New York City show explores Japanese comic books, animation

NEW YORK - The gallery of the normally serene Japan Society has been overtaken by scenes of ruined cities, rocket travel, giant fighting robots, prostitution and teenagers in the throes of eating disorders. The carnage and dysfunction are central to the elaborate fictional worlds of Japanese comics (manga), animated films (anime) and video games now on display in midtown Manhattan. On a recent weekend, two mothers and their kids huddled over a model of the 1980s video game Pac-Man, trying to get the yellow circle to devour all the dots in a maze without being killed by ghosts. In another room, a couple of teenage girls crouched down to get inside a small tea house-like enclosure lined with hundreds of manga, some the size of telephone books. Elsewhere, six anime were being simultaneously projected along a long wall in a room... [read full story]                    

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