When one looks at online mentions of Japanese pop culture, one cannot ignore the fan-created materials based on the “canon” source material. Fanart floods social media, AMVs fill YouTube, and most importantly, you’ll encounter vast collection of doujinshi coming out every half year. But why? What drives fans to create such fanfics?
In this lecture, the aim is to give some context to “doujinshi” and the world of “derivative works" (niji sosaku) in Japan. This also focuses on the look into “canons” that allowed for larger fan-created content, as well as recent boom in such content.