Episode division method in comics by using frequency of personages' appearance

Abstract

This paper propose a method for dividing story in a comic by episode. In recent years, it has been possible to search comics by using bibliographic information such as publishers and authors. It, however, is still difficult to search the comics by focusing on the contents of them. To solve the problem, we aim to develop a system to search an intended episode of a comic. To achieve this goal, we focus on the frequency of personages' appearance. This idea is based on hypothesis that the trend of personages appearance relates to the episode's progress in comics. Our experiment so far revealed that weighting the importance of personages (e.g., main character and rival character) can contribute to divide episodes correctly.