Though in previous decades the word had been used among fans as an innocuous second- person pronoun, ‘otaku’ was adopted as an insult during the lolicon boom in the early 1980s. Foundational to the discourse is ‘‘Otaku’ Research’ (‘otaku’ no kenkyu), a column written by Nakamori Akio and published in Manga Burikko from June to December 1983. In the first instalment, Nakamori begins by relating his first visit to the Comic Market, which drew some 10,000 fans to buy and sell their amateur manga and fanzines. As discussed above, women had dominated these events, but the success of Azuma Hideo and the lolicon boom contributed to a spike in male participants. Attempting to describe these ‘manga freaks’ to the reader, Nakamori unleashes a slew of schoolyard stereotypes: the physically unfit; the gloomy, unpopular and unstylish; mommas’ boys; fat kids; four-eyes; and so on. He speculates that these normally reserved losers and loners are ‘freaking out’ because they are all together in one place. Because Nakamori was critiquing ‘manga freaks’ in Manga Burikko, which catered to readers who might fall into that category, the column sparked a heated debate (to some extent orchestrated by Otsuka Eiji) in the reader response section of the magazine.
While Nakamori pokes fun at just about everyone from train spotters to techies in his first column, he reserves a special contempt for manga freaks. Consider this passage about the Comic Market: ‘Some are dressed in costumes of anime characters, others look like a shady character from an Azuma Hideo comic, still others constantly try foisting off their ‘lolicon’ fanzines on unsuspecting girls, the shit-eating grins never leaving their faces all the while’ (Nakamori 2008a). Those who Nakamori calls ‘otaku’ here are clearly part of the controversial fandom of men attracted to bishojo and producing fanzines, as can be deduced by the references to Azuma Hideo and lolicon. The next installment of ‘‘Otaku’ Research,’ published in Manga Burikko in July 1983, is titled ‘Can Otaku Love Like Normal People?’ In this piece, Nakamori picks up on the ‘perversion’ of some young male manga and anime fans that he had hinted at before:
See, these otaku are definitely lacking something in the masculine behavior department. Most of them leer over cutouts of Minky Momo [from Magical Princess Minky Momo, an anime series for girls aired in 1982] and Nanako [from Nanako SOS, a manga by Azuma Hideo that was adapted into a TV anime in 1983] they’ve got stuffed into their commuter — pass holders — you could call it a 2D complex, or something — yet can’t bring themselves to speak to an actual woman. … A nude photo of a normal young woman does absolutely nothing for guys like this. (Nakamori 2008b)
‘Otaku’ has now been refined to describe failed men who lust after fictional girl characters. What seems to bother Nakamori is that these men are not interested in ‘normal’ women. Nude photos do nothing for them and some are not even interested in ‘androgynous girl idols.’ Simply, they are not sexually interested in human beings. ‘Otaku’ are sexually aroused by fictional characters, and even have a sexual preference for them, which Nakamori refers to as a ‘two-dimensional complex.’ (Recall that Kawaguchi Toshihiko, a reader of Manga Burikko, defiantly admits in a letter to the editor that he has such a ‘complex.’) Among manga and anime fans, the orientation of desire toward fictional characters was said to be a form of ‘sickness’ (byoki) (Akagi 1993: 231; Yoshimoto 2009: 174—75). For men with such a sickness, the fictional girl character is a ‘cuteness fetish,’ which ‘replaces a lack of desire for the ‘real thing’ — a lack of desire that young men are ‘naturally’ supposed to possess for real young women’ (Shigematsu 1999: 132). The desire is ‘unnatural’ and thus disturbing.
For Nakamori, otaku turn to fictional girls because they ‘lack’ something as men:
Maybe it’s because they’re lacking in the male performance department or something, but these guys all seem kinda effeminate to me. These are people well into their twenties who, upon getting a new poster or something with their favorite anime character on it, get so happy and excited that their legs come together, their knees bend and they start to bounce… It really makes me sick. There’s no way the majority of these guys will ever get a woman. (Nakamori 2008b)
Note that masculine lack has shifted to ‘effeminate.’ In their excitement over images and objects generally and fictional characters specifically, otaku appear to Nakamori to be ‘feminine.’ The otaku will never get a woman, the logic goes, because he is a ‘woman,’ used here as a pejorative for failed men.
While it has been noted outside of Japan that fans are depicted as feminine or asexual due to the stereotype that excessive consumption forecloses other types of social experience (Jenkins 1992: 10), the debate about otaku took a unique turn in that desire for fictional characters was taken to be a rejection of socially (re)productive roles and responsibilities. Otaku were seen as failed men because they did not want to take on the mantle of an adult member of society. This comes out in the final installment of the “Otaku’ Research’ column, written by Ejisonta and published in Manga Burikko in December 1983. The article depicts otaku as young men who are ‘infatuated’ with fictional girls and are ‘interested only in maintaining psychological stasis’ (Ejisonta 2011). Ejisonta acknowledges the widespread appeal of youth and rejection of adult society in Japan (see Kinsella 1995: 250—52), but argues that this is far more pronounced among otaku:
This is why they remain in the manga/anime cultural sphere, maintaining a mid-teen level mindset and sensibility, reacting to adults who happen to penetrate from time to time with a ‘please leave us alone.’ … Mentally, they completely refuse to vector themselves towards maturity. What remains is immature self-assertiveness, immature thinking — effectively speaking, immature everything. (Ejisonta 2011)
Predictably, the call is for otaku to grow up and get a(n acceptable) life. The critique of otaku is now explicitly directed at the male readers of Manga Burikko, who are assumed to be attracted to fictional girl characters:
Let’s look at a real-world problem: you! Reading this lolicon-mag with a huge-ass grin on your face. Take a look in the mirror. You know you’re gross. Jerking off to stuff like this is nothing to be proud of. This is why sad little children can’t resist clumping together with other ‘different kids’ and transform themselves into otaku cliques. (Ejisonta 2011)
Ejisonta is upset because he sees the otaku orientation of desire toward fictional girl characters as a vector away from social/sexual ‘maturity.’ By his estimation, otaku are not maturing into adults or men. Particularly vexing is the wilful choice of fictional girl characters and refusal to vector in socially acceptable ways. As highlighted by Anne Allison, the fictional girl character is an alternative to the physically mature body of the woman and ‘body politic centered by the reproductions of family’ (Allison 2000: 173). The ‘antisocial’ behavior of youth identified by Ejisonta engendered a great deal of anxiety, which welled up in a moral panic about otaku sexuality in the mass media.