METHOD TO INVESTIGATE FICTIONAL ENTITIES: A CASE OF ISHINOMORI SHOTARO’S “KAMENRIDER BLACK” TV SERIES IN INDONESIA

This article reports an experiment to pursue appropriate observation method on fictional entities inside popular culture products from Japan: two dimensional characters, fictional characters in a movie. Previous research showed how Indonesian popular culture producers being empowered in production, as fictional entities involved, such as “Hatsune Miku” (HM), a virtual singer persona. This article focused on older cases where media Japan travelled to Indonesia. Back in 1989, a TV action serial "Kamen Rider Black/ Ksatria Baja Hitam" (KRB/KBH) from Japan, was broadcasted by Indonesian local television station RCTI, and dubbed in Indonesian language. The experiment on finding appropriate observation method is conducted by constructing frameworks, imagined as ‘dissecting’ fictional entities into smaller observable parts. The purpose of this paper is to map methods to examine the role of non-human entities under transnational media by evaluating through early stage experiment.


INTRODUCTION
Here, is a description story of days together with popular fictional entities in Indonesia: A brief introduction and some reflections of living in the nineties as children.
"A warm and bright Sunday morning in 1990. RCTI, a local television in watched in a betamax video format. This show, along with many more TV serials, specifically broadcasted as a program to children and teenagers (Witasari & Liana, 2018). There were only two TV stations operating in 1990 back then: TVRI (Televisi Republik Indonesia), which was founded and ran by Indonesian Government, and RCTI (Rajawali Citra Televisi Indonesia) which was commercially founded. Under "keputusan menteri penerangan no 111 tahun 1990" which regulates establishment of TV stations other than TVRI to broadcast, RCTI allowed to do more innovation, but still required to divide their program into several target audience groups, including 'children ' and 'teenager' (pp6.).
While KRB is enjoyable because the show is one of the first opportunity to know how 'Japan at the moment' is, there is a problem if one should re-visit the show through research. One might found how scavenging data about popular cultural products from Japan can be quite problematic, explaining terms by terms, regarding the validity and what was true and what was not in academic writing. One's own experience were actually hard to be regarded as a supporting data as audience experiences tend to be different one another.
This paper serves as a proto-type vessel to seek alternative strategies of how an observer toward cultural products from Japan would fill that gap. By investigating KRB as a show, I found that this wasn't the same 'Japan' I imagined after watching TVRI's TV Drama "Oshin" before 1990. It could no longer be seen as traditional Japan, as people dressed in kimono dresses. Household rooms were no longer accessed through a shoji sliding door. 'Japan' in KRB's action TV serial was full of motorcycles, neat western houses, tall buildings, and people working in laboratories. There were factory remains, local café and stores. It was urban, futuristic and heroic, yet lonely and uncanny at the same time. It was nice to know facts and trivia from KRB, but it could only provide data recollection, thus only enough to tell how an Indonesian individual responded to popular culture from Japan, while another Indonesian might respond differently. As a scholar who once wrote a thesis on HM 2 , describing, then observing cultural products came from Japan was never been an easy task. Finite popularity also made cultural products getting out of sight easily and replaced by other products. 2 Until 2011, there have been various kind of popular media contents from Japan consumed in Indonesia, such as animations, video games, and the do-it-yourself music and visual arts products around VOCALOID (a computerized music production software). VOCALOID also known for its two dimensional character mascots which acts as a creation-hub. Through one of its most phenomenal mascot called "HM" (HM), Indonesian youth could attached locality into her looks and song products; thus making her serve as a creation hub. "Batik" traditional cloth mixed and matched with her costume; Songs produced were written in various languages (Indonesian, English, Japanese); The term fictional entity, is used in this article paper to suggest similarities had by media personas one cannot be found outside the fictional realm, regardless the kind of media containing them. The term also chosen by (Thomasson, 2009) to describe fictional characters observed and regarded anthropomorphically such as the famous Sherlock Holmes. Her work shows how a fictional entity cannot be regarded as "not existing", but rather exists, whether as a studied discourse or as a role model in the society.
