Rachael Hutchinson and Jérémie Pelletier-Gagnon (eds.), Japanese Role-Playing Games – Genre, Representation, and Liminality in the JRPG, Lexington Books, 2022

Presentation

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.

Table of contents

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

Reviews

Bringing together some of the most insightful voices in Japanese game studies, Jérémie Pelletier-Gagnon and Rachael Hutchinson provide a roadmap to a crucial genre of games: the Japanese Role-Playing Game (JRPG). From Pokémon 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 the JRPG, Japanese games, and game studies in general.— Marc Steinberg, Concordia University

This book is an essential addition to the role-playing game studies literature. Its focus on Japanese computer role-playing games (JRPGs) is wonderfully and deliciously broad, deep, and diverse in its authors, perspectives, and games. There is plenty here to sate the intellectual curiosity of readers interested in the staples of the JRPG canon who are also unafraid to head into the wilderness of Japanese games that have mostly escaped the critical eye.— José P. Zagal, University of Utah

 

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