漫画とアニメの影響を受けた日本の若者ドイツ体験
ティモ・テーレン
金沢大学人間社会学域国際学類 講師

Germany in Japanese Pop Culture and Its Influence on the Experiences ofYoung Japanese Going Abroad.
Timo Thelen
Lecturer School of International Studies, Kanazawa University

Abstract
In recent decades, Japanese pop culture has produced a considerable amount of media content whichis connected to German culture and history like Attack on Titan, Fullmetal Alchemist, and Hetalia.
Case studies from the Western context indicate that pop culture can hugely influence young people’sinterest for a certain culture and for traveling to these places. In this article, I examine Japanese pop
culture’s impact on young Japanese people in relation to Germany. For my investigation, I conducted
qualitative semi-structured interviews with young Japanese people temporarily living in Germany
about their pop-cultural media consumption and activities abroad. The results illustrate that, besides
German literature, classical music, and history, Japanese pop culture related like the series mentioned
above have become a new common field of attraction that influences traveling and learning behaviorof young Japanese. As the importance of German as a foreign language in Japan continuously
decreases, I suggest that this phenomenon can provide a valuable additional topic in German
language and culture classes reflecting contemporary students’ interest.

緒言
最近の数十年で、日本のポップカルチャーはかなりの量のメディアコンテンツを生み出しており、これらは「進撃の巨人」、「鋼の錬金術師」、「ヘタリア」などのドイツの文化や歴史に関連している。西洋の観点からの事例研究では、ポップカルチャーが特定の文化やこれらの場所への旅行に対する若者の関心に大きな影響を与える可能性があることを示している。
本稿では、ドイツとの関係で日本のポップカルチャーが若い日本人に与える影響を調べる。
今回の調査では、ドイツに一時的に住んでいる日本人の若者たちに、彼らのポップカルチャー
メディアの利用と海外での活動について定性的で半構造化したインタビューを行った。
結果は、ドイツ文学、クラシック音楽、歴史に加えて、上記のシリーズのような日本のポップカルチャーが、若い日本人の旅行や学習行動に影響を与える新しい共通の魅力となっていることを示した。日本での外国語としてのドイツ語の重要性は低下傾向にあり、この現象は現代の学生の興味を反映したドイツの言語と文化の授業で付加価値のある話題となることを示す。

1

1. Introduction
German as a foreign language in Japan declines in popularity; the number of students learning thislanguage in Japan has decreased by 50% between 1995 and 2015, from ca. 400,000 to ca. 200,000
learners (Schöningh 2015: 541). Among these, ca. 75% learn German only for about one year andless than 60 hours in total, quitting at a very low level (Ibid: 543). Asking for the reasons why
Japanese students choose to learn German, the truth is that many starts to learn this language because
they have to. Some disciplines like law, medicine, or pharmacy still require a basic level of German
skills (Schaaf 2010: 268). In addition, university programs of the humanities often demand asecondary foreign language after English. Thus, a lot of students decide to learn German for reasons
like the similarities to English or just because they were not accepted for their preferred foreign
language. Such students somehow obligated to learn German make up ca. 40-45% (Ibid: 266).
Among those who intentionally learn German, common interests are history (especially World WarII) and “high” culture, i.e. classical music and canonical literature (Christ-Kagoshima 2010: 181).
However, Schöningh warns that the future of German language education in Japan is not anymore, a“perpetuum mobile” (2015: 540).
In my personal experience as a German language lecturer at a Japanese peripheral university, I
recognized that many students nowadays are interested in Japanese pop culture connected toGermany; for instance, the highly popular Attack on Titan franchise, that is set in a fictional
Germany-like world, or Hetalia, in which different national stereotypes appear as allegoric characters.
These observations lead to the idea whether such media content might have become a new and rather
unexplored reason for some young Japanese to start learning German or to become more interested
in German culture. In this research study, I thus aim to examine which impact such pop culture might
have on them.
For my investigation, I conducted qualitative semi-structured interviews with young Japanese people
who have been living in Germany for at least one year and who have previously started to learn
German in Japan, interrogating their learning motivations, interests in pop culture, as well as theirexperiences and activities abroad. As many interviewees talked about domestic traveling in Germany
to places connected to their favorite media content, I decided to set this research in the theoreticalcontext of media tourism studies and not language education studies. In the latter field, such atranscultural case seems not yet examined because native language material is of course preferable
as an object to study with. Pop-cultural media is commonly employed in classes studying the origin
language of the content, e.g., German popular movies or music to learn German language, history,or culture (e.g., Oebel 2003; Lay 2010; Kahnke and Stehle 2011; Sosulski 2013), or manga/anime to
study the Japanese context (e.g., Fukunaga 2006; Armour 2011; McLelland 2018). In my case,however, more than regarding my interviewees as learners or students, I found it fruitful to consider
them as tourists or fans, who adore a certain media content that influences their activities likelanguage learning, traveling, etc.
The article starts by explaining the theoretical background of this research, i.e. the anthropologicalperspective on contemporary tourism being highly affected by media consumption. In the following,
I will elaborate on my research method and the criteria by which I selected my interviewees. Then, I
will present the results on my interview study and discuss which series related Germany areparticularly popular and impactful in emerging attraction for German culture and language. In the
conclusion, I will reconsider my study’s implications and tasks for future research.

