Problematic online anime (animation) use: It's relationship with viewers' satisfaction with life, emotions, and emotion regulation.

Although there are numerous studies on problematic technology use, such as problematic video game use and problematic smartphone use, little is known about problematic online anime use. However, problematic online anime use warrants further examination because of anime's popularity and commercial importance. Furthermore, how emotion strategies and emotions (such as pleasure and arousal) invoked upon watching the online anime are associated with problematic online anime use is not examined in previous studies. To bridge these literature gaps and to contribute to the fields of emotion regulation and media psychology, this study adopts the emotion regulation theory and considers the relationships among viewers' satisfaction with life, feelings of pleasure and arousal arising from watching a particular online anime, cognitive emotion regulation strategies activated because of anime viewing, and potential to exhibit problematic behavior related to online anime use, which is operationalized as viewers' inability to control or reduce watching online anime. Data was collected from viewers who have watched the popular romantic comedy anime Kaguya-sama: Love Is War online via a major online discussion board in Taiwan through the purposive sampling method. Data analysis on the 190 online questionnaire returns (mostly from males and students) through the partial least squares analysis reveals that the emotion regulation theory can be used to examine viewers' perceptions of anime. In the online anime context, the emotion regulation strategy most likely to be invoked is positive refocusing (mean value of 3.68, measured through a 5-point Likert scale) which is in line with how people typically watch anime for immersion and escapism. Satisfaction with life demonstrates its robustness and flexibility in invoking the positive refocusing (path coefficient = 0.17) and refocus on planning (path coefficient = 0.13) strategies. It also lowers the adoption of the maladaptive strategy of catastrophizing (path coefficient = -0.18). While catastrophizing strategy (path coefficient = 0.31) and arousal (path coefficient = 0.24) add to problematic online anime use, pleasure (path coefficient = -0.27) lowers problematic online anime use. Thus, when viewers keep magnifying the severity of a bad situation they are in while watching online anime, instead of making them better, could lead them to the undesirable outcome of problematic online anime use. Although this study has provided several interesting insights, this study has only considered Kaguya-sama: Love Is War and used survey respondents' perception of their extent of problematic online anime use. To increase generalization, future studies could consider other types of anime and alternative means to measure problematic use, such as frequency of online anime viewing.

Progressively Unsupervised Generative Attentional Networks with Adaptive Layer-Instance Normalization for Image-to-Image Translation.

Unsupervised image-to-image translation has received considerable attention due to the recent remarkable advancements in generative adversarial networks (GANs). In image-to-image translation, state-of-the-art methods use unpaired image data to learn mappings between the source and target domains. However, despite their promising results, existing approaches often fail in challenging conditions, particularly when images have various target instances and a translation task involves significant transitions in shape and visual artifacts when translating low-level information rather than high-level semantics. To tackle the problem, we propose a novel framework called Progressive Unsupervised Generative Attentional Networks with Adaptive Layer-Instance Normalization (PRO-U-GAT-IT) for the unsupervised image-to-image translation task. In contrast to existing attention-based models that fail to handle geometric transitions between the source and target domains, our model can translate images requiring extensive and holistic changes in shape. Experimental results show the superiority of the proposed approach compared to the existing state-of-the-art models on different datasets.

Multi-Label Classification in Anime Illustrations Based on Hierarchical Attribute Relationships.

In this paper, we propose a hierarchical multi-modal multi-label attribute classification model for anime illustrations using a graph convolutional network (GCN). Our focus is on the challenging task of multi-label attribute classification, which requires capturing subtle features intentionally highlighted by creators of anime illustrations. To address the hierarchical nature of these attributes, we leverage hierarchical clustering and hierarchical label assignments to organize the attribute information into a hierarchical feature. The proposed GCN-based model effectively utilizes this hierarchical feature to achieve high accuracy in multi-label attribute classification. The contributions of the proposed method are as follows. Firstly, we introduce GCN to the multi-label attribute classification task of anime illustrations, enabling the capturing of more comprehensive relationships between attributes from their co-occurrence. Secondly, we capture subordinate relationships among the attributes by adopting hierarchical clustering and hierarchical label assignment. Lastly, we construct a hierarchical structure of attributes that appear more frequently in anime illustrations based on certain rules derived from previous studies, which helps to reflect the relationships between different attributes. The experimental results on multiple datasets show that the proposed method is effective and extensible by comparing it with some existing methods, including the state-of-the-art method.

