The Transcultural Transmedia Media Mix

Entertainment media have undergone significant transformations in the last twenty years. Not only have interaction technologies transformed the way that media is created, distributed and marketed, but global information flows have also transformed the type of media being consumed. Whereas international media markets were previously dominated by American and Western European exports, the past fifteen to twenty years have seen the rise of a new country of origin: Japan. Manga Japanese comics titles are now so well established in American markets that many distributors will merely translate and release them as they were written, right to left. The fact that anime films animated manga, or animated graphics tend to undergo more extensive alteration is indicative of their broad audience base. Since the late 1990s, for example, anime feature films made by the prominent Japanese production company, Studio Ghibli, have been distributed internationally via the American animation giant, Disney. Japan and America’s entertainment media are now securely positioned within each other’s mainstream popular cultures.