He may very well be the biggest, highest-level otaku in the Genshiken, but he’s also somehow the most stylish, most sociable, and most conventionally attractive.
When you’re flying around DCS World in the Weebjet 5000, you don’t get to take yourself seriously, no matter how much money you spent on your flight sim setup.
Obviously, otaku pursuits can be life-encompassing endeavours. The 17 Sustainable Otaku Goals serve to help otaku integrate their passion into a healthy lifestyle, thus avoiding burnout and conflicts both inside and outside the subculture.
In a world where being able to merchandise a show can be a determining factor in that show’s fate, it’s counterproductive that so many outspoken anime fans in the West seem disdainful of anime made to appeal to people and sell.
There’s a cycle that plays out in anime fandom that, on the surface, looks benign, and mostly is benign. Despite that, however, there are subtle issues with it that bother me in that it tends to prevent a real discussion from occurring.
It’s surprising how easy it can be to push a false narrative to the level where it becomes accepted by default by many within a population, despite not representing reality.
For what’s portrayed by so many as a wish-fulfillment genre for lonely men, harem anime protagonists seem to have a penchant for choosing some pretty hostile women.
They build an identity around how antisocial they are, making themselves feel superior and absolving themselves of responsibility for being unable to make friends or form and maintain relationships.
Fictional characters can make good role models, as their existence is as a set of boiled-down concepts, making them free from the many intricate shortcomings of being human.
To understand fanservice and truly answer the question of what makes fanservice work, it’s necessary to break things down to a structural level and work from there.
Rather than making commentary on otaku culture by passively studying it through a cultural critic lens, Otaku Spaces meets the otaku right where they live.
Capable of controlling the light, A.C., and other household appliances, as well as functioning as an alarm clock and a weathergirl, Vinclu Inc.’s Gatebox is Amazon’s Alexa with an otaku spin.