22. Pop Culture and Media Tourism
In the age of globalization, pop cultural media easily spreads worldwide as “cultural flows” that canbe called “mediascapes” (Appardurai 1990). For instance, American Hollywood movies as well as
online on-demand platform series are consumed all over the globe and so create sociocultural trends
and people’s interests in various domains. A famous example from Japan is the soft power policy of“Cool Japan” (McGray 2002), i.e. the promotion of the country as a whole or of designated places
like Tokyo’s electric and otaku town Akihabara as a “cool” tourist destination employing pop culture
like anime, manga, and videogames (Galbraith 2018). Similarly, South Korea implemented Hallyu(Korean wave) to foster not only its pop music and video gaming industry but also to stronger engage
in soft power and international tourism (Jin and Yoon 2016).
The phenomenon of travel behavior and preferences influenced by pop culture has been largely
investigated in film/media tourism studies in the last decades (e.g., Beeton 2016; Buchmann, Moore,and Fischer 2010; Connell 2012; Hudson and Ritchie 2006). Inside of Japan, this research commonly
runs under the label of contents tourism (e.g., Masubuchi 2010; Yamamura 2015; Seaton, Yamamura,
Sugawa-Shimada, and Jang 2017; Scherer and Thelen 2017) and utilizes similar theoretical
approaches, while being often but not exclusively focused on anime series and video games. Scholars
of fan studies (e.g., Hills 2002; Reijnders 2016) furthermore discussed media tourism as a frequent
participatory fan activity that expresses the fans’ affection for and knowledge of their favorite media
content.
An important theoretical contribution to this research discourse was Urry and Larsen’s (2011)
concept of a “mediatised tourist gaze,” which means that the viewpoint of a tourist is influenced bypreviously consumed media content related to the visited place. Urry and Larsen argue that “[tourist]
gazing on the scene [place or landscape known from a media product] relive elements or aspects ofthe media event” (2011: 20). In other words, from the tourist’s perspective, a place becomes inscribedwith images and emotions remembered from a media content, which was filmed or set there or whose
setting bears strong similarities. The tourist, more or less consciously, compares the visited place toits mediatised image in his mind. As a result of the mediatised gaze, places become deeply linked topopular media narratives, like for example the mountain panorama of New Zealand can today barely
be gazed on without memories of the Lord of the Rings / The Hobbit franchise (Buchmann, Moore,and Fischer 2010). Media companies and tourism planners are well aware of these effects and so
arrange the promotion of places or even a whole country by the assistance of related media products(Croy 2010). To name another recent example, the highly popular Game of Thrones series attracts
many tourists to the filming locations in Scotland and Croatia, where different guided tour programs
are offered also explaining how the series was filmed there to provide unique insights for the visiting
fans (Waysdorf and Reijnders 2017). Like these cases show, “[m]edia cultures also create desires fortourism, novel destinations and for new forms of mediated gazing” (Urry and Larsen 2011: 115), as
social media and other websites, where fans share their travel experiences, made it easier than everbefore to track down where beloved media content was produced or is supposed to take place.
In addition, an accumulation of media products strongly related to a certain country can also makethis national state, its culture, and its language more popular in general. This effect can be seen for
the United Kingdom in the last decades: Popular media franchises like Harry Potter or Sherlock
Holmes increased the interest of Japanese people in traveling to the United Kingdom and in British
culture, to which they become to feel more “familiar” through watching these movies or series(Iwashita 2008: 150). Looking at Japanese pop-cultural media content set in foreign countries, an3interesting case is the 1970s’ TV series Heidi, based on a Swiss novel and created by the laterinternationally acclaimed directors Miyazaki Hayao and Takahata Isao. The creators of Heidi were
the first Japanese anime production team that went for “location hunting” abroad in order toreproduce an authentic and appealing depiction of the Swiss Alps’ landscape and culture. Until today,
this series positively impacts the image of Switzerland in Japan and lures people to travel to themodel locations (Yamamura 2020).
Recent case studies also exemplify that animated media products can evoke tourist interest for acountry, even though the connection between media narrative and place is constructed throughmarketing. Disney’s Frozen, which is prominently set into a Nordic European-like setting, broughta tourist boom for Norway, although the original animated media product does not indicate thiscountry as the place of the story; tourist promotion in collaboration with Disney implemented thisimage to attract visitors (Metcalf et al. 2018). In Australia, places like a bakery shop and a nationalpark are believed to be related to the Miyazaki Hayao movies Kiki’s Delivery Service or Nausicaä ofthe Valley of the Winds respectively by some national fan groups. Thus, fans frequently travel there,
even though the director has never been to this country and there seems to be no connection at all(Norris 2018). Likewise, I expect that Japanese pop-cultural media content can increase young
Japanese’s interest in German language and culture, also without intended promotional tourist or
national marketing involved.

