"All Men Are Otaku"

Suddenly, it's hip to be square in Japan.

The concept of trying to make geeks feel like they're normal citizens is nothing new. Hobby Japan magazine has long highlighted female modelbuilders like Tomoe Ohgoshi to try and "sex up" the otherwise mundane art of Gun-Pla building, and Bandai's defunct "MG Style" website profiled superficially normal-looking individuals who'd incorporated robot toys into the stylish decor of their homes.

I'd always dismissed these sorts of halfhearted PR efforts as amusingly desperate, but in hindsight they're starting to look like they were simply ahead of the curve. These days, signs of the mainstreaming of Japan's nerd subculture are everywhere, from books to TV exposés to magazine cover stories. Ultra-niche otaku publications like Dengeki Hobby, Figure Oh, and Hyper Hobby have been around for years (decades, in some cases), but now we have the first mass-market magazines intended to bring the otaku subculture to broader demographics: Kodansha's Mekabi (a contraction of "Mecha to Bishojo," essentially "Chicks and Robots") for men, and Beth for women, both of which debuted earlier this year.

In this IT Media interview, Mechabi is described as "a magazine edited by otaku, for otaku." The magazine goes on the offensive against that scourge of any up-and-coming subculture, the early adopters who pooh-pooh newbies for not really "living the life." As editor Tomokazu Matsushita proclaims, "I'm not a 24-hour a day otaku; I'm a salaryman by day and an otaku at night. But an otaku is an otaku." It's an obvious attempt to build a bridge between hardcore nerds and those borderline types who like geeky stuff but have been heretofore afraid to self-identify as such: as the text along the spine declares, "all men are otaku." You CAN be an otaku and live a normal life, kids. Or so Mekabi wants you to believe. Think of it as a declaration of nerdependence.

Meanwhile, Beth's targeting the elusive female nerd demographic -- or more specifically, "kirei-kei otaku," or "clean otaku," essentially "normal" women with otaku tendencies. The really telling thing here is the magazine's mascot, the eponymous Beth, a (totally fictional) 21-year-old American college girl from Los Angeles who "loves manga and anything Japanese." Essentially, it's like a manga version of "Cosmopolitan" magazine published on Otome Road instead of wherever the hell Cosmo is published.

The really interesting thing about these magazines is the fact that both showcase a distinctly Japanese subculture through the prism of foreign respect and acceptance. Mechabi proclaims that it stands for the unlikely concept of "moé for world peace." And Beth's gaijin mascot is proof positive of the impact foreign fans of Japanese pop culture have had on the growing acceptance of otakuism in mainstream Japanese society. (One could tie this back to how Japanese woodblock prints were only recognized as art in their native country after 19th century European artists cited them as influences, or how Akira Kurosawa was considered a hack here until he started winning all sorts of acclaim at foreign film festivals, but I don't want to make this self-indulgent little essay any more ponderous than it already is.)

Conspiracy theories of big business trying to shape the minds of Japanese consumers aside, it was probably only a matter of time before major publishers tried taking otaku culture to the masses. It's far too early to predict how well these two magazines will do, but there's no question they represent the serious attention now being paid to the otaku subculture in Japan. Akihabara's Electric Town and Ikebukuro's Otome Road are consistently cited as two of Tokyo's hottest spots on all sorts of Japanese television shows, "Cool Japan"-related books and cover stories are the flavor of the month, an industry-sponsored anime information center has ensconced itself in Akihabara, and even grumpy ol' Tokyo mayor Shintaro Ishihara is getting into the act, shilling for the Tokyo International Anime Fair. From that standpoint, otaku culture isn't "the next big thing" -- the revenge of the nerds is already happening today.

Comments

[Fort Max]

Mekabi strikes me as being the published equivalent of DannyChoo.com, to that end it comes as no surprise that the only robot gracing their cover is from a Hentai game.

So have you read either of these Matt?

[Matt]

Yes, I've got copies of both. Ironically Mechabi is actually pretty substantial. It's full of interviews (including a big one with Koike Kazuo) and a lengthy analysis of Comiket attendence and survey statistics.

It only veers into weird territory with a bizarre two-page spread on "The cutting edge of Japanese mecha design! High tech wheelchairs!" which features illustrations of cute girls strapped into all sorts of wheeled contraptions. Apparently it isn't enough to infantalize women anymore; now they're paralyzing them...! (What with the ongoing sick fascination with the "Ayanami Rei in bandages" look, I shouldn't be surprised....)

[Fort Max]

It's the vulnerability, surely?

[Madeline Ashby]

I'm a panelist at Ad Astra (a Toronto-area SF convention), presenting on depictions of otaku within Japanese media. I just wanted to let you know that I find this post very timely, and very helpful!

[Matt]

Happy to be of service!