• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.10 no.10
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• pp.152-160
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• 2010

Modern comics find their roots in caricatures, which have a basic element of comics as a combination of wrings and drawings. In three East Asian countries, new media, comics have been developed by joining modern arts and cartoons which is a news form of western comics. As modern comics have evolved according to situations of the three countries, they expand from the satire on the system, foreign invasions, and internal corruption to the enlightenment of the people. However, the criticism on the system lead to the oppression, and the imperialism in East Asian countries enforce the agitation, war engagement, propaganda of the colonialism on the comics. Current East Asian comics have been occupying the largest part in the world comics, and have their roots in the modern comics. So it is meaningful to investigate the characteristic of modern East Asian comics.

• Cartoon and Animation Studies
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• s.37
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• pp.45-82
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• 2014

Comics and cartoons of superheroes in the West have adopted various semiotic systems and other art-forms, including their politico-socio-economic condition, and made parody of other popular texts, as well. Based on the idea of the development of superhero genre, this article focuses on how East Asian popular texts appropriate and reconstruct the genre, which was once considered the realization of American idea, by analyzing a series of TV animation (Japan, Sunrise,2011). Through the feature of parody with intertextuality, provides East Asian value and sensibility of characters as corporation-centered modern humans in capitalist society. This animation has similarity and difference, compared to that of Western superhero cartoons. It satires Western capitalist society and emphasizes Eastern family-oriented value. The performances of superheroes on TV represent the satire on Western style individualism and estimation through each one's achievement. It metaphorically criticizes the situation in which modern human falls into dependency on capital and media, and the capitalistic system in which public good is used for the method of private profit. emphasizes East Asian value of human and society, the cooperative relation for the success and maintenance of community by combining members of state and society through familial sensibility. Tiger functions as a spiritual leader in the group of superheroes who have been obsessed with competition for their own private purpose rather than public cause, Bunny and other colleagues are gradually influenced by Tiger's familial communicative style. emphasizes community-centered view and self-sacrificing sensibility as an international citizen to solve social pathology of modern world.