Analysis of My Autoethnographic Approach

Nicole Gentle

For BCM320 in week five, I wrote and uploaded a brief blog post which discussed my own autoethnographic experience with Japanese anime Violet Evergarden. Today, I will be analysing this experience, and investigating the effectiveness of understanding outside cultures using the context of my own cultural framework, through an attempt at what Ellis et al describes as a “layered account” (2011).

Throughout this blog post, I mainly focused on the aspects of the show which triggered a sense of familiarity. This included things such as the setting and the character design. However, I have to be honest, I probably focused on these aspects a little too strongly and missed some of the more nuanced meanings behind the anime, but I digress.  I wrote:

…it appears to be somewhat Eurocentric. Perhaps set somewhere in the late 19th-20th century based on setting, clothing, and mannerisms, and very likely set in Western…

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Violet Evergarden, My Own Autoethnographic Approach

Nicole Gentle

Scrolling through Netflix, I came across Violet Evergarden. From its thumbnail it appeared to be a cutesy slice-of-life anime full of romance and gut-wrenching story. And, to some extent, it was. Violet Evergarden opens up with a beautiful, loving scene between the protagonist Violet and a man whom seems questionably both a father figure and a lover. Now, I can’t relate to this scene whatsoever, but it seemed pretty in line with what I expected from this anime. And I was pleasantly surprised to be quickly proved wrong.

The opening scene, as pictured in the gif above, introduces us to Violet in a very whimsical way. The focus on her eyes and the swirling of the pendant brought my attention to just how different her character design is to what I had come to expect from anime. She is decidedly European in appearance. And she isn’t the only one…

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Autoethnography Through Akira (1988)

Nicole Gentle

I am no stranger to watching Japanese anime. So, walking into this week’s BCM320 seminar I was expecting to enjoy and interact with a culture in a way that I very used to. However, I was not expecting to be watching it dubbed. This simple difference, or departure, from what I would personally consider the norm for anime really threw me. Watching Akira in English didn’t feel natural, it didn’t feel right, and it sure as hell didn’t feel like I was watching a Japanese anime.

Perhaps this feeling was also due to the addition of that stereotypical dystopian setting that we all know too well. You know the one. That city filled with dilapidated skyscrapers and that’s run by a chaotic government. It’s overcrowded. It’s messy. It’s depressing. We’ve seen it a thousand times in futuristic plots, where the hero is always saving the world from some form of corruption…

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Live-Tweeting The Host (2006)

Nicole Gentle

During the first weekly screening for UoW’s BCM320 class, I found myself entirely engrossed with director Bong Joon-ho’s 2006 monster film The Host. This movie, set along the Han River, delved into the realms of desperation and fear associated with the loss of a loved one alongside deeper political concerns of government ideology, morality, and a perceived lack of responsibility to their people.

Coming into this film as what would be considered as an Asian-Australian, I expected to see something which I could both relate to, but also something which delved from my expectations as an Australian media consumer. Given that I am not of Korean descent, my expectations going into this screening of The Host more so followed the latter.

During this screening, we were asked as a class to participate in a live-tweeting activity which required us to tweet our personal responses to the movie through…

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