A Transformer-Based Model for Super-Resolution of Anime Image.

Image super-resolution (ISR) technology aims to enhance resolution and improve image quality. It is widely applied to various real-world applications related to image processing, especially in medical images, while relatively little appliedto anime image production. Furthermore, contemporary ISR tools are often based on convolutional neural networks (CNNs), while few methods attempt to use transformers that perform well in other advanced vision tasks. We propose a so-called anime image super-resolution (AISR) method based on the Swin Transformer in this work. The work was carried out in several stages. First, a shallow feature extraction approach was employed to facilitate the features map of the input image's low-frequency information, which mainly approximates the distribution of detailed information in a spatial structure (shallow feature). Next, we applied deep feature extraction to extract the image semantic information (deep feature). Finally, the image reconstruction method combines shallow and deep features to upsample the feature size and performs sub-pixel convolution to obtain many feature map channels. The novelty of the proposal is the enhancement of the low-frequency information using a Gaussian filter and the introduction of different window sizes to replace the patch merging operations in the Swin Transformer. A high-quality anime dataset was constructed to curb the effects of the model robustness on the online regime. We trained our model on this dataset and tested the model quality. We implement anime image super-resolution tasks at different magnifications (2×, 4×, 8×). The results were compared numerically and graphically with those delivered by conventional convolutional neural network-based and transformer-based methods. We demonstrate the experiments numerically using standard peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) and structural similarity (SSIM), respectively. The series of experiments and ablation study showcase that our proposal outperforms others.

Are virtual anime endorsers a new type of endorser? Examining product involvement as a moderating role.

Virtual anime endorsement has been prevalent as an advertising strategy, and many companies invest massive amounts of money into virtual endorsements. While previous studies have found that endorser-product congruence is related to consumer brand attitude and purchase intention, it is not known whether moderate incongruence between a virtual anime endorser and a product has a positive influence on brand attitude and purchase intention. This study developed a 1 × 2 experiment to investigate the influences of virtual anime endorser-product congruence and moderate the endorser-product incongruence on consumer brand attitude and purchase intention. Product involvement played a key moderating role in the relationships of virtual anime endorser-product congruence and the endorser-product incongruence with consumer attitudes. A total of 919 participants were recruited from animation-related venues and stores in Taiwan. The findings of this study validated the interaction effects of virtual anime endorser-product congruence and incongruence on these two consumer responses, i.e., brand attitude and purchase intention. This study further investigated the moderating effect of product involvement in the relationships of virtual anime endorser-product congruence and moderate the endorser-product incongruence with consumer responses. The findings of this study provide a valuable reference regarding endorsers and product patterns through which enterprises can maximize their value.

Otakuism and the Appeal of Sex Robots.

Social robots are becoming increasingly prevalent in everyday life and sex robots are a sub-category of especially high public interest and controversy. Starting from the concept of the otaku, a term from Japanese youth culture that describes secluded persons with a high affinity for fictional manga characters, we examine individual differences behind sex robot appeal (anime and manga fandom, interest in Japanese culture, preference for indoor activities, shyness). In an online-experiment, 261 participants read one out of three randomly assigned descriptions of future technologies (sex robot, nursing robot, genetically modified organism) and reported on their overall evaluation, eeriness, and contact/purchase intentions. Higher anime and manga fandom was associated with higher appeal for all three future technologies. For our male subsample, sex robots and GMOs stood out as shyness yielded a particularly strong relationship to contact/purchase intentions for these new technologies.

