Japanese Role-playing Games: Genre, Representation, and Liminality in the JRPG examines the origins, boundaries, and transnational effects of the genre, addressing significant formal elements as well as narrative themes, character construction, and player involvement. Contributors from Japan, Europe, North America, and Australia employ a variety of theoretical approaches to analyze popular game series and individual titles, introducing an English-speaking audience to Japanese video game scholarship while also extending postcolonial and philosophical readings to the Japanese game text. In a three-pronged approach, the collection uses these analyses to look at genre, representation, and liminality, engaging with a multitude of concepts including stereotypes, intersectionality, and the political and social effects of JRPGs on players and industry conventions. Broadly, this collection considers JRPGs as networked systems, including evolved iterations of MMORPGs and card collecting "social games" for mobile devices. Scholars of media studies, game studies, Asian studies, and Japanese culture will find this book particularly useful.
Rachael Hutchinson is professor of Japanese studies at the University of Delaware. Jeremie Pelletier-Gagnon is postdoctoral researcher at Universite du Quebec a Montreal.
Acknowledgments A Note on Names and Sources List of Figures and Tables Introduction Jeremie Pelletier-Gagnon and Rachael Hutchinson Part One: Genre Chapter 1: Evolution of a Genre: Dragon Quest and the JRPG Yuhsuke Koyama Chapter 2: Japan's Hard(ware) Power: Consoles, Culture, and the Mass Appeal of Japanese Role-Playing Games Noekkvi Jarl Bjarnason Chapter 3: Tutorial Characters and Rhetorical Strategies: Comparing Mother and Final Fantasy Fanny Barnabe Chapter 4: Challenging Linearity: Microstructures and Meaning-making in Trails of Cold Steel III Joleen Blom Chapter 5: "Is JRPG Old Fashioned?": Genre, Circulation, and Identity Crisis in Black Rock Shooter: The Game Jeremie Pelletier-Gagnon Part Two: Representation Chapter 6: Harmonized Dissonance: Parodies of Japan's America in Earthbound Benjamin Whaley Chapter 7: From Cleric to Daemon: Narrative and Ludic Agencies of Female Characters in the Tales of Series Loic Mineau-Murray Chapter 8: Beyond Status Effects: Disability and Japanese Role-Playing Games Andrew Campana Chapter 9: Empathy for the Blind: Negotiating Disability in Final Fantasy XV Rachael Hutchinson Chapter 10: Everyday Aesthetics and Social Reform in Persona 5 Frank Mondelli Part Three: Liminality Chapter 11: Creating Community in Persona 3: Japanese Role-playing Games as Networked Practice Douglas Schules Chapter 12: Networked Asymmetry: Uncanny Traces in the Dark Souls Series Daniel Johnson Chapter 13: Pseudo-allegory in Final Fantasy XIV William Huber Chapter 14: Traces of Change in JRPG History: Mythological Thinking in Fate / Grand Order and Pokemon GO Daichi Nakagawa About the Contributors
