Released as a mas­cot and spe­cial bonus fea­ture to the Japan­ese Win­dows 7 Ulti­mate edi­tion, Nanami Madobe quickly gains fame in the otaku com­mu­nity as the lat­est and most adorable of the OS-tans. Wide­spread pop­u­lar­ity was then estab­lished when the cel­e­brated seiyuu (voice actress) and singer Nana Mizuki was hired to serve as the voice of Nanami-tan. As one might guess, the name Nanami is a word­play on the seiyuu’s name and the Japan­ese proun­ci­a­tion of seven (“nana”).

Only in Japan…

What­ever else one might say about Microsoft as a com­pany, you got to admit that their Japan­ese branch sure has awe­some mar­ket­ing ideas. I can’t pro­vide fac­tual sources here, but I’m sure will­ing to bet that a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of the Japanese’s younger techie com­mu­nity — those most picky about their oper­at­ing sys­tem choices — are at least mod­er­ated involved in the Japan­ese visual cul­ture, bet­ter known as their anime/manga otaku cul­ture. Mak­ing Win­dows 100% more moé is cer­tainly one sure­fire way of mak­ing sure at least one of their machines, likely the most often used one, is run­ning it.

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While brows­ing Kotaku for amuse­ment in their only-in-japan cat­e­gory, I came across the Love Plus trailer. I swear I could feel a ter­ri­ble ache in my chest after watch­ing it…

The begin­ning I didn’t mind that much. I’ve seen dat­ing sims before. Trial-played one even, although it’s really not my thing since they sim­ply lack the char­ac­ter and plot val­ues their visual novel sib­lings have ( for the last time vis­nov != dating-sim!!! ). The first half of the trailer sim­ply dis­played Love Plus as a dat­ing sim with more ani­ma­tion than what my men­tal imagery gives.

Then she greeted dear player good morn­ing… (~1:45)

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