Grimms Manga as a Transcultural Product

Abstract

This research examines how Kei Ishiyama’s Grimms Manga series create a transcultural product by retelling selected Grimm brothers’ fairy tales, and by incorporating Japanese visual language. Ishiyama’s Grimms Manga has its own transcultural beginning, and its inception began when Ishiyama was temporarily living in Germany and encountered the Tokyopop publisher of Germany. Ishiyama Grimms’ fairy tales retellings use various modes with contemporary visual styles, such as commercialized and domesticated notions of exaggerated cuteness, which are very common in manga targeting young female readers. Due to the success of Grimms Manga Volume 1 (2007) and Volume 2 (2008), a special volume titled Grimms Manga Sonderband (2011) was published, which contains retellings from German and Japanese manga artists. These retellings not only celebrate the success of Ishiyama but reflect the important influence of German literature to display a product of a contact zone and an artifact of transculturation.

Keywords

• fairy tales
• manga
• moral education
• transcultural
• visual language