Entre geishas y samuráis : la imagen del japonés en el cine occidental

El cine, como medio de comunicación de masas, juega un papel clave a la hora de generar, difundir y modificar estereotipos. Por ello, se debe prestar una atención especial al modo en que las minorías étnicas, sociales y culturales son representadas. Esta comunicación toma como objeto de estudio la imagen de los japoneses y las japonesas en el cine comercial norteamericano para determinar cuáles son los arquetipos más habituales y qué características presentan. En concreto, se examinan seis representaciones arquetípicas de lo japonés: el ejecutivo, el samurai, el yakuza, el maestro, la geisha y el ama de casa.Cinema, as a mass medium, plays a key role in the generation, spread, and modification of stereotypes. For this reason, special attention must be paid to the way in which ethnic, social, and cultural minorities are portrayed. This paper studies the representation of Japanese characters in mainstream Hollywood cinema in order to determine what the more usual archetypes are and what features they have. Specifically, I will look at six archetypical representations of the Japanese: the executive, the samurai, the yakuza, the master, the geisha, and the housewife

El monstruo intertextual : apropiaciones de Frankenstein en la era de la Quality Television

La novela Frankenstein o el moderno Prometeo, escrita por Mary W. Shelley y publicada originariamente en 1818, se ha convertido en una de las obras más influyentes en el imaginario gótico-fantástico gracias a las numerosas versiones de este relato que se han realizado en varios medios de expresión, tales como teatro, cine, o cómic. El presente artículo tiene como objetivo establecer de qué modo la obra original de Shelley ha sido adaptada, apropiada o versionada en la ficción televisiva estadounidense durante la fase actual de Quality Television. Partiendo de la premisa de que las diversas configuraciones narrativas que ofrece la ficción televisiva afectan al modo en que los relatos previos son trasladados a la pequeña pantalla, este trabajo analiza la adaptación de Frankenstein como trama episódica, miniserie, película para televisión y trama seriada en productos televisivos estadounidenses prestando atención a la caracterización de los personajes.The novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, written by Mary W. Shelley and published in 1818, has become one of the most influential works in the gothic-fantastic imaginary because of the many versions of this story disseminated through different media such as theatre, cinema, or comic books. This article aims to establish the ways Shelley's work has been adapted, appropriated, or modified in TV series from the United States of America in the current phase known as Quality Television. Departing from the idea that the diverse narrative configurations that can be found in TV series shape the process of adapting previous works, this article analyzes several versions of Frankenstein made for television (as an episodic plot, as miniseries, as a TV movie, as a serial plot) paying attention to the characterization of the protagonists

Modificaciones narrativas en la adaptación cinematográfica del cómic japonés

El presente artículo se centra en las modificaciones realizadas sobre el contenido narrativo de cómics japoneses al ser adaptados al medio cinematográfico. Así pues, tras realizar un recorrido introductorio sobre las principales teorías de la adaptación, el artículo desarrolla un análisis comparativo de cómics japoneses y sus correspondientes adaptaciones cinematográficas para determinar cómo se produce ese trasvase de contenido narrativo y qué estrategias discursivas se utilizan para adaptar la historia de un medio a otro. El corpus incluye obras orientadas a adolescentes masculinos (donde predominan las tramas argumentales episódicas) y femeninos (donde es más habitual encontrar tramas seriadas). La metodología de análisis tiene un enfoque comparativo y presta especial atención a los procesos de traslación, añadido, eliminación o modificación de elementos narrativos.This article focuses on the modifications of narrative content of Japanese comics when they are adapted into films. After an overview of the main filmic adaptation theories, a comparative analysis of the comics and their filmic versions is presented in order to determine how the narrative content is translated from one medium into the other. The corpus includes works targeted at male teenagers (where episodic plots are very common) and at female teenagers (with more serial plots). The methodology of analysis has a comparative approach and it pays special attention to the processes of translation, addition, elimination or modification of narrative content

