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Am I an otaku?

On the spectrum of otaku-ness, from casual fan to dedicated hikkikomori…well I guess I’m somewhere in the middle so I’m sure the people on either side would say I am or I’m not an otaku compared to them. I’m not actually sure whether I would consider myself an otaku- I know one definition of addiction is that it impacts the rest of your ‘normal’ life in an unwanted bad way…so by that standard yes I have gotten to work late because I stayed up so late to see the ending of an anime…but then again it can’t be that bad if I don’t talk about anime with my real-life friends, and it doesn’t keep me from going out to parties on the weekend (got my priorities straight..^_^). For all the ’social outcast’ stigma to the label, I’m actually kind of attracted to the freedom of just completely indulging in a guilty hobby, so I kind of like the idea of being a closet otaku- letting myself be obsessed, but not all the time.

Not just anime otaku

There are all different flavors of otaku, since you could be an obsessive fan of anything. Here is a favorite anime character of mine, I guess you could say L from Death Note is an otaku for solving cases! Like many literary detectives, he is obsessed and relentless about hunting down the truth.

Or, he may be an otaku for eating pastries and watching people on surveillance, since he seems to always be doing these too. (but i’d like to know his secret- how does he keep the weight off with that diet of cake and pastries??!)

Society’s views of otaku
People are very judgemental, especially about things that are different from what they are used to or that they don’t understand. Social norms and society tell us to socialize, do what everyone else does, be productive and excel and make money (especially Japan and U.S. cultures). So someone who would rather sit and watch anime rather than work all day to climb the corporate ladder, and be introspective rather than socialize and do what everyone else is doing, obviously people wll think someone that chooses to do that is an odd duck.

Outside social norms…

Since otaku are shunned as not cool and not normal, even outsiders to mainstream society, they are also less constrained by mainstream social norms and conventions. Already disapproved of by society, so why conform to its conventions? This means that in the anime community there is a lot of material that people living by mainstream norms are shocked by. Once you’ve been in the community though things like loli and “trap” characters, or over-the-top violence, just seem like “normal” elements of the anime otaku world.

As a Lifestyle ??

To be honest, part of me actually wishes I could live as a hikkikomori for a little while. Do whatever I want, watch every anime ever, and be teh best fan!! And I don’t like judging people, everyone’s different and people should be able to live however they want without being told what to do. Except I’d be surprised if someone’s parents didn’t tell them what to do! (”get a haircut and get a real job!”) Maybe other people don’t have the other part of themselves that says no, do some real work and go out and see the world. Or maybe it is part of being much more introverted than extroverted, so that you crave individual emotional engagement from watching anime instead of from social interactions. It is much less pressure after all to watch other people make friends, struggle through emotional and physical battles, and overcome great odds, than to do it ourselves. And you still somehow get to share in the feeling of accomplishment and live vicariously through the characters that you see as friends or extension of self. All I know is, the two times I stayed at my college dorm during short 1-week breaks, I got bored and lonely after only a few days without other people around, I started talking to random people just because I needed to talk with real people! I think it’s like in The Sims, some people’s social bars just go down faster or slower than others and then they need to talk and hug other people or they will have weird thought bubbles and not do anything productive that you try to tell them! ^_^

Check out the other Girls Round-Robin posts!

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• elezend
• death by moe
• hoshi
• fang-tan
• hynavian
• biankita
• animemiz
• nyachan
• fuyumaiden
• a day without me
• meows
• haruda
• townberry