Category Archives: fandom

I Am/Am Not an Otaku: The Reverse Thieves’ Otaku Diaries and the Definition of Otaku

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After an initial introduction of the demographics of those who chose to partake in the Otaku Diaries, the Reverse Thieves have released the second part of their study. This time around, the discussion centers around the word “otaku” and what it means to anime fans.

A large number of their results showed that many anime fans consider the word “otaku” to have negative connotations and may even be upset if someone referred to them as an otaku. It is, in other words, an insult. Sometimes, the negative connotations come from wanting to distance oneself from the “other” anime fans, e.g. socially inept naruto fans, and other times they stem from wanting to use the word as the Japanese use it. Of course, I can’t be the only one to see the irony in a person denying that they’re an otaku while also championing the true, JAPANESE definition of the word, or at least their interpretation of the Japanese definition.

I remember years ago when I was part of a Pokemon community on the internet (the Team Rocket Headquarters if you want to know), where one of the site owners got very upset whenever someone called him an otaku, insisting that the term was in reality extremely derogatory and that it should only be used for the most extreme cases of anime fandom. It was around that time that I began developing my hypothesis on the Path of  Otaku Self-Acceptance, or the path the typical anime fan takes when confronted with the term “otaku.”

Phase 1) I Want to Be an Otaku!

This phase is usually the first one that new anime fans feel. Anime is fresh and exciting, and they want to see more and more of it. They consider the status of “otaku” to be a goal to strive for. However, if they start to sour towards the anime community they may enter…

Phase 2) Don’t Call Me an Otaku!

This is the point at which you find many of the subjects of the Otaku Diaries, as well as many anime fans you know. Sometimes they genuinely are just not that into anime and don’t want to be considered hardcore fans, but often times you see that many of the people who fall into this category are simply in denial. They hide their anime fandom from others as hard as they can, and they will put on airs so that no one can discover their terrible, terrible secret. Eventually, some of them pretend not to be otaku so hard that they permanently make the switch. Others, however, may grow tired of the charade and come to acceptance. That is what leads them to…

Phase 3) I am an Otaku

This is the point at which people realize that “Otaku” is just a descriptor. It is no more a self-inherent badge of shame or badge of pride than any other part of a person’s life, like saying “I am short” or “I work in construction.” It’s where I hope to see more anime fans, and I believe it’s the key to becoming true to oneself, provided you actually are an otaku.

I am an Otaku. Are you?

The Reverse Thieves’ Otaku Diaries: And Now the Results

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Some of you may recall that back in February I mentioned an interesting project by the Reverse Thieves called the “Otaku Diaries.” The basic premise was that they wanted anime and manga fans to fill out a survey about various aspects of their lives, from age to love life to of course questions about their fandom. As someone who is always interested in information such as this, I participated as well. Well now the Reverse Thieves have finished compiling their data and are ready to discuss the results.

This initial post establishes some statistics and is mainly there to get the ball rolling for future posts about the Otaku Diaries. For the near future, the Reverse Thieves will be devoting the first Monday post every month to discussing the Diaries, and I think there will be a wealth of information to be had.

One thing to point out is something said right in the statistics post: these results are not absolute, and are personal truths instead of absolute ones. Even if the sample size is somewhat small, there’s still a lot that can be learned, and I am eager to see what Hisui and Narutaki have to say about the results.

Adieu, Geocities

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It’s the end of an era as Yahoo! has decided to completely shut down Geocities, the free site-hosting service that  was one of the go-to places during the late 90s if you didn’t know a whole lot about html or web design but really, really wanted a website. I never used it myself, being an Angelfire user, but so many of my friends both online and in real life utilized Geocities that it’s tied to my youth and my time as a fan of anime and video games.

Geocities is very significant to a number of fandoms out there, and it’s particularly a big deal when it comes to anime. It’s not because any incredible resources existed on Geocities sites (though some may have, I just can’t be bothered to check), but the sheer amount of anime sites that were on Geocities over the years. Don’t believe me? Go to the Anime Web Turnpike right now and look through the sites and see how many are Geocities pages.

