Forum - View topicINTEREST: 'Otaku' Term Extends To Introduce Diverse Meanings and Impact on Economy
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Foxaika
 Posts: 365 Location: Columbus, Ohio |
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Personally I am very hidden about most of the things I am interested in. Showing it off makes me very nervous.
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minakichan
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Guys... it's not "rear charge." It's リア充 riajuu, which is an extremely common slang term for essentially a "real-lifer"-- a fulfilled, social, normal person. Basically, if you've ever seen Haganai, a "riajuu" is the kind of normal person that the loner main characters can't relate to at all. This term shows up in anime all the time now. You see it translated as "happy people," "normal people," "real-lifer", "IRLer," "people with actual lives," etc.
The リア is for riaru "real," not for "rear"... If you need to translate it, it could be something like "real-lifer otaku." |
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relyat08
 Posts: 4125 Location: Northern Virginia |
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^^
Wow, that makes way more sense. Thanks for clarifying that for us. 
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vonPeterhof
Posts: 729 |
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enurtsol
 Posts: 14876 |
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Here's the X-Y axis chart:
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vonPeterhof
Posts: 729 |
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@enurtsol Is "barely surviving" supposed to be a translation for ガチ? Because that's not what the word means at all, it's a colloquial modifier meaning "seriously", "for real" or "legit". Also, I'm pretty sure "reality-based" has a very different nuance in English.
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Parse Error
 Posts: 592 |
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"Casual" would probably work better than a literal translation. Of course, that carries stronger connotations of "somebody who only likes a few anime" than "somebody who openly likes a lot of anime yet still has a healthy social life," but "Casual Otaku" wouldn't be a contradiction in terms going by the dictionary since it's being used as an adjective there. |
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P€|\||§_|\/|ast@
 Posts: 3498 Location: IN your nightmares |
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Thanks for the corrections with "rear charge." To me it sounded too much like something associated with a hentai BL manga.
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Alabaster Spectrum
Posts: 528 |
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It's not like otaku do much to help their own image a lot of the time the way they behave both on the internet and in public. I can kind of see both sides of the situation a lot more nowadays, especially since it feels like more and more otaku seem to feel entitled to act like complete ass hats now that a lot of the otaku favorite things are getting more and more exposure of late that used to be more of a behind the scenes thing. |
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EricJ2
 Posts: 4016 |
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Yes, but in the last two weeks, I've seen "It's not like anyone would miss them anyway!" jokes (and usually the same identical one) in four different series that Otaku = Internet addiction = Girl-phobe = Snack hog = Agoraphobic work-rebelling NEET, that practically reward and reinforce the idea that it's okay to publicly ridicule them--And some that are even outraged at the idea one shouldn't. (Qv. Outbreak Company selling so poorly at home.) And bad things usually happen the more casual and comfortable the entire mainstream population of a country gets when they decide a certain section of the population can be second-classed and cheerily spat upon because they "have it coming" for all the things they've "done to" the country. Not to court Godwin's (watch this paragraph disappear), but if there'd been an upbeat campaign in 30's Berlin of "I'm a casual Jew!--We're just plain folks, but we're not really concerned about money as everyone thinks we are! ", it still might not gone over quite as successfully as hoped. Most of the mainstream people the message was aimed at would still be too caught up in trying to find the easy scapegoats that were delaying all that economic and social reform they were impatient for, and dreaming of finally getting said "annoyance" out of the way once and for all by hook or by crook.
Last edited by EricJ2 on Sun Dec 06, 2015 6:09 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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minakichan
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Ah, looks like they changed it to "casual." Good. I personally like "real-lifer" because it kind of has a derogatory feel that's also comically self-deprecatory towards the speaker in that "explode, riajuu!" kind of sense-- like you're insulting someone else, but also insulting yourself because you know you can't be as socialized as them. It also sounds slangier. But thinking about it, "casual" kind of works in that "filthy casual" way, although I think "casual" also just connotes someone who just watches Dragon Ball and isn't really otaku, as you're sort of explaining. Definitely better than "rear charge" ... |
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nobahn
 Subscriber Posts: 5140 |
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Oh dear mother of the goddesses..... 
Eric-- I respectfully submit that that you are wrong. I respectfully submit that that the, ah, "enhanced" antisemitism of the Weimar Republic was a direct result of a radicalized German middle class that was radicalized by hyperinflation and the Great Depression.
