The focus of this thesis is to examine representations of otaku and fujoshi (i.e., dedicated fans of pop culture) in Japanese anime and manga from 1991 until the present. I analyze how these fictional images of fans participate in larger mass media and academic discourses about otaku and fujoshi, and how even self-produced reflections of fan identity are defined by the combination of larger normative discourses and market demands. Although many scholars have addressed fan practices and identities through surveys and participant observation, many of these studies work with Western groups of fans whose identities may not be consistent with those of Japanese otaku and fujoshi, and fewer studies have addressed the way these fans are reflected in the very media (anime and manga) they consume. I examine both negative and positive depictions of otaku and fujoshi, as well as the representations of fan gender identities and sexualities, across a broad range of anime and manga, including Rusanchiman (Ressentiment), Genshiken, N.H.K. ni Yokoso (Welcome to the N.H.K.), Otaku no Video, Kuragehime (Princess Jellyfish), Oreimo, and Moso Shojo Otakukei (Fujoshi Rumi). The varied depictions of otaku and fujoshi in these works illustrate the tension between otaku and fujoshi identities and normative social roles, the problematic elements of identities defined through consumerism, and the complexities of the interaction between fans' fictionalized and lived desires.

Au moment de déposer ce mémoire, la base de données créée par les fans, pour les fans nommée The Visual Novel Database (https://vndb.org/) liste plus de 37 000 visual novels. Ce corpus non- négligeable demeure peu abordé dans la recherche vidéoludique, particulièrement dans une perspective englobant les différents sous-genres qui lui sont associé, telles que « simulateur de drague » (dating simulator), jeu bishoujo ou jeu otome. Ce mémoire se penche sur des éléments culturels et de jouabilité récurrents dans ces sous-catégories à l’aide des études des genres (gender studies), des études queer, des études otaku et des études narratologiques. Il propose un cadre conceptuel afin d’articuler l’expérience particulière qu’offrent les visual novels, l’employant ensuite pour les analyses des jeux Psychedelica of the Black Butterfly (STING & Otomate, 2015), Hustle Cat (Date Nighto, 2016) et Gnosia (Petit Depotto, 2021). / At the time of handing in this thesis, the database created by fans, for fans called The Visual Novel Database (https://vndb.org/) lists over 37,000 visual novels. This significant corpus remains barely addressed in videogame research, particularly from the perspective of the various sub-genres associated with it, such as dating simulator, bishoujo game and otome game. This dissertation examines recurring cultural and gameplay elements in these subcategories using gender studies, queer studies, otaku studies and narratological studies. It proposes a conceptual framework to articulate the distinct experience that visual novels offer, before employing it to analyze the games Psychedelica of the Black Butterfly (STING & Otomate, 2015), Hustle Cat (Date Nighto, 2016) and Gnosia (Petit Depotto, 2021).

This thesis examines the ways in which popular culture reveals, and shapes, religious thinking in contemporary Japan. Through an investigation of popular culture including animated films (anime) and graphic novels (manga), and the cultural processes related to their production and consumption, it explores how and why popular culture in Japan is acting as a repository for ideas and images relating to religion, the supernatural, and the human and non-human agents who mediate them. Popular culture is important not only for the ways it discloses contemporaneous cultural trends, but because it acts in dialogic tension with them. In Japan, where society has grown increasingly secularized since at least the middle of the twentieth century, an overwhelming majority of citizens consider themselves non-religious. Surveys have consistently indicated that only a small percentage of respondents identify as actively Shintō, Buddhist, Christian or some other religious affiliation. At the same time, depictions of religious images and themes have grown exponentially in popular culture such that a recent internet search on “anime” plus “kami” (a Shintō deity) produced an astounding 20,100,000 hits. Clearly, religion continues to play a crucial role in the popular imagination. This juncture of popular culture and personal religious identity in contemporary Japan raises a number of questions discussed in the following chapters. What benefits do consumers derive from the treatment of religious themes in anime and manga? What do depictions of religion in popular media indicate about the construction of religious identity in Japan? Why the disparity between religious identification survey results and cultural consumption of religious themes and images? In short, what are the ways in which popular culture in Japan reveals ideas about religion and the supernatural, and in what ways does popular culture actively shape those conceptions? / text

