This research focuses on the Japanese gay TV drama series Ossan’s Love (2018) to investigate why the show attracted not only queer audiences, but also heterosexual audiences by analysing its textual periphery through paratexts such as promotional posters, articles and audience reviews. Normally, publicists tend to avoid emphasising a show’s sexual minority themes in the story, considering that such a polemical theme would narrow the target audience. However, publicity for this show clearly indicated a gay theme in its promotional materials, and the show became popular nationwide. From the perspective of social identity theory, it is difficult to explain how such promotional strategies effectively attracted a heterosexual audience. Through paratextual analysis, this research identified the concept of an ‘ideal society’. At first, some people may think the show is a stereotypical comedy that makes fun of gay people, but they eventually recognise that none of the characters laughs at...
Author - Miyuki MORIKAWA
Tokyo University of Technology, Tokyo, Japan, ORCID: 0000-0001-7512-521X
Nowadays, online user reviews are becoming increasingly important to moviegoers, especially in choosing specific movies they want to see. However, not every user review is considered influential by consumers. To describe the characteristics of useful reviews, this study focuses on online movie reviews posted on Yahoo! Japan Movies—a site that features a usefulness counter with each review. Three principal characteristics of useful reviews are demonstrated: a) a longer text, b) a high level of verbal expressiveness, and c) references to other reviews. From the perspective of the cultural dimensions theory, it is reasonable that longer, informative texts with rich expressions are preferred by consumers from cultures with high uncertainty-avoidance scores, such as Japan. However, Japan’s potential moviegoers are motivated by reviews reviewing other reviews, even if some comments about the movie are very negative. This study suggests that people have different tendencies on the Internet...
