Train Man is one of the names given to the story about a poster on 2channel, a Japanese message board. He saves a young lady from a drunk on the subway, and, spurred on by all of 2channel (which is truly massive), he courted and eventually began dating the woman he saved. 2channel provided him with all sorts of dating advice. It’s a fun story that’s seen it’s variations done in manga, anime, a live-action movie, a TV drama, and a stage play. There’s an article about it over at Wired.com – link via Boingboing. Richard “Pocky” Kim of Katsucon directorial fame was the first to clue me in on the whole thing a year ago.
Some people seem to think it’s fiction – but where’s the fun in that? ;)
This entry was posted on Thursday, January 11th, 2007 at 12:44 PM and is filed under Rant. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Ha!
This is as real as iPod vending machines.
This story came out in my newspaper abot almost 3 years ago or so. It was in my newspaper mainly becasue they where going to make a movie about it. Over all though the story sounds much better than beuty and the geek stuff we have over here on our networks. I eman its more realistic than having your girls firend figure out wht a the dewey deciaml system is used for. The story is real becasue he goes online like any geek would and asks his geek friends what he shold do. Don’t we all do that toa certain degree?
Anyways, the story is real, and certainly makes great materail for its variations!
Ah, God of the Geeks. Now that’s an honor. I salute him!
There’s actually a full live-action series on tv in Japan called “Densha Otoko” (literally “Train Man”) based on that very same story. 2Channel gets changed to Aladdin for the series, but the episodes supposedly loosely follow the events of the main character, Yamada, as he tries again and again to gain the love of the woman he saves from a drunkard’s advances.
The character Getsumen Heiki Usagi Mina shown in the title sequence is actually getting her own anime due to the show’s success.
Right, I have seen the aforementioned drama and some of the manga and while its all a bit farfetched, I have to say it was one of the funniest non-gameshow programs ever aired on Japanese television. There’s a ton of humor built into it, but it takes some getting used to if you aren’t used to things being overly hammed up.
I recommend trying to find a subbed copy and watching the series. It’s amazing.
There’s also a novel that collects all the (translated) posts involved and some of the background information. It’s in English, but I can’t seem to find it on Amazon for a link, I saw a copy in my local bookshop a couple of weeks ago when just browsing. If I see it again I’ll attach it to this post.
Please do, I’d love to read it!
I love the story of Densha Otoko, it gives me hope that someone like me can find love on a train, I just rencenlty got the movie, but I’m waiting till I get a DVD burner to watch it because my computer sucks with 256 mb of ram
@ suds
or….u could read this awsome fan translation of the whole thread at 2Channel :)
http://www.rinji.tv/densha/index.html
A nice story, though everything I’ve read says it was fake. Doesn’t lessen the story at all, just hard to think of it as real after reading all of that.
It DOES however show that the internet can do anything.
No way, Densha is so real. How could he not be? I love the story, it’s so cute. The movie is pretty much exactly like the book, with less focus on the online characters. The TV show adds a bunch more online action, some nice subplots and a whole lot more angsty drama.
Fan subtitled versions:
Movie
http://www.boxtorrents.com/details.php?id=128795
TV Show
http://www.boxtorrents.com/details.php?id=128607
TV Bonus Ep + Extras.
http://www.boxtorrents.com/details.php?id=128657