SeattleOtaku

If you’re into playing tennis, that’s fine. But if you like to watch anime, you’re weird. Why?!
~ Kubo

Meet Kubo and Tanaka, two fans of anime (one translation of the slang term otaku is ‘obsessed fan’) that set out on a mission to “Otakunize” the world by starting their own anime company in Gainax studio’s Otaku no Video.

Meet the Gainax studio, started by fans of anime and went on to become one of the greats themselves , with works such as The Wings of Honneamise, Nadia: Secret of the Blue Water, Neon Genesis Evangelion, and others among my favorites as well. It also features designs from a favorite character designer of mine, Kenichi Sonoda, who also designed characters and mecha in the original Bubblegum Crisis, and created both Riding Bean and Gunsmith Cats.

Story Intro

Normal folk just don’t understand us.
~ Tanaka

The show starts with Kubo practicing tennis, meeting his girlfriend at a local diner, and other “normal” things. But one day, leaving his tennis-club friends to their drinking night out in order to get some rest for an upcoming match, he stumbles upon a group of anime fans led by his old high-school friend Tanaka.

While the fandom circle that he joins seems strange to him at first, his habits change. He winds up quitting the tennis team and spending most of his time with the anime club, and his girlfriend leaves him. Fed up with the discrimination of Anime/SF fans, he decides to drop everything and become the biggest otaku ever: “Otaking”. He and Tanaka set out to otakunize the world, but trouble creeps in when business interests collide with fandom.

Mingled in with the story are spoof vignettes of interviews with various types of otaku, from one obsessed with video taping every anime but never having time to actually watch them, to an American who had moved to Japan to more easily access shows that haven’t been imported yet, and a few more interludes.

Other Info

There are more studio in-jokes, other-anime references, and Japanese pop-culture links in two 50-minute videos here than some other shows have in an entire series. See how many you can recognize.

Otaking lives!

US distributed by AnimEigo:

Otaku no Video 1982 (1991 OVA) and Zoku (More) Otaku no Video 1985 (1991 OVA) together as Otaku No Video

(Translated quotes Copyright (C) AnimEigo.)