Contemporary culture, not anime

JAPANESE artist Imai's paintings of young women bear a striking resemblance to anime characters, with their porcelain skin and French maid costumes.

But make no mistake - the women in his paintings have not been copied off comic books and television programmes.

Instead, the 28-year-old artist believes that his paintings are a part of Japanese contemporary culture on the whole. "I grew up in an environment very familiar with anime, manga and the Internet. So you could say that my paintings might have received some influence from shared subculture. However, I'm not specifically influenced by it."