In the mid-1990s, Japanese artists Mariko Mori (b. 1962) and Takashi Murakami (b. 1967) began creating works that referenced Japanese popular culture tropes such as sexuality, technology and the idea of kawaii, or cute. These tropes were associated with emerging youth cultures instigating a “soft rebellion” against social conventions. While emancipated female youths, or shōjo, were criticized for lifestyles based on the consumption of kawaii goods, their male contemporaries, the otaku were demonized for a fetishization of kawaii girls and technology through anime and manga, or animation and comic books. Destabilizing the nation’s patriarchal theory of cultural uniqueness, or nihonjinron, the youth triggered fears of a growing infantilized, feminized automaton ‘alien’ society during Japan’s economically tumultuous 1990s. In response to these trends, Mori and Murakami create works and personae that celebrate Japan’s emerging heterogeneity and reveal that Japan’s fear of the ‘alien within’ is a result of a tenuous post-war Japanese-American relationship. But in denoting America’s position in Japan’s psyche, Mori’s and Murakami’s illustration of Japan as both victim and threat encourages Orientalist and Techno-Orientalist readings. The artists’ ambivalence towards Western stereotypes in their works and personae, as well as their distortion of boundaries between commercial and fine art, intimate a collusion between commercialization, art and cultural identity. Such acts suggest that in the global economy of art production, Japanese cultural identity has become as much as a brand, as art a commodity. In this ambivalent perspective, the artists isolate the relatively recent difficulty of enunciating Japanese cultural identity in the international framework. With the downfall of its cultural homogeneity theory, Japan faced a crisis of representation. Self-Orientalization emerged as a cultural imperative for stabilizing a coherent national identity, transposing blame for Japan’s social and economic disrepair onto America. But by relocating Japanese self-Orientalization within the global art market, Mori and Murakami suggest that as non-Western artists, economic viability is based upon their ability to cultivate desirability, not necessarily authenticity. In the international realm, national identity has become a brand based upon the economies of desire, predicated by external consumption, rather than an internalized production of meaning.

In the mid-1990s, Japanese artists Mariko Mori (b. 1962) and Takashi Murakami (b. 1967) began creating works that referenced Japanese popular culture tropes such as sexuality, technology and the idea of kawaii, or cute. These tropes were associated with emerging youth cultures instigating a “soft rebellion” against social conventions. While emancipated female youths, or shōjo, were criticized for lifestyles based on the consumption of kawaii goods, their male contemporaries, the otaku were demonized for a fetishization of kawaii girls and technology through anime and manga, or animation and comic books. Destabilizing the nation’s patriarchal theory of cultural uniqueness, or nihonjinron, the youth triggered fears of a growing infantilized, feminized automaton ‘alien’ society during Japan’s economically tumultuous 1990s. In response to these trends, Mori and Murakami create works and personae that celebrate Japan’s emerging heterogeneity and reveal that Japan’s fear of the ‘alien within’ is a result of a tenuous post-war Japanese-American relationship. But in denoting America’s position in Japan’s psyche, Mori’s and Murakami’s illustration of Japan as both victim and threat encourages Orientalist and Techno-Orientalist readings. The artists’ ambivalence towards Western stereotypes in their works and personae, as well as their distortion of boundaries between commercial and fine art, intimate a collusion between commercialization, art and cultural identity. Such acts suggest that in the global economy of art production, Japanese cultural identity has become as much as a brand, as art a commodity. In this ambivalent perspective, the artists isolate the relatively recent difficulty of enunciating Japanese cultural identity in the international framework. With the downfall of its cultural homogeneity theory, Japan faced a crisis of representation. Self-Orientalization emerged as a cultural imperative for stabilizing a coherent national identity, transposing blame for Japan’s social and economic disrepair onto America. But by relocating Japanese self-Orientalization within the global art market, Mori and Murakami suggest that as non-Western artists, economic viability is based upon their ability to cultivate desirability, not necessarily authenticity. In the international realm, national identity has become a brand based upon the economies of desire, predicated by external consumption, rather than an internalized production of meaning.

