Project MUSE - A 2.5D Approach to the Media Mix: The Potentialities of Fans’ Produsage

This article and provocation aims to demonstrate how the 2.5-dimensional (hereafter 2.5D) cultural approach could advance the theoretical framework and methodology of media mix studies. 2.5D here means “a space between the two-dimensional (fictional space where our imagination and fantasy work) and the three-dimensional (reality where we physically exist).”1 In the context of Japanese popular culture, 2.5D culture primarily refers to cultural products based on anime but enacted in live-action contexts, such as stage plays (theatrical adaptations from manga, anime, and games), used as a new category in Japanese entertainment business. But it also includes users’ and fans’ cultural practices such as appreciating 2.5D stage plays and live concerts by voice actors/characters, cosplaying, performing as VTubers, and so on, where 2D fictionality and 3D physicality intersect via the help of human body. It is an emerging cultural phenomenon in Japan and beyond, impacted by the development of so

This article and provocation aims to demonstrate how the 2.5-dimensional (hereafter 2.5D) cultural approach could advance the theoretical framework and methodology of media mix studies. 2.5D here means “a space between the two-dimensional (fictional space where our imagination and fantasy work) and the three-dimensional (reality where we physically exist).”1 In the context of Japanese popular culture, 2.5D culture primarily refers to cultural products based on anime but enacted in live-action contexts, such as stage plays (theatrical adaptations from manga, anime, and games), used as a new cat