Let’s say you like Japanese animation, or “anime.” You own a couple videos, rent others from time to time and know just enough about the field to know what you like. You’re a fan.
On the other hand, let’s say you spend several hours a day watching anime. You have several shelves of videotapes — both commercial releases and second-generation, hand-subtitled copies of Japanese videos — and a couple dozen CDs of anime soundtracks. And a couple hand-painted resin models of your favorite anime characters. And a small collection of animation cels. And a couple hundred anime stills downloaded from the Internet on your computer. And a teach-yourself-Japanese manual so you might someday read all the manga (Japanese-language comics) you own.
You are an otaku.
Don’t worry, though — you’re not alone. Otaku, or hard-core anime fans, may not be quite as common as Trekkers, but give ’em time. After all, anime remains a relatively new enthusiasm for Americans.
Naturally enough, the otaku phenomenon has been in place for some time in Japan. The term itself is Japanese, and
originally derives from the phrase “o-taku,” or “your house.” Apparently, video fans in Japan used “o-taku” so much in conversation that they were dubbed “otaku-zoku” (roughly, “your tribe”).
But as interest in anime and manga grows, the ranks of American otaku steadily swells. They can be found in specialty stores like New York’s trendy Anime Crash (located in Greenwich Village, just across the street from Tower Records); at conventions like Otakon (which this August relocates from State College, Penn., to Hunt Valley), KatsuCon and Anime America; and on college campuses across the country.
On campus
Although university-based anime clubs are major meeting places for American otaku, they aren’t all college kids.
“Since it is a university club, the majority of the members are students,” says Hong-Loan Luu, editor of the anime fanzine Tsunami, and a member of the University of Maryland’s Terrapin Anime Society. “Then you have some fans who are much older, in their 30s and above, who are developing quite a voracious appetite for anything anime-related. They collect tapes, T-shirts, stationery, anything that has their favorite anime pasted on it.
“That is predominantly what anime fans are.”
“Otaku in America is somebody who not only really likes Japanese animation, but likes it enough that it’s probably their biggest hobby,” says Dave Asher, convention chairman of Otakon. “As opposed to the Japanese sense of the word, which is someone who’s more obsessed, who quits their job so they can be closer to artists and other weird things. American otaku just devote a large amount of their spare time to watching stuff or reading those newsgroups on the Internet.”
Otaku are a major presence on the Internet. In addition to such general groups as rec.arts.manga, in which fans argue over Japanese comics, and alt.binaries.pictures.anime, which is full of encoded anime picture files, there are specialized newsgroups like alt.fan.bgcrisis and alt.fan.sailor-moon, which are devoted to the anime series “Bubblegum Crisis” and “Sailor Moon,” respectively. And, of course, there are dozens and dozens of anime-related home pages, ranging from the “AMG Skuld Shrine,” devoted to the little sister of Belldandy from “Oh! My Goddess,” to “The Ranma 1/2 Universe,” which focuses on all things Ranma-related.
Lots of Internet traffic
Traffic on the Internet newsgroups is dauntingly high, with more than 8,000 posts per month on rec.arts.anime alone, while anime-related home pages are sometimes so popular they wreak havoc on the host computers.
Just ask Thomas Cardwell, a senior at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte’s engineering school. His “Ranma 1/2 Extended Home Page” was so popular that he was asked to move it off the university’s computer system. “It was about at least 33 percent of the server’s [host computer’s] business at one time,” he says. “That’s how busy it was. They told me it was killing their server.” Fortunately, Cardwell found a private host for his new “Ranma 1/2 Universe,” which can be found at: http: //iczer1.usacomputers.net /ranma/ranma.html.
Cardwell doesn’t consider himself an otaku, just a fan. What’s the difference? “I don’t have the money to be an otaku,” he answers. That’s one of the reasons he hasn’t gotten into collecting anime cels (the individual drawings that make an animated character move). “I was at the animation convention, KatsuCon, last year and I was just flipping through them,” he says. “They were running around $100 for even the cheapest one, and most of the good ones were around $200.
“I want to get into models,” he adds. “On my latest page, I’ve got one of the models I saw in one of the Japanese books. I’m going a little bit onto that route.”
Models, or garage kits as they’re known in Japan, are a major enthusiasm for Japanese otaku. Although some are molded-plastic kits like the airplane and car models American hobbyists build, most are resin statues that the fans paint and often modify by carving their own details onto the original figurine.
“The problem [for American fans] is trying to locate those,” says Luu. As a result, American otaku will often order kits sight-unseen, simply because they happened to read about them in a magazine somewhere. “It’s based on sort of almost blind faith, that the Japanese will not fail them in producing something that they will like,” she says.
Translations
There is one American otaku pastime not found in Japan, though — complaining about the accuracy of translations. While it’s true that most American otaku don’t speak or read Japanese, those who do can be quite cantankerous about the way dialogue is translated.
“I was just as obnoxious as any fan walking the street today. Probably worse,” laughs Trish Ledoux, editor of the anime-oriented monthly Animerica and a translator who has worked on both video and comic book adaptations of “Ranma 1/2 ” and “Maison Ikkoku.”
“I was one of the most hard-core fan purists. I mean, part of the reason I started learning Japanese was so I could tell what was being said and wouldn’t have to have somebody translating it to me.”
So now that she’s translating it for others, she has to deal with phone calls from irate American otaku who can’t believe she has the English-language Ukyou Kounji saying “Ranma honey” where the Japanese character uses the near-untranslatable “Ran-chan.”
“People complain about ‘Ranma’ — ‘No, no, they’re saying it wrong!’ ” she says. “I understand. I was one of the worst ones of all. I used to go around saying, ‘That’s not what they say!’ So in some ways, I feel as though it’s my penance for being such a hard-core fangirl way back then. Now I have to listen to other people come up to me saying, ‘That’s not what it says!’ “
She laughs. “It’s the big circle of life.”
Pub Date: 4/16/96
Otaku enthusiasms
There’s more to being an otaku than watching anime videos. Here are some typical otaku collectibles and enthusiasms:
Art books: Beautifully printed collections of artwork from anime titles. Sometimes hardbound and almost always imported from Japan, these volumes can cost $40 or more.
Cels: Original artwork from animes, cels are the moving parts of any animation (as opposed to the background, which is a separate component). Because they feature major characters and are hand-painted on clear vinyl sheets, cels are very attractive to anime fans and can cost tens to hundreds of dollars.
Costume play: Dedicated otaku make costumes and dress up as their favorite characters. More common in Japan than here, although a disturbing number of male American fans dress as Sailor Moon.
Fan-fic: Fan-generated fiction, in which otaku imagine scenarios the original authors never would; “Star Trek” crossovers are not uncommon. Many fan-fics can be found on usenet, in: rec.arts.anime.stories.
Fan-sub: Before American editions of some anime titles become available, some fans purchase Japanese laser discs and, using computerized subtitling software, make their own subtitled videotapes. Not always legal, but infrequently prosecuted.
Garage kit: Resin models of anime characters, designed for painting or other modification by fans. Called “garage kits” because that’s usually where Japanese fans work on them.
Image album: In addition to anime soundtrack CDs and “Music Calendars” (CDs with music and dramatic dialogue that are released yearly), the Japanese music industry also produces Image Albums, which feature music “inspired by” a specific anime title or character.
Tankouban: In Japan, successful manga (comics) are collected in paperback books called tankouban (literally, “in book form”). Otaku who read no Japanese at all sometimes have complete 40-volume sets of tankouban.
