The 'Otaku' Elimination Game

The Otaku Elimination Game: One Year – It is Better to Create than to Destroy

otakuelimination — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 21:45:53 +0000

It has been almost a year since we started the Otaku Elimination Game and after finally reaching a collective point of which we could all agree upon, we have decided to end what the blogosphere knew as The Otaku Elimination Game. The truth is that somewhere around early 2010 we came to a conclusion that we did not want to take the game any further and had suspended it indefinitley; our reason crafted into cryptic clues for our readers to perhaps make some sense of and make up their own mind upon the actuality of the matter without backing down from what we stood for.

One year onwards and we believe that what we stood for is no longer relevant and we do not wish to fool anybody else into believing that in October 2010 our message stands true. Whilst we do not, and will not regret our actions in the past, we believe they should be seen as a history lesson of sorts and never forgotten.

Let’s take some time to look at the clues we left…

All the titles of the clues contained numbers. These numbers were all ‘cryptic’ numbers in various cultures and had varying meanings. This was to indicate that the following post was not just spam or nonsense but similarly to the numbers – contained a double meaning.

1. The piece of music titled 9413 was a piece of music slowed down and played in reverse. The piece of music was Majutsushi by Kawai Kenji. Well done to whoever was able to identify the piece as one of his works.

The Magician/Majutsushi/魔術師

2. By decoding the hex values in the post titled ’1734′. The plain text output looks very similar to base64. When we decode the base64 we are left with a backwards encoded URL, if we reverse it we finally discover a URL that one reader had left as a single comment: http://jotei.asahi.co.jp/

The Empress/Jotei/女帝

3. Our next clue was the most obvious: a heavily pixelated picture of our final clue:

The Hermit/Inja/隠者

4. Once again, we see a repeat of the Jotei/The Empress clue.

These are all tarot cards in the major arcana, and by taking their numbers in the major arcana we are left with 1,3,9, and 3. 1+3+9+3 = 16. In the major arcana, number 16 – the tower or tou represents chaos, disillusion, downfall a realisation of the truth and drastic change; in other words – wisdom from crisis.

The Tower/Tou/塔

The Otaku Elimination Game; us as eliminators, we were not brought down, keep this clear in your mind. We say this not because we do not wish to lose face or appear as weak but because we would like to stress that our unbecoming was caused by ourselves, by a change in our ideals and our ethics, a change for the better that we are satisfied with having discovered.

We saw attempts to personally close us down, and we’re sorry that we couldn’t satisfy your ego by falling to your efforts. However, let it be known that we now understand that those who point guns at others can only expect to get shot themselves; maybe we were just lucky this time.

The Word ‘Otaku’

The truth is, the word ‘Otaku’ can’t be defined by us, it can’t be defined by Danny Choo, it can’t be defined by any single person but by all of us, working together as a collective group; anything else is merely semantics for elitism’s sake. The otaku world is small, both inside and outside of Japan and it is therefore important that we must all stick together and ensure that fandom of anime, manga, games and so on remains strong regardless of how we identify ourselves and how different as individuals we may be from one another.

Don’t misunderstand us; our suspicion of Danny Choo still remains high; we do not believe that his money making strategies are entirely morally correct, however this is not the time or place to discuss these matters, we only ask that if you wish to stand up against this behaviour that you do so without involving the ‘otaku element’ and look at the bigger picture, this will not only preserve peace within the otaku community but it will also ensure that perhaps even Danny Choo himself may see the moral shortcomings of how he does business. But once again; this is not the time nor the place for such matters.

Before we give our final parting words, we would like to say that we wish both the western and eastern non-Japanese otaku culture well, regardless of the words it uses to describe it’s fandom. We hope that the most diehard otaku can find things in common with even the most casual of otaku and that they can share their interests together instead of dividing themselves because they believe they are of a higher status.

And it is with that we say our goodbye; That is not to say that we will be gone, disappearing forever, But instead we will dissolve into the otaku culture and embrace it as one; our individual blogs are out there and maybe one day you will stumble across them; maybe you already have, but remember that in the otaku blogosphere, we are now no longer any different from you – In fact there is no more “you and I”…only “us”.

さよなら

The Otaku Elimination Game

The Major Arcana: Final Card (#21) – The World/Sekai/世界

“So powerful is the light of unity that it can illuminate the whole earth.”

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１７３４

otakuelimination — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 17:04:34 +0000

4f 7a 63 30 49 79 59 37 4d 6a 45 78 49 79 59 37 4e 6a 41 78 49 79 59 37 4e 6a 51 6a 4a 6a 73 78 4d 54 45 6a 4a 6a 73 35 4f 53 4d 6d 4f 7a 59 30 49 79 59 37 4e 54 41 78 49 79 59 37 4e 44 41 78 49 79 59 37 4e 7a 6b 6a 4a 6a 73 31 4d 54 45 6a 4a 6a 73 33 4f 53 4d 6d 4f 7a 59 30 49 79 59 37 4e 54 41 78 49 79 59 37 4d 54 41 78 49 79 59 37 4e 6a 45 78 49 79 59 37 4d 54 45 78 49 79 59 37 4e 6a 41 78 49 79 59 37 4e 7a 51 6a 4a 6a 73 33 4e 43 4d 6d 4f 7a 67 31 49 79 59 37 4d 6a 45 78 49 79 59 37 4e 6a 45 78 49 79 59 37 4e 6a 45 78 49 79 59 37 4e 44 41 78 49 79 59 4e 43 67 30 4b 0d 0a 0d 0a 0d 0a 0d 0a

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4

otakuelimination — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 01:08:23 +0000

4

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１７３４

otakuelimination — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 11:56:02 +0000

Filed under: Uncategorized

９４１３

otakuelimination — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 17:34:31 +0000

http://www.mediafire.com/?zxztmt2wzej

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Round 12 – We Are Genocide

otakuelimination — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 22:55:52 +0000

Welcome back! Sorry we couldn’t give you a round last week, it was the WonFes weekend and we were busy. We thought we’d actually mentioned this but apparently not. We’re also a little late because of the size of this post, we don’t have all week to work on these so it takes us time. Either way, it doesn’t matter because this week we’re going all the way, this week we exorcise all the demons on our list, all the demons but one.

If you’ve been waiting for us to feature you for all this time and your name doesn’t end in ‘Choo’ then tonight is the night. We are genocide, and this is our stage 7.

Since the last round, we haven’t kept up to date with the blogosphere, everything has gone quiet so we’re going to blow a crater in it. But before we do, let’s keep you up to date with something reasonably amusing. Much to our surprise, we don’t actually get too many emails, we thought we’d get a lot of hatemail but it seems people reserve that for the comments. One day however, we recieved a letter from “David Nakamura” a reporter for The Washington Post asking us to answer some questions, we actually did some background checks and it seems that this guy really is “David Nakamura”. That or he’s suffering from a severe identity crisis. Take a peek at the spools, OEG is in red, Nakamura in blue

Hello,

I’m a reporter for The Washington Post working on a profile of Danny Choo and I found your Web site and Otaku Elimination Game. I would like to interview you about the site (how and why it started, etc…) and about your feelings on Danny Choo. To be fair to everyone, I would most likely have to identify you in the piece if I were to quote you.

Please let me know if you would be willing to discuss the site and Danny. I am currently based in Tokyo and can be reached at this email or at my office at 03.6741.0005.

Sincerely,
David Nakamura

Remember, David Nakamura is happy to give his office phone number out to strangers, so we’re sure he’d like to hear from you too.

Your offer is interesting, but firstly we’d like a few questions answered, it would be great if you could follow them up.

Do you have a street address for this office?
How would you like to conduct this interview? Email?
How much identification do you need?
What is the purpose in the profile you are writing?

If any of these could be answered, we may further inquire.

LIES! The offer was only interesting because we thought someone was trying to mess around with us, turns out that it wasn’t very interesting.

Hi there –

I am based for the year at the Keidanren Kaikan building in Otemachi at 1-3-2 Otemachi Chiyoda-ku. I have no particular affiliation with the Keidanren; rather, my fellowship from the Council on Foreign Relations and Hitachi put me with a host company that provides a desk and phone.

