Anime is the red-headed stepchild of “geek culture.”
While certain works like Dragonball Z, My Hero Academia, and Demon Slayer have made it more into the mainstream consciousness, the vast majority of the medium and many of its underlying elements remain squarely in the otaku niche, never to be dislodged.
Even as anime grows in popularity in the US, the Japanese industry continues to serve their domestic market first. This comes even as Western publishers attempt to aggressively localize anime in hopes of scaling up profit.
How has anime managed to escape total assimilation into the greater “geek culture” paradigm in ways things like comic books, tabletop games, and sci-fi haven’t?
The reason is because otaku engagement is fundamentally different from how other fans of niche subcultures operate. While the closest equivalent concepts we have words for are indeed “geek” and “nerd,” they aren’t the same as otaku. Otaku are a fundamentally different market and the market forces governing “geek culture” don’t serve otaku.
Though we in the West usually use the word to describe anime fans in particular, “otaku” is, in many ways, a method of consumption and interaction with a subculture. There are “otaku” in gaming spaces, comic book spaces, sci-fi spaces, and a myriad of other “geek” subcultures. But the difference between a normal gamer and one with otaku tendencies is almost night and day. It’s the difference between the casual Call of Duty Warzone player and the gamer spending hundreds of dollars on control stick setups for DCS World.
The appeal is different, and the business model must be different as a result. This is where the disconnect between Japanese anime producers and Western publishers occurs.
Anime, as a business model, is meant to make money over a long period of time through multiple revenue streams, all aimed at serving and growing a dedicated core demographic. Western publishers, however, operate with a desire to increase scale quickly (Especially companies under the umbrella of larger companies).
Scale requires a growing consumerbase, and the faster that consumerbase grows, the better. Japan’s production committee business model mitigates this need, but no such thing exists in the West. Creating a niche product for a niche audience is a risk that many companies aren’t willing to take. As a result, things like comics, sci-fi, and tabletop get absorbed into the greater “geek culture” and participate in the “geek chic” paradigm, in an effort to scale up.
Anime doesn’t get to join, because anime is still created for otaku. Western publishers may try to water down otaku appeal where they can (to wildly varying degrees of success), but they can’t erase anime’s origins.
The difference between “geek culture” and otaku culture is, while “geek culture” has spent decades trying to endear itself to the mainstream culture, otaku culture operates as if the mainstream culture doesn’t even exist.
The two will clash wherever they meet because their endgames are fundamentally different.