technology was seen as a way to protect the body from threats, a way to effectively armor the soft, vulnerable human flesh. Technology could then protect bodies from future disasters such as radiation and bombing.

  There is a second aspect of Japanese culture that contributes to this: a rich history of storytelling about changing bodies. Magical figures change shape often, such as those seen in most of Miyazaki’s films, like Prince Turnip changing from a jumping scare-crow to a Prince in Howl’s Moving Castle. This mythology of changing bodies along with the technological development of Japan has created a cultural site for anime to show morphing creatures and cyborgs as possibilities, rather than monsters.

  The Posthuman

  POST-human? So we’re currently after the human? If this is after the human, what am I? Posthumanists argue that technology is so pervasive and invasive in culture that what it means to be human is now something new. What it meant to inhabit a human body in 1200 B.C.E. was very different than what it means now. They are no longer the same bodies due to the ways that our bodies have been altered by technology. Firstly, bodies are constantly encased in technology, from the plastic designed shoes to the chair I am sitting in to the paint on my walls. Secondly, bodies are altered due to technology, from carpal tunnel syndrome to fatness. WALL-E depicted the ultimate result of that Western fear of technology taking over human lives, bodies that were not even able to walk any longer. Thirdly, bodies become technology, making everyone cyborgs. Posthumanists do not say this is yet to come, in the future. No, they argue it has already happened. Clearly this applies to people with artificial hearts and limbs, but what about everyone else?

  “Cyborg Studies” is a large area of posthumanist scholarship, starting with Donna Haraway’s famous “Cyborg Manifesto” (from her book Simians, Cyborgs, and Women), which argued that we are all already cyborgs. We are all cyborgs, and therefore after the human. After all, a Terminator governs the state of California. My blood is made of technologically developed antibodies from the vaccines I’ve received. My food is genetically manipulated and fortified with vitamins. The water I drink is chemically treated and processed. My cells have evolved with technology, and technology is part of me.

  Humans like to consider themselves “exceptional,” as above and beyond other species and in control of other technologies. Donna Haraway argues in When Species Meet that human exceptionalism has caused many people to disregard the ways that humans are altered and how that changes our culture in favor of the myth that we are all stable and singular beings. Anime helps to break that thin veneer of the pretense of human exceptionalism in favor of imaging the magic of what bodies may be.

  Cyborg Studies and Posthumanism rarely focus on popular culture representations of the combination of humans and technology. Instead, scholars are interested in issues such as who and what counts as a citizen in an age of artificial intelligence, cybernetics, virtual worlds, and medical procedures which combine organic and machine, for example Chris Hables Gray’s Cyborg Citizen. Our definition and understanding of who is considered alive and how citizenship rights are awarded will surely have to change with our technology. Another issue addressed by posthumanists is how technology is used to better write gender upon the body, such as in the case of plastic surgery (as Anne Balsamo discusses in Technologies of the Gendered Body). For example, women’s bodies are technologically altered in order to give them large breasts, which helps those bodies to better fulfill the societal standards of gender. However, these standards are not “natural,” as large breasts on thin women rarely occurs without technological intervention.

  A few scholars of posthumanism, including myself, focus on popular culture representations of posthuman bodies. For example, in Cyborgs and Barbie Dolls, Kim Toffoletti examines popular culture artifacts such as Barbie dolls and Marilyn Manson for the ways that they help us to imagine what the body can be. She calls Barbie a “posthuman prototype” due to the ways its hard plastic torso, rubbery limbs, and unachievable proportions serve as a cultural manifestation of what posthuman bodies may be. Popular culture representations say something about the culture the representations developed out of. Representations on television and film show what people in a particular culture fear or love. Sometimes, as in anime, these representations are fantastical: what people would like to exist or what they fear may come to exist. This is why popular culture is an important area of study for the posthuman, as it shows cultural attitudes towards technology and bodies in an age of dramatic advances in genetics, cloning, robotics, and nanotechnology. In popular culture, people tell stories about these advances and their potential to transform humanity, which reveal something about the cultures these stories emerge from.

  Anime is a particularly rich medium for exploring cultural attitudes towards the posthuman, as the representations of the posthuman are extremely abundant in anime, perhaps more abundant than in any other medium. In Mechademia 3: Limits of the Human, scholars from a variety of areas came together to explore the posthuman in anime. The posthuman is such a common theme in anime that the editors of the series felt an entire volume in the Mechademia series was warranted.

  The Ghost in the Machine

  There are two valences of the posthuman that are clearly presented in anime. The first I term the “Ghost in the Machine” perspective, which is personified in the anime film Ghost in the Shell as well as the entire mecha genre. The Ghost in the Machine perspective on posthumanism sees advantages in leaving the human body altogether. The idea is that perhaps human consciousness could be transferred to a machine, thus negating the necessity of the human body and all the frailties that go with it. This myth is seen in cultures throughout the world, as well as in cybernetic research.

