Now that the first issue of PiQ has come and gone and everybody’s had their chance to chime in, I’d like to talk about one particular criticism that I’ve heard several times. While I anticipated it, I had hoped that the article content itself would deflect such criticism, since I wrote it specifically for the skeptical viewer.

I am referring, of course, to the Avatar: The Last Airbender feature.

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I read an article today about how tsundere — a combative personality that shows occasional flashes of kindness, as exemplified by Haruhi Suzumiya — is a bunch of old crap. In its place is deretsun, essentially the opposite personality — seemingly nice and modest, but later cold and criticizing.

Of course, I read about this in a Japanese women’s fashion magazine, so there may not be a preponderance of scientific evidence to back this statement up. Here’s what the May ‘08 issue of with had to say on the subject:

“The exact opposite of the ‘tsundere’ that’s been so popular the past few years, this new ‘gap character’ is rapidly rising in popularity. The secret to the buzz: the exasperated lecturing behind the soothing exterior, a sharp combination that’s rare to see nowadays.”

One weblog commenting on this brings up Maison Ikkoku’s Kyoko Otonashi as an example of a deretsun kind of personality — extremely nice, often to a fault, but someone who snaps and lets Godai have it whenever he screws up yet another date or whatever.

This strikes me as the sort of personality that people would find attractive only in the world of anime, but…

I’ll need to drink about this much beer before I ever consider it a good idea again to bring a credit card into a used manga shop. My knees are still hurting from all the books I lugged out of there.

They really don’t want your dog pissing on the Asakusa Kannon Temple in Tokyo. There are tons of these signs all around the main building, each with some different art and text derived around the theme of not having your dog piss on the temple.

If you want to have your dog piss on someplace godly, kindly stick to your local church. Make sure you attempt it sometime besides Sunday morning.

My father was so excited to discover the Asahi Beer Hall that he insisted we take this picture. I love it when I make my father happy… although I guess I could’ve just showed him a picture of this office building/object d’art instead of making him pay airfare and hotel costs to Japan. Ah well.