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Answerman - Why Is It Socially Unacceptable To Be An Otaku In Japan? (Revisited)


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BodaciousSpacePirate
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 14, 2017 12:00 pm Reply with quote
Thanks for the follow-up, Justin!
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EricJ2



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PostPosted: Wed Jun 14, 2017 12:06 pm Reply with quote
Anyone remember the scene from the old 80's "Otaku no Video" anime, where a successful businessman was "blackmailed" with his secret otaku shame, that he, gasp, owned a CHAR HELMET??

Take a guess what his "secret anime otaku shame" would be if they did the joke today.
And whether he'd keep his job because of it.
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Parsifal24





PostPosted: Wed Jun 14, 2017 12:27 pm Reply with quote
That was informative I thought the last article did seem a little "dated" as far as the whole "hide you're power level" internal debate. Yeah it is sometimes you honestly don't want to be bother having to explain things to people over and over. Also because of some people just have small minds and assume the worst of you.

Also yes it does depend on what kind of Otaku you are dealing with and Otaku who is say really into Love Live is going to have another level of acceptance. Over and against some one who is into a more underground thing like Doujin Bullet Hell games as completely random example.

There also the fact that "Cool Japan" is still trying to be made a thing by the Japanese Government as well of course if one looks at books like The End of Cool Japan: Ethical, Legal, and Cultural Challenges to Japanese Popular Culture (Routledge Contemporary Japan Series) edited by Mark McLelland this could be on it's way out or in a slow process of self destructing as well.

As far as understanding Otaku one of the best pieces of writing I've read still has to be Eiji Otsuka's interview in Patrick W. Galbraith's The Moe Manifesto.
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#861208



Joined: 07 Oct 2016
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 14, 2017 1:48 pm Reply with quote
When I'm in Japan, I'm usually mostly around somewhere between Shibuya and Ikebukuro, which is a pretty fujoshi and "youth"-fashion (e.g. Shibuya and Harajuku) filled area... but it's hard to get on a crowded train and not see a few ita-bags.

The one thing that bothers me the most, though, is... male idol anime are so big there, and barely on anyone's radar on English sites. I barely ever just run into someone randomly talking about Tsukiuta, but I see a ton of Tsukiusa plushies on bags on the train in Japan. UtaPri and EnStars are even bigger. Pitadoru is.......... unfortunately not as big, even though it's legitimately the best thing ever seriously look at them they're perfect.

Anyway, yeah. Please. Give these boys some love.
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Lord Oink



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PostPosted: Wed Jun 14, 2017 3:08 pm Reply with quote
#861208 wrote:
The one thing that bothers me the most, though, is... male idol anime are so big there, and barely on anyone's radar on English sites. I barely ever just run into someone randomly talking about Tsukiuta, but I see a ton of Tsukiusa plushies on bags on the train in Japan. UtaPri and EnStars are even bigger. Pitadoru is.......... unfortunately not as big, even though it's legitimately the best thing ever seriously look at them they're perfect..


Japan is way more open about different genres than American fans are. Americans pretty much gravitate towards action-type shows. Attack on Titan, Drifters, SAO, Naruto, Dragonball. Everything else gets lukewarm reception. Shoujo/josei/fujoshi series have never done particularly well here aside from Sailor Moon, and even that took until recently to be fully released here. Most go unlicensed, others like Precure and Doremi get mangled by Saban and 4kids and left to die in obscurity.
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ninjamitsuki



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PostPosted: Wed Jun 14, 2017 4:53 pm Reply with quote
Lord Oink wrote:
#861208 wrote:
The one thing that bothers me the most, though, is... male idol anime are so big there, and barely on anyone's radar on English sites. I barely ever just run into someone randomly talking about Tsukiuta, but I see a ton of Tsukiusa plushies on bags on the train in Japan. UtaPri and EnStars are even bigger. Pitadoru is.......... unfortunately not as big, even though it's legitimately the best thing ever seriously look at them they're perfect..


