User:ShyAndroid/sandbox/iCharaCall

note to self: get someone who understands japanese to proofread after

iCharaCall (iキャラコール) was a collaboration between Takara and KLab released in early 2004, its release coinciding with the release of the FOMA 900i series of phones by Docomo. It was a site which offered chara-den, characters that would stand in for the user in a way that emulated a voice call, with different emotions that could be toggled using the numpad. Some chara-den also came with special actions like dances. There were 20 characters available at the site's launch, with more being made available later on. Several Takara properties got their own chara-den, including Licca-chan, Choro-Q, and of course, Transformers. Optimus Prime and Megatron were both available within the site's initial selection of chara-den.

The service had a monthly fee of 315 yen. https://k-tai.watch.impress.co.jp/cda/article/news_toppage/18439.html

Sources

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sswinoaZMcg https://www.itmedia.co.jp/mobile/articles/0401/23/news065.html https://k-tai.watch.impress.co.jp/cda/article/news_toppage/16936.html https://web.archive.org/web/20060204050751/http://www.klab.org/press/2004/040206.html (note: link pdf versions for klab articles maybe, since they don't suffer from broken images) https://web.archive.org/web/20050308223445/http://www.klab.org/press/2003/031218.html