Dramatic advances in genetics, cloning, robotics, and nanotechnology have given upward push to either hopes and fears approximately how know-how may possibly remodel humanity. because the chance of a posthuman destiny turns into more and more most probably, debates approximately tips on how to interpret or form this destiny abound. In Japan, anime and manga artists have for many years been imagining the contours of posthumanity, growing superb and occasionally aggravating artistic endeavors that envision various human/nonhuman hybrids: biological/mechanical, human/animal, and human/monster. Anime and manga supply a constellation of posthuman prototypes whose hybrid natures require a shift in our notion of what it potential to be human.
Limits of the Human—the 3rd quantity within the Mechademia series—maps the terrain of posthumanity utilizing manga and anime as publications and signposts to appreciate how one can take into consideration humanity’s new possibilities and bounds. via a variety of texts—the folklore-inspired monsters that populate Mizuki Shigeru’s manga; Japan’s Gothic Lolita culture; Tezuka Osamu’s unique cyborg hero, Atom, and his manga model of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (along with Ôtomo Katsuhiro’s 2001 anime movie adaptation); the robotic anime, Gundam; and the concept of the uncanny in Ghost within the Shell 2: Innocence, between others—the essays during this quantity reject uncomplicated human/nonhuman dichotomies and as an alternative motivate a provocative rethinking of the definitions of humanity alongside solely unforeseen frontiers.
participants: William L. Benzon, Lawrence poultry, Christopher Bolton, Steven T. Brown, Joshua Paul Dale, Michael Dylan Foster, Crispin Freeman, Marc Hairston, Paul Jackson, Thomas LaMarre, Antonia Levi, Margherita lengthy, Laura Miller, Hajime Nakatani, Susan Napier, Natsume Fusanosuke, Sharalyn Orbaugh, Ôtsuka Eiji, Adèle-Elise Prévost and MUSEbasement; Teri Silvio, Takayuki Tatsumi, Mark C. Taylor, Theresa Winge, Cary Wolfe, Wendy Siuyi Wong, and Yomota Inuhiko.