Kabe

Male customers can receive same-sex kabe-don with romantic ear-whispering from the staff member of their choice this Valentine’s Day.

Animate, Japan’s largest retailer of manga, games and anime, has over 117 stores dotted around the country. This Valentine’s Day, their branch in Niigata Prefecture, roughly 320 kilometres out of Tokyo, will be offering a very special service exclusively for their male customers: “kabe-don” wall pounds with their male staff.

▼ “Kabe” means “wall” and “don” is the sound of something hitting a hard object, like a wall, giving birth to the phrase “kabe-don”. The pose, which is usually seen between male and female characters in manga and anime, is said to set hearts a-flutter with its close intensity.

Kabe2

Since Animate’s Niigata branch announced their free male-on-male kabe-don campaign on Twitter, the post has been re-tweeted more than 16,000 times. The announcement states: “February 14 is Valentine’s Day. As it’s the day for professions of love, male customers who purchase products will be able to receive a ‘kabe-don’ from the male staff member of their choice, who will whisper words of love into their ear.”

While the store doesn’t specify exactly the exact phrases that will be used, they mention that they will be “words you like”, suggesting that there will either be a selection to choose from, or customers will be able to make their own original requests on the day. As a follow-up to the announcement, the store provided a visual image of the type of service male customers can look forward to.

Readers in Japan who heard about the news were quick to comment:

“This is just too wonderful!”

“I want to go just to watch it happening”

“I wonder how the staff feel about having to do this?”

“They should do this at ALL Animate stores!”

“Are there any good-looking employees at Animate?”

While the service is exclusively aimed at men, a subset of female manga and anime fans called fujoshi are particularly thrilled to hear about the event. Fujoshi, women into comics featuring male homoeroticism, said they can’t wait to go and hopefully take photos of the male-on-male action.

Source: My Game News Flash
Top Image: Twitter/@animateniigata
Insert Images: YouTube/GoGoAnalogma, Twitter/@animateniigata

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