Do you know what the word “OTAKU” means? In these recent years, the word is becoming familiar in the United States because the flow of Japanese animation to the United States has become more frequent. Just like there are crazy fans in sports and music, there are also fervent devotees to anime.
These people are called “OTAKU” which refers to fan of, or is specialized in any particular theme, topic, or hobby in modern Japanese slang.Common uses are anime otaku (a fan of anime) and manga otaku (a fan of Japanese comic books or manga), pasokon otaku (personal computer geeks), gemu otaku (playing video games), and wota (pronounced ota, previously referred to as `idol otaku`) that are extreme fans of idols, heavily promoted singing girls In fact, there is a name in Japan for young people with this out-of-school knowledge of and interest in computers and popular culture: the otaku-zoku. This is a tough term to translate into English. ‘Otaku’ is a polite way of saying ‘your home’ or ‘you’.In the late-1980s the terms otaku and otaku—zoku (otaku-tribe) came on the scene to refer to young people with an obsessive interest in some aspect of popular culture which they accessed through the emerging computer/Internet technology without ever leaving their bedroom.
In some respects otaku is equivalent to ‘hacker’. But unlike ‘hacker’, otaku refers not just to someone skilled in using computers in nontraditional, unintended, and anti-authoritarian ways, but to someone whose computer interest and acumen is in the service of their obsession with a particular area of popular cultural knowledge.One is not just an otaku, but a manga-(comic book-) otaku or a pop-idol- (pop-singer-) otaku or a Twin Peaks—otaku. Otaku are (typically) young men who spend most of their days and nights at home, at their computers, accessing, processing and distributing information about some very specific aspect of the world of television, music, movies or comic-books. Japanese writings about the otaku-zoku are a classic form of the alarmist Nihonjinron genre.
According to the social scientists and media pundits who describe them, the otaku are the antithesis of the idealized Japanese character: they are so unlike what (Japanese) people should be like that they seem to be a new tribe, a new race, a new species of human being. The dysfunctionality of their personalities and emptiness of their souls is inextricably linked to their uncanny knowledge of computers and popular culture. An Otaku At age 15, Isaac’s life revolves around the Internet and Warhammer 40K (a war-playing game.The first thing Isaac does when he wakes up each morning is to check his e-mail—he receives around 50 messages daily and sends replies to about half of them.
Keeping up with this correspondence takes several hours a day. On school days, Isaac logs on for 30 minutes in the morning, eating breakfast at the computer. Whenever he has a free period at school he uses the computers in the library to telnet to his e-mail account. He puts in his longest stretches at the computer at home in the late afternoon and evening.Most of Isaac’s corespondents are members of the Warhammer 40K gaming mailing list.
Isaac posts messages to the list, as well as writing and receiving letters from individuals. Isaac has formed friendships with several members of the group. Currently, his closest friend is Thomas, a 15-year-old who lives in the British midlands. Other e-mail buddies include college students on the US mainland, a businessman from Nottingham, a librarian at a natural history museum in London, and several Scandinavians.After completing his first check of his e-mail inbox, Isaac checks the counters on his Web pages to see how many ‘hits’ he has received overnight.
He surfs the Web, checking out other Warhammer sites to see if they have been updated and to keep an eye on the competition. He periodically gets hired to do design work for clients who learn of his services when they come across his ‘Tobin Graphics’ page on the Web.Most of these clients are other Warhammer fanatics, who want Isaac to design original tilable backgrounds, using Warhammer themes and graphic design, for their homepages. Isaac is continuously upgrading his computer and Web-authoring skills. This summer he plans to begin learning Java programming language, downloading tutorials from the Web.
He works on improving his Webpages by adding state-of-the art features such as frames and animation loops.
