Otaku Girl

Otaku Girl
Author: Louis Bulaong
Publisher:
Total Pages: 438
Release: 2021-06-24
Genre:
ISBN:

Imagine a world where you can live the life of your favorite fictional characters. Where you can become a real comic book superhero, anime protagonist, video game badass, and other great characters of fiction. Where you can gain actual superpowers, live in a fantastical world filled with villains and adventures, and have fun battling it out with other fellow geeks. In the virtual reality world known as the Escapist Dream, all of this can be possible for a price - once you get in, you can never get out. An American geek named Charlie, and a Japanese otaku named GI, would become trapped inside and forced to fight for survival, against rogue AIs and crazed players that had taken over the virtual reality world. Would their new-found powers and teamwork be enough? For what they didn't know, behind this malfunctioning virtual reality world, hides an even darker evil. One who is all-powerful, sadistic, and possibly eldritch...

Beautiful Fighting Girl

Beautiful Fighting Girl
Author: Tamaki Saitō
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
Total Pages: 243
Release: 2011
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0816654506

From Nausicaä to Sailor Moon, understanding girl heroines of manga and anime within otaku culture.

Guide to the Perfect Otaku Girlfriend: Roomies and Romance Volume 1

Guide to the Perfect Otaku Girlfriend: Roomies and Romance Volume 1
Author: Rin Murakami
Publisher: J-Novel Club
Total Pages: 183
Release: 2021-06-17
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 1718381484

If I’m going to find a girlfriend, she has to be an otaku. She’ll be beautiful, innocent, with long black hair, and she’ll like all the stuff that I like! Kokoro Nishina, the girl I’m living with, is the exact opposite of that. So why did I promise that I’d turn that flashy, extroverted gyaru into the ideal otaku girlfriend?! Sadly, I know just how it feels to need a little self-improvement to find the perfect date... and there’s no way a girl like that will tell her friends that she’s actually a closet fujoshi. But I’ll teach her—then maybe she can teach me too! With my expertise, she’ll definitely become an otaku’s dream girl!

Otaku and the Struggle for Imagination in Japan

Otaku and the Struggle for Imagination in Japan
Author: Patrick W. Galbraith
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2019-12-06
Genre: Comics & Graphic Novels
ISBN: 147800701X

From computer games to figurines and maid cafes, men called “otaku” develop intense fan relationships with “cute girl” characters from manga, anime, and related media and material in contemporary Japan. While much of the Japanese public considers the forms of character love associated with “otaku” to be weird and perverse, the Japanese government has endeavored to incorporate “otaku” culture into its branding of “Cool Japan.” In Otaku and the Struggle for Imagination in Japan, Patrick W. Galbraith explores the conflicting meanings of “otaku” culture and its significance to Japanese popular culture, masculinity, and the nation. Tracing the history of “otaku” and “cute girl” characters from their origins in the 1970s to his recent fieldwork in Akihabara, Tokyo (“the Holy Land of Otaku”), Galbraith contends that the discourse surrounding “otaku” reveals tensions around contested notions of gender, sexuality, and ways of imagining the nation that extend far beyond Japan. At the same time, in their relationships with characters and one another, “otaku” are imagining and creating alternative social worlds.

Otaku

Otaku
Author: Hiroki Azuma
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
Total Pages: 177
Release: 2009
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0816653518

Printbegrænsninger: Der kan printes 10 sider ad gangen og max. 40 sider pr. session

Escapist Dream

Escapist Dream
Author: Louis Bulaong
Publisher: Independently Published
Total Pages: 630
Release: 2020-07-27
Genre:
ISBN:

In a not too distant future where virtual reality has become the norm, lies a world known as the Escapist Dream, where all kinds of geeks can live a life of superpowered adventures. It is a place where comic book nerds can become superheroes, anime otakus can date their waifus, and gamers can fight each other in epic firefights.But then, something went wrong...Two individuals - a shy teenage geek named Charlie, and a serious programmer named Jim - came to the Escapist Dream for different reasons. One came to this virtual reality to have fun while the other was sent to fix bugs that have been plaguing the Escapist Dream. Charlie and Jim would soon find out how the bugs have caused madness in this place, and must now work together to protect themselves and save the Escapist Dream.

