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 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.
Within the anti-otaku sentiment cultivated by the media, there is no room for a portrayal of otaku as politically-active, socially-liberal, and generally not evil.
Without the extended internal questioning about otaku identity, nor any immediately visible effort to enforce standards of behaviour or change their image to the outside world, the otaku community invites a lot of skepticism and criticism from the outside looking in.
When otaku get together, however, magical things can happen. Combine plenty of time to develop a talent with the undying passion and drive to see one’s dreams come true and we get things like the Daicon IV animation.
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.