Geocities has sort of become obsolete at this point, as those who want free pages can go to Myspace or Livejournal (or WordPress!) and do whatever they will with their space, while those who want their own web space can obtain it easily as getting web space and your own domain name is significantly easier now than it was 10 years ago all while being less expensive. Still, I feel we should pay our respects to Geocities, with its initial ridiculous URLs and its pop-up ads and remember how much it has done for anime fandom and online communities in general.

Anime Fangirls Unable to Handle Geriatric Hunks

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Let’s face it, most girls are not Ohno Kanako, first true female member of Genshiken and lover of bishounen who are not shounen at all (“biteinen?”). So with an anime like Ristorante Paradiso, a sort of “Ouran High School Host Club” starring men ages 40 and up set in Italy, streaming legally (for free!) on Crunchy Roll, it’s only natural that the viewers on Crunchy Roll seem unsure how to handle this unusual setup.

“These are not beautiful people by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, they are all very plain. Hope the action picks up.”

“well they are old and the girl is so ugly i will not be waching these sorry..”

“They emphasis too much of the double eyelid, with the depth and shadow, it gives them an aging look. *sad face* Either way, the plot is interesting and it’s rereshing. For those who are used to the whole shoujo thing, the art grows on you.”

“their mouths are huge, like freakin’ muppets. Their smiles are awful”

…among other comments.

What I find really interesting here is the amount of comments that basically amount to, “Whoa they’re old! Old men aren’t supposed to be handsome!” as if they had totally been entrenched in the Expanding Bishie Empire and its doctrine of “youth=beauty.” Of course, anime isn’t the only source of this belief, it’s something a part of most cultures in the world, but here it’s referring specifically to that type of effeminate beauty that one can usually see in series such as Fruits Basket or even Saint Seiya.  Nor is it gruff manly manhood, or rather what GUYS think sexy men who get all the women should be like. Ristorante Paradiso sits in a unique position, especially in American anime fandom, and I look forward to each episode teaching you young whipperotaku a thing or two about what it means to charm the ladies when all you had was a spoon in your pocket and a chip on your shoulder.

Emotional Investment: An Introspective Un-Rant

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Tell me if you’ve heard this one before. Maybe from even your own mouth.

“Yeah the show seemed like it was well done, but I didn’t feel emotionally invested in it.”

Emotional investment, by nature of the words used in it, should be and is always a very personal thing, and yet the entertainment we read is supposed to do this for not just one person but many people.

This isn’t a topic that is terribly complex, the idea that people will enjoy shows that resonate with them better, but it always feels like such a dangerous thing to say that a show lacks that emotional connection. Is it your fault? Is it the fault of the show? Is it a fault at all? If not, how can any production compensate for something like this? Is this why in the end, art is art and science is science, and while there’s plenty of overlap some things are “just because?”

And then you have the other side, where people feel emotionally invested in a story. The setting, the characters, something about this piece of fiction you’re looking at strikes a chord deep down inside of you and you wonder how anyone could not like it. So when that story is attacked or trivialized by another, it feels like a personal slight, and saying that a show was unable to pull you in emotionally can sometimes sound like the ultimate insult to a show even if it isn’t meant to be.

There’s no real conclusion to this, no grand point I’m trying to make, I’m just using this post to collect my thoughts and record them as they are.

The Otaku Diaries: Helping Otaku Learn About Themselves

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Hisui and Narutaki over at the Reverse Thieves have an interesting project going, which they’ve called the Otaku Diaries. They basically want you, John Q. Otaku, to fill out their anonymous survey so that we can learn things about otaku beyond the trappings of anime and fandom. And you know me, I’m always a fan of these sorts of projects. Hisui and Narutaki introduce their own project better than I could, so I’ll let them do the rest of the talking.

