She’s come prepared with notes, like any good otaku, and shuffles her pages of penned thoughts like a deck of cards. Hana seeks refuge from the buzzing lights of Otome Road in a nearby café and makes another swirl with her straw. They flock to Otome Road, or “Maiden’s Road”, a wide-set boulevard with a parade of animation-related boutiques selling everything from collectable figurines to thousands upon thousands of comic books. While Tokyo’s neighborhood of Akihabara is known worldwide as the center of otaku culture-a veritable capital of geek-dom, if you will-female enthusiasts tend to congregate beyond of the spotlight in Ikebukuro, on the other side of the city.
They’re obsessed with what is called BL, or Boys’ Love-fictional stories that detail the romantic entanglements of two men. Rotten girls, or fujoshi in Japanese, is a self-inflicted term used by women throughout the country who fall under a certain category of ardent manga (comic book) and anime (animation) fandom. She slowly moves her straw through the whipped cream in her designer latte and looks up.
