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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