I would be happy to meet you in person, talk on the phone or do by email.

The reason we would need to identify you is that to be fair to Danny Choo, we would have to identify anyone who might be critical of him, his blog, etc…

The profile is interesting because Danny has a large, committed following and his site sort of stands in the nexus of the changes affecting the (forgive me for loosely generalizing here) broader “otaku industry.” In fact, this angle sort of touches on some of the ideas your OEG site has brought up.

Let me know what you think. I am trying to finish by mid-February.

Thanks,
Dave Nakamura

There was no way we were going to wander into his office, we just wanted some more info. There was also no good reason why we should be identified and we didn’t bite.

In terms of identification, we can’t give you real names. Some kind of alias or fake name is our limit. As with anyone, we’re happy to answer questions via email. whether or not you choose to use them is another matter and it’s entirely up to you. We pride ourselves upon being anonymous, we don’t hide behind it. It’s more of a collaberation of thoughts and ideas from the underground than a simple lynch mob.

It’s true, we’re not a lynch mob, more of a hit squad.

Well, policy-wise, we can’t use fake names. Perhaps you could answer these few questions. I might not be able to quote directly from your responses with no name attached, but it would help me understand your perspective as I go about the rest of my reporting.

1. I have read your blog and its “about” page. On that page, you mention Danny Choo by name. What is your beef with him in particular?

2. Do you think Choo is hurting the traditional otaku scene with his popularity and self-promotion? If so, how so?

3. Do you think Choo could/should be classified as an “otaku” himself or is he more of a businessman/capitalist/

celebrity masquerading as an otaku?

4. Depending on your answer to the above questions, I wonder how you would respond to those who might say you and others who criticize Choo saying you are merely envious or jealous of his following/success?

5. You mention the Western or American otaku scene. I assume you are based in the States?

Thanks,
Dave

Policy wise, he can’t use fake names, but if we gave him fake names he’d be none-the-wiser. What kind of retarded policy is that? Did he think we’d send drivers licenses? Company cards? Dave, you read our about page and assumed the rest, even our readers have the good grace to read everything we say, surely as a reporter you should at least do the same…

1. Originally, we had a beef with Danny Choo calling himself ‘otaku’ when it was plain to see he was not otaku at all. This annoyed us because he was the most famous example, and was giving the OK to his followers to use that word in the wrong context. As someone living in Japan, he should know better and that angered us. We continued the game, and we noticed that particularly in the western anime scene that the use of ‘otaku’ was more than just a wrongly applied label, and the things that annoyed us kept coming back to him.

When we started the game, we knew we were to going to feature him but we thought we’d give him the benefit of the doubt in our post. Now, we’ve progressed and we’ve seen the knock on effect he’s had, and it made us more angry and showed us that he’s responsible for a lot more than we had originally thought. It’s sad, we didn’t want it to turn out this way but we refuse to stand back as if it isn’t happening.

2. Yes. We don’t want to seem like we are trying to cling on to the traditional otaku scene, but on the same token we’re not prepared to let it be destroyed either. Somebody on another blog made a very good analogy when they said:

“The most basic problem (among many others) with Hard Gay as an (even tongue-in-cheek) gay archetype is that, well, he’s not gay. I’m not an avid Danny Choo follower, but he seems to have at least the same basic problem as far as being an otaku archetype. I understand why he would be so grating to the OEG guys.”

As we’ll come to explain, Danny Choo uses ‘otaku’ as a gimmick, he’s not otaku at all. This is encouraging hundreds of bloggers to think the same way, and it seems to turn the scene into something that it isn’t. We explained in a post previously that Danny Choo is very selective of the merchandise and companies he features on his blog, and the international interest for those companies is inevitably causing them to expand. Unfortunately as a result of this we’re seeing smaller shops in akihabara having to close down under the pressures of the larger ones, just for the sake of having the room to display a few more figures which were mass produced as quickly as possible and rushed off the production line. Any creativity or care has been stifled under the overwhelming demand for more.

3. No, he should never be considered otaku. We researched Danny a lot, and as you may know as a child he was a big fan of Australian celebrity Kylie Minogue. There is (or there was, if it’s been removed) a picture of his room from when he was a fan of her, and there is no doubt in our mind that he was a Kylie otaku, had he known of the word then. We seem him now, and his anime interests, do not even come close to the interest he had in Kylie.

Danny Choo uses his ‘otaku’ image as not just a gimmick but also a cheap hook to make people buy the products he wants them to buy, and many many shops have followed suit. He’s not otaku, he can’t tell you much (if anything) about the anime/manga/eroge of which the figures he promotes are from. He doesn’t watch anime, he doesn’t even buy his figures, they’re just handouts. He’s cheap and far from otaku. We’re sure there’s an interest in anime present in Danny Choo, but it’s minimal.

Simply stated, Danny Choo has not earned the right to call himself otaku, he is a casual fan at best. The word otaku is still frowned upon, and we don’t have a problem with that. It’s a badge of honour you earn from being a truely dedicated fan with lots of passion, not something you can apply to yourself just because you have business links with figure manufacturers and shops.

We could go on forever about this point.

4. People that claim we’re jealous are those that simply don’t have a relevant response to us and are generally looking for a fast way to get the last word. This kind of behaviour is also provocative, passive-aggressive and childish, so we never expect much intelligence from people who say such things.

We’re considered infamous, if we wanted fame we would stop writing and start trying to reach that level. But we don’t; another reason we don’t give our names out. Success is different among people, Danny’s idea of success might be monopolising Akihabara, whereas ours is getting a figurine or doujinshi we queued for days to obtain. That’s another reason why Danny Choo will never be otaku, he cares more about seeing his name in lights than he does about his hobby.

5. No. We’re a handful of people from all across the world, predominantly Japanese, with a few ex-patriates in Japan handling translation & writing and some members from USA, Singapore and the UK doing research because of the large divide in culture and the fact that internet jokes can be difficult to understand without a full insight into the context of their use.

We never got a reply, but it doesn’t matter. It wasn’t a very interesting conversation and there’s nothing we haven’t told you already but we felt we’d share any brushings with the press we had with you all just so that it’s all out in the open. Remember, the message is always more important that the person it comes from, so there’s no reason why David Nakamura should care more about us than he does for you. Give him a call, visit his office or email him at davidnakamura2009@gmail.com and let him know what you think of Danny Choo. On with the game.

Bruneian Otaku no Sekai

Anyone who knows Yamada will be taking a sharp inhale through their teeth right now, why? Because Yamada is disabled (Possibly). We think it was something to do with his eyes but we honestly can’t remember and refuse to go back to figure.fm to check. This of course set us up for a number of jokes depending on how awful his blog was appearance-wise. Unfortunately, it’s incredibly standard. In fact we’ve seen much worse from people who don’t have a disability excuse. It really must put things into perspective when your design skills are worse than a guy who requires medical attention for his eyesite alone. Shame on you.

Unfortunately Yamada, we can’t pass you. You’re not otaku but at least you don’t seem so full of yourself and your ideals that you can’t learn from your mistakes.

Bruneian Otaku no Sekai by Yamada – ELIMINATED

Lightningsabre

It’s the same deal as above really, only with less excuses and more unfunny stories (See: Alafista) Lightningsabre also didn’t pass, he can’t understand what ‘otaku’ means, and his yonkoma is horrible. It’s been going a year now, and nobody has stopped him. ‘sabre also has another blog; “The Melancholy of Saber Lily” no, we didn’t want to touch it either.

Get out, stop your stupid comic, learn how to make a banner without JPEG artefacts, stop misusing otaku and then come back.

Lightningsabre by Lightningsabre – ELIMINATED

Akiba-ch

Hah! This was a laugh, Akiba-ch is supposed to be a blog-come-professional-website setup by Koji. We remember not being very impressed by it, but when we came back to give it a look over it was down. Unfortunately, we don’t pass people by default, we can only eliminate them, but if you feel you care enough, come back when you can actually maintain a website and we’ll happily go through it for you.

