Category: Tiny Use Case

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.

Continue reading “Tiny Use Case – Kaiju Genre Part IV – Transcultural and Historical Data 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.

Continue reading “Tiny Use Case – Kaiju Genre Part III – Transmediality and Trope Cluster Analysis”

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.

Continue reading “Tiny Use Case – Kaiju Genre Part II – Defining the Kaiju Genre through Tropes”

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.

Continue reading “Tiny Use Case – Kaiju Genre Part I”

Part one of this blogpost introduced the research questions of our fifth tiny use case, which stem from the circulation of popular beliefs regarding blood type and temperament in Japan, and their potential influence on character design practices. The two questions were as follows:

• Do these beliefs about the connection between blood type and personality translate into character designs, such as a correlation between blood type and specific personality traits/descriptors?
• Does its representation in character data reflect popular beliefs circulating in Japan or does it differ?

We took our questions to two datasets, one coming from VNDB , another from ACDB .

Continue reading “Tiny Use Case 5 Part II – Actual Co-Occurrence of Blood Type and Character Personality Traits”

Within Japanese visual media works, it is not unusual to find mentions of a character’s blood type within the work proper or within connected texts such as databooks, author interviews etc. In Japan blood type is widely believed to be a predictor of personality and temperament, each blood type corresponding to a set of temperaments, personality traits and quirks. The listing of a character’s blood can be found across multiple media types and franchises, with popular intellectual properties such as Naruto, One Piece, Bleach, Attack on Titan and My Hero Academia all featuring information regarding a character’s blood type in one way or another. Do these beliefs about the connection between blood type and personality translate into character designs? Do these representations reflect popular beliefs circulating in Japan or do they differ? We took these questions to our data sources in our fifth tiny use case.

Continue reading “Tiny Use Case 5 Part I – Blood Type and Character Personality”

Taking inspiration from the network representation of real-life actors co-staring in movies (see Bacon number) the central question for this Tiny Use Case (TUC) was can we find patterns in the networks of co-appearing characters that are specific to Japanese media mixes (explained below). The short answer is we couldn’t, but read on to learn about the interesting things we found in the process of trying.

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During the first part of this blogpost, we outlined our investigation into recurring practices of character design in visual novel games employing character data from The Visual Novel Database (VNDB). To map these practices, we visualized our dataset as a network of nodes, and examined its modularity and the eigenvector centrality of its subnetworks. Through the combined examination of modularity and eigenvector centrality, we were able to observe patterns of trait distribution across our dataset. We identified three trait communities, one of which included the near totality of character traits describing character sexual activity and pornographic depictions. The gendered distribution of types of pornography in the field of visual novel games elicited us to stratify our dataset according to characters’ intended audiences. This second part of our blogpost describes the results of our data stratification.

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The process of designing characters for a visual novel game relies on shared conventions for drawing character clothes, hairstyles, accessories, for articulating character demeanor (through visual and other cues) and more. In some cases, certain character types are conventionally depicted with certain visually recognizable traits. For example, a character’s hair could be drawn so that it sports a strand of hair which moves according to the character’s mood, this is called an ‘ahoge‘(idiot hair), and signifies a correspondingly whimsical personality. Another character might treat their love interest coldly while secretly harboring affections for them, struggling in the contradiction, a ‘tsundere’ demeanor, which does not necessarily have a corresponding outward visual trait to signify this personality type. Ahoge and tsundere are two of hundreds of templates for character design, which combine to shape a character’s identity.

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