Degree Thesis Bachelor’S Degree Applying MBTI to Analyzing Shōnen Manga Characters

Degree Thesis Bachelor’s Degree Applying MBTI to analyzing shōnen manga characters A case study of My Hero Academia Author: Marttaleena Suvanto Supervisor: Herbert Jonsson Examiner: Hiroko Inose Subject/main field of study: Japanese Course code: GJP23Y Higher education credits: 15 Date of examination: 15.1.2021 At Dalarna University it is possible to publish the student thesis in full text in DiVA. The publishing is Open Access, which means the work will be freely accessible to read and download on the internet. This will significantly increase the dissemination and visibility of the student thesis. Open Access is becoming the standard route for spreading scientific and academic information on the internet. Dalarna University recommends that both researchers as well as students publish their work Open Access. I give my/we give our consent for full text publishing (freely accessible on the internet, Open Access): Yes ☒ No ☐ Dalarna University – SE-791 88 Falun – Phone +4623-77 80 00 Abstract: This is a case study of a popular shōnen manga, My Hero Academia, written and illustrated by Kōhei Horikoshi. The study’s aim is to determine the personality types of five characters, while utilizing the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. The secondary aim is finding out which details help in the MBTI analysis and which do not. The third aim is to look into what are the difficulties of executing this kind of study. The initial focus of the analysis was the characters’ actions, dialogue, body language, facial expressions, use of role language and how the manga artist utilizes the Japanese scripture. The final results show that the characters are INFJ, ENTP, ENFP, INTJ and ESTJ types, and that the most helpful methods are to look at a combination of the characters’ actions, speech, body language, behavior, and expressions. In addition, the method of analysis occasionally depends on the character in question. While the scripture does not help in gaining the results, the choice of language for the characters gives additional affirmation for the results but does not work by itself to affirm any MBTI types. The main challenge is deciding which of the MBTI type pair polarities has more value to the character’s personality to become the preference. Keywords: Japanese, shōnen manga, My Hero Academia, Myers-Briggs Type Indicator 2 Table of contents 1.0 Introduction ....................................................................................................... 4 1.1 The research questions .................................................................................. 4 2.0 Background and Literature Review .................................................................... 5 2.1 Theory ............................................................................................................ 5 2.1.1 Myers-Briggs Type Indicator ................................................................... 5 2.2 Research on MBTI .......................................................................................... 6 2.3 Research on Manga ........................................................................................ 7 2.4 Research on MBTI and fiction ........................................................................ 8 2.5 Shōnen manga ................................................................................................ 8 2.6 Kōhei Horikoshi .............................................................................................. 9 3.0 Methodology .................................................................................................... 10 3.1 Material ........................................................................................................ 10 3.1.1 My Hero Academia ................................................................................ 10 3.2 Methods ....................................................................................................... 10 3.2.1 Using MBTI ............................................................................................ 11 3.2.2 Scripture ................................................................................................ 11 3.2.3 Role language ........................................................................................ 11 4.0 Results & Analysis ............................................................................................ 13 4.1 Izuku Midoriya .............................................................................................. 13 4.2 Katsuki Bakugō ............................................................................................. 14 4.3 Ochako Uraraka ............................................................................................ 16 4.4 Shōto Todoroki ............................................................................................. 17 4.5 Tenya Iida ..................................................................................................... 18 5.0 Discussion ......................................................................................................... 20 5.1 Discussing results ......................................................................................... 20 6.0 Conclusions ...................................................................................................... 26 7.0 References ........................................................................................................ 28 3 1.0 Introduction The personality analysis of fictional characters, not to mention that of manga characters, offers its own challenges in comparison to the analysis of people in real life. The objective of this thesis is to analyze the characteristics of shōnen manga characters to gain an understanding into all the challenges and possibilities of this type of analysis and what aspects need to be looked into while utilizing a method that is typically used in the analysis of non-fictional people. The method I am using is the popular but controversial Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) that is based on Jung’s Personality Types theory. I will be using MBTI to analyze characters from Kōhei Horikoshi’s My Hero Academia and by applying this theory, I will find out some of the characters’ MBTI types, and the complexities of using this theory on manga characters. As the field of MBTI analysis of fictional characters is severely lacking, this study will give new material to it, offering a basis for further research. 1.1 The research questions Due to the small size of this research, there is a limit to which questions I can pose without lacking evidence or conviction in my answers. As I am using MBTI to analyze the characters, my first question is related to this. The other questions will concern the methodology of utilizing MBTI in the analysis of manga characters and will help the researchers wanting to expand a study such as this. The questions are in these following points: • What are the MBTI types of five of the central shōnen manga characters from My Hero Academia? • Which methods will help in the MBTI analysis and which will fail? • What difficulties does the analysis involve? The background includes an explanation for the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, after which follows an overview of previous research and information on shōnen manga and Kōhei Horikoshi. The methodology chapter relates how I will execute the analysis, and the storyline of My Hero Academia will also be described. Afterwards I will move on to the analysis and the results, analyzing each character one by one. I will reflect on the results in the discussion section, while contemplating the answers to my research questions. I will also discuss what other realizations I may have made, like in what way my study could be beneficial for later research. In the conclusions I explain the main points of my study. My main conclusion is that the analysis requires focusing on a combination of the characters’ actions, dialogue, body language and facial expressions. 4 2.0 Background and Literature Review 2.1 Theory 2.1.1 Myers-Briggs Type Indicator In the 1900s, Carl G. Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist, realized that people have mental or psychological preferences, which dictate many of the person’s decisions. In the 1940s, Isabel Briggs Myers and her mother, Katherine C. Briggs, researched the measuring of personality preferences and developed it into the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), a self-report questionnaire, which would make Jung’s theory useful and more understandable (Kennedy, Kennedy 2004, 38-39). According to the MBTI, each person has a natural preference in their behavior. The theory is expressed with four type pairs that have two polarities, of which you prefer the one or the other. These four type pairs are Introversion - Extraversion (IE), Sensation - iNtuition (SN), Thinking - Feeling (TF) and Judgement - Perception (JP) (Behaz & Djoudi, 136). As each person uses their preferred MBTI types more, it causes the preferred functions to become more developed than the ones used less. This in turn results in surface behaviors, characteristics and skills being linked to a certain preference (Wolk & Nikolai 1997, 6). Introversion (I) and extraversion (E) indicate where an individual gains their energy and what is their direction in life. In the case of introverts (I), they gather their energy from the inner world and focus on internal thoughts, feelings, and reflections. Introverts enjoy solitude and privacy and like to communicate in writing. Their learning comes through deliberation.

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