I’m safely back in Japan after a pleasant JAL flight from San Diego. As usual, it’ll take some time for me to get back into “Japan mode,” getting used to seeing whipped cream sandwiches and “large” iced coffee that are not very large at all for sale in convenience stores. Right now the biggest challenge for me is to defeat the jet lag that’s threatening to pull me down into sweet sleep in the middle of the afternoon…
One of the great archetypes of modern anime stories is the “harem-mono” (harem type), which generally features an indecisive male character who finds himself surrounded by several beautiful girls, all of whom are in love with him. While the first harem anime is thought to be the groundbreaking Urusei Yatsura, about a jealous space alien princess named Lum and her eternally unfaithful boyfriend Ataru, the genre arguably goes back 1,000 years to The Tale of Genji, about the many loves of the playboy son of a fictional Japanese emperor. As the harem genre developed through the 1990s and 2000s, through now-classic shows like Tenchi Muyo and Love Hina and Ichigo 100%, new ideas had to be added to keep things interesting for fans, including stories involving zombies, supernatural fox spirits, Cthulhu-mythos monsters, reverse harems and pretty much anything else you can imagine. One show many fans have been waiting eagerly for is the latest innovation in the harem genre, monster girls, with the new Monster Musume no Iru Nichijou series. I’m loving the show so far, how about you?
I get a lot of emails from J-List customers who are planning trips to Japan and want me to recommend some sights they should see while they’re here. Since it’s difficult to reply meaningfully to each of these emails, I made a basic blog post on the J-List side blog listing places I think are worth visiting, and other things to keep in mind when planning a trip to Japan. Now there might be a new excuse to plan a visit in the near future: an official Eva-themed shinkansen bullet train. To commemorate the 40th anniversary of the opening of the shinkansen to Japan’s southernmost island of Kyushu, as well as the 20th anniversary of the airing of Evangelion, a specially painted 500-series high-speed train running at 320 kph/200 mph will make daily runs between Fukuoka, Kyushu and Osaka. Considering the intensity of anime fans in Japan — when Lawson opened an Eva-themed convenience store at the site of NERV in Hakone, fans flocked to it from all over Japan, overloading the store until they had to close it — I wouldn’t be surprised if Kyushu experiences a big boom in “otaku tourism” this fall. It’d totally be fun to get a group together and ride the train while cosplaying Eva characters. Who’s with me?
Speaking of monster girls, we’ve got some good news: Lightning Warrior Raidy III, the awesome third chapter in the popular yuri fighting RPG series, is in stock and shipping now. The limited edition we have for you comes with a large Japan-style box, game and high quality color manual, plus 12 collectable cards based on the characters in the game.
