(The J-List site was down for a few hours due to a database hiccup, but all is well now.)
Winter is here in Japan, which is always a bit of a trial for me, as I’m from balmy San Diego. Winters in the Kanto (Tokyo) area are generally mild, with a small amount of snowfall 1-2 times each year and enough snow to actually cause inconvenience only once every five years or so. In addition to visiting hot springs, the Japanese love to go skiing at Japan’s many ski resorts, though not this year: thanks to extremely warm temperatures, many ski resorts have almost no snow, forcing some to cancel the remainder of their season. Every day the news reports on how everyone in ski-related industries is praying for snow, any snow, to somehow save the remainder of their snow season.
If you watch five minutes of anime, you’ll probably notice some form of “fan service,” a term for anything that creators put into a fictional work for the appreciation of serious fans. Of course, there are many kinds of fan service, including the occasional pantyshot from a mainstream series like Monogatari; the truly ecchi story situations of a show like Valkyrie Drive Mermaid; a strong emotional payoffs, like the crying scene in K-On!; or phrases designed to delight fans, like adding a reference to the “Kessel Run” to a certain sci-fi film. Occasionally there are discussions on J-List’s Facebook page about why a given series will insert, say, a boob jiggle for no particular reason, and whether this means Japan is a hopelessly perverted country. My own take is that one of the reasons we’re all drawn to Japan is that they’re good at telling stories that have an “edge,” telling highly dramatic stories with love and sex and, yes, occasional convenient gusts of wind. Japan is attractive to fans around the world exactly because it refuses to sterilize its own pop culture to the point of being totally bland, as we do all too often in the U.S. While there’s a lot of focus on the subject of fan service in anime these days, it’s not a new thing at all, having been well represented in such classics as Space Battleship Yamato, Sailor Moon and more.
J-List loves to bring you fun and unique products from Japan, and we’re loaded with awesome Star Wars toys, snacks and other products that are popular in Japan right now. Browse these fun items during out $25-off-EMS-sale right now!
