J-List will be attending Anime Expo this year at booth 1319. We hope you’ll come by our booth and check out all the cool products we’ve got for you. If you can’t be at the show, don’t fret, since we’ve got a great side-wide 10% off sale for you!
Sometimes I think my family would make the basis for an interesting 4-koma (4-panel) manga series along the lines of Darling wa Gaikokujin, a comic about a Japanese woman who thinks she’s found the “perfect” American husband but is surprised when things don’t always go as she expects. In the tradition of every magical girl show ever, my daughter would be the main character, since she’s a bit おっちょこちょい occhokochoi, translatable as “clumsy in a cute way,” always needing help from everyone around her just like Usagi, Doremi, Madoka, and many others. Her brother would be a glasses-wearing egghead, constantly pointing out her faults, which is what he does already, and we could make jokes based on his over-analytical approach to English compared with her tendency to use English words freely without actually knowing what they mean. I think I’d make a pretty cool anime father character, a good-hearted but bumbling American who loves Japanese hot spring baths and who collects useless information about Japan that even Japanese don’t know, like how to write the kanji for “rose” (it’s 薔薇, and my being able to write this is what made my wife decide to go out with me). Having my wife as the president of the company (since my wife is president of J-List) would create some humorous situations, too — she could try to pull rank on her husband while at home — while providing a fresh model for women in Japanese pop culture. I’ve even thought of a name for the manga: お宅のパパは外国人 Otaku no Papa wa Gaikokujin, meaning Your Father is a Foreigner, but using the word otaku to add a double meaning.
One thing I love about Japan is that it’s generally a very safe place free from crime and violence, and even in the “most dangerous” part of Tokyo (the Kabuki-cho region of Shinjuku, home of some shady bars and other establishments) you’d never actually feel unsafe. Perhaps it’s because of this fact that when murders do happen, they often seem especially cruel and senseless. One year a woman killed her (allegedly abusive) husband by hitting him a wine bottle, then tried to dispose of his body by cutting it up and hiding the parts in different corners of Tokyo. In another sad event, a 16-year-old girl decapitated her 15-year-old classmate. In 2012 Japan’s gaming community was shocked by news that Minamino Shingo, the Nitroplus producer responsible for the music in such games as Demonbane and Steins;Gate, had been stabbed to death by a random passer-by with a knife, sadly a common enough event to have a name (通り魔 tohri-ma meaning “a devil passing by on the street”). The crime was committed by recently-released-from-prison Kyozo Isohi, who gave as his reason that he wanted to die but was too cowardly to commit suicide, so he committed an unforgivable crime so he’d receive the death penalty. Well, Mr. Isohi got his wish, with a verdict of death being handed down by a court last Friday.
Anime Expo starts on Thursday, and J-List will be there in booth 1319, selling tons of T-shirts, English-translated visual novels, sexy figures, plush toys, Tentacle Grape, and other items that we’ve spent all year preparing for you. But since not everyone can be at the show, we thought we’d do something cool for our fans, something like, oh, give a huge discount on all products for the duration of the show. So starting now through Sunday, California time, you can get 10% off any J-List order using code CONSALE. (As usual, the code can’t be used for items like iTunes cards, subscriptions and so on, sorry.)