In the mid-1990s, Japanese artists Mariko Mori (b. 1962) and Takashi Murakami (b. 1967) began creating works that referenced Japanese popular culture tropes such as sexuality, technology and the idea of kawaii, or cute. These tropes were associated with emerging youth cultures instigating a “soft rebellion” against social conventions. While emancipated female youths, or shōjo, were criticized for lifestyles based on the consumption of kawaii goods, their male contemporaries, the otaku were demonized for a fetishization of kawaii girls and technology through anime and manga, or animation and comic books. Destabilizing the nation’s patriarchal theory of cultural uniqueness, or nihonjinron, the youth triggered fears of a growing infantilized, feminized automaton ‘alien’ society during Japan’s economically tumultuous 1990s. In response to these trends, Mori and Murakami create works and personae that celebrate Japan’s emerging heterogeneity and reveal that Japan’s fear of the ‘alien within’ is a result of a tenuous post-war Japanese-American relationship. But in denoting America’s position in Japan’s psyche, Mori’s and Murakami’s illustration of Japan as both victim and threat encourages Orientalist and Techno-Orientalist readings. The artists’ ambivalence towards Western stereotypes in their works and personae, as well as their distortion of boundaries between commercial and fine art, intimate a collusion between commercialization, art and cultural identity. Such acts suggest that in the global economy of art production, Japanese cultural identity has become as much as a brand, as art a commodity. In this ambivalent perspective, the artists isolate the relatively recent difficulty of enunciating Japanese cultural identity in the international framework. With the downfall of its cultural homogeneity theory, Japan faced a crisis of representation. Self-Orientalization emerged as a cultural imperative for stabilizing a coherent national identity, transposing blame for Japan’s social and economic disrepair onto America. But by relocating Japanese self-Orientalization within the global art market, Mori and Murakami suggest that as non-Western artists, economic viability is based upon their ability to cultivate desirability, not necessarily authenticity. In the international realm, national identity has become a brand based upon the economies of desire, predicated by external consumption, rather than an internalized production of meaning. / Arts, Faculty of / Art History, Visual Art and Theory, Department of / Graduate

La question posée dans ce mémoire de recherche concerne l’artiste contemporain japonais Aida Makoto, comme figure provocante et ironique, remettant en question les appareils de répression et d’aliénation de la société capitaliste japonaise. L’objectif de ma réflexion est de montrer l’apport de la schizo-analyse dans l’analyse d’œuvres plastiques comportant des prédispositions à l’utilisation de celle-ci. À travers les œuvres de l’artiste Aida Makoto où une multiplicité de corps emplit l’espace de la toile, et à partir des concepts de multiplicité et de sensation théorisés par Gilles Deleuze et Félix Guattari, la recherche apportera une seconde lecture aux œuvres de cet artiste en mettant en avant les aspects révolutionnaires de sa création artistique. Constitué de deux chapitres, le mémoire porte dans un premier temps sur la picturalité de l’œuvre, d’ordre technique, esthétique et éthique, en mettant en avant les composés de sensation présents sur la toile, ceci afin, dans un second temps, d’appréhender la figuration, de la visagéité à la multiplicité, comme aspect central de l’œuvre. Ainsi, la Figure, au sens deleuzien du terme, permettrait à l’artiste Aida Makoto d’entamer une fuite schizophrénique à l’occasion de laquelle il pourra créer à l’abri de toute répression ou normalisation de ses machines désirantes par la société capitaliste japonaise. / The question posed in the research concerns the contemporary Japanese artist Aida Makoto, as a provocative and ironic figure, challenging the machinery of repression and alienation of the Japanese capitalist society. The purpose of my reflection is to show the contribution of schizoanalysis in the analysis of visual artworks. Through the artworks of the artist Aida Makoto, where a multiplicity of bodies fill the space of the canvas, and from the concepts of multiplicity and sensation, theorized by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, this research will bring a second reading to Aida’s works highlighting the revolutionary aspects of his artistic creation. Constituted of two chapters, the thesis focuses mainly on the pictoriality of the work from technical, aesthetic and ethics points of view, emphasizing the compounds of sensation present on the canvas, in order to, secondly, understand the figuration of faciality to multiplicity as a central aspect of the work. Thus the Figure, in the deleuzian sense, would allow the artist Makoto Aida to start a schizophrenic escape during which he can create freely from repression and normalization of desiring machines in the Japanese capitalist society.

