Note: The author of this piece has been gracious enough to let me post this on my own site. The rest of his works may be found here.
Do you know what the word "Otaku" means? Your average Japanese student would probably tell you that it means "house" and might even go into explaining whose house it would refer to. Another huge amount of people would smugly tell me that it means "fan", overly confident in their choice. While I could simply smile and pat both groups of people on the head and tell them how smart they are, I'd rather slap the people with the "fan" response and enlighten them.
WARNING TO "OTAKU": If you are one of the American self-professed "Otaku"s, please do not read further. It would be better for you to live out your blissful lives of ignorance.
Although "Otaku" can mean "(your/his/her) house" (as in - not my house), it also means: "nerd", aka "geek", aka "loser", aka "freaky scary fanboy who no one would go near no matter how much you paid them". Yes. "Otaku" is primarily used as an insult in the country of Japan to describe people who: spend too much time on the computer, spend too much time playing video games, spend too much time watching sci-fi movies, Japanese animation, and are really into all of the previous mentioned things. It is interesting to note that many American fans of "anime" (as they call it, brutally mutilating its true pronounciation, not realizing that the word "anime" is short for "animeeshon" and refers to ALL animation, not just Japanese) actually call themselves "otaku", not realizing the negative connotations. Although I have friends who are "otaku", both Japanese and Americans, there are many things that really annoy me about "otaku". Most of these annoyances are just common ideas and ways or acting among the American "Japanimation fans".
Most American "anime fans" grow an extreme liking to the theme songs in animation shows, many times even memorizing the words to these songs. Of course, they have no idea what the words they're singing mean. Well, technically the words they're "singing" don't mean anything because they're butchering the pronounciation so badly. But, the more "advanced" anime fans -- I mean the ones who do more than just buy the soundtracks to these shows - actually delve into REAL Japanese music. But what do they delve into? Ayumi Hamasaki, Utada Hikaru, Hitomi, etc. What they basically find is female Japanese pop. And, so far, all of them make the same conclusion, the same deadhead idea. "Wow. Japanese pop music is so much better than American pop music." Uhm... no. Yes, American pop music sucks, but is it worse than Japanese pop music? Not at all. I could just ask "what is the difference? really?" Cuz to me, it all seems like the same R&B/techno/bubblegum pop influenced drivel. The only difference is that while Ayumi Hamasaki is whining in her high-pitched "I never wanted to be a singer, but now I'm the role model for all kogyaru culture" voice, Britney Speares is groaning in her "I want you to screw me now" voice. Well, undoubtably, from very little investigation, you can find that at least half of Japan's male and female solo acts can't actually sing. They were just picked because they look good. In fact, less Japanese pop artists write their own music than American pop artists. WHAT exactly is so much better about Japanese pop music than American pop music? The fact that some Japanese pop artists actually throw together a song for an animation while American pop artists don't?
Another irritating sentiment predominant among American anime fans is that "animation is considered an art form in Japan." Well, yes, animation is considered an art form in Japan. But, did you notice it's also considered an art form in the US? No? You didn't know that? Ohh, you meant that most people in Japan respect animation as an art form! Well then, you're wrong. Normal people may go out to watch Studio Ghibl movies like "Mononoke-hime" or "Sen To Chihiro No Kamikakushi", but that's because Ghibl movies are cute and don't have the typical annoying "anime cliches". It's not that they respect it as an artform or whatever.
Before I go any further, I'd just like to make it clear that I was an obsessive video game freak from since I was 11 until I was about 16 and that I like many Japanese animation shows and movies. But I am not and have never been an "otaku".
Granted, Japan is a rather perverted country, but who would've thought about an entire industry of animated porno? Even though it's big enough in Japan that you can't help but notice it if you live in Japan for at least a few weeks, you will also notice that the only people seen in the shop are young male nerds with thick glasses who don't talk much. Basically nerds. Someone may ask "Why would they wanna see porno cartoons? Wouldn't they rather see the real thing?" Well, I have a theory about this. First of all, otaku people get very very involved in their animation, video games, or whatever. Since historically the majority of them have been males, many of them have been watching an animation with a girl in typical school uniform (for some weird reason many Japanese think that school girl uniforms are highly erotic. To me, keeping the current female high school dress code seems like the Japanese education system is promoting pedophilia) and they think to themselves "Wow, I'd like to see her naked." And oftentimes, Japanese animation shows a breast or a butt, which might seem like it would somewhat please these horny otaku men. But, no, now they wanna see the girl in compromised situations, having sex, oftentimes forced to have sex. Yes, sick perverted nerds... well, this spawns an industry of horny nerd artists drawing cartoon porno and selling it to horny nerds, which brings me to my next point.
