Applying MBTI to analyzing shōnen manga characters : A case study of My Hero Academia

• Main Author: Suvanto, Marttaleena
• Format: Others
• Language: English
• Published: Högskolan Dalarna, Japanska 2020
• Subjects: Japanese; shōnen manga; My Hero Academia; Myers-Briggs Type Indicator; Languages and Literature; Språk och litteratur
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:du-35934

This is a case study of a popular shōnen manga, My Hero Academia, written andillustrated by Kōhei Horikoshi. The study’s aim is to determine the personality typesof five characters, while utilizing the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. The secondaryaim is finding out which details help in the MBTI analysis and which do not. Thethird aim is to look into what are the difficulties of executing this kind of study. Theinitial focus of the analysis was the characters’ actions, dialogue, body language,facial expressions, use of role language and how the manga artist utilizes theJapanese 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 acombination of the characters’ actions, speech, body language, behavior, andexpressions. In addition, the method of analysis occasionally depends on thecharacter in question. While the scripture does not help in gaining the results, thechoice of language for the characters gives additional affirmation for the resultsbut does not work by itself to affirm any MBTI types. The main challenge is decidingwhich of the MBTI type pair polarities has more value to the character’s personalityto become the preference.