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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(WARNING: Almost none of the links in this column are work-safe. Do not view them in front of co-workers, family members, or federal agents.)

As the tastefully named Richard Kim told you on Tuesday, the Gal-game genre tends to fall into three major categories, each filled with dozens upon dozens of very similar games. As with any overcrowded genre, each game company expends a great deal of effort trying to differentiate itself from its competitors.

From monopolizing popular artists (see: Unison Shift and Itou Noizi) to developing famous scenario writers (see: TYPE-MOON and Nasu Kinoko) and even planning word-of-mouth infamy (see: 0verflow and School Days), there are a huge number of ways that a company can carve out a niche and a fanbase (see: Alice Soft and their never-ending series of strategy/conquest/harem/kitchen sink games).

The most amusing method companies use to distinguish their works is through the genre title. There’s no such thing as a Simulation Life Game (SLG) these days, and most developers won’t stand to see their game called a simple Adventure Game (ADV). No, we have such wondrous things as Dies Irae ~Also Sprach Zarathustra~ from Light, which declares itself a 学園伝奇バトルオペラADV, or “School Romance Battle Opera Adventure.”

The hit parade doesn’t stop there, either. Henshi~n, a cult classic about a boy who turns into cylindrical household objects near girls, is a “Metamorph Dramatic Love Comedy AVG.” Propeller’s latest game, Bullet Butlers , gets even more ridiculous. The game’s genre is listed as 銃と魔法と執事と主のファンタジーＡＶＧ, or “An adventure fantasy of guns, magic, butlers, and masters.”

My absolute favorite, though, is from Zanma Taisei Demonbane, one of the most famous works from Nitro+ - you may have seen the cleaned-up anime version of it, Kishin Houkou Demonbane. In its original game form, the genre was listed as 荒唐無稽スーパーロボットADV. This translates to “Preposterous Super Robot Adventure.” I’m not even taking any liberties with the translation there, that’s literally what it means.

Beyond the cheap chuckles, though, these genre titles are pretty good at letting people know exactly what’s in the game. Skim through the Giga online catalog and you’ll find hard-boiled action-adventures, jealous twin adventures, and alternate universe school adventures. If you just lumped them all under “adventure game,” there’d be absolutely no way of knowing what you were in for. Just like RPGs have been separated into various categories - Massively Multiplayer, Tactical, and Sit There Pressing X In Between Cut Scenes, for example - Japanese gal games have made sure to label themselves in such a way that no fan of a particular genre or Sprouting archetype can possibly miss it.

So if you ever walk into one of the basements of Akihabara, where the gal games are sold, do yourself a favor and skim through the titles. Not only will you get a good laugh, but you’ll usually find out exactly what’s inside and whether or not you’ll like it.

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A warning before I launch into this week’s column: none of the links I provide contain totally explicit images - though you’ll see some underwear flying around, literally and figuratively. They are mostly safe to view at work. However! Make sure you do not play any of these music clips within earshot of anyone who knows Japanese, because while these songs sound innocent, the lyrics are often tremendously explicit (in the first song, “yours is so big, I’m worried it won’t fit” is probably the least embarrassing line your Japanese-speaking co-workers can overhear). I also take no responsibility for loss of brain cells that may result from listening to any of the songs I mention.

With that said, this week’s column is about the polar opposite of last week’s subject matter. Yes, we’re going to be talking about a relatively young form of J-pop known as denpa.

To understand what denpa songs are, you have to understand what the term comes from. Denpa (電波) means “electro-magnetic wave” in Japanese, and denpa-kei (電波系), or denpa-type, is a term for the kind of strange people who seem to be listening to something that only they can hear (in other words, picking up some weird radio waves). It doesn’t just apply to the kind of weirdos who run around wearing tinfoil hats, though, it has come to extend to people who live off in their own little dream worlds and have trouble communicating with the real world (mostly otaku). So, in essence, denpa songs are songs made to appeal to these types of people.

As with such vaguely defined subculture concepts as moe, the definition of what makes a person or a song denpa can vary wildly depending on who you ask, but generally accepted features of denpa music are:

1) Music and vocals that are politely termed “overly enthusiastic,”and often intentionally horrid.
2) Lyrics that have no meaning (I know translators who’ve lost years of their life to denpa songs).
3) Frequent use of sound effects to fill space, usually sung (examples: “chu chu!” and “yaaaaaay!”).
4) An uncanny ability to get stuck in your head.

