Japanese Role-Playing Games

This book examines the origins and boundaries of Japanese digital role-playing games. A geographically diverse roster of contributors introduces English-speaking audiences to Japanese video game scholarship and applies postcolonial and philosophical readings to the Japanese game text.

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.

Acknowledgments

A Note on Names and Sources

List of Figures and Tables

Introduction

Jérémie 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

Nökkvi Jarl Bjarnason

Chapter 3: Tutorial Characters and Rhetorical Strategies: Comparing Mother and Final Fantasy

Fanny Barnabé

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

Jérémie 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

Loïc 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 Pokémon GO

Daichi Nakagawa

About the Contributors