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The
“real” world is now also added to these
exchanges as the trading of characters can be accompanied
by the trading of video and still images captured by
one phone and shipped immediately to another—sometimes
allowing virtual characters to inhabit worlds formed
of images captured from the real world.
The electronic characters that
are traded back and forth often are quoted from Japanese
anime narratives which in turn borrow liberally from
the popular cannon of Western literature, film, music,
and from components of international pop culture cults
like those that surround Madonna, the Beatles, Bjork
or Sailor Moon; the country is therefore alive with
the ghostly presence of its own history
intermixed with the histories, stories, symbols
and images of many other cultures around the globe.
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