WTF Japan?!? – It’s A Trap!

In the immortal words of Admiral Ackbar: “It’s a trap!”

WTF Japan?!? is the newest segment to be introduced to my blog, featuring all of the weird and disturbing trends that primarily emanate from Japan and deserve to be monitored a bit more closely under the microscope. While I had originally planned on putting many of the subjects that will be discussed here under the Entropic State of the Industry heading, I have since decided to keep that feature confined to the more business and socioeconomic related topics while this new one discusses the more sociological, philosophical, psychological or just plain disturbing aspects of the geek industry at large.

That being said, the first topic on the block is anime traps. And by traps I don’t mean booby traps (not in the way you’d expect, anyway). No, a trap in anime is a boy who often dresses and acts in a manner similar to a girl to the point where one believes they actually are a girl, up until the point where someone develops feelings for them or discovers the wrong set of genitalia during an intimate moment. By that point they’ve already been taken in by the ruse, hence the name “trap.”