It was interesting to seek how a fictional entity from Japan like Hatsune Miku (HM) could investigated by us to "tell her story". The hype of HM lessen from year to year, she was losing fans' attention. By this, to continue the observation, one may seek deeper on the role of creation hub created after a popular culture phenomenon occurred; a concert, for instance. If a researcher would investigate a fictional entity under transnational media context, there are challenges, especially as HM and also KRB are fictional and perceived differently by each human producers and consumers participants.
In pop culture and media studies a researcher at any state is still required to investigate along human actors; producers and consumers as subjects affected by their existence. By how fictional entity adopted from Japan to Indonesia, fans could be investigated. But how if fans aren't actually stable as a data source? As demonstrated above, story about how a fictional character gain affection was told by notes on experience, but how can one say that this experience would came out in same articulations (i.e interviews, quotes, comments)? An observer in this situation have perceived the show in a different way compared with other fans, therefore any note taken would only serve as a diary, hardly stand as an objective written report. This paper suggests to gain research material from TV show characters or a software mascot are rather than investigating affection from fans. Embodied along in visual appearance depicted in media, and having their own biography, these entities imagined as a living participant. This paper will at first do textual analysis on the character as a cultural product. Then by mapping and then sort out a fair amount of points and tracks of networks inside and outside KRB, this paper will enter the next stage, which is the observation design. How the method's proto-type came out then can be compared to previous existing methods in media studies. Discussions in this segment explained under "transnational media traveling to Indonesia" context, and build observation design in its primal form.
Regarding how KRB depict cyborgs, may or may not resonate with what Haraway (1985) wrote about cyborgs and companion species (2003)  36 "third gender". Human found his companion species, machine and beloved pets. Even though non-human differs and not seldom monstrous, people affected by fictional entities in media consumption found themselves a kind of companion. It can born from ideas, while those ideas 'lived' and embodied inside a fictional entity. The affection that grew toward fictional entities also has the same spirit of Honda Tooru's concept "No'nai Ren'ai no Kakumei"/ "Love Revolution" in his own writings. Fans celebrates how affection towards two dimensional characters in animation can be seen as an alternative way of seeing romance in which aren't graspable to them in real life. (Galbraith, 2014) quoted Tohru while still maintaining the common sense which sees that regarding love toward two dimensional (fictional) characters as 'not normal' was also a common gesture of the otaku sub-culture, media products-aware-data-scavenging people who usually fell in love with these characters and at times declare their love to it.
However, in this paper we need to remember that this is not a critic on human gender roles or any discourse of representations regarding the otaku community, but rather a demonstration on how contexts can be described to build observation method or strategy toward fictional characters itself, and how far an observation strategy can support further researches.

Social Life as a Database While Investigating Their Producers and Consumers
A fictional entity is a media product, a commodity in media business, and has cultural values. Discussions about things described as commodities in cultural context had been coined in "Social life of things" (Kopytoff, in Appadurai, 1986 This view, of course, frames the commonsensical definition of a commodity: an item with use value that also has exchange value" (p64).
It is actually interesting how a popular fictional entity commoditized, the same way as a product does. However the term 'biography' could cause out of focus and misunderstanding especially as the word itself commonly used on human. A mascot or a TV Serial's hero/ heroine, usually has their own 'official biography', written by the producer to start with.
Previous thesis by (Arisun, 2016) recognized how a media product from Japan would trigger affection in Indonesia by discussing this point 3 . Biography had by Hatsune Miku (HM), is a part that can be observed partially as a persona. This kind of 'biography' in the first stage should be thought as something different from the one described in "Social Life of Things" : not yet a commodity, but rather recognized as it is, a fictional character born from 'his'/'her' producer. There was a profile added by Crypton Future Media, company sold her as computer software to determine how young she'd look in illustrations; how squeaky her voice should be heard (replicating other popular animation characters found in Japan); or how her body size counted as virtual female singer. HM like other industrial product is sold and gain fans because of the use of her as a software, meanwhile fans also sees her as a persona. The word "virtual idol" even used to describe her existence.