3. Method
For my research aim, I considered qualitative semi-structured interviews the best method. I defined
three essential criteria to choose my interviewees: 1) younger than 25 years old, 2) living experiencein Germany of 1-2 years, and 3) not “forced” to live in Germany, like e.g. expats sent from theircompanies based in Japan or because of a German (marriage) partner. I conducted interviews at two
locations, Dusseldorf and Munich; both are urban cities where Japanese people can be more easilyfound than in the countryside. The geographic distance between the two cities was intended topossibly recognize differences in the interviewees’ motivations for living there, like for instance
Munich is a “more traditional” place than Dusseldorf. However, the results between the two cities
only suggested as one minor difference, that the interviewees in Munich tended to be more interested
in classical music than those in Dusseldorf. I searched for interviewees by snowballing and came toa sample of ten individuals. The interviews were basically conducted in Japanese at a neutral place,in most cases in cafés, recorded by a voice recorder whilst taking notes by hand, and afterwards
partly transcribed for further analysis. The upcoming interview quotes were translated by the author,
language and grammar were cleaned up but the choice of words and nuances were aimed to be kept
as much as possible. The length of the interviews varied between 45 and 90 minutes. The questions
centered on the interviewees’ personal histories, why they came to Germany and how much German
they had learnt, which kind of Japanese pop culture they had consumed in general, and finallywhether they had consumed media content related to Germany. In case they had, I also wanted toknow what kind of related activities they had done abroad (e.g., traveling), and whether this media
content had an impact their interest in Germany / learning German. By the hints of students andfriends, I expected the following four series as potentially popular and mentioned them directly incase the interviewees did not come up with them on their own: Attack on Titan, Hetalia, Fullmetal
Alchemist, and Saga of Tanya the Evil. In the results’ section, I will describe these series and theirconnection in Germany in more detail. The results are summarized in the tables 1 and 2.

4

Table 1: Interview data part 1: general information and background of the interviewees.

student

Stayin Germany
1 yearFirst interestin Germany
history

student

1 yearculture, tourism

98

Dusseldorf

student

1 year1010FDusseldorf

student

1 yearNoneenvironment,
migration policy

5

3

21

F

Dusseldorf

student

1 yearliterature

8

8

6

20

F

Dusseldorf

student

1 year

none

3

5

7

21

F

Dusseldorf

student

1 yearnone

8

6

2 years

classical music

5

5

Age

Sex

Location

Profession

1

22

F

Dusseldorf

2

21

F

Dusseldorf

3

21

F

4

20

5

8

25

F

job training
Dusseldorf(Ausbildung)Interest in anime/manga(1=lowest, 10=highest)
9
9

9

22

F

Munichstudent

1 year

none

7

7

10

23

F

Munichstudent

1 yearclassical music

7

7

1*

23

F

Munichstudent

20 years(family moved toGermany)

1

0

2*

38

F

Munichfreelancer

13 yearsclassical music

8

8

3*

39

M

Munichemployee

13 yearsclassical music

5

5

Table 2: Interview data part 2: interviewees’ pop culture consumption and activities abroad.
Age Sex AoT

FA

H

Other

Related activities in Germany

Learning German?

