Goki Atoyama is a PhD student at the Graduate School of Core Ethics and Frontier Sciences, Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto. His research theme is atomic bomb representation in literature.

Fanny Barnabé is a lecturer-researcher at Epitech’s Digital Methods for Human and Social Sciences lab, and she is a founding member of the Liège Game Lab. Her research focuses on video game narration (she is the author of Narration and Video Game: For an Exploration of Fictional Universes), on the different forms of détournement (or remix) of video games (the topic of her PhD dissertation), and on video game tutorials, which she studied as an FNRS Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Liège (Belgium). She also studied video game paratext during a one-year research stay at the Ritsumeikan Center for Game Studies in Kyoto, under the supervision of Professor Hiroshi Yoshida.

Luca Bruno is a PhD student at Leipzig University and a member of the Japanese Visual Media Graph (JVMG) research project at Stuttgart Media University. He is currently completing his dissertation on characters in Japanese character intimacy games and their wider universes of transmedia production and reception. He has written on characters and Japanese video games, with a specific focus on processes of character-based intimacy in a gamic context. Beyond this, his research interests include software design practices and imagined affordances in static and interactive media.

Taeko Edaki is a PhD student at the Graduate School of Core Ethics and Frontier Sciences, Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto. Her research theme is Kimono culture between the Taisho and Showa eras (1920s–1940s).

Konstantin Freybe was born in 1987 in Germany. He is a cultural sociologist who is currently undertaking PhD research on gaming culture through the study of influencer-community interactions. He completed a Master’s degree at Leipzig University in 2014 and worked in the university’s Musical Instruments Museum until he was appointed as a researcher for the university library’s Databased Infrastructure for Global Game Culture Research (DIGGR) project. He has recently acquired skills in the domain of data visualization, natural language processing, and (small-scale) machine learning, which informs his research on social media data. He participated in the Partnerschaften mit Japan und Korea (PaJaKo) exchange in 2019 and spent time at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto.

Dr. Melanie Fritsch is Junior Professor in Media and Cultural Studies with a focus on Game Studies and related fields at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf. In 2018, she published her dissertation “Performing Bytes. Musikperformances der Computerspielkultur” (Königshausen & Neumann) and recently co-edited the Cambridge Companion to Video Game Music (Cambridge University Press, 2021) with Dr. Tim Summers (Royal Holloway). She is a member of the Ludomusicology Research Group organizational team (www.ludomusicology.org) as well as the spokesperson team of the AG Games of the Gesellschaft für Medienwissenschaft. Further, she co-founded the Society for the Study of Sound and Music in Games (www.sssmg.org) and the Journal of Sound and Music in Games (University of California Press), is co-editor of the book series “Studies in Game Sound and Music” (Intellect Publishing), and member of the Arbeitskreis Geschichtswissenschaft und Digitale Spiele (https://gespielt.hypotheses.org).

Hugo Gelis is a writer, game designer, and PhD candidate at Leipzig University. His research topics include game studies, digital media, and the aesthetics of Japanese otaku production, with a particular focus on community activity within the contemporary dōjin subculture in Japan. He has worked in anime simulcasting and created several experimental video games.

Masako Hashimoto is a PhD student at the Graduate School of Core Ethics and Fronter Science at Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto. She studies comparative literature, focusing on interactions between literature and art in Japan’s modern era. Her main research theme is Tsukuhae, a magazine from the 1910s featuring creative woodblock prints and poems. Her publications include “ An Acceptance of Van Gogh in Japanese Creative Woodblock Print: Applicability for New Creativities from “Misunderstanding” by Limited Number of Obscure Duplications”, Core Ethics, 14 (2017) and “ Meaning of a Memorial Issue of Tsukuhae: Condolence and Bond of Members over Shi ni yorite ageraruru sei ( the Risen Life )”, Taisho Imagery, 14 (2018).

Kyohei Ito is in heaven and everything is fine. His specialized field is cognitive philosophy that is not self indulgent. Main academic articles are “The Return of the Nose: Translucent and Virtual Vision”, Core Ethics , 16(2020), and “The Fall of the Uncanny Valley”, Core Ethics, 17(2021).

Zoltán Kacsuk holds a doctoral degree in manga studies from Kyoto Seika University. He is currently a postdoctoral researcher for the Japanese Visual Media Graph project at the Institute for Applied Artificial Intelligence, Stuttgart Media University.

Yasuo Kawasaki is currently a visiting researcher at the Ritsumeikan Center for Game Studies. In October 2020 he received a PhD from the Graduate School of Core Ethics and Frontier Sciences at Ritsumeikan University. He has published various articles related to historical and sociological research, mainly on the process and factors that established Japanese Game Center culture in society. His current research is on the impact of "social control" on the social history surrounding games, and the impact of the "place" where games are played on game culture. His most recent work is a doctoral thesis entitled "The History of "Game Centers" in Japan: How Amusement Facilities Took Root in Society".

