zysik – Japanese Visual Media Graph

14. July 2026

Presenting at Mechademia 2026

As a first for Mechademia, the conference was not held in Japan or the USA, but this time in Singapore. A big thank you to Deborah Shamoon and the local team at the National University of Singapore for organizing the event.

The keynote presentation was held by Chua Beng Huat, currently professor emeritus at NUS. Titled “Approaches to Study of Pop culture in Asia”, he explored the ongoing changes in an increasingly transnational popular culture and the consequences for a field that used to call itself “Asian pop culture”. The discussion went from the definition of the field, its research methods and its visions for research beyond detailed analysis of – in his words “essentially ephemeral commercial products of pop culture.” He finished his presentation with a call to action for researchers to be aware of the options that analysis of large datasets offers in their field and that research without a broader outlook backed by “big data” will become increasingly irrelevant. This was a strong sentiment, and as researchers who are building an infrastructure for data-driven research we were very happy to hear it.

5. June 20265. June 2026

The JVMG-Project at the Trans-Asian Transcultural Fandom Symposium

Set between the Culture Futures Lab’s “Hacking the Asian Waves” and Mechademia 2026, we had the opportunity to attend the Trans-Asian Transcultural Fandom Symposium on May 28 at the National University of Singapore. The symposium was organized by Bertha Chin, Michelle Ho, and Weiyu Zhang. Two packed parallel sessions provided broad and rich insights into contemporary fan studies within the Southeast and East Asian research communities. The plenary session featuring Anthony Fung (Chinese University of Hong Kong), Lori Morimoto (Temple University Japan), and Wikanda Promkhuntong (Mahidol University) provided a more casual and personal, yet still serious, discussion on the directions and futures of transcultural fandoms in East and Southeast Asia.

18. May 202622. May 2026

The JVMG-Project at the Workshop “Soundscapes of Storytelling. Music, Atmosphere, and Narrative in Studio Ghibli Films”

Between April 17 to April 19, we had the great pleasure of presenting the JVMG-Project at the “Soundscapes of Storytelling. Music, Atmosphere, and Narrative in Studio Ghibli Films”-Workshop at the HMT Leipzig. Organized by Christoph Hust, Professor for Music at the HMT Leipzig, the program featured a thematically diverse range of topics and perspectives on the music in Studio Ghibli Films: from rural and urban imaginaries, nostalgia, and instrumentations, over aesthetics, atmospheres, and the tension between the West and Japan, to contexts and fan-reception. This led to rich discussions and exchange of perspectives and ideas in a supportive and appreciative setting.

11. December 20254. October 2026

Tiny Use Case – Kaiju Genre Part IV – Transcultural and Historical Data Analysis

In our previous tiny use cases, we examined the occurrence and co-occurrence of tropes in kaiju works within the TV Tropes community. The aim of these previous use cases was to examine the relationship of tropes to genre to find out how the kaiju genre is defined within fan communities and whether tropes are a reliable approach to define/understand a specific genre. In this tiny use case, we examine the potential of fan-databases, in this case TV Tropes, for transcultural and historical data analyses. Besides exploring the data provided, we also investigate how historical data (here: release dates) and cultural data (here: country of origin) about kaiju works are handled on TV Tropes and how to deal with incomplete data. Additionally, we examine how fan-curated data can contribute to a data analysis of the transculturality and history of the kaiju genre.

1. October 202516. October 2025

The JVMG-Project at the Annual Conference of the German Society for Media Studies

We, Martin Hennig and Christopher Zysik, had the pleasure to present our research and the JVMG project at the Annual Conference of the German Society for Media Studies (Gesellschaft für Medienwissenschaft) at Paderborn University from September 16^th to 19^th. The Society for Media Studies brings together scholars from different disciplines involved with research around theories, practices, and structures of mass media and other forms of mediatization, such as communication, data, or transportation. This year, the hosts invited researchers to present and discuss the topic “Macht” (in engl.: “power”). We contributed with a presentation on “Macht in fankuratierten Datenbanken” (“Power in fan-curated databases”) and how the JVMG project enables a new perspective and method to approach this topic.

30. May 20254. October 2026

Tiny Use Case – Kaiju Genre Part III – Transmediality and Trope Cluster Analysis

In our previous blog post, we concluded that the TV Tropes data about live-action films alone is not sufficient to understand what constitutes the kaiju genre, a tokusatsu (jap. 特撮, “special effects”) subgenre in Japan, on this fan-curated database. This observation is based on the list of supposedly genre-defining tropes of kaiju works on TV Tropes. In comparison to the list of core tropes extracted from the dataset of live-action kaiju films, we observed significant differences with the list of tropes provided by TV Tropes. Additionally, we concluded that individual tropes provided in the dataset are not sufficient to develop a core understanding of the kaiju genre in the fan community. Thus, we will first examine the transmediality of the kaiju genre on TV Tropes by examining tropes attributed to other media works, such as TV series, games, anime, and manga. In the next step, we will explore and compare potential clusters of kaiju tropes between different media to examine similarities and differences between them.

17. December 2024

Tiny Use Case – Kaiju Genre Part II – Defining the Kaiju Genre through Tropes

In a previous blog post, we introduced the research questions of our sixth tiny use case, presenting the kaiju genre as an interesting subject for examining kaiju-related tropes. In part II, we explore the consistency of the tropes attributed to live-action kaiju films via data-analytical methods.

For our analysis, we draw data from the fan-curated database TV Tropes. Our approach brings together two perspectives that have played only minor roles in film genre theory so far: The inclusion of the fan perspective, here based on the fan-curated database TV Tropes, and the focus on narratological tropes rather than the traditionally favored visual and sociocultural frameworks.

10. May 20244. October 2026

Tiny Use Case – Kaiju Genre Part I

To tackle the problem of genre consolidation and the potential role of media tropes for merging several, varying databases about Japanese visual media, the following Tiny Use Case is narrowed down to the Kaiju genre. Due to its diverse nature, the Kaiju genre provides a special challenge to evaluate its genre-defining core tropes from a data-analytical perspective. Thus, gained insights can provide a solid base for further studies on other genres. Additionally, because contemporary genre research focuses on tropes as a transmedia concept to understand the notion “genre”, the question whether this method is still viable in times of digital databases has to be raised.

7. May 202414. May 2024

Exploring and integrating genres in the second phase of the JVMG project

In the second project phase Dr. Martin Hennig (PI) and Christopher Zysik from the University of Tübingen joined the project for the implementation and data-ethical reflection of genres and associated categories, that is to say, to be sensitive of the cultural origins of the categories and terms. The main goal is the integration of comprehensive genre categories, the development of appropriate theoretical models as well as corresponding research questions, that can be answered using the database.