The BBC has weighed in on the whole “Is-manga-child-porn?” argument with an online article and radio show with the balanced headline: “Why hasn’t Japan banned child-porn comics?”? James Fletcher reports from Tokyo on this now slightly tired issue. Posters of elfin-faced, doe-eyed cartoon heroines, many of them scantily clad and impossibly proportioned, turn the cavernous…

This Monday it’s Coming-of-Age Day in Japan. On top of being a national holiday for everyone, if you are turning 20 you get to dress up in a kimono and attend a ceremony where you become a legal adult. Asagaya Loft A has its own take on the rite of passage, though. While officially the…

A 55-year-old adjunct professor at Taisho University, a private college in the Sugamo area of north Tokyo, has resigned for stripping off on campus. The university announced that one of its faculty staff has performed an act that was “counter to public morals” at around 3pm on January 8th. The unnamed lecturer was swiftly taken…

We’re a bit late with this but we love it. Live2D Euclid is a system created by Live2D to animate characters in a rich 3D environment. Reported by the reliable chaps at DigInfo, the technology allows you to interact with 2D illustrations in a 3D space. Of course, the demo is an anime girl character!…

Over the weekend we reported on the bizarre case of the 55-year-old lecturer found completely naked on the campus of Taisho University, where he worked. It was at 3pm that students stumbled across the man in a corridor without any clothes on. Then there were few details so we could only speculate… Now the truth…

Remember the Zettai Ryouiki Flashing Skirt? We blogged about it late last year as a cool gadget-cum-cosplay item that really draws attention to that sexy area of the upper thigh, known as zettai ryouki (“the absolute zone”). In this skirt, developed by Kiyoyuki Amano of Kayac Inc, multi-colored flashing lights have been added to a…

It just goes to prove: being an middle-aged otaku does not mean you stop being attractive to the opposite sex. Toshio Okada, the famous anime producer and writer, and co-founder of Gainax (Evangelion), has been exposed as a mass philander. The 56-year-old chubby otaku had his cat let out of the bag when a picture…

A few years ago people started talking about the “Chiisai Ojisan” — the “tiny uncle”. He was first reported in 2009 and is said to live around a shrine in west Tokyo. Apparently measuring no more than 20cm, the small man may be some sort of yokai (Japanese sprite). As we’ve written before, Japanese erotica…

Another day, another media article about sexlessness in Japan. This time it was an article by Jiji that got republished on The Japan Times. It focuses on a survey from last September by the Japan Family Planning Association about married couples. It found that 49.3% of people said they had had no sex in the…

The threat announced by ISIS to execute two Japanese hostages, Kenji Goto and Haruna Yukawa, unless the government pays them $200 million shocked many. But not Japanese netizens. They responded with amusement — by mocking the extremists through a series of composite images on social media. Yes, a Photoshop contest is apparently the best response…