Forum - View topicIt is really wrong to call someone an otaku?
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nobahn
 Subscriber Posts: 5124 |
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ReverseTitan--
I don't understand what you're referring to; please quote from JoseCruz exactly what you're referencing to. Thank you. |
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Redbeard 101
Oscar the Grouch
Forums Superstar  Posts: 16941 |
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I watched all 3 LOTR movies, director's cut thank you, in one sitting. I've marathoned anime series as well. Depends on what I got going on and how interested I am. I suspect most people though can't do the same thing for 15 hours without going nuts.
I agree with a lot of what Alan said. I think part of the core problem however with the term itself is there is NO DEFINITIVE DEFINITION that everyone goes by. You ask someone the definition of other slang terms for groups of people or fandoms and it's clear. There is no arguing on what a whovian is. Since the term Otaku can be a derogatory slur let's take a few of those as examples. You call someone a mick, a chink, or other slur there is no confusion on what you mean. The term Otaku however is a real grey area. It means quite the different thing depending on who/where you say it. On one hand it can be a positive, or at least endearing, term to call someone. To another person or group of people it could be as offensive as calling them another derogatory slur. For me whether or not it's ok to call someone that comes down to how well you know the person. Are you friends? Do they know what it means? Do they call themselves that or joke around with the term themselves? I only call a few of my good friends who I know are into anime and know the term an Otaku. Which is rather ironic for me seeing as how I go to Otakon every year in my state of Maryland. The con is named after the term in essence and it's the "celebration of Otaku culture." Then again, if you're at an anime convention it's pretty safe to say you won't offend many people calling them an Otaku. It would be akin to going to a Doctor Who convention, calling someone a Whovian, and then they want to kick your ass for it. That would just not make sense. Outside of the con though I normally would stick to my above mentioned idea of making sure it's a good friend and they're cool with it first. |
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Bango
 Posts: 1122 |
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Aye, a con or dedicated anime shop is likely the only place where I'd use the term on a stranger and usually not without identifying myself as one in some way right after.
Though I have been told off for calling someone (well, everyone at the table, myself included) a geek at a gaming con. But I think that guy was just angry in general. Otaku and Gamer are likely the only ones I use on myself. I don't consider myself a Trekkie, Whovian, Brony or Browncoat despite watching the related shows. |
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Jose Cruz
 Posts: 1779 Location: South America |
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Disagree completely, I don't find anything "universal" about US movies if compared to other movies. US movies are characteristically American, in the same way that anime is characteristically Japanese. US movies dominate most markets thanks to American economic and cultural domination. However, in many countries they do not, in Japan, US movies only made 25% of the gross in 2012, for instance, in China, less than that, in India, less than 15%. US movies perform very well in Canada, UK and Latin America. Canada and the UK are pretty much similar to the US and part of the same cultural world (the English speaking world) while Latin America has always been a region of US cultural colonization. The causes of the domination of Hollywood of most of the world's theater gross are also many, beginning from the fact that Americans spend more to watch movies than other countries (US theater gross is 4.5 times Japan and 6 times France) and so already have a hugely strong national market that allows for the production of blockbusters with more special effects than movies made in other countries. However, that was not my point. My point is that US culture (or more broadly, the English speaking culture) is extremely self contained and the US is in particular hostile to foreign cultural products (with the exceptions of British, Canadian and Australian cultural products for obvious reasons). The causes for this general hostility are complex and I am not sure if I understand them very well, but I noticed that when living in the US. I am from Brazil, and there people are much more open to foreign cultural influences than in the US. Although US cultural influences in Brazil have also managed to block much of the cultural influences from the rest of the world besides the US. Notice that American children care less than adults from where cultural products come from, mainly because they have not yet been indoctrinated by their society to hate foreign culture. That's why a children's movie is the highest grossing foreign language movie in US history (the first Pokemon film).
I do not find Chinese films such as Hero to be more Chinese than American films such as The Avengers to be more American. Both movies are characteristic cultural products of their respective countries. The military, cultural and economic domination of the English speaking countries, first thanks to the UK and later thanks to the US, however, has over the past two centuries defined "universal sensibilities" to mean Anglo-American cultural sensibilities. The fact that you consider Anglo-American culture to be universal shows how well their culture has managed to incorporate itself into the rest of the world.
There is also a difference in average, I personally find the average quality of Japanese animation to be higher than American (compare an average anime such as A Certain Scientific Railgun with the average Cartoon Network show), but that is also due to the fact that they target a different demographic (Japanese animation is made for me, American is made for 9 year olds). If I compare the average anime with the average American adult animation, such as Family Guy, the quality is a bit more similar, though the average anime has much better visuals, more subtle characterization and is overall more elegant. US animation is still not taken seriously by US society and so they cannot make animation that takes itself seriously as an artform and as a medium for storytelling.
Why Japan would have a need to import foreign videogames while the US doesn't have a need to import foreign films? Sheer size? I believe that Japan has produced a very large number of videogames in a wide variety of genres. I agree that Japan is also a rather closed country from a cultural point of view. Not as closed as the US though and for different reasons. Japan is relatively closed because it was a civilization that evolved separately from other civilizations while it became westernized after 1870's, cultural differences still remain and the sheer size of Japan, an industrialized country of 130 million, makes it a very large cultural sphere. Still, it's very common for Japanese manga to be set in Europe, for instance, and for them to make references to other countries. Cowboy Bebop, for instance, has very strong explicit American influence, how many US TV shows have such explicit Japanese influence? Usually, US movies and TV makes foreign references for exotic appeal, not for the audiences to identify with the foreign culture but for the curiosity of it's exotic characteristics. |
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mdo7
 Posts: 6284 Location: Katy, Texas, USA |
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Just to let you know, there are 12 types of Otaku found in Japan and it's not limited to anime/manga/video game.
I wish there other type of otaku beside the 12 listed there. |
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