I have not forgotten about pontif.us again. In fact, I redesigned it; see? Marvel at the simplicity!

Anyway, I’ve been reading Bakuman — I’ve read all that’s currently available, actually. It is, in a word, good, and it stands out in its self-referentiality in terms of art itself more than fandom. I could talk about that, but I won’t, as it’s plain enough to any reader, and you really should read it. I will, however, talk about the following segment.

Which brings us to our titular question: who is an otaku?

Takagi vehemently rejects the label. But he is self-admittedly and demonstrably a fan of manga. He writes manga, with the goal of having some work of his animated at some point. It’d be difficult to call him an especially casual manga-reader.

And yet he doesn’t self-identify as an otaku. If anyone around him thinks of him as such, we don’t see it. Do his creative inclinations free him from otaku status? As I understand it, an otaku in the Japanese sense is one who does something obsessively; perhaps Takagi’s manga addiction is permissible insofar as it results in an output. Instead of holing himself up in his room and reading manga at the expense of all else, he produces, and thus his hobby is not entirely self-centered or without broader utility.

Or perhaps Takagi isn’t an otaku because of his success as a manga writer. Money serves as powerful justification. You don’t hear anyone call Stephen King a nerd because of his interest in speculative fiction. Financial success is perhaps yet more evidence of productivity, but it’s evidence that most people can’t ignore.

For what it’s worth, Moritaka seems to have little or no interest in what the general public thinks of him. Perhaps it’s a matter of public denial on Takagi’s part. But neither Takagi nor Moritaka spend much of their time doing the usual things that show up in manga as representative of anime/manga otakudom. It might not have been surprising to see them hone their skills through doujin work, but at no point do they consider that option.

The line between manga-ka and manga otaku seems thin, but at least we can draw it — provisionally — using productivity as our guide. Still, I have to wonder about a case more relevant to my interests. What of an academic? Or a blogger? Is someone who uses anime and manga as catalysts for critical and philosophical inquiry while receiving (and expecting) little or no tangible, measurable reward an otaku?

We could talk about the intellectual rewards of critical thought and writing, but it’s difficult. How would we measure that? If it’s primarily we who benefit from our work — ourselves and our small communities — are we forced to concede that our output is low in social terms? This may not be a concern for blogs with wider appeal, but my perspective is that of one who writes for a very narrow audience. I certainly don’t consider myself a teacher, handing out bits of knowledge for you to do with as you will. I just try to ask questions and contribute to the discourse of the sphere, as the discourse of the sphere entertains me (and I hope it entertains you as well, if you’re immersed in it).

I’m not one to trivialize entertainment; I think entertainment and critical thought are very closely related. We can make readers reflect by entertaining them, and that is, I think, a tangible output — it’s the very output with which Takagi and Moritaka are concerned, in fact. But they’re dealing with a much broader audience. As Wikipedia has it, Jump’s circulation stands at around 2.7 million readers. I doubt I need to clarify that especially analytic anime blogs attract a much smaller crowd, and, in my experience, it’s a crowd consisting mainly of bloggers. And as far as I’m aware, we have no good method for bolstering our ranks. A passion for deep and specific analysis is something one must come to on one’s own terms. We (and I don’t mean anyone specifically, so include or exclude yourself to whatever degree you deem appropriate) are essentially writers writing for an audience of writers, who enjoy a certain kind of rhetoric, and who needn’t worry about the relative unpopularity of that rhetoric in the company of one another.

I suppose I’ve digressed. My question was whether or not we academic-types are otaku in the way Takagi fears. Do we do what we do too exclusively? Most of us try to be as accessible as possible, I think, but there’s only so much we can do beyond varying the specificity of our analyses — and you may know that I tend to be very specific, and thus more exclusive at times than even I might prefer, but I have to write the sort of thing I like to read.

What, then, are the benefits of reading posts that pick through arcane literary devices and rhetoric with a set of precision instruments? If we can figure out what the reader gains, we may be able to establish a level of productivity. Personally I think there’s much to learn of narrative art, and of how and why people appreciate it, from beginning with the minute and moving outward, and from following the records of those who do so. We could at least call it an intellectual exercise. It’s more beneficial than idleness, I’m sure. And each of these utilities suggests criticism as a form of entertainment, at least given my preferences. It almost has to be.

But if we’re entertaining only our little club, if our productive energy isn’t escaping our circle despite our efforts to the contrary…no, there’s a misconception there. It’s not inaccurate to say that we’re entertaining our club. It is, I believe, inaccurate to assume that a blogger like Danny Choo isn’t entertaining his club, too. His happens to be larger, but it’s still a club.

I think I’ve painted too bleak a portrait of our situation. There exist a number of bloggers who pair fairly deep analysis with readable language, those who don’t undertake passionate love affairs with jargon as I do (it’s not because I’m a douchebag, it’s because technical language is useful). I won’t provide a list for fear of excluding anyone, but many of you will know who I mean. And our loosely-defined legion does expand, if slowly. After all, I ended up in it.

I’m really reaching for a point here, believe it or not, that being that we can’t really define an otakudom as a community that doesn’t produce. Every community produces within itself. I’d say something about discourse, but I’m too rusty on Foucault. At any rate it’s not Takagi’s productivity that allows him to deny otaku status; it’s his belonging to a community of considerable size. Manga isn’t an unpopular pursuit, and one who reads (and writes) manga isn’t necessarily involved with all the more obscure accoutrements. In the end it’s about popularity, and though that conclusion may seem too obvious to warrant over a thousand words en route, it never hurts to explore possibilities and make connections, to really know a term or a narrative element.

And anyway, this sort of thing is just what I do. This is my obscure accoutrement. I’m a structural and rhetorical criticism otaku.