Akiba-ch by Koji – ELIMINATED

Cleartranquil:Blog

We could have a lot to say about Cleartranquil, but unfortunately he hasn’t returned to his blog in months and we can officially declaire it dead. The outcome would have been clear, however. We clicked the big ‘Otaku’ tab and were presented with a lot of cosplay articles and so on. Okay, so if we’re being fair it really wasn’t as bad as a lot of ‘Otaku’ categories we’ve seen on blogs, but it missed the mark somewhat. Either way we’d have to eliminate him for leaving it dead, we did warn about this earlier.

Cleartranquil:Blog by Cleartranquil – ELIMINATED

Ganbatte Forever!

Seinime, poor seinime. First you did a pre-emptive strike and then you got drama from SiRiRu. We can’t help but like Seinime; it’s like he’s gone through so much and even then he manages to retain his sanity and continue writing a good blog. Especially as one who heeded our warnings, we feel bad that we couldn’t give you an elimination worthy of your expectations. But hey, there’s always phase 2.

Ganbatte Forever! by Seinime – APPROVED

Nn..mou..asa?

We’re not sure about you, but the name ‘Reikon’ sounds like one of those awful names that don’t seem to really mean anything (Akin to Alafista). We were however, pleasantly surprised when we found that Reikon was a harmless, modest eroge blogger. We have a few things to say, but they fall more into ‘constructive criticism’ and are better suited for phase two. Sit tight reikon, you passed this one.

Nn..mou…asa? by Reikon – APPROVED

Accany’s VN Dump

Another eroge blogger. Generally we like most of these guys because they make our job much easier, we’ve seen some stupid ones, but the good seems to outweigh the bad in most cases. Accany’s VN Dump seems a bit empty, and we’re pretty sure that the “Wakoopa” widget on the right is the most retarded waste of space we’ve seen in a long time, but either way we can’t fail this place.

Accany’s VN Dump by Accany – APPROVED

Memories of Eternity

After a long run of reds we’re seeing the green. Memories of Eternity (MoE) did mention us at one point in a positive (we think) light. Another laid back blogger, making our job super easy once again.

Memories of Eternity by Eternal – APPROVED

Blue Gravy

Stop. Stop right there. If you saw the title of the blog and thought “No idea who this is, skip” let us tell you. Do you know Cyberchaos? He’s the guy on DC.com with the black and white L avatar. That’s right, him. He comments on virtually everything that Danny has to say with his self-depricating bullshit over and over again. His blog is ridiculous and full of “Poor me” posts along with mindless drivel about his car. Aside from misusing otaku too many times to count on various comments, we also eliminate Cyberchaos on the grounds of being the least interesting person on the fucking planet.

Blue Gravy by Cyberchaos – ELIMINATED

Taikutsu Remedy

Taikutsu Remedy is a blog from Snark. Snark. Snark…that name sounds familiar but we can’t place it. Either way, an easy pass here really. Comics that are at least partway amusing (even if they do revolve around pedophiles most of the time) thank god there are no fucking nendoroids.

Taikutsu Rememdy by Snark – APPROVED

Anime Instrumentality Blog

zzeroparticle…another name that we feel we should remember from somewhere but can’t remember if it was in a good or a bad way. This is what happens when you take a week out from blogging, everyone forgets, things have to be learned over again and again.

All in all, no misuse seen, maybe we could pick some holes, but we won’t go into that until phase 2.

Anime Instrumentality Blog by zzeroparticle – APPROVED

Onii-chanのＨ！

How can we hate this place?! If we had the Wednesday awards still going, we would have had to feature this place for it’s sheer confidence regarding any “questionable” content. Images and videos that we can only describe as a lolicon’s dream are strewn across the front page with no shame. We can’t help but take a step back and admire the head-on approach ‘Onii-chan’ took with this blog. Enough NSFW material to make Sankaku Complex look tame, and with none of the bullshit sensationalism either, a real winner.

Onii-chanのＨ！ by Onii-chan – APPROVED

The Anime Almanac

Almost a shame really, a fairly standard blog ruined by the tagline ‘An in depth look into American otaku culture.’ Sorry but what we’ve seen of it so far is just a lot of pirating, leeching, fashion labelling and more pleasure from blogging than actually watching anime. Maybe if you concentrated on those areas your tagline might be a bit closer to the truth. Gone.

The Anime Almanac by Scott Von Schilling – ELIMINATED

We Remember Love

Ghostlightning must be a popular guy because his blog doesn’t really seem to contain anything worth reading you couldn’t find elsewhere. We weren’t really taken by it, yet despite some edgy use of ‘otaku’ we were kind and decided we’d let you pass. After all, we’re gonna need some cannonfodder come phase 2.

We Remember Love by Ghostlightning – APPROVED

NaNeee?!

We left this round late, after dragging our feet about rating blogs we didn’t want to rate, a post by blur came to our attention and we perked up immediately. Yes, anyone who has been to NaNeee?! lately will know what’s coming. As of late, Danny Choo’s antics have left us so angry that we refuse to even visit that shithole of a ‘blog’. ..And then we heard about otacool 2.

Otacool 1 sucked, we told you that. There was nothing there you couldn’t find on figure.fm, in fact at least figure.fm updates. Otacool 1 was just an excuse for Danny to kill some trees and earn some cash. We thought Otacool 2 would just be a load of bullshit too but we found something more juicy. Because blur can explain it better than we can:

http://naneee.wordpress.com/2010/02/14/otacool-2-copyrights-issue/

In short, Danny isn’t a cosplayer and should get the fuck off the book. Also Danny and Kotobukiya are going to help themselves to what they like and fuck the people who deserve credit anywhere down the line. We hate to say “Told you so” but this is where things get taken too far. We’ll let the rest kick off on it’s own.

We can’t fail blur for a post like that. Fight the power.

NaNeee?! by blur – APPROVED

orz

drmchsr0 is an active reader of the OEG, and we never really had much of a problem with him until his latest retarded antics. He said that we lied about the sales of ‘Otacool’. Now, given the context of how this was written, we couldn’t draw a conclusion as to whether or not he was serious or being sarcastic, but either way you’re losing points here.

We were there, the stall was a stone’s throw from Akihabara station right outside the (relatively)new Kotobukiya store, we can’t remember what time it was but it wasn’t too early, we saw Danny sitting at a desk with a monitor and a pile of Otacool books with a poor female cosplaying as his mascot. We’re not sure how much was sold at AFA or what the ‘net profits’ were, but if it was enough of a hit in Akihabara like Danny makes out, we would have heard much more of it than we did. We didn’t.

Either way, we can’t fail you for a simple argument, you do seem to have your head screwed on the right way.

orz by drmchsr0 – APPROVED

Through the Looking Glass

A difficult one for us, this. gundamjehutykai really does throw ‘Otaku’ around, and that annoys us. However, his creativity and passion for plamos is something we haven’t seen much if at all so far, especially this far into the game. We have a hard decision on our hands, so this time it’s up to you. For once, we’re throwing a question to the crowds. So remember, give reasons why we should or shouldn’t approve or eliminate gundamjehutykai. We’ll vote on the best reason, not the number of reasons. It’s in your hands, you’ve got until friday morning! (2010/02/19). We’ll update the post when we’ve decided, so keep watching!

Through the Looking Glass by gundamjehutykai – VOTE NOW!

Bluemist Anime Blog

Let’s make this short and sweet, a dull blog but it doesn’t piss us off or misuse ‘otaku’ enough to eliminate you.

Bluemist anime Blog by Bluemist – APPROVED

Exce7ion

Okay 7, there’s only one reason you’re here really. Remember when we said something about having ‘Amazing Google Skills’ ? Well we were being sarcastic of course but some blogger took it literally. You replied with “Look at my name, try and get my blog through that” (Or something to that effect). What you failed to realise was that you linked to your blog in that very comment because you filled out the “URL” field.

Oh well, your blog isn’t too bad. Come along with us to phase 2. The more the merrier.

Exce7ion by 7 – APPROVED

And so we have finished phase one, it took us time, effort, patience…but we got there. We are now ready to move on to phase 2, where new frontiers await us, and a much more fun game begins. We…

…Hold on a moment, we’re forgetting someone.

