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Static and temporal network properties are shown to resemble those of real human social networks. Most manga are protagonist-centered, with a single protagonist interacting with most characters, and boys’ manga shift over decades toward denser, less protagonist-centered structures while featuring fewer characters; girls’ manga show the opposite pattern except for the decline in character counts.",{"@graph":69,"@context":122},[70,84,105],{"@type":71,"itemListElement":72},"BreadcrumbList",[73,77,79,82],{"item":74,"name":75,"@type":76,"position":8},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":78,"name":9,"@type":76,"position":14},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/",{"item":80,"name":40,"@type":76,"position":81},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/research-report/",3,{"item":83,"name":65,"@type":76,"position":19},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/social-network-analysis-of-manga-similarities-to-real-world-social-networks-and-trends-over-decades/137255/",{"url":83,"name":65,"@type":85,"image":86,"author":91,"headline":65,"publisher":94,"fileFormat":97,"inLanguage":63,"description":67,"dateModified":98,"datePublished":99,"encodingFormat":97,"isAccessibleForFree":100,"interactionStatistic":101},"DigitalDocument",{"url":87,"@type":88,"width":89,"height":90},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/social-network-analysis-of-manga-similarities-to-real-world-social-networks-and-trends-over-decades/137255.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":92,"@type":93},"Liam","Person",{"url":74,"name":95,"@type":96},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-10-23","2026-08-22",true,{"@type":102,"interactionType":103,"userInteractionCount":44},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":104},"ViewAction",{"@type":106,"mainEntity":107},"FAQPage",[108,114,118],{"name":109,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":111},"What data and scope are used to analyze character networks in manga?","Question",{"text":112,"@type":113},"The study analyzes character networks from 162 popular Japanese manga spanning more than 70 years. Manga are selected based on publication scale in Japan and use the paperback pocket edition page as the unit of analysis, with manual examination limited to volumes one through three.","Answer",{"name":115,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":116},"What structural and temporal findings compare manga character networks to human social networks?",{"text":117,"@type":113},"Many static and temporal properties of manga character networks are found to be similar to those of real human social networks, supporting the expectation that popular manga tend to produce realistic social network patterns.",{"name":119,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":120},"How do manga aimed at boys vs girls differ in network trends over decades?",{"text":121,"@type":113},"Boys’ manga become denser and less protagonist-centered over decades and show a reduction in the number of characters. Girls’ manga exhibit the opposite trend, except for a downward trend in the number of characters.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":83,"og:type":124,"og:title":65,"og:site_name":95,"og:description":67},"article",{"robots":126,"canonical":83},"index,follow",{"doc_id":128,"site_id":62},137255,1787403541,{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":131},{"doc_id":128,"user_id":132,"nickname":92,"user_avatar":133,"doc_module":4,"category_id":39,"category_name":40,"doc_title":65,"doc_description":67,"doc_content":134,"file_id":135,"file_url":136,"file_type":137,"file_size":138,"view_count":44,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":8,"is_downloadable":8,"audit_status":8,"page_count":139,"language":140,"language_code":63,"site_id":62,"html_lang":63,"table_of_contents":141,"faqs":142,"seo_title":143,"seo_description":67,"update_tm":129,"read_time":144},8796095461564,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_155a257f0dc6eb9ab79c44ca47cae57d","arXiv :2303 .07208v2 [physics .soc-ph] 15 Nov 2023  \nSocial network analysis of manga: similarities to real-world social networks and trends over decades  \nKashin Sugishita 1 and Naoki Masuda2,3,4, *  \n1 Department of Transdisciplinary Science and Engineering, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, 152-8550, Japan  \n2 Department of Mathematics, State University of New York at Buffalo, Buffalo, 14260-2900, NY, USA  \n3 Computational and Data-Enabled Science and Engineering Program, State University of New York at Buffalo, Buffalo, 14260-5030, NY, USA  \n4 Center for Computational Social Science, Kobe University, Kobe, 657-8501, Japan  \n* Corresponding author  \nABSTRACT  \nManga, Japanese comics, has been popular on a global scale. Social networks among characters, which are often called character networks, may be a significant contributor to their popularity. We collected data from 162 popular manga that span over 70 years and analyzed their character networks. First, we found that many of static and temporal properties of the character networks are similar to those of real human social networks. Second, the character networks of most manga are protagonist-centered such that a single protagonist interacts with the majority of other characters. Third, the character networks for manga mainly targeting boys have shifted to denser and less protagonist-centered networks and with fewer characters over decades. Manga mainly targeting girls showed the opposite trend except for the downward trend in the number of characters. The present study, which relies on manga data sampled on an unprecedented scale, paves the way for further population studies of character networks and other aspects of comics.  \n1 Introduction  \nThe global comic market has been rapidly growing. The market size was valued at USD 14.7 billion in 2021 and is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate of 4.8% from 2022 to 20291 . A driving force underlying the rapid expansion of the market is the widespread availability of ebooks, which enables us to easily access comics around the world. The COVID-19 pandemic also helped the growth of the comic market because the lockdown in many countries increased the demand for comics. Manga, Japanese comics, has been especially popular on a global scale. Many manga have been translated into different languages. For example, over 510 million copies of One Piece have circulated worldwide; One Piece is recorded in the Guinness Book of Records as the best-selling comic in the history2. The history of the development of manga culture in Japan, its social background, and its global prevalence have been studied3–5.  \nOur social networks are complex but characterized by common properties such as heterogeneity and community structure6, 7. Because literally all storylines of manga rely on interactions among characters, social networks among characters, which are often called character networks, may provide a backbone of the story of manga and influence its popularity. More generally, character networks have been analyzed for quantitatively characterizing fiction works8, 9. A number of problems can be addressed through analyses of character networks, such as summarization 10, 11 , classification 12, 13 , and role detection 14, 15. Character networks have been studied for a variety of fiction such as novels 13, 16–20, plays21–24 , movies 15, 25–27, and TV series 11, 25, 28–30. However, character networks for comics have been rarely explored except for Mar-  \nvel comics31, 32 , a graphic novel33 , and a few manga titles34. One possible reason for this is the difficulty of automating data collection for comics8.  \nIn the present study, we analyze character networks of 162 popular Japanese manga that span decades and test the following two hypotheses. First, we expect that popular manga tend to produce realistic social networks. Therefore, we hypothesize that structural and temporal properties of the character networks of manga are similar ","cbCaiap8978vChp9","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaiap8978vChp9","pdf",2798589,17,"English","# Abstract\n# Introduction\n# Methods\n## Data collection","[{\"question\":\"What data and scope are used to analyze character networks in manga?\",\"answer\":\"The study analyzes character networks from 162 popular Japanese manga spanning more than 70 years. Manga are selected based on publication scale in Japan and use the paperback pocket edition page as the unit of analysis, with manual examination limited to volumes one through three.\"},{\"question\":\"What structural and temporal findings compare manga character networks to human social networks?\",\"answer\":\"Many static and temporal properties of manga character networks are found to be similar to those of real human social networks, supporting the expectation that popular manga tend to produce realistic social network patterns.\"},{\"question\":\"How do manga aimed at boys vs girls differ in network trends over decades?\",\"answer\":\"Boys’ manga become denser and less protagonist-centered over decades and show a reduction in the number of characters. Girls’ manga exhibit the opposite trend, except for a downward trend in the number of characters.\"}]","Social network analysis of manga: similarities to real-world social networks and trends over decades | PDF",43]