Anime Maps

A Satellite Image of Hurricane (Sandy? no, not Sandy) turned into an anime character. 

Following upon my blog postings about Anthropomorphic and Zoomorphic maps, there is apparently a new trend in creating maps of countries (and other geographic features) that resemble anime characters.  I discovered this because all of a sudden my blog posting (#2) about the topic of anthropomorphic maps received like about 5,000 hits in one days, and I looked back to see where they were all coming from.  It was this Japanese site that had referenced my post in discussing the map of the US that looked like an eagle.  My previous posts on the topic:
 http://geographer-at-large.blogspot.com/2011/06/anthropomorphic-and-zoomorphic.html
http://geographer-at-large.blogspot.com/2011/06/anthropomorphic-and-zoomorphic_16.html
http://geographer-at-large.blogspot.com/2011/06/anthropomorphic-and-zoomorphic_17.html

This is the new(ish) one that sparked the storm: the map of the UK turned into a Victorian girl.  They clearly didn't know what to do with Northern Ireland!  See http://kotaku.com/5959112/how-japan-turned-the-united-kingdom-into-a-cute-anime-girl for the full evolution of the image from map to girl.

I actually think I like this one even better.

See also original Japanese site for some additional very clever transformations of countries into people: http://blog.livedoor.jp/janews/archives/6088491.html