With its many historical buildings, Otaru is a popular tourist destination.

Otaru is a port town on the coast of the Sea of Japan in northern Shiribeshi Subprefecture.

In the winter, however, Otaru is exceptionally snowy, receiving as much as of snow from November to March, when it snows almost constantly and sunshine is extremely low.

The city was an Ainu habitation, and the name " Otaru " is recognised as being of Ainu origin, possibly meaning " River running through the sandy beach ".

Otaru is also known for the freshness of its sushi.

Otaru is an important port for Sapporo, and part of this hilly city is on the lower slopes of Tenguyama, a good place for skiing and other winter sports and one that is accessible via Otaru Tenguyama Ropeway.

After graduating from the Otaru School of Higher Learning, which is the current Otaru University of Commerce, he worked at the Otaru branch of Hokkaido Takushoku Bank.

Mrs. Fujii explains that they used to live in Otaru, and that their old house is now replaced by a highway.

On the day of the visit to Otaru, female Itsuki is tricked by her mother into going to the hospital to get her " cold " checked up.

A day later when Hiroko is leaving Otaru and Itsuki is out to put her reply letter in the mail, they momentarily spot each other before parting.

is about Mamiya Otaru and his three marionettes, humanoid female robots ; the young and free-spirited Lime ; the small and reserved Cherry ; and the outgoing and busty Bloodberry.

That is until a poor boy named Otaru Mamiya encounters a Marionette named Lime.

:: Congregations in the cities of Asahikawa, Ebetsu, Fukagawa, Kitami, Otaru, Sapporo, and Takikawa as well as in the towns of Iwanai and Suttsu

Like Otaru, Faust is supported by his own trio of marionettes, collectively known as the Saber Dolls, who are structurally villainous counterparts to Lime, Cherry and Bloodberry ; Tiger, the tenacious and emotionally subservient leader, Luchs, an intelligent and accomplished strategist, and Panther, a loud and vicious blonde.

This issue was highlighted in February 2001, when naturalized-Japanese Debito Arudou and two co-plaintiffs sued Yunohana Onsen in Otaru, Hokkaidō, for openly refusing service to customers because of their race.

In contrast to the care-free lifestyle of the marionettes, Lorelei begins to feel stifled by her over-protected existence within the walls of Japoness Castle, and begs Otaru to help her escape for a day.

While Otaru and the marionettes were preoccupied with Faust, Doctor Hess and a member of the Xian government had used the opportunity to scan Lorelei's brain for information, although they escape without revealing their true purpose.

While the girls feel sorry for Otaru and appreciate his attempt to be considerate, they begin to feel that they are emotionally mature enough to handle the situation, whoever he might choose.

Otaru begins a desperate search for the girls, greatly hampered by the fact that he has been accused of causing the explosion in Doctor Hess ’ s lab and branded a terrorist.

When we last see Otaru and the girls, we see a determined father who will stop at nothing to protect and care for his girls.

For the girls ’ part, they are now normal human girls with no recollection of their past, although there are some signs that perhaps their plans for Otaru have not been changed by their death and rebirth, but merely postponed ( and this couldn't be better illustrated than by the now human child Cherry yet harbouring romantic reveries regarding Otaru ).

This idea becomes more recurrent later in the series when Otaru finds himself growing closer to the girls and questions himself for it.

During the onset of the series, Otaru comes into the inadvertent acquisition of three marionettes ; Lime, a wildly effervescent girl with a knack for mischief, Cherry, the gentle and soft-spoken mind with gifted culinary skills, and Bloodberry, a bold and voluptuous woman with vigor matched only by her libido.

Arudou and two co-plaintiffs, Kenneth Lee Sutherland and Olaf Karthaus, in February 2001 then sued Earth Cure in district court pleading racial discrimination, and the City of Otaru for violation of the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, a treaty which Japan ratified in 1996.

" The Sapporo High Court dismissed Arudou's claim against the city of Otaru for not creating an anti-discrimination ordinance.

Some conveyor belt sushi restaurant chains, such as Kappa Sushi or Otaru Zushi, have a fixed price of 100 yen for every plate.

Type " so-30 " railway crane for accident recovery is preserved at Otaru synthesis museum.

A canal adorned with Victorian-style street lamps runs through Otaru.

Otaru was recognised as a village by the bakufu in 1865, and in 1880 the first railway line in Hokkaido was opened with daily service between Otaru and Sapporo.

In the story, Faust asks Otaru to receive the three Saber Dolls in his apartment, so that he can educate them as he did with Lime, Cherry, and Bloodberry.

Upon reaching Xian, Otaru comes down with a serious fever called the “ sleeping fever ,” which the marionettes are told can only be cured by a rare moss that grows in the mountains.

Peace returns to Terra 2 and Otaru takes the girls as his daughters, determined to use his second chance with the girls to finally return the love and happiness they had given him.

Mitsurugi Hanagata, the effeminate gay acquaintance who has a crush on Otaru and whose reckless driving more or less sets the premise of the show, also bands together with the group on their travels and as their neighbor when his mansion is burned down.

They now have their own comedy theme park in Otaru, Hokkaido and have begun signing the likes of musicians, producers, athletes and singers alongside business with the Japanese owarai industry.

Shakotan, along with neighboring Otaru, is home to Japan's only national-level marine sanctuary.

Karthaus was a co-plaintiff with Debito Arudou and Kenneth Sutherland in an anti-discrimination lawsuit against a hot spring ( onsen ) in Otaru, Japan, that refused entry to individuals with foreign appearance even if they were Japanese citizens.

In 2001, onsen owners in the port city of Otaru, Hokkaido referred to incidents of rowdy Russian fishermen bothering other customers and causing lost business as reason to refuse service to anyone not Japanese.

Some of the rivers in Otaru are: Hoshioki, Kiraichi, Zenibako, Hariusu, Asari, Katsunai, Shioya, Myoken, Irifune.

Otaru was redesignated as a city on August 1, 1922.

Since 1950s, as the coal industry around the city went into a decline, the status of economic hub shifted from Otaru to Sapporo.

Kobayashi was born in Odate, Akita, Japan and was brought up in Otaru, Hokkaidō.

At the age of four his family moved to Otaru, Hokkaidō.

The family was not wealthy, but Kobayashi's uncle paid his schooling expenses and he was able to attend Hokkaidō Otaru Commercial High School and Otaru Commercial School of Higher Learning.

After graduating school he worked in the Otaru branch of the Hokkaidō Takushoku Bank.

The film was shot almost entirely on the island of Hokkaidō, mainly in the city of Otaru.