Are there any academic journals that focus on anime/manga?

Question

Are there any places that regularly publish anime or manga related academic papers?

I'd be interested in reading them and possibly submitting one myself.

Answer 1

Mechademia is an annual publication published by Minnesota Press. It also covers fan practices and other surrounding activities and media of anime/manga

There is currently a call for papers for a conference on Asian Pop Culture, but none for the next edition. The last volume was published in 2014 and they are still active.

Larger conventions occasionally have calls for papers and a good source of finding them is on the Fan Studies Network site. They hold their own conference with cfps annually also. Arguably the largest of these is at Anime Expo

Other resources for finding articles on anime & manga can be found here:

• The "Let's Manga" Project , (also here)
• Academia.edu
• Anime & Manga Studies group

Answer 2

Some of my thoughts on this topic are at https://animemangastudies.wordpress.com/2016/01/06/where-do-we-publish-on-animemanga-a-select-list. Basically, just some of the journals that regularly publish articles on anime/manga, organized by subject, include:

/Animation

• Animation Journal
• Animation Studies
• Animation: An Interdisciplinary Journal

/Comics

• The Comics Grid: Journal of Comics Scholarship
• Image [&] Narrative
• ImageTexT: Interdisciplinary Comics Studies
• International Journal of Comic Art
• Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics
• Scandinavian Journal of Comic Art
• Studies in Comics

/Film Studies

• Cinephile: The University of British Columbia's Film Journal
• Journal of Japanese & Korean Cinema
• Journal of Religion and Film
• Post Script: Essays in Film and the Humanities
• Scope: An Online Journal of Film Studies

/Japanese, East Asian, Asian Studies

• The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus
• Asian Studies Review
• Electronic Journal of Contemporary Japanese Studies
• Japan Forum
• Japanese Studies
• The Journal of Asian Studies
• The Journal of Japanese Studies
• Intersections: Gender, History & Culture in the Asian Context
• Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique

/Media and Popular Culture

• East Asian Journal of Popular Culture
• Intensities: The Journal of Cult Media
• Journal of Fandom Studies
• Journal of Religion and Popular Culture
• M/C Journal
• The Phoenix Papers
• Refractory: A Journal of Entertainment Media
• The Journal of Popular Culture
• Transformative Works and Cultures

/Science Fiction

• Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction
• Science Fiction Film and Television
• Science Fiction Studies

Hope this helps!

Answer 3

Yes, there are.

Journal of Anime and Manga Studies (JAMS) is an annual on the study of Anime and Manga, which was firstly issued in 2020. As the official description says,

The Journal of Anime and Manga Studies (JAMS) is an open-access journal dedicated to providing an ethical, peer-reviewed space for academics, students, and independent researchers examining the field of anime, manga, cosplay, and fandom studies to share their research with others. JAMS is peer reviewed by scholars with experience in these areas. The goal of JAMS is to explore anime as an art form and bring visibility to the deeper meanings, understandings, and/or cultural significance of anime, manga, cosplay, and their fandoms.

The use of “anime” as a descriptor in all principles includes manga, cosplay, and its fandoms.

You may find articles on any serious topic in this journal. There are some critical analyses on anime like those on traditional literature works. For example, Existentialism and Death Education in Anime did a detailed analysis on the existentialism in the anime Cells at Work!. There are also researches on the behaviour of the audience, for example, Japanese Anime Fandoms in the UAE: An Exploratory Study on Media Accessibility, Habits and Cultural Perceptions. And of course there are studies on the content of an anime genre, like A Survey of the Story Elements of Isekai Manga.

What's more, it's free for the time being! You can download any paper on this journal for free up till now.

There are surely more journals to come in the future, considering the rapid growth of the anime fandom. This is a good start for a trend of systematic analysis and critique of the anime-related stuff. It can be imagined that some anime might get the position as serious literature works in the near future.

Answer 4

I would have a look here: https://journal.animationstudies.org/

It's not restricted to anime as such, but animation in general.

The article which first caught my attention some time ago was this:

https://journal.animationstudies.org/daisuke-akimoto-a-pig-the-state-and-war-porco-rosso/

More (from the same author) https://www.soka.ac.jp/files/ja/20170513_055728.pdf

I was thinking of eventually writing a similar semi-scholarly article on how a certain isekai protagonist does or does not conform to the principles of Machiavelli, Sun Tsu's The Art of War, and Robert Greene's 48 Laws of Power.