YU YU HAKUSHO FIRST EPISODE: A semiotic narrative analysis

This paper aims to analyze the meanings and feelings represented by semiotic elements available in the first episode of the anime Yu Yu Hakusho. The theoretical approach adopted is the Semiotic Cultural Psychology (SCP) in which considers human beings as meaning makers in the world through the mediation of signs. In this paper we consider signs from the Peirce perspective as the representation of objects in the real world and divided into symbols, indexes and icons. From SCP we considered how these signs can represent mediation by pleromatization and schematization in order to understand meanings and feelings represented by field-like signs and point-like signs. In the excerpt from this article, we selected the first episode of the anime Yu Yu Hakusho to understand how meanings and feelings are regulated through existing complexes of signs during the narrative. To achieve this, we cataloged the main semiotic elements of the episode, classifying them as point-like signs or field-like signs. Subsequently, we analyzed which of these signs were part of a semiotic hybrid complex (pleromatization/field-like signs/hyper-generalization) regulating feelings related to the narrative and which expressed constructed and shared meanings (schematization/point-like signs/generalization). In the results, we found that semiotic elements can be considered as narrative devices to involve the viewer in the story based on the intentionality of the author. In the Yu Yu Hakusho first episode, the intentionality is based in the presentation of the character Yusuke and the creation of feelings related to him. In this sense, in order to present who Yusuke is, point-like signs were identified representing some characteristic about him. In the second part of the episode, there was a predominance of field-like signs in order to create some feelings about Yusuke based on the empathy constructed in the first part of the narrative. Then, as related in the literature, mediations by schematization and pleromatization acted all the time in order to relate cognitive elements (meanings constructed about Yusuke) and effective elements (feelings to be felt for Yusuke).