Aidoru (ア​イドル). from the English word “idol,” a Japanese term used to refer to the young performers, typically in their teens or early twenties, in manufactured girl and boy bands or sometimes as solos singers, tightly controlled by artist management companies (e.g., aidoru are not allowed to date). An aidoru is primarily admired no so much for their vocal talent, but for their attractiveness, which in the case of female performers, is measured in youth and cuteness. World-famous supergroups like AKB48 (composed of 134 members) and Morning Musume ’19 hold annual popularity contest in which fans vote on their favorite member using a voting ballot that comes with CDs (the more CDs one buys, the more votes one gets). These pools determine each aidoru’s rank within the group, impacting their participation in singles or on-stage position. When performers reach a certain age (typically, around their early twenties), they “graduate” from the group and are replaced by a younger member.

Obsessive fans of Japanese aidoru called wota. At concerts and other aidoru events, wota perform wotagei, i.e., specific cheering actions like jumping, clapping, arm-waving with glow sticks, and chanting slogans. Beyond supergroups, the broader aidoru scene, particularly in Tokyo and Osaka, includes groups that perform in small venues for local crowds. In the 2010s, Japan has also seen the rise of the alternative aidoru scene. These alternative aidoru groups are still manufactured by agencies and have strict rules, but they appeal to an edgier image than traditional aidoru, for instance, by including punk, metal, or gothic elements in their songs, and using violent or disturbing imagery. Examples of famous alternative aidoru include Babymetal, Kyary Pamyu Pamyu, BiS, and Brand-new idol SHiT(BiSH).

Anime (アニメ), abbreviation of “animēshiyon,” from the English “animation,” is the term used to describe animated cartoons made in Japan, typically, adopting the iconography and aesthetics of manga, applying to both feature films and serial television programs.  Anime is produced by dedicated studios, sometimes as original miniseries, often as adaptations of manga, novels, or videogames. Serial anime miniseries typically have a runtime of  25 minutes, are broadcast weekly, and span from twelve to twenty-six episodes. These series are broadcast in four three-month yearly seasons: winter, spring, summer, and fall. Anime targeted at otaku (adult) audiences are shin’ya anime (“late-night anime”), broadcast in programming blocks from 10 pm to 4 am, e.g., Fuji TV’s Noitamina and +Ultra, TBS TV’s Animerico, Tokyo MX’s Anime no Me, etc. The airing times of anime targeted at broader audiences (children, teenagers) vary from morning, late afternoon, and evenings. Popular contemporary anime studios today include A-1 Pictures, Brain’s Base, JC Staff,  Kyoto Animation, Madhouse, Mappa, PA Works, Production IG, Shaft, Studio Bones, Studio Ghibli, Studio Pierrot, Sunrise, Toei Animation, and Wit Studio.

Although the first registered public animation showing happened in 1912, the oldest known animated film in Japan is the Matsumoto fragment, from 1907, a three-second animation of a boy in a sailor uniform writing the characters 活動写真 (katsudō shashin, “motion picture”) on a wall. Anime was developed during the interwar period by the “fathers” of anime, like Kōuchi Junichi, Shimokawa Ōten, and Kitayama Seitarō, later followed by the likes of Masaoka Kenzō and Seo Mitsuyo. Masaoka directed Chikara to Onna no Yo no Naka (“Within the World of Power and Women,” 1933), a lost film that was the first Japanese animated film with voiceovers, and many short animations considered to be anime masterpieces, like Kumo to Tulip (Spider and Tulip, 1943). Seo, who worked under Masaoka, animated cartoons featuring the famous manga character Norakuro, and was the author of Japan’s feature-length animated film, the propaganda film Momotarō: Umi no Shinpei (Momotaro, Sacred Sailors), released in 1945. The first color animation, appeared in 1958, a relatively late development, due to the technical and logistical limitations of the decade after the war, with Toei Animation’s first theatrical film, Hakujaden (The Tale of the White Serpent), influenced by American animation studios like Disney. Also from Toei, came Wanpaku Ōji no Orochi Taiji (The Little Prince and the Eight-Headed Dragon, 1963), directed by Mori Yasuji, one of the most influential directors in postwar animation, who formed a younger generation including Miyazaki Hayao, Takahata Isao, Ōtsuka Yasuo, and Kotabe Yoichi.

Also in the 1960s period, Osamu Tezuka founded Mushi Productions, that began airing the first serialized television anime on January 1, 1963, an adaptation of Tezuka’s beloved manga series, Tetsuwan Atomu (Astro Boy). Mushi Productions also produced adult-oriented animated feature films, such as Yamamoto Eiichi’s erotic trilogy Senya Ichiya Monogatari (A Thousand and One Nights, 1969), Cleopatra (1970), and the experimental masterpiece, Kanashimi no Belladonna (Belladonna of Sadness, 1973). By the 1970s, anime was an established industry, with a boom of studios and styles in Japan, mostly working on television adaptions of manga. The television anime adaptation of Nagai Go's manga Mazinger Z launched the roots of the mecha genre—giant humanoid robots controlled by human pilots, fighting to defend the Earth from alien armies—one of the most successful anime genres. Along with anime about futuristic space adventures such as (Space Battleship Yamato), Uchū Kaizoku Captain Harlock (Space Pirate Captain Harlock), and Ginga Tetsudō 999 (Galaxy Express 999), the mecha genre reshaped the face of Japanese science fiction, including titles as diverse as Sunrise Studios’s Gundam franchise, or Anno Hideaki’s Shin Seiki Evangelion (Neon Genesis Evangelion, 1995), from the influential Gainax studio. Anno and other animators that founded Gainax had also worked on the short anime films Daicon III and IV Opening Animations ( approximately 6 minutes each) for the Nihon SF Taikai fan convention in Osaka, which crystallized the otaku’s love affair with anime, comics, and science fiction, in 1981 and 1983. Another popular genre since the 1970s is magical girl anime, including not only classics like Minky Momo, Creamy Mami, and Sailor Moon, but also deconstructive works such as Ikuhara Kunihiko’s Shōjo Kakumei Utena (1997) and Mahō Shōjo Madoka Magica (2011).

Animated feature films regained momentum in the mid-1980s, with works by Miyazaki Hayao and Takahata Isao. After the success, in 1984, of Miyazaki’s post-apocalyptic science-fiction anime Kaze no Tani no Nausicaä (Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind), Miyazaki and Takahata founded Studio Ghibli. Studio Ghibli has created some of the most beloved Japanese animated films, such as Miyazaki’s Tonari no Totoro (My Neighbor Totoro, 1988), Kurenai no Buta (Porco Rosso, 1992), Mononoke-hime (Princess Mononoke, 1997), Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi (Spirited Away, 2001), Howl no Ugoku Shiro (Howl's Moving Castle, 2004) or Gake no Ue no Ponyo (Ponyo, 2008), and Takahata’s Hotaru no Haka (Grave of the Fireflies, 1988), Omohide Poro Poro (Only Yesterday, 1991) or Heisei Tanuki Gassen Ponpoko (Pom Poko, 1994). Other anime films, such as the cyberpunk classic Akira (1988), directed by Otomo Katsuhiro, Mamoru Oshii’s masterpieces Tenshi no Tamago (Angel’s Egg, 1985) and Ghost in the Shell (1995), Kon Satoshi’s films Memories (1995), Perfect Blue (1997), and Paprika (2006), Tekkonkinkreet (2006) based on Matsumoto Taiyō manga series of the same name, Yuasa Masaaki’s Mind Game, Hosoda Mamoru’s Summer Wars (2009), and Shinkai Makoto’s films including Kimi no Na Wa. (Your Name., 2016), the highest-grossing anime film of all time, have achieved the status of animation landmarks.  

On the other hand, the direct-to-video industry, or OVA (“Original Video Animation”), i.e., anime designed for being released on VHS or, more recently, DVDs and Blu-rays, has flourished since the mid-1980s, occupying a considerable share of the market and generating its own specialist magazines. Original or part of broader franchises, one-shots or spreading over several episodes, with have no predefined duration, OVA often contain graphic violence and explicit sexual content, due to the absence of the restrictions applied to television and film productions. More recently, ONA (“Original Net Animation”), i.e., anime produced directly for the internet, usually of short duration (a few minutes) and initially used by amateur and independent artists (although now adopted by major studios), have enjoyed increasing popularity, with major hits such as Hetalia: Axis Powers in the early 2010s.

In the mid-to-late 1990s and 2000s, anime became widely available on foreign television channels and legal and illegal Internet streaming sites, with the worldwide dissemination of fansubbing groups (i.e., fan groups of who translate and subtitle anime and other contents), which prompted the global popularity of series like Dragon Ball (1986-1996), Sailor Moon (1992-1997), and Pokémon (1997-present). Popular anime from the 2000s and 2010s include adaptions of manga like One Piece (1999-present), Naruto (2002-2017), Bleach (2004-12), Death Note (2006-07), Shingeki no Kyojin (Attack on Titan, 2013-present),  as well as original or novel-based series like Furi Kuri (2000-01), Paranoia Agent (2004), Mahō Shōjo Lyrical Nanoha (2004), Samurai Champloo (2005-06), Code Geass (2006-08), Suzumiya Haruhi (2006-09), Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann (2007), Lucky Star (2007), K-On! (2009), the Monogatari series (began in 2009), Durarara!! (2010), Mawaru Penguindrum (2011), Free! Iwatobi Swim Club (2013), Yurikuma Arashi (2015), or Yuri!!! on Ice (2016), among many other series.

