Kotaku-Tan

I had this shirt handed to me today! My good friend Moke gave it too me because he needs to make room for other stuff. I wasn't really clear on what the other stuff was but I was glad to help him get rid of some overstock.
He remembered that I liked this shirt and -as far as I know- came to me first to see if I wanted it. These shirts were commissioned by the news blog Kotaku and were only available for a short while before they crazy sold out. They sometimes give them away as prizes or to the press, which is where I think Moke got it from. You can get a charcoal XL from their online store here while they still last.
http://meatbun.us/store/products/kotaku-tan-asphalt
Kotaku didn't skimp on the quality when they had these created. The shirt is super high quality and -according to their website- the print was done in something like 13 color screen passes -when you would normally have like 1-4. If I were to have bought this for myself I would have chosen black, but never look a gift horse in the mouth right? At least Moke and I both fit a medium.
So, hmm... how to describe this picture? Well I'll go from the top down: On the top of the cake is a green letter "K" this is the initial for the gaming news blog Kotaku -the people who requested this shirt-. The cake represents "their unhealthy love of cake" mainly stemming from the game Portal who features it prominently in its ending. The girl is "Kotaku-tan". Bear with me a moment on this one. A "-tan" is an anthropomorphized/personified version of something, usually taking the form of a beautiful girl. Like girls on the side of WWII bombers they exemplify what the unit or thing stands for. In some cases different parts of the character design or personality can represent different elements of the source material. In this case she is just scantily clad in circuit laced apparel -Kotaku is a web log-, there are directional pads on the suit -it is a gaming blog-, she has headphones on -they have a podcast-, and her color scheme is the same as their main page and logo -green, pink and white-. The big ass fish is a little icon that they started using to point out things of interest on posts and to use as a censor bar. It all comes together in a great corporate mascot.
I would like to wear this out when I am meeting people who know what this is. Like people from work or maybe E3 or another gaming convention. I would rather show it somewhere people would get it because of two simple reasons. 1) They would know what Kotaku is and the fact that it is rare. 2) Explaining the whole Kotaku-tan thing to someone who has no idea what the blog is or what tans are is more than a little frustrating and embarrassing. Though, the non sequitur quality is indeed attractive.

I got this today and haven't really had any dazzling moments with it yet. But I look forward to this weekend and seeing if A) People get it and B) Anyone says anything about it. While walking around the house my mom asked me what it was/represented and I had to go through the whole speech. That did however, allow me to sort out how to explain this to other people on the blog. At least half of my job was already done because she already knew what Kotaku was.