That’s right, the long awaited trial of Danny Choo under the court of the OEG band of REAL OTAKU is coming soon, very soon. Round 13, the boss stage we will finally find out if Danny Choo is an enemy that we can topple, yes. We will say it in stone now: If we cannot eliminate Danny Choo, we will end the game, there will be no phase 2 and the OEG will die. We stand by our words, but who will prevail? What does Danny Choo have up his sleeve? Watch this space and find out soon, the true form of the OEG…

Filed under: Uncategorized

Round 11 – Fire and Ice

otakuelimination — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 13:57:55 +0000

They say you can’t have the good without the bad, the light without the dark and so on. Well following our angelic last round, we’re revving the engine back up again; the chainsaw is purring, the gasoline has been spilled and a split grin of knives wink back in the darkness.

Finger on trigger – How a girl figures
Flesh from bone – Gordonator
gauge and puncture – My Secret Otaku Life
strung, sawn and slaughtered – austrian otaku

We’re looking at the list and things are coming to a boiling point. When we update it you should be able to see that at the very maximum we have 4 rounds left. After this round, expect a slow period until we reach our final round, then the vitriol will come out.

How a Girl Figures

If you remember the Meimi incident, you’ve probably got a good idea as to what is in store for ‘Dancing Queen’. We said it before and we’ll say it again, the moment you start making gender, race or any other kind of distinctions in your blog is the moment you are going to piss a lot of people off.

How a girl figures is basically, “A girl’s take on figure collecting”. Now, we could rip you apart or we could ask you calmly. We’ll do both.

Dancing Queen, if you are reading this right now, you MUST answer this question for the sake of everybody else who is wondering the same thing:

When you started your blog, what made you think that anybody would care any more or any less about a girl’s take on figure collecting as opposed to a male’s take? Do you elevate your importance entirely on the basis that you are female?

We’ve got our own theories on this; similarly to meimi, bloggers will follow girls in the hope of getting a girlfriend; yes it seems like a very sweeping judgement to make but it is largely true and hilariously transparent at times. We see people cracking jokes, making them laugh. Others take the passive route of “Nobody would like me”. Hoping for some kind of “Don’t worry, I like you!” fantasy response.

It’s sad. Not so much on the principle (Although that’s pretty painful to watch too), but on just how obvious these people make it. We could pick each individual example out over different blogs in the aniblogsphere but it’d be like shooting fish in a barrel.

Look at the girls at scrumptious, basically annoying like a fly that flew up our nose before we sneezed it out. But even so, an undeniably successful blog that doesn’t get it’s readers by flying the female flag. Persocom-san’s blog, loldebi, Yi (We think), many more. All female, yet somehow manage not to make a big deal of it, and good for them, even if we did eliminate some.

But it doesn’t stop there.

As a blog, How a Girl Figures simply isn’t that good. There are loads of figure sites out there, hundreds. And you would think that when your competition is the likes of alafista that you could pretty much just shit on the page and still end up with a better blog, but oh no, it couldn’t be like that could it?

The reviews are pretty bad, to be blunt. The concept of figure reviews are heavily flawed, much in the same way that music reviews are flawed or any artform for that matter; it’s entirely subjective. Pictures are nice, but other than that it’s up to us to decide if we like it or not, not you.

To add to this, music reviews are usually done by those with some kind of musical experience, but in the case of figures, many reviews have never sculpted a figure, couldn’t name a few figure circles without looking it up online and seem to have this idea that well painted face == highly detailed face, despite the fact that the facial sculpts of most figures nowadays are just smooth plastic with a lump for a nose. It reeks of mass-production and corner cutting, yet people act as if it was hand crafted in the most precise of ways. Skin deep in more ways than one.

Back to the blog, for someone who watches “lots and lots of anime” (Why the fuck do you spend so much time on your blog or twittering or on MAL or commenting on other blogs?) there are rarely any details about the anime itself on there. Would it kill you to give us some background information on the character? Oh that’s right, you lied. You don’t watch enough anime to give us any information. You’re a collector and nothing more.

Not even an embedded video or comparison of the figure and the anime/game/etc. What a fucking disgrace.

Still to be kind, we didn’t see any misuse of otaku. Watch and learn, Meimi. This could have been you if you didn’t talk shit about matters you have no knowledge of.

How A Girl Figures by Dancing Queen – APPROVED

Austian Otaku

Now, by the name alone we should really getting angry right now. But for a single reason; we can’t. This is not because Hikky agrees with us, but because he’s just so right.

http://austrianotaku.com/2009/11/blogroll-2-0-dannychoo-com-criticism/

It was kind of sad because Hikky tried to take back what he said after some DC followers said some inane bullshit, but the fact it was made is proof enough that something is up. It wasn’t just us after all.

“I visited DC.com daily since mid 2007 and registered over there in early 2008. Looks like this was the peak of the awesomeness on that site unfortunately.”

We weren’t there at that time, it was early ’09 that we found out that the guy in the stormtrooper outfit was some kind of internet sensation, we looked and saw a lot of bullshit regarding ‘Otaku’ and some severe misuse, then we found the aniblogosphere as a whole doing the same thing and thus with a dash of anger and a pinch of rage, the OEG was born.

“There were also articles (believe it or not) with a lot of TEXT which where really useful! Now most of the content is user generated from Danny’s live bloggers and via figure.fm articles. Yus, DC.com also featured user generated content before at the “Member News” section, which was later transformed into “Member stuff” (or something like that) as it’s topics weren’t any longer only news, but also random stuffs no one cared about. (Don’t get me wrong there were lots of interesting news entries and weekly series too.)”

Because DC has turned his blog into some kind of web 2.0 mess. Web 2.0 is basically user generated content, if you’re smart you may realise that completely conflicts with the concept of a blog, but there you go. DC is lazy and doesn’t like to write anything, he just wants the fame and his name in lights.

“Folks hanging out at DC.com should realise that Danny is a businessman first, who works also for GSC.”

Absolutely. Think about this from a business point of view. Look at all the “Samples” Danny gets. Does he get them because he translates the GSC pages to english? No. He’s an advertiser, a simple businessman trying to sell you what he can. Look at all the bloggers out there, look at all the websites that ship GSC figures outside of Japan and tell us there isn’t an international market. Danny is driving that thing, and he doesn’t give a fuck about whether or not the goods are of any quality. Ever heard Danny say “Well, the face is a bit off…actually I’m glad I got this figure free, GSC could do better.”? No, he will sell you the tackiest shit if asked to. Then he demands you all put an RSS feed on your site and for what? A possible mention at the very bottom of the page. Honestly it is sickening, this guy pretends to be your friend.

“72% of Danny’s readers voted for GSC!

What the hell? What about ALTER, Kotobuikiya, eh? Maybe I’m an weird idiot but in my opinion ALTER pawns GSC quality wise or plays at least in the same league. Maybe he should divide business content from personal content a little bit more? But Danny teams up with other companies too to do stuff like Otacool. Wondering since when “otaku” are cool (besides imaginary in the fucked up minds of some random weeaboos). Yes, it’s just name and it’s hard to come up with something that doesn’t sound wacky but in my opinion it shows the wrong image. Featured inside this book are DC community members, showing of there collection. (Great advertisement for your blog and no offense against those featured.) Unfortunately even those featured inside have to pay for the book. o_O”

Now this is very important. Hikky, we agree 100% ALTER is much better than GSC, and as stupid as they may be we don’t think that /that many/ people voted for GSC. It just helps business for Danny Choo for him to report back and say “Look, GSC is loved by many! Operation DC.com is going well.”

Otacool really pisses us off, and we’re sure it pissed off those who featured in it too. Aside from the fact there were very few real otaku in the book, anyone featured in the book were not given a free copy. So hold on a minute, Danny Reaps the rewards for a book that he didn’t do anything for, simply stick photographs together, and even those featured didn’t even get a free copy? What kind of bullshit is this? Fuck, they should have gotten a percentage, let alone a free copy.

Wanna know why they didn’t get one? Well here’s an OEG secret for you, a few of us were going to attend the Otacool signing to meet Danny Choo, but the turnout was horrible. It was a tiny stall with stacks of unsold books despite the hype Danny surrounded it with. we didn’t even want to go there and pretend to be interested. Hey, our image matters to us, and Danny would only have tainted it. Poor show. Didn’t you wonder why Danny took such few pictures and quickly moved on to Otacool 2? What a joke.

