Free Republic

Video URL is; https://youtu.be/ZbM6WbUw7Bs?list=PLg_CV0vugqaJ-4yQJ2WyabgZW1O1ACoqg

A Korean anime fan has proudly tied the knot with a pillowcase featuring the image of his favorite magical girl heroine. Heavy Rain asked the player, "how far would you go for love?" Would you go so far as to travel to another country? Would you kill a man? Or would you just decide that your soulmate was a fictional character and marry her image printed on a cotton pillowcase? A Korean otaku opted to go with the last option, wedding a dakimakura body pillow featuring the image of Fate Testarossa, one of the popular heroines of magical girl show...

True love can take many forms. In this case, it has taken the form of a Korean man falling in love with, and eventually marrying, a large pillow with a picture of a woman on it. Lee Jin-gyu fell for his 'dakimakura' - a kind of large, huggable pillow from Japan, often with a picture of a popular anime character printed on the side. In Lee's case, his beloved pillow has an image of Fate Testarossa, from the 'magical girl' anime series Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha. Now the 28-year-old otaku (a Japanese term that roughly translates to somewhere between 'obsessive'...

From Pokémon to Full Metal Panic, the anime industry is doing everything the rest of show biz isn't: embracing technology, coddling fans—and making a killing.           It was 2 a.m. when John Ledford heard the banging at his door. Stumbling from bed on that night in the fall of 1999, he threw on a robe over his boxers and opened the door of his Houston apartment to a twentysomething guy with glasses and a face full of freckles. Ledford was about to tell him he had the wrong apartment when the stranger launched into a speech....

Life Imitates Anime Okay, the Real World just keeps getting weirder and weirder. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.) Case in point -- this report from Agence France-Presse:A Japanese Internet whiz is tipped to become the world's fourth space tourist -- and he wants to orbit the earth dressed as an ace pilot from a hit Japanese animation series. The candidate for the 20-million-dollar trip is Japanese investor Daisuke Enomoto, a 34-year-old former board director of the Livedoor Internet firm headed by flamboyant entrepreneur Takafumi Horie, local media said. Enomoto has already passed medical checks and started flight training...

Dozens of grown men from their 30s to 60s crowd around the tatami mat room in Kagetsuen, a Shizuoka Prefecture ryokan inn, and begin playing with their train sets. More than 90 percent of the inn's guests are adults who enjoy playing with toy trains. These mature train setters have not only kept the inn afloat as others around it have fallen into oblivion, they've helped it grow in a prime example of the otaku business that's now booming throughout Japan, according to AERA (7/18). "Thanks to trimming down our target market, we could stay in business," Eiji Misu, Kagetsuen's...