Anime, originated from Japan, is one of the most influential cultural products in modern society and is especially popular among younger generations. The popularity of anime reflects important cultural evolutions in our society. Despite existing research on anime as a cultural phenomenon, we still have a limited understanding of how anime really evolves over the years. In this study, using a large-scale multimodal dataset of anime characters from an anime review site, we applied computational methods that integrate textual, visual, and production features of anime characters with online popularity traces. By combining LLM-extracted personality features with avatar features, we identify recurring personality archetypes and visual tropes with their temporal evolution over the past decades. We found that the target audience of anime has undergone a systematic shift from children to a maturing audience of teenagers and young adults over time. Character design has been undergoing moe-ification, with softer or sexualized female traits becoming increasingly prominent since the 2000s. Some personality archetypes are often visually predictable, yet audiences also tend to prefer less conventionalized characters. Finally, we reveal that visual signals play a more dominant role than personality traits in shaping audience preferences, with features such as moe-style faces and mechanical designs contributing greatly to popularity. These findings offer insights into the broader dynamics of anime's cultural and creative practices.

翻译：动漫起源于日本，是现代社会中最具影响力的文化产物之一，尤其在年轻群体中广受欢迎。动漫的流行反映了社会重要的文化演变。尽管已有关于动漫作为文化现象的研究，我们对其多年来究竟如何演变的理解仍十分有限。在本研究中，利用来自动漫评论网站的大规模动漫角色多模态数据集，我们应用了整合动漫角色文本、视觉与生产特征及其在线流行度轨迹的计算方法。通过将大语言模型提取的人格特征与虚拟形象特征相结合，我们识别出反复出现的人格原型与视觉套路及其过去几十年的时间演变趋势。研究发现，动漫的目标受众已系统性地从儿童转向逐渐成熟的青少年与年轻成人群体。自2000年代以来，角色设计经历了"萌化"过程，柔和或性化的女性特征日益显著。某些人格原型在视觉上常可预测，但观众也倾向于偏好非传统化的角色。最后，我们揭示出视觉信号在塑造观众偏好中比人格特质起更主导的作用，其中萌系面容与机械设计等特征对流行度贡献显著。这些发现为理解动漫文化创意实践的更广泛动态提供了洞见。