Western Otaku: Games Crossing Cultures

Mia Consalvo

Wed., June 10, 2:00–3:00, Browsing Library (2nd floor, West Central)

From Nintendo’s first Famicom system, Japanese consoles and videogames have played a central role in the development and expansion of the digital game industry. Players globally have consumed and enjoyed Japanese games for many reasons, and in a variety of contexts. Yet beyond studies of male and female players, or fans of a particular genre, we have seen little research exploring the different types of players that choose various sorts of games. This study examines one particular subset of videogame players, for whom the consumption of Japanese videogames in particular is of great value, in addition to their related activities consuming anime and manga from Japan. These players, here named “Western otaku”, take great pleasure in finding and playing different sorts of Japanese games, often importing the Japanese versions before English or Western versions are released, and playing them on modded or Japanese versions of game consoles. Who are these players? What draws them to these videogames, and how does a game’s “Japaneseness” inform player understandings of the games through play? Through in-depth interviews with such players, this research investigates how transnational fandom operates in the realm of videogame culture, and how a particular group of videogame players interprets their gameplay experience in terms of a global, if hybrid, industry.

The term “otaku” originated in the early 1980s in Japan, as “self-referential slang [used] by hard-core anime fans in Japan” (Yang, 2005). “In its standard usage, otaku (literally, ‘your house’) is an extremely formal way of saying ‘you’; an English equivalent might be ‘thou’” (Yang, 2005). While Japanese individuals outside of hardcore anime fandom have derided self-identified otaku for their alleged lack of social skills and grooming habits, “the term ‘otaku’ is a label that U.S. anime fans have embraced with half-deprecating, half-defiant pride — using it similarly to the way that software coders and other techie types have embraced the term ‘geek’” (Yang, 2005).

The term “Western otaku” is one that I borrow from fans themselves and here assign to a particular subset of digital game players — players in primarily North America but also elsewhere in the West who are interested not only in popular culture or technology, but particularly Japanese versions thereof. As part of their interest in Japan and Japanese pop culture, Western otaku read manga and watch anime. Some of them learn Japanese in high school or college, and they play Japanese videogames, often purchasing the original Japanese versions. Some plan on visiting Japan to either teach English or soak up the sights at some point in their future; and many of them have found a way to further indulge their interest in Japan — by playing games that are Japanese in origin, often in the original Japanese. These Western otaku raise provocative questions about identity, use of media, and our understandings of the “other”. In their quest to play games as well as interact with Japanese culture, they offer food for thought about global fandom and what that might be like. Their quest for the exotic and their work in “getting closer to the other” are examined to see how the possibility space of Japanese digital games is constructed, changed, and maintained by Western otaku.