Oh man, I just read this hilarious article at Wired about how otaku are now supposedly some kind of “geek elite”. However, unlike in America, not everyone can just call themselves real otaku.
“Here’s the real evidence,” he says, producing a certificate and ID that confirm his standing as “otaku elite.” He earned this rank by getting a very high score on a rigorous National Unified Otaku Certification Test last summer.
The exam was something of a Japanese obsession, despite having been available only as an insert in Elfics magazine, which features cheesecake drawings of scantily clad, underage girls on the cover. The 15-page quiz demanded a staggering knowledge of minutiae, from the names of obscure videogame villains to fluctuations in the stock price of toy-robot manufacturer Bandai.
Now when you get certification, your knowledge goes from being a hobby to being a quantifiable asset. Soon, everyone is fighting over you.
In a recent column for the Japan Times, Shoji wrote about women who were desperately trying to land otaku boyfriends and the trouble they were having competing with the ultrageeks’ preferred romantic companions – racy images of anime idols freely available online.
So now that you are extremely attractive in your personal and business life, it’s important to be picky about who will benefit from your elite level of knowledge. Goodness knows that certification didn’t come cheap. But if you play your cards right, that certification could lead to some serious fringe benefits at work.
When Umeda got his first job after college, he kept mum about his life outside the office. Before long, however, he discovered that his boss was also an otaku. “Now, if I want,” he says with a grin, “I can get a day off to go to the comics convention.”
Now that’s hot.
This post was written by...
Kabitzin – who has written 1970 posts on Sea Slugs! Anime Blog.
One of the founders of Sea Slugs, I handle most of the blog admin tasks while wearing my I AM BOSS shirt. I like my action series well choreographed, and my romance series extra trashy. I also have a soft spot for puns.
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Are you sure this isn’t some kind of bizarre joke? I thought otakuism was frowned upon because, y’know, all otaku want to do is play games, watch anime, and buy figures. And maybe write blogs about it…
I guess the NHK is really trying to build an army of super desirable nerd men.
I remember reading an article, I believe it was on the Daily Mainichi’s English site, about a year about talking about how women in Japan were going after Otakus now because basically there was no one left to marry otherwise. So I don’t doubt this article at all, although I kind of wonder how happy many of the women are about this development.
Everybody knows real otaku would shun thier would be female suitors just to sleep with thier lifesize body pillows.
What do you expect? This is Japan we’re talking about. They’ve finally (grudgingly) accepted the otaku. In the West (and most Asian contries), otaku on the street = shame.
Well, in Singapore, you’ll find a concentration of otaku comparable to Japan’s. Because we’re socially repressed people.
That’s great! Kind of reminds me of Densha Otoko (which I’m watching at the moment) in reverse. Especially the part where Yamada’s freinds give him the Certificate of NON-Otaku status.