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Trainman
Opinions about Internet bulletin boards can be extreme. Many dismiss them as refuges for social inepts
who cannot function in the "real" world; losers who should spend less time online and more "getting a life".
Others, often those who have found online havens where they have made friends on the same wavelength as themselves or
receive great practical and emotional support in times of need hail them as one of the most powerful generators of
community
in increasingly atomised societies.
One Tokyo publisher, it seems, saw a gold mine. Last year Shinchosha published
Densha Otoko ,
the collected postings of a young
otaku
who turned to his online friends to help him win the heart of a beautiful young woman he gallantly stood up for when she was
being harrassed on the Tokyo subway. There is some speculation about whether
the postings on Japan's enormous bulletin board site 2 Channel
in the spring of 2004 were genuine or an elaborate hoax, but if true
editor Hiroko Gunji recognised that although the media may have been new it was a classic love story that would
have widespread appeal. She was right and
the Densha Otoko or Trainman has since become a media phenomenon.
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After approaching Trainman, who still prefers to remain anonymous, she downloaded the posts and put the
book together and it was
a bestseller last autumn. It was then produced in not one, but four
manga. This weekend the
movie
adaptation, directed by Masanori Murakami,
opens in theaters.
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More on Trainman
Densha Otoko opens in Hiroshima theaters Sat, June 4. Click here for a more details.
June 2005 |
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