Anime Was a Mistake is a popular 2015 Internet meme consisting of a series of GIFs with troll quotes misattributed to Japanese animation guru Miyazaki Hayao, in which he bitterly vocalizes his disdain for anime and its fans, stating that “Anime was a mistake. It’s nothing but trash” or that “Those who identify as ‘otaku,’ they sicken me deeply.”

Animegao kigurumi (アニメ顔着ぐるみ) is a cartoon-character costume with anime face. The term is also used to describe performers wearing this kind of costume covering the entire body, including arms and legs covered in skin-tight sleeves, and a mask with anime-like features.

In English, the term “doller” is synonymous with animegao.

Anthropocene (literally, “age of humans”) is a name for the proposed new geochronological epoch in which human societies have become a planetary force capable of drastically impacting the Earth and its ecosystems, e.g., through anthropogenic climate change. Although the term had been used already in the 1960s, its current meaning was allegedly coined by American biologist Eugene Stoermer in the 1980s. In the 2000s, it was popularized by Dutch atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen and became widely discussed not just in the natural sciences, but in the social sciences, the humanities, and the arts originating a cross-disciplinary debate among several fields of knowledge production. Famous Anthropocene-related authors in the social sciences and the humanities include Bruno Latour, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Donna Haraway, and Timothy Morton.

There are several dating hypotheses for the Anthropocene, including the European Expansion of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the eighteenth-century Industrial Revolution, and the Great Acceleration after World War II. The term “Anthropocene” has been widely criticized as, ironically, the theoretical and artistic it indexes often emphasizes the agency of the nonhuman. Alternative names include Capitalocene, Plantationocene, or Chthulucene.

Bishōjo (美少女) means “beautiful young woman.” In Japanese, the prefix bi, 美, denotes feminine beauty, with the word bijin meaning“beautiful person,” usually referring to beautiful women. In animanga terminology, a bishōjo is an attractive female character, whose specific attributes vary according to industry trends and genres, from accurately proportionated beauty to sexy or cute caricatures (the latter known as loli), and the many stages in between these poles. Bishōjo statuette are a popular form of merchandise among Japanese otaku.

Bishōjo game (少女ゲーム), also known as “girl game” or “galge,” is a Japanese videogame genre consisting of dating simulators or dating-themed point-and-click adventures or visual novels, in which the male player interacts romantically with female anime characters. Bishōjo games co-evoluted with eroge, and many (although, not necessarily) contain erotic or pornographic content. Although many masterworks of Japanese videogames can be filled into this category, for instance, To Heart, Clannad, and Kanon, “purer” popular bishōjo dating simulators include the Elf’s Dōkyūsei and Konami’s Tokimeki Memorial series, beginning in 1992 and 1994, respectively.

When dating simulators feature a female that interacts romantically with male characters, it is called an otome game or otoge (“maiden game”).

In traditional East Asian aesthetics, bishōnen (美少年, literally, “beautiful young boy”) is a term that applies to androgynous males whose universal beauty transcends gender and sexual orientation. In animanga terminology, the characteristics of bishōnen (“pretty boy”) or biseinen (“pretty man”) characters have changed according to different trends over the decades, but broadly denote a type of male figure with a slender and delicate beauty, combining stereotypical “masculine” and “feminine” features, with links to the slang term ikemen (イケメン), meaning a handsome man with a suave voice. The shortened form of bishōnen or biseinen is “bishie,” often used in fandom contexts.

Although the bishōnen has become particularly popular in Japanese girl’s comics, it stems from erudite Japanese culture, particularly in literature and the visual arts, linked to an ideal of homosociality and homoeroticism with deep roots in the Japanese religious tradition (and the East Asian in general, mainly in China). Its roots can be traced back to the chigo (“children” or “acolytes”), i.e., an adolescent boy who served as helpers in Buddhist temples or aristocratic household in the Middle Ages. The chigo were meant to add beauty to religious ceremonies and everyday life and to provide companionship, and, often, sexual services, to a monk to assigned to initiate them. Although initially developed within an aesthetic and spiritual context—the chigo are recurrent characters in the Buddhist moral tales, associated with the transience of beauty—the bishōnen soon became associated with more worldly realities, for example, in connection to kabuki theater to prostitution. In The medieval Japanese imagination, the chigo, seen as passive and innocent sexual objects, were both deified and recurrent victims of violence.

With the importation of the term “gei” (“gay”) in the postwar period, the bishōnen became connoted with the feminine-looking gei boi (“gay boy”). With the development of postwar shōjo manga, including BL (“boys’ loves”), shōnen ai, and yaoi and the emergence of the visual kei in music, bishōnen aesthetics became a central part of women’s culture in contemporary Japan.

In pop-cultural tropes, a Bizarro world or universe describes a type of inverted or mutated alternative universe, originating weird versions of canonical characters and structures (e.g., a character who is good or talented in the canon becomes an evil or clumsy Bizarro).

The term first appeared in the American superhero comics magazine Action Comics, published by DC Comics, in 1960.

Boys’ Love, BLB (“boy loves boy”) or BL (“boys’ love”), is a subgenre of Japanese girls’ comics (shōjo manga) emerging in the 1970s, whose central theme are gay relations among men, traditionally bishōnen, ranging from the platonic homoeroticism (shōnen ai) to hardcore pornography. Female fans of BL are called fujoshi (literally, “rotten girl”). Unlike bara, i.e., gay erotic or pornographic manga written by gay men for gay men featuring “manly men” (bulky, muscular, with body hair, etc.), boys’ love is typically written by women, for (mostly, straight) women, presenting an idealized expression of feelings and slender, androgynous “pretty boys.” Usually, male characters in BL do not actively identify as gay and only occasionally deal with the real constraints felt by gay men in society, such as homophobia, family expectations, or social disapproval. BL has sometimes been criticized by LGBT activists for its stereotypical (even, heteronormative) representation of male-male love and relationship roles.

The first BL author in the postwar was Mori Mari, daughter of the famous Japanese writer Mori Ōgai, who wrote “aesthetic novels” (tanbi shousetsu) of a luscious, decadent gay romance between beautiful boys and men, namely, the trilogy Koibito-tachi no Mori (“Lovers’ Forest,” 1961), Nichiyōbi ni Boku wa Ikanai (“I Don’t Go on Sundays,” 1961), and Kareha no Nedoko (“The Bed of Dead Leaves,” 1962). In manga, Year 24 Group authors such as Hagio Moto, Takemiya Keiko, and Aoike Yasuko, established and developed the genre with shōnen ai classic such as Tōma no Shinzō (The Heart of Thomas, 1974-75), Kaze to Ki no Uta (“Balad of the Wind and the Tree,” 1976-84), Eroica Yori Ai wo Komete (From Eroica with Love, 1976-2012). In the 1980s, BL was closely connected with the dōjinshi (amateur manga) boom at the Comiket, whose vast majority of participants were young women. Female fans began to create erotic or pornographic parodies of popular (male-oriented) animanga series like Space Battleship Yamato, Mobile Suit Gundam, Captain Tsubasa, Saint Seiya, Yoroiden Samurai Troopers, Yū Yū Hakusho, Slam Dunk, among others. Because of their parodic, often random or over-the-top quality, this kind of works became known under the label yaoi, an acronym of the phrase yamanashi ochinashi iminashi (“no climax, no point, no meaning”). One of the more iconic yaoi series of the 1990s is Ozaki Minami’s Zetsuai series, an extravagant psychosexual melodrama which began as a dōjinshi of Captain Tsubasa, before transitioning to commercial publication.

In the 2000s, popular BL series include Nakamura Shungiku’s romantic comedies Junjō Romantica and Sekai-Ichi Hatsukoi. The genre has also had a significant influence on sports anime like Free! And Yuri!!! on Ice, which are catered to female fujoshi audiences.

In Internet terminology, chan, from “channel,” is a text or imageboard in which users post anonymously, split into various boards with specific content and guidelines. Famous examples include the Japanese imageboard Futaba Channel (a.k.a. 2chan, launched in 2001) and the American 4chan (launched in 2003) and 8chan (consisting of user-created boards, launched in 2013).

Chan culture originally sprang from otaku, gaming, and underground culture, which still plays a vital role in these boards, although it has also become linked to hacktivist groups like Anonymous, Internet troll culture, and far-right Internet phenomena like the alt-right movement and the Gamergate controversy. The chans are also the birthplace of many Internet memes, including LOLcats.

In in animanga terminology, chibi (ちび, literally “small child” or “short person”), also known as mini kyara or superdeformed, describes a popular type of cute caricature of manga, anime, or videogame characters with oversized heads, roughly half of the chibi’s total height. Chibi’s typically have enormous eyes, miniature bodies, and tiny, sometimes rounded, hands and feet.

Chibi are often used in omake (“extra” clips of manga and anime) and comedic contexts.

Comic Market, or Comiket, for short, is Japan’s largest fan convention, focusing mainly on the promotion of dōjin (self-published) culture and cosplay. The main attraction of the Comiket is amateur manga fanzines known as dōjinshi, mostly parodi manga, i.e., parodies and pastiches of commercial works of manga, anime, and videogames. Held twice a year since 1975, for three days in mid-August and mid-December, and housed at the Tokyo Big Sight pavilion since 2009, the Comiket receives nearly 600 000 visitors, i.e., over 6% Tokyo’s population.

The Comiket is the otaku event par excellence, where the pulse of contemporary animanga and fan trends can be felt.

Cool Japan is a concept and governmental policy to promote Japan’s “indigenous” pop culture abroad, e.g., anime, manga, videogames, J-pop, aidoru, fashion, and kawaii culture.

The term was prompted by the 2002 article “Japan’s Gross National Cool” by American journalist Douglas McGray. It is a kind of cultural diplomacy, meant to increase Japan’s soft power in the global market.

