Close encounters of the hug pillow kind, April post ranking, Golden Week event coverage, and other site news

Heisei Democracy access stats for April 2007

• The big spike there toward the end of the month is from when Kotaku linked both the Chou Kanojo and HDTV posts back to back; time will tell if our new guests stick around or get fed up with the shameless fanboy gibberings (we’re really not that creepy. I promise).

the top ten HD pages of April 2007

• Beyond the main page and the “Ero (18+)” tab, the most popular page of the month was our creator spotlight of Happoubi Jin. Whether due to a genuine interest in his work or the nearly irresistible desire to click on a picture of two erokawaii girls kissing, the post seems to be getting something right; this is a feature we’ll definitely be continuing in the future.

• In early April I put up a link in the blogroll to the 抱き枕総合研究所 (dakimakura soukou kenkyuujo, or “Hug Pillow Integrated Research Institute”). Yesterday they took notice, mentioning our link in a news item on their front page. I’m honored that they thought we were worth linking and will try to cover the dakimakura world more thoroughly in the future (my personal collection consisting of a meager single pillow at this point). リンクされて光栄です！これからも抱き枕の素晴らしさを海外に伝えるため頑張って行きたいと思います！

We are currently in the midst of Golden Week, a cluster of random holidays that people use as an excuse to take time off from work and hold masses of otaku events. HD has had and will have a presence at several of these, with reviews coming online over the coming week or so (hopefully posting news of them here will encourage the relevant parties to make it so…):

• M3 2007 Spring – the doujin music equivalent of Comiket, KOF2000 was there and will be reporting on some blazing hot tunes

• Comic1 – the first installment of the all-genre doujin event that’s being heralded as the replacement of the defunct Comic Revolution, Shipon and Animaestro were there and will be documenting the action shortly

• Dream Party Spring 2007 Tokyo – the biannual bishoujo game expo held in the Big Sight, I’ll be there tomorrow and hope to come away with some quality pictures and reports on the latest industry news

• World Hobby Festival Ariake 16 – the biggest garage kit event outside of Wonder Festival, if I can still stagger on the bloody stumps of my feet on Saturday I’ll be heading to the Big Sight again, and

• Comitia 80 – the other big all-genre doujin convention sandwiched between Comikets, sharing space this Saturday with WHF in the Big Sight. Animaestro will be there to check it out.

Finally, I’m in the process of putting together a call for artistic and literary contributions on the nature of moe, to be filed in the Under Election column. A sort of community moe definition project, if you will. Concurrently we’ll be looking for fresh artistic conceptions of the HD mascot, Demo-tan; details will follow in a subsequent post. Ready your pencils and moetic epithets!