Marc Steinberg, Anime’s Media Mix: Franchising Toys and Characters in Japan, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012

Abstract

Coming from University of Minnesota Press, Anime’s Media Mix: Franchising Toys and Characters in Japan (2012) continues the publisher’s tradition of releasing academic books on anime and Japanese popular culture, such as the annual journal Mechademia (2006–today), Thomas Lamarre’s The Anime Machine: A Media Theory of Animation (2009) and translated works from Japanese such as Hiroki Azuma’s Otaku: Japan’s Database Animals (2009) and Saitô Tamaki’s Beautiful Fighting Girl (2011). In Anime’s Media Mix, Marc Steinberg sets out to explore the links weaving together media, characters and toys in Japan since the 1960s. To do so, he chooses as his centerpiece example the transmedial movements of the character Atomu (also known as Atom or Astro Boy in English), the protagonist of the Tetsuwan Atomu manga and its anime adaptation that first aired in 1963. In what Steinberg describes as a “major historical coincidence,” 1963 is also the year that the term media mix entered the marketing lexicon in Japan (p. 138).