1

22

F

O

X

O

X

traveling, comparing stereotypes

watching anime inGerman

2

21

F

O

O

O

X

comparing stereotypes

no

3

21

F

O

O

O

JBA

traveling

no

4

20

F

O

X

X

X

watching anime inGerman

5

21

F

O

X

O

X

discussing with Germans, taking
photos of cosplayers
traveling, taking photos ofcosplayers

6

20

F

X

X

X

X

7

21

F

O

O

O

X

8

25

F

O

O

O

X

9

22

F

O

O

X

X

10

23

F

O

X

X

X

traveling, simple cosplay

no

1*

23

F

X

X

X

X

traveling

no

2*

38

F

X

X

X

X

no

reading other manga inGermannoa bit more motivationnotrying the same food, discussingnowith Germans
discussing with Germans, simple more motivation, reading
cosplay. Travelingmanga in German
more motivation,
traveling, discussing withwatching anime inGermans
German

3* 39
M
X
X
X
NGE
no
no
Abbreviations: AoT = Attack on Titan, FA = Fullmetal Alchemist, H = Hetalia, JBA = JoJo’s Bizarre
Adventure, NGE = Neon Genesis Evanglion

5

4. Results
The interviewees’ first interests in Germany were in most cases typical topics like classical music,
history, literature, or culture in general. One person, studying international relations, was interested
in German environmental and migration policy. Four of the interviewees, in contrast, had no interestin Germany; they had to choose German as a subject, although they would have preferred to study a
different language. This corresponds with Schaaf’s findings that ca. 40-45% of students fall under
this category (2010: 266).
“I wanted to study Italian, but my grades weren’t good enough, so I started to learn German.” (7)“I actually wanted to go to an English-speaking country, but everybody wants to go there andcompetition is tough.” (6)The interviewees’ interests in anime and manga varied, but everyone in the main corpus liked to readmanga and/or watch anime at least once a month. One of the additional interviewees had no interestin manga and anime at all; this person had grown up in Germany and explained that she had adopted
the “German view” of anime and manga (cartoons and comics) as being media products primarily
for children.
“Besides some very famous movies like those of Studio Ghibli and Your Name, I stopped reading
manga and watching anime after elementary school (Grundschule). When I am in Japan, it’s stillkind of strange for me to see adult men reading manga.” (1*)
As most of the media content discussed in the following was released via a media mix strategy(Steinberg 2012), i.e. across various platforms and types of media, it proved convenient toaccumulate them as franchises and to differentiate between anime and manga only when the media’s
qualities (like the music in anime) were an important factor.

Attack on Titan
Nine of the ten interviewees were fans of the highly popular Attack on Titan (Shingeki no kyojin,
2009-) franchise, which tells the story of a special military unit defending mankind against an
onslaught of zombie-like giants that eat humans. The original manga series is set in a fictional world,roughly like 19th century Europe, and only contains a few allusions to Germany apart from thecharacter names. The highly popular anime adaptation, however, created more explicit links. For
example, the opening and theme songs are sung partly or entirely in German. Most interviewees
started reading the manga or watching the anime series in high school, since the franchise reached
its peak of popularity around 2013/14.
“I first got the manga from a friend in high school; then, I successively read all of them andcontinued reading each new volume as soon as it came out.” (10)But not all interviewees enjoyed the series to the same degree. Generally speaking, the anime is more
popular than the manga, and interviewees often explained that this might be because the manga ismore explicit in its depictions of violence. Interestingly, some rediscovered the series when they
started learning German, since they then understood some of the references better and became more
attracted to Attack on Titan.

