what's an otaku? (double topic)

[FireLight09]

I'm pretty sure he was joking, dude, he's posted around here before normally if I recall correctly. >.>"

 

[Abbadon]

I'm pretty sure he was joking, dude, he's posted around here before normally if I recall correctly. >.>"

Everytime I've seen him around here, he's been a little... well, I'll just say zealous to be nice. He actually started a few threads before about how evil anime is.

And happy birthday.

 

[Eudaimonist]

A white westerner that idolizes the ways on the Japanese people and their culture.

No, it isn't. A Japanese guy can be just as much an otaku as a Westerner. An otaku is basically a kind of anime nerd/fanatic, something like an extreme "Trekkie", and often imagined as fat and obsessed.

 

[Qyöt27]

No, it isn't. A Japanese guy can be just as much an otaku as a Westerner. An otaku is basically a kind of anime nerd/fanatic, something like an extreme "Trekkie", and often imagined as fat and obsessed.

True. You can even see this idea in DiGi Charat, although there are other series which portray them differently (Comic Party, at least the main characters, Evangelion, Otaku no Video's main characters in the animated segments - well save one of them, etc.). Puny-looking, hyperactive bespectacled nerds are probably the other half of the common image (coincedently, that's more of the image of a common Trekkie).

It also gets into 'what is obsessed, though?', because there are some anime-related hobbies which sort of have lives of their own (primarily talking about AMVs, here). While I'd be the first to admit that every fanscene has its distinctly otaku members, I wouldn't say that all of them are. I enjoy editing AMVs, but I would get thoroughly offended if I was labelled as an otaku, since I'm not. My draw to it is the creativity and the entertainment quality far more than the fact that it's 'ZOH TEH ANIME!!11'. [/sarcasm]

 

[Bluwav]

Ya know whats even worse? A hikkimori. Its a shut in person who will refuse to come out of their rooms for years at a time, even forever. Its becuase the Japanese standards are so high, they just lose it and withdraw from society. They order everything through the internet and have their parents leave their food at the locked down.

I'd just like to have a SWAT team tear down their doors and drag em outside.

 

[Eudaimonist]

Ya know whats even worse? A hikkimori. Its a shut in person who will refuse to come out of their rooms for years at a time, even forever. Its becuase the Japanese standards are so high, they just lose it and withdraw from society. They order everything through the internet and have their parents leave their food at the locked down.

I'd just like to have a SWAT team tear down their doors and drag em outside.

Are you so sure you wouldn't be a hikkimori if you grew up in Japan and had to face those standards?

 

[Abbadon]

There's a higher suicide rate for modern ronin (those that fail college exams) than the historical ronin. And if you do get through college, you're expected to work something like 18 hours a day.

Life in Japan sucks by American standards.

 

[FireLight09]

From what I learned it's near impossible to flunk out of college, though. College is really seen as the party years of one's life, until you get a job.

And don't get me started on employment in Japan. It scares me to merely think about it.