Paper short abstract:

Manga, anime and videogames created in Japan are populated by a wide range of fictional characters. But how can we characterize this population? How diverse is it? In this paper, I explore a wide range of fan-created data about characters in order to create a census of the visual media population.

Paper long abstract:

Manga, anime and videogames created in Japan are populated by a wide range of fictional characters. But how can we characterize this population? How diverse is it? In this paper, I explore a wide range of fan-created data about characters in order to create a census of the visual media population.

Manga, anime and videogames created in Japan are populated by a wide range of fictional characters. But how can we characterize this population? How diverse is it? In this paper, I explore a wide range of fan-created data about characters in order to create a census of the visual media population.

Prior work on the virtual census project (Williams et al., 2009) critically considered the relation between the characters populating videogames, and the population of the U.S., revealing a systematic over-representation of male white adults in videgames. Building on this approach, the paper firstly shows how the population of visual media created in Japan has developed over time and in comparison to the population described by the Japanese census over time (kokuseichousa, https://www.e-kokusei.go.jp/). This analysis focuses on established categories of the census, such as age and gender, showing that over time, the population has developed a bias towards female teens and, with less prominence, female adults.

In the second part of the paper, I critically reflect on the adequacy of these established categories for describing the visual media population. By applying several population-specific categories, I approximate the visual media population in its own terms, in turn revealing some of the underlying logic of this fictional universe.

The paper has been developed as part of the project “Japanese visual media graph (JVMG),” which aggregates metadata about Japanese visual media compiled and curated by enthusiast fan communities accessible to academic research. For this paper, I draw on data from the Anime Characters Database (https://www.animecharactersdatabase.com/) and the Visual Novel Database (https://vndb.org/), which each provide a wide range of metadata on visual media created in Japan and the characters that live in them.

Paper short abstract:

Scene hunting in anime pilgrimages reflect the media literacy of its practitioners. I compare the skills demonstrated by butaitanbou practitioners to the indicators of Media and Information Literacy (UNESCO). The results show that these communities are paradigmatic of the contemporary prosumers.

Paper long abstract:

Japanese commercial animation has become one of the most popular forms of audio-visual entertainment. Concurrently with the growing numbers of international visitors, anime-related tourism has given rise to several "meccas" around Japan for both foreign and Japanese fans. Places traditionally left out of tourist itineraries have turned into high-profile destinations thanks to the spontaneous development of seichijunrei, fan pilgrimages to the places that inspired the background settings for popular anime series. Anime pilgrimages generate eloquent communicative expressions that reflect the degree of media literacy of its practitioners. In this proposal I delve into a particular interest within seichijunrei: butaitanbou, or scene hunting. Butaitanbou has given rise to the production of comparative photomontages combining photographs of the original locations and still frames from their animated version. For these creations, fans need not only to test their ability to gather information about the location scouting of the animation studios, but also to demonstrate both their skills in composition and the use of postproduction software and, of course, their capacity to disseminate their expeditions through the butaitanbou communities. My approach concentrates in a comparison between the skills demonstrated by two of the most active English-language butaitanbou websites and the indicators of Media and Information Literacy established by UNESCO. The results of my research show that these communities are paradigmatic of the contemporary prosumers as they demonstrate technological capability, critical reception and active expression. By means of this novel approach, I aim to address the impact of informal interests on the media literacy of active niche subcultures.

Paper short abstract:

The amount of data, knowledge and mediators that we have access compared from 10 years ago, when the study of Japanese video games underwent significant progress, has increased so dramatically that we need to establish a rough sketch of every venue that we can take from now on.

Paper long abstract:

By the mid 2010’s, what was known about Japanese videogames and Japanese video game culture amounted to a fragmentary mosaic of accounts, interviews and press notes that scattered across different historial periods. Although early researchers were able to make up a somewhat stable vision of its most significant events, our main object of focus still centered around their perceived contributions to a ready-made narrative that privileged American consumers and developers as the main forces of progression within the medium. Nowadays, we can curb that tendency thanks to an increasing breadth of data that both academics and gaming enthusiasts have been able to gather. This breadth, however, doesn’t limit merely to hard data and amusing factoids, but covers several interpretations and narratives that act as mediators for many audiences and collectives that have interacted with Japanese videogames over the years.

The challenge that this seemingly endless array of venues presents can be faced head on if we adopt an epistemological instance that takes into account how each one of these interactions (no matter how small) has had an impact on the ongoing reception of Japanese video games across the world. Such an instance can be attained if we expand our sources and reach as many actors as possible, which might shed some light of alternative local histories that can counter prevailing narratives and eventually lead us into a multifaceted study of the medium. This paper will make use of the actor-network model proposed by Bruno Latour to establish a picture of our current relationship with this facet of Japanese culture (namely, the Japanese videogame), and will hopefully encourage any starting researcher to contribute as well.