Italy looks like a boot. Romania looks kind of like a fish. And the United Kingdom? The country certainly has a distinctive shape—a shape that Japan turned into an anime girl.
As website Japan Sugoi pointed out this week, a thread popped up on bulletin board 2ch online in Japan last fall. In it, the shape of the United Kingdom was compared to "a girl who worries tremendously about her bosom". Bwah? you say. This makes perfectly good sense!
Northern Scotland, the thread said, looks like a hat, while just above Edinburgh, the land looks like a face. Above Newcastle, it looks like a female's bosom. Then Liverpool and the land south of that looks like a skirt. The resulting anime character looks like a Victorian female.
Here is how that creative train of thought played out online in Japan:
There is a long history of anthropomorphic (er, zoomorphic) maps that has existed for centuries, whether that's turning Russia into a giant octopus, the United States into an eagle, or Europe into a queen.
This recent anthropomorphic map, however, even inspired a new round of land mass personifications. You can see them here.
イギリスの形って胸の大きさ気にしてる女の子に見えるよね （画像あ [ニュース２ちゃんえる via Japan Sugoi]
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