Peter Payne, the entrepeneur behind the import portal j-list.com, has done for Hello Kitty vibrators what Marco Polo did for noodles. He has a professional interest in keeping abreast of what's hot and cool in Japan, and he's clued us in on many new trends, from Haruhiism to Alibi Buddy. His latest tip-off involves the anime-ification of Shakespeare's most famous tearjerker.
"Romeo x Juliet" (that's a sort of yaoi thing there, the x meaning 'versus') is quite cool. It's basically a remix of the famous story, so you've got Juliet as part of a team of (sort of) sentai fighters who resist the Montagues who killed all the Capulets. It's fun for the English major geek in me, since they add in other Shakespere characters, like Hermione from A Winter's Tale (Romeo's fiancee), Shylock from The Merchant of Venice, Titus Andronicus, and so on.
No US version has been announced, but we're keeping our fingers crossed. Wired recently reported on a British publisher who're releasing a manga Hamlet. Is the Bard becoming an otaku icon? I can't wait for a giant mecha version of Measure for Measure.
wow - i had forgotten about jlist
Posted by: vagrant | November 15, 2007 at 08:59 PM
"...has done for Hello Kitty vibrators what Marco Polo did for noodles." LOL X 1000
Posted by: kungfupiggy | November 16, 2007 at 06:12 AM