As we approach the end of the year, I’d like to step back and take stock of what’s going right and wrong with this column. I came in with no clear idea of what I wanted to do, so in the beginning, I just wrote about a few topics that I found amusing and tried to see if things flowed from there.

The problem with this format, in my mind, is that what I find amusing and what all of you find amusing is vastly different. I’m an old hand at the Japanese moe market, and things that you would find fascinating or fun, I barely think about in passing. So I’m really digging down into the niche stuff, while I’m sure there are a wealth of topics I haven’t delved into yet that would make better columns.

So, with a couple months of columns under my belt, I’d like to take this holiday break to find out what’s working and what isn’t. If any of you want to tell me what I’m doing right and what I’m doing wrong, I’m listening. Hopefully I’ll come back in 2008 with renewed purpose and another flood of random tidbits about moe-moe culture.

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The holiday season has arrived, readers! Wake up with a lighter step! Take things with a warmer stride! And do your part to fight back against the Christmas-can-die-in-a-fire callousness.
(Seriously folks, you get semi-free stuff and certainly free food! Lighten up!)

But I’ll tell you, I personally am looking forward to something better than my Amazon Wish List. (If I had one anyway:)

COMIC MARKET 73* is on Dec 29th through the 31st in Tokyo! A motherlode more than your existing motherlode of doujinshi awaits!!!

*[The quick & dirty explanation is that Comic Market (Comiket) is a bi-annual Japanese small press convention of independant comic creators & cosplayers, offering primarily independent comics called “doujinshi.”]

As an artist & manga fan, I’m reminded around this time of year just how lucky we are to be able to reach media like this. Even if one hasn’t set foot in Japan, to think that one can actually sample, buy and communicate with the myriad creators at Comiket courtesy of the Internet is just mindboggling! And more so than before, there are individuals like the writers at Heisei Democracy, bold bloggers like Danny Choo, or able-bodied and strong willed artists and fans who are making their way to Comiket and experiencing the event firsthand. Someday, I hope to join them, and see the faces behind my favorite circles as well. I’ve GOT TO meet Himukai Yuji.

But, for now as I approach a real milestone of my life (30 years on this planet!) I look to Comiket news all over the net, steeple my fingers and itch for deliveries to my favorite mail order catalogues, and prepare to do what comes natural to me — geek the heck out. Add on the defensive buffs of Christmas holiday fever (+5 Happiness, Luck & WellWishes) , New Years Eve drunken schenanigans (+10 charisma, -6 agility) and my birthday to cap off the winter (30% critical up), and I personally can’t help but be a bit… jolly!

Likewise, more than new Iphones or 1080p TV’s… what events this holiday season are you all looking forward to?

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While this week is supposed to be a Burning article, those tend not to be as fun to write as the Sprouting articles, and I can’t let an excuse to write about maid cafes slip by.

The tastefully named Richard Kim told you earlier this week that maid cafes are easy to start and keep open, but that’s not the whole truth. The market for cosplay cafes, and maid cafes in particular, is relentless and cutthroat, and the prospects for a new maid cafe are dim if they enter a saturated market without a solid plan to bring in a steady clientele.

So, to carve out a steady clientele and a distinct niche in the maid cafe world, everyone supplements their cosplaying girls with a gimmick. @home saboh has two stores: one which offers girls dressed in traditional Japanese clothing, and one with a much more “standard” maid atmosphere. Akiba Maid de Casino Guild is, well, a casino with maids as the dealers. Cafe Nagomi, which is famous enough to have been on television several times, is an imouto (little sister) cafe. I can name a million more stores and their gimmicks, from maid foot massages to a few hours of board games and rock-paper-scissors.

Not that I’ve been to any of these places, of course. You just, uh, hear about them in my line of work is all.

But what’s even more fascinating about the maid cafe industry is its willingness to change not just from store to store, but from week to week in order to retain customer interest. Nagomi is a great example of this - on their website, they are currently touting a pajama-themed event, where the little sister costumes get traded out for PJs. Nearby maid cafe Pinafore has become a popular location for video game events, with special days for Idol Mahjongg Suchi Pai as well as an upcoming event for soon-to-be-released gal game Period (warning: link not safe for work). Tsundere day, free cosplay day, animal day, even “twin tails with ribbons” day, if there’s some kind of fetish that will draw in extra customers for the day, these cafes have to be willing to cater to it if they want to survive.

There’s a shoujo manga currently running called Kaichou ha Maid-sama about a girl who works in such a maid cafe. Along with being one of the best crossover appeal manga currently in print (for some odd reason, Akiba guys LOVE reading about well-drawn girls in maid outfits), it’s a pretty good depiction of the kind of work that goes into running a special event each week, from extra costuming to acting lessons - I highly recommend it to anyone who’s even vaguely interested in the phenomenon.

So if you’re in Japan, and you’re not going to take my suggestion of walking into the basement of a game store and reading the genres of porn games to yourself, try checking out the maid cafes just to see the cosplay equivalent of an arms race. It’s a fascinating example of a market that forces itself to evolve weekly.

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Maid cafes are a relatively recent phenomenon in Japan that has become fairly popular, even among non-otaku. If you go to any sites that cover modern Japanese life and culture, you are likely to eventually run into an article on the now almost ubiquitous maid café.

The allure isn’t hard to understand. Cute girls dressed up as maids (and in some cases, guys as butlers), serving you a variety of (hopefully) tasty food and drink, in a place where no one will judge you for being there. It’s kind of like a private club, without the steep membership requirements.

And so, a combination of that feeling, an otaku-wide love of maids, and the recent boom in moe culture in Japan have led to a wide range of maid cafes being opened across the nation. They’re profitable, not too hard to start and maintain, and like I’ve said, popular. 

A segment of the non-Japanese otaku population laments the lack of maid cafes in their countries, wishing that one would be started so they could enjoy the same experience as their Japanese counterparts.

The interesting thing is, we already have them in the United States. We just call them “Hooters”. 

Now, before you start arguing about how Hooters isn’t the same, how they’re not maids, etc., please hear me out. First, I’m not saying that Hooters is the exact same thing as a maid café. However, it’s effectively the American equivalent.

Hooters is a restaurant chain whose main allure are the waitresses. While some might claim that their buffalo wings are the reason that a lot of people go back, time after time, I think that most people would agree that the reason most people go to Hooters are the women. 

In any case, the similarities between a maid café and Hooters are striking. 

a)      a place where specialty waitresses (maids, women who are particularly well endowed) serve the patrons

b)      a place where one feels that they will not be judged by the other people there

c)      a place that is fairly well known to a growing part of the population

While the methods might be different (cute and moe versus sex appeal), the end result is the same – bring customers in to enjoy the atmosphere and service (and spend money). 

Unfortunately, there will likely not ever be a Japanese style maid café in the U.S. for a good, long while. While Japan is in the midst of an ‘otaku boom’, where fannish things are more tolerated, things here are still at the point where a café where all of the waitresses had to wear maid outfits might be seen as weird, at the very least, if not out and out fetishistic.

But if there were “real” maid cafes in the U.S. (or whatever country you live in, not counting Japan), would you patronize them? Why? If not, why not? Are there any other kinds of café that might entice you?

(Personally, I’d like to see a “bunny girls in glasses” café.)

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