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Proceedings of the annual meeting of the Southern Anthropological Society

Abstract

A globally popular Japanese manga/anime series called JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure has become the basis for a form of fan video art that employs the MikuMikuDance (MMD) software program. This has led to the creation of a JoJo MikuMikuDance (JoJo MMD) digital community based on fan art creators and viewers. This digital ethnographic study, drawing upon an autoethnographic perspective, investigates the JoJo MMD fan community and its relationship to the MMD videos as fan video art. Examining this involves an analysis of YouTube videos and posted comments. The study argues that the JoJo MMD fan community has taken a very positive view of this fan art. The analysis shows the following distribution of comments over 25 videos: 207 positive, 1 negative, and 40 outliers. This indicates not only a love for the craft, but a thriving commenting community surrounding a very peculiar practice of fan art. More broadly, anthropology should investigate these digital fan art communities, which provide insight into processes of globalization, media, art, and sociality. As such, this study contributes to the emerging scholarship on the digital anthropology of fandom, technology, and dance.

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