For years, the Japanese geek community has anthropomorphized various Windows versions as cute anime girls called “OS-tans“. Hopping on the bandwagon and jumping the gun on Japanese Windows fans, Microsoft imposes its own official anime girl on Windows 7.

Whereas previous fanmade mascots had affectionate names like 2K-tan and XP-tan, Redmond’s new J-girl gets a punnily clever official name: “Nanami Madobe” (“Nana” is Japanese for “Seven”.). Nanami even gets her own voice actress, and graces a bundled desktop theme for Japanese preorder customers. Heck, she even tweets.

From ME-tan’s clumsiness to 2K-tan’s business attire to XP-tan’s big boobs, previous OS-tans had a real community-driven feel to them. They embodied actual user reactions to the operating systems. Sadly, the blandly smiling Nanami looks like yet another sad case of Microsoft design-by-committee. No matter how hard Redmond pimps her out, a boring woman is still a boring woman.

(Via Sankaku Complex.)

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