6

“I first found the series too dark and grotesque, but when a friend gave me the hint that it is somehow
related to Germany, I gave it a second try after I started learning German at university That’s when
I got hooked on it.” (1)In 2013, a Japanese TV variety show aired at primetime on Saturday night brought up the possibility
that a rural city in southern Germany (Nördlingen, ca. 19,000 inhabitants) could be the model location
for Attack on Titan. Although the TV production company quickly posted a statement on Twitter that
there is no official connection between the series and this city, fan rumors spread on social media.
Five of the interviewees traveled there after they encountered these rumors somewhere on the Internet.
“I heard about Nördlingen for the first time in the variety show and later looked it up again on theInternet. When I went there I found that the city indeed looks a lot like the one in the series.” (9)“I went to Nördlingen together with a (Japanese) friend from university. We climbed on the town
wall and strolled through the city. I was very impressed (kandō shita).” (1)Curiously, one of the additional interviewees had also traveled to Nördlingen—not because she hadseen the series, but because her Japanese relatives visiting Germany wanted to go there. Twointerviewees made simple cosplay photos in clothes similar to the protagonists’ uniforms there, while
two others took photos of German Attack on Titan cosplayers at Japanese pop culture events in
Dusseldorf like the annual Japan Day.
Attack on Titan is also popular among young Germans (or people living in Germany) interested inJapanese culture or studying Japanese. Thus, four of the interviewees took the chance to discuss theseries with Germans, for instance in relation to the story, the meaning of characters’ names, or theGerman used in the anime’s songs.
“I have watched the German dubbed version together with my tutor (student learning Japanese).
We also discussed the series’ characters, which ones he liked, and I asked him about the opening
song (German) lyrics’ meaning.” (5)“I recognized that one of the students got a tattoo from the series, so I asked her about it, and wetalked a lot about it and the story of Attack on Titan.” (7)Moreover, two interviewees used the translation of the manga to study German, while two others
used the dubbed version of the anime.
“I watch the series in German with subtitles. I think it’s good to learn some everyday-life language
and also some rather strange expressions, which might not come up in language classes.” (4)“I try to read the translated manga. It’s good if you want to learn some dirty words? [laughing].”(8)
For three of the interviewees, the series thus became an additional motivation to learn German; forone of them even a major reason to study this language and go abroad:“I actually wanted to study French but was not accepted. First, I had no motivation to study German
at all, but as I encountered Attack on Titan, which became one of my favorite series, and its
connection to Germany, I got much more motivated for language learning and going abroad forexchanges
7

Hetalia
The second popular franchise related to Germany is Hetalia (Hetaria Axis Powers, 2008-), which six
interviewees had consumed. Originally a web-manga that was adapted into an anime, the franchise
depicts allegorical characters of different nations. In contrast to the other franchises discussed in thisarticle, Hetalia has also drawn the attention of scholars who discussed the series’ stereotypical
portrayal of German culture and history (Berndt 2015) as well as its female fan communities andtheir creative fandom works like dōjinshi (fan-made manga) (Annett 2014).
One of the three main characters is “Germany” and embodies many clichés like being very strict,wearing a uniform, being blond, etc.; other minor characters from the German cultural realm are
Austria and Prussia. The interaction with characters like “Italia” and “Japan,” who similarly reflectnational stereotypes, often proves funny while being impressively detailed. For two interviewees, theseries’ depictions of the German, Austrian, and Prussian characters and their customs thus became
an opportunity to compare stereotypes and portrayed “traditions” while living abroad:“In a New Year’s episode, ‘Germany’ made fireworks and got a little pig. In Germany then, I was
surprised that the Germans indeed do fireworks on New Year’s Eve (unlike in Japan) and that little
marzipan pigs are a symbol of fortune on that occasion.” (2)“On the one hand, I was surprised that, like in Hetalia, German people actually seem to like dogs alot, and even the quite large ones behave very well in public. On the other hand, I expected Germans
to have good taste in clothing, but in reality, many people wear sportswear in daily life.” (1)Fullmetal Alchemist
The interviewees’ consideration of Fullmetal Alchemist (Hagane no renkinjutsu-shi, 2001-10) was
surprising for several reasons. I actually expected this manga and anime series to be too dated for thecontemporary young generation, but half of the interviewees had actually consumed this franchise at
the suggestion of older relatives or just because of its general popularity. Curiously, none of these
five interviewees thought that this franchise was connected to Germany, although it employs many
tropes from Goethe’s Faust I and II as well as allusions to historical alchemists from the Germanspeaking cultural realm like Paracelsus (1493-1541). Of course, such specialized cultural knowledge
about German/European literature and history is unlikely for young Japanese people. The franchise’s
fictional, late 19th-century Europe-like setting was an obvious reference for the interviewees, butthey could not contextualize the motifs and imagery, or recognize which (Middle/Northern)
European country they came from. Yet, one of the interviewees, who was majoring in European
studies, was a great fan of Fullmetal Alchemist and cited the franchise as her main reason for gettinginterested in European culture and languages.
“The setting is somehow Europe-like, but I didn’t think about where exactly. Maybe England? I
loved the series a lot ever since I received the manga from my older sister about 10 years ago. I thinkit evoked my deep interest in Europe and its cultures.” (2)Other Series Related to Germany
I was astonished that none of the interviewees had consumed the light novel, manga, and anime
franchise Saga of Tanya the Evil (Yōjo senki, 2013-), which is quite popular among my students and8Japanese friends in their 30s. This series tells the story of a ruthless salary man from Tokyo who wasmurdered and then reborn as a young female magical soldier in a Germany-like state during a
fictionalized World War I. Here, the allusions to Germany include maps based on real geographic
borders at that time, character names, and theme songs partly sung in German, among other things.
One franchise that I did not consider in advance was Jojo‘s Bizarre Adventure (JoJo no kimyō nabōken, 1987-). The long-running action-comedy manga series with an anime adaption follows afamily bloodline in various historical epochs. Among these is a storyline set during World War IIthat prominently depicts a Nazi main character called von Stroheim. This series was mentioned in
one interview:“Being in Germany, I remembered von Stroheim. I also talked with Germans about which season
they like the most.” (3)One of the additional interviewees (39 years old) remembered that he was fan of Neon Genesis
Evangelion (Shinseiki ebangerion 1995-6) in his youth; this anime series contains some classicalmusic and a half-German main character who sometimes speaks a few words of German. Theinterviewee, however, did not particularly notice these aspects when he watched the series.
“I liked Evangelion a lot and watched it numerous times. I was the same age as the hero; so for mygeneration, this series was very popular in the mid-1990s. At that time, however, I didn’t think about
its links to Germany.” (3*)
Only after he had lived in German-speaking countries for many years did he retrospectively recognize
the series’ references to Germany. His example shows that in the past—when the Internet and social
media were still in their early days and international traveling not as common as it is today—
consumers of Japanese pop culture were possibly less reflective about the media content’s sourcesin different cultural contexts.