Cosplay (コスプレ, cosupure, from “costume play”) describes the hobby or professional practice of dressing oneself as a fictional character (comics, animation, videogames, films, literature, etc.). Although the term was coined in Japan in the 1980s, the practice has much earlier roots, in Japan and elsewhere.  Since the 1990s, the practice of cosplay has become a global phenomenon, happening in fan conventions around the world. Professional cosplayers often perform at public events and sell merchandise, like photo books.

When the performer is of the opposite gender of the portrayed character (e.g., a female performer dressing up as a male character, or a male performer dressing up as a female character), the practice is called “crossplay” (from “crossdressing”).

a small portion of the non-searchable web” (called the deep web) hosted on darknets, i.e., “restricted networks.” Accessing and navigating the dark internet requires that users use anonymous communication over a computer network, or onion routers, like Tor. Therefore, websites in the dark web often have the domain suffix “.onion.”

The dark web gained a reputation for being a hub for illegal activities (e.g., terrorism) and black markets (e.g., drugs, weapons, child pornography, etc.). The Silk Road was the first modern darknet market, active from 2011 to until it was shut down by the FBI in 2013.

Decora (デコラ, from “decorative”) is a Japanese street fashion style associated with cute culture which emerged in the late 1990s in the Harajuku fashion district in Tokyo, and remained popular throughout the 2000s. Practitioners of decora fashion are called decora-chan, emphasizing their childlikeness, and were often featured in iconic Japanese street fashion magazine FRUiTS. Decora is characterized by the “excessive” use of accessories in bright and neon colors, including numerous toys, bows, face stickers, ribbons, hair clips, and colorful stockings.

Related styles include koteosa (decora mixed with goth and visual kei elements) and decololi (decora mixed with Lolita fashion).

Dōjin (同人) is a Japanese word for self-published media and activities, including dōjinshi (同人誌, fanzine), dōjin soft (同人ソフト, independent videogames or fangames), dōjin ongaku (同人音楽, self-published CDs), and others.

Dōjin culture is the basis of fan conventions like the Comic Market (Comiket, for short).

Dorama (ドラマ), or J-drama, are television miniseries produced by major Japanese networks like NHK, broadcast in four three-month seasons yearly: winter, spring, summer, and fall. Dorama comes in all genres, from romance to horror, from crime-mystery to period dramas. Many popular dorama, like Hana Yori Dango (“Boys Over Flowers,” 2005), are based on manga, mainly, of the shōjo variety.

Serial dorama, with a runtime of about forty-five minutes, are typically broadcast weekly, from 9 pm to 11 pm. Dorama transmitted in the morning, called asadora (“morning dorama”), are broadcast daily.

Enjo-kōsai (援助交際) is the practice of “compensated dating” in which middle- and upper-class girls and women voluntarily go on dates with older men in exchange for money and luxury gifts. Enjo-kōsai gained notoriety in Japan during the 1990s, originating a moral panic in the mass media.

The practice became associated with the kogyaru subculture of school girls wearing seifuku (school uniforms) with miniskirts, loose socks, tans, and branded goods. 

Ero guro (エログロ) is a short form of “erotic grotesque nonsense,” a countercultural modern art movement which emerged in Japan during the 1920s and 1930, celebrating the macabre, the perverse, the decadent, and nihilistic parody. The movement became associated with the representation of violent and queer sexuality and women liberation, in the artworks of artists like or novels like Tanizaki Junichiro’s Chijin no Ai (in English, Naomi).

Ero guro has its roots in the ukiyo-e wood prints of nineteenth-century artists like Yoshitoshi Tsukioka, which depicted graphic violence and death.  The ero guro movement has been highly influential in Japanese popular culture throughout the twentieth century, including manga and anime, for instance, in the works of comics artists and illustrators like Maruo Suehiro, Kago Shintarō, Takato Yamamoto, and the “Godfather of Japanese Erotica,” Saeki Toshio.

Eroge (エロゲ) are image-based “erotic videogames” emerging in Japan in the 1980s.

The first eroge, Koei’s Night Life (ナイトライフ), was marketed as an educational erotic simulation game to enhance couples’ sex life, released in 1983 as part of the company’s adult label, the Strawberry Porno series. Night Life had schematic black and white graphics, but eroge soon adopted animanga graphics and coevolved alongside related genres like bishōjo dating sims and visual novels.

Evangelion, originally, Shin Seiki Evangelion (新世紀エヴァンゲリオン, Neon Genesis Evangelion), is a science fiction anime television series written and directed by self-proclaimed otaku Hideaki Anno—one of the animators involved in the production of the iconic anime short film DAICON IV Opening Animation, in 1983—and produced by GAINAX studio, with character design by Sadamoto Yoshiyuki. It was initially broadcast in 1995 in a series of 26 episodes plus a 1997 film entitled Shin Seiki Evangelion Gekijou-ban: Air / Magokoro o, Kimi ni, widely known in English as End of Evangelion. Evangelion, acclaimed by many critics and fans as the best anime television series of all time, is credited with revitalizing the otaku industry in the 1990s and launching a new wave of anime and manga. Evangelion’s protagonists Ikari Shinji, Ayanami Rei, Sohryu Asuka, Katsuragi Misato, and Nagisa Kaworu, remain some of Japan’s most iconic, influential, beloved, and merchandisable characters. More recently, Anno has worked on the film tetralogy Rebuild of Evangelion, that remakes of the original series.

As postmodern critic Azuma Hiroki puts it,  Evangelion is “the absurd story of a meaningless battle that takes place while riding on a puzzling machine against an equally puzzling enemy.” The series’s exotic combination of giant humanoid robots, Judeo-Christian mythology, psychological drama, terminologies and scenarios drawn from biology and psychoanalysis, and an inexhaustible range of symbolic associations combined in a cryptic cocktail sparked endless debates and interpretations by both regular anime fans and a wider audience of intellectuals drawn by the series’ complexity and aesthetic boldness. Evangelion subverts the more linear narrative structure typical of famous mecha (giant robot) franchises like Mobile Suit Gundam, especially in the second half of the series, when characters and the narrative fabric begin to implode, and the horror, violence, and anxiety intensifies. According to Murakami Takashi, Evangelion was a “meta-otaku film, through of which Anno, himself an otaku, sought to transcend the otaku tradition.”

Originating in 1980s science fiction conventions, furry is the term used to describe the fans or enthusiasts of fictional anthropomorphic animals, usually expressed by dressing up in full body costumes called “fursuits,” or creating online avatars to roleplay as “fursonas,” i.e., an individual’s furry persona.

On the Internet, furries have gained the reputation of sexual fetishists; while the term may indeed refer to someone who is sexually attracted to anthropomorphic animals and fursuits, the term is not necessarily sexual.

Ganguro (ガングロ. literally, “black face”) is a sub-style of gyaru fashion, emerging in the late 1990s and peaking in popularity around the year 2000, characterized by deep solarium tans, blonde, orange or silver highlights (messhu), think black eyeliner and mascara, false eyelashes, white concealer around the eyes and lips, facial gems and stickers, brightly-colored outfits, miniskirts, platform boots, and colorful accessories.

Ganguro propelled and was propelled by the fashion magazine Egg (closed in 2014, returned in 2018 as online publication) and their starlet, the ganguro model Buriteri. Other magazines associated with ganguro included Cawaii, Popteen, and Ego System.

Giri (義理, literally, “duty,” “obligation,” “burden”) is the sense of serving one’s superiors with a self-sacrificing devotion and paying one’s debt to society. It is a fundamental value in the organization of traditional Japanese society, regulating the entire hierarchical pyramid, and it is inseparable from the concept of “ninjo” (人情), i.e., humanity, empathy, sympathy, which humanizes these relations. The conflict between giri and ninjo is a classic theme in Japanese art.

Gyaru (ギャル), from “gal,” is an umbrella term which emerged in the 1980s for a diverse set of subcultures of young women in Japan, including kogyaru, ganguro, yamanba, agejo, amekaji, himegyaru, oneegyaru, mode, rokku gyaru, and neo gyaru. Gyaru is a street fashion and lifestyle generally associated with sexually liberated women rebelling against traditional Japanese beauty standards and gender roles—namely, the yamato nadeshiko ideal of white-skinned, demure feminine beauty—with loud personalities who enjoy bodycon sexy clothes and clubbing. Typical gyaru traits include messhu and chapatsu hair, bleached or dyed hair in shades ranging from dark brown to platinum blonde (occasionally, colors), tanned skin, long decorated nails, and dramatic makeup.

The discothèque Juliana's, operating in Tokyo from 1991 to 1994, was a symbol for the gyaru’s hedonistic lifestyle, and in the late 1990s, the gyaru subculture popularized synchronized dance style known as Para Para. The Tokyo neighboorhood of Shibuya and department stores like 109 are known as the gyaru Mecca.

In animanga terminology, the term “harem” (ハーラム, haaramu) describes anime, manga, and videogames focusing on a male protagonist who pursues and is pursued by three or more female romantic interests. Hasemi Saki and Yabuki Kentaro’s To Love Ru (2006-2009) is an example of a famous harem manga.

In a “reverse harem,” the protagonist is a female surrounded by three or more male romantic interests.

Hauntology is a portmanteau of “hanté” and “ontologie” and near-homonym of ontologie (“ontology”). The neologism “hantologie” was first formulated by the French philosopher Jacques Derrida in his book Spectres de Marx in 1993, to describe the ambiguous state of the specter, which is neither being nor nonbeing.

