If you’re under 25, this might sound insane, but there was a time when anime and manga fans felt the need to hide their hobbies — especially in Japan. Let’s delve into anime subculture history and learn how otaku culture went from something fans were secretive about to a mainstream phenomenon the whole world now embraces!
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The History of Otaku Culture
Modern otaku culture did not suddenly become acceptable around the world. It was gradually normalized as society came to understand that those funny cartoons from Japan weren’t going away anytime soon. Inside Japan, this process involved language shifts, as softer, mainstream-friendly terms like mania, fan, and the term that’s taken over recently, oshi (as in Oshi no Ko, literally “the girl [idol] I support”) appeared. These new terms took the “hard” edge off of otaku subculture and made it more acceptable.
The word otaku is a formal word meaning “you and your family.” I might use the word when praising a neighbor after hearing their son had passed his university entrance exams, for example. The thinking is that this overly formal word might have been used by early anime fans, who were a bit lacking in social skills. Over time, the term became associated with obsessive anime and manga fans. Because after all… fun things are fun!
Anime Fandom Starts to Embrace The Word
The word otaku entered general consciousness in Japan thanks to a nerdy “otaku social commentator” named Taku Hachiro [TikTok link]. In the early 1990s, he became a regular on Takeshi no Genki ga Deru Terebi. He played a bumbling caricature of a glasses-wearing nerd everyone could laugh at. When Gainax released Otaku no Video, which told the story of a happy, well-adjusted university student’s slide into the dark world of otaku-dom, anime fans had a new label to identify themselves as.
While the idea of society viewing anime otakus negatively might seem unfair, there was a reason for it. In 1988, a man named Tsutomu Miyazaki started a murder spree that claimed the lives of four girls over a ten-month period. When he was caught, the press talked endlessly about “the Otaku Killer” and his collection of videotapes containing horror, anime, and porn. Thanks to his actions, it took a long time for the term otaku to lose its association with social dysfunction.
In the 2000s, the word otaku slowly made its way into the collective psyches of anime fans around the world. Happily, only the positive elements of the term got “ported” to English, without any of the negative stigma. The world’s embracing of the term helped repair the negative image Japanese fans still had towards otaku culture. By the time Otaku USA magazine launched in 2007, pretty much every anime fan outside of Japan knew the term. The Oxford English Dictionary added the word in 2012.
Can You Believe We Used to Hide Our Otaku Hobbies?
I arrived in Japan in 1991 and was eager to make friends with fellow anime fans. But I quickly hit a brick wall. It was still quite taboo to openly talk about loving anime figures and how big your Laserdisc collection was.
After I started ESL teaching, I was talking with a nerdy student about what he did over the weekend. He told me he watched some TV on Saturday. I asked him, “Was it the TV show airing at 7 pm on Saturday on TV Asahi?” He nodded, and we both smiled, since this was the original broadcast of Sailor Moon. Now the two of us had a shared secret, and we had lots of fun geeking out about each new episode together.
Anime Subculture History: How Did Otaku Culture Go Mainstream?
I’ve got a very specific answer for the moment when otaku culture ceased being “underground” and started becoming widely embraced. It was December 31st, 2009, when anime singer and voice actress Nana Mizuki got on stage at the massive Kouhaku Red-and-White Song Battle music show to sing Shin’ai, the opening song for the White Album anime based on the 18+ visual novel by the same name.
It was quite an awakening. One day, you’re keeping your huge stash of Sailor Moon doujins secret from your normie friends, and the next, the theme song from an anime based on a hentai game is being heard across Japan. Fast forward 16 years, and anime films regularly premiere in IMAX theatres.
I guess anime can’t really be considered “subculture” anymore, can it?
Thanks for reading this post exploring anime subculture history, and how otaku culture went from something fans shared only with other fans to something celebrated around the world. When did you first learn the word “otaku”? Tell us in the comments below!
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