The newly elected Governor of Tokyo, Yuriko Koike, is keen to celebrate the medium of anime and turn the city into a veritable “anime land”.
The timing of this, from my standpoint, is a bit surreal. As only yesterday, I was hoping that someone would create Tokyo Otaku Land from the seminal Gainax anime Otaku no Video (trailer shown below). Well, it seems the first woman governor of Tokyo has a similar idea, though on a far bigger scale.
Koike is actually an interesting figure in Japanese politics. While a member of the Liberal Democrat Party, she stood for the governor position without any backing from her party. Essentially an independent then, her appointment to the Tokyo governorship has unsettled many of the political establishment here.
She is also an anime fan, as last Halloween she cosplayed as Sally the Witch. So not so much an Otaking then, more an Otaqueen.
