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A pretty major difference between anime and western animation is the amount of detail Japanese productions put into character profiles and backstories. For just about any significant anime character, you can be sure the creators have decided on things such as a family name, exact height in centimeters, favorite food, and, in the case of sex-appeal female characters, bust, waist, and hip measurements.

If nothing else, characters almost always have an official birthday, even if there’s never an episode highlighting it or any other part of the story affected by, for instance, Attack on Titan’s Levi being born on December 25. Now, a fan-produced website has compiled a database of anime birthdays, allowing you to plug in your own to see which characters you could conceivably share a cake with.

Called Kyaratan (a mashup up of kyarakuta/character and tanjobi/birthday), the site currently has data for almost 10,000 anime characters available here. Scrolling down from the top page presents you with three different ways to sift through the listings. If you want to bring up a list of all the characters from a series, you can search by the first syllable of the series’ title in Japanese.

▼ Across the top, from left to right, that’s a, ka, sa, ta, na, and ha, and along the bottom it’s ma, ya, ra, wa, and English letters and numbers.

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Users can also search by the first syllable of the character’s name.

▼ Characters that are Japanese seem to be listed under their family names, while other characters are listed under their given names.

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Where things really start to get fun, though, is when you search by calendar date.

▼ January to June on the top, July to December on the bottom.

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Clicking on any of the months brings up the same page, which has a calendar for the entire year. Simply click on the date you want to check, and the site will produce a list of characters born on that day.

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For example, as I’m writing this it’s June 5, so…

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…we should be wishing a happy birthday to Yowamushi Pedal’s Kotaro Ishigaki, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure’s oddly named Weather Report, and 12 other characters further down the list.

While the site’s navigation is all in Japanese, the results happily include the series title in English and the character’s name spelled out using the Roman alphabet.

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Okay, now that we know our way around the site, let’s try plugging in the birthdays of a few prominent people. Since we’re talking about anime, we’ll start with retired director Hayao Miyazaki, even though this is just the sort of otaku-centric obsession he wouldn’t approve of. Once we do, we learn that the Studio Ghibli co-founder has the same birthday as Love Hina protagonist Keitaro Urashima and would-be waifu Ichigo Kohinata from Girl Friend Beta

Or, on August 4, U.S. President (and anime appreciator) Barack Obama could throw a party for himself, Idolm@ster Cinderella Girls’ Akane Hino, and New Prince of Tennis’ Itaro Migihashi.

If you’re shopping for a present for Itaro, he might need a torso.

Since it’s got a bowling alley and movie theater, we imagine the White House makes a pretty sweet venue for a birthday bash. The only question is if Vice President Joe Biden, out of respect to his Love Live! girls, will refuse to attend any celebration in honor of a member of a rival anime idol franchise.

Related: Kyaratan
Source: Jin
Top image ©RocketNews24
Insert images: Kyaratan (1, 2, 3)