Otaku no video

I had Otaku No Video out of the library for a full three weeks before getting around to watching it. I had been put off by its reputation as a film with in jokes only truly understood by hard core anime fans.

When I finally watched it, I found I had been mistaken. Although it has many in jokes, they do not spoil the fun of the movie. The true appeal of Otaku no Video is its loving yet still hilarious depiction of otaku. It explores virtually aspect of fandom, making it look fun even as it mocks it. It's enough to make you go on eBay or JBox and try to find a garage kit!

Also, the film actually makes you care about its characters. Kubo and Tanaka are genuinely sympathetic, even to a non-otaku. Yes, they are socially awkward and obsessive, but the movie deals with this issue pretty well. For example, Kobu is shown to have been an obsessive tennis player before he was an otaku. As he asks at one point, why is playing tennis constantly fine while watching anime obsessively is bad?

This is definitely a must for any anime fan, or any rabid genre fan for that matter.

I loved this anime! It's so hilarous and dead on in its presentation of anime fans and nerds in general. The anime is basically about this tennis jock who gives up his beautiful girlfriend and jock's life to be an anime nerd. The presentation of the "Otaku" in the film was very eeriely similar to how nerds behave here. I laughed hysterically...

This grab bag video features a fictional (and animated) story line of how some college anime fans came together, lost their other friends, flunked out, started an animation studio, got rich and eventually got to live out their futuristic sci-fi dreams. Actually this part was a thinly fictionalized and slightly idealized re-telling of how the real life GAINAX company came about.

What makes it special, though, are its hilarious (live) 'documentary' interviews with anime fans which play like outtakes from some Japanese version of Slackers. Strictly for fans of the genre, - non-fans of anime will be confused and likely bored by all of the inside jokes and cryptic references, and even devoted anime fans might need to glance at liner notes from time to time - but this is a clever and entertaining exercise intended for insiders. Recommended if you are already an 'otaku'(obsessed fan).

It's so interesting looking at this time capsule of otaku world, that no longer existing.

And the scenes of them taking the piss out of them, so with portrait of utako episodes. It get me the feeling of catching a Predator it's kind of weird and cool.

The OVA has an insane pace because of the bubble economy, it's just going full speed over to nerd them otakudam all the different ways making a company losing a company friendship merchandise ,fictional women, real women who draw like a machine.

It's interesting that four years later they release evangelion and become one of most important anime of all time

And I would recommended as a school assignment to understand old school anime fans and where we come from.

Some reflections about the Otaku culture (which is far more accepted and mainstream today than before) have aged from the period in which this was made, some are still appliable in fields not connected to the manga/anime subculture alone and some are surprisingly prescient, in particular the attempt by some vinyl figure producer to flood the (fake) otaku/geek/n3rd culture with BILLIONS of samey crap presented as "statuines" or "collectibles". If you're into anime/manga/Otaku stuff, give it a try.