Imagine you are hanging out with 2 or 3 especially academically-inclined friends, watching anime and talking about the themes of membership in or destruction of cultural communities.  After viewing the TV anime "Ouran High School Host Club," the documentary about Studio Ghibli "Kingdom of Dreams and Madness" and the full-length anime film "Spirited Away," and and reading this module's assigned reading, discuss the ways these different anime represent community.  How do these anime *specifically* represent cultural communities?  How do these films represent violence and destruction of communities?  What overall interpretation of the future (optimistic?  pessimistic?  why?) can a thoughtful viewer generate from the endings of these films?

Feel free to include material from our course textbook by Tsutsui as it pertains to cultural specificity in Japanese popular culture (this week: anime) and cultural communities.

The Manga Module material on the representation of gender will also be very pertinent to this week's consideration of communities, especially in the TV anime "Ouran High School Host Club."

Compose a spell-checked, grammatically-correct response. The readings on anime should help you to articulate your point, and you must make references to all of them. Make sure you anchor your specifics with page numbers and/or video time stamps.

After you have completed your response, you should post AT LEAST two additional short responses to your classmates' comments.  These responses should be approximately 80-100 words in length.  The class discussion is broken up into small discussion groups of 3 to 5 people this week, so expect to have a close-knit and engaged discussion with just a few members of the class.

Post your initial response to this week's discussion by Tuesday before midnight.

Then, reply to at least two peers' posts by Thursday before midnight.