Mia's brain storming

OTAKU and society

2009-06-04T03:24:00.000-07:00

OTAKU used to be a group of people who was looked down upon by the whole society because they are indulging in unreality. The main stream of the society excludes OTAKU. OTAKU people were considered as a group of people who doesn't have active funtion and contribution to the society but useing up same amount of resource as everyone else.

The situation changed since a TV drama called Densha Otoko (電車男) on air in 2004. Densha Otoko can be translated as Train Men, actually it's produced as movie, television series, manga, novel, and other media products. They are all based on the purportedly true story of a 23-year-old OTAKU who intervened when a drunk man was harassing several women on a train. The OTAKU ultimately begins dating one of the women who is a noblest beauty.

Further information about Densha Otoko:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Densha_Otoko

The drama changed people's opinion on OTAKU. People start to put their prejudice away for a while, so they can see an OTAKU's life and mind. The drama brought shy and good-natured image of an OTAKU, people followed the view from the OTAKU's side to continue the story line so that they can get understand the character's feeling.

OTAKU is just a differentiation by hobby and behaviour, OTAKU is also a group of people who has dream. From another point of view, the reason for why OTAKU become negative is the discrimination from other group of people. The press from society make them feel spineless and useless, but in fact, they are creative . OATKU is the main power that is holding up and supporting the anime industry. Products of OTAKU culture such as COSPLAY and fanfic publication do bring a huge profit to the economy.

Extreme sometimes can be considered as pure, most of the OTAKU are idealist. They have to make themselves more face to the reality and improve skills for living. It will be a long term process which needs care and forgiveness from the whole society.

OTAKU culture - events

2009-06-04T03:04:00.000-07:00

OTAKU has lots of events which can be considered as activities of their circles.
They hold culture festivals in BUDOKAN (a big hall centre in TOKYO) every year. They sell and buy fanfic manga, drama or original songs CDs in the hall. Different cycles own their own location in the hall. There is COSPLAY show taking place at the square outside the hall.

This is the link to the most famous and popular OTAKU discussion board in Japan:

http://www.2ch.net/

This is a site on which they are selling products from the 74th festival:

http://www.dannychoo.com/detail/mac/eng/image/6486/C74+Doujin.html

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There is a big event which takes place on the internet of Japan every year, it's called the cutest anime character competetion. People vote for the characters from the anime which come on air during a prescriptive period ( eg. Oct 2008 - Sep 2009). The competition takes 3 months from preliminary contest to final through a knockout system. The winner will be recognized as the cutest of the year.

The official site for most cutest 2008:

http://friend.45.kg/saimoe2008/

OTAKU culture - COSPLAY

2009-06-04T02:40:00.000-07:00

Cosplay which is a short form of costume roleplaying. It can be considered as the most gorgeous product of OTAKU culture.
COSPLAY means People ware costume of anime characters and make up to make themselves look like the characters. They take photoes and photoshop them to make the whole image closer to the original characters.

It came of the feeling of becoming one's favourite character, now it's one of the most important activities of OTAKU culture. Big shows and events are held quite often, many famous COSERS (cosplaers) become popular like stars.

Specific definition of COSPLAY:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosplay

Gogle image result for COSPLAY:

http://images.google.co.nz/images?hl=en&q=cosplay&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=pkMGSoTnM5S6tgPVh6TlAQ&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&resnum=1&ct=title

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Maid cafe is another kind of COSPLAY, the waitress are all waring costume of maid and treat customers like masters. It's a type of rolplaying between the aitress and the customers. Maid cafe is very popular by male OTAKU.

What's Maid Cafe?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maid_cafe

OTAKU culture - Fan Fiction

2009-06-04T01:15:00.000-07:00

Each group or circle has its own culture style, so as OTAKU.
As now we have all known that OTAKU is a group of people who loves Japanese ACG products, we will easily know that their culture must base on the ACG stuff.

Actually OTAKU is a creative group. They sucessfully developed their own culture style and products through many different areas. OTAKU form lots of different clubs to share information, have discussion and develop their own products.

