Folklore in the Anime Media Mix: Variation, Hybridization, and the Persistence of Yokai

This thesis examines how Japanese folklore, specifically yokai, is adapted and sustained within the anime media mix through a diachronic study of Akuma Kun (1966, 1989, 2023). Rather than evaluating adaptation through fidelity to a source text, I argue that folklore persists through processes of variation, hybridization, and recombination. What allows these figures to endure is not accuracy, but recognizability, the ability of audiences to identify familiar motifs even as they are transformed across media and historical contexts. Focusing on Akuma Kun as a central case study, this project traces how each iteration restructures folkloric elements in response to changing industrial conditions, genre conventions, and audience expectations. The 1966 live-action series demonstrates an early logic of variation through fragmented transformation and motif-based recognition. The 1989 anime expands on this process through hybridization, particularly by integrating yokai with Western Faustian motifs. The 2023 adaptation, produced within a global streaming environment, reconfigures these elements within a more introspective and transnational framework while maintaining continuity through recognizable structures. Drawing on Marc Steinberg’s theory of the media mix, this thesis argues that yokai function as modular configurations of motifs that circulate across media rather than as fixed narrative entities. Linda Hutcheon’s model of adaptation and Michael Dylan Foster’s concept of the folkloresque further inform this analysis, but are extended here to account for a system in which authenticity is produced through recombination rather than preservation. By situating Akuma Kun within broader patterns of folklore adaptation, this study demonstrates how the media mix transforms folklore from a system of transmission into one of circulation. In doing so, it contributes to adaptation and cultural studies by proposing that folklore in contemporary media is sustained not through fidelity to its origins, but through its capacity to remain recognizable amid ongoing transformation.