Christianity has been in Japan for five centuries, but embraced by less than one percent of the population. It's a complicated relationship, given the sudden appearance in Japan of Renaissance Catholicism which was utterly unlike the historic faiths of Shinto and Buddhism; Japan had to invent a word for "religion" since Japan did not share the west's reliance on faith in a personal God. Japan's views of this "outsider" religion resemble America's view of the "outsider" Islamic faith. Understanding this through the book Orientalism by Edward Said, Patrick Drazen samples depictions of Christianity in the popular Japanese media of comics and cartoons. The book begins with the work of postwar comics master Tezuka Osamu, with results that range from the comic to the revisionist to the blasphemous and obscene.

"An excellent reference work on the subject." Library Journal (starred review) For fans, culture watchers, and perplexed outsiders, this expanded edition offers an engaging tour of the anime megaverse, from older artistic traditions to the works of modern creators like Hayao Miyazaki, Katsuhiro Otomo, Satoshi Kon, and CLAMP. Examined are all of anime's major themes, styles, and conventions, plus the familiar tropes of giant robots, samurai, furry beasts, high school heroines, and gay/girl/fanboy love. Concluding are fifteen essays on favorite anime, including Evangelion, Escaflowne, Sailor Moon, Patlabor, and Fullmetal Alchemist. Patrick Drazen is an anime historian who lives in Bloomington Normal, Illinois.

"Prepare for a sampling of Japanese ghosts and spirits, from sources that include the world's oldest novel, the urban legends of contemporary Japanese schoolchildren, movies both classic and modern, anime, manga, and more." For hundreds of years Japan has lived in a reality consisting of the real world and the spirit world; sometimes the wall between the two worlds gets thin enough for spirits to cross over. In such a reality, ghost stories have been popular for centuries. Patrick Drazen, author of "Anime Explosion," looks at these stories: old and new, scary or funny or sad, looking at common themes and the reasons for their popularity.This book uses one Japanese ghost story tradition: the "hyaku monogatari" (hundred stories). In the old tradition, people tell each other one hundred ghost stories in one sitting. These hundred tales run from folklore to cartoons, but all are designed to send chills up the spine ...