J-List is shipping out hundreds of packages daily, including Sailor Moon, Steins;Gate, Pokemon and kawaii cat-related products. In addition to our popular EMS Cash Back sale, which gives you up to $50 back when ordering from the site using EMS, we’re offering free shipping on all J-List anime and kanji T-shirts and shrinkwrapped visual novels shipping from San Diego, all month long!
This has been an interesting year for random anime-related memes from Japan. In January a man was walking with his girlfriend during a snowstorm when the couple was interviewed by a news crew. His romantic words – “walking with my lover in the snow gives me a ‘special feeling’ that I like a lot” – caused a jealous twitter user to tweet a screenshot of this scene with a negative comment. What happened next was amazing: hundreds of artists started drawing parodies of this scene but with their favorite anime character couples substituted, competing to make even more unlikely pairings, which became known as the #SpecialFeeling meme. A few months later another Twitter user created a Photoshop overlay showing a hand holding a pregnancy test, and suddenly every fan was Photoshopping hilarious pictures for the #PregnancyAnnouncement running gag. The latest concept to take over Japan’s Pixiv artist community is the 胸開きタートルネック “open-chested turtleneck sweater” meme, called “Keyhole Sweater” in English, in which artists draw their favorite character wearing “ribbed” sweaters with vertical lines and an open space above the chest. If you want to check out some of these fun images, follow J-List’s Twitter, Facebook and/or Tumblr accounts.
One anime I find myself enjoying this season is Denkigai no Hon’ya-san (Bookstore in Electric Town), a slice-of-life story about otakus working in a fictional version of the Tora no Ana bookstore in Akihabara. While all the characters have their charm, the star of the show is Sensei, a female otaku and budding manga artist who usually provides the most humor. No matter what she does, she’s confronted with her total lack of 女子力 joshi-ryoku or “girl power,” which cause her to do such unladylike things as wiping her face with a moist towel intended for the hands, not owning any sexy underwear at all and being a basket case when going on a date with her male co-worker, Umio. Sensei is fascinating in a similar way as Kuroneko from Oreimo in that we can learn something about the kokoro (inner heart) of modern otaku girls, and try to understand them better.
J-List has hundreds of Sailor Moon products in stock, and we keep getting more in every day, including a big shipment of items today. There’s plenty of time to get your order to you by Christmas thanks to our EMS Cash Back Sale, which gives you up to $50 in cash back (as a use-anytime store coupon) when you order using EMS. We’re also having a free shipping sale on all T-shirts and H-games that ship out of San Diego. So why not put in an order now?