Hikky, we appreciate your blog and we appreciate your post on DC.com that was incredibly true, and a real eyeopener on just how many people feel the same way. You call your blog “austrian otaku” yet you’re not otaku. But with that, you were almost spot on in the DC post. All we can say is take a look at that definition, take a look at yourself and realise something isn’t matching up. Adjust accordingly, be it removing the word or being more otaku. We’re fine with either. This is not an elimination out of hate.

Austrian Otaku by Hikky – ELIMINATED

My Secret Otaku Life

AKA “My Secret life as an otaku”. Well, no prizes for guessing what you were going to score here. You’re a fucking disgrace, one way or another. You started blogging back in 2008 right? So it’s taken you 2 whole fucking years to pre-order a single figure? Even the singapore guys are doing better than you and they suck, they’re so far from otaku it hurts. You’re not otaku, you’re shit. Your blog is shit, and uninteresting, you know what would liven it up? Fire.

We can rant about the misuse of ‘otaku’ until we go blue in the face, it doesn’t bother us. But fucking hell do you try to make your blog this boring really?

We watched your video ‘Figure review’. Are you related to Ray from Tsunderebanana? Are you in fact, Ray himself? Why didn’t you just stop the video at 0:27? That’s all you needed to say. “Here’s the box, here’s the figure. Make your own damn minds up”.

The misuse of otaku is still out there, and it’s still at large. We saw the #otakumanup hash tag on twitter, funny idea, but fundamentally flawed that none of the people who used it were otaku at all, so it fell flat on its face. Hopefully it was just a parody.

We smacked Actar down, yet he still continues to bullshit about being otaku. Have you not learned anything? Let’s clear this up once and for all:

Being otaku is not the same as being an anime fan. Being otaku is a large, unhealthy obsession with something, in this case it’s anime. In case you were too stupid to know, your mild interest that you claim to be an ‘unhealthy obsession’ is weak, and it’s not otaku. Money spent? Irrelevant. Number of figures? Irrelevant. Number of blog posts? Irrelevant.

We are otaku. We have the right to dictate who is and who isn’t. We sleep with dakimakura, we’re not interested in 3D girls. When we’re not posting, we’re watching anime. We’re reading manga on the train, we’re playing eroge on our PSPs or reading graphic novels on our cell phones when we should be working. We queue at midnight for the latest releases, we queued for days at wonfes before they banned it. Like many others, we skipped work when DQ9 was released. We’re hopelessly addicted, what’s your excuse?

There are levels of otaku, we’re not saying you have to match us to join us, but there’s a difference between otaku and an enthusiast or otaku and a collector, and that line is heavily blurred.

My Secret Otaku Life by Hiroshi – ELIMINATED

Gordonator

The moment our cursors homed in on poor Gordon, we began to rip it apart. Writing, writing, finding more things to say, writing more. It’s not unfair to say he set himself up for this.

Gordonator is the owner of the vainly titled Gordonator.com; another wordpress blog with a customised domain. We’ve seen some real copycats of Danny Choo, but out of them all Gordinator takes the cake for being completely devoid of any kind of originality by dancing around in a stormtrooper outfit. Sound familiar? Gordon is so similar to Danny Choo that we’re certain he stars in a number of the ‘Tokyo Trooper’ videos when danny choo is too lazy to dance or is otherwise blogging on his iPhone about a leaf that blew past him seconds ago (The article was probably called “Tokyo leaves” or “Foilage in Japan”).

Danny has Mirai, Gordon has Gordenette.
Danny parades around in Stormtrooper armour, Gordon parades around in Stormtrooper armour.
Danny has fan art, Gordon has fan art.
Danny wrongly calls himself otaku, Gordon wrongly calls himself otaku.
Danny has flickr, Gordon has flickr

And so on..

Of course you can see a pattern emerging here; whatever danny does, gordon does. Only Gordon doesn’t quite have the same merits as danny and can only provide a ‘Danny Choo-lite’ experience. Quite why he won the Singapore Blog Awards is beyond us, but you can bet your last figma we will never hear the end of it. Oh and if you’re looking for some good softcore BL fanfiction, you can find it here: http://gordonator.com/about/ Turns out Danny influenced Gordon SO much that he [Gordon] had to imitate just about everything of his.

Danny of course laps this up, and is BEST BUDS with Gordon. We don’t like 4chan or any of the stupid jokes they create, but we sincerely call for rule 34 on Gordon and Danny, just to fuck shit up. Best art we see gets a guest part in the OEG ripping a blog they particularly hate.

It’s not so much the blatant copycatting that annoys us about Gordon, but how much blind sheeping Gordon does. We were incredibly shocked to see Gordon using Windows XP in his profile picture. We bet Danny never lays off about it. As always, this goes for everyone else too, we’ve seen countless Danny Choo ripoffs (But none quite as obvious about it as Gordon is) and we have to ask “Why?” we recommend you ask the same too, and maybe we can start clearing this scene up.

We think Gordon will be one of the first in line to use Mirai Gaia, but hey, it’s better than wordpress. They say if you try to access the mobile version of Danny Choo’s site 3 times in succession using Google’s Android OS, you get redirected to Gordonator…

Look Gordon, we’ll go easy on you. We know you’re a sheep and you can’t think for yourself, many people are like that too. But if you’re going to blindly follow someone, follow someone who isn’t just a useless corporate tool. It won’t make you any richer or more popular, we just think you’re more of an idiot for doing so. Danny is playing you like a deck of cards, just like he does everyone. Don’t take it personally, he can’t help being manipulative, just move away before you get hurt.

Oh and while you’re about it, you’re not otaku. You can tell all of your friends that and get them to stop misusing the word too, it would really help us. “Otaku pride” is such a fucking facade. It’s like saying “I’ve given up smoking” when you never smoked in the first place. It’s just a cry for attention as if people are going to hate you because you “like anime”. You get it easy, Gordon. Stop trying to act like some kind of fucking savior, you weren’t otaku to begin with, the only pride you have is on your ego. Lame.

Gordonator.com by Gordonator – ELIMINATED

And that’s that, boys and girls. It’s amazing, the higher profile bloggers are the ones that talk the most shit about “otaku” and yet they’re the farthest from it. We have real otaku still growing in the darkness of the underground of the aniblogosphere, they’re the ones who should be running this joint, not the fakers we’ve seen so far.

Phase 1 is almost over, we have a couple more rounds and then it’s onto phase 2, where we can finally leave those morons behind. This is the true otaku revolution.

See you in Round 12!

Filed under: Uncategorized

Round 10 – We’re in Double Figures!

otakuelimination — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 12:47:28 +0000

Welcome back! Round 10! We’re in double figures already. Sorry for it being so late, we were busy and it had to be left until morning, then we decided it’d be easier just to do it the following night when we’re all sat down together.

We didn’t do awards last wednesday because…well, after the first two wednesday awards it became tedious and nothing much was happening anyway.

We were truely amazed and flattered by the amount of support we got following round nine, and we’ve never seen someone’s ego inflate as much as DigitalBoy’s.

Everyone’s looking to the future now, waiting to see what phase 2 holds. We’ve seen some interesting development in the blogging scene, a large number of supporters and a growing amount of talk regarding the financial situation of the anime market and the economic climate of Akihabara. Most of us in the OEG don’t know much about economics and any we try to pass on would no doubt be lost in translation or otherwise incorrect at somepoint. Someone made a comment something along the lines of “I don’t want smaller shops having to close down just so gamers can display more figmas” This is basically our entire philiosophy too: we like our subculture, we like it a lot, and we don’t want to see pollution of it via word misusage (See: Danny Choo) or via large companies taking over. Equality all around.

It’s not easy being otaku for all kinds of reasons, but we stand by it and put up with all kinds of social pressures because we’re passionate about what we love. But as long as we’re buying, there are people trying to manipulate us, make us buy what they want and not what we want, and as long we’re passionate about our interests, we’re passionate about defending our culture. And that true passion is fundamental, because nobody can take that away from you, nobody.

