The Anime Girl through the Male Otaku Gaze

In this essay, I’m talking about heterosexual, cis-gendered men. When you come across terms like men, male, masculinity, etc. the “cishet” is implied — though to be clear, women and LGTBQ otaku do, have always, and always will, exist as integral to otaku culture. Though the topic is narrow, please don’t take the scope of this essay as an erasure of those identities and experiences.

In Japan, there’s been a good amount of discourse about “otaku” and what they represent.

The word originates from a polite second-person pronoun meaning “your home.” In the Tottori Prefecture, “otaku” is commonly used to say “you.” The word has come to mean things like nerd, geek, or hardcore fan.

Calling someone an otaku sparks different ideas: from pop culture enthusiasts to fanatics to anti-sociality to sexual perversion. Others argue that otaku are the salient reflection of Japanese “kawaii” culture — from cat-eared girls to Tamagotchi pocket pets to cosplay; an “obsession” with cuteness, childhood, and media that “postpones the pressures of adulthood.”

Patrick Galbraith traces the origins and meanings of otaku in “Otaku: and the Struggle for Imagination in Japan.” In “Beautiful Fighting Girl,” Saito Tamaki does a psycho-analytic deep-dive into male otaku psychology. Though the book is far more nuanced than what I’m quoting here, Tamaki puts it very crudely: “you can tell an otaku by whether or not he is able to use the image of a female anime character as an aid to masturbation.” To put it lightly, discourse about otaku often wrestle with everything from the normal to the weird to the taboo.

In “Interpreting Anime,” Christoper Bolton writes:

At the positive end of the spectrum are images of the otaku as charmingly shy but admirably earnest tastemakers at the cutting edge of popular consumer culture. But the term is often used pejoratively in Japan to suggest not only an unhealthy interest in an unworthy subject but also lack of social skills, a sexual immaturity, and detachment from reality that prevents the otaku from participating in society and forming authentic relationships.

What ties all the definitions of otaku — whether positive or negative, simple or nuanced, conventional or perverse — is that male otaku have…