Otaku - Wikipedia

Otaku is derived from a Japanese term for another person's house or family (お宅, otaku). The word can be used metaphorically as a part of honorific speech in Japanese, as a second-person pronoun. In this usage, its literal translation is "you". It is associated with some dialects of Western Japanese and with housewives, and is less direct and more distant than intimate pronouns, such as anata, and masculine pronouns, such as kimi and omae.[8]

The origin of the pronoun's use among 1980s manga and anime fans is unclear. Science fiction fans were using otaku to address owners of books by the late 1960s (in a sense of "Do[es] [your home] own this book?").[9] Social critic Eiji Ōtsuka posits that otaku was used because it allowed people meeting for the first time, such as at a convention, to interact from a comfortable distance.[8] One theory posits that otaku was popularized as a pronoun by science fiction author Motoko Arai in a 1981 essay in Variety magazine,[8] and another posits that it was popularized by fans of anime studio Gainax, some of whose founders came from Tottori Prefecture in western Japan (where otaku is commonly used).[10] The pronoun was also used in the popular anime Macross, first aired in 1982, by the characters Hikaru Ichijyo and Lynn Minmay, who address each other as otaku until they get to know each other better.[11][12][13]

The modern slang form, which is distinguished from the older usage by being written in hiragana (おたく), katakana (オタク or, less frequently, ヲタク) or rarely in rōmaji,[14] first appeared in public discourse in the 1980s, through the work of humorist and essayist Akio Nakamori. His 1983 series 'Otaku' Research (『おたく』の研究, "Otaku" no Kenkyū), printed in the lolicon magazine Manga Burikko, applied the term as pejorative for "unpleasant" fans, attacking their supposed poor fashion sense and physical appearance in particular.[15] Nakamori was particularly critical of "manga maniacs" drawn to cute girl characters,[15] and explained his label otaku as the term of address used between junior high school kids at manga and anime conventions.[16]

In 1989, the case of Tsutomu Miyazaki, "The Otaku Murderer", brought the fandom, very negatively, to national attention.[17] Miyazaki, who randomly chose and murdered four girls, had a collection of 5,763 video tapes, some containing anime and slasher films that were found interspersed with videos and pictures of his victims. Later that year, the contemporary knowledge magazine Bessatsu Takarajima dedicated its 104th issue to the topic of otaku. It was called Otaku no Hon (おたくの本, lit. The Book of Otaku) and delved into the subculture of otaku with 19 articles by otaku insiders, among them Akio Nakamori. This publication has been claimed by scholar Rudyard Pesimo to have popularized the term.[18]