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Tokyo Marriage Agency to Start Service for Otaku

This month, the Tokyo-based First Contact marriage agency pre-launched a website for its new service "Otaren," whose name is derived from the words "otaku" (geek) and "ren" (a reading of the kanji character "koi," which means "love"). The service is designed to match fans of anime, manga, and games to one another for the purpose of marriage — for a fee. Those fees are discounted until May 31 at:

Monthly subscriptions will also be available. The site promises that it offers women "safe" meetings by conducting identification checks on the male members.

Washimiya, the Kuki City neighborhood that is home to the "Lucky Star shrine," hosted its first otaku matchmaking event on last November. According to the organizers of the "Ota-Konkatsu Washimiya Deai-Hen ~San-jigen no Kimi ni Todoke~" (Otaku Matchmaking: Washimiya Dating ~Reaching You in 3D~) event, seven couples were formed out of the 20 male and 20 female participants. In 2009, the Take and Give Needs (T&G) wedding coordinators and famed wedding planner Akemi Ariga chose one couple from about 550 for an all-expenses-paid wedding ceremony in front of the life-size Gundam robot statue in Tokyo.

Source: Kon-katsu News via Crunchyroll News