In the mid-2000s, the term was revamped and applied to a cultural movement interested in retro, ghostly, and uncanny aesthetics, by journalists and critics like Mark Fisher, Simon Reymonds, Mike Powell, Adam Harper, Ken Hollings, or David Toop. Although hauntology is mostly associated with electronic music (e.g., labels like Ghost Box, genres like witch house), the concept has had a significant influence on films, photography, videogames, and art in the 2000s and 2010s.

Health goth is an Internet-bred street fashion style and aesthetic mixing goth culture and sportswear, emerging in the mid-2010s. It is inspired by transhumanist ideals of physical and mental fitness, monochrome sportswear, technical and smart wear, biotechnology, and combat gear.

Health goth aesthetics conflate with net art and environments.  

Herbivore men (草食男子, sōshoku-kei danshi) is a term coined in 2006 by Fukasawa Maki to describe heterosexual men with a passive, nonaggressive approach to sex or relationships (including marriage) with women. Herbivore men deviate from hegemonic masculinity because of their gentle nature, respect for women, and fear of emotional pain. Herbivore men are also interested in “feminine” hobbies, like eating sweets and shopping.

Hikikomori (引き籠もり) is a Japanese term for the phenomenon of “acute social withdrawal” or “exclusion” in which a person (the majority of which are young men between 18 and 35, although it also affects women) stops going to school or work and voluntarily isolates themselves in a single room at home for long periods, sometimes for years or even decades. Studies estimate that there may be over one million people in Japan suffering from this condition.

Although Japanese shut-ins have captured the media’s attention, this is a widespread phenomenon across the globe, including other Asian countries, the United States, and Europe.

Host or hostess clubs, in Japan, are nightlife establishments where clients pay for the company of young employees who are attractive men or women, respectively. The costumers typically buy them drinks, engage in conversation, sing karaoke, or play games. The most famous location for host and hostess clubs in Japan’s is Tokyo’s entertainment and red-light district of Kabukichō, in Shinjuku, or the high-class Roppongi district.

Kaomoji (顔文字) is the Japanese style of emoticon made up of Japanese characters and grammar punctuations, used to express emotion in texting and cyber communication.

This type of emoticon is read from up to down (unlike Western-style emoticon, read from left to right, e.g., :-D) and are also characterized by the use of kawaii and animanga iconography, for example, (^ _ ^).

Kawaii (かわいい) is the Japanese word grosso modo equivalent to the English word “cute.” The kawaii became the national aesthetic of postmodern Japan, popularized by global icons like Hello Kitty and the dissemination of animanga culture, with which it has profound ties. According to Japanese artists Murakami Takashi, in Japan, has transformed into “a living entity that pervades everything,” resulting from country’s “long post-war” (Harry Harootunian), the hefty social and environmental price of the Japanese economic miracle and workaholic ethic, and the tremendous tensions emerging in a Confusion public sphere.

For a more substantial overview of cuteness in Japan, see the Introduction: “The setting of kawaii: etymology, history, culture” and “kawaii and manga.”

Kemonomimi (獣耳, literally, “animal ears”) is a popular moé trope in otaku culture, in which otherwise human characters are attributed animals ears and other traits like tails or paws, used as if they were costume accessories. Animals commonly used for this practice are cats, dogs, foxes, mice, lambs, tigers, and so on.

The popular franchise Kemono Friends (beginning in 2015) has a kemonomimi cast consisting of exotic, endangered, and legendary species.

Kinderwhore is a fashion style popularized by female alternative rock icons like Hole’s Courtney Love and Babes in Toyland’s Katherine Bjelland.

Kinderwhore fashion consists of provocative outfits reminiscent of children or and Victorian dolls, often including red lipstick, garish makeup, babydolls dresses, knee socks, and Mary Jane shoes, combined with a confrontational feminist attitude.

Kogyaru (コギャル), literally, “little gal,” is a gyaru subgenre which emerged in the mid-to-late 1990s. The style is characterized by the use of Westernized attire based on modified Japanese school uniforms: raised pleated skirt, loose socks (i.e., white, thick, and long leggings-like socks originally for mountaineering), a tanned solarium complexion, cute accessories, branded bags, mobile phones, and hair dyed in light brown or reddish hues. Like the gyaru, the kogyaru cultivates an infantile aura, in which the girls neglect the obligations like school, work, and marriage, in favor of a superficial and promiscuous lifestyle. The kogyaru became associated with the enjo-kōsai “compensated dating” phenomenon and moral panic. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, kogyaru gave rise to the subgenres ganguro (“black faces”), yamamba, and manba (“witches”), which became the target of intense media attention and open hostility by the public opinion.

Kyara (キャラ) is a clipping of kyarakutaa (キャラクター), the Japanese transliteration of the English word “character,” in media studies and animanga terminology, it describes a stylized type of character with a recognizable name, often sporting kawaii aesthetics.

Kyara can have “primitive” forms like Hello Kitty or Gudetama, or adopt animanga visuals, like Di Gi Charat and Hatsune Miku. Typically, the design of kyara is post-authorial, i.e., its success is not measured by its creativity, reflecting the “voice” of an author, but for its commercial effectiveness and “anonymous,” corporate-like style. As such, many popular kyara are standalone merchandisable icons that do not emerge from traditional narrative milieus (for instance, a novel or a film) and are synergistically transmedial, working across different narrative or visual platforms like manga, anime, videogames, toys, etc.—or what is called, in Japanese, a “media mix.”

In recent years, the concept of kyara as gained traction in media theory for its usefulness in the study of transmedia or multiplatform storytelling.

Light novels (ライトノベル, raito noberu), also called ranobe or LN, are a style of serialized Japanese novels primarily directed at a teen or young adult demographic, often involving complex plots and supernatural elements, accompanied by animanga illustrations. Not to be confused with the term “light literature,” used in Latin America and Iberian countries to describe “easy reading,” middle brow novels most often written by women and targeted at a female demographic.

Popular light novels include the series Durarara!! by Narita Ryōgo (2004-14), the Monogatari series written by Nisio Isin (began in 2006), Ore no Imōto ga Konna ni Kawaii Wake ga Nai written by Fushimi Tsukasa (2008-13), or Yahari Ore no Seishun LoveCome wa Machigatteiru written by Watari Wataru (began in 2011).

In animanga terminology, a loli (ロリ, rori) is a character type associated with the boom of moé in otaku culture and CGDCT (“cute girls doing cute things”) anime and manga. Typical loli protagonists are short for their age, flat-chested girls, with the large breasted ones occupying supporting roles. Compared to old school bishōjo (“beautiful girl”) animanga visuals, who are typically voluptuous and long-legged female characters, the loli emphasizes curved lines and overall body proportions that make characters look young and petite, fitting a “little sister” (imōto) or “daughter” (musume) archetype. Other traits include large, soft puppy-dog eyes and almost nonexistent noses, rendered as dots rather than the traditional "L" shape of manga iconography. Loli look pre-pubescent regardless of how old they are diegetically, resulting in a decrease of the general artistic age in moé animanga.

Loli designs emerged and became popular in the adult visual novels from the mid to late 1990s, including Leaf’s Shizuku (1996), Kizuato (1996), and To Heart (1997). In particular, HMX-12 Multi, a popular heroine from To Heart, a robot high school maid with an earnest and hard-working personality, was influential in the development of design and character elements of the loli.

Lolicon (ロリコン, rorikon), taking after Vladimir Nabokov’s 1955 Lolita novel, is a contraction of the phrase “Lolita complex,” introduced in Japan through the translation of American author Russell Trainer’s 1966 book The Lolita Complex. In Japan, the term broadly indicates the sexual attraction of adult men to underage girls, while in the Western animanga fandom, it refers to someone who is sexually attracted to cute, young-looking 2D characters in anime, manga, or videogames.

As a genre, lolicon manga emerged in the late 1970s and 1980s, in dedicated magazines like Manga Burikko and Lemon People, whose contents ranged from soft illustrations of young female characters to sexually explicit and violent animanga pornography, often with fantasy or sci-fi elements. The word is also used to describe a fan of the lolicon animanga genre (as in, “that man is a lolicon”).  The male equivalent of lolicon is shotacon, featuring underage male characters.

Lolita fashion (ロリータファッション, roriita fasshon) is one of the most popular styles of Japanese street fashion, emerging in the Harajuku fashion district in Tokyo in the late 1970s. Practitioners of lolita fashion are known as roriita or lolitas, including a growing community of international fans. The style was launched and popularized by Japanese clothing and accessory brands such as Pink House, Milk, Angelic Pretty, Baby, The Stars Shine Bright, Metamorphose temps de fille, Innocent World, Mary Magdalene, and Moi-même-Moitié, among others. These brands made a collage of elements inspired by French fashion of the Rococo period and Victorian children’s clothes, including a bell-shaped silhouette achieved with petticoats and culottes worn underneath dresses or knee-length skirts, round collar shirts, knee-high socks or opaque tights, mary jane shoes, big ribbons, hats, hair clips, or other accessories on the head.

Within this general formula, there are numerous variations. The sweet lolita (suriito roriita) is the most ostensibly childish, making excessive use of ribbons, lace, light pastel colors (mainly pink, white or blue baby), accessories like toys, and fabrics with patterns of strawberries, hearts, flowers, cakes, etc. The gothic lolita (goshikku roriita) mixes Lolita fashion with Victorian-inspired gothic, wearing outfits in black and other dark colors, articulated with white details and adorned with crosses and crucifixes; the gothic lolita style was popularized by visual-kei bands such as Dir En Gray and Malice Mizer, whose popular leader, Mana, established a clothing brand and coined the term EGL, Elegant Gothic Lolita. Other lolita substyles include casual lolita, hime Lolita (“lolita princess”), shiro Lolita (“white lolita”), kuro Lolita (“black lolita”), classic lolita, country lolita, sailor lolita, wa Lolita (“Chinese-style lolita”), ero lolita, kodona ou ouji (“tomboy style”), aristocrat and hybrids resulting from the combination of lolita fashion with discreet Japanese fashion subcultures such as decololi (lolita fashion + decora), guro lolita, punk lolita and cyber lolita.