If strategies using "Social life of things" as a lens above were to be applied to HM, then how her biography (not her official biography which written by Crypton Future Media) might be told briefly this way: "Birth of HM, is repeated at every software factory, then the company sold her in stores or online. A user would install her in his/her desktop PC, then starts creating vocal tracks using her. HM sings the song, and the recorded song then collaborated to a project together with illustrations and animations, broadcasted through streaming sites such as "Nico-nico Douga" or "Youtube". If the response are exceptional for this song, HM might sang it in a concert". 3 In the cultural flow, transfer of ideas and culture products, producers of HM in Indonesia able to contain various ways of creating music, illustration, and mixed them altogether as a hub. They were freely inserted and attached many kinds of local cultural content, almost as if there is never a boundary claiming that HM came from abroad. She wore batik and other traditional dresses in illustrations, made to sing in Indonesian language in songs, responded in concert greeting boards with Sundanese replies, and so on.
The biography above shows how writing biography of a fictional entity can contribute fairly into the first stage of data processing. Iwabuchi Koichi, an expert in transnational media saw this case in the term mukokuseki, nationless-ness which sees locality detached from media products to ensure better cultural approval internationally; or in his term "culturally odorless". However, it "…was littered with references and locales that only the Japanese would understand and appreciate, a "cultural odor" seen as foreign and exotic to those consumers outside of Japan (2002, p27). He suggested that media products from Japan like "Pokemon" card games, will still possess dominant forms from where it was made in the first place. While the media itself came from Japan by nullifying Japan stereotypes, Indonesian producers and consumers of HM preserved her "animation and comic illustrations from Japan" look: hairstyle, turquoise "Miku" colors.
These parts are what affected them in the first place, as it represents "Japan" they embraces through its popular culture in Indonesia. How one could produce songs from her, actually were done in a style distinct to Japan, or in "what only Japanese would understand". In other words, otaku ways of (re)producing derivative forms of a product. Apparently this way of (re)produce things travels along with HM from Japan, and adopted by Indonesian.
A fictional entity not only consumed as a media product by merely watching or hearing it. People also made derivative products from it, involved in fan-chatters, deconstructed and put inside pun and jokes, and so on. Azuma (2009) recognize this way of devouring narrative/ database done by Japanese animation and game fans as he writes in "Otaku: Database Animals". He explains that otaku views the world by gazing at its nodes, its construction parts and to reproduce the world: a grand narrative, into smaller narratives: popular culture products, derivative ideas, and so on.
Social media and comments in the online streamed HM videos would form networks as a result an also form of reproduction. In the other hand, all these facts could serve as data chunks, only if affection toward a fictional entity existed. Therefore, human factor should be included to investigate those affections. However if the fictional entity itself passes through time and remembered only as nostalgia, there are vast amount of human consumers to be investigated. A researcher in this situation would hardly investigate those who affected by a fictional entity. If they only remembered small parts and not the whole episode, or if they forgot how and what part they loved during the show at the time it was broadcasted, particularly in 1990's RCTI the whole data acquiring process would be exhausting and would not stand well as a research data.
It was a challenge to thoroughly trace the remnants of affection, at a period when fictional entity enjoyed in TV serials only circa 1990-1994 in Indonesia. In the case of KRB, this TV Serial regarded as nostalgia and "come from Japan" at the same time. Jakarta's "Battle of the Toys" public event in August 2016 to meet and greet KRB's Minami Koutaro actor, Mr. Kurata Tetsuwo, for instance is an opportunity where people celebrate the nostalgia on Japan's action hero in Indonesia. In the other hand, even if one said the nostalgia is celebrated, it's almost impossible to make human participants, hence KRB, the fictional hero wouldn't tell anything worthy of its biography under transnational media context. Even if an interview done to its actor, Mr. Kurata to ask how he feels about KRB coming to Indonesia as a TV serial, as he didn't watch KRB in 1990's RCTI, no data would be gained. Another strategy, for instance is to interview KRB consumers in Indonesia. Diversity of how people could perceived and felt the same way would be out of a researcher's reach in a limited time and resources.
