Comments on: I Love The ‘Otaku’ Elimination Game

By: Temporal Vortex » Otaku Elimination: On Selecting Contestants

Temporal Vortex » Otaku Elimination: On Selecting Contestants — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 13:59:11 +0000

[...] argument is, keeping an anime blog doesn’t necessarily make you an otaku, just as pointed by NovaJinx. The fact that you were listed there is similar to arresting you for a crime you really [...]

By: Temporal Vortex » Blog Archive » Otaku Elimination: On Selecting Contestants

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 07:38:45 +0000

By: Mark

Mark — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 10:58:45 +0000

That campaign appears to be more of nitpicking on what the term otaku really means in the Japanese social scene or wherever it may be that they consider being called an otaku critical.

By: NovaJinx

NovaJinx — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 15:24:36 +0000

Scamp, ABA was sort of a mixed bag. It did have its own category for new blogs and stuff but you’re right, it was mainly a field day for big blogs. That said, it’s not like smaller blogs didn’t get any attention from it and that’s always positive. They were going to introduce a whole bunch of improvements to the formula in this year’s ABA but sadly it was canceled – what I heard from Mellow and Impz was that the project was too time-intensive to manage considering that it didn’t really benefit the organizers themselves in any way.

Sorrow-kun, it’ simply because most of the time anime blogs are like DA-tartlets or webcomics – growing in an environment where any serious criticism is almost nonexistent. In the anime blogosphere you rarely come seriously under fire and that leads to people either becoming fearful of any criticism at all or starving for it. And I say most of us in the ‘sphere belong in that latter group.

By: Sorrow-kun

Sorrow-kun — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 13:58:51 +0000

The OEG might be unearthing more about the anime blogosphere than even they originally intended. There’s one word that strikes me as interesting that seems to continually crop up in discussion about OEG. It’s not a word like “hate” or “trolling” or such since these words pop up every time someone comes along to rattle cages and upset the established order (OMG OEG is The Joker), so we can quietly dismiss these. The word that I find interesting is “masochist”. Might this say something about the types of people that blogging attracts? Hmmm….

(Someone will inevitably come along and say “sif you didn’t realize bloggers are masochists”, but we’ve never seen a collective admission on this scale before. What surprises me is it took just one little push… one little threat of guaranteed criticism for bloggers to en masse exclaim “beat me with your insult whip like the bitch I am, baby”. It reminds me of that SZS episode where people lined up to get taunted by Arai-sensei)

By: Scamp

Scamp — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 13:01:43 +0000

BTW, wasn’t the Anime Blog Awards a complete failure? I only joined the blogsphere in it’s aftermath but didn’t it totally fail in it’s objective? It was made to encourage views for well-written anime blogs that had little attention but only ended up being a place where the big boys could pat each other on the back.

By: Scamp

Scamp — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 12:59:02 +0000

I’m surprised by how many people are recoiling at the possibility that someone might actually critisize their writing. I totally agree with you on the fact that blogging hopelessly lacks any proper form of critism beyond disagreeing with your own views (WHUT, you don’t like Mazinger Z!?! You suck rawr rawr etc.)

Granted, the OEG probably isn’t the best way to go about this but hey, they started the shitstorm and people are paying attention. We won’t know the true result of this until they start posting more flaming..err, I mean reviews

By: NovaJinx

NovaJinx — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 12:37:27 +0000

Very much true Miha. OEG has chosen a topic with a lot of potential impact and initial shock value but lacks the credibility and skills to have enough momentum behind its arguments. Basically this seems to be a case of Japanese “true” anime nerds complaining about the use of otaku as a loanword in foreign languages. And like I stated in my post, as a Finn I might as well flame the Japs for using “sauna” in their language referring to something that no self-respecting Finn would ever consider as one. And yet such argument would be utterly futile, especially if the only thing I’d focus on would be its usage rather than expressing constructive criticism on the local saunas instead.
I’m interested to see whether OEG can really be more than just bitching about “correct” terminology. And I agree with you on their writing skills, even though I represent somewhat similar provocative style. Their arguments are strong but lack substance when you take a peek between the lines. And their apparently genuine surprise over the influx of positive feedback and voluntary self-nominations clearly points out that they don’t have all that much social sense or experience as far as the English anime blogging culture is concerned. But hey, it’s not every day shit like this happens. I’d have to be an idiot to ignore it.

By: Miha

Miha — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 10:06:10 +0000

Hey Nova, loved your posts on Index! Having said that, I might understand where these guys are coming from. I know tons of popular anime bloggers that have secured themselves a position of authority among certain readers, at least in the blogosphere. The problem here is that a lot of these guys claim to be otaku, but in actuality they merely opened up an anime blog, got popular on memes and web 2.0, and that’s that (the perfect example here would be Impz). They had no previous involvment with the industry, they haven’t been around for that long, yet people turn to them for answers, as if they have something valuable to offer to the community. Well, they don’t, at best they are just a shoutbox.
That being said, I think the guy(s) behind OE pretty much fail as bloggers, they have no credibility and no writing skills to make the experience that interesting. All that’s interesting about OE is that they are denying others their fandom. No otaku wants to be told that they fail at it, it can be a very personal thing. Not to whine too much about it, but that’s the reason why it’s been given so much attention.

By: dood

dood — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 09:51:16 +0000

@Netto:
In Japan Otaku can mean anything but for the rest of the world its associated with anime only the rest are just fanatics ;P