J-List is busy selling awesome products at the San Diego Comic-Con in booth 4929, in the “Anime Alley” part of the dealers’ room. We hope you’ll come by our booth and check out all the great products (and free stuff) we’ve got for you. If you can’t be at the show, never fear, since we’re continuing our site-wide 10% off sale for you!
Being a native of San Diego (well, no one is actually from here — I moved from the East Coast at the age of 12, but you know what I mean), it’s been a lot of fun to see how the San Diego Comic-Con has grown and evolved over the years. I first attended SDCC in 1985, right as anime-related fandom was coming into its own, and I remember hunting for Macross soundtrack albums and plastic models, which I mostly bought because of the amazing Haruhiko Mikimoto art on the covers. There were only 6000 fans at the event back in those days, and the entire show fit inside the comparatively tiny San Diego Performing Arts Center, a far cry from the 140,000+ attendance we enjoy now. A few years later I was lucky enough to be in one of the anime viewing rooms when some staff from Tokuma Shoten came in and played a just-released film called Tonari no Totoro, mainly to gauge what kind of response American fans might have to their newest character. (We all know how that turned out.) No one knew back then that the Comic-Con would go on to become the premier Mecca for all things nerdy, or that geek culture would go as mainstream as it has now, but I’m really glad I’ve been able to watch it all unfold.
During my time in Japan, I’ve been able to observe some of the more interesting traits of the females around me. Japanese girls in their teens or 20s are generally in touch with their “inner kawaii” and are capable of making a wide range of cute manga-like gestures and facial expressions without warning. Japanese females can be extremely group-oriented creatures, and seem unable to go to the bathroom without bringing their friends with them, a social phenomenon called called tsureshon, or “group pee.” Another interesting feature of Japanese females is the tendency of many of them to have crooked teeth, called 八重歯 yaeba (pronounced ya-eh-ba). Instead of being viewed as a negative, as it would surely be in the West, yaeba are often thought of as being cute, and many idols and singers use their imperfect teeth as a “charm point” to win fans. Since moe is all about the adorable imperfections that make us feel love towards female anime characters, crooked yaeba teeth are a popular fixture in anime characters, represented two-dimensionally as a single fang protruding from the mouth. So, what do you think about crooked Japanese teeth?
Will you be attending the San Diego Comic-con? Then be sure and visit our booth (#4929, in the “Anime Alley” section of the dealers’ room) to get some cool free stuff, including our trademark J-List pocket tissues, we’ve got a great gift just for visitors at the show: an original hachimaki headband that that proclaims your status as an オタク (otaku), hand printed in Kyoto. Free with a purchase from our booth at the show!
J-List will be at the San Diego Comic-Con in a big way, with tons of awesome T-shirts, English-translated visual novels, sexy figures, plush toys, Tentacle Grape, and other items that we’ve spent all year preparing for you. We decided to extend last week’s sale for another week, giving all the fans not lucky enough to be in San Diego a chance to save some money. So through the end of Monday, 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.)
