Tokimeki Memorial Girl’s Side: Enacting femininity to avoid dying alone

Abstract

This paper examines the Japanese dating simulator video game, Tokimeki Memorial Girl's Side, the first female protagonist version in the Tokimeki Memorial series. Analysis of the game mechanics, characterisations, player options and their results demonstrate that the game assumes and reinforces a range of cultural norms and social expectations in relation to gender performativity, courting and dating, relationships and intimacy. I discuss how the gameplay actively produces particular heteronormative perspectives on how girls and young women should enact femininity if they are to avoid being alone at the end of the game, and, for that matter, in life.

Femininity as a virtual object. Interacting with the Japanese girl-machines: Shiori, Monika, Miku, and Kizuna

“…The discursive precedent set is that a digital woman is meant to love and be loved. This aligns with what authors like Patrick Galbraith (2011), Tina Richards (2015, and Dominic Pettman (2017) discuss. These characters' roles in their discursive frameworks do not involve offering a set of enunciations through which one could identify with them (García-Carpintero, 2016;Manney, 2019), or use them as references to enact femininity (Butler, 2006(Butler, /2004.…”

“…On the one hand, since the dawn of the dating simulation genre in videogames during the nineties, various studies have focused on unravelling love in the virtual era and the specific relationship that can be built with artificial intelligences and preprogrammed personalities. These encounters serve as both a way of reinforcing gender roles, expectations on presentation, and gendered stereotypes, and also ways in which men can criticize masculinity and empathize with female characters (Galbraith, 2011;Pettman, 2017;Richards, 2015;Tan and Shi, 2021). On the other hand, with the rise of virtual celebrities, we can find studies on the mass building of holographic celebrities such as Miku that transform the ways in which crowd behavior, the individual, femininity and embodiment are conceived (Davidson, 2017;Guga, 2015;Lam, 2016).…”

Il faut beaucoup d’amies pour aimer un bel homme. Pratiques de sociabilité autour des jeux de romance ( Otome Games ) au Japon

“…On pourrait s'étonner que les femmes se prennent au jeu d'une mécanique si conventionnelle et finalement si peu flatteuse. Mais c'est qu'elles n'ont pas le choix : pour obtenir l'amour d'un personnage masculin, il leur faut remplir des « missions avatar », c'est-à-dire rendre leur avatar plus « séduisant » à l'aide de robes et de bijoux coûteux, qu'elles peuvent coordonner avec les couleurs des canapés, des tentures ou des décors de luxe qui font partie du système de points (Richards 2015). Les otome games pour smartphone ne laissent aucune alternative.…”

Growing the Otome Game Market: Fan Labor and Otome Game Communities Online

“…This definition has its roots in the Japanese game industry and media mix industry whose history that remains unexplored, and players, such as my respondents, may have their own definitions of otome games. 1 Apart from Kim's (2009) piece on early otome games, other literature mostly presents analyses of individual games (Hasegawa, 2013;Lamerichs, 2014;Richards, 2015). Marc Steinberg and Edmond Ernest Dit Alban (2018) described otaku pedestrian practices in Japan.…”