Charles wrote:... I wonder what it's like in Japan, where so much of this art comes from. I keep reading that in Japan it's perfectly normal for people of both sexes, all age groups and places in society to enjoy these things. But, somehow, I still get the feeling that liking them is kind of geeky.
I looked round several Japanese bookshops (in Japan) & there always was a large Manga section. Maybe 20% of the shop. Furthermore there are Manga for all ages so it isn't just for kids. So it's more mainstream than in western countries, where comics are written just for children and therefore any adult reading them is probably a bit, shall we say, slow.
However collecting action figures is definitively on the geeky side. I saw a TV programme on this. Apparently you can get action figures in all sizes. The line between geek & pervert seems somewhat blurred.
I'm not really an expert in the Japanese games market, but they certainly seem to like adventure, karaoke and simulated dating games as well as platformers. The simulated dating games don't seem to have transferred to the west, so I've never played one of those, but there was an episode of the mini-goddesses anime, which covered this, so I got the general idea. In each level you have to succeed in more difficult and different types of date. You have to allocate your scant resources (a bit like in adventure games) and there is multiple choice dialogue. You get scored on how appropriate your dialogue was. I'm assuming that this kind of gaming is primarily aimed at girls.
