Akihabara Otaku Paradise

A Youtube Video, entitled Akihabara Otaku Paradise: a Feint Operation starts with a speech given by an otaku that is a diehard fan of anime and manga, in which he talks about anime and being an otaku: “That animated cartoons and figures is a hobby that Japan boasts to the world. We want to tell people all over the Japan with this in confidence. This is our mission. We are proud to be otaku. It is proud to be otaku. Yes. It is not a shame to be otaku. It is proud to be otaku.” Then they shout together: “The otaku spirit is we are immortal.” In the video, we also see manga and anime otakus dancing in costumes to j-pop, Japanese pop songs, in Akihabara, a neighborhood known as the center of anime and manga culture in Tokyo, and making cosplay, acting out the anime figures by dancing in their costumes.

Manga and anime (hereafter I will call it “manganime”) culture has spread throughout the world as one of the most famous element of Japanese popular youth culture. Manganime culture has become a very strong (sub) culture on the internet with its fans (otakus), and is lived as reality. Japanese animation and comics have built a global following and have entered the international lexicon with their Japanese names: manga and anime. Young Americans, Europeans and Asians have grown up watching Japanese cartoons, among many Astro Boy (Noboru Ishiguro Osamu Tezuka, 1980), Captain Tsubasa (Yôichi Takahashi, 1994), Heidi (Atsuji Hayakawa, Masao Kuroda, 1974), Sailor Moon (Junichi Sato, 1995 and Naruto (Hayato Date, Jeff Nimoy, 2002). Anime fan clubs, “fanzines”, and websites have sprung up by the hundreds, and hit movies such as Spirited Away (Hayao Miyazaki,2001) , Akira (Katsuhiro Ôtomo, 1988), and Ghost in the Shell (1995- 2004) have been seen by thousands of people. Japanese manga is translated and read eagerly throughout the world, and some European animators have been inspired by the aesthetics of manga and anime.