  In Ghost in the Shell, the cyborg cop Motoko Kusanagi links herself to information networks in order to catch a hacker called the Puppet Master. Motoko is still part human herself and is somewhat limited by her human body. In the end, she discovers that the Puppet Master is actually a computer program that has become conscious. This bit of consciousness moves throughout the information network as a Ghost in the Machine. Finally, Motoko herself merges her consciousness with the information network, experiencing a freedom unlike any she had experienced while she was still tethered to her body. This film embraces the possibilities that exist through completely merging with technology to exist only as a consciousness.

  While not specifically addressing Ghost in the Shell, N. Katherine Hayles critiques this common view of cyberneticists on the grounds that human consciousness is dependent on embodiment (How We Became Posthuman). Her critique is considered a pillar of posthuman thought. She argues that when the body is taken away, or another body
is put in its place, the consciousness itself dramatically changes. In other words, mind and body are not separate but are a unified whole. My body creates my moods, my pain, my energy. Bodies are not something to be liberated from. Instead, they create identity and existence. Consciousness is embodied. I see many cultural reasons to long to be without a body. Imagine what it would be like to no longer feel pain or to be limited by a frail, feeble body. However, it is not possible to know who we would be without our bodies, as our consciousness would surely change. While I could be freed from pain, I’d also be liberated from my senses, including wonderful sights, smells, tastes, and touches. Posthumanists don’t want to escape bodies, but instead want to know how body and consciousness change with various configurations of body and technology.

  The mecha genre of anime embraces human bodies encased in larger mechanical suits, combining human and machine to create a cyborg, such as in Robotech and the various Gundam series. Transformers is a US franchise which seems to similarly embrace the Ghost in Machine mythos, but is a cross between mecha and Ghost in the Shell. Transformers are not the metal boxes on utility poles (perhaps they evolved from them), but are large “transforming” machines that fight similarly to mecha, yet are not dependent on organic beings. And they are incognito among us as vehicles. I think Herbie may be the first transformer to come to Earth, later joined by his long lost son Bumblebee. Unlike mecha, transformers do not need organic bodies, but may allow humans the privilege of riding with them.

  The mecha suits enable the human bodies to do things they otherwise couldn’t do, such as defeat giant invaders. Mecha is about protection, but also about union. The technology protects bodies, and the bodies help to organize technology. The human body is like the Ghost in the Machine, but it is a different variation of this mythos. The body is not entirely eliminated, but instead drives the machines, creating and utilizing technology. This is a new configuration of human existence, living in conjunction with these huge suits. The possibilities of this configuration are what posthumanism is all about.

  Morphing Bodies

  Animation, all forms of animation, focuses on plasticity of bodies. As we already noted, all bodies are constantly changing. However, only in extreme cases are we able to see that change happening, such as in a bad car accident. Usually the changes in our bodies happen too slowly to see them take place or at too microscopic a level to view with the naked eye. Animation, however, is the perfect medium to portray changing bodies. Animated bodies can be— and often are—pulled, tugged, torn, and even blown up. They are able to change shape and then return to their original shape if needed. These changes are often extreme and comical because they are so unrealistic. In animation, bodies need not be subjected to the laws of space and time. Think of Wile E. Coyote pedaling his feet as he is frozen in mid-air until he realizes his situation. Think of characters aging instantly on the screen as some form of comic relief.

  Animated bodies can also be altered for additional effect, for example, to show different aspects of the character. In the Disney film Mulan, Mulan’s body changes depending on whether she is a boy or a girl. As a boy, her neck is widened and her jaw is squared. This is very different than an actress merely putting on different clothes to portray a boy or girl. Instead, Mulan’s body changes for the character, rather than just being dressed differently. Similarly, because size can be greatly exaggerated in animation, bodies can change to show mood, such as making a character physically much smaller when she or he is afraid or much larger when he or she is angry. Bodies are also changed to draw the viewer’s focus. For example, bodies may at first look relatively normal, with an image of the character’s regular body. A close-up then shows gruesome aspects of the body, such as hair sticking out in inappropriate places or festering sores. These items were not drawn on the original body, but are in close-up drawings, making it appear similar to a film zooming in. However, in a live-action film when a camera zooms, the item which it is zooming in on is also present, though perhaps smaller, in the wide shot. Animation adds characteristics to the body with these shots, morphing the body. The body is presented as pliable and changing, and these “morphing bodies” are the second valence of the posthuman readily found in anime.

  Altering bodies is just as popular in anime as it is in US animation. In Pokemon, the Pokemons’ bodies change dramatically from their peaceful, complacent form to their fighting form. In their peaceful form, Pokemon are adorable. They are drawn with neotony, meaning characteristics of infants such as large, round eyes. When they turn into their fighting form, the lines become much straighter and harsher, making their bodies fierce rather than cuddly.

