[...] let’s just dive in to the latest issue of this journal of anime and manga studies. I’ll start with the articles I had problems [...]

I would hope that Mechademia is trying to be a bridge between fans and scholars. One end of will be the theory-laden works like Looser’s piece which will appeal to scholars and be respected as ‘serious’ research in academia. On the other end will be works like Okamoto’s piece which is more fan-friendly in it’s approach. It would be a lost oppurtunity if Mechademia simply became an insular academia journal. There are fans, like myself, who are instrested in a more analytic and historical approach to manga and anime. I hope it doesn’t have to be either/or.

For all that’s worth, what makes you think that somebody like Looser *is* writing ‘for the majority of fans.’ I would say that he is pretty obviously not – and in of itself, there is also nothing wrong with that. The conversation he is joining (and maybe starting) is a very particular kind of conversation, and casual passers-by are not really welcome in it. For all that’s worth, the fact that Mechademia is now accessible through one of the major academic/research databases means to me that what the journal ultimately wants is to give scholars a permanent space for placing intensely theoretical papers on Japanese popular culture much more so than it wants to give fandom a quick tour through the world of scholarly communication.

[...] Johanna Draper Carlson on Manga for the Beginner: Chibis (Comics Worth Reading) Ed Sizemore on Mechademia 4: War/Time (Comics Worth Reading) Todd Douglass on vol. 2 of Mikansei No. 1 (Anime Maki) Diana Dang on vols. 1 [...]