I think anime otaku really get are unfairly maligned... why is this, well, it struck a chord with me while I was at a classic/antique auto show over the weekend.

Certainly, people get more than obsessive over their hobbies (and when your hobby involves $20,000+ cars, it probably isn't too hard). These folks do everything your ordinary otaku does. There were all sorts of nice toys for sale but the two that stand out are the classic car videos and the die-cast models.

Why videos? Well, you have to be a big hobbyist to seek out videos of your favorite muscle car racing around from 'back in the day'. This I want to equate to collecting artbooks and the like. Obviously car videos don't encompass the same section of the hobby as anime videos would (because those would be the cars themselves). Instead, it's 'bonus footage' much like artbooks, guides, and the like.

The models... however... I was just standing there, browsing through a bunch of boxed die-cast models, when I see a guy come up with a very nice looking camera taking a close up of some die-cast car that was on display. I'm very much reminded of images of fans taking photos of the latest resin figures or somesuch.

Anywhoo, it's kind of hard to go half-way when you have a very expensive hobby like cars. Sure, I like em, but I'm not one to go to the lengths that I've seen people go to. I guess dropping that much money into some tou cars seems more acceptable than dropping it on anime/manga things. So next time someone challenges your hobbies you can probably point right back at their own.

Just a nice observation.

Often times, people judge otaku based not on their hobby but their behaviors. Why is it that many people are quick to say that someone is acting strangely rather than point at their relative hobby? It's because hobbies are usually well hidden from many people. Unless they are doing something blatantly related to their hobby, not too many people will know. I have a slight obsession over linguistics but people don't normally see this in me until they get me started on basic issues in Asian linguistics.

My stance on this whole "otaku" thing is that it is fine to be an otaku. It's just like any enthusiast of any other hobby. However, there are those fanatics that take it to an entirely new level. You have hobbyists and you have extremists. Extremists always get the spotlight.

<a href='http://catsonmars.com/otaku/index.php' target='_blank'>http://catsonmars.com/otaku/index.php</a>

I never understood that "otaku" bs <!--emo&-_---><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/sleep.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='sleep.gif' /><!--endemo-->

<!--QuoteBegin--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE</div><div class='quotemain'><!--QuoteEBegin-->My stance on this whole \"otaku\" thing is that it is fine to be an otaku. It's just like any enthusiast of any other hobby. However, there are those fanatics that take it to an entirely new level. You have hobbyists and you have extremists. Extremists always get the spotlight.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->I thought "otaku" meant to be an Extremist, in that you basically live, breathe, and sleep [to the point in which you have no other life other than] anime. Doesn't it have sort of a negative meaning in Japanese culture? *Shrug*

And thats y when girls call a guy an otaku its a diss <!--emo&:lol:--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/laugh.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='laugh.gif' /><!--endemo-->

<!--QuoteBegin--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE</div><div class='quotemain'><!--QuoteEBegin-->I thought \"otaku\" meant to be an Extremist, in that you basically live, breathe, and sleep [to the point in which you have no other life other than] anime. Doesn't it have sort of a negative meaning in Japanese culture? *Shrug*<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Otaku means house. In America, it's not supposed to carry any sort of negative connotation. It has been my understanding that the word 'otaku' is just a description for anybody that regards anime as their hobby. Just the same with the words 'stamp collector' or 'skater' or 'florist'. Just because it does indeed carry a bad stench in Japan, does it really mean that it ought to be the same in America, or anywhere else for that matter? As for those extremists, there's extremists in everything. They always get the spotlight. Just like the Taliban. They don't represent Muslims as a whole, now do they? In fact, Muslims don't even like the Taliban. Whether regular otaku like or dislike the extremists, I don't know. I can only say that I don't like them at all for they take the eyes of the public and as a result, misrepresent otaku as a whole.

I remember looking this up a long time ago and had this saved on my computer. Just snips of a few sites, if I recall.


The word otaku has many different meanings in Japan. It can mean "your house" but it is "most commonly used as one of the multitude of words in the Japanese honorific hierarchy for 'you,' especially when addressing someone with whom you are not overly familiar and wish to be very polite.
The new group of anime and manga fans addressed each other with the honorific otaku, which was unusual. Exactly why they did so is not altogether clear, since young males in Japan have traditionally addressed members of their peer group with far rougher sounding personal pronouns. It may have started as a word solely for anime and manga fans, but it soon began to be used with any youth obsessed with a hobby (generally male). Thus there are baseball otaku, military otaku and video game otaku as well as fans of anime and the Japanese comics known as manga.
In 1988 and 1989 a porn manga and anime otaku, Tsutomo Miyazaki, (not to be confused with the acclaimed anime director Hayao Miyazaki) killed four young girls.
Since Miyazaki's crime was particularly horrible and had occurred in a nation that prides itself on being almost crime-free, the media went into a feeding frenzy, establishing a perfect syllogism in the public mind-- that otaku are people obsessed with manga and animation; that Miyazaki was an otaku and therefore all otaku are like Miyazaki. A flood of reports soon ... soon appeared in the media, creating the impression of the manga and anime fan community inhabited by socially deranged and autistic wackos.


=/ Its like a lot of words we use for reasons we don't know. Because it mutated over time and it's meaing has changed. Before Otaku was just another word, but no it's associated with all these connotations. *shrug* Ahh well. <!--emo&^_^--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/happy.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='happy.gif' /><!--endemo-->