Can you feel the love?

For me, Valentine’s Day means a romantic dinner and chocolates with my Yoko dakimakura– I mean my boyfriend, John. But over at Japanator, it’s an all-day celebration of nerdy love, whether it be 2D or 3D. I contributed two articles for the occasion. You can read them in full on the Japanator site, but here are some previews:

Ready to make some chocolate, girls?

Valentine’s Day for a Western woman means sitting back and waiting for the candy, flowers, and overstuffed teddy bears to roll in. However, if you’ve been watching Mitsudomoe, you know that women in Japan don’t have it so easy. Over there, it’s a day for the ladies to give out chocolate to their special someones… read the rest!

Be my Valentine: dakimakura!

Nobody has to be alone this Valentine’s Day. Not when there are plenty of waifus to go around!… read the rest!

The second episode of the podcast I co-host with Otaku Dan is out today. You can download it here.

In episode 2, we talk about anime documentaries, a subject that you know I enjoyed. Also, we fixed our mic problems! Let us know what you think.

It’s finally ready! The not-so-secret project that Dan and I announced last week is up and ready for download on iTunes. Get it here!

In our first episode, recorded on January 8, we talked about the winter anime season and about what happens when fanservice gets excessive. This podcast is only 20 minutes long since we’re still working to perfect our rhythm and pacing. Good podcast chemistry comes with lots of practice!

We already have a couple ideas for future recordings — topics in fandom, anime reviews, maybe even an otaku advice column — but we’d love to get some feedback. Feel free to leave yours in the comments.

Breasts have been on my mind a lot lately. If you look to my ads at the left and right of this post, there’s a 50% chance you are looking at them.

It’s something I’ve struggled with since putting ads on Otaku Journalist. I consider myself a feminist, which means I think men and women should be treated equally. Though the ads don’t bother me, I worry about offending other women. Not to mention, the ads on my site with sexy women in them garner the most clicks and earn me the most cash. I’ve become part of what I’m terming the Boob Economy.

So last night when I was assigned to write about the racy new cover for Catherine, this was the sort of thing running through my mind. I don’t like to write about sexy things for no reason on Japanator (or anywhere) so I usually turn these stories down. However, I was running late on my story quota and I didn’t have time to pick something new. I wrote about Catherine’s sexy striptease, but in a way you might not expect:

Let me be candid for a moment. By exploiting a cartoon female’s body in this way, Atlus is going to get a ton of sales. Likewise, by blogging about it, I’m getting Japanator a ton of hits. We’ve based an entire economy on boobs…

…So what do you think? Do you feel taken advantage of when your favorite blog posts suggestive photos, or are you a happy and willing participant in the Boob Economy?

In response, the intelligent Japanator community did not disappoint but is sincerely continuing to debate the topic. (I swear that this is the only major blog that I can speak my mind at and get genuine responses back, troll-free.) It’s no surprise that most of our (mostly male) readers have no problem reading sexy posts as long as they aren’t excessive.

“I say bring on the boobs, but do so in a way that is intelligent,” said commenter LuLu.

“Don’t get me wrong, boobs=YAY and lots of people are pervs, but don’t ever reduce good journalism to flashy, simple eye candy. Today’s media has enough of that already,” said commenter Mari Hikiko.

What some readers did have a problem with were advertisements, especially Funimation’s chesty Sekirei ads that have recently run on both Japanator and Otaku Journalist. This surprised me since advertisements make no pretense. Sex sells, so they use it as a tool. On the other hand, sex in blog posts themselves seems more indirect — and therefore shadier — to me.

“I try not to hold the advertisements against y’all because it supports this site, even if the last few have caused me to have to quickly minimize the screen or shut my laptop when other people walked into the room,” said commenter Apriled.

Apriled added that sometimes looking at the site does nothing for her “inner feminist.” “I liked Sekirei. But there is a time and a place,” she said.

The commenter I agreed with the most was pax et agape, who said, “I actually don’t like when that is done so much mainly because it limits who I can feel comfortable sharing the site content with (even when the real content is top rate).” This is one of the reasons I list Modern Method, Japanator’s parent company, on my resume instead of Japanator itself. The latter is not a good site for the easily offended.

In conclusion, I’m not suggesting Japanator needs any self-censorship. Readers like sexy stories (as long as they’re presented intelligently) and if the ads were toned down, they wouldn’t be doing their jobs. But the day we start posting this stuff needlessly, it’s time to draw the line.