The role of the character’s corporeality in Japanese ‘shumimono’ manga: a reinterpretation of character modeling

This paper revisits and expands upon Azuma’s ‘Database Consumption’ theory and Ito’s ‘Chara-Character’ model by proposing a new conceptual framework;the Connotation-Extension Model which emphasises the non-causal and contingent relationship between character settings and their narrative realisations. This paper proposes a new model of manga characters through an analysis of a group of Japanese manga fictions called ‘shumimono’. The model proposed in this paper is a connotation-extension model. In this model, connotation indicates character setting. Extensions, on the other hand, indicate the actual words and actions of the character in the fictional universe. This model assumes that there is no logical relationship at all between connotation and extension. This indicates that there will always be a misalignment between connotation and extension. The misalignment is often reflected in the corporeality of the character. However, there are gradations in the degree of emphasis on corporeality, even within the same genre of comics. In this paper, I will use the ‘shumimono’ manga as an example. This study is based on Azuma’s theory, but this paper is unique in that it emphasises non-causality in extension.