Cross-media narrative of anime in YOASOBI and EVE music videos

This paper discusses twenty-three original music videos by Japanese music artists YOASOBI and EVE. These works are not only narrative music videos but are also entirely created through animation techniques. As animation products from Japan, these music videos share common forms, elements, and components with the narratives of the anime medium. Therefore, we use two methodological tools, starting from anime as a medium and its cross-media movements, which have been studied by various scholars, and adopting tools from music video analysis and anime studies. The first is a systematic analysis of these narrative and animated music videos, and the second is a comparative study. The goal is to identify the shared components with anime, which go beyond the design of characters, sharing themes, scenarios, narrative forms, stories, and animation techniques alongside other elements. In addition to discussing these music videos as anime works, the most representative aspect is that anime finds in these original music videos new forms of expansion and dissemination that support it as a popular transmedia medium in continuous growth, establishing synergies with other industries and media, as it has already done with videogames.