Tokyo Cyberpunk (PDF)

important, and wide ranging. The analysis is thorough, imaginative, and sophisticated without being over-jargonated and unapproachable. The book is a genuine pleasure to read - stimulating, informative and even eye-opening at particular moments, when the author works through a wide and sometimes seemingly disparate variety of sources to open up a particular icon of cyberpunk (or should I say simply 'contemporary'?) culture." - Susan Napier, Professor of Japanese Studies, Tufts University and author of From Impressionism to Anime: Japan as Fantasy and Fan Cult in the Mind of the West

"Strikingly original in its conception, Tokyo Cyberpunk engages with critical rigor and artistic insight some of the most challenging Japanese live-action and animated films that interrogate the contours of an increasingly technologized humanity. Brown pushes his analyses past usual domestic readings into new transnational matrixes of meaning. Tsukamoto Shinya's cyberpunk classic Tetsuo: The Iron Man is recast in productive relationships within a globalized media environment that includes Fritz Lang's Metropolis and David Cronenberg's Videodrome in a way that compels us to watch all of these films (again) with deeper understanding and appreciation; Oshii Mamoru's Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence is unpacked within a transnational grammar and dialogue of the posthuman from the dolls of Hans Bellmer to the cyborgs of Donna Haraway while Brown's treatment of Oshii's often overlooked Avalon opens up penetrating and timely discussions on the differences between analog and digital film and diminishing border between live-action versus anime. Informed but not overburdened by critical theory and committed to a transnational frame without ignoring local social contexts,Tokyo Cyberpunkpropels the reader on new lines of flight through contemporary Japanese visual media that peers just over the edge of our present." - Gerald Figal, Associate Professor of History and East Asian Studies, Vanderbilt University and author of Civilization and Monsters: Spirits of Modernity in Meiji Japan