In addition to fashion, the Lolita subculture is also a lifestyle that emphasizes beauty, modesty, and nostalgia by adopting “old-fashioned” women's activities, such as sewing, embroidering, making cakes and other domestic work, which are also associated with house-dolls or court ladies from fantasy realms. The emergence and dissemination of the lolita style have been linked with the sociological phenomenon of “parasite singles.”

Magical girl, mahō shōjo (魔法少女), majokko (魔女っ子), is a subgenre of fantasy manga and anime with specific visual codes and mythologies, in which the protagonists are girls endowed with supernatural powers. The Sailor Moon series is considered a paradigm of the genre. Mahou Tsukai Sally (Sally the Witch, 1966-67), by Yokoyama Mitsuteru,  inspired by the famous American series Bewitched, and Himitsu no Akko-chan (Akko-chan’s Got a Secret!, 1962-65) by Akatsuka Fujio, defined the gender in the 1960s with their young heroines endowed with magical powers and secret identities, establishing the element of transformation that became central to the magical girl mythology. In the 1990s, Takeuchi Naoko’s Bishōjo Senshi Sailor Moon (Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon, 1992-1993), reinvented the genre with a style that crossed the glittery femininity typical of the shōjo genre with action elements inspired by live-action television series with superhero teams, like Super Sentai.

Throughout the three decades of evolution, including popular 1980s series like Minky Momo and Creamy Mami, the magical girl genre took on specific codes of its own. These include familiars (magical speaking animals that accompany the girls), teams of heroines who fight together to defeat the enemies that threaten world peace, and ritualized transformations, often in intricate sequences of dynamic pirouettes in which the girls’ everyday clothing disappears and is replaced by special costumes. The series commonly referred to as the prototype of this transformative strand of the magical girl is the Cutie Honey series, written and illustrated by Go Nagai in the mid-1970s, a male-oriented series which eroticized the transformation. In the early 2000s, there was a boom of animanga magical girls directed at male otaku audiences, associated with the increasing popularity of moé. In 2011, Puella Magi Madoka Magica, a dark, deconstructive magical girl anime series by acclaimed writer and director Urobuchi Gen and Shinbo Akiyuki, became widely popular and brought a new depth into the genre.

Manga (漫画, literally, “whimsical or impromptu pictures”) or komikku (コミック) is the Japanese term for comics and cartooning. Initially referring to late-eighteenth century picture albums like the famous Hokusai Manga, with the globalization of Japanese comics, manga is also used to refer to comics produced outside Japan by non-Japanese authors working in “mangaesque” iconography and style (e.g., Euromanga, Manfra, Amerimanga, Original English Language manga, etc.). In Japan, manga is typically divided according to the age and gender of its target audience, namely, kodomo manga (children’s comics), shōnen manga (boys’ comics), shōjo manga (girls’ comics), seinen manga (young man comics) and josei manga (young woman comics), along with pornographic genres like eromanga, lolicon, bara, or yaoi. Mangaka is the term used to describe an artist who draws manga, usually professionalized. A writer who writes stories for manga is called gensaku-sha.

Manga is typically published as one-shots or serial chapters in weekly or monthly comics anthology magazines belonging to large publishing houses like Kodansha (e.g., Weekly Shōnen Magazine, Nakayoshi, Afternoon, Evening, etc.) and Shueisha (Weekly Shōnen Jump, Weekly Young Jump, Non-no, Ultra Jump), and then each individual series is collected and reprinted in higher quality as separate tankōbon (“separate volume”), or trade paperbacks. In Japan, reading manga is widely spread across all kinds of demographics, from young children to commuting salaryman; nevertheless, manga magazines often specialize in different kinds of manga (e,.g., kodomo, shōnen, shōjo, salaryman, lolicon, etc.), so not all manga is read by all kinds of people.

Although there is a mainstream manga style, with some unifying narrative and visual characteristics, the term “manga” encompasses an extremely heterogeneous, sometimes contradictory, variety of expressions. The contemporary mainstream manga style is often synonymous with visual dynamism and dynamic panel arrangements, abstract backgrounds that communicate emotions, eccentric points of view, using mise en scène details to control the story-telling pacing, close-ups of character’s eyes, and mini-flashbacks. In terms of visual iconography, it primarily draws on linear, black and white drawings, use of screentones (preprinted sheets with textures and shades) to produce gray tones, expressive speech balloons and drawn onomatopoeias, an extensive emotional iconography—“sweatdrops,” “embarrassment blushing,” “cross-popping veins,” “nosebleeds,” “tear lines,” “happy eyes,” “starry eyes,” 3-shaped mouths, elongated canine teeth to signify impishness or aggression, giant head-bumps to represent lesions, white band-aids to represent physical pain, faces that change shape according to the character’s emotions, and so on—and a specific character design canon: big, bright eyes regardless of external lighting, small L-shaped noses, stylized months reduced to lines, sculptural hair, etc. In terms of themes, manga has an endless variety of subgenres, including adventure, action, drama, romance, comedy, science fiction, historical, police, terror, erotica, food and cooking, sports, abstract, among many others.

Manga resulted from interaction and contamination between, on the one hand, cultural and historical phenomena dating back to the end of the Edo Period and the Meiji Era (nineteenth century, beginning of the twentieth century) and, on the other, a set of specific socio-political conditions occurring in the aftermath of World War II, including the influence of American comics and Walt Disney animated films. The origins of manga go back to the late nineteenth century, with Rakuten Kitazawa and Okamoto Ippei considered to be the first professional manga artists. The interwar period was a fertile ground for the development of the comics medium, namely, manga published in monthly children’s magazines like Boys’ Club and Shōjo no Tomo (“Girls’ Friend”) or in akahon format, i.e., cheap comics books for children, often drawn by anonymous artists and published by houses (examples of akahon publishers include  Osaka Manga Company, The Art Company, Araki Publishing, or Enomoto Books). Influential children’s manga from the interwar period include Shishido Sako’s Speed Taro (1930-33), Tagawa Suihō’s Norakuro (1931–81), Shimada Keizō’s Bōken Dankichi (1933–39), Sakamoto Gajo’s Tank Tankurō (1934), Nazo no Clover (“Mysterious Clover,” the first shōjo manga, by Matsumoto Katsuji), Asahi Taro (story) and Oshiro Noboru (art)’s Kasei Tanken (“Expedition to Mars,” 1940), and Oshiro’s Kisha Ryoko (“A Trip by Train,” 1941).

Tezuka Osamu is considered the “father” of postwar manga. Along with other seminal authors, he developed the current stylistic features of manga, crystallized in paradigmatic creations such as Tetsuwan Atom (Astro Boy), Jungle Taitei (Kimba the White Lion), and Ribbon no Kishi (Princess Knight), triggering a robust publishing industry and transforming manga into a medium consumed across genders, age groups or social class. When, in 1947, Tezuka published his first book with Sakai Shichima, Shin Takarajima (“New Treasure Island”), a 192-page manga credited with reigniting and developing the “story manga” and “cinematic style” pioneered in the interwar period, it sold an unprecedented 400 000 copies. Tezuka moved to Tokyo and created a core group of followers, many of whom, like Ishinomori Shotaro (Cyborg 009, Kamen Rider), Fujio Fujiko (Doraemon), Akatsuka Fujio (Tensai Bakabon, Osomatsu-kun) and Mizuno Hideko (Fire!, Honey Honey no Suteki na Bōken), lived and worked with Tezuka in the mythical Tokiwa-sō apartments, originating the model of a studio in which a main manga author works with the help of various assistants, that still prevails in today’s manga industry.

Tezuka’s success created a generation of avid readers that did not grow out of manga but continued to read it well into their adolescence and adulthood, contributing to the expansion of an industry that until then was almost exclusively directed at children. In the second half of the 1950s, the first weekly magazines emerged, like Weekly Shōnen Magazine and Weekly Shōnen Sunday, in 1959, in which comics were the main attraction; to this day, weekly and monthly magazines remain at the core of the manga industry. In turn, in 1958, Tatsumi Yoshihiro coined the term gekiga to describe the subgenre of alternative, “hardboiled” manga that he and other mangaka from Osaka had been developing since 1956 in the magazine Kage, often with socio-political themes. Gekiga fed and was fed by the boom of kashibonya, i.e., bookstores specialized in renting comic books (at the time, buying manga was a luxury, inaccessible for much of the population), attracting young people in their late teens, blue-collar workers, and college students, to whom reading manga was a form of rebellion. Weekly Shōnen Jump, a manga magazine established in 1968 that catered to a young male audience with a taste for edgier contents than other boy-oriented magazines, became the bestselling manga magazine—a position it occupies to this day. Weekly Shōnen Jump’s most famous titles include, for instance, Toriyama Akira’s iconic Dragon Ball series (1984-1995) and, more recently, Naruto, One Piece or Bleach.

