Seinen Ramen » July’s MOE anime no.1: MOETAN

July’s MOE anime no.1: MOETAN June 22, 2007

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MOETAN stands for:

Methodology
Of
English
The
Academic
Necessity

…and is a collection of Japanese books with anime-style art aimed at Japanese Otaku trying to learn English. MOETAN has also been licensed and translated into Chinese to teach Chinese-speaking people English O_o The anime adaption is slated to air next month.

Official Website: http://www.ink-chan.com/

Well for those unfamiliar with Japanese honorifics like -san or -kun, -tan is actually a mispronunciation of -chan. The -chan honorific is usually used between girls to indicate closeness and girls also usually call their father’s names followed by -chan. -tan is supposed to be a cute mispronunciation of -chan to indicate some playfulness as well. Thus MOETAN is actually a complex 3-way pun indicating a series of books with an acronym, featuring MOE artwork and probably a girl as well.

The books were first published in 2003 and the covers look like this:

The insides of the books look something like this:

“Each chapter consists of a short story, written in pure Japanese, concerning the adventures of “Nao-kun” (a high school student) and “Ink-chan” (a mysterious magical girl who arrives to help him with his studying), followed by a set of word examples.

Unfortunately, many of the English examples in the book are bizarre, unnatural, or downright incorrect. As such, the book has become a popular import for native English otaku or others who are amused by Engrish phenomena.” - Wikipedia

An artbook (which is sold out T_T) titled LOLIPOP has been released by the illustrator of the books and scans of it can be found here (they are NOT SAFE FOR WORK):

http://gallery.aethereality.net/list/series/239/

English translation of the first part of the first book can be found here:

http://www.trevreport.org/moetrans.shtml

I went Kinokuniya about a month ago to find the MOETAN books, and there were only a copy of each left, around $24.50 each. I didn’t buy them due to the outrageous price, but did have a flip through though. They are something like our Chinese vocabulary handbooks with a flowing storyline. In fact, the second book features short stories in full English. I read through the first few chapters and must say the English standard isn’t lousy at all.

Well my personal comments are, looks like an incredibly cute show that should be watched for the MOE-ness like Manabi Straight! However the storyline seems abit dumb, so no surprise if I drop it halfway through the season.

If you’re thinking of recommending this anime for younger audiences, think again. Because the books feature alot of phrases intended for an 18 and above audience. So, DON’T.

This is a TVCM for the MOETAN series of books back in 2003:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRocgolzQrY]