The Anime New Century of Gundam, Evangelion and Demon Slayer with Matt Alt

I’ve loved anime and manga since my dad first brought home those thick Japanese comics from his trips to Japan and I first saw Robotech on TV in the 80s.

But there aren’t enough manga creator biographies and history books that do deep dives on Japanese pop culture, so I’m extremely happy when I found the book Pure Invention: How Japan’s Pop Culture Conquered the World and I’m happy to invite author Matt Alt inside The Hyper Room to talk about Astro Boy, Gundam, Akira, Evangelion all the way up to Demon Slayer today.

Hello Kitty, the Nintendo Entertainment System, and multimedia empires like Pokémon and Dragon Ball Z were more than marketing hits. Artfully packaged, dangerously cute, and dizzyingly fun, these products made Japan the forge of the world’s fantasies, and gave us new tools for coping with trying times. They also transformed us as we consumed them—connecting as well as isolating us in new ways, opening vistas of imagination and pathways to revolution. Through the stories of an indelible group of artists, geniuses, and oddballs, the book Pure Invention reveals how Japanese ingenuity remade global culture and may have created modern life as we know it. It’s Japan’s world; we’re just gaming, texting, singing, and dreaming in it.

The book goes deep into all the creative ideas the Japanese have contributed to the world – but in this podcast we will focus on manga and anime and there is a lot of great insight into those worlds that we explore.

Please join me and author Matt Alt inside The Hyper Room.