After I watched the second episode of Ore No Imouto Ga Konna Ni Kawaii Wake Ga Nai, it seems to be a very realistic representation of Otakus in real life. In a way, it relates to some of the aspects presented in the first real life female Otaku meeting. Even though I do not consider myself as an Otaku, there are plenty of issues and experiences I can relate to the show. 1
Anime, Manga and other related activities are looked down by society most of the time since these mediums are stereotyped as an Otaku interest depending in the type of material. Otaku, which practically means “house” in Japanese normally refers to a person who is a failure in life, lacks a social life and stays home all day watching these things. In reality, they are just normal people, but their interests in things like certain Anime and Manga has left them with this negative connotation. Since being an Otaku is so negative, they are not able to express their opinions on the things they are passionate about when someone brings it up in the conversation. In a way, this causes them to be isolated because of their interests.
Come to think about it, I felt this way in real life since I hardly talk about Anime and Visual Novels. I only talk about these things online in the Anime blogosphere and to my sister since most people would accept my interests. I keet my Anime interests to myself in high school since stuff like Anime and Pokemon is not cool and everyone expected you to be interested in relationships and sports. I was different from the other high school students since I liked Anime and Japanese music instead of the western stuff.
When I started my first year of college, I expanded my interests with the return to Anime. I started to like shows that were not mainstream and more geared to the Otaku like Kanon and Clannad. Eventually, I got hooked on Visual Novels not only for the appreciation of the original source material, but for the more in depth story, the emotionally powerful music and beautiful art work. Even though some of these Visual Novels had some eroge scenes that I did not like, I looked past it since I liked what the Visual Novels shown me.
The truth is, most Anime fans would look past Visual Novels not only for the eroge scenes it had, but also they took a long time to complete. Since an arc takes 12-20 hours to complete from my experience, it takes away a considerable amount of time from socializing with other people; it could become hazardous if your whole life depends on socializing with others.
Throughout the episode, I have noticed that Kirino had some difficulties expressing her interests with other people with the same interests. Most people would feel that way because of fear that they would get shunned from their interests in Anime. Later, Kirino became more open when Saori had Kirino talk to Kuroneko. This is when Kirino became confortable talking about her interests in a rather heated debate.
The debate between the two girls reminds me of the debate in the fandom over over moe vs deep stories. Before my return to Anime, I watched pretty much everything in the mainstream like Pokemon. When I returned to anime in fall of 2008, my interests shifted from the mainstream shouen anime to moe-oriented anime. In a way, I find my choice of Anime rather enjoyable; I stuck with moe since it can both be deep and rather enjoyable even though some of the people will not agree with me.
Nevertheless, Ore No Imouto Ga Konna Ni Kawaii Wake Ga Nai is relatable to most anime fans compared to Nogizaka Haruka since it focuses the interest on normal people like myself. Perhaps the story being told in a viewpoint of Kyousuke is an advantage for the story. It represents someone who has no interest in Otaku interests that is being dragged into the whole thing. In a sense, people could relate to what Kyousuke experiences with his sister forcing him to watch Anime and play eroge. Perhaps we can learn more about the Otaku subculture that we might not have known if we did not watch this show in a rather enjoyable fashion.
Selected Blogosphere Opinions
Since I found some rather interesting posts about others experience with Anime, it was best to share my thoughts on them
In a post made by Honya at Lyrical Spark, I found her story pretty interesting considering that she had experiences with the Japanese culture from living in Japan and loved Anime. The difficulties in expressing herself about her interests in Anime are vastly similar to what Kirino is going through. Aorii from Major Arcana had a similar story that Honya experienced and gone even further on how they met each other at their college Anime Club.
I also agreed with Janette’s viewpoint on eroge on her blog, even though the sex scenes are meh and feel so out of place, I cannot deny the fact the stories from Visual Novels are rather touching from the intense character development.
As for lolikitsune, he likes the show and I said it’s a full of win. Yumeka also likes the show too since it relates to her past experiences, even though she has some concerns, but they were pretty minor.
Some Notes
Interesting entry! I know we’ve talked before about experiences about being otaku and expressing it, so it’s hard for me to find something else to say without rehashing old conversation.
What is interesting is that people who play video games are regarded as normal, even though there’s a portion of VG fandom that likes video games the same thing that makes anime appeal to anime fans.
I think the popularity of video gaming that involves no Anime style art always seems to be popular, especially violence oriented games like Halo, Call of Duty and Gears of War. In Japan, most of the games that are popular are RPGs and Visual Novels. I think it has to do with the culture between the East and the West that causes these differences in gaming tastes.
It’s worth noting that Anime Styled JRPGs don’t sell well in the west. It’s usually the Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest series that do well since they don’t use this style and you can see why.