Animation and music in the music videos created by Studio Ghibli

Este artículo analiza los videoclips animados creados por el Studio Ghibli, un reconocido estudio de animación japonés. El objetivo principal de este análisis es doble: por un lado se pretende establecer qué técnicas de animación se utilizan y cómo se relaciona la música con la imagen animada. Por el otro, se examina la presencia de rasgos autoriales e intertextuales en los videoclips para determinar si estos videos cumplen una auténtica función promocional o usan la música como mero acompañamiento. El análisis llevado a cabo se basa en una metodología de análisis cualitativo del discurso audiovisual que comprende diversos aspectos tales como la organización estructural, la relación entre música e imagen, los personajes, los espacios, el apartado formal, el apartado sonoro y la presencia de elementos intertextuales. La muestra se compone de seis videoclips animados creados por Studio Ghibli. Los resultados de los análisis permiten concluir que en estos videos se aprecia un estilo diferenciado al de los largometrajes del estudio y que la dimensión promocional propia del formato predomina sobre las pretensiones artísticas o la excelencia formal.This article analyzes several animated music videos created by Studio Ghibli, a renowned animation studio from Japan. This analysis has a double purpose. On the one hand, it aims to identify which animation techniques are used and what is the relationship between music and animation. On the other hand, it examines the presence of authorial traits and intertextual elements within the music videos in order to determine if these music videos fulfil a promotional role or just use songs as a mere accompaniment. The analysis is based on a qualitative analysis of the audiovisual discourse that includes several items such as structural organization, relationship between image and music, characters, spaces, formal traits, sound, and intertextuality. Six music videos animated by Studio Ghibli were analyzed. The results allow us to conclude that these videos use aesthetics different from the Ghibli films and that the promotional role of music videos prevails over artistic freedom

Análisis del perfil de masculinidad del Otaku japonés : el caso de Densha Otoko

los estudios sobre fans (Fan Studies) comienzan a perfilarse como un área emergente dentro de la Comunicación. Desde la década de los 90, han surgido diversos trabajos académicos que consideran a los aficionados a productos culturales como el cómic, los videojuegos, el cine de género o las series de televisión como agentes representativos del nuevo paradigma comunicativo surgido a partir de la implantación de los new media. Las principales líneas de investigación de los Fan Studies se centran en la personalidad y los rasgos de los fans; las actividades que llevan a cabo; y su representación en los discursos sociales y mediáticos. La presente comunicación se enmarca dentro de esta última y adopta una perspectiva intercultural y de género. Tomando como objeto de estudio la figura del otaku (término japonés para designar al fan del cómic y la animación) en el film Densha Otoko (Shôsuke Murakami, 2005), se analiza la representación de este colectivo con el objetivo de establecer el perfil de masculinidad que los medios de comunicación japoneses le atribuyen y la valoración implícita que subyace

A Reuse-based framework for the design of analog and mixed-signal ICs

Despite the spectacular breakthroughs of the semiconductor industry, the ability to design integrated circuits (ICs) under stringent time-to-market (TTM) requirements is lagging behind integration capacity, so far keeping pace with still valid Moore's Law. The resulting gap is threatening with slowing down such a phenomenal growth. The design community believes that it is only by means of powerful CAD tools and design methodologies -and, possibly, a design paradigm shift-that this design gap can be bridged. In this sense, reuse-based design is seen as a promising solution, and concepts such as IP Block, Virtual Component, and Design Reuse have become commonplace thanks to the significant advances in the digital arena. Unfortunately, the very nature of analog and mixed-signal (AMS) design has hindered a similar level of consensus and development. This paper presents a framework for the reuse-based design of AMS circuits. The framework is founded on three key elements: (1) a CAD-supported hierarchical design flow that facilitates the incorporation of AMS reusable blocks, reduces the overall design time, and expedites the management of increasing AMS design complexity; (2) a complete, clear definition of the AMS reusable block, structured into three separate facets or views: the behavioral, structural, and layout facets, the two first for top-down electrical synthesis and bottom-up verification, the latter used during bottom-up physical synthesis; (3) the design for reusability set of tools, methods, and guidelines that, relying on intensive parameterization as well as on design knowledge capture and encapsulation, allows to produce fully reusable AMS blocks. A case study and a functional silicon prototype demonstrate the validity of the paper's proposals.Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia TEC2004-0175

