Database consumption () refers to a way of content consumption in which people do not consume a narrative itself, nor fragments of it, but rather its constituent elements. The concept was coined by the Japanese critic Hiroki Azuma in the early 2000s to describe how characters and mechanics found in a narrative's "database" are demanded and consumed by fans without trying to compensate for the absence of an encompassing grand narrative, in a manner dependent on personal interpretations. Azuma cites the change in consumption patterns of Japanese otaku content since the late 1990s as a major example of "database consumption", during which the "control" over a franchise shifted from the authors and manufacturers to the fans. Satoshi Maejima suggests that narratives that end inconclusively force fans to turn to database consumption and to "character moe", in which the characters of a franchise become the direct targets of fan affection. Azuma compares this affection to drug addiction and calls it "animalization".
The rise of the "slice of life" and isekai genres in the later half of the 2000s has been attributed to database consumption. Hatsune Miku, a fictional character featured in a speech synthesis software who possesses no narrative, is singled out by Azuma as "the exact form of database consumption". Outside of otaku culture, aspects of database consumption have been found in youth culture more broadly, in the consumption patterns of music and internet memes. Azuma himself cites the cataloguing of visual effects in Hollywood films as an example. Tsunehiro Uno argues that the grand narrative has become "defunct" and is being compensated for with expanding plots. Huei Wen-Lo cites the Pokémon franchise as a "database multiverse", where characters, rules and attributes are endlessly recombined.
Some scholars like Thomas Lamarre have questioned Azuma's use of the database as the model for this kind of consumption, and others find that Azuma presents no precise description of how this database comes into existence. Paul Perdijk argues that the database is constructed socially and is not merely an isolating "animalization". Forrest Greenwood finds Azuma's works to suffer from a market-driven approach to analysis and an excessive focus on the male otaku, claiming that Azuma downplays gender differences when analyzing consumption patterns.
Overview The background to Azuma's presentation of this theory is the concept of narrative consumption by the critic and writer Eiji Ōtsuka.
In his A Theory of Narrative Consumption, Ōtsuka cites franchises like Bikkuriman stickers and Sylvanian Families as examples, pointing out that people are not consuming the items but the "grand narratives" (, worldviews and setting) behind them. He called the paradigm of consumption mainly found since the 1980s "narrative consumption". It is also referred to as "worldview consumption" () to avoid the ambiguity of "narrative" which specifically means "grand narrative (worldview and setting)" in this theory.
Based on Ōtsuka's work, Azuma replaces "grand narrative (worldview and setting)" in the theory of narrative consumption with "grand non-narrative (stacks of information)" () and uses the term "database consumption" to describe the new paradigm of consuming a huge "database" shared within a community. This form of consumption is particularly prominent in Japanese otaku culture since the late 1990s.
The new consumption paradigm is closely related to the advent of postmodernism. In essence, otaku culture and the postmodern condition are thought to have the following points in common: 1) As stated by Jean Baudrillard, it is no longer possible to distinguish between the original and the simulated, and thereby the in-between simulacra prevail in hyperreality, which parallels the difficulty to distinguish derivative works and media mix from the original works in otaku culture; 2) Jean-François Lyotard defined postmodernism as the decline of grand narratives (norms shared by society as a whole) and the emergence of many localized, little narratives (norms shared only within small communities), which corresponds to otaku culture's unique value norm that the fictional world rather than the real world is paid more attention to.
While narrative consumption could be seen as fabricating pseudo-"grand narratives" with worldviews behind works to compensate for the lost grand narrative (partial postmodernism), in database consumption, however, even fabrication is abandoned (full postmodernism). Therefore, in (full) postmodern otaku culture, by accessing the database (stacks of information) that varies depending on personal interpretations, various settings are extracted by different people to create different original and derivative works (indistinguishable between originals and copies).
In Lacanian terminology, "grand narrative" could be seen as "the Symbolic", "little narrative" as "the Imaginary", and the "database" as "the Real". However, psychiatrist Tamaki Saito, while acknowledging such correspondence is understandable as a metaphor, believes the equivalent to the database should be more appropriately the Symbolic, stating that it is the autonomous Symbolic that promotes the "genesis of characters". The "database turn" of the world can be considered a manifestation of postmodernization in the cultural aspect (shift towards database consumption), globalization in the economic aspect, and the digitalization in the technological aspect.「動物化するオタク系文化」『網状言論F改—ポストモダン・オタク・セクシュアリティ 』28頁。
Azuma did not mention which type of database is involved in database consumption. Informatics engineering expert Naohiko Yamaguchi and art critic Takemi Kuresawa believe the concept corresponds to a relational database.
