The reading sums up the forms of “migratory cities” explored in various science-fiction examples. It demonstrated these films’ ability to counter the preceding rules of architectural definition of city – from a space of stale and still to that of flexibility and motion. Such exploration gave a lot of conceptual breakthroughs of thinking about the “impossibilities” about a city, including the unexplored merits within the realm of nowadays’ technology. For instance, cities could merge and develop exponentially amid competition within the framework of Darwinism, or a distributed city could lower environmental footprint and allocate resources more efficiently; Yet, the drawbacks

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  “Doom-laden dreams” I think this is an interesting description towards the Japanese Monster films culture.According to the reading,fictional apocalypses have been visited upon Tokyo more frequently than any other location in the world.And the reason of formation of such unique theme for monster movies is mostly due to the historical background of Japan.Japanese have been experiencing and under the anxiety and fear of catastrophe like earthquakes,tsunamis,bombings even the suppressed violence Japan experienced in WWII as well as fear of the Cold War……And these topics are not evaded but promoted through monster films production.The writer points out that the purpose

Continue readingReading Response: William Tsuitsui

The article was based on the recurring fictional destruction of Tokyo in postwar Japan’s sci-fi doom culture, it linked history and social behavior with the production of the monster film. Toyko’s historical vulnerability to catastrophic events of natural and manmade origin is reflected by the regularity of annihilation fantasies in popular culture. ‘Monsters’ are a symbol for post-war destruction and natural disaster, so the response of people shown in a monster film is somehow recording and beautifying the people’s personality and morality in real life. The monster film suggested that people are trying to face those challenges and destruction optimistically

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“Oh No, There Goes Tokyo” may be the most interesting essay I read in this course. Since when I was a child, I like to watch monster films and animation such as Godzilla and Ultraman. Monster films are famous in Japan because it can show the citizen how to help each other and how to solve the problems. There are many nature disasters in Tokyo like earthquake, tsunami and typhoon. Buildings always destroyed and rebuild again in five-and-a-half centuries. This situation look like giant monsters appear and damage the buildings. Someone says that the monster in the film is related

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Portrait of imaginary city provide an extravagant method to narrate the city form in influencing people’s behavior and reveals its hidden transforming nature or ideologies, describe as the ‘the walker city, a city to the move. To walk was the world. To walk was life.” Through portrait the city form in transport, which may linked to national sense or historical imagination, such as Americans’ locomotives, European airship presenting the idea of spacial specialization in urban planning. The most intriguing is the flying machines with the fancy of technology illustrate a metropolis like New York, London present modernism visibly in nomadic

Continue readingReading Response: Carl Abbot

William Tsutsui discusses how Tokyo is the destination for apocalypse monster films. Multiple perspectives are identified within the text—positive, negative, and neutral alike. One perspective that I agreed to the most was a rather pessimistic point of view, which explains that there are so many Japanese monster films due to the unsolved tensions, fears, feelings of vulnerability, all resulting in a shared history of trauma. However, this perspective argues that the apocalyptic pop-culture has re-imagined Japan’s gravely distorted history by repressing memories of violence and averting its eyes from reality. This creates historical amnesia. Although there are other perspectives that

Continue reading[Reading Response: William Tsuitsui]