The Performance of an Otaku
I kind of wrote about this on Goodreads already, but it was past 1am and I was too tired to actually write something more meaningful and I suppose I owe you all a real review.
Otaku Spaces
by Patrick Galbraith (photos by Androniki Christodoulou)
The design of this book just kind of screams "puff piece" from the outset: large pages with large color photographs, a three-column layout for the text, lots of graphics in the margins, maybe an introductory paragraph that tries to contextualize the photographs and make it seem more intellectual than just "ooh pretty pictures." In short, it looks like a coffee table book, something you flip through when bored and show off to your friends rather than actually straight-up read.
That would be a wrong assumption. This book not only has a lot of text, it has footnotes. It talks about public vs. private space, the media gaze, and a bunch of other things I haven't heard uttered since I got my communications degree. Of course, that ultimately means I enjoyed those parts greatly, even if other people might have been lost.
The bulk of the book was interviews with various otaku, preceded by a color portrait. The interviews were all different, though some of the same general questions were asked:
"When did you become an otaku?"
"What do you collect, if anything?"
"How do people react to your hobbies?"
"What do you think an otaku is?"
"Are otaku and collectors different or the same?"
This lends a uniformity to the book, tying people with varying interests together and allowing the essays that begin and end the book to act as introduction and conclusion, even if the book is not structured as a "proper" essay. Ideas overlap and reinforce each other, implying a conclusion even when it's not obviously stated.
Each interview is conducted respectfully, and they seem to draw a lot of good responses from the interviewees. They don't just say they like something, they try to explain the mechanics of why they like it. They're more than willing to say whether they are an otaku, and they are very cognisant of what others may think. We've definitely come a long way from "weird Japan" here.
The book centers on Japan, with brief and occasional mentions of otaku overseas, which is fine since it is trying to examine the historical factors that led to the creation of otaku and otaku culture (and the spaces in which it exists). But it got me thinking about my own experiences, as a geek/nerd/otaku. I used to relish the whole "culture" and anyone who knew me back then remembers how much I loved to analyze and study geek culture. Now... I guess I'm still a geek, but I've distanced myself somewhat from the idea of having to immerse myself in it. I barely even watch anime anymore, and it's not that I don't like it, it's just that there's so much out there to consume. I don't think of myself as an anime or manga fan, I'm an animation and comics fan. Which to me, is a more "pure" fandom since it doesn't discriminate. But I don't think I'm right, just different.
Anyway, the book got me thinking about how I used to be, and when I used to more into cons and anime, and how things have changed since then, in terms of the product and not me. In going with the questions posed in the book, it seems to me that being an otaku and collecting used to go hand-in-hand, that in order to watch or read something you had to collect it first. But in the last decade we've made huge strides toward divorcing consumption of media from the collection of it. Basically, you no longer need to own something to watch/read/play it, mainly because of the Internet. You can watch your favorite shows on Netflix or Hulu or CrunchyRoll or whatever. You can stream music on services like Pandora and Spotify. I even stopped buying a lot of American comics and manga, not because I can get it on the 'net (because you really can't, not as easily as other types of media) but because I can get it from the library for free. Books too. In the past if the library didn't have it, they didn't have it and I went to the store instead. Now I can order any book they have in their system and have it delivered to a branch nearby. I've read so many different books this way.
So essentially there's no need to own something to enjoy it. If you own it, it means you really like it. Ownership becomes a much larger act of devotion. There are people out there who scoff at the idea of owning things, since they could get it for free, but more and more I've been feeling, "then you're not really the big fans you claim to be." Buying something proves you actually like it, because you didn't have to spend that money, you made a choice.
I guess that's my answer to the question of "Are otaku and collectors the same, or different?"
I hope it would also answer the question of whether I liked the book. In short, I did. I appreciated how it treated its subjects respectfully, and I enjoyed the diversity of subjects. The essays were a bit dense, but not terribly so, just a bit beyond what a normal person might expect of a book of this design and format. The section about otaku areas/neighborhoods could have been a bit more filled out, perhaps with more photographs of the exact things they were talking about (maybe more specific storefronts) and maps. It did make me want to revisit Japan again, though, as I haven't been there in over five years. The part talking about the changes in Akihabara after the stabbing was a bit distressing to me, and I'm glad I visited before the incident.
The design had some oddities in it; there was a lot of white space, including entire blank pages which could have had more photographs on them and the little pictographs in each interview were about 50/50 with their usefulness, making them feel like space-fillers rather than as presenting any kind of information. I also disliked how they didn't necessarily correspond with the text on the page; it's distracting when a magazine uses a pull quote in an interview that actually appears on another page, and this wasn't any different. I also found the book somewhat hard to hold, but that's really a minor gripe considering the trade-off is that the size and shape is there to display the photographs better.
