Interest

K-On, Doraemon Help Push Tiger Mask Donations Past 700

Donors under the names of the K-ON anime character Yui, Doraemon, Mario and Yoshi of the Super Mario games, Anpanman, Ai no Senshi Rainbowman, Seigi wo Aisuru Mono Gekkō Kamen, Hideto Matsumoto (X Japan's late guitarist hide), and Laputa: Castle in the Sky's Muska help push the number of recent donations to Japanese children's centers past 700. The movement began on Christmas morning when a person left 10 30,000-yen (about US$360) backpacks at a child guidance center in Gunma Prefecture under the name of Naoto Date — the alter ego of the manga/anime pro wrestler Tiger Mask.

On Tuesday, the Shōnan Gakuen school in Ōtsu, Shige even received 35 volumes of manga and 3 anime DVDs from a "2nd-Year Middle School Naoto Date." Other characters who "contributed" to the cause include Momotarō, Ashita no Joe, Evangelion's Rei Ayanami and Ryōji Kaji, Haruhi Suzumiya, Crayon Shin-chan, Arsène Lupin, Kamen Rider, the real-life samurai warlord (and Sengoku Basara character) Date Masamune, Kyojin no Hoshi, Stitch!, and Tetsujin 28-go. As of Wednesday, 620 backpacks and 24 milion yen (US$290,000) have been contributed since Christmas.

In related news, the publisher Kodansha reports that sales of the original Tiger Mask manga jumped since Tuesday. In just two days, each of the seven volumes sold about 1,500 copies for a total of about 10,000 copies. The manga originally ran from 1968 to 1972.

Source: NHK, TKU, Asahi, Jiji Press, Sakigake, Zakzak