The Search for Otome

Heileen, one of the few available English otome titles.

Last semester, Polecat, Starfish, and I found a number of ways of avoiding our always mounting work. In-between playing flash games (Winter Bells, anyone? Drench?), watching movies, reading the news, baking cookies, watching Buffy, and knitting, we sometimes fell into our fangirly, Manga Meditation-ish ways.

While I personally fell off the manga reading train, Polecat and Starfish continued to diligently log onto Manga Fox and One Manga and whatever other scanlation aggregates on the Internet. The three of us also continued our K and J drama nights; we're almost done with Hana Yori Dango 2, by the way.

Starfish took it further and began to delve deeper into the girly comics universe: Dating sims. If you know your shoujo manga, chances are you've at least heard of dating sims, and if you're even more dedicated, otome games.