Turning First Graders Into Moe Otaku? The Hatena Yousei (Question Fairy)

And after the Cheetahmen boom now we get this. Last week, somebody uploaded an anime to Nico Nico Douga from a DVD that came with this "First Grade Challenge" material published by Benesse (mostly to promote their own products, of course), where an upcoming first-grader, Yuki, goes through these various challenges to get him ready for school. It seems pretty normal until the second challenge and the はてなようせい hatena yousei -- Question Fairy -- shows up. Check the video after the jump to watch.

The Question Fairy's character design is something you would expect to see in a moe anime -- yaeba (cat tooth), loli, mahou shoujo, some blush on the cheeks, seiyuu Megumi Toyoguchi (Honoka@The Third, Winry@Fullmetal Alchemist) and just plain cute... and haitenai (as in not wearing anything under the dress) as well, apparently. Of course, the people hanging around Nico Nico tend to have a lot of free time so illustrations and videos started popping up there and elsewhere. There are now 900+ hits on pixiv (site for Japanese artists. Fanart and such) and 150+ videos on Nico Nico.

It seems like the boom has slowed down some, so we'll wait for the next one to come along. I would've liked to have joined in on the matsuri (festival), but since all I can do is compose music that sounds like it came straight out of a 16-bit console RPG there wasn't really anything I could do (^^;;