Tani Levy is a graduate in Media Studies at the Eberhard Karls University, Tübingen. Their main interest lies within the pop cultural media forms of Japan, including manga, anime, games, and the subcultures and fan communities that surround them with a specific focus on contemporary trends and developments in this field. The chapter in this volume marks their first publication in the academic field.

Dorothea Mladenova studied Japanese Studies, Bulgarian Studies, and Sociology at the University of Leipzig. She obtained her PhD in 2019 from the same university for her project “The Optimized Death of the Entrepreneurial Self: Shūkatsu (終活) in Japan”. She has published articles on end-of-life preparation (shūkatsu) in German, English, and Japanese. In previous publications, she has dealt with the globalization and nation branding of Japanese food culture and with the introduction of peaceful use of nuclear power in Japan. In 2020, she co-edited a publication on the Anti-Olympics movement in Japan. Her current research focuses on the Statue of Peace in Berlin and grassroots memory culture in a post-migrant society.

Peter Mühleder studied Japanese Studies at the University of Vienna and Tokyo University. From 2017-2019, he worked as a researcher at the Databased Infrastructure for Global Games Culture Research project at Leipzig University Library. Currently, he is a researcher at the Saxon Academy of Sciences and Humanities with a focus on research software development and digital methods.

Shunsuke Mukae is a PhD student of game studies at the Graduate School of Core Ethics and Frontier Sciences, Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto. He received a Master's degree in film studies from Kansai University. He also works as a temporary assistant at the Ritsumeikan Centre of Game Studies. The central theme of his research is UX (user experience) through the interface of computer games. He is now focusing on two typical genres which introduce unique interfaces: horror and date sim. Mukae is currently analysing points of view as the interface in horror movies and is developing his study of horror games. His latest work is "How to Scare Properly in Horror Games: Reconsidering Fear and Genre" in Waseda Bungaku, autumn/winter 2021 (in Japanese).

Martin Picard is a Visiting Lecturer and Research Associate in the Department of Japanese Studies at Leipzig University. His teaching and research interests cover Japanese video games, cinema, and media theory, as well as video game history and aesthetics. He has published articles in journals such as Game Studies, as well as chapters in anthologies such as The Routledge Companion to Video Game Studies (Routledge, 2014), Encyclopedia of Video Games: The Culture, Technology, and Art of Gaming (ABC-Clio, 2012), and The Video Game Theory Reader 2 (Routledge, 2009). He also co-founded the Kinephanos journal and is currently the coordinator of the [j]Games Lab at Leipzig University.

Dr. Martin Roth is an associate professor in the Graduate School of Core Ethics and Frontier Sciences at Ritsumeikan University and a research fellow at Stuttgart Media University. He works on videogames, digital space, and Japan. His first monograph, Thought-Provoking Play: Political Philosophies in Science Fictional Videogame Spaces from Japan, is available open access from ETC Press. For more information about Roth’s work, please visit http://www.asobiba.de/martin/.

Cäcilia Sauer has been studying musical theatre studies and theatre studies at Bayreuth University and Leipzig University. A fan of the video game series Final Fantasy since childhood, she quickly became interested in Japanese video game music and wrote her Bachelor’s thesis on Final Fantasy VI’s opera “Maria and Draco”. Recently, she has become interested in audio-only games, which she is also researching for the PaJaKo project.

Juhyung Shin is a postdoctoral researcher at Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto. Her research interests include serious games (SGs), digital game-based learning (DGBL), and gamification. Shin’s deep interest in SGs for educational uses and serious gaming-related cultural phenomena drove her to receive her PhD in 2020. Her ongoing research interests are “gaming places” (where games are played) and the representations of realities inside SGs and their intersections. She has published papers on SGs within their social-cultural contexts and educational uses. In addition to conducting research, Shin also participates in the Game Archive Project at Ritsumeikan Center for Game Studies (RCGS).

Stevie Suan is An Associate Professor at Hosei University’s Faculty of Global and Interdisciplinary Studies. He holds a doctorate from the Graduate School of Manga Studies at Kyoto Seika University and a Master’s in Asian Studies from the University of Hawai‛i at Mānoa. His main area of expertise is anime aesthetics, through which he explores various modes of existence. In his recent research, he utilizes performance/performativity theory and media theory to examine anime aesthetics and its relation to neoliberal globalization. This is the topic of his upcoming book, Anime’s Identity: Performativity and Form beyond Japan (University of Minnesota Press, 2021).

Siyu Yang is a PhD student at the Graduate School of Core Ethics and Frontier Sciences of Ritsumeikan University. He is currently working on issues of representation in modern first-person military shooting games and its player community.

Hiroshi Yoshida is Associate Professor at the Department of Aesthetics, the Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology, the University of Tokyo; he is also working as visiting professor at Leipzig University since 2017. He has published extensively on aesthetics, musicology, and game studies in both Western and Asian languages. While working at Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto (2008–2018), he established and initiated the Ritsumeikan Center for Game Studies.