Previous studies described above, how a biography told from fictional entities lead to reveal many important facts, which can be poured into the analytical stage in several options. A fictional entity can be imagined as a subject interrogated on its social life. Biographies had a good reason to ensure a fictional entity stand in an actor's hat.
The researcher may now turn away a while from his human participants. This would point out how producers/ consumers being empowered, or how a derivative product may be (re)produced. Therefore, the first stage is to seek a certain biography from the fictional entity. A researcher might examine and 'dissect' the fictional entity by having it tell the story it contains. Not only the official story written by the ones created it, or how fans consume it. It should be interrogated to gain the 'database' it has. There are networks it may connect between parts and the outer world, the grand narrative represented by the fictional realm it dwells in. Deeper information might be useful as the fictional entity should reveal its interconnection to targeted study areas like transnational media research between Japan and Indonesia.

Trial of a Method Design to Approach Fictional Entity by Dissecting Their Parts
First of all, in this experiment, "Kamen Rider Black" is observed as a focus point. Furthermore the focus is on the one appeared in TV Serial, first episode.   Ishinomori Shotaro (1938-1998, as one of Japan's founding father of animation, comic and action hero, alongside with other legendary artists lived in the Tokiwa apartment house (Osamu Tezuka, Fujimori Hiroshi, etc.). His biography might explain any surrounding facts in the outside world which told by the show. Dark, lonely, and mysterious atmosphere usually tinted in his work KRB. Ishinomori, is known as an influential sci-fi comic artist who usually rendered historical narratives in his story plots (Rosenbaum, 2016).
A possible joint to gain connections to worldly themes as suggested by this method is to extract and highlight economic history, as one of Ishinomori's concern. His famous work in 1965, "Manga Nihon Keizai Nyuumon (An introduction to Japanese Economy)" based on Japan's post-war economy, and it would not surprising if Japan's post-bubble condition (along with bankruptcy and factories closed) which happens in the '80s also rendered in KRB's background landscapes (factory ruins, neon light Akihabara district, and so-on) 4 . From landscapes as parts, one can try to imply that somehow the idea on world economy seeded and influenced many of his later works as a comic artist/ story teller. narrative which is the outer-factual world, into smaller narratives in his work. Azuma suggests that this is the characteristic of first wave 'otaku' generation, regarding this case. So we can now believe that Ishinomori Shotaro as a writer who is concerned with Japanese conditions since the 60s, also depict Japan's 1988 economic 'Post Bubble' era through parts of KRB's TV serial. It would be hard to imagine that he does not read how factory shuts in the outside world, along with criminal organizations entwined with politicians and celebrities, or imagining him not deriving them into art works and fictional stories.
An observer, seeing briefly on Ishinomori's background and Kamen Rider Black's 'life' inside the first episode, should use database extracted from first episode of KRB, as the fictional entity reveal its biography. This can be done by listing vast story of evil deeds, anxiety, animal (spider, and grasshopper) based monsters, enacted in a visually, relatively dark or lonely spaces (while in contrast the scene is shown in daylight). Another narration to observe at this stage would be the representation of evil in "Gorgom". This is the name of an underground organization and how they in the beginning coerce Koutarou Minami to fulfil their need. Koutarou represents a typical lonesome hero. Here, an observer might note how the possible audience, children and teenagers can relate to loneliness they encountered. The changing, surrounding world is a part intertwined with the show through depiction of Koutarou's loneliness. The lore told by Gorgom priests about the Century King who said "shall rule the world", through abduction of two boys said to be its reincarnated bodies. Facts found in the show may represent how younger people controlled by adults in difficult tasks without their consent.
Actions such as change, as another part was unveiled as secrets from the story, also stand to construct the whole biographic or historical background of fictional characters as written by the author can also be seen as another node or parts to observe.
A change is not only happening in shape-shifting Koutarou into KRB; but also to his life, as he now lost Nobuhiko and his foster father for good. Change also occurred in insects and other animal in the show as they lost appropriate shape, turning them to look uncanny. They change, or being cut and paste into the human shape in the depicting of kaijins/ humanoid monster. An interesting fact might be traced here as both the concept change and different-peculiar-strange-uncanny, can be depicted in Japan's kanji character 「変」(hen/ kawa-ru). This might resemble how incomplete a soul of a teenager's life would be.
