Otaku
The subculture's birth coincided with the anime boom after the release of works such as Mobile Suit Gundam, before it branched into Comic Market.
In 1980, around the Kabuki-chō district of Shinjuku in Tokyo, there was a boom of nyū fūzoku, or new sex services employing female college or vocational school students.
[1] The otaku subculture grew with the expansion of the Internet and media, as more anime, video games, shows, and comics were created.
[3] According to a nationwide U.S. survey conducted by Dentsu in July 2022, 34％ of American Gen-Zs (around 15 million people), acknowledged themselves as anime otaku.
These publications classify distinct groups including anime, manga, camera, automobile, J-idol, and electronics otaku.
[7] Social critic Eiji Ōtsuka posits that otaku was used because it allowed people meeting for the first time, such as at a convention, to interact from a comfortable distance.
[8] The pronoun was also used in the popular anime Macross, first aired in 1982, by the characters Hikaru Ichijyo and Lynn Minmay, who address each other as otaku until they get to know each other better.
[9][10][11] The modern slang form, which is distinguished from the older usage by being written in hiragana (おたく), katakana (オタク or, less frequently, ヲタク) or rarely in rōmaji,[12] first appeared in public discourse in the 1980s, through the work of humorist and essayist Akio Nakamori.
His 1983 series 'Otaku' Research (『おたく』の研究, "Otaku" no Kenkyū), printed in the lolicon magazine Manga Burikko, applied the term as pejorative for "unpleasant" fans, attacking their supposed poor fashion sense and physical appearance in particular.
Until the late 1980s, unathletic and unattractive males focused on academics, hoping to secure a good job and marry to raise their social standing.
[15] These individuals were drawn to anime, a counter-culture, with the release of hard science fiction works such as Mobile Suit Gundam.
[15] The perception of otaku was again damaged in late 2004 when Kaoru Kobayashi kidnapped, sexually assaulted, and murdered a seven-year-old first-grade student.
Japanese journalist Akihiro Ōtani suspected that Kobayashi's crime was committed by a member of the figure moe zoku even before his arrest.
In his book Otaku, Hiroki Azuma observed: "Between 2001 and 2007, the otaku forms and markets quite rapidly won social recognition in Japan", citing the fact that "[i]n 2003, Hayao Miyazaki won the Academy Award for his Spirited Away; around the same time Takashi Murakami achieved recognition for otaku-like designs; in 2004, the Japanese pavilion in the 2004 International Architecture exhibition of the Venice Biennale (Biennale Architecture) featured 'otaku'.
[3] Marie Kondo told ForbesWomen in 2020: "I credit being an otaku with helping me to focus deeply, which definitely contributed to my success.
According to Lawrence Eng, the first anime that could have caused this to happen was Gunbuster, and the protagonist, Noriko Takaya, is teased about her otaku behavior.
[31] In the early 2000s, the otaku community in the United States often consisted of suburban young people and niche online groups.
"rotten girl(s)"), a self-mockingly pejorative Japanese term for female fans of yaoi, which focuses on homosexual male relationships.
A well-known light novel, which later received a manga and anime adaptation, is Welcome to the N.H.K., which focuses on otaku subcultures and highlights other social outcasts, such as hikikomori and NEETs.
These values were partially released with a much higher estimation in 2004, but this definition focused on consumerism and not the "unique psychological characteristics" of otaku used in the 2005 study.
In 2012, it noted around 30% of growth in dating sim and online gaming otaku, while Vocaloid, cosplay, idols and maid services grew by 10%, confirming its 2011 predictions.
[48] Japanese otaku use it to describe themselves as adult fans of an anime, a manga, or a TV show that is originally aimed at children.