Japan is way more open about different genres than American fans are. Americans pretty much gravitate towards action-type shows. Attack on Titan, Drifters, SAO, Naruto, Dragonball. Everything else gets lukewarm reception. Shoujo/josei/fujoshi series have never done particularly well here aside from Sailor Moon, and even that took until recently to be fully released here. Most go unlicensed, others like Precure and Doremi get mangled by Saban and 4kids and left to die in obscurity.

Nah, Ouran High School Host Club, Fushigi Yuugi, Hetalia, and Fruits Basket were huge in the western anime fandom for a time, and Free! and Haikyuu are still very popular. It's just the male idol shows that haven't caught on with western female fans, I suspect it might have to do with the music licensing being a nightmare for most companies.
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leafy sea dragon



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PostPosted: Wed Jun 14, 2017 6:28 pm Reply with quote
Parsifal24 wrote:
There also the fact that "Cool Japan" is still trying to be made a thing by the Japanese Government as well of course if one looks at books like The End of Cool Japan: Ethical, Legal, and Cultural Challenges to Japanese Popular Culture (Routledge Contemporary Japan Series) edited by Mark McLelland this could be on it's way out or in a slow process of self destructing as well.


Regardless of the changes in attitudes since, the Cool Japan campaign still comes across to me as an incredibly misguided and poorly researched project. It's as if the Cool Japan agents only went to anime conventions as far as their western research goes and thought every young westerner is like them.

Well, that, and they're trying way too hard, and that automatically makes them uncool.

#861208 wrote:

The one thing that bothers me the most, though, is... male idol anime are so big there, and barely on anyone's radar on English sites. I barely ever just run into someone randomly talking about Tsukiuta, but I see a ton of Tsukiusa plushies on bags on the train in Japan. UtaPri and EnStars are even bigger. Pitadoru is.......... unfortunately not as big, even though it's legitimately the best thing ever seriously look at them they're perfect.

Anyway, yeah. Please. Give these boys some love.


Well, look at how real-life musicians and bands that become popular with teenage girls and young women get treated here: They become the people the rest of society likes to hate on. There is something about media aimed at girls, especially music, that seems to irk men and keeps their profile low.

Look at Justin Timberlake and Leonardo DiCaprio: They were targets when they were the heartthrobs of teenage girls everywhere. Then, both of them went into acting in movies aimed at general audiences and now the guys respect them too. If you told a man from 1998 that in 2015, lots of men really wanted DiCaprio to finally win his first Oscar for Best Actor, he'd think the world would've finally gone mad.
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Stuart Smith



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PostPosted: Wed Jun 14, 2017 7:31 pm Reply with quote
ninjamitsuki wrote:
Nah, Ouran High School Host Club, Fushigi Yuugi, Hetalia, and Fruits Basket were huge in the western anime fandom for a time, and Free! and Haikyuu are still very popular.


The later two fall in the realm of sports shows with lots of female fans rather than actual shojo. Hetalia is also seinen, for the record.

Quote:
It's just the male idol shows that haven't caught on with western female fans, I suspect it might have to do with the music licensing being a nightmare for most companies.


That would really only explain lack of domestic releases and physical sales, not online popularity which isn't limited by legal clauses.

There are a number of shows popular with girls and women in Japan that haven't caught on here. Whether one wants to blame it on poor dubs or licensing issues, the fact remains theres a big gap. Detective Conan has a huge fujoshi market in Japan, but the series barely registers as a blip in America, male or female. Same goes for Inazuma Eleven and Yu-Gi-Oh!, the former can be explained by lack of soccer interest in America, and the latter has a stigma of being a merchandise show in America.

To be fair, the same can be said for male media. Gundam has always had shaky popularity in America. Pocket Monsters also suffers from the same stigma Yu-Gi-Oh does here. Sun and Moon caused a lot of controversy in America, but in Japan it's doing immensely better and has way more fandom than XY. Yokai Watch is even worse off here.

leafy sea dragon wrote:
Well, look at how real-life musicians and bands that become popular with teenage girls and young women get treated here: They become the people the rest of society likes to hate on. There is something about media aimed at girls, especially music, that seems to irk men and keeps their profile low.


