Was Your First Crush an Anime Crush? Tell Us!
One of the more embarrassing questions we all face is, who was your first crush? For most people growing up, it would have generally been a famous actor or singer who caught our eye and engaged our imagination for a time. For me growing up in the late 1970s, it was a toss-up between Olivia Newton-John, Battlestar Galactica-era Jane Seymour and…Nova from Star Blazers, who was arguably the first female character in anime cute and/or complex enough to obsess about. (Fujiko from Lupin III would have made a decent anime crush, had I known of her existence at the time.) Seeing the first really intense love story in anime — the original SDF Macross — with its love triangle between Minmei, Misa and Hikaru, also amazed me, since it was nothing that had been present in animation before, and it forced you to rationalize why you preferred this romantic outcome or that. I know from talking with J-List customers on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram that crushing on anime characters growing up is not a rare thing at all, and many have admitted to being infatuated with on Misty and Ash from Pokemon, Sakura from Cardcaptura Sakura, Sailor Mercury, Tuxedo Mask, Naruto, and many others. Now that we’re more grown up and worldly, we no longer talk about our anime crush, but about how awesome our 2D waifu or husbando is. It’s totally different, right? Right?
A big change is coming in Japan, literally the end of an era. The current Japanese Emperor Akihito will be retiring and abdicating his throne at the end of the year, something that’s unprecedented in 2000 years of Imperial reign, causing the Japanese legislature to pass a series of laws to manage the succession. On January 1st, his son Naruhito will become Emperor, a role defined in Japan’s Constitution as the symbolic and ceremonial head of the Japanese people. In addition to the Western calendar, Japanese refer to dates according to the current Imperial reign, and you become quite adept at working with this system after a while. I was born in Showa 43, and came to Japan in Heisei 3. My kids were born in Heisei 7 and 8, J-List was founded in Heisei 8, and so on. The current year is Heisei 29. A new Imperial era will begin with Emperor Naruto, ending the era of Heisei forever and allowing the current Emperor to have a well-deserved rest. I wonder what the new era will be called!
J-List stocks lots of fun Japanese snacks, and the closer we get to autumn, the more awesome our snack lineup is going to be. And we’ve got a special treat: a limited Pepsi Special Halloween Pack, which comes with seasonal candies and other fun things to eat which are only available during this period. Best of all, there’s a limited Pepsi Halloween Cola, which looks suspiciously like the legendary Sakura Pepsi to is. Order a set now!
