Japanese Role-Playing Games: Genre, Representation, and Liminality in the JRPG [Paperback]

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.

J?r?mie Pelletier-Gagnon is postdoctoral researcher at Universit? du Qu?bec ? Montr?al.

Bringing together some of the most insightful voices in Japanese game studies, J?r?mie Pelletier-Gagnon and Rachael Hutchinson provide a roadmap to a crucial genre of games: the Japanese Role-Playing Game (JRPG). From Pok?mon and Final Fantasy to lesser-known games like EarthBound, this book shows that the JRPG is a crucial lens onto global game studies and the continuing impacts of Japanese game studies on it. This volume offers an insightful set of case studies and suggests some unique vantages onto the JRPG: from platform analysis, to Japan's media ecologies, to tutorial characters, to disability. This will become a go-to resource for anyone interested in tló