Overall, I thought this was an interesting read, a good overview of how the otaku scene has changed over the past decade, and a respectful look at its otaku subjects.
Otaku Spaces
by Patrick Galbraith (photos by Androniki Christodoulou)
The design of this book just kind of screams "puff piece" from the outset: large pages with large color photographs, a three-column layout for the text, lots of graphics in the margins, maybe an introductory paragraph that tries to contextualize the photographs and make it seem more intellectual than just "ooh pretty pictures." In short, it looks like a coffee table book, something you flip through when bored and show off to your friends rather than actually straight-up read.
That would be a wrong assumption. This book not only has a lot of text, it has footnotes. It talks about public vs. private space, the media gaze, and a bunch of other things I haven't heard uttered since I got my communications degree. Of course, that ultimately means I enjoyed those parts greatly, even if other people might have been lost.
The bulk of the book was interviews with various otaku, preceded by a color portrait. The interviews were all different, though some of the same general questions were asked:
"When did you become an otaku?"
"What do you collect, if anything?"
"How do people react to your hobbies?"
"What do you think an otaku is?"
"Are otaku and collectors different or the same?"
This lends a uniformity to the book, tying people with varying interests together and allowing the essays that begin and end the book to act as introduction and conclusion, even if the book is not structured as a "proper" essay. Ideas overlap and reinforce each other, implying a conclusion even when it's not obviously stated.
Each interview is conducted respectfully, and they seem to draw a lot of good responses from the interviewees. They don't just say they like something, they try to explain the mechanics of why they like it. They're more than willing to say whether they are an otaku, and they are very cognisant of what others may think. We've definitely come a long way from "weird Japan" here.
The book centers on Japan, with brief and occasional mentions of otaku overseas, which is fine since it is trying to examine the historical factors that led to the creation of otaku and otaku culture (and the spaces in which it exists). But it got me thinking about my own experiences, as a geek/nerd/otaku. I used to relish the whole "culture" and anyone who knew me back then remembers how much I loved to analyze and study geek culture. Now... I guess I'm still a geek, but I've distanced myself somewhat from the idea of having to immerse myself in it. I barely even watch anime anymore, and it's not that I don't like it, it's just that there's so much out there to consume. I don't think of myself as an anime or manga fan, I'm an animation and comics fan. Which to me, is a more "pure" fandom since it doesn't discriminate. But I don't think I'm right, just different.
Anyway, the book got me thinking about how I used to be, and when I used to more into cons and anime, and how things have changed since then, in terms of the product and not me. In going with the questions posed in the book, it seems to me that being an otaku and collecting used to go hand-in-hand, that in order to watch or read something you had to collect it first. But in the last decade we've made huge strides toward divorcing consumption of media from the collection of it. Basically, you no longer need to own something to watch/read/play it, mainly because of the Internet. You can watch your favorite shows on Netflix or Hulu or CrunchyRoll or whatever. You can stream music on services like Pandora and Spotify. I even stopped buying a lot of American comics and manga, not because I can get it on the 'net (because you really can't, not as easily as other types of media) but because I can get it from the library for free. Books too. In the past if the library didn't have it, they didn't have it and I went to the store instead. Now I can order any book they have in their system and have it delivered to a branch nearby. I've read so many different books this way.
So essentially there's no need to own something to enjoy it. If you own it, it means you really like it. Ownership becomes a much larger act of devotion. There are people out there who scoff at the idea of owning things, since they could get it for free, but more and more I've been feeling, "then you're not really the big fans you claim to be." Buying something proves you actually like it, because you didn't have to spend that money, you made a choice.
I guess that's my answer to the question of "Are otaku and collectors the same, or different?"
I hope it would also answer the question of whether I liked the book. In short, I did. I appreciated how it treated its subjects respectfully, and I enjoyed the diversity of subjects. The essays were a bit dense, but not terribly so, just a bit beyond what a normal person might expect of a book of this design and format. The section about otaku areas/neighborhoods could have been a bit more filled out, perhaps with more photographs of the exact things they were talking about (maybe more specific storefronts) and maps. It did make me want to revisit Japan again, though, as I haven't been there in over five years. The part talking about the changes in Akihabara after the stabbing was a bit distressing to me, and I'm glad I visited before the incident.
The design had some oddities in it; there was a lot of white space, including entire blank pages which could have had more photographs on them and the little pictographs in each interview were about 50/50 with their usefulness, making them feel like space-fillers rather than as presenting any kind of information. I also disliked how they didn't necessarily correspond with the text on the page; it's distracting when a magazine uses a pull quote in an interview that actually appears on another page, and this wasn't any different. I also found the book somewhat hard to hold, but that's really a minor gripe considering the trade-off is that the size and shape is there to display the photographs better.
Overall, I thought this was an interesting read, a good overview of how the otaku scene has changed over the past decade, and a respectful look at its otaku subjects.