Some of them who is good at drawing or story writing build club to pulish fan fictions as manga and novels, it's called DOUJINSHI (同人誌) in Japanese. There are many professional DOUJINSHI authors who take writing fanfics as job. Many DOUJINSHI refer R18 contents, the stories are usually about the main characters having sex with the most popular female characters. OTAKU bought this kind of fanfic publication as publication.

definition of DOUJINSHI:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DÅjinshi

Google image result for fanfic manga :
http://images.google.co.nz/images?hl=en&q=doujinshi&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=3sf3Sb5FpuC1A8DtpeIO&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&resnum=4&ct=title

Female OTAKU group has a special inteest, they love to put male characters as couples.
They exclude female characters but like to dream their favourite male characters are gay people.
It's called BL (boys love) in their language. They write or draw fanfics about BL, almost all the fanfics contains sexual scenes between males. Because they are both males, so nobody is gonna to be jealous.

There are fanfics about GL (girls love) as well. Gl doesn't have a fixed readership class differentiated by gender. There are several people who is from both male and female OTAKU groups likes GL fanfics.

What's BL?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaoi

A BL fanfic site:

http://www.fanfiction.net/

I think it's a good development to create fanfictions. It's a good way to put one's feeling really into the original work. Many eople who belong to the group of OTAKU is creative, they are useing their skills in a non-main stream area, but not a wrong area.Original products and fan-made products are all welcome by the market so hey both makr contribution to the anime industry and the economy.

Where are they?

2009-06-03T23:39:00.000-07:00

Where can OTAKU be found?

The answer is everywhere.
- at class (someone use anime songs as their mobile phone ringtones,drawing anime characters on their notebooks,talking about animes and games at lunch time, like downloading animes and so on)

- at work (similar situation comparing with the pints list above)

- in street (someone walking past with an OTAKU look)

- someone you konw or have heared about ( who is a Japanese anime, manga or game mania)

What I would like to introduce is the place where is difined as OTAKU's base area in Japan.
It's called AKIHABARA (秋葉原).

Below is the link of introduction to AKIHABARA form Wikipedia dictionary:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akihabara

AKIHABARA is called the electronic city in Japan because there are many shops located there selling electronic products. Also,there are many shops selling ACG (anime,comics and games) products and internet cafes in AKIHABARA. The OTAKU group usually go to AKIHABARA to purchas ACG products, they stay at the anime concept cafes, watching cosplay shows and joining different types of actiities there. AKIHABARA is the main distributing center of OTAKU in Japan.

There is a TV drama called Akihabara@Deep which was on air in 2006. It is a story about young OTAKU group's life and career. They use AKIHABARA as the only stage, telling the tory about different levels of characters who belong or relating OTAKU group. The drama used a typical Japanese comedy style to reflect the OTAKU culture.

Specific introduction to the drama AKIHABARA@Deep:

http://wiki.d-addicts.com/Akihabara@deep

the OTAKU look

2009-06-03T22:54:00.000-07:00

Here is a page of another description on OTAKU:
http://eskeptic.wordpress.com/2007/09/29/uberreicht-das-otaku/

I photoshopped the picture from the page above and remarked the note of introduction to an OTAKU's looking as below:

There is another image result below showing an OTAKU who is taking photo of a figure of an anime character:

The looking of OTAKU group is one of the main reasons that people discriminate them. Simple costume sometimes do seems not polite enough, but it is much more better than sugaring up only outside than inside. Like some girls are really putting effort in beauty care and make up, they look pretty but what they have is just good looking.They have no inner spiritual search, no goal or ideality.

What's OTAKU ?

2009-06-03T20:57:00.000-07:00

Here is a link of definiton on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otaku

And also a link from Urban Dictionary:
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=otaku

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OTAKU comes from the Japanese word 御宅, (sounds as otaku）.
The word actually means a house, now it was used to describe people who stay at home all the time. That's the OTAKU group. It was usually written in KATAKANA ( a type of Japanese alphabet), as オタク.

OTAKU is considered differently to the group of NEET (not in education, employment or training). The OTAKU group may have jobs or they may be students. The most obvious character of OTAKU is to indulge in one or several kinds of hobbies. Most of people who is defined as a OTAKU now is more like a Japanese anime mania. These people spend almost all their leisure time on researching, watching, collecting and communicatuing about Japanese manga and animes. They seem only interested in the ２D elements. They treat everyday life as needs, but anime products as energy for living.

My Delicious

2009-06-03T20:40:00.000-07:00

Here is the link to my delicious page of tags that I created for my topic
http://delicious.com/tags/mia_li

OTAKU

image

Place

culture

event

cosplay

doujinshi

BL

shopping

denshaotoko

My topic

2009-04-28T20:45:00.000-07:00

I'm going to discusse about the OTAKU culture in the steps below:

1. introduction to OTAKU

2. OTAKU culture

3. OTAKU group and the society