ABSTRACT
While manga and anime are features of the popular cultural landscape around the world, there remains a unique ubiquity in Japan. In the 1980s, more paper was used to print manga than to make toilet rolls. By the 1990s, half of printed publications were manga, half of studio output was animated, and the top-grossing feature in box-office history was an animated film. Nowhere else are manga/anime-style characters more visible, and their impact is felt in lived experience as in Japan. Anthropologists have documented subcultures of men and women in love with characters dating back at least to the early 1980s. In a struggle for imagination, these early fans experimented and attempted to bring their characters from the drawn world into reality in various media and material forms. This chapter argues that these desires are key to understanding why and how new technologies are forged and adopted in Japan. If, as Marc Steinberg states, characters are a technology of “attraction and diffusion,” and if, as Brian McVeigh adds, the component cuteness of these characters is a technology of “socialization” (if not influence and control), then this is precisely why they are so crucial to forming the foundation of technological advancement. Through the case of Gatebox and its “virtual bride,” this chapter examines how characters and a desire to bring them into reality and live with and love them precedes and predicts technological experimentation in Japan. In the process, it draws attention to research by Jindong Leo-Liu, Keiko Nishimura, and many others.