Most sources point to the opening of Maid in Heaven, an erotic game released in 1998, as the first denpa song. Conveniently, you can listen to it on YouTube if you really want to hear a maid singing about how thoroughly she’s going to sex you up.

The song that really defined the genre, though, came attached to another erotic game in 2001: Ren’ai Chu! You can hear more of the archetypal denpa stylings in that song: chintzy music, cheerfully clumsy harmony, constant repetition of cutesy noises (chu!), and a knack for sticking around in your brain. The Ren’ai CHU! song was the creation of a singer named KOTOKO, who gave the song its “unique” personality over the constant protests of her producer and composer. For better or worse, it was wildly popular and spawned a legion of imitators, including early earworms Da Pantsu! (2002) and Miko Miko Nurse! (2003).

The denpa style dominated the erotic game arena, creating minor celebrities out of poor singers, and it wasn’t long before it started leaking its way into more mainstream media. In 2004, Tsukuyomi Moon Phase inflicted Nekomimi Mode on the world, and these days you have the Lucky Star opening, which makes me want to murder baby rabbits every time I hear it.

But despite my constant insulting of the denpa genre, it’s not TOTALLY without merit. Denpa has evolved into a form of new wave/techno, and there are songs that actually have musical merit and have competent singers providing the vocals. I can’t name many of them at the moment, but there are also a few that are funny enough that you can forgive them for their faults (prime example: the music for Sega’s game for the Nintendo DS, Feel the Magic, which never fails to make me chuckle).

If, God forbid, you’re actually interested in hearing more denpa music, try checking out the works of ave;new, I’ve Sound, and MOSAIC.WAV - I’m pretty certain that you’ve never heard anything like it.

See you next week, and until then, I think I need to clean out my ears with a power drill.

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If you’ve watched enough anime, you may get the feeling that every young man in Japan is required to grow up next to a girl of equal age and disproportionately high attractiveness. It’s like the Sprouting version of a chicken in every bucket. This is the wildly popular osananajimi (”childhood friend”) archetype at work, and this is my subject for today.

It’s not hard to figure out why the osananajimi character is so valued by Sprouting circles. She works on many of the same principles as the classic “girl next door” - someone the main character feels instantly comfortable around, someone who the main character can’t possibly imagine living without - and also the person he’s least likely to consider when Old Man Biology decides that it’s time for things to get all awkward in a boy’s life.

It’s easy to root for such a friendly and familiar character, and those of us who didn’t grow up next door to an attractive member of the opposite gender can easily buy into the uncomplicated fantasy of your best friend gradually becoming your girlfriend. As mentioned before, no story with more than one possible love interest can go without an osananajimi. From Shiori in Tokimeki Memorial (1994) to Yurika in Martian Successor Nadesico (1997) to Saki in Genshiken (2002) and other countless other characters over the years, osananajimi are a staple of the genre - some would even say they’re a necessity.

I don’t have a problem with that, myself - my problem is when “we grew up together” and “we played together when we were kids” become a crutch for lazy writers, and that’s cropping up more and more often these days (please note that these crutches also exist for the little sister/big sister archetypes, but a childhood friend involves less justification, because of that whole incest taboo thing).

Making an osananajimi involves very little effort in terms of writing character histories and motivations, so it’s a great fallback for the unmotivated author. Want to justify a stunning goddess falling in love with some random schmuck? It’s because he was nice to her a few times when they were kids and she never forgot. How does Shuffle! account for nubile demigods converging on the same random schmuck? Why, the girls played with the random schmuck once and never forgot him, of course. A wealthy heiress devotes her life to a man she hasn’t seen in years - and is, in fact, expressly forbidden to marry - because he was nice to her when she was young and (you know what’s coming, right?) she never forgot him.

The list of osananajimi connections that test the limits of suspension of disbelief goes on and on. It’s getting dangerously close to the “God, not again” status that amnesiac protagonists have earned in American cinema, in my opinion.

