In Japan, advertisements featuring anime characters are often used to sell goods and services. Marketing strategies that use anime characters exploit people’s feelings toward them. The Japanese slang “moe,” derived from the Japanese intransitive verb “moeru,” meaning to sprout, has come to represent people’s affection for anime characters, sometimes also called “moe characters.”
Click here for original story, ‘Moe’ than just advertisement: Reflections on the use of anime characters for tourism promotion
Source: Phys.org