On Manga And Anime Character And Character Consumption

In the mass consumer society, characters, originating from manga and anime, will inevitably become symbols with certain social meanings. Meanwhile, as a kind of goods in a time of mass culture, characters can be consumed in modern society because they have all the features shared by other commodities and character consumption is a way of cultural expression resulting from the rapid development of the mass culture. Character can realize its own value and use value through the production, consumption and circulation of its image. People, who buy character goods, are seeking a way more for self-expression or entertainment and less for status, reputation or wealth. Thus, what character consumption represents is a kind of value orientation, or an expression of a specific intention, or a memory and happiness of one’s childhood. However, such character consumption is definitely not only commercialized but also infiltrated by the dominant ideology and social values of the society in which it exists. In this sense, character consumption is also a popular socio-cultural activity. That is because character consumption per se reflects different cultural value, cultural norms and cultural patterns of different consumers which contribute to the establishment of their own social values and living patterns. In current social life, as long as one does not cut oneself off the society or try to get rid of all the popular elements deliberately, he or she will experience character consumption, or at least the elements of character consumption.Since the post-war period, manga and anime have immersed in the socio-cultural lives of Japanese. Especially with the coming of the information society, more and more Japanese have lost themselves in virtual reality formed by internet or mobile information platforms. In this virtual reality, a very important medium for them to communicate with each other is the characters. This even makes Japanese youths evade and escape from reality because they tend to depend on characters (or "masks") which are different from their real selves to communicate with others. This behavior, to some extent, has promoted the characterization of Japanese society. In this process, a new pattern of consumption, character consumption, gradually takes shape. The increasing needs of character consumption finally construct a character consumer market in Japan which represents the post-modern features. Essentially character consumption is a kind of cultural grafting or social collage that get the elements (characters) away from their original narratives while preserving the original meanings and socializing (or symbolizing) them to cope with other social discourse system for certain purposes. Consumers in different fields are just taking what they need toward the characters, although the same character may take on different meanings in the eyes of different consumers.The character consumer market in contemporary Japanese society is an important part of Japanese manga and anime industry chains as well as a unique derivative market in pace with the continuous development of the industry. Here, the character as a derivative goods that relies on the mass consumer society and the modern commercial system has made its free production and exchange possible.As for the overall structure, the thesis consists of three major parts including nine chapters in total.Part one is the introduction, containing Chapter One and Chapter Two.Chapter One is the introduction of the reasons, significance, ideas, methods and current status of this research. Chapter Two mainly addresses to the history of manga and anime as the development of "stories and characters."It briefly reviews the historical line of manga and anime and puts forward an idea that "Dong-man" (the pinyin of one chinese term, literally refering to the combination of manga and anime) began since the post-war period and was closely related to the development of culture, economy and society in post-war Japan. However, contemporary "Dong-man" includes not only manga and anime but also video games, character novels (light novels), relevant entertainment, art and various derivatives.After nearly 70 years’development, "Dong-man culture" now plays an important role in Japanese mass culture. In a sense, Japanese "Dong-man" and its derivatives are not only an important carrier of Japanese culture and history, but also a major means of economic and sociel interest besides its role for the consumers’ self-entertainment.Part two is the body of the thesis. It is composed of Chapter Three, Four, Five and Six. Part two mainly tackles the following issues-the essence and meaning of characters, the social basis of character mass consumption, character merchandising and merchandising right, the operational mechanism and the exploration of character consumer market, intellectual property protection and cultivation of the targeted receptors of character consumption. To be specific, Chapter Three mainly expounds the essence and meanings of the characters which derive from manga and anime. That is to say, in a mass consumer society, character will inevitably become a symbol of specific social meaning, and thus become the target of consumers. Character consumer market is a new emerging market which is not only a product of constant improvement of manga and anime industry but also an important pillar and a new economic growth point of it. Chapter Four makes a systematic analysis of character merchandising and merchandising right as