Paper long abstract:

"Eden of the East" ("Higashi no Eden") is a Japanese animation series (2009, dir. Kamiyama Kenji) that has been praised for the way it addresses social issues in contemporary Japan. The plot stages a confluence of crises: a dragged social and political crisis (NEETs, gender issues, lack of leadership), identity and privacy crises (from amnesia to image recognition devices, virtual communities, configuration of national identity), and ultimately a global crisis of the consumer society model (the question of choice and the possibilities for action). Post-factual approaches to the notion of crisis are called into question too, since the agentivity and social creation of crises are highlighted. Through cultural analysis of the imaginative responses presented by a product designed for popular entertainment, this intervention aims to analyze the idea of crises as presented by different (trans)national discursive frameworks that are socially, politically and historically situated.