– A short report by Saskia Dreßler –
On Tuesday, October 21 the Japanese Visual Media Graph (JVMG) Project had the wonderful opportunity to present its research and ongoing work at a special seminar event organized by Alba Torrents González at the Faculty of Communication Sciences of the Autonomous University of Barcelona. The event featured four presentations (in-person and online) that introduced the aims, structure, and methodologies of the JVMG.
The session began with an introductory talk by Magnus Pfeffer, who provided an overview of the project’s objectives and scope. Saskia Dreßler followed with a presentation titled “Challenges in Working with Fanfiction and Fanfiction Metadata for Large-Scale Analysis,” highlighting both the potential and the methodological difficulties of studying fan-created works within large data environments.
JVMG_introduction_UAB_2025 Dressler_UAB_2025Next, Christopher Zysik discussed a number of lessons learned from his ongoing research on kaiju media in his presentation “Power in fan-curated databases,” offering insights into the cultural and analytical dimensions of the kaiju genre. The final talk was given by Zoltan Kacsuk, who presented “An example Tiny Use Case: A virtual census of anime characters” further illustrating the potential of the JVMG knowledge graph for research.
Presentation-Power-in-fan-curated-databases_UAB_2025 Virtual_Census_Anime_Characters_UAB_2025The event concluded with a discussion with our three moderators, Alba Torrents González, Tomás Grau de Pablos, and Oscar García Aranda (who some of our readers will remember undertook a short research-stay with us in 2023, see his write-up about his work with us back then here) as well as questions from the audience.
We are grateful to have had this opportunity to present our work in Barcelona, and we would like to once again extend our heartfelt thanks to Alba Torrents González for organizing and co-moderating this special seminar for us, as well as to Tomás Grau de Pablos and Oscar García Aranda for also co-moderating the event, and we look forward to the upcoming next steps in our joint efforts in furthering research on anime, manga and games.