well as the intellectual property protection in Japanese character mass consumption. Character consumption market comes into being when it tries to meet the demands of the consumers for the characters derived from manga and anime, because demand has the market and the market has the producer (such as designers or manufacturers of characters) to meet the demand. Producer, media and consumer form the three poles of character consumer market. They are both the subject and object, depending on each other to build up a complete consumption environment of character. Chapter Five illustrates the operating mechanism of Japanese character consumer market. In the perspective of modern economic system, character consumer market is a carrier as well as an operating platform:because of its high convergence and expansion, it can isolate the charming and friendly characters from their original works; and by integrating those characters into various aspects of the society, the market can dig out great benefit space. Moreover, character marketers’constant innovation for the profit models and marketing strategies also make contribution to the development of character consumer market. Chapter Six studies the exploration and transformative forms of the character consumer market. As the character consumer market develops to a certain stage (a state of relative saturation), new outlets have to be worked out to sustain the rise of character business. In recent years, the gradually developed forms of character consumption, such as "cosplay," "maid cafe," "derivative work," "N-dimension" and "character moe," have become the new growth points supporting the development of character consumer market.Part three is the conclusion of this thesis. This part only has one chapter, Chapter Seven. It mainly focuses on the natural construction of character consumption patterns and the tendency of character consumption within the context of postmodern consumer culture. This chapter proposes that in the process of natural construction of character consumption patterns, consumption per se has symbolic meanings; people can achieve social communication through consumption which means the consumption behavior can realize people’s flow among different classes, or become a kind of comparative capital for people in the same class. With the improvement of modern communication technology and the emergence of new media, character symbols have become a significant medium for people to communicate and exchange with each other. Furthermore, well-controlled, temperate and reasonable character consumption undoubtedly has positive effects on the development of society and economy; conversely, rampant, immoderate and excessive character consumption brings about negative effects, and even damages to the society. Therefore, we should treat the development of the character consumption in contemporary society dialectically.This thesis has the following innovative points:Firstly, it analyzes the formation and the profit-making process of the character consumer market from the economic perspective. Character consumption has already built up a self-organizing cultural field in which the characters have become the identifying symbolic entities with specific cultural meanings. It is also a corollary of the capital logic. In this field, the aims of the character producers are not merely to meet the demand of consumers, but more importantly to gain the maximum profit; similarly the publicity campaign of the media aims at getting more advertising revenue from the manufacturers and retailers; however, as to the consumers, they need to pay much, including the cost and profit, to obtain their favorite characters. Moreover, this thesis also makes a further conclusion that there are two profit models for character goods-the direct profit model and the indirect one. Secondly, based on a comprehensive analysis, this thesis summarizes four reasons of the constant development of character consumer market:(1) the maturity of modern consumer culture and network system provides fresh soil; (2) the giant profit and the potential profit space act like an "invisible hand;" (3) the excellent flexibility of supply and demand, and the reasonable distribution of profits contribute much to the balance; (4) character creation and interactive responses offer the inexhaustible power. Thirdly, it has clearly pointed out that there is alienation existing in character consumption, like other consumption forms. As the character consumer market meets the demand of consumers, it realizes not only the transfer of economic value and the increase of profit but also the transfer of social values and the growth of culture. But once the character consumption is out of control, many negative effects will be brought about and even do harm to the society at last. In short, what we need to do is to envisage the reality and judge it dialectically instead of simply judging it with a "yes" or "no."Human society is always a contradictory unity interweaving the rational and irrational, the real and unreal, the imaginary and the expectative. Through thousands of years of civilizations, an inner mechanism has formed for the society to self-regulate, self-improve and self-develop. In the long history of society, human may feel anxious or even lost in a certain period, or a certain stage, or a certain moment. However, finally people will find themselves again, regulate their own cultural coordination and recover their beliefs and dreams while wiping the dust off their body and soul to step toward a bright future.