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Stare at a cute anime girl who’d be happy to get an eyeful of your earwax.

Believe it or not, a lot of people in Japan think it’s romantic to have someone of the opposite sex clean your ears for you. It’s not something that every couple does, but mimikaki, as ear-cleaning is called in Japanese, occupies a place in Japanese people’s imagiation not unlike lovebirds sipping a milkshake through two straws stuck in the same cup.

As a matter of fact, mimikaki has such an intimate image that you can even pay an attractive young lady to perform the service for you, as we did a while back in Akihabara. But if what you really long for is to have an anime-style girl servicing you mimikaki style, that fantasy is about to get a whole lot more realistic with the imminent release of the Nagomi no Mimikaki virtual reaity smartphone app.

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Set in a traditional Japanese countryside manor, Nagomi no Mimikaki, also called Nagomimi by its developers, isn’t necessarily a “game,” as there doesn’t seem to be any sort of challenge or objective. Instead, it’s presented as a relaxing experience where you assume the role of a harried businessperson who finally gets a little time off and goes to visit the kimono-clad star of the app, Nagomi.

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“If you’re feeling tired, how about if I clean your ears for you? Come on, stretch out your legs and lay your head down here in my lap,” says Nagomi in the app’s preview trailer. Since the game is meant to be played by sliding your smartphone into a VR head strap, you’re expected to convey your acceptance by actually lying down, which tilts your on-screen view accordingly. If you’re using headphones or some other sort of stereo speaker setup, the sound is also adjusted accordingly to reflect Nagomi’s position, relative to you.

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From there, Nagomi goes to work, starting with the innocuous question “Does that feel good?”

▼ Technically, this perspective shouldn’t be possible if someone is cleaning your ear at the time, but no one is going to be downloading Nagomi no Mimikaki because they don’t want to look at anime-style girls.

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As the session goes on, though, Nagomi’s dialogue become more provocative, as she asks “You’re going to spend the night, right?” and eventually “Let’s sleep in the same bed, like we used to long ago.”

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That last line hints at a preexisting relationship between the player and Nagomi, but it’s not that the two of you used to date. No, Nagomi is supposed to be your cousin whom you haven’t seen in several years, just in case you wanted an extra degree of difficulty in explaining your taste in virtual reality software to anyone who happens to know you’ve got the Nagomi no Mimikaki app on your phone.

As the preview video comes to a close, Nagomi can be heard saying “Next time, I’ll clean your ears before so much wax gets built up” before finally whispering “Do you want to…keep going?”, deftly checking off the boxes for wholehearted acceptance and thinly veiled suggestiveness that many otaku find so enticing.

It’s clear a lot of thought has gone into the app, which is scheduled for release on April 29 as a free download for iOS and Android devices. Still, the preview video shows that a couple of things aren’t quite sorted out yet, such as the way Nagomi occasionally doesn’t seem to have a mouth.

▼ Perhaps her lower-than-usual number of orifices is the reason why she’s so captivated by the ones on the sides of your head.

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There’s also the fact that while Nagomi no Mimikaki simulates the mimikaki experience, as a purely virtual affair it won’t actually clean your ears for you. For the full effect, you’ll have to grab an ear pick and time your scrapes with Nagomi’s on-screen ones, which is one more reason to invest in a hands-free head mount with which to enjoy the app.

Follow Casey on Twitter, where how much ear wax he has is a tightly kept secret.

Related: Nagomi no Mimikaki website
Source: Nagomi no Mimikaki website
Images: YouTube/DLsite/にじよめ