OtakuDan got incredibly annoyed with us because we didn’t pass him:

“it is nothing but a copy-and-paste of other things you have said about other blogs”

good reason for that: your blog is nothing but a copy and paste of other blogs. Your interests and choice of merchandise are nothing but a copy and paste of other bloggers, you’re horribly unoriginal, and it doesn’t matter how many years you’ve been watching anime, a lifeless fan is just a lifeless fan.

And don’t be ridiculous about skype. We don’t give out our names on here, what makes you think we would start a conversation on Skype with some deadbeat fan who wants to tell us how much he knows about some bullshit we don’t care about?

You’re not otaku, but you claimed you were. We failed you, that’s just how it goes. You’ve got no passion at all, anyone can study the facts and the trivia just like anyone can splash money on a large number of figures and manga but it doesn’t make them any more otaku for it. We’re talking passion here, and we see it in both introverted and extroverted people, but we looked at your blog and we didn’t see a thing. You only have yourself to blame.

Oh wait, Draneor just blew a hole through Dan. We don’t have to carry on after a comment like that. You might want to sit down, Dan; that looked painful.

Let’s get on with the show, it’s round 10 and we’re clearing house so we can move onto phase 2.

HappySoda
Bokutachi no Blog
Memories of Eternity
Temporal Vortex

HappySoda

HappySoda is a blog that took us by surprise, not in a good or bad way, it just took us by surprise. With a name like HappySoda we were expecting a blue/green pastel background with a dancing soda can mascot, but instead we got a blog so dark and poorly arranged that even Visible wouldn’t touch. Maybe it’s a fashion statement in the blogging world. Anyway, credit where credit is due, Super Rats doesn’t misuse otaku.

HappySoda by Super Rats – PASSED

Bokutachi no Blog

For those hooked upon the OEG drug, you can blame Brianandrew from Bokutachi no Blog. To this day we still wonder just how he found out about us so quickly after our first post, we leave that to your imagination too. Since his initial anticipation, we wanted to top him and give him an awful review just to meet his expectations but in the end, we couldn’t find anything to hate, no traces of “otaku” and aside from that we really couldn’t find anything to fault. Not anything we won’t cover in more depth in phase 2…

Bokutachi no Blog by brianandrew – PASSED

Memories of Eternity

In case you didn’t get it the first time round, Memories of Eternity is an initialism for “Moe”. The real question is whether or not Eternal is an eroge blogger or not. Either way, Eternal was one of the first people to post on us in a non-biased fashion while others were raging at the very thought of us. The OEG has (slightly) changed since those days, so it wouldn’t be right to make any judgement at this point in time. Proof that there are some real nuggets of gold to be found in Toronto. We bet Eternal is a friend of Micchi’s.

We liked the alternating banners too, with the “Because ______” slogans.

Memories of Eternity by Eternal – PASSED

Temporal Vortex

Not a bad blog really, since we started planning phase 2 more we haven’t gone into much detail as we’re simply saving it up for the next phase. Foomafoo seemed to misunderstand what we were about when we took several handfulls of bloggers, maybe this has been made clear now, maybe not. If it’s the latter, then just read over our many posts and so on.

Temporal Vortex by Foomafoo – PASSED

A super-quick round, I think you’ll all agree. As we said, it’s all about phase 2 now so we’re trying to get people on board for that, and get rid of the rest. We still have some interesting entries to come up; how a girl figures, Gordonator and of course the main event; Danny Choo. From here to phase 2, the pace will be relatively similar, it’s time to chill out and let the OEG run it’s course for phase 1. See you next week!

Posted in Uncategorized

Round 9! Finally! Some Interesting Bloggers for a Change!

otakuelimination — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 16:45:58 +0000

So we’re at our next round, and we’ve got a nice lineup for you today. However we can only apologise for how much the next few rounds will no doubt drag slowly past. We want to get onto phase 2 desperately but we want to go through with phase 1 100% first. Let’s answer some comments.

We saw the conversation/debate/whatever between mt-i and some others. It’s nice to see some real knowledge and insight being passed around. Let’s take some quotes and expand on them and so on. Anyone reading who doesn’t know anything, absorb it all in. This is the more truthful side of Akiba that most people don’t see.

“No, they do realize it’s more than that. Akihabara is notorious nationally and internationally. Various interests have been trying to leverage that popularity to create some sort of IT/entertainment hub to showcase Japan’s soft power while driving away the less savory aspect of the otaku presence (anime is fine, hardcore eroge and U-12 idols not so).”

In addition to this, the otaku market is extremely hard to sell products to, many otaku are very picky about what they do and don’t like (Which is where the majority of singaporians fall flat) and it’s difficult to reach a widespread interest. If you remember the real “idol burst” in around 2005/2006 especially with AKB48, it was almost as if the businesses could only bring things to akihabara and not pry the otaku away because it was basically a heaven nobody wanted to leave.

Around that time was also the Densha Otoko (Train Man) movie adaption. In addition to the drama, Akiba was getting a lot of recognition for it’s otaku side. Basically, all eyes were on Akihabara. Of course from there it was just a matter of time before these references started popping up in manga and anime.

Either way it doesn’t really matter to us because in the end “every dog has it’s day”. Shibuya had it in the 90s and so on. It was going to end soon.

But that’s history. We’ll come to the present.

“So yeah, while Danny Choo is certainly capable of giving a skewed image of otaku to his gaijin followers, I wouldn’t give him so much credit as to believe he can single-handedly turn Akiba into another Shibuya.”

We don’t think he’ll turn it into another Shibuya; there can be only one. But you can blame Danny Choo however for his misrepresentation of Akihabara. It’s become “the place to be seen for geeks”.

For example, Akihabara seems to be catering a lot more to foreign interest. This isn’t an entirely bad thing because Akihabara has always been a place people visit just to see it. However, this foreign interest is extremely one sided. The formula is like this:

Danny Choo heavily pushes already-large companies such as Good Smile Company, Cospa and online retailer amiami.com
These companies begin to open their doors to international interest (english language versions of webpages and so on).
These companies heavily dominate the international market, leaving little room for other companies.
The outside interest in otaku increases, with people beginning to take trips to Akihabara from all over the world to buy from Gamers, Animate, Brocolli and so on because they saw it on Lucky Star or some other anime.
These companies also grow extremely large, inadvertantly they expand and need extra real estate.
Smaller shops can’t compete with the larger shops, they close down.
End.

All while this was happening, there were real otaku out there losing places to get their exclusive goods. The good shops close, the small ones, the local businesses you could trust.

Why do we hate the word ‘otaku’ being misused? Because Danny Choo made that word cross borders, and now it’s becoming a marketing ploy. You put “otaku” on your shop, more people will buy your goods.

That word meant something to us, now it’s being used as a cheap hook to earn more cash for those who don’t deserve it. Our pride is being used to hammer us into conformity and weak consumerism. Yes otaku was all about buying those goods, but it was about buying those goods you wanted. Not having to choose out of a limited selection of products what to spend your money on.

Where do you come in? You’re the bloggers that are listening. There are many of you, many more than we anticipated, and as long as you’re otaku or at least even a fan, don’t buy from these cash cows. Come to Akihabara and wonder around. Find a shop that doesn’t have a flashy website and a third rate blogger from abroad trying to promote the fuck out of it.

Let them know the strength of the international otaku, let them know that otaku will be otaku and otaku will buy from the places not matter, not the places with the best marketing campaign. Fuck the ‘Otaku’ revolution. This shit has been ours since day one.

Moving on..

What do we think of legal streaming services? No problem with them really. If you brought every single DVD of every anime you’re watch then not only would it certainly cost a lot of money, it would also mean you’re behind everyone else in terms of story progress. There’s no problem with fansubs and so on. But the fact is, if you like the anime enough, of course you’d want the actual product. So buy it. Same applies to anything.

We don’t know the details of whether or not it helps, but we are aware that fansubs are basically illegal. Look at it this way, the more you support these official streaming sites the better chance there is that they’ll show more anime at a higher quality and so on, which puts you in less legal danger. Either way, it’s your choice and we don’t care how you watch it, just watch it. And if you like it, buy it. The moment you measure your anime collection in MB/GB/TB is the moment something went wrong.