Those bands are still immensely popular though. However, I think a big issue is lack of accessibility to seiyuu. Unless one comes to a convention, it's harder to be as big a fan as Japanese fans can go to events and concerts all over, buy their CDs, and support them in various way. Idol culture relies a lot on proximity.

-Stuart Smith
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EricJ2



Joined: 01 Feb 2014
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 14, 2017 8:17 pm Reply with quote
leafy sea dragon wrote:
Parsifal24 wrote:
There also the fact that "Cool Japan" is still trying to be made a thing by the Japanese Government as well of course if one looks at books like The End of Cool Japan: Ethical, Legal, and Cultural Challenges to Japanese Popular Culture (Routledge Contemporary Japan Series) edited by Mark McLelland this could be on it's way out or in a slow process of self destructing as well.


Regardless of the changes in attitudes since, the Cool Japan campaign still comes across to me as an incredibly misguided and poorly researched project. It's as if the Cool Japan agents only went to anime conventions as far as their western research goes and thought every young westerner is like them.

Well, that, and they're trying way too hard, and that automatically makes them uncool.


That, and they don't seem to watch any of the shows themselves--and certainly wouldn't dare to say so or proclaim the shows' "coolness" in front of their voters--and just assume that we in those unexpected other countries are just watching whatever they're watching (eg. Love Live), or they just hired someone to Google that we're all talking about Attack on Titan or My Hero Academia.
Which makes it seem like standard "Hello, fellow young people" marketing, except it's attached to one crucial government export to bolster the economy.

In the end, basically comes off as, oh....remember last movie weekend, when Universal brought out their goofy Tom Cruise monster movie and said "Hey, you profitable moviegoers, here's your next new corporate six-movie comic-book franchise you'll all look forward to over the next five years!", and everyone sort of shook their heads sadly and laughed?
Yeah....Kinda like that. Confused
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Sakagami Tomoyo



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PostPosted: Wed Jun 14, 2017 9:13 pm Reply with quote
EricJ2 wrote:
Anyone remember the scene from the old 80's "Otaku no Video" anime, where a successful businessman was "blackmailed" with his secret otaku shame, that he, gasp, owned a CHAR HELMET??

Wasn't blackmail; it was the "interviewer" producing evidence to the contrary of his claims of not having cosplayed. He winds up copping to it and puts on the Char helmet he had at his desk. And Otaku no Video was made in 1991; the mockumentary bits were set then and the anime bits were (mostly) set in the 80s.
leafy sea dragon wrote:
There is something about media aimed at girls, especially music, that seems to irk men and keeps their profile low.

To a large extent, that's the "if it's not pandering to me, it's worthless" attitude that many men have. But even for the more open-minded men, stuff aimed at teenage girls has limited appeal.
leafy sea dragon wrote:
Look at Justin Timberlake and Leonardo DiCaprio: They were targets when they were the heartthrobs of teenage girls everywhere. Then, both of them went into acting in movies aimed at general audiences and now the guys respect them too. If you told a man from 1998 that in 2015, lots of men really wanted DiCaprio to finally win his first Oscar for Best Actor, he'd think the world would've finally gone mad.

I can't speak for everyone, but what prevented me from taking Leonardo DiCaprio seriously as an actor back in the day was that all I ever heard about him was "omigod he's so CUTE" from countless teenage girls, and it didn't help that he only ever seemed to feature in works aimed solely at that demographic. If at the time he'd acted in more stuff that had a more general audience in mind, I expect more people would have recognised that he was actually a good actor, and that he had value beyond being eye candy for girls.
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crosswithyou



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PostPosted: Wed Jun 14, 2017 9:47 pm Reply with quote
I think this is a better answer than the previous one which, as most people pointed out, was pretty dated. I've not yet had any issue admitting that I like anime since that's an explanation that is usually follows after I'm asked where I learned my Japanese. (I actually majored in Japanese in school too, but I got my start by watching anime and reading manga.) This could be due to the fact that I'm a foreigner, but I haven't seen anyone be shamed for liking anime.