Examples above about reading the nodes inside KRB to depict 'exchange of value' attached to the poor boy Koutarou might act as a good anchor to start understanding what the TV show was all about, without asking to the author, Ishinomori. In Gorgom's gaze, Koutarou's value were as low as traded animals or machines sold in stores. These fictional entities may exchange in roles, in a loop: youth to commodity to victim back into youth again. By writing KRB's official biography as a TV show, data can be extracted: " database about humanoid creatures 5 could then be used to trace collaborative and shape alteration things like collaboration on anything comes from outside Indonesia in their future (monsters, also shape-shifting heroes).
Up to this point, what blurted before as assumptions started to gain more stable role as a research data. Hypothesis such as "collaboration might happen driven by the affect toward KRB" probably revealed and lead to the ontological step of defining fictional character in Indonesia. Deeper data mining and observation on more episodes of KRB will support many more assumptions, but in this stage there's already a framework to step on. Networks in KRB built from more series. What kind of similarities representing Japan-Indonesia at the moment the series was broadcasted can be traced? Links to "Indonesia-Japan Nowadays"; or other fictional entity driven cases can also visited. The most important part of this investigation is that the knowledge brought by the fictional entity can be suggested in a role. A role imagined as 'active' actors participating in cultural (re)productions. Parts are not only dissected, but also being observed and investigated.
As explained throughout the text, the mission of this article is to seek out, to pursue a method to observe fictional entities. Those explained above are examples on how the observation process might work. The observation might concluded after worldly themes found explained in deeper and reflective ways, together with specific cases and probable frameworks constructed by the researcher. It can only be built along with proper research questions, fair amount of resources and a carefully designed timeline. Concepts such as economic insecurity and violence seen by families through newspapers and TV news happened in the world and it might fuel collective minds to relate to specific concepts such as violence during the show (for example). Regarding what the show told as a story representing violence, came out further questions such as "who really did the violence (through hidden backstage)?", "Is it politicians with their ugly pursuant of power?", "Is it scientists who made modern technologies but then using it to military purposes?", "Is it celebrities, paid to cover up the ill-mannered side of the world with their charisma, singing lullaby for the world so it could sleep and not thinking on solutions?". These questions would lead to the next projects involving fictional entities CONCLUSION By using the method, one should use these facts considerably in a research, regarding the wide area it may cover and what correlation it has while discussing the fictional entity. However, this article might still had flaws to start a complete methodological framework pursuant. It actually still has a long way ahead until it's appropriate to use as a research tool. Many more evaluations were needed before this project really conducted as a research project. This method is also in no means, said originally constructed. The model used as a method toward transnational media, somehow still similar to Appadurai team's collective essay in "Social Life of Things", to how Azuma suggests a narrative reading model by otaku.

How it explained nodes/database assemble in networks might resemble what
Deleuze say about rhizomes in cultural products, or Latour's term actant in actor-network theory, also lending Todorov's term grammatical actant, all these jargons can be described in the same manner: strategies to pull up-front the fictional entity as research object. In the future, hopefully dissecting nodes of culture would not stop only at "one organism", one entity only to observe. If the method was used in more cases of fictional entity, altogether with their own cases and results, there are possibilities to approach "the network" as a larger entity. This model, may be evaluated together with its strength and weaknesses. It supposed to open further discussion about future methods, treating nodes which are believed as "passive" in culture, as a subject one can investigate. Fictional entities, in the sense of participant subject in a research might not be appropriate regarding common sense of doing proper research. However, regarding a fictional entity as a participant, an actor or a subject, hopefully still has its advantages. It brought strategies and boundaries and challenge them to reveal more knowledge about fictional entities as a part of human culture entering 21 st century. To dissect a fictional entity in its own nature and examine by cutting them into parts, can be seen like how a child cut an insect open to see its inner organs. Furthermore, it is quite uncanny that a researcher needed to pick Kamenrider Black, a fictional character looks like a バ ッ タ ー "batta"; a grasshopper, to 'tell their story' and 'what they really are' by dissecting its parts.