  I love animated bodies because they are so ripe with the human body in a state of becoming. And I don’t always know what they are becoming, which is exciting. Animation can help to alter how people think about bodies, since it challenges the discourse that bodies are stable, unchanging entities. Anime helps to excite people’s imaginations, conceiving of what the human may become.

  Miyazaki is better at this than any other anime director. But let’s face it, I’m a fan, and so I’m a bit biased. In one of Miyazaki’s most underappreciated films, Porco Rosso, the main character has the head of a pig. None of the other characters have pig heads. Everyone else is just a regular, boring human, but not Porco Rosso. His pig head came from a curse, but Porco Rosso is about as posthuman as they come, merging not with technology, but with an animal. Of course, we are all constantly combined with animals, millions of which live in, on, and make up our bodies at any given moment. The “I” that I am is actually a “we.” I am a combination of many. Posthumanists are concerned with the potentials of human existence in combination with other species as well, exploring the entangled web of species in which we all exist. The character of Porco Rosso is oddly human for such an inhuman pig-man, flawed with jealously and lustfulness. Miyazaki appears fond of pig-people, changing Chihiro’s parents in Sprited Away into pig-people as well, as a magical punishment for their gluttony. They transform before the viewer’s eyes from human to pig, and finally back to human as the story concludes.

  I love the imaginative possibilities that Miyazaki poses, such as a living fire in Howl’s Moving Castle, or No Face in Spirited Away morphing from a giant gob of faceless, speechless goo into something beautiful.

  Although technology is not the focus of his films, Miyazaki’s characters are not outside of technology. Kiki in Kiki’s Delivery Service lives in a city with all of the modern conveniences but also uses magic. In My Neighbor Totoro, they have hospitals, telephones, and buses. Porco Rosso is centered around airplanes and war. In Spirited Away, Chihiro and her parents are brought to this place in automobiles. In Howl’s Moving Castle, a large castle contraption moves around the countryside, created through technology. Miyazaki’s films do not return to an idyllic time before technology, a time when the myth of magic created things that could now be done through technology. Instead, they are about having some magic in everyday life, about magic co-existing with technology.

  Wave Goodbye from the Catbus

  Anime offers more insight into posthuman theory than any other medium. Posthumanism did not develop with anime in mind, but I find it hard to believe that it didn’t have a large influence on the thinking of posthuman scholars. One of anime’s most significant contributions to popular culture is allowing for new ways to think about the body, offering fantastical and magical possibilities about what the body may become.

  The Catbus in My Neighbor Totoro is still the most iconic image of posthumanism, and the Catbus isn’t even human at all. Instead, it is a vehicle-body that transports us to a crazy world of monsters, cyborgs, and morphing bodies in a state of becoming. This animal-technology-magic-fantasy combination drives our imaginations and helps us to see the world in a new way. Once we understand that we are all already cyborgs and that we are not singular beings, but instead multitudes of beings living under the assumption of being singular, it can be an eerie transformation
of our consciousness. Once onboard the Catbus to the realm of the posthuman, the world and our bodies never quite look the same again. And there’s no going back. Come on. Take a ride.

  2

  The Making of Killer Cuties

  CHRISTIE BARBER, MIO BRYCE, and JASON DAVIS

  Since the 1960s, Japan has produced a considerable number of cyborg narratives in manga and anime, particularly in works targeting male children or adolescents. From early manga examples such as Kazumasa Hirai and Jirō Kuwata’s 8 Man and Shōtarō Ishinomori’s Cyborg 009, and their subsequent anime versions, the protagonist is commonly cyborged without their knowledge or against their will or desires.1 This positions them as victims, regardless of how physically powerful they are. Their sense of inferiority and vulnerability usually underpins these narratives, either subtly or explicitly.

  The depiction of female cyborgs adds complexity to the positioning of cyborgs in manga and anime, especially in terms of gender. Female cyborgs may be equipped with remarkable physical strength, combined with voluptuous, eroticized bodies (for instance Major Motoko Kusanagi in Masamune Shirow’s original manga and Mamoru Oshii’s anime version of Ghost in the Shell); and these powerful female cyborgs are also frequently ascribed roles as protectors or supporters of incompetent and insecure male protagonists. Although some female cyborgs may possess characteristics that indicate a transgression of the conventional boundaries of gender, this transgression is often limited and undermined by other elements of their depiction. As Kumiko Sato points out in her essay “How Information Technology Has ªNot‚ Changed Feminism and Japanism”, “female cyborgs and androids have been safely domesticated and fetishized into maternal and sexual protectors of the male hero” and thus “their function is usually reduced to either a maid or a goddess obediently serving her beloved male master, the sole reason for her militant nature.”