There are also quite a few celebrities known for liking anime, and there are more programs, including documentaries, centering on anime and the anime industry. It's pretty impossible to not notice the growing visibility of anime in public. There are ads on trains and in stations, related media regularly shows up on the Oricon ranking charts alongside "regular" stuff, etc. The stigma that comes with being an anime fan has definitely faded with the years.

On the other hand though, I do have friends who choose to keep their hobby under wraps at work.

I think it would be interesting to compare newer fans with fans from maybe a decade ago. Personally I find a lot of fans nowadays to be very obnoxious. This is likely due to the fanbase growing younger. I absolutely HATE when there are fans near me at events or concerts who shout out at the performers in hopes of being noticed, or those who wave their arms wildly, obscuring the view of those around them. (My personal rule is to only wave pen lights in front of you and never higher than your head, unless the situation calls for it and everyone is doing it.) Perhaps with anime being a little more acceptable, newer fans don't feel the need to restrain themselves, nor have they seen how tamer events used to be.
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Juno016



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PostPosted: Wed Jun 14, 2017 10:57 pm Reply with quote
I didn't get to respond to the previous article, but this one is muuuuuuch better. Pretty much, there's been a trickling in of specks familiar to the otaku culture in the mainstream, due to more exposure with technology. New tech is very friendly to fictional entertainment and the more people see something, the more they think, "Huh, I wonder if I should try this out." My dad used to pick on me for playing Pokemon as a kid, and now he's ironically one of the few people who STILL regularly play Pokemon Go. In Japan, most kids I was around had a favorite anime, and there were a few parents playing video games alongside them, or while waiting for their kids' classes to finish. One of my classes basically involved three otaku girls who loved turning the topic to otaku anime (Love Live, Re:Zero, KanColle, Pokemon, etc.) and didn't mind speaking English to do so, even though they struggled with the language. And I lived nowhere near Tokyo, but Nagoya and most big cities have their own "DendenTown" (electronic markets with maid cafes and game centers and mandarake and annual otaku cosplay events) that basically embody smaller Akibas.

But still, let it be known that anti-otaku attitudes still persist in stronger abundance in Japan than anti-geek attitudes in the West. On 2ch, you see lots of awkward stories of guys and girls losing actual face when their hobby interests were exposed. I remember one particular story of a girl who worked at a maid cafe bullying one of the regular customers because she knew him back in high school and always thought he was gross BECAUSE he was an otaku. Ironic, but she had already established the guy (who had a good job) as a loser, so she was quite comfortable with singling him out. She'd order more than he could afford behind his back to jack up his bill and sit down at his table to discourage any other maid from choosing him to talk with and promote to. I witnessed it myself in Japan, too, with people treating me like a creep if I was carrying bags from Nagoya.
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leafy sea dragon



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PostPosted: Thu Jun 15, 2017 1:05 am Reply with quote
crosswithyou wrote:
I think it would be interesting to compare newer fans with fans from maybe a decade ago. Personally I find a lot of fans nowadays to be very obnoxious. This is likely due to the fanbase growing younger. I absolutely HATE when there are fans near me at events or concerts who shout out at the performers in hopes of being noticed, or those who wave their arms wildly, obscuring the view of those around them. (My personal rule is to only wave pen lights in front of you and never higher than your head, unless the situation calls for it and everyone is doing it.) Perhaps with anime being a little more acceptable, newer fans don't feel the need to restrain themselves, nor have they seen how tamer events used to be.


