Characters' Amnesia in 2.5D Culture: Affective Reception of Bronze Statues of Anime and Manga Characters and Public Sculptures

Introduction

This article discusses the social phenomenon of erecting bronze statues of anime and manga characters and their relation to other public sculptures through the lens of 2.5D (two-and-a-half dimensional) culture, which began to gain popularity in Japan in the 2010s. The most representative example is 2.5D theater, where actors with material three-dimensional bodies portray two-dimensional anime and manga characters on stage. 2.5D culture requires a particular cognitive process from the audience. Fans of 2.5D theater have an image of anime and manga characters in their minds before attending a play to visually encounter characters that are in their minds' eyes and to interact with the actors on stage who are dressed in costumes that resemble those anime and manga characters. This cognitive process enables the incarnation of 2D characters' images in the 3D material world. The expression "2.5D culture" is used to refer to various cultural phenomena that result from the interaction between anime and manga and the real world, such as cosplay, Vocaloid performances, idol voice acting, and content tourism. ¹ Sugawa-Shimada elucidates that since 2.5D culture depends on this cognitive dimension, it may be addressed using the scholarly approaches of audience reception theory and fan studies. ² This perspective allows us to study various cultural phenomena through the framework of 2.5D culture, such as the proliferation of Pokémon characters in Pokémon Go, local characters for economic development and public relations, and the mushrooming of bronze statues of anime and manga characters in every corner of Japan.

This article pays particular attention to the numerous bronze statues of anime and manga characters erected in recent years. Prior to this, anime and manga were stigmatized and did not appear in public spaces. However, the fan base for anime and manga has expanded in the twenty-first century; consequently, political and economic interests began to target them. Today, anime and manga images are common in public spaces, such as railway stations, city halls, and schools. Thus, these anime and manga bronze statues can be viewed as occurrences of 2.5D culture. The question is, what happens when people experience the 2D characters' invasion of their 3D world? This article examines this question by comparing the anime and manga statues with two similar public sculptures, Sun Child and Statue of Peace, which both represent dark events in Japanese history. This comparison reveals the complex operation of desire in a broadly defined 2.5D culture due to this culture's indispensable dependence on a unique form of audience reception based on what this article will describe as the "characters' amnesia."

2.5D Character Culture

What makes 2.5D culture possible in the broadest sense is that 2D symbolic representation slips into 3D material space. This is possible due to the intertextual autonomy and transmedia malleability of anime and manga character images, as discussed by numerous anime and manga scholars.

Referring to Ōtsuka Eiji's semiotics of manga characters and testimonies of various manga artists against their characters, Itō Gō distinguished between kyara (proto character) and kyarakutā (character). ³ By relativizing the discourse that absolutizes Tezuka Osamu as the origin of Japanese manga, Itō liberated the expressive potential of manga from its narrative-centered perspective. ⁴ For this purpose, he focuses on characters, not as building blocks of the story, but rather as line drawings. Table 1 shows Itō's definition of kyara and kyarakutā, which is somewhat ambiguous and overlapping. The basic idea is that the kyara is the iconic figure materially depicted by each line drawing in the manga, whereas kyarakutā is a personality that readers can imagine behind the line drawings. The division between kyara and kyarakutā distances us from the established history of manga, which finds its origin in Tezuka, and emphasizes that the iconic and figurative aspect of kyara itself are manga's strong appeal.

Iwashita Hōsei indicated that Itō's concept of kyara refers to both "a relatively simple line drawing–based icon" and "something like...