Nippon ichi! o esporte na cultura dos animes e mangás / Nippon ichi! sports in anime and manga culture / Nippon ichi! el deporte en la cultura del anime y del manga

Resumo: Este ensaio discute algumas das inserções do esporte no contexto dos animes e mangás, aqui entendidos como mercadorias e ao mesmo tempo pontos de confluência de forças culturais globais e locais. Para fundamentar essa reflexão, também estabelece marcos referentes à cultura japonesa e à ascensão do esporte no Japão. Nesse sentido, infere que, apesar da forte influência exercida por símbolos pertencentes à identidade nipônica, a representação do esporte nos animes e mangás está cada vez mais próxima da (pós-)modernidade ocidental, graças à globalização e à transnacionalização de bens imateriais. (AU)

Abstract: This essay discusses some instances of the presence of sports in animes and mangas, here understood as both commodities and confluence points for global and local cultural forces. In order to support this reflection, it also sets some milestones related to Japanese culture and the rise of sports in Japan. It finds that despite strong influence exerted by Japanese identity symbols, sports' representation in animes and mangas is getting closer to western (post) modernity due to globalization and transnationalization of immaterial goods. (AU)

Resumen:En este trabajo se analizan algunas de las inserciones deportivas en la cultura del anime y del manga, aquí entendidos como mercancías y, al mismo tiempo, puntos de confluencia de las fuerzas culturales globales y locales. Para que sirvan como fundamentos a esta reflexión, también establece marcos de referencia de la cultura japonesa y del crecimiento del deporte en Japón. Se concluye que a pesar de la fuerte influencia ejercida por símbolos de la identidad japonesa, la representación del deporte en los animes y mangas se está acercando cada vez más a la (post)modernidad occidental, debido a la globalización y a la transnacionalización de bienes inmateriales. (AU)

Metabolitos volátiles presentes en Protium heptaphyllum (Aubl.) March. colectado en Tame (Arauca - Colombia) / Volatil metabolites of Protium heptaphyllum (Aubl.) March. from Tame (Arauca-Colombia)

This paper reports the identification of volatile components of the leaves, flowers, resin of the stem, and bark of the branches of the tree Protium heptaphyllum (Aubl.) March. collected from East Plains, Orinoquia, Colombia. The main constituents identified by GC-MS in the volatile fraction of the leaves were guaiol (14,4 percent), alpha-copaene (8,6 percent), 1,10-di-epi-cubenol (8,1 percent), beta-cariophyllene (5,7 percent), and gamma-cadinene (5,4 percent). Germacrene D (13,9 percent), germacrene B (13,4 percent), bicyclogermacrene (11,8 percent), and limonene (8,3 percent) were determined in the flowers, while p-cymene (30,1 percent), alpha-pinene (22,1 percent), and limonene (14,4 percent) were identified in the resin; finally, germacrene D (27,7 percent), 1,10-di-epi-cubenol (7,9 percent), guaiol (7,4 percent), and gamma-cadinene (6,9 percent) were found in the bark. The analysis of the resin showed a high percent of monoterpenes (- 60 percent); while the leaves presented a high content of oxygenated sesquiterpenes (- 60 percent); flowers and bark showed a high composition of sesquiterpenes (40-50 percent).

En este trabajo se reporta la identificación de los componentes volátiles de hojas, flores, resina del tallo y corteza de las ramas del árbol Protium heptaphyllum (Aubl.) March. recolectado en los Llanos Orientales, Orinoquía, Colombia. Los constituyentes mayoritarios identificados por GC-MS en la fracción volátil de las hojas fueron guaiol (14,4 por ciento), alfa-copaeno (8,6 por ciento), 1,10-di-epi-cubenol (8,1 por ciento), trans-beta-cariofileno (5,7 por ciento) gamma -cadineno (5,4 por ciento). Germacreno D (13,9 por ciento), germacreno B (13,4 por ciento), biciclogermacreno (11,8 por ciento) y limoneno (8,3 por ciento) se determinaron en las flores, mientras que, p-cimeno (30,1 por ciento), alfa-pineno (22,1 por ciento) y limoneno (14,4 por ciento) se identificaron en la resina; finalmente, germacreno D (27,7 por ciento), 1,10-di-epi-cubenol (7,9 por ciento), guaiol (7,4 por ciento) gamma -cadineno (6,9 por ciento) se encontraron en la corteza. El análisis de la resina mostró un alto porcentaje de monoterpenos (- 60 por ciento); mientras que, las hojas presentaron una alta proporción de sesquiterpenos oxigenados (- 60 por ciento); las flores y la corteza mostraron una alta composición de sesquiterpenos (40-50 por ciento).