Description
From everyday streets to iconic landmarks, place-focused anime incorporates real-life locations into their narratives. The rising popularity of fans taking “sacred pilgrimages” to these places remain concentrated in Japan but around the consumption of Japaneseness and for some, Eurocentricity. Depictions of Malaysia in Japanese anime are rare and fleeting (i.e. Food Wars and Cowboy Bebop), but Jujutsu Kaisen’s inclusion of recognisable Malaysian locales would turn Malaysia into a peripheral but visible node in anime’s global imaginary. By framing anime pilgrimage as a transnational media phenomenon, this paper examines how Malaysia is reframed through Jujutsu Kaisen through digital platforms, smartphones and fan participation. Through textual and social media analysis, the paper takes a close reading of two scenes shown the Shibuya Incident Arc: (i) Mei Mei’s post-battle stay at a hotel in Suria KLCC, and (ii) Nanami Kento’s dream of a house on a Kuantan beach. The former is place-specific, whilst the latter affective and symbolic. Both scenes inspired local and global fans to create memes, cosplay reenactments, anime pilgrimages and even geotagging “Nanami Shrine” on a Kuantan beach on Google Maps, which later caught the attention of Tourism Malaysia and the state government. Overall, the paper argues how these sacred sites operate as co-created and hybridised forms of transnational place brand, where Malaysia is reimagined as a hyperreal modern city and tropical paradise within a deterritorialised anime network.| Period | 29 May 2026 → 30 May 2026 |
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| Event title | Mechademia 2026 Conference: Traversing Trans-Asian Imaginaries: Anime, Manga, and Media Cultures |
| Event type | Conference |
| Location | Singapore, SingaporeShow on map |
| Degree of Recognition | International |