5. Conclusion
In this article, I have shown how Japanese pop culture can influence the experiences and activitiesof young Japanese when temporarily living in Germany as well as their interest in learning German.
My qualitative study clearly exemplifies that such media content can indeed have a certain impact
on Japanese audiences—in this case, nine of ten interviewees. The most common related activity
among the interviewees (six individuals) was traveling inside of Germany to locations that the
franchises are supposedly modeled on. Moreover, half of the interviewees talked with Germans about
these series, while four used translated versions of the manga and the dubbed anime to study German.
For three interviewees, the consumed franchise even increased their motivation for language learning.
I thus suggest that Japanese pop culture related to Germany can be a valuable resource for German
language and culture classes in Japan. In the context of Japanese language education abroad,
McLelland proposed that professors and teachers should proactively discuss Japanese pop-cultural
media (manga in his case) with their students (2018: 103). I consider a similar approach here. For
instance, in one or two class sessions, students could discuss franchises like Attack on Titan or Hetalia,
read parts of the manga, and analyze the images related to Germany. Furthermore, the original
passages read can be compared to published translations, or the students could even make their own
translations. Such tasks can illustrate the challenges of translation, not only with respect to linguistic
aspects, but also sociocultural implications and nuances.
9One minor finding of this study is that the pop-cultural media depicting Germany popular among
young Japanese is commonly related to war and militarism (especially World War I and II). The
students’ interest in these topics can—or maybe even should—be explicitly thematized in classes,
because the romanticized heroic images of war in some of these series in combination with most
student’s limited knowledge of (European) war history may foster naïve ideas about war. SugawaShimada (2019) noticed this tendency among young fans of war anime series with moe characters(young, cute, and attractive girls) that leads to a potential “displacement and/or invalidation” of thedarker aspects of war.
Finally, it is crucial to note that this qualitative study is based on a small sample. More diversity ininterviewees’ gender (all were female) and location (more than two places) would be desirable infollow-up research. There is also the option of using surveys among German language students inJapan to provide quantative data. Furthermore, deeper content analysis of franchises related toGermany that examines the exact inspirations, origins, and supposed references would be a valuable
contribution toward a better understanding of this phenomenon. Last but not least, all of this seems
to be a relatively new trend, especially in relation to Attack on Titan and Hetalia. It is important toassess the long-term development and relevance of this phenomenon, because the Attack on Titan
franchise is scheduled to end soon, and one cannot forecast whether there will there be a similarly
popular media franchise that draws on German motifs in the near future.

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