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CoffeeFlux
Posts: 7 |
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im a "rear charge otaku"
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Lili-Hime
 Posts: 569 |
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Lol wow did I just see otaku compared with the persecution of Jews in Hitler's Germany? Individuals ridiculing you =/= government sponsered extermination / persecution. Guy sounds like the Christians that think they'ere being matryed because people say "happy holidays" instead of "merry xmas" Between this and the Islam thread there's some serious derailment going on.
I don't know where I fall. To my friends I have no shame about my weeabo-ness, but general acquaintances and such I tend to keep it on the dl. Idk I'm american and anime fandom is a bit of a generational thing. People in their early 30's and below grew up watching anime here. Even then I'll kind of talk about stuff that's more generally popular like Sailor Moon or Bebop... not about to talk to people about my yaoi and yuri doujins if I don't know them, really... really well lol. |
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EricJ2
Posts: 4016 |
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That's rather why I used it: Japan's sudden economic turnaround in the 90's-00's Recession left them somewhat unprepared, as they were still on their 80's mode of thinking that being corporate giants would buy them prosperity and leadership of the world's economy. When that wasn't happening anymore, the only instruction manual they had to guide them out of a slump was the old one that said "If you're not succeeding, it's your fault for not working hard enough!" And it still didn't seem to be enough...What terrible thing could be spoiling it for them? Gosh, maybe it was--gasp!--all those people they'd heard about on the Internet who were so smug about not working! Meanwhile, the sudden "plague" of young victims retreating from the high pressure and school pecking-orders--a society that had grown up on responsible bullying and only knew how to bully into responsibility--is a product of a generation that's lost its identity, doesn't know how to start over from scratch, and isn't even allowed to rebel against what it does see as faulty, except through wild self-indulgent stunts. Even worse, they're told it's their fault if they see anything wrong with what's around them, and have no answer what to do except to go somewhere where they don't have to hear it anymore. Needless to say, hiding in your closet, like the Japanese believe all game/anime fans do ("instead of going outside, getting jobs, and running into the sunset working up the sweat of youth!"), is not how public change happens, and those who do are gleefully attacked--and with a passive hostility born of out of frustrated social scapegoating that borders on bloodthirsty--as irresponsible, childish freaks. It's nice that someone IS trying to change that--particularly by working Otaku into broader economic theory, where they're seen as the pestilent boogeymen--but he's attacking the symptoms, not the disease. The disease is going to need a little bit of self-diagnosis before any recovery can take place.
YES. Since the Hikkikomori-bashing started in the late 00's, we have seen fake "studies" trying to link anime/moe fandom with pedophilia, we have had social groups claiming manga is a "danger", we have had...how many recent cases of well-meaning social groups getting up in arms because a cute female anime mascot was "sexist" and "unacceptable", because as we all know, the sight of 2D-anime pulchritude creates perverted thoughts? Where do you think these are coming from, and what do you think is the ultimate goal they may or not be consciously aware they're trying to accomplish? Okay, so anyone who watches Love Live isn't going to be rounded up by the police in the middle of the night  , but it does seem to be adding up to a very frustrated "How can we get them by legal means?" mindset to rid the culture of the same anime that creates those horrible NEETs. If they can't get rid of the bad people, maybe they can starve them out, and force them to go outside into the sunshine and get jobs again, that'll show 'em--And if the link between sexy anime girls and perverted behavior can be proven, why, it'll be doing the country a public service, and like they joke, "It's not like anyone would miss the sheltered otaku anyway."
(When we tried to say "Comic books rot kids' minds and cause juvenile deliquency!" in the 50's, it wasn't necessarily the comic books we were trying to burn out of existence, it was the delinquents. Because we didn't know what was causing it, but all we knew was that it couldn't be happening in our whitebread home, we were too good and productive! It wasn't until James Dean started rebelling without a cause that it dawned on us that, hey, maybe it wasn't the comic books or Elvis songs, maybe all those aimless frustrated teens were, y'know, angry and frustrated about something, and it might have even been us!) We (I don't mean "we" in the US, of course, I mean "we" in the cross-Pacific solidarity sense) are under attack. And I don't mean culturally, I mean for real. Ignore the next goofy outraged public protest at your peril, because that's usually how the bad stuff starts, once it starts trying to buy moral public legitimacy and present a social solution. |
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