Beautiful Fighting Girl

Beautiful Fighting Girl
Author: Saito Tamaki
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
Total Pages: 314
Release: 2013-11-30
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1452916500

From Cutie Honey and Sailor Moon to Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, the worlds of Japanese anime and manga teem with prepubescent girls toting deadly weapons. Sometimes overtly sexual, always intensely cute, the beautiful fighting girl has been both hailed as a feminist icon and condemned as a symptom of the objectification of young women in Japanese society. In Beautiful Fighting Girl, Saitō Tamaki offers a far more sophisticated and convincing interpretation of this alluring and capable figure. For Saitō, the beautiful fighting girl is a complex sexual fantasy that paradoxically lends reality to the fictional spaces she inhabits. As an object of desire for male otaku (obsessive fans of anime and manga), she saturates these worlds with meaning even as her fictional status demands her ceaseless proliferation and reproduction. Rejecting simplistic moralizing, Saitō understands the otaku’s ability to eroticize and even fall in love with the beautiful fighting girl not as a sign of immaturity or maladaptation but as a result of a heightened sensitivity to the multiple layers of mediation and fictional context that constitute life in our hypermediated world—a logical outcome of the media they consume. Featuring extensive interviews with Japanese and American otaku, a comprehensive genealogy of the beautiful fighting girl, and an analysis of the American outsider artist Henry Darger, whose baroque imagination Saitō sees as an important antecedent of otaku culture, Beautiful Fighting Girl was hugely influential when first published in Japan, and it remains a key text in the study of manga, anime, and otaku culture. Now available in English for the first time, this book will spark new debates about the role played by desire in the production and consumption of popular culture.

Fandom Unbound

Fandom Unbound
Author: Mizuko Ito
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 353
Release: 2012-02-28
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0300158645

In recent years, otaku culture has emerged as one of Japan's major cultural exports and as a genuinely transnational phenomenon. This timely volume investigates how this once marginalized popular culture has come to play a major role in Japan's identity at home and abroad. In the American context, the word otaku is best translated as “geek'—an ardent fan with highly specialized knowledge and interests. But it is associated especially with fans of specific Japan-based cultural genres, including anime, manga, and video games. Most important of all, as this collection shows, is the way otaku culture represents a newly participatory fan culture in which fans not only organize around niche interests but produce and distribute their own media content. In this collection of essays, Japanese and American scholars offer richly detailed descriptions of how this once stigmatized Japanese youth culture created its own alternative markets and cultural products such as fan fiction, comics, costumes, and remixes, becoming a major international force that can challenge the dominance of commercial media. By exploring the rich variety of otaku culture from multiple perspectives, this groundbreaking collection provides fascinating insights into the present and future of cultural production and distribution in the digital age.

Japan

Japan
Author: Keiko Hirata
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2014-06-24
Genre: History
ISBN: 030018607X

Following a crushing defeat in World War II, Japan rose like a phoenix from the literal ashes to become a model of modernity and success, for decades Asia’s premier economic giant. Yet it remains a nation hobbled by rigid gender roles, protectionist policies, and a defensive, inflexible corporate system that has helped bring about political and economic stagnation. The unique social cohesion that enabled Japan to cope with adversity and develop swiftly has also encouraged isolationism, given rise to an arrogant and inflexible bureaucracy, and prevented the country from addressing difficult issues. Its culture of hard work—in fact, overwork—is legendary, but a declining population and restrictions on opportunity threaten the nation’s future. Keiko Hirata and Mark Warschauer have combined thoroughly researched deep analysis with engaging anecdotal material in this enlightening portrait of modern-day Japan, creating an honest and accessible critique that addresses issues from the economy and politics to immigration, education, and the increasing alienation of Japanese youth.

Tokyo Geek's Guide

Tokyo Geek's Guide
Author: Gianni Simone
Publisher: Tuttle Publishing
Total Pages: 144
Release: 2017-07-11
Genre: Travel
ISBN: 1462919707

Tokyo is ground zero for Japan's famous "geek" or otaku culture--a phenomenon that has now swept across the globe. This is the most comprehensive Japan travel guide ever produced which features Tokyo's geeky underworld. It provides a comprehensive run-down of each major Tokyo district where geeks congregate, shop, play and hang out--from hi-tech Akihabara and trendy Harajuku to newer and lesser-known haunts like chic Shimo-Kita and working-class Ikebukuro. Dozens of iconic shops, restaurants, cafes and clubs in each area are described in loving detail with precise directions to get to each location. Maps, URLs, opening hours and over 400 fascinating color photographs bring you around Tokyo on an unforgettable trip to the centers of Japanese manga, anime and geek culture. Interviews with local otaku experts and people on the street let you see the world from their perspective and provide insights into Tokyo and Japanese culture, which will only continue to spread around the globe. Japanese pop culture, in its myriad forms, is more widespread today than ever before--with J-Pop artists playing through speakers everywhere, Japanese manga filling every bookstore; anime cartoons on TV; and toys and video games, like Pokemon Go, played by tens of millions of people. Swarms of visitors come to Tokyo each year on a personal quest to soak in all the otaku-related sights and enjoy Japanese manga, anime, gaming and idol culture at its very source. This is the go-to resource for those planning a trip, or simply dreaming of visiting one day!