Otaku culture
As mentioned above, Azuma cites how Japanese otaku content has been consumed since the late 1990s as a major example of database consumption.
For example, the shift of fan consumption patterns from Mobile Suit Gundam (since 1979) to Neon Genesis Evangelion (since 1995) suggests a departure from narrative consumption. In Gundam, different series were set in the same fictitious history (Universal Century, etc.), and fans enthusiastically scrutinized that fictitious history (grand narrative). Evangelion fans, however, tend not to immerse themselves in the world of the work, but rather to devote themselves to doujinshi (self-published derivative works) that feature the heroines and model figures of the mechanics in the series. Rather than the worldview, stacks of information (grand non-narrative) including characters and mechanics are demanded and consumed. According to Satoshi Maejima, a Japanese critic, despite many meaningful keywords (Human Instrumentality Project, S2 Engine, etc.) that seem to hint at the worldview of the work (which fits the concept of narrative consumption) in the first half of Evangelion, the work eventually came to an end without revealing the truth, and the audience was therefore forced to change their attitude of consuming the story. This change in consumption patterns that began in 1995 (the shift to so-called "character moe") can be considered a shift from manufacturer-led to consumer-led, and the background was the consumer base shifted from otaku students of liberal arts (who prefer stories) to those of engineering (who prefers systems).東「立ちから萌えへ」『文学環境論集 東浩紀コレクションL』 講談社、2007年、222–223頁。ISBN 978-4062836210。
In 1998, Di Gi Charat characters were designed as Broccoli's image character (mascot) without a background story. Nonetheless, they surprisingly became a hit and were adapted into different media franchises, including anime and video games, ultimately ending up having a background story. Characters in Di Gi Charat were designed by assembling moe elements like ahoge and bells, making them a good example of "moe-element database" consumption (Other examples of combinations of moe elements can be seen in mainstream culture. For example, the same argument can be applied to the costumes of the idol group Mini-Moni.) In this way, otaku have developed a spinal reflex reaction to symbols of their favorite moe elements as though they are drug addicts. (Or, more generally, they only have self-contained desire-fulfillment circuits without mediating the desires of the others.) Hiroki Azuma borrows the expression of Alexandre Kojève and calls this development "animalization". In database consumption, characters like Di Gi Charat and Binchotan born without a story in the background may be given ones later on or become the subjects of derivative creations. Such human characters (typically young girls) designed as representations of non-humans can be called moe anthropomorphism. Hatsune Miku, the image character of a speech synthesis software package released in 2007, despite lacking a narrative, gained high popularity due to her unique characteristics and has since been widely used in various derivative creations. Hiroki Azuma describes this as the "exact form of database consumption".東浩紀・伊藤剛・谷口文和・DJ TECHNORCH・濱野智史「初音ミクと未来の音 同人音楽・ニコ動・ボーカロイドの交点にあるもの」『ユリイカ』2008年12月臨時増刊号、152頁。 While Hatsune Miku's success was mainly based on the video-sharing platform Niconico, the cyberspace of the website, which is filled with a plethora of MAD movies (videos made by splicing together anime clips; anime music video), is made possible as a result of the establishment of database consumption.
Bishōjo games that became popular in otaku culture after the late 1990s are also thought to reflect postmodern database consumption due to their structure.
In Japanese manga and anime, as manga critic Kō Itō points out, there exists a phenomenon that characters maintain their identities even when removed from their original context and placed in a different environment (e.g., secondary creations). He called the phenomenon "autonomization of characters" (). In a way, a "character database", not the narrative, has become the object of consumption. Light novels, which have attracted attention since the early 2000s, encompass various genres including science fiction, fantasy, and detective fiction, and are often considered difficult to define; However, by focusing on their crucial element–character design–we can use the keyword "database consumption" to define them as "novels written within the environment of a character database".『ゲーム的リアリズムの誕生』37–45頁。
In the latter half of the 2000s, works featuring "moe" characters with appealing charms and regressed narratives have gained increasing popularity, particularly triggered by the success of TV anime Lucky Star. These works, commonly referred to as "slice of life" (), are media content that precisely fits into the database consumption model.
Shūji Nomaguchi mentioned that what is being done in the creation of isekai works () that hit the same era of the 2010s corresponds to this. He believes the clichéd narō-kei story is part of what Azuma calls the "invisible database", and these works are created through accessing an intangible "narō-kei database" and selecting elements to be used in their settings.