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Predator or Prey Who Do You Think You Are?
The Dystopian Interpretation/Adaptation of Titus Andronicus in the animation PSYCHO-PASS
in Critical Survey
Author:
Kyoko Matsuyama
Kyoko Matsuyama
Komazawa Women's University, Japan
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Abstract
In the Japanese animation PSYCHO-PASS, the setting is a future Japan where every citizen's mental health is monitored and analysed, and where they can sometimes be terminated according to the state of their mental health. In such a dark and dystopian setting, the motifs from the many bloody quotations of Shakespeare's bloodiest play Titus Andronicus are used in the three-episode multiple murder case of young schoolgirls. The animation shows how Shakespeare is used to stylise and elaborate the serial murder case. This article discusses how Titus Andronicus is used to give relevance and sophistication to serial murder, and how the bloodiness of a serial murder can give a different impression to audiences by the use of literature.
Contributor Notes
Kyoko Matsuyama has been an associate professor at Komazawa Women's University in Japan since 2009. Her research focuses on English Renaissance drama and its performance or acceptance by modern Japanese, either in the form of manga or anime, with a particular interest in animation and manga in the twenty-first century. Her most recent work is ‘Teaching English Literature in Universities’, British Shakespeare Association Teaching Shakespeare Magazine 13 (2017) and ‘Reading Shakespeare's Twelfth Night in Modern Form: Easy Introduction to Classics? Light Novel Style Twelfth Night’, The Faculty Journal of Komazawa Women's University 24 (2017).