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The story
TBS announcer Mao Sasaki is being talked about on 5ch as an “otaku club princess” — the kind of woman especially popular with geeky, otaku-leaning guys. She’s a quarter Japanese-Russian and has a history of auditioning for Nogizaka46’s 2nd generation and failing the 3rd generation audition. The thread buzzed with talk about TBS’s tendency to hire mixed-race announcers, alongside comparisons to other popular female announcers at the network. It also brought up an episode where Sasaki herself corrected a false Wikipedia entry on her radio show, which had claimed she was “from Russia and had auditioned for Nogizaka46.” Comments about her looks and background were common too, and the overall tone of the thread was mixed.
What people said
Nango's the most popular one, right?
What kind of person does that?
She could've made AKB48 though
even though she's "secondhand" now, after Panther's Mukai (slang implying she previously dated him)
Her lower eyelids are really wide and low
I watch THE TIME just for this announcer
Background and Key Points
“Otaku club princess” is internet slang for a woman who gets special treatment within a group of mostly otaku-leaning men based on her looks or behavior — it’s easy to misread this as a claim about conventional beauty standards, which isn’t really the point of the term. Because of her Japanese-Russian heritage, announcer Mao Sasaki was once the subject of an inaccurate Wikipedia entry claiming she was “from Russia and had auditioned for Nogizaka46,” which she reportedly corrected on her radio show, calling it “completely untrue.” Some in the thread also pointed out that TBS tends to hire a lot of mixed-race announcers, but the thread offers no actual data on hiring numbers or criteria — it’s worth keeping in mind that this is based purely on viewers’ impressions.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Nandemo Jikkyo G) thread “[Good News] TBS Female Announcer Trending as an “Otaku Club Princess”.”
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