As for “waining” ? It was Meimi’s word, not ours.

Wow! We spent a long time talking. On with the show. We decided we’d treat you with 4 well-recognised bloggers today, separating the good from the bad. We’re pulling teeth here and the blogosphere just got a root canal.

Lost his wisdom teeth: otakudan gets named and shamed
Sinking canines into neck: We go for the jugular with Hau~ Omochikaeri~!
Don’t run with incisors: DigitalBoy walks on the edge with his dangerous use of the word ‘otaku’
Deep Molar Inspection: We try to work out why NovaJinx was on our list in the first place

So let’s go!

Otakudan

Now, we’ve seen some really stupid people. Otakudan is really no exception to this. Now wait a moment, you may think we’re going to say “He’s so stupid he doesn’t understand otaku. ELIMINATED!” but no, it extends way beyond that.

Otakudan commented on the OEG. So he knows what the OEG is about, he understands it, he understands what we preach. But no, he messed up. Look at this:

“do my blog next, remember to make fun of the ads and that I’m lazy.”

Dan seemed to have completely overlooked the fact that we would of course be eliminating him on his use of ‘otaku’. How egotistically stupid can a single person be?

Dan. You are here. You are in the OEG blog. Now tell us, why do you call yourself otaku? We demand an answer. Do you think it’s a title you deserve? Did you not know the origins of the word? If so then why use a word you don’t understand?

Dan’s blog is terrible. We have a favour to ask you Dan. Seeing as you know the writer of that ridiculous “otaku encyclopedia” ask him what the fuck he was thinking when he wrote it. We saw previews of that book on dannychoo.com and it was both incorrect and ridiculously pretentious. How dumb is this book? Well Danny Choo has an entry. Why is a man who has nothing to do with otaku featured? Oh and he wrote a comment on the inside sleeve:

“You can’t possibly be called an ‘Otaku’ without this book. I speant hours trying to think up words they might have forgotten to include – only to find them all well documented”

We can think of many we’re almost certain wouldn’t be documented, but seeing as we didn’t want to waste our money on fiction, we haven’t read it. If anyone has got it, we’d like to request a list of everything in there. Followed by you burning it in a fire. We’re guessing the “moe” definition is skewed too, because nobody ever seems to get that right, despite the overuse.

Given our overall message and the general point of this project, to have a name like ‘otakudan’ is pretty fucking pretentious if we say so ourselves. In fact, everything about his blog is pretentious. Otakudan has his own logo-come-mascot which he uses as a callsign to promote his blog. Sorry dan, but glasses, ears and a devil tail just doesn’t cut it. Maybe you should use something a bit more fitting like a huge penis.

Ever since Danny Choo posted his own writeup on his blog, others have imitated him. Dan also jumped on this bandwagon and gave himself the third person description of his own accomplishments. This works when you actually have done something meaningful with your life, but for everyone else, it’s just lame. You can also use some of his especially created banners if you’re desperate enough to want to link to his site.

When it comes down to it, Dan’s blog is just another generic Photos, Figures, Anime etc. blog he shows his boring room full of figmas, english translated anime DVDs and pictures of the same characters we see everywhere. Snore. You can also buy things from his amazon store such as DVDs and figures, but that would just be encouraging him.

Otakudan’s blog is terrible, the writing sounds like he’s thoroughly depressed, the layout is dark and hideous, when he isn’t blogging he’s sucking on Danny Choo’s ballsack. He’s not an otaku by any stretch of the imagination, and neither is his encyclopedia writing friend, nobody cares about Dragon Ball anymore, and for someone who gives tours around Akihabara, you sure are ignorant. If we had you on the list, we’d eliminate you too, but looking at your blog, it’s incredibly dull and would only bore our readers.

Eliminated.

Otakudan by Otaku Dan – ELIMINATED

Next up we have someone with a clue. Dan don’t jump to those comments just yet, you might just learn something.

Hau Omochikaeri

Micchi runs a blog named ‘Hau Omochikaeri’ which specialises in providing eroge news and reviews to his english speaking peers in a frenzy of romanised japanese and cheerful emoticons.

Sometimes you can’t help but respect a guy for the way he goes about his shit, and in this case the guy is Micchi. He runs a one-man show keeping his blog off the ground while his unhelpful co-authors Zen and nemuiwanko clutter up the place. Once you get over the constant whoring of Da Capo and the Nendoroid posts, Hau Omochikaeri isn’t a bad place at all, and despite being from Canada, Micchi knows his shit. Unfortunately he has the Danny Choo feed on the front page, but it’s right down the bottom, Hah! We can overlook that.

In all seriousness, Micchi is proof that you can be affiliated with Danny Choo and not be a complete retard, which draws us to a very interesting point. If we see a user affiliated with Danny Choo, we try and find their Danny Choo account to get an idea of what kind of a person they’re like outside of their blog, where we stumbled upon this gem:

Basically, it was a post about 2D dating. This was a real eyeopener to us because we saw so many people who call themselves ‘otaku’ recoil and heavily criticize the true otaku. Whether you like it or not, this is real otaku. There is no “gone too far”.

Micchi in Toronto (Registered on 2008/09/18)
Eroge blogger

http://omochikaeri.wordpress.com/

“Staying true to the original connotations of otaku in the Japanese realm, I don’t consider myself to be one. I just like anime, manga, eroge and 2D characters, but I won’t go overboard like this. It just seems really really sad. I will make passing remarks about my favourite characters’ birthdays, but that’s the extent of it.”

Give the man a medal and put him in charge. While we can’t agree about how ‘Sad’ it is, Micchi has fundamentally summed up exactly what needed to be said by anyone who isn’t willing to fully commit themselves. Give yourself a pat on the back Micchi, there’s no way we can fail you with a comment like that. Excellent. He also uses 15 different passwords, not bad! Yet unfortunately claims not to understand TCP/IP. Don’t worry, Cyberchaos doesn’t either, and he works in the industry.

2D dating seems to be a tough pill to swallow for people who thought of themselves as dedicated fans, disregarding it as “sad” or “too obsessive”. Every real otaku has at least thought about it, even if they went on to stalk seiyuu or follow idols around the country. It’s not a pre-requisite, but if you found yourself hovering over that box ready to tick it, you can consider yourself at least partially otaku.

Hau~ Omochikaeri~! by Micchi – APPROVED

Fuzakenna

If you’ve been following our comments at all, you’ll know of Fuzakenna, or more importantly, you’ll know of 21stCenturyDigitalBoy or “DigitalBoy” for short.

OEG has been a rocky ride of drama, laughs and suprises, and we really got some of them from DigitalBoy.

He first came to our attention by falling into our spam filter by pasting his URL into our comments too many times, and proceeded to ask us why he, the self-proclaimed biggest otaku of all time did not end up on our list. We of course were expecting somewhere either pretty fucking impressive (Unlikely) or something totally retarded (Much more likely). Needless to say, we came across the latter.

We’ll tell you it how it is, DigitalBoy; we saw your blog, we saw your face on it and we wanted to punch our monitors or start figuring out if PoIP (Punch over IP) was really possible with the latest in haptic technologies.

Then it struck us, of course it was all a troll attempt. There was no way we could honestly take him seriously. And the sheer overkill of the word (comparable to Danny Choo) was nothing more than an attempt to fly up our collective noses and generally be an annoyance. We toyed with you for a while; we said you ‘weren’t worthy’ just for a laugh really because we knew you wouldn’t take kindly to it and it would be ironically funny to miss the most stereotypical example of what we despise.

Then it all came crashing down.

One comment in particular struck us deep.

“I approve of the OEG as well, but I actually wish they’d be less angry and more codial just so that their point would really sell home. I’ve been fighting the good fight to nail out a proper use of the term ‘otaku‘ for a while now, and I’d love for people to start ‘doin’ it right’ but no one is going to listen to you if you be a troll about it. Oh well.”

Then came more

“I’m just pissed that I’m not on their list. With all the posts I’ve done in trying to better the use of the word ‘otaku’ in western fanbase, you’d think I’d be right there. ‘Not notable enough’ my fucking ass.”