But hey, I’m just one guy, and the osananajimi juggernaut will continue with or without me, so all I can do is pick out stories where the characters’ childhoods actually make sense. If you’re like me and are a sucker for a well-written osananajimi, Myself;Yourself has a cast made up mostly of people who grew up together and act accordingly, or you can pick up Genshiken in its many excellent forms and see how it pokes fun at the genre archetypes.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a long-overdue appointment with my copy of Tokimeki Memorial 2, where pretty much everyone is an osananajimi who meets you maybe once or twice when they’re young and (c’mon, you know I had to say it at least once more) never forgets.

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As many people know, I am a fan of the “meganekko” (眼鏡っ子), or “girl in glasses”. If you asked me why, the answer would be that I’ve always felt glasses equal intelligence, and I’ve always found intelligence to be attractive in a woman.

But what IS a meganekko? I will try to illustrate what I feel a meganekko is here. (please note that when I say “girl”, it also refers to boys – but writing “people in glasses” or “boys/girls in glasses” would get annoying really fast. And the guys are sometimes called “meganekkun”.)

“There is a deep and large gap between a “girl who wears glasses” and a “girl in glasses”! – Kuriko Kazetsubaki, Maburaho, Episode Five

I whole-heartedly believe that statement.

A “girl who wears glasses” is one that one that only wears their glasses when they have to. They usually either go for contacts, or suffer through their bad eyesight because they’re ashamed or something of wearing glasses.

A “girl in glasses” is one that wears their glasses most, if not all, of the time. They often times wear them due to their own actions – too much reading or studying, for example. These girls tend to be smart, or at the very least studious. There ARE non-intelligent meganekko, but they’re rare in media.

There are many examples of meganekko, in anime and in other forms of media. Yomiko Readman from the Read or Die series, is a prime example. For more generic examples, you’ve got the “cute scientist”, the “sexy librarian”, and the “hot teacher”.

Unfortunately, many people see meganekko and think, “Meh, a nerd.” And they pass them by for more “exciting” characters. I think the negative stereotype towards meganekko is sad – who says that smart girls can’t be sexy, or fun, or outgoing, or anything else? They can and often times are, especially with writers/artists designing them to be that way.

So get out there and support the meganekko, real and fictional! Show the world that they’re just as wonderful as everyone else!

Meganekko uber alles!

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I feel this strange urge to apologize for writing my column on time, but I will resist and dive straight into it.

As I mentioned last week, the Japanese anime and game industry has learned over the last few years that adding some random Sprouting-moe girls to a work will draw more fans. It doesn’t matter if the girl even fits the mood of the work at all - shoehorning a maid or a spunky childhood friend into your show will guarantee that some fans of that particular Sprouting type will give you their money.

There’s no better example of this kind of shoehorning than The SoulTaker. SoulTaker is a dark but generic action story (you might even call it Burning) which would have been forgotten quickly under normal circumstances. However, it was given extra shelf life by the insertion of a pink-haired, squeaky-voiced nurse named Komugi.

Komugi was a huge hit in the Sprouting crowd, spawning her own series and salvaging some measure of profitability for SoulTaker. She was also an extremely minor character. But her success wasn’t at all isolated.

Other studios took note of the sheer amount of money to be made from the Sprouting market, and the various Sprouting character archetypes became increasingly prevalent in Burning-type shows in more and more overt ways.

For example, maids started popping everywhere, whether they fit the setting or not - the bridge bunnies from Macross were replaced by bridge maids in shows like Gravion and Demonbane (admittedly, Demonbane started out as an adults-only visual novel, so it was meant to appeal to the Sprouting-obsessed male crowd from the very beginning, despite the giant robots). Capcom even added a useless little girl to the Devil May Cry anime to try and extract some extra money from a fanbase not usually inclined to watch a shirtless man perform over-the-top stunts while fighting demons.

What I term the “moefication” of anime doesn’t seem to be slowing down at all - fans vote with their wallets, after all, and the rewards for hitting the right chord with a moe-obsessed fandom are great. Every company is looking for the next Komugi-style gold mine to be merchandised and exploited, like the Shuffle! franchise or the Haruhi crew.

What do you think about the perceived need for any given show to have at least one girl who is made for the moe crowd? Is it annoying? Does it make a show more enjoyable? I’m curious about other people’s opinions on the matter. Personally, I’ve learned to accept it as the norm, though the more blatant the moe money grab, the less I enjoy watching a show.

See you next week for Feel the Burning, when I talk about a subject near and dear to my heart: the pile bunker.

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