Their images of Japanese pop culture reveal the recognition of a specific cultural odour perceived as pleasant, which translates into an interest in Japan. Privileging a qualitative method, it notably focuses on the people who give life to the website. It does so considering the biggest Italian web-community,, as a microcosm of the Italian fandom interactions and emotions.

This paper aims to provide insights on the way Italian fans perceive Japanese pop culture and Japan on the kind of bonds to Japan they develop, and how they socialize. This phenomenon has resulted into a very active Italian fandom spanning through different generations, and into a strong fascination towards Japan. Globalization and Internet have made other aspects of Japanese pop culture available to Italians and the rest of the world alike. In the ‘70s anime started to fill the airtime of emerging private TV channels, marking the childhood of those Italian who grew up in those years and until the early ‘90s, when manga finally appeared in the Italian market. Japanese pop culture has influenced Italy over the last thirty years. The review carried out shows the use of different sources and intense fieldwork by Japanese creators to recreate particular visions of European (or European-like) settings and the narrative and communicative strategies or even commercial implications of these settings according to the genre, demographics, and media specificity of each project. First, tracing a theoretical retrospective that displays the different concepts and conceptions used to understand these contents, to then focus our study in reviewing the European settings of some of the main anime productions that contain this kind of contents: the 1970s sh?jo manga and anime series (comics and tv anime series addressed to girls), the Nippon Animation-originated so-called “Meisaku” group of series, and more “singular” cases, such as Miyazaki Hayao’s films.

The following article discusses the creation, aesthetic appeal, and uses of these contents. Europe, as a cluster of cultural elements related to nations, cities, and historical periods, has experienced different representations and recreations in Japanese animated series and films (anime) in the form of European (or European-like) settings.

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