On the other hand, the alternative manga scene continued to develop and expand in seinen and avant-garde magazines such as Nagai Katsuichi and Shirato Sanpei’s Garo and Tezuka's Com. In the late 1970s and 1980s, Garo regularly published experimental and edgy works, directed at the intelligentsia and the counterculture, harboring different voices, from gekiga-style realism to the surrealist works of authors like Tsuge Yoshiharu and Hayashi Seiichi, as well as the heta-uma (“incompetent but good,” i.e., a deliberately “bad” or “ugly” style) movement led by artists such as King Terry and Ebisu Yoshikazu. In 1982, the Youth Magazine began publishing Otomo Katsuhiro’s Akira (1982-1990), a landmark cyberpunk epic, in which, through detailed realism of representation, each panel acted as individual imaged to create, as artist Murakami Takashi puts it, a kind of meta-manga, i.e., “using manga to criticize manga.”

Parallel to shōnen and seinen, shōjo manga, whose target audience is young girls, was developed, especially as women authors entered into the manga industry (until the 1970s, most manga for girls was written and drawn by men). The magazine boom also contributed to the expansion of the genre and established many bi-weekly or monthly magazines entirely dedicated to girls’ comics, such as Ribon, Shōjo Comic, Margaret, Hana to Yume, LaLa, and others. Authors like Takahashi Macoto (Sakura Namiki, 1957, Tokyo-Paris, 1959) developed innovative layouts for expressing impressionistic rhythms and emotions, along with the (in)famous shōjo manga eyes, that kept getting bigger, brighter, and more starry during the 1960s, creating a stark contrast with the more stylized characters of shōnen manga and gekiga’s realistic style. In the 1970s, a group of female artists known as the Year 24 Group or the Fabulous Forty-Niners (as they were born in or around the year of 1949), revolutionized the genre. Artists like Hagio Moto (Poe no Ichizoku, Tōma no Shinzō, Jūichinin Iru!), Takemiya Keiko (Kaze to Ki no Uta, Terra e), Ikeda Riyoko (Versaille no Bara), Ōshima Yumiko (Banana Bread Pudding, Wata no Kuni Hoshi), Aoike Yasuko (Eroica Yori Ai o Komete), and Yamagishi Ryōko (Shiroi Heya no Futari, Hi Izuru Tokoro no Tenshi, Terpsichora), among others, rejected the limitations imposed on gender, exploring new themes and styles, and testing the frontiers of sexual identity and the comics medium alike.

The quality of these works expanded their readership beyond the original target audience, capturing the attention of critics and adult men and women. With the thematic and stylistic diversification and an increasing number of readers, shōjo as a whole became more flexible, even breaking the taboos in more sophisticated mainstream romantic comedies. The result was a growing number of shōjo subgenres, like mahō shōjo, boy's love, yaoi, horror, mystery, sci-fi, sports, etc. with their specialized magazines, that characterize the contemporary shōjo manga landscape today.

Mecha (メカ) is a contraction of the English word “mechanism.” In a broad sense, it is used to refer to any robot or science fiction machine; in a narrower sense, used by manga and anime fans in the West, it describes a mechanical kind of vehicle, typically, a giant, biped, humanoid, single-pilot, combat-oriented robot with sword-like weapons or cannons.

The term is also used to describe the animanga genre in which this type of vehicle plays a central role in the argument and aesthetics of the series. One of the most popular examples of this genre is the Mobile Suit Gundam franchise.

New materialism is an umbrella term originating in the late 1990s for a conceptual framework stressing the tangible but complex materialities of living and non-living bodies immersed in social power relations. New materialism stems from cultural, social and feminist theory, including a plethora of approaches by scholars of heterogeneous backgrounds.

Leading new materialist scholars include Rosi Braidotti, Karen Barad, Jane Bennett, Iris van der Tuin, and Jussi Parikka. 

Moé (萌え) is a polysemic concept known for being difficult to describe, but intuitive for the otaku to understand. Resulting from the synergy of Japanese and Western animanga fandoms, the contemporary meaning of the term moé indexes both a general love for fictional characters (i.e., an emotional reaction aroused in fans) and a specific type of cuteness (that tends to stimulate such responses), namely, “little sister” or “daughter”-like characters for whom one roots, as well as the genre of anime, manga, and videogames revolving around these characters. Containing moé characters, however, does not necessarily make an anime or manga moé—moé animanga is focused primarily on the moé-ness of characters, often in a slice of life CGDCT (“cute girls doing cute things”) or magical girl setting. Characters in moé anime and manga are typically loli and moé is closely related to the waifu phenomenon among male otaku audiences.

As a slang word, moé is thought to have emerged online in Japanese textboards in the late 1990s. The term encompasses an etymological duplicity: the verb moeru, from which the noun moé derives, is pronounced the same whether it refers to 燃える, meaning “to burn” or “to get excited about,” or 萌える, meaning“to bud” or “to sprout.”  It is said that Japanese word processors would mistakenly convert one into the other. Although “pure” moé animanga is mostly innocent, due to the historically specific circumstances of Japanese otaku culture, moé is often considered to be the spiritual heir of lolicon manga, as the latter morphed into a more palatable, desexualized form, and many grey zones remain between the two. When moé characters lack any distinctive features beyond a high percentage of cuteness, they are derogatorily called “moé blobs.”

In Japan, moé animanga and merchandise is an industry with its codified a repertoire of stock “-dere” and “-kko” characters: meganekko, tsundere (“angry on the outside, lovey-dovey on the inside”), kūdere (“cool on the outside, lovey-dovey on the inside”), dandere (“emotionally stunned on the outside, lovey-dovey on the inside”), gandere (cute but likes guns), darudere (cute and sluggish), nyandere (cat-related cute), yangire (cute but psycho), yandere (lovesick but psycho), otenba (“tomboy”), ojōsama and so on. Moé can also be situational or associated with manneirisms, certain types of outfit (e.g., sailor school uniform), relational or speech patterns, and even cute onamatopeia like kyun. Iconic moé animanga include, for instance, Azumanga Daioh, Lucky Star, K-On!, YuruYuri, Nichijou, or Yotsuba&!.

In animanga terminology, moé gijinka (萌え擬人化) or moé anthropomorphism, is a humorous trope in which all kinds of animals, concepts, objects, places, machines, technologies, or brands, are turned into anime girls by attributing them moé qualities and cosplay-like accessories that highlight their nature previous to anthropomorphosis.

Part of the humor of moé anthropomorphism is the character’s satirical personality and the arbitrariness of characterizing a living and nonliving entities as kawaii.

Murakami Takashi (村上 隆) is a Japanese art impresario, artist, curator, and author, born in 1962 in Tokyo, known for coining, popularizing, and forefronting the Japanese postmodern art movement Superflat. Murakami attended the Tokyo University of the Arts and holds a Ph.D. in Nihonga (traditional-style Japanese painting). In 1996, he founded the Hiropon Factory, an art production workshop, incorporated in 2001 in the art production and management company Kaikai Kiki, of which he is the founder and president, and which manages the careers of younger Japanese artists like Mr., Takano Aya, Aoshima Chiho, and others. Murakami curated the Superflat trilogy of group shows from 2000 to 2005 (Superflat, Coloriage, Little Boy) and published Superflat (2000) and Little Boy, two book-manifestos of Superflat aesthetics. He was also the founder of the biannual GEISAI art fair in Japan, which is presently organized by Kaikai Kiki.

Murakami works across a broad range of media, from painting and sculpture to video and installation, and has created various recognizable characters, including DOB, the laughing flowers, Kaikai, Kiki, or Inochi-kun. His works often deal with themes of “indigenous” Japanese pop culture, like anime, manga, kawaii (cute), and otaku sexuality (Hiropon, 1997, and My Lonesome Cowboy, 1998, are two of Murakami’s most known creations in this respect). Murakami has collaborated extensively with Western celebrities and brand, such as Louis Vuitton, Kanye West, Pharrell Williams, Kirsten Dunst, Britney Spears, among others. He also embraces new communication platforms, being highly active on Instagram (takashipom).

Nihonjinron (日本人論, literally, “theories about the Japanese, ) is a genre of non-fiction texts discussing issues of Japanese national and cultural identity and how Japan and the Japanese should be understood. These books are typically written by Japanese authors, for Japanese audiences.

Otaku (オタク) is a Japanese term grosso modo similar to “geek” or “nerd” in the West, which came into widespread circulation in the mid to late 1980s (columnist and editor Nakamori Akio is often credited with popularizing the term in 1983). In Japan, “otaku” describes someone obsessed with a specific subject or hobby. Internationally, it has become associated with the Japanese subculture of superfans obsessed with comics, animation, tokusatsu, videogames, or aidoru. In Japanese, お宅 (“o-taku”) is an honorific for “you,” originating from 宅 (taku, “house,“ “home,” “family”), meaning, as a slang, that those with obsessive interests are not used to having a social life and therefore are excessively formal when engaging in interpersonal relationships. The Tokyo neighborhood of Akihabara is considered to be the Mecca of otaku culture, where the biggest retailers of manga, anime, merchandise, and other otaku-oriented venues (e.g., maid cafés) can be found. Female otaku are known as otome (“maiden,” “young lady”), and hang around the “otome road” in Tokyo’s Ikebukuro district, whose manga and anime stores are mostly aimed at women. The Comic Market or Comiket, beginning in 1975 and held biannually at the Tokyo Big Sight, is the otaku and otome event par excellence.

Although otaku culture is often seen as youth culture, the first generation of otaku is composed of individuals born in the late 50s and early 60s, now in their 40s and 50s, so far from being a recent phenomenon, it is a subculture with deep roots in Japanese postwar society. Otaku culture is typically divided into three or four generations. The first generation, composed by individuals born around in the 1960s, spent their childhood and adolescence watching anime shows like Space Battleship Yamato and Mobile Suit Gundam, and are those whose interests fall more heavily on science fiction and B-movies. The second otaku generation, born during the 1970s, lived in a period of industry consolidation and expansion that brought about a new diversity of genres, approaches, and resources; this generation consumed manga like Dragon Ball or Akira. The third otaku generation of the 1990s watched anime like Neon Genesis Evangelion and Sailor Moon while attending elementary or secondary school. The fourth, prospective otaku generation, born in the late 1990s and 2000s, is currently living their adolescence with Web 2.0 and social media, at a time when otaku culture has become a globalized phenomenon.

