Once Upon a Time in Akihabara
The saddest sight in the world.
It’s the night before Comiket 78. In about a few hours, I will be joining hundreds of thousands of others like myself, lining up in the sweltering heat and braving stampedes of foul-smelling young men in a quest for books, goods and trinkets. On the eve of battle, I sit alone in my Tokyo apartment, five minutes from Akiba. The lights are dim, Aoi Hana is playing softly from my computer’s speakers and I sit in my chair, reflecting upon my long history with Akihabara.
Akihabara has always played a big part in my life, long before I was ever into anime. One of my favorite childhood memories involved Akihabara— every weekend, my family would take a family trip to Ishimaru Denki to buy new electronics for our little home in Kanagawa. I was a toddler, barely cognizant of everything around me, but I remember pushing every button and turning every knob. Naturally, I had no idea what anime was. Akihabara, to me, was the land of stereos and televisions.
Fast forward 8 years. Akihabara has changed, and so have I. No longer a clueless toddler, I was now a budding anime fan. I had watched the classics— Doraemon, the works of Ghibli, Pokemon, naturally— but I did not know much more than that. During our eight years apart, Akihabara had taken on a bolder, in-your-face look. Gamers and Animate dominate Chuo-dori. Large posters of cute anime girls smile at me from above, beckoning me into shops. I oblige them. Inside, rows upon rows of manga greet me. I pick out a few that look interesting, and pay at the cashier. She gives me five or six free bookmarks. I am happy.
A few more years pass. It is now 2008. Akihabara has changed from the land of televisions and stereos to the land of maids and moe. Maids smile at me, asking me to “return home” to their establishments. Toranoana has transformed itself from a small, single-room shop in a basement into a towering, seven-story orange behemoth. I walk inside, greeted by row after row after row of pornographic doujinshi. I am overwhelmed. I could spend hours inside this place, browsing its debaucherous treasures. I end up spending hours inside.
Present day. I come back to Akiba, and everything looks less colorful. The streets are worn, the maids are less enthusiastic and the Toranoana sign has been sun-bleached a grotesque, blotchy shade of pink. I go in anyways. The walls are plastered with advertisements for the newest books and goods. The shelves are still lined with doujinshi— but dakimakura covers, figurines and other specialty goods also populate the store. All the books look the same— the same girls, with the same cute, bubbly expression and unnatural glitter about them.
And that is Akiba— once a bastion for cutting-edge technological toys, reduced to floor after floor and store after store of the exact same thing. Just yesterday, I was at Gamers, utterly devastated by a book that I found. It was called All Otaku Can Become Novelists! The tagline: “You don’t need originality! Just add specialized knowledge!”
Is this the current state of “otakudom?” No originality necessary— just specialized knowledge? No longer is anime an art form— it has become a science, complete with formulae. Follow the formulae, and everything will turn out as it should.
Fueling this is the “new” otaku— one concerned with the accumulation of stuff. Otakudom is no longer about spirit, or passion— it’s about collection. I have never liked the word “otaku”, in neither Japanese nor English. In Japanese, it implies a sort of mania— drooling fanboys, rabid fangirls, socially maladjusted nerds who spend their time obsessing over things that normal people wouldn’t even give a moment’s thought to. To be otaku is to disregard social norms, live on the outskirts of society, and be a perpetual outsider. In English, the term is worn as a badge of pride by those who self-identify with the anime fandom. It is a gateway to an exotic and exclusive subculture. Yet, at the same time, its overuse and abuse has rendered the term, already shallow and cheap in Japanese, completely devoid of meaning in English.
The “new” otaku is a consumer. He buys, and accmulates, and is extremely proud of his massive hoards of stuff. Around him, Akihabara has created a culture of perfection called moe. The science of moe is the science of making things flawless— all the girls have the same cute, half-hesitant expressions, the same sprawling posture on bedsheets, the same large, twinkly eyes. To deviate from this established norm is to risk financial death. Otaku don’t want originality. They want their perfect vision of the world to be recreated ad infinitum.
In a quiet corner of Akihabara, far away from the lights and noise, lies a small club named MOGRA. A tiny little space invaders logo unpretentiously announces the club’s existence. It is here, behind its soundproof doors and narrow staircase that I find the true spirit of Akihabara— the spirit of creation and community. DJs show off their remixes. The club’s patrons socialize amongst themselves. A song begins to play, everyone comes to the floor, and the night is spent in revelrie.
For this is what being a fan is about: giving back, or at least, participating in the community. Sitting in a room obsessing over figurines isn’t really being a fan— it’s being a consumer. Watching an anime, or playing an eroge, with no one to discuss it with is the saddest and lonliest experience on Earth. When I see Akihabara, and see its masses of goods, designed for single-person consumption (sometimes even designed to replace human contact), I can’t help but feel cynical about the future of the industry and the fandom.
