2022 Volume 22 Issue 1 Pages 43-54
This paper analyzes Japanese manga and anime using a perspective of posthumanism, in order to explore how this posthuman idea exists within Japanese popular cultural imagination, and what its meaning might be for the audience.
There are many Japanese SF anime since the 1950s. This research focuses on Knights of Sidonia (2009-2015), which was an innovative Japanese manga series created by Nihei Tsutomu. The anime adaptation aired on Japanese television as a series (2014 to 2015), and was released as an animated film in 2021. The story has typical Japanese SF aspects, with gigantic robots fighting alien enemies. However, all human bodies in the story have been technologically enhanced. The innovative point of this anime is its “queer” characters, specifically, non-sexed humans and mix-sexed creatures.
Interpreting this anime’s imagination of posthuman and post-sexual characters, I employ theories from the pioneer of posthumanism, Donna Haraway, and the Japanese anatomist and thinker, Yōrō Takeshi. This analysis will show how the series challenges the dualistic boundaries of body and mind, female and male, monster and human, etc. Through this analysis, we can see how Japanese popular culture presents avenues for conceptualization of transgressive sex and sexuality through its imagination of posthuman characters.
