.::Otaku::.

Otaku (おたく or オタク, Otaku) is a Japanese term used to refer to people with obsessive interests, particularly anime and manga.

Etymology

As an honorific second-person pronoun

Otaku is derived from a Japanese term for another's house or family (お宅,　御宅 otaku) that is also used as an honorific second-person pronoun. The modern slang form, which is distinguished from the older usage by being written only in hiragana (おたく) or katakana (オタク or, less frequently, ヲタク), or rarely in rōmaji, appeared in the 1980s. In the anime Macross first aired in 1982, the term was used by Lynn Minmay as an honorific term. It appears to have been coined by the humorist and essayist Akio Nakamori in his 1983 series An Investigation of "Otaku" (『おたく』の研究, "Otaku" no Kenkyū), printed in the lolicon magazine Manga Burikko, who observed that this form of address was unusually common among geeks, nerds and most notably, animationist like Haruhiko Mikimoto and Shōji Kawamori.[1] It was apparently a reference to someone who communicates with their equals using (unnecessarily) the distant and formal pronoun, and spends most of their time at home.

In Japan

In modern Japanese slang, the term otaku refers to fan of, or is specialized in any particular theme, topic, or hobby. Common uses are anime otaku (a fan of anime ) and manga otaku (a fan of Japanese comic books or manga)

Some of Japan's otaku use the term to describe themselves and their friends semi-humorously, accepting their position as fans, and some even use the term proudly, attempting to reclaim it from its negative connotations.

I`m Otaku