The groundbreaking Mechademia book series is reborn as a biannual journal. Mechademia: Second Arc expands its focus from Japan to Asia and beyond, covering professional and fan-created works influenced by the forms of anime, Japanese manga/Korean manhwa/Chinese manhua, cinema, television dramas, digital media, video gaming, music, performance arts, and many other forms of popular culture that have proliferated in East Asia and throughout the world. The inaugural issue, "Childhood," explores the profundities of that experience, considering it from angles ranging from metaphor to marketing strategy to lived, mediated reality. Contributors include Honda Masuko, Sandra Annett, Brent Allison, Sharalyn Orbaugh, Okabe Tsugumi, It G, Mia Lewis, Ana Matilde Sousa, and Leticia Andlauer.