Cutesy, busty female characters in miniskirts and maid costumes are regular fixtures of Japanese anime and manga, but a doctor in Tokyo is trying to use their universal appeal to educate people on what they rarely talk about in public: poop.
Yosuke Ishii, a 32-year-old gastrointestinal surgeon, is developing an online game app featuring such moe characters in revealing costumes, who all bear names taken from real-life bacteria in the colon, such as Bacteroides oreiciplenus and Lactobacillus brevis.
Ishii and a network of volunteers who are developing the game have so far come up with 16 characters, each with different personalities and abilities, to keep their world, dubbed "Untopia," safe from the evil forces.