Otaku sexuality in Japan

Abstract

This chapter explores ‘ otaku ’ sexuality in Japan. According to the Kojien Japanese dictionary, otaku are ‘People who are interested in a particular genre or object, are extraordinarily knowledgeable about it, but are lacking in social common sense’. In Japan, manga and anime have in the postwar period become vibrant cultural forms with mass appeal. In the 1960s, Tezuka Osamu’s Astro Boy was the star of a manga and anime series, had been recorded as a TV and radio drama and could be purchased in the form of toys and merchandise. In the 1970s, at a time when critics felt mainstream manga for boys had stagnated and the gekiga movement had lost its edge, shojo manga was undergoing a revolution. The striking success of Cybele is a symbolic coming out of shojo manga and anime fans, whose numbers had been quietly growing in the 1970s.

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