Self (re)Invention

Last month, when I attended a talk in Tokyo by Dr. Frenchy Lunning, who edits the Mechademia anthologies of academic essays on anime, manga and so on, I couldn't help but reconsider Takayuki Tatsumi's Full Metal Apache, a book I reviewed for The Journal of the American Literature Society of Japan. (**Clicking on the pages above ought to render them readable.)

Lunning was in Japan briefly on a Fulbright fellowship and spoke of her investigation of confluences between Western and Eastern cultures--the principle argument in Tatsumi's book, which finds numerous creative synergies among artists from both sides of the planet.

More tantalizing--to me, at least--was Lunning's self-professed queries into the sexual relations between cosplayers, convention-goers and their ilk. She said she visits chat rooms to find out what's going down.