Characters' Amnesia in 2.5D Culture: Affective Reception of Bronze Statues of Anime and Manga Characters and Public Sculptures.

This article examines the phenomenon of bronze statues of anime and manga characters in Japan as manifestations of "2.5D culture," a concept describing the cognitive process by which fans project two-dimensional (2D) fictional characters into three-dimensional (3D) real-world spaces. Central to this culture is the "autonomy of kyara"—the ability of character images (kyara) to exist independently of their original narratives—and the resulting "characters' amnesia," where characters lose their original story-context to maintain transmedia consistency across various media and public spaces. The article compares these statues to public sculptures like Yanobe Kenji's Sun Child and the Statue of Peace, which engage with historical memory rather than fictional worlds, highlighting differences in audience reception and emotional engagement. Ultimately, it argues that while 2.5D culture's amnesiac mechanism enables fan interaction and commercial use of anime and manga characters, it contrasts with memorial sculptures that demand historical remembrance, revealing complex intersections between popular culture, memory, and public space in contemporary Japan.