Japansk populärkultur får allt fler fans i Sverige och svenska ungdomar inspireras av popartister, japanskt mode och framför allt de speciella tecknade serieformerna - manga och anime. Den här uppsatsen behandlar språkandet inom den svensk-japanska subkulturen med fokus på slanguttryck, språkblandning och lånord. Syftet är att undersöka kommunikation inom subkulturen och ta fram de speciella ord som används där. Materialet som analyserats är bildtexter och kommentarer publicerade på internetcommunityt Dayviews. Tio deltagare i gruppen "Cosplayare" har bevakats under tre månaders tid och de ord som är speciella för deras kommunikation har tagits ut och sorterats i olika kategorier. Användningen av dessa ord har också analyserats ur både ett fonologiskt och ett morfologiskt perspektiv. Resultatet visar att studiens informanter har ett stort ordförråd med japanska ord som används som slangord i kommunikation som annars sker på svenska. Dessa ord är ofta interjektioner, personord och titlar eller så kallade utfyllnadsord. Förutom de japanska orden finns det gott om subkulturtypiska ord, det vill säga begrepp som är viktiga för de speciella aktiviteter och medier som ingår i den japanska populärkulturen. Kommunikationen som beskrivs i resultatet kan tolkas som en form av ungdomsspråk eller internetspråk, med slangord från olika språk, specifika ordtyper och ett kreativt förhållande till stavning, ordbildning och användande av olika symboler. De specifika ord som används i subkulturen blir till markörer för språkgemenskapen och konstruerar en egen stil som individerna kan använda för att forma sin identitet. I diskussion av resultatet beskrivs till sist en förklaringsteori med det språksociologiska begreppet ackommodation som drivkraft för att använda japanska ord, där språkanvändarna visar identifikation med den egna gruppen men också med fiktiva karaktärer från de populära serierna.

Dans les jeux vidéo de rôle japonais (JRPG), si le héros est généralement un personnage masculin hétérosexuel se battant à l’arme blanche pour sauver le monde, le personnage de soutien principal est une jeune femme éprise du protagoniste et dotée de divers attributs associés au féminin (apparence soignée, mais peu adaptée au combat, tendance à occuper un rôle de soutien…). À partir du constat selon lequel la plupart des analyses féministes occidentales ne prennent pas en considération le contexte culturel spécifique japonais qui voit naître les JRPG, ce mémoire construit un cadre conceptuel pour mieux décrire et comprendre les tendances historiques de l’évolution des personnages féminins de ces objets vidéoludiques. Il fait appel au concept de l’agentivité, utilisé à la fois en études du jeu et en études féministes littéraires, pour établir des liens entre le genre d’un personnage et la jouabilité qui lui est associée, puis à des travaux japonais sur les phénomènes otaku pour s’assurer d’intégrer un point de vue non-occidental sur ces objets culturels. ll se termine par une analyse des rôles en combat et dans le récit des personnages féminins de la série Tales of. / In Japanese role-playing games (JRPGs), if the typical protagonist is a male brunet swordsman saving the world, the typical support character is a young good-looking woman, enamored with the protagonist, and whose fighting style focuses on supporting him rather than offense. From the observation that most occidental feminist analysis in game studies do not take into consideration the specific cultural context in which JRPGs are born, this master thesis builds a theoretical framework to allow a deeper understanding of the historical dynamics that have guided the evolution of female characters in these videogames. This thesis examines the uses of the concept of agency in both game studies and literary gender studies, in order to bridge gameplay and gender. It then integrates Japanese perspectives of female characters in otaku cultural objects, such as mangas and animes. The thesis ends by depicting of the evolution of female characters in the Tales of series, more specifically their combat roles and importance in the story.

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