The Negatives

Otaku get a bad rap. Some of it is deserved (never read the opinions of anybody else about anime ever regardless of their country of origin) but a lot of it isn't. Otaku as a whole aren't responsible for the crazy bullshit perpetrated by a small handful of homocidal psychos- the whole "anime and games made him violent" scapegoat that tends to pop up in Japanese media even still any time an otaku commits some sorta violent act isn't really any different from talking heads on the TV over here saying that video games cause mass shootings. Is there correlation? Sometimes, sure. You see that a lot over here also. "guy who killed people was a huge fan of media about killing people". Gee, that's surprising. "tiktok girl who killed her friend was huge fan of yandere subculture". Okay. "murderer had extensive slasher movie collection". At some point people need to realize that what they're describing is someone with a mental predisposition who clung onto media that either fulfilled or excited whatever fantasies they either had or developed as a result of the media. Even if they developed those fantasies from that media, that's like putting a bored murderer unsure of how to commit his next crime in a room with a TV playing one of the Friday the 13th movies, handing him a machete and then saying it's Jason's fault he started slashing people with it. And a lot of these people are ultimately just plain fucking mentally ill but like always end up horribly mistreated either by others around them or by (in the states specifically) the US medical industry which loves to sling more pills than Dr. Mario. Does this justify their actions? Hell no. But I usually stand on the basis that, in a lot of these cases, things could've went very differently.

So what are otaku responsible for? Other than having bad opinions sometimes and liking Sakura Wars too much there are instances where otaku subculture definitely has its negatives. It reminds me of modern "Kpop stan" subculture in a way- the obsessive idolatry of other people or inanimate things to the extent that all rationality flies out the window, like when the Aya Hirano sex scandal happened and otaku started smashing figures of Konata and Haruhi. Dude, I'm gonna be fucking real with you, if I read a headline that told me the chick who sang "God Knows" was banging her entire band I think destroying merchandise of the characters she voiced is the last thing I'd be thinking about, and even then what the hell does it have to do with the fictional characters she's affiliated with? Like oh no, Aya's out here letting her drummer bang on her drums, I'll never look at... Hana-chan from Yakuza 4 the same way again?

What I'm trying to say is that a lot of this crazy shit is an aspect of many fan-based subcultures (and regular cultures) in general, it's just that in this case it's being associated with bug-eyed cartoon schoolgirls and that makes people on the outside looking in lose their shit for some reason, as if we don't live in a world where these same scenarios happen all over the place in all different contexts like a game of Mad-Libs.