Shingeki no Kyojin,
or Attack on Titan in English, is a
Japanese manga and corresponding anime series, about giant humanoids (Titans) with
an insatiable hunger for human flesh. Surviving humanity has retreated within a
series of walls, until one day the Titans breach the walls and the humans are
forced to act lest they be wiped out forever.
Looking at Shingeki no
Kyojin, it’s easy to see where Hollywoodization has come in. One character
is the last Asian human alive amongst a presumably European and American
population, playing upon an oft used storyline in American cinema. Additionally,
large battle sequences and set pieces often occur, reminiscent of those in the
Hollywood blockbuster, resulting in dramatic effects on the storyline including
major character deaths.
Mikasa Ackerman, the last Asian on Earth (Source: Deviantart)
The anime’s score also has a notable mixture of Asian and
Western influences, not dissimilar from Pacific
Rim’s soundtrack, a film also known for blending Asian and Western
flavours.
Shingeki no Kyojin OST mini-mix (Source: YouTube)
It’s obvious that “globalization’s homogenizing and heterogenizing tendencies” (Klein 2004, p. 372), are producing spliced products that are a new genre unto themselves and we as consumers from both the Asian and Western markets will reap the rewards with amazing cinema and television to come.
Sources:
Klein, Christina 2004, ‘Martial arts and globalisation of US and Asian film industries’, Comparative America Studies, vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 360-384.
A very short but a very efficient post. I do enjoy Shingeki no Kyojin a lot myself, having been recommend it by one of my Japanese friends, and I find your an analysis to be a good one. Your argumentation would have benefited from the inclusion of more sources; especially in your second paragraph which contained several interesting points that I regret you didn't develop a bit more (like the issue of 'the last Asian' in a Japanese anime, etc...), but you've used Klein (2004) in a good way to support your arguments, especially in your last paragraph. I think you might have spent a lot of time integrating the first picture in your post, because its blending in with your blog's brown background gives this post a striking look and it did grab my attention but not to the point of distracting me from your writing. That was very well done! Also, it's nice of you to have included a video with the soundtrack of Shingeki no Kyojin, it gives an added dimension to your point about the impact of cultural blends upon soundtracks, for it seems that it is indeed easy to focus on images alone and forget how sounds affect our perception. A reference to McLuhan's arguments on that subject in the context of globalisation would have been appropriate here (see his famous playboy interview, the library has a few copies both printed and online).
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