Analysis of Size Distributions of Fictional Characters: From Pokémon to Godzilla

Abstract

In this letter, the size (height and weight) of fictional characters in animations, superhero series, movies, and other media is studied. We find that the distributions of character height and weight approximately follow lognormal distributions in common to five selected works. We propose a mechanism governing this lognormal behavior based on the principle of maximum entropy and the Weber-Fechner law. Moreover, we provide a comparison to the size distributions of real animals. Although the size distributions of fictional characters and real animals are both lognormal, the distributions are essentially different, particularly in the scaling between height and weight.