Third Thursdays and the Japanese Cultural & Community Center present:

"MANGA... AND MOVIES... AND MONSTERS... OH MY!"

Thursday, April 19, 2007 7:00-9:15 pm
Japanese Cultural & Community Center
1840 Sutter Street
San Francisco, CA 94115

Once the province of specialty stores and import shops, Japanese entertainment
media has
invaded the mainstream and is putting its own stamp on American culture. With
animated
movies like "Spirited Away" scooping up the coveted "Best Animated Feature Film"
Oscar
and manga comic books taking over as the fastest growing segment in the
publishing
industry, it's hard these day to walk into a bookstore or video retailer and not
see a
healthy selection of anime and manga titles. Some traditional American
stereotypes have
also been upended with such trends as "girl power" fueling the growth and spread
of
manga—a startling full 60% of the manga readership are women or girls. So these
days
even Dorothy would stand a good chance of being able to walk into a Borders in
the heart
of Kansas to get her "Rurouni Kenshin" fix.

How did we get from Godzilla to Pikachu? Have manga and anime shifted our
perception
and acceptance of the kinds of stories that can be told through comic books and
animated
movies? Come join our star-studded panel for a fun and lively discussion of
Japanese
entertainment media and its impact on American culture!

Panelists include:

AUGUST RAGONE is currently working on the first-ever biography to be published
outside
of Japan on tokusatsu legend Eiji Tsuburaya, famed visual effects director of
such series as
Godzilla and Ultraman. "Eiji Tsuburaya: Master of Monsters" will be a hardcover,
coffee
table book produced with the full cooperation of Toho, Tsuburaya Productions and
the
Tsuburaya Family, and will be published by Chronicle Books in the fall. Mr.
Ragone has
also written for numerous publications, including "Filmfax," "Video Watchdog,"
and "Asian
Cult Cinema," and made several appearance on the seminal Bay Area Japanese
entertainment series "Captain Cosmic" that was aired on KTVU-2.

Historian and writer TRINA ROBBINS has been writing graphic novels, comics and
books for
over thirty years. Her subjects have ranged from "Wonder Woman" and the
"Powerpuff
Girls" to her own teenage superheroine, "GoGirl!," and from women cartoonists
and
superheroines to women who kill. She has written over a dozen educational
graphic novels
for three different publishers, provided English language rewrites for "shojo"
manga
graphic novels, and lectured on comics, manga, and graphic novels throughout the
United
States and Europe. She lives in San Francisco, in a 102-year old house with her
partner,
her cats, and her books.

FREDERIK SCHODT is a writer, translator, and interpreter in the Bay Area. With
his books,
"Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics" (Kodansha International, 1983), and
"Dreamland Japan: Writings on Modern Manga" (Stone Bridge Press, 1996) he helped
spark
the manga boom outside of Japan. In addition he was a pioneer in translating
manga, and
has worked on numerous well-known titles. In 2000, he won the "Special Award"
category
of the Asahi newspaper's prestigious Osamu Tezuka Cultural Award, for helping to
popularize manga overseas. His latest book, "The Astro Boy Essays: Osamu Tezuka,
Mighty
Atom, and the Manga/Anime Revolution," will be published this summer by Stone
Bridge
Press. He has also written extensively on U.S.-Japan relations, technology, and
history.

Third Thursdays is a monthly dinner series for people in the nonprofit,
for-profit, and
government sectors interested in Asian American & Pacific Islander (AA&PI)
community
issues and service opportunities. Each event seeks to educate the audience about
an
important issue or work in the API community and provide ways for audience
members to
get involved.

Visit the Third Thursdays website to find out more about our events!
http://www.thirdthursdays.org/