I've been observing it going the other way here in the United States: There are fewer kids who are getting into anime than there used to be a decade ago. As a result, the average age of the American anime fan has been rising, and they've become more civil and quiet. There is just so much entertainment aimed at kids that stuff like Yo-kai Watch and Doraemon, recent attempts of Japanese franchises at appealing to western children, have a supremely hard time yanking their attention from stuff they've been glued to. That, and an overall shift away from action and towards surreal comedy (made popular by SpongeBob SquarePants) and breakneck-pace slapstick comedy (made popular by Despicable Me and the Rabbids video games). And because anime reached its peak popularity 10 to 15 years ago in the United States, many anime fans are now parents, and American children commonly distance their hobbies from those of their parents.

Gone from conventions and other social gatherings are are those yaoi paddles, insertion of Japanese buzzwords like "baka" and "kawaii" into English conversations, and destruction of public property at neighboring hotels. (Well, maybe the last one isn't completely gone yet--but it's now caused not by kids who lose their sense of reality, but by fans who get drunk.)

Juno016 wrote:
I remember one particular story of a girl who worked at a maid cafe bullying one of the regular customers because she knew him back in high school and always thought he was gross BECAUSE he was an otaku. Ironic, but she had already established the guy (who had a good job) as a loser, so she was quite comfortable with singling him out. She'd order more than he could afford behind his back to jack up his bill and sit down at his table to discourage any other maid from choosing him to talk with and promote to.


I would've assumed it would be illegal to covertly load more items into someone's purchase to make it cost more. At least, it sounds very much like fraud.
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crosswithyou



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PostPosted: Thu Jun 15, 2017 1:33 am Reply with quote
leafy sea dragon wrote:
I've been observing it going the other way here in the United States: There are fewer kids who are getting into anime than there used to be a decade ago. As a result, the average age of the American anime fan has been rising, and they've become more civil and quiet. There is just so much entertainment aimed at kids that stuff like Yo-kai Watch and Doraemon, recent attempts of Japanese franchises at appealing to western children, have a supremely hard time yanking their attention from stuff they've been glued to. That, and an overall shift away from action and towards surreal comedy (made popular by SpongeBob SquarePants) and breakneck-pace slapstick comedy (made popular by Despicable Me and the Rabbids video games). And because anime reached its peak popularity 10 to 15 years ago in the United States, many anime fans are now parents, and American children commonly distance their hobbies from those of their parents.


I think I only partially agree with you on this. I agree that U.S. fans aren't quite overly obnoxious as they've been in the past, though many still converse loudly in public places to get the attention of people passing by. However, I wouldn't say that there are fewer people getting into anime. The number has increased, in my opinion. Anime has never been more easily accessible and young attendees are still quite plentiful at conventions. Depending on the area, they may even outnumber the old(er) fans. My friends who have become parents have definitely passed their hobbies down to their kids with little to no resistance.

I would think that we are currently living during the peak years of anime. Disc sales may not be at an all-time high, but that's probably because most people watch via online streaming.
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mangamuscle



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PostPosted: Thu Jun 15, 2017 1:23 pm Reply with quote
So this is the thread where I can show my shotgun and say "you kids have it easy nowadays"

leafy sea dragon wrote:
There are fewer kids who are getting into anime than there used to be a decade ago.


I do not have any statistics, but I know for a fact that popular (in japan) kids anime (sazae-san, doraemon, maruko-chan and similar) have never been popular on the americas. We had the original Dragonball (which is more targeted toward kids) shown on broadcast tv over here, but re-runs of it are very, very rare, the more teenage oriented DBZ still gets lots or re-runs. So while dragonball super and one piece might be seen by kids, the thematic makes it more targeted toward teens+ (at least over here, japan has sometimes different set of values).

As for kids not watching as much anime, again I have no statistics but netflix is making it easy for them to watch little witch academia and voltron and they probably have yet to learn what "anime" means (they will not ask to go to an anime convention if they do not know the word).

So, if a paid study do finds out that the age of anime fans is increasing this side of the pacific, then initiatives like cool japan should try to tackle the issue since the future is at stake, literally.
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