One of the incidents that most marked the history of otaku culture was the arrest of Miyazaki Tsutomu, a serial killer who raped, murdered, and mutilated the bodies of four little girls. In Miyazaki’s room, they found a collection of anime, manga, and slasher films, which prompted the mass media to nickname him “the otaku killer.” The incident put the term “otaku” in the limelight and created a moral panic around the members of the subculture, considered by many commentators to be an army of potential assassins-in-waiting. This sparked a heated debate on the decline of Japanese values, the permissive education of modern parents, and the threat posed by a new generation immersed in the fantasy world of “hazardous” comics and cartoons. From 1989 onwards, the otaku stopped being mostly invisible, as they had been so far in Japanese society, to become personae non gratae; consequently, a wave of otaku bashing began that translated into raiding of bookstores by the Japanese authorities, arrests, dismantling of underground dōjinshi distribution circles, and tighter content control and censorship.

On the other hand, this generated a reaction on the part of the otaku—suddenly hyper-conscious of their group identity—that instead of rejecting the label “otaku,” began to use it deliberately to describe themselves, reinforcing a positive feeling of group membership, often to the point of self-absorbed snobbery. In the 2000s, there began to emerge shifting perceptions of the otaku, that “re-humanized” the members of this subculture and even made them icons of Japanese cool around the world. This was both the result of Cool Japan policies, popular television series like the live-action dorama Densha Otoko (2005), and influencers like blogger Danny Choo, who launched the book series Otacool (starting in 2010), featuring photographs of otaku rooms across the globe and their collections. In the academia, too, critics such as Otsuka Eiji, Okada Toshio, and Murakami Takashi refashioned the otaku as heirs to traditional Japanese culture like kabuki, bunraku puppet theater, and so on, or praised their role in the “indigenization” or “domestication” of foreign (mostly, American) culture.

Parasite single (ラサイトシングル, parasaito shinguru), in Japan, the term is used to describe an unmarried person, typically a woman, who lives in their parents’ house throughout their 20s and 30s (sometimes 40s).

Unlike NEETs, parasite singles often pursue a stable career but choose to spend their incomes on material goods, refusing to marry and raise a family.

Seifuku (制服) is the Japanese school uniform used in many Japanese public and private schools until entry to the university (although in some women’s colleges the use of uniform remains mandatory). Commonly, schools have a summer model and a winter model.

The Japanese school uniform was introduced into the education system at the end of the nineteenth century, with a model derived from military uniforms of the Meiji era, in turn, shaped in the image of European navy uniforms. Later, Japanese schools also introduced and adopted models inspired by Western school uniforms, e.g., blazers with the school emblem, bows for girls or ties for boys, and white shirts or blouses. Students often personalize their seifuku by upping or lowering the hem of the skirt, ditching the tie or bow, etc.).

Gakuran (“Dutch uniform”) or tsume-eri is the term used to describe the traditional school uniform for male students, inspired by the Prussian military uniform, usually in black or dark blue with buttons inscribed with the school emblem.

Sērа̄fuku (“sērа̄” from "sailor") is the term used to describe the traditional female school uniform introduced in the 1920s, designed in the image of the British Royal Navy uniforms. As a rule, it consists of a blouse with a collar reminiscent of navy uniforms, a type of V-neck tie, pleated skirt, with colors that usually range from blue, gray, black or green, and knee-length socks, generally in shades of white or blue. In the context of the otaku subculture, the seifuku, in particular, sērа̄fuku, is a fetish item, and although its second-hand sale is prohibited, it can be found on the black market in underground shops known as burusera.

Superflat is a term coined by Takashi Murakami (b. 1962) to define both the contradictions of postwar westernized Japan, and an art movement including artists, curators and critics who emerged during the 1990s, sharing a common set of references and an overall attitude toward contemporary art in general and the Japanese art scene in particular. In his book-manifesto Superflat (2000), Murakami, the mentor and ideologue of the movement, emphasizes the trans-historical character of superflatness. According to him, for instance, the influential style of 1980s animator Kanada Yoshinori continues the expressionist and decorative style of what art historian Nobuo Tsuji calls an “eccentric lineage” of artists of the Edo Period (namely, Iwasa Matabei, Kano Sansetsu, Ito Jakuchu, Soga Shohaku, Nagasawa Rosetsu, and Utagawa Kuniyoshi). For Murakami, Superflat is also an extension of this lineage.

On the other hand, Murakami highlights a set of factors influencing the development of Japanese art in the second half of the twentieth century, that contributed to the emergence of Superflat. These include the instability of the concept of “art” in postwar Japan, resulting from the confusion between the traditional terms geijutsu and bijutsu and the Western notion of art; the promiscuity between art and entertainment, epitomized by the Expo 70 in Osaka; the association of “freedom” with shallowness instead of self-knowledge in Japanese society; the general understanding of the avant-garde as a subculture, and the subculturzation of the avant-garde; and Japan's infantilized status in relation to the United States of America. Murakami also lists several topics that make up his superflat image of Japan and which serve as a conceptual background to the various artistic manifestations within the movement, including an eccentric, secular and grotesque Japanese subculture, meaningless hierarchy, celebrations and media frenzy, eroticism and grotesque, otaku and manga, freedom and childishness, pop, cheap ticket (an allusion to the first time that the Japanese were able to travel abroad, which had a significant impact on the relationship between Japanese youth and the West), the West, History, and Art.

Although Superflat and Neo-Pop—the name for the broader movement in Japan influenced by Pop Art and pop-cultural imagery, not necessarily under Murakami’s banner—are united stylistically by the use of Japanese pop iconography, the result differs significantly from artists artist. Artists like Murakami, Mr. (pseudonym of Iwamoto Masakatsu), Aoshima Chiho, Miyake Shintaro and Hasegawa Jun are more direct and strategic in their borrowing of animanga visuals, while Nara Yoshitomo, Takano aya, Kuwahara Masahiko, Ban Chinatsu or Kudo Makiko explore their more manual, lyrical and intimate side. Others, like Murata Yuko, Aoki Ryoko, Hosoya Yuiko, Murase Kyoko, Sugito Hiroshi, and Yanobe Kenji, share an interest in cute aesthetics less linked to comics.

In the West, the Superflat movement was marked by three major group exhibitions-manifesto curated by Murakami. Namely,  Superflat (2001) at the MOCA in Los Angeles, Coloriage (2002) at Foundation Cartier pour l'Art Contemporain in Paris, and Little Boy: The Arts of Japan’s Exploding Subculture (2005) at the Japan Society, in New York.

Tareme (タレ目) and tsurime (つり目) are two shapes of anime eye design, used to represent opposite character types. Tareme are droopy puppy-dog eyes meant to represent a character’s inner softness and kind-heartedness.

In turn, the outer corners of tsurime slant upwards, giving it a sharp or pointed look, signifying the harshness of a tsundere character.

Tarento (タレント), from the English word “talent,” are Japanese celebrities who are primarily known for appearances on television. While tarento often begin their careers as singers or comedians, their most important quality is cuteness (for female stars) and charisma (for male stars).

Contrary to traditional actors or singers, tarento do not need to act or sing well, as they are mostly famous for being famous.

Tokusatsu (特撮), meaning “special effects,” are Japanese films or live-action television series with superhero teams and special effects.

The kaiju (literally, “strange animal”) monster film is one of the most popular subgenres, carried out by monstrous creatures, like Gojira, Mosura, Angirasu, Radon or Gamera. Popular tokusatsu shows Kamen Rider, Metal Heroes, Giant Robo, Ultraman, and Super Sentai.

Tsundere (ツンデレ), in animanga terminology, is a hot-cold personality type, used to describe characters who are overtly hostile on the outside, but warm, friendly or lovestruck on the inside. The word is a portmanteau of the tsun tsun (ツンツン), meaning “to turn away in disgust,” and dere dere (デレデレ), meaning “lovey-dovey.” The term initially referred to the gradual development, over time, of a character in a show which starts as “bad” or hostile but eventually becomes somewhat “good” and affectionate.

The present meaning of tsundere, however, has shifted to encompass characters who are double-faced from the get-go, discarding the term’s temporality or transition.

Tumblr is a microblogging and social networking website founded in 2007 by David Karp. The dashboard, a live feed showing the posts of the blogs one follows, is Tumblr’s primary feature. Besides posting original content, users mostly like or reblog posts from other Tumblrs.

Tumblr became a popular hub for fandoms, the Internet social justice movement, and subcultures. Although its popularity is said to have declined in the second half of the 2010s and, particularly, after its ban on nudity and pornography, starting in 2018, it remains a significant presence on the Internet.

Ukiyo-e (浮世絵, literally, “images of the floating world”) an influential school of woodcut and painting that emerged in Japan in the early seventeenth century, linked to the emergence of urban-bourgeois culture and the depiction of daily and hedonistic themes. The recurring motifs, especially in the engraving, were scenes from the world of popular entertainment (courtesans, sumo wrestlers, actors) and, later, landscapes and scenes containing explicit sexual content, known as shunga although, the latter were banned.