Geometrically-constrained, parasitic-aware synthesis of analog ICs

In order to speed up the design process of analog ICs, iterations between different design stages should be avoided as much as possible. More specifically, spins between electrical and physical synthesis should be reduced for this is a very time-consuming task: if circuit performance including layout-induced degradations proves unacceptable, a re-design cycle must be entered, and electrical, physical, or both synthesis processes, would have to be repeated. It is also worth noting that if geometric optimization (e.g., area minimization) is undertaken after electrical synthesis, it may add up as another source of unexpected degradation of the circuit performance due to the impact of the geometric variables (e.g., transistor folds) on the device and the routing parasitic values. This awkward scenario is caused by the complete separation of said electrical and physical synthesis, a design practice commonly followed so far. Parasitic-aware synthesis, consisting in including parasitic estimates to the circuit netlist directly during electrical synthesis, has been proposed as solution. While most of the reported contributions either tackle parasitic-aware synthesis without paying special attention to geometric optimization or approach both issues only partially, this paper addresses the problem in a unified way. In what has been called layout-aware electrical synthesis, a simulation-based optimization algorithm explores the design space with geometric variables constrained to meet certain user-defined goals, which provides reliable estimates of layout-induced parasitics at each iteration, and, thereby, accurate evaluation of the circuit ultimate performance. This technique, demonstrated here through several design examples, requires knowing layout details beforehand; to facilitate this, procedural layout generation is used as physical synthesis approach due to its rapidness and ability to capture analog layout know-how.Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia TEC2004-0175

On the suitability and development of layout templates for analog layout reuse and layout-aware synthesis

Accelerating the synthesis of increasingly complex analog integrated circuits is key to bridge the widening gap between what we can integrate and what we can design while meeting ever-tightening time-to-market constraints. It is a well-known fact in the semiconductor industry that such goal can only be attained by means of adequate CAD methodologies, techniques, and accompanying tools. This is particularly important in analog physical synthesis (a.k.a. layout generation), where large sensitivities of the circuit performances to the many subtle details of layout implementation (device matching, loading and coupling effects, reliability, and area features are of utmost importance to analog designers), render complete automation a truly challenging task. To approach the problem, two directions have been traditionally considered, knowledge-based and optimization-based, both with their own pros and cons. Besides, recently reported solutions oriented to speed up the overall design flow by means of reuse-based practices or by cutting off time-consuming, error-prone spins between electrical and layout synthesis (a technique known as layout-aware synthesis), rely on a outstandingly rapid yet efficient layout generation method. This paper analyses the suitability of procedural layout generation based on templates (a knowledge-based approach) by examining the requirements that both layout reuse and layout-aware solutions impose, and how layout templates face them. The ability to capture the know-how of experienced layout designers and the turnaround times for layout instancing are considered main comparative aspects in relation to other layout generation approaches. A discussion on the benefit-cost trade-off of using layout templates is also included. In addition to this analysis, the paper delves deeper into systematic techniques to develop fully reusable layout templates for analog circuits, either for a change of the circuit sizing (i.e., layout retargeting) or a change of the fabrication process (i.e., layout migration). Several examples implemented with the Cadence's Virtuoso tool suite are provided as demonstration of the paper's contributions.Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia TEC2004-0175

Mejora de la robustez de controladores LQG/LTR. Aplicación a un sistema multivariable

En el presente artículo se realiza un estudio de métodos de diseño LTR, demostrándose su utilidad con la aplicación de un sistema multivariable. El planteamiento se realiza en el espacio de estados para el cálculo e implementación de los algoritmos de control, y un tratamiento en el dominio de la frecuencia para el análisis de robustez. Se describen diferentes técnicas de diseño que emplean una filosofía de síntesis similar, conocida como LTR. Para evaluar los controladores se proponen unos indicadores de robustez. Se realizan diferentes diseños para un sistema multivariable, comparando los resultados obtenidos entre el regulador LQC/LTR convencional y un controlador LTR con estructura no basada en observador. Por último, se propone un controlador para mejorar la robustez y aplicabilidad del controlador LQR/LTR convencional.This paper makes a study of LTR (Loop Transfer Recovery) desing methods. the applicability of the methods to a multivariable system is demonstrated. State space methodos are used to implement the control algorithms and frecuency domain techniques are used to analyse its robutstness. Robustness indicators are proposed to evaluate the performance of the controllers. Different designs of a multivariable system are made, and the results obtained by a conventional LQG/LTR controller and a LTR controller without observer are compared. Finally a method is proposed to enhance the robustness and applicability of conventional LQG/LTR controllers