If you’re an anime fan or moe-loving otaku then this should certainly cheer you up.
The iPhone app Rodoku Shojo (Story Time Girl), which features a female anime character called Shiori Otoha reading out classic literature, is now providing earthquake messages of support, written especially for the app by a range of contemporary authors and manga artists. The hope is that these messages motivate people and help inject some positive energy into a damaged Japan.
The Roduku Shojo app is voiced by Nozomi Sasaki and has been downloaded 500 thousand times since its July 2010 release. The app itself is free but adding books for Shiori to read to you costs between 115 and 450 JPY (US$1.40-5.50), depending on the length of the tale. Somehow I doubt the typical Japanese otaku reads much Akutagawa or Kenji Miyazawa (some of the writers on offer), so this is certainly one way to improve the population’s literacy levels.
Rodoku Shojo even made the retroactive switch from digital to analog recently, with a manga comic book of Shiori’s adventures being published in December. These kinds of subculture characters are very flexible and their designers can get a lot of mileage from them, expanding into other media and industries once they have built up a loyal consumer base of the female protagonist’s fans. However, likely nothing beats the charm of having a petite lady reading you a bedtime story from inside your phone.
[Via J-Cast]
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