In the 1760s, the first polychromatic ukiyo-e, called nishiki-e (“brocade images”) appeared. Japanese ukiyo-e masters include Moronobu Hishikawa, Harunobu Suzuki, Utamaro Kitagawa, Hokusai Katsushika, and Hiroshige Utagawa.

In the field of robotics and 3D animation, the uncanny valley (不気味の谷, bukimi no tani), refers to a hypothesis, first formulated by Japanese roboticist Mori Masahiro in 1970, that there is a point along the scale which separates the machine from the human in which robots look almost, but not entirely, like a human being, provoking mixed feelings of attraction and repulsion.

The hypothesis is visually described by an upward curve, which corresponds to an increase in familiarity with the automaton as it becomes more humanized, followed by a steep fall, which corresponds to the "uncanny valley," which rises again to as we approach the 100% human or the perfect android.

Vaporwave is an Internet-bred aesthetic emerging in the early 2010s from chillwave, including music, fashion, and art. Vaporwave was popularized by electronic musicians like Oneohtrix Point Never (under the alias Chuck Person), Vectroid (namely, with the album Floral Shoppe, released under the alias Macintosh Plus), or Blank Banshee, who combined sampling and chopped and screwed techniques with lounge and elevator music, smooth jazz, R&B, and so on.

As a critique and appreciation of late modern cyber capitalism, nostalgic mass culture, and corporate aesthetics, vaporwave often includes references to Japanese anime and advertisement.

Visual kei (ヴィジュアル系, bijuaru kei), literally “visual style,” is a subgenre of J-rock (Japanese rock) by bands whose image and appearance is as important as their music. Visual kei bands are typically characterized by theatrical poses, heavy make-up, eccentric hairstyles, and extravagant clothes, often combined with an androgynous look reminiscent of animanga characters. Musically, the main influences are glam rock, hard rock, and metal.

Classic visual kei bands include X Japan, Versailles, Malice Mizer, Glay, or Luna Sea.

Visual novels (ビジュアルノベル, bijuaru noberu) are a form of interactive fiction emerging in  Japan in the 1990s, with similarities with Western-style adventure videogames, but characterized by a significant emphasis on the “passive” reading of a script and watching illustrations, with few points where the player interacts with the game—as opposed to the point-and-click puzzle-solving model in adventure games. The typical visual novel includes rotating backgrounds and character sprites, a textbox with the scripted narration, background music, and character voiceovers, along with multiple endings and story branches, which change according to players’ choices at crucial moments of the game.  

The visual novel medium coevolved alongside eroge (“erotic games”) and bishōjo games (i.e., dating simulators), and it is sometimes hard to establish clearcut distinctions among the three. Many classic visual novels are adult visual novels containing erotic or pornographic content, for instance, Leaf’s Shizuku and Kizuato, that coined the term “visual novel” in 1996, or To Heart (1996), the first bestselling visual novel that crossed into the mainstream, with its theme song appearing in karaoke machines across Japan. Subgenres of the visual novel include the nakige (“crying game”) and ustuge (“depressing game”) in which the point is, respectively, to make the player cry with emotional melodrama (e.g., Tactics’s One: Kagayaku Kisetsu e, 1998) or depress them with no happy endings and hopeless scenarios (e.g. Nitroplus’s Saya no Uta). The classic visual novel trilogy consists of Key’s Kanon (1999), Air (2000), and Clannad (2004). Other popular visual novels include Higurashi no Naku Koro ni (2002), Type-Moon’s Fate/stay night (2004), Key’s Little Busters! (2007), or Nitroplus and 5pb’s Steins; Gate (2009).

VOCALOID (ボーカロイド, bōkaroido), from “vocal” and “android,” a text-to-speech voice synthesizer developed by Yamaha, that uses recorded phonemes by a human speaker to create “vocal fonts.” By entering syllables into an editor, allocating them musical notes, and modulating the voice through a set of options, VOCALOID end users can generate realistic singing clips.

In short, Vocaloids are editable singers, originally used as background voices in professional music production, before spawning the phenomenon of crowd-sourced virtual idols like Hatsune Miku (meaning “first sound of the future”), launched in 2007 by the Japanese company Crypton Future Media.

Waifu (ワイフ), the Japanese transliteration of the English word “wife,” in animanga and fandom slang, is a female character, typically from anime, manga, or videogames, to which one is attracted and who one considers to be their significant other—often translating into the building of merchandise shrines devoted to the character in one’s bedroom. The term waifu conveys the male otaku's possessive attitude toward characters and is associated with the moé phenomenon; Izumi Konata, the protagonist of the moé animanga series Lucky☆Star, is the prototypical waifu. The waifu has originated several Internet memes about lonely otaku in love with fictional girlfriends, such as Dinner With Waifu. The male equivalent of waifu is husbando (“husband”).

Weeaboo (or weeb, for short), from  “wannabe Japanese” or “Wapanese,” is an Internet slur for a non-Japanese person, typically from Europe or the United States, who is obsessed with Japanese pop culture, e.g., manga, anime, videogames, or aidoru. Contrary to “simple” fans, weeaboos are thought of as engaging in annoying and gratuitous Japanophile behavior, like blurting animanga soundbites (“sugoi,” “kawaii,” “desu”) or ostensibly wearing animanga merchandise.

Y2K aesthetic refers to a specific look fashionable from the mid‑90s to the early 2000s, coincident with the dotcom bubble and preceding the “war on terror” after 9/11. The Guardian writer Alexander Leigh describes it as such: “Synthetic or metallic-looking materials, inflatable furniture, moon-boot footwear, and alien-inspired hairstyles were just a few signposts of the spirit of the age. Even popular music videos of the time had a cluster of common traits: shiny clothes, frosty hues, setpieces that resembled airlocks or computer interfaces, and a briefly omnipresent ‘bubble pop’ sound effect -– almost as if the music charts could foretell the end of the dotcom age.”

The popular Tumblr blog Institute for Y2K Aesthetics is often credited with coining and disseminating the term.

Yamanba (ヤマンバ) and manba (マンバ), meaning “mountain witches” from Japanese folklore and Noh theatre, are to date the most extreme expressions of the gyaru subculture. Yamanba upped the contrast in ganguro fashion by adding “tribal” face paintings (white streaks on the nose, larger white circles around the eyes reaching down to the cheeks), bushy hair with rainbow-colored extensions (sometimes using wool to emulate dreadlocks), facial stickers, nail art with complicated and often ridiculously long and clunky miniaturized ornaments, coloured contact lenses, temporary tattoos, fluo and metalized clothing, Hawaiian leis, cowboy hats, and other incongruous accessories creating a garish getup in which Western and ethnic signifiers magnified and distorted beyond recognition.

Yamanba and mnba Styles are distinguished by the placing of makeup above or below the eyes. The mamba style peaked from 2004 and 2008.

Yonkoma manga (コマ漫画, literally, “four-panel manga”) is a format generally associated with gag or humorous manga, composed of four panels of the same size arranged vertically from top to bottom. It is a Japanese equivalent of the comic strip.

As a genre, yonkoma manga is a form of gag manga introduced in the early 1900s by the first professional cartoonist in Japan, Rakuten Kitazawa, considered the founding father of modern manga along with Okamoto Ippei. Rakuten was influenced by Western-style political caricature of pioneering cartoonists such as Frank Nankivell and Frederick Opper and published his comic strips and cartoons in Japanese weekly newspapers like Box of Curios and his magazine Tokyo Puck, founded in 1905. After World War II, the first women to work as a cartoonist in Japan, Hasegawa Machiko, authored the yonkoma manga series Sazae-san, comprised of light-hearted vignettes from the everyday life of a housewife, which became extremely popular, running in the national newspaper Asahi Shimbun for nearly 30 years. In the 1990s, the yonkoma series Tonari no Yamada-Kun (later renamed Nono-chan) by Ishii Hisaichi began serialization in Asahi Shimbun and continues to run to this day, having been adapted into the animated feature film My Neighbors the Yamadas (1999) by Studio Ghibli.

In the 2000s, there was a boom of yonkoma manga targeted at otaku audiences, including series such as Azumanga Daioh (1999-2002), Sketchbook (since 2002), Lucky Star (since 2004), Hidamari Sketch (since 2004), Potemayo (2004-11), Working!! (since 2005), Sweet Valerian (since 2005), Yurumates (since 2005), Hetalia: Axis Powers (since 2006), A-Channel (since 2008), K-On! (2007-12), Kill Me Baby (since 2008), Yuyushiki (since 2008), Shiba Inuko-san (since 2010), Wakaba Girl (2010-13), Gekkan Shōjo Nozaki-kun (since 2001), and Tsuredure Children (2014-18).

Yurui (緩い) and yuru kyara (ゆるキャラ) come from the words yurui and kyarakuta ("character"). Yuru kyara is the term coined by illustrator Miura Jun to describe cute characters found throughout Japan, designed by local artists to promote specialties, attractions, and tourism, or regional organizations and events. They have “weak,” unpretentious designs which, according to Miura and Murakami Takashi, are the key for their success as public relations tools.

Initially, the adjective yurui orbits around notions like “loose,” “mild,” “free,” “moist,” “lacking in firmness,” or “without tension.” Recently, yurui has acquired the additional meaning of  “undemanding,” “tolerant,” “relaxed,” “lazy,” “languid,” “listless,” “inattentive,” or “disinterested.” It is used as an antonym of “severe” and, in a broader sense, of the accelerated, relentless and competitive lifestyle that Japan has epitomized since the postwar economic miracle. It can also elicit connotations such as an “adorable failure” and “self-deprecating humor,” both with a positive meaning, reflecting a sympathy towards the underdog that the kawaii also evokes (in the sense of “pitiful” or “helpless”).