We at Reverse Thieves are looking to do something a little different.

We are proposing a project called the Otaku Diaries. We are looking for people who consider themselves anime fans to participate in an anonymous survey. It will be profiling the lives, loves, and losses of these individuals and how their hobby has related to shaping them. We will also be looking for patterns as well as differences in the cases. We are looking for diverse people who are not afraid to get personal, questions will include topics like prior relationships, profession, and sexuality.

This survey is about a story, not about numbers.

If you are interested here is how it is going to work. Send us an email at otakudiary@gmail.com with a brief description of yourself include your age, sex, and location. No names need be exchanged and your anonymity will be protected, create a separate e-mail account just for this survey if you wish. If you are selected to participate, you will be given a case # to which all your answers will be attributed. After all the data is collected we will be doing several blog posts about the results.

We hope to start at the end of February, depending on the number of responses.

Thanks!

I’ve already filled out and sent in my survey! And you want to be cool like me, right?

And Then Emperor Palpatine Fell Into an Explanation

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The other day I went to see the movie Fanboys, about a group of Star Wars fan one year before the release of Episode 1: The Phantom Menace. I won’t say much about the movie itself except that I thought it was hilarious, but it reminded me that there’s a lot of Star Wars “lore” out there. I had borrowed a Star Wars character guide from a friend long ago, and I enjoyed it thoroughly, so I decided to hop online and take a look at the compiled information on the universe that is Star Wars. Upon reading I began to feel this sense of dread.

One of the very important lessons then Western Art took from Eastern Art was the concept of negative space, that leaving spaces blank can be just as effective a tool as filling in every detail. Essentially, it means less can be more. When applied to storytelling, it means that not every detail has to be explained and that in many cases the more explanation that arises the less effective the storytelling becomes. This is what I saw with the information on the  Star Wars Universe. I saw unnecessary explanation after unnecessary explanation, as if making sense of the world and filling in the gaps is far more important than maintaining the feel of the story and characters.

The idea of fans filling in the gaps is not something that’s necessarily bad. In fact many times I consider it to be a good thing as I feel it’s a very important foundation of fandom, whether it’s imagining stories in between major events, inventing new characters, or even fleshing out one-dimensional characters. One can argue that having these complex technical explanations is one type of fan’s way of exploring the universe of the story, but once it reaches a point where it becomes some kind of hybrid canon/fanon that influences or restructures the original story, I can’t help but feel that it is done at the detriment of core vital elements of a story. Obi-Wan and Yoda learned how to maintain their identity in the Force. Why does this need an explanation? Obi-Wan is a magical old man, and Yoda is an even more magical and even older man. There, that’s your explanation.

I think one of the many reasons why I like anime so much is that it seems to understand this idea of effectively using the gaps in storytelling. It’s not just about fueling imagination so that we the viewer may fill in the blanks, but using that sense of ambiguity to excite and drive us forward. Gurren-Lagann is an excellent example, because the characters utilize this vague, ill-defined power to achieve victory after victory. They are literally powered by a lack of common sense that keeps them from questioning if anything they’re doing is truly possible. “Do the impossible, see the invisible,” as the saying goes. One does not need to explain what doing the impossible entails or how it works other than that it was driven by the hero’s desire and the support of his friends.

A more apt comparison might be Star Wars and Gundam especially given the way they’ve influenced each other, but for all of the detailed explanations and added material that has been placed into the Gundam Universe, I feel that Gundam has handled it far better than Star Wars. What even its most hardcore fans ultimately enjoy appears to be more the story and the characters and the way great tales are told, rather than little details.

Wasn’t Star Wars once in its own in a way similar to Gurren-Lagann? There was the Force as a vaguely defined aspect of the universe with vaguely defined skill sets available to its users. What’s the difference between a normal man and a Jedi? That one is a Jedi and one is a man.