Most American otaku seem to think that Japan is so mature about sexuality and that's why they have all this nudity in cartoons. But, anyone that knows Japan well knows that Japan is one of the most immature countries in the world when it comes to sex. Just think about some of the most predominant things in Japan dealing with sex. Enjou kosai (old men paying junior high students to have sex with them), the rampantness of Japanese S&M fetishes, men groping women on trains... Japan is very immature in the sex area and its animation reflects that fact, especially since animation is primarily drawn and produced by very nerdy-looking people who are, for the most part, male.
The more extreme "otaku" do things called "kosupuree", which is from the English words "costume" ("kosu") and "play" ("puree"). I would have never known about this phenomenon in particular if my Japanese friend wouldn't have explained it to me a while ago. In "kosupuree", crazy otaku dress up as their favorite video game or animation character. For example, dressing up as Sephiroth from Final Fantasy VII or as Shampoo from Ranma 1/2. These people are insane lunatic freaks. Normal otaku nerd people can be very cool, very nice people, but... well... I'm sure kosupuree people can be nice too, but they are monstrosities on the face of the planet. I once came across a website of American kosupuree people (they called it "cos-play") and I must say that it was one of the scariest experiences of my life. Seeing a person actually dressed up as Zeiramu from "Iria: The Animation" was a frightening experience I never want to have again. Every year there are several events and markets where people show off their insane costumes. One of the biggest is the "Tokyo Game Show", where the biggest console gaming companies show their wares of unreleased software and hardware. A very good page on this particular event with lots of pics of Japanese kosupuree freaks, would be Galvin Chow's site on the "2002 Tokyo Game Show".
One of the most annoying aspects of American otaku is that they learn a few random unimportant Japanese words and excessively overuse them. In many groups, using Japanese words that the other otaku's don't know is uncool. Common words that they know and use are "kawaii" (cute), "neko" (cat), "chibi" (runt), and name endings like "chan", "kun", "san", and "sama". Knowing these words may seem somewhat harmless, but fan subs of animation and some fan translations of games write things like "Kaorichan, look at this." One thing you may have noticed is that they didn't really translate it into English. They translated it into "American 'anime' fan English." If you ever overhear American otaku's talking, you will hear some of the most stupid dialogue ever. For example, "Hey, look at this kawaii chibi drawing! It's of a baby neko!" Of course, if a Japanese (or someone) walked up to them and said, "Ano ne, sono kawaii neko nani tte iu no?", the American otaku would just look back and say, "Oh, I'm sorry. I don't speak that language."
Oh, but the truly funny thing is that probably half of the Americans in the US who are interested in Japan originally became interested in Japan because of animation and/or video games. ANIMATION AND VIDEO GAMES ARE NOT INHERANTLY JAPANESE! Both animation and video games were created in the United States, not Japan. Japan simply took animation and video games and made their own. Have you noticed that practically all Japanimation characters look caucasian? Well, many young Japanese feel that Westerners (usually caucasians) are cooler than Japanese. This sometimes has even caused an inferiority complex among some Japanese. I have heard the expressions "I don't like Japanese guys." and "I think foreign guys are really nice and cute." from at least 20 different Japanese junior high and high school girls. Logically, animation, based off of an "artform" from the west, trying to be cool, would make their characters look Caucasian. Rarely do animation characters even get Japanese names. Usually they get European/American names or get made up names that are based off of English words or English fantasy-style names. Therefore, at least 70% of Japanimation characters' names are written in katakana and about 85% of video game names are written in katakana. Many animations take place in American-esque worlds and all the characters have American names (only with Japanese pronounciation, though).
American anime fans generally have the idea that professional translations are always really bad, but fansubs are much better than the original translation. This idea applies to both animation and video games. But I must ask, "How do you know? Can YOU understand Japanese? Those people ARE professionals." I have seen fansubs that were better than the original translation, but most of the time fansubs suck and are way untranslated, oftentimes even leaving words like "doumo arigatou gozaimasu" in romanized Japanese (roomaji) in the subtitles. If an animation has an incredibly corny sub, many fans assume that the translation must have been bad. Why can't you assume that the original Japanese dialogue is just extremely corny? You know, it IS possible that the Japanese voice actors are doing horrible acting as well. I have to agree with many American anime fans that the American voice acting is very very bad 100% of the time, but the Japanese voice acting can be just as bad sometimes.
I hope I have enlightened you or at least led you in the right direction. Although there are many other things I could say about "otaku" people, I simply just don't feel like it.