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Moreover, though clearly interested in textual readings of manga in particular, Ōtsuka has also had a long-standing investment in ethnographic modes of analysis. he fascination with ethnography and ethnographic modes of analysis Ōtsuka developed during his undergraduate studies was reignited during his later work as a freelance editor for “lolicon”(rorikon) and science fiction comics and videogame magazines. During this time he began to see his editorial work as a kind of “fieldwork” geared toward the development of an “urban ethnography.” 6 It was in this vein that Ōtsuka published his first of many critical works of the late 1980s. he essay presented here,“World and Variation: he Reproduction and Consumption of Narrative”(“Sekai to shukō: monogatari no fukusei to shōhi”), is taken from one such work of urban ethnography published in 1989, Monogatari shōhiron (A theory of narrative consumption). 7

In fact it was this critical ethnographic work that led Ōtsuka to develop a strong sense of the consumption patterns of youth and the potential for the further development of what in Japan has been called the “media mix”(analogous to what in North America has been called “transmedia story telling”). At the time, the concept of the media mix—designating the synergetic combination of multiple media types to promote consumption across commodity forms—was strongly informed by the model of the “blockbuster film–novel–soundtrack” trinity developed by Kadokawa Haruki, then president of Kadokawa Shoten (Kadokawa Books). 8 Yet as the initial success of this model wore off and the massive investment required for the production and …