I Ship It

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Seme


Uke

Otacrates

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Based on a number of factors, from columns in anime magazines to forum posts, from knowing people both online to talking offline, I realize that when it comes to understand the larger trends at work in something we might call “anime fandom,” all I know is that I know nothing.

There may have been a time when those willing to discuss anime are the ones driving the industry, but I don’t think that’s the case anymore. That’s just how it is: the casual will always outnumber the hardcore, and there’s nothing wrong with this. I have a relative who reads manga and watches anime with some frequency, but I doubt I would ever see him discuss it on a forum or go to an anime chatroom. When you go to a con, what you’re seeing are those who are dedicated enough to make the trip, and it’s not even necessarily a dedication to anime so much as it is to the trip and the event itself.

To understand what anime fandom as a whole is like is probably the key to success for anime companies in the US, so I’m not going to even pretend to answer when many others with more information have probably tried. This is more a personal reminder that as much as I study and discuss and enjoy anime and its fandom in one or two or even a thousand directions, there’s still infinite angles.

It’s All in How You Look At It

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The 2000s have been an unusual time in anime fandom. It’s achieved greater popularity and notoriety than ever before, but it’s also been characterized by  claims that the people who create anime have lost their adventurous spirit, that shows are too dumb, creators are too cynical, and that what made anime great isn’t there or isn’t there in sufficient amounts.  I don’t believe this to be the case, but I occasionally have trouble convincing naysayers otherwise. How can you talk about the subtleties of experimentation within genres that people refuse to watch in the first place?

The other day I was reading the animation blog AniPages Daily when his post on what makes animation interesting caught my eye.

“Five or six years ago, I discovered something that kind of renewed the waning spark of my enthusiasm for anime: a set of Japanese animators creating flamboyantly stylish animation that was exciting like no animation I’d ever seen. It was the discovery of the existence within the anime industry of a coterie of animators with a deeply creative spark like Masaaki Yuasa, Shinya Ohira, Satoru Utsunomiya, Atsuko Fukushima, Yoshinori Kanada and Takeshi Koike – each working within the industry, yet managing to carve out a stylistic niche of the kind that elsewhere might only be attainable in the capacity of an independent animator – that renewed my faith in the power of animation, and showed me that some of the most exciting animation being made today was being made by these people in Japan. These animators heightened my awareness of the animated element in animation, and expanded my appreciation of the importance of movement in animation. But more than that, the sheer audacity and brashness of their individuality opened my eyes to a rich vein of creativity in the Japanese animation industry. There have been many great animators over the decades in Japan, and these animators continuing that tradition opened my eyes to a hidden narrative of anime history that broadened my appreciation of anime and renewed my faith in its potential.”

This post was written November 7, 2008.

Now, the man behind AniPages Daily is not your typical blogger. When I say it’s an animation blog, I mean it’s an animation blog. AniPages Daily is concerned with quality of animation above all else, and he’ll seemingly watch any show for it, from Naruto to Tiger Mask. He doesn’t talk about character designs, writing, story, giant robots, or fanservice, unless it concerns how a scene was animated. I really don’t watch animation like he does, and I’m not sure if I could completely agree with the idea of watching animation for the animation. However, I can appreciate his approach and the fact that it’s different from mine, and it left an impression on me that he could look at today’s anime, often criticized for lack of experimentation, and from his relatively unusual perspective see ideas and techniques being pushed towards greater heights.

It makes me wonder if it’s actually possible for anime to truly stagnate. Yes, there are disappointing shows, and ones that you could call better than others, but even in those shows which do not manage to succeed artistically or financially there are hands at work, and they may be achieving something special, just in an area that you or I don’t expect or pay any attention to. Maybe it’s in the soundtrack or even the use of the soundtrack relative to the animation. Maybe it’s daring risk-taking with forms of storytelling. Maybe it’s highly unorthodox mecha designs. And all of this is within the confines of an industry which is concerned with appealing to larger audiences.