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.
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.
We don’t know what a “good dub” is because the history of dubbing is so fraught with decisions made stateside at the whims of people who didn’t make the anime.
Streaming really changed the game in the Western anime fandom. Not only did it usher in a new era of availability for anime in the West, it changed the culture here in some pretty major ways.
It’s a balancing act, where some companies are okay with having a smaller audience if it means that audience will be happier with their product, while other companies try to expand their markets.
In many ways, the subculture is still smarting from the hackjob localizations of the past, which were often poorly translated, poorly dubbed, had content cut for the Western release, or some combination of the three.
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.
A series of selfishly-made bad decisions. A downward spiral of people treating other people badly to satisfy their own ends. A tragic story of people callously taking advantage of one another.
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.