But then, I go to Comiket, and meet the doujin artists— I see them, interacting with fans, selling their painstakingly-crafted doujinshi, socializing, laughing— and I think to myself, perhaps it’s not that bad after all.
… I’ve never been to Akihabara, or even Japan for that matter, but what you wrote here evokes all sorts of feelings inside. I can feel the childlike amazement at the rows of tvs, and the happiness that comes with wandering through new worlds in manga and doujins. I can also feel the hopelessness comes with this new age. This death of originality, where everything is factory-produced to appeal to a specific set of ideals is more depressing than anything. It’s a really sad state of affairs. I was really moved by this. Thank you.
Great post. It’s even got that tiniest bit of anti-capitalism, counter-cultural undertone to it, on top of all those pointed summaries.
Will consume again.
Well, this blog made me want to go to akihabara, then not (I’m not into hentai or erotic video games) and then it made me feel bad about being and otaku, and then I felt better ^-^
This just reminds me of how I feel whenever I go to Manhattan. You look at the skyline from an incoming train, and it’s just the most beautiful thing ever. And then you walk the streets, and the giant buildings are plastered from top to bottom with towering billboards and commercials no one cares about. I never knew advertisements needed to scrape the sky, blocking out the windows with their shamelessness. My peripheral vision is picking up more and more detail every day because I’m standing in the shadow of somebody’s marketing campaign, tough luck.
From the little I’ve seen and heard about MOGRA, it’s almost like a hip, offline version of Nico Nico Douga at its most creative. You know, creative people sharing their works which are strongly inspired by pop otaku culture. It seems what you value isn’t the consumption side of otaku culture, but the sharing of experiences and creations among fans which come out of that consumption. Like, the consumption shouldn’t be the be-all and end-all it has become in Akihabara, but the starting point for creating something which is both a reflection of something personal and unique that can also be projected upon a wider group of fans who “get it”. Makes sense to me. I guess that’s what makes conventions so appealing, and why it’d be nice to see the convention spirit spreading to more places. Like MOGRA. It’s also why I’m really excited by the doujin scene right now. It seems that a lot of the most creative people in the industry at the moment are getting their starts in the doujin scene (Ryukishi07, Nasu, ABe, etc.)
Looks like the place changes for the worse. That is sad for the otaku fans who strive on originality.
How original does original have to be for it to be counted as original?
Despite the fact that the book you showed me at Gamers said “No need for originality”, I really have to disagree with the idea that you can sell anything (well) without any real sense of originality.
As the book says, otaku are indeed specialists, but does that mean that there’s no need for anything but that?
I don’t know. I think commercialization capitalizes on character types and consumption of simulacra. But, when it comes down to it, when those database features are materialized in novel format, they have to be done so inside a story.
Like I mentioned before: I think marketing “non-originality” well takes originality — it’s just coming in a form that we’re not used to seeing, so we fail to acknowledge its existence. And yes, what I just said was somewhat paradoxical.
Times like these, I’m happy we have noitaminA and Anime-no-Chikara.
Also, it’s not as if anime is stuck in tropes. I realize that seems weird, but I think, as we’ve observed here recently, that the creative minds behind manga and anime are trying to work with the profitable but still try to create something new. The moe with substance argument again.
However, your argument seem to focus more on the otaku themselves, which is much more problematic. I find it interesting that Kylaran here is downplaying your argument when he is one of the forerunners behind the “otaku are rejecting / replacing reality” phenomenon.
A great article, and for some reason I had one of my teacher’s voice playing in my head as I read that… And I also swear that some of the language in the article seems lifted from a lecture that he gave too…
Anyway, I’d have to agree with the fact that a large part of Otaku culture has become an objectification of characters and marked by some pretty crazy materialism. But at the same time, I can’t seem to imagine anyone having a primarily solitary experience with anime. I mean Comiket in and of itself is a social gathering. With the prevalence of the internet, why anyone would choose to not talk about anime online eludes me.
But the real problem for me is the reason behind this consumerism. Otakus buy these figurines and Otaku products because they only feel a thirst to achieve their ideal world. They’ve objectified the characters and really taken them out of the world that they exist in, and have now decided to treat them as objects of desire. No longer is Senjougara the girl who has created a front for herself thanks to her childhood trauma. She’s now just “that crazy Yandere”. And I feel that that’s the mentality that we should be scared of. The reduction of these characters to essentially their appearance.
Control.
Interesting. I instinctively started reading this as a typical anit-consumerism rant but I think you’re trying to say that the passion is slowly draining from the community as the years go by. Maybe I’m incorrectly paraphrasing, but the image of a “typical Japanese otaku” being a 30 year old with a fair bit of money, a ton of figures and BDs, and next to no knowledge of the full extent of his hobby and his fan communities might be believable, and I agree that it’s less than healthy. I personally think that consumption is extremely important – I despise the concept of anime fans who stop watching anime – but the creative and social groups that form around the hobby are equally important. In Japan, we need doujinshi and forums and social events to get fans thinking and keep things creative; outside of Japan, we need translations and file sharing and blogging to foster discussion and to have access to the media to begin with.
Anyway, being an anti-anti-consumerist, my instinctive reasoning isn’t that fans place too much emphasis on consumption; it’s that they need to step up their game and keep their brains on when they play eroge and watch anime. There’s no obligation to be overly critical, but slipping into that brainless state of consumption does nothing for you or the industry you claim to be supporting. As you said, places like MOGRA and events like Comiket are a reminder that fandom is not dead, and I don’t believe for a second that the quality of anime has actually declined over the past decade, but the fan mentality of accumulation without passion that you’re describing is indeed a threat. I’m just optimistic enough to believe that the threat won’t have a significant impact.
It goes to show that the community hit a moe saturation at some point, but we don’t know when or why (I think, really, that we’re just seeing trends. We don’t fully understand why people stopped looking for originality). Whatever the reason or point in time, it seems that the spirit of maintaining a community has been lost. Which is a shame, because your article really reminded me how much the entire industry relies on feedback and propagation. It may in fact be a live or die situation as you’ve been forecasting for a long time.
But lovely article Akira. I think it’s amazing for NHRV to have someone with your perspective.
@Kylaran
Originality in your example has the most amorphous definition of “being different,” which I cannot call as thus. Or perhaps if we are to quantify that as originality, then I may have to say that the originality that Akira seeks is “more original” than that. Regardless of whether we consider that as originality or not, we can agree that it’s quite a shallow level, and what Akira implies originality to mean is larger in scope than that.
Remember when you watched Beyblades as a 10 year old and then you wanted to go out and buy it because it was so ‘cool and fun’. Seems to me they have the mindset of a 10 year old with their consumer behaviour. The difference is that they do so on the basis of fulfilling their obsession with purity and to have a relationship.
Although I do wonder, who is controlling who? The audience or those in charge taking advantage of them to milk them for money?
Despite what anti-free market people would lead you to believe, the consumer controls everything eventually. The market reacts to the demands of the consumer. If the consumer is enjoying X, and X is profitable, the market will do X until X no longer makes money.
There are times when the consumer can be manipulated. American advertisement agencies are masters at it. But I don’t think Bandai created the moe industry and told everybody to reject reality and fill in their pathetic existences with tropes. That was done by the fans and it wasn’t, as Akira is pointing out in this article, a quick transformation. It took years, and it morphed in such a way I doubt anybody could predict.
The situation in Akiba seems bad but actually it has a cyclic nature to itself just like everything else. Those cute girls images will fall apart eventually but what comes next is still hard to guess
:/ Not even a mention.
Having been to Akiba numerous times in 2006 and 2007, and returning to it now in 2010 (to make shady drug deals with sketchy guys in funny shirts), I definitely agree with the sentiment of change you mention. When you first told me you thought the place was crumbling I understood instantly and couldn’t agree more. It is something you only gain through a separated perspective, maybe to those who haunt the Electric City daily have missed it (dare I say, frog in boiling water) but it is super tangible to a person returning after a long break.
When a wandering stranger introduced me to Mandarake, however, I found it as something redeeming. Yet, Mandarake is off the beaten path in Akihabara. It isn’t situated among the Gamers and Animate (oh, how I hate Animate), and I think that says a lot about what it represents. While my guide took me straight to a floor dedicated to personal creativity and expression, I later returned to go through the other floors of older merchandise. Akira often jokes that I am not an anime fan anymore, and it is kind of true. But in Mandarake, I could find what made my an anime fan. Old school mechs, classic videos, and a Ritsuko figure. In Otakudom, there is a proliferation of the main street Chuo Dori mentality, but (as Akira points out about MOGRA) there does still exist some of the old. Mandarake was my proof of that, thank you stranger.
All Otaku need to read Genshiken Manga and watch Genshiken Anime in order to help them to understand why it’s fun to be in a community of like-minded people. Oh and join an Anime Club helps tremendously.
In the end, as everyone says above, the average Otaku consumer is becoming enclosed and the average anime is turning onto itself for resources rather than being inventive and seeking outside sources. It’s not healthy. The untimely blow of Satoshi Kon’s death is definitely bad.
I wish there are more shows like DRRR. Sigh.
I also add: starting a website dedicated to Anime related stuff and interacting with folks really helps! XD
[...] Okay, so you probably did NOT find out about Mogra like that. Most likely you’d have heard about it from a mutual friend, or that crazy guy on Twitter screaming in English about it (That was me). Or maybe you’ve heard about it from that one webcomic. Or read about it in that one blog post. [...]