The more we looked at the situation, the more we found something more interesting to take away from it: It seemed that all this time digitalboy was essentially fighting a similar battle about the word ‘Otaku’, and even more interestingly, the more time we spent on his blog, the more we realised that comparitively, he fits the true meaning pretty damn well.

DigitalBoy, surprisingly you have a dose of potential within you. Do not ruin it, do not walk down the Danny Choo road. Some people say ‘Merchandise makes the fan’ and to an extent that’s true, however many people seem to confuse this with ‘Figures make the fan’ which is absolutely incorrect. We all love figures, but for western fans it seems to be a slippery slope, when eventually they end up buying characters they don’t even know or have any real inclination to find out, and there is no way that can be considered otaku.

Don’t think you’re losing face here digitalboy, believe us when we say you are soaring above everyone else who claims to be otaku. The scene needs more people like you who actually give more of a fuck about the anime and less about the social scene surrounding it. Oh and we noticed you enjoy cosplaying; don’t buy into the fallacy that otaku do not cosplay. Sure most choose not to, but there are still those that do, it’s personality dependant and anyone who says otherwise needs to stop drawing examples from Genshiken and Welcome to the NHK and using them as fact.

You can praise/blame DigitalBoy for the fact that there is a phase 2 at all. There were times we thought “There really aren’t any true otaku overseas” but we were wrong, and of course; we’ll see you then.

Fuzakenna by 21stCenturyDigitalBoy – APPROVED

As digitalboy quite rightly said: you don’t have to be otaku to not be eliminated from phase 1. And with that in mind, let’s move on.

NovaJinx

It goes without saying that NovaJinx isn’t the most suitable of people to be featured on the OEG, but we seemed to have piqued enough interest of his for him to write a number of posts about us. We try our best to answer these (as we did in this edition) but we’re always open to interview sessions.

NovaJinx claims not to be an otaku, and that’s fine with us. You don’t have to be playing eroge every moment of your life, or listen to drama CDs on the train constantly (but it helps). We don’t consider you as otaku, so you probably won’t last through phase 2, but we can’t help but appreciate your effort at not soiling the word by using it incorrectly, and we thank you for that.

Ironically, NovaJinx blogs much more skillfully and interestingly than the fake ‘otaku’.

Jinx by NovaJinx – APPROVED

What a week! We are really impressed by the people we featured this week. It’s nice to have a phase where (almost) everything is OK and all seems right with the world! What a cheerful note to end this round on! See you next time!

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Micro Wednesday Awards – The First of 2010 + What is the OEG?

otakuelimination — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 15:52:06 +0000

Wednesday awards are back! It’s short this week but we also have a special reminder of what the OEG game is, seeing as most of you have forgotten.

Last round had some interesting reactions, a lot of people panicking and telling us not to fuck with personal lives and so on. Basically, a lot of people saw what we did to meimi and thought “Wait, this could be me” and didn’t like it one bit. As far as profiling blogs go, we strictly take publically available information and we also strictly target those who deserve it. Even if the blog is horrible it would have to take some severe misuse of ‘otaku’ before we did something severe. In short, fuck up like Meimi and the Meimi treatment.

Which reminds us. Meimi, if you’re reading, let us tell you something: your ‘otakuness’ was never waining because it never existed in the first place. You have never been otaku, you will never be otaku. And you can do us all a favour by telling DC nicely not to use the word ever again to describe himself or his peers before we get to him. There is a lot of hate for him you might not have seen in the blogosphere and I don’t think he will like it one bit.

Oh and don’t kid yourself, everything about your comments scream “attention seeker”. Think of it this way, if didn’t think you were one, we wouldn’t have brought it up. If we threw it around at anyone, more people would have been accused of it. However, they haven’t. So take a long think about what might cause people to say that.

Orcinus: Sorry, we didn’t really understand much of your comment at all about urbanites or something. We are not typically cool people so no, we wouldn’t try and appeal to them and they probably wouldn’t read this anyway. Really, we’re not sure what you’re trying to say with that. However:

“Take back akiba from Danny Choo and the singapore invasion, whose mass corporate dreams will rip through our electric town like napalm through asphalt, turning it into “Shibuya for nerds”.”

This is incredibly important. Anyone out there who cares about anime needs to severely take notice of this. Danny Choo is trying to turn Akiba into a fashionable place, and it’s not so much the social connotations that make us mad (We’d love to be seen as extra-cool) it’s the fact that our good shops and stores are being ruined under the pressure of the big companies (GSC, Cospa, Brocolli, Gamers, Animate and so on) and we’re not prepared to let this happen at any cost.

Scamp and Shance: You probably noticed that we heavily feature blogs that we eliminated, but not so much for blogs that passed. This is basically because of phase 2 (Which is coming quite soon).
Remember this is the otaku elimination game and is basically meant for eliminating otaku. We grab loads of blogs, and in phase 1 we work on the logic that anyone who labels themselves as otaku is immediately eliminated because it’s clear they’re not otaku (However, if they can prove themselves to actually be otaku, then fine.) anyone who doesn’t misuse the word otaku (whether they consider themselves to be one or not) goes through to phase 2.

Phase 2 we’re basically taking all the anime bloggers who haven’t done the heneious crime of misusing the word, and in a (hopefully) much kinder way we start evaluating them on how otaku or how much of a fan they are, how good at blogging they are. Then we keep eliminating until we end up with the true otaku of the blogosphere, or maybe there will be more than 1.

Anyone who said this was a troll blog or a publicity stunt will soon be proved wrong in phase 2 purely because we aren’t half as scathing to the people who did make it to phase 2.

In other words, anyone who got approved or gets approved, we’ll have much more to say on their blog in phase 2.

The entire point of the OEG is to rid misuse of ‘otaku’. And we’re doing this by eliminating high profile bloggers like Danny Choo who wouldn’t know otaku if it him in the face and then promoting and evaluating the lesser known bloggers who really are otaku and saying “Those guys are awful and not otaku, this is the real otaku, these guys are better bloggers and bigger otaku”. Basically following the logic that people are going to follow the high profile blogs, we’d much rather have the people who know what otaku actually is and give a genuine shit about their interests than someone like alafista or DC who care more about seeing their name in lights.

Anyway, on with the awards.

Biggest Fan of OEG: Guy

You all know Guy by now, he’s the kid who writes the comments on our blog that seem to be angry about something, but neither him nor us can work out just what he’s trying to say. We can’t help but laugh whenever we see that Guy has left a new comment because his voice seems to be trampled under the weight of the more interesting comments. We try and give him some time, but we never seem to come to any conclusion, it’s like he’s arguing for the sake of arguing and we don’t understand that at all.

But what makes him the biggest fan of OEG this week? Well we were checking through twitter and saw that he’d replied to a number of people so we decided we’d go straight to his profile to see them all in one place. The sheer number of comments was outstanding, Guy loves to talk about us, and most of these are in reply to people who have only mentioned us. A guy (no pun intended) who absolutely loves to spread the good word about us, Guy is a true OEG otaku, even if he does come across as a little jealous that we get more attention than him. But hey, hate == love right?

Best Comment: Nagisa

In response to round 8, someone calling themselves Nagisa made a comment so derisive of western fans we thought many people would accuse us of writing it ourselves. However the comment wasn’t perfect, so we thought we’d pick up from here. Here’s the comment in it’s original form:

“I think the level of devotion to anime (eroge, manga, etc) in Non-Japanese Fans (NJFs) doesn’t come close to what you have in Japan. In fact, it can’t reach that level since the vast majority of stuff is inaccessible to NJFs due barriers in language, geography, and so forth. NJFs may get obsessed with a certain show, but how obsessed are they? Most NJFs don’t listen to weekly radio show, for example, read articles about the production, go on pilgrimages, attend seiyuu events, or the hundreds of other things related to a franchise. Hell, most NJFs don’t even know the the staff of an anime, beyond the director and some seiyuu.

Lastly, unlike in Japan, NJFs don’t offer anything back–we just leech. I mean, other than some cosplay photos (which is hardly a unique contribution), what creative talent have we really given back? DeviantART and the shit sold in artists alley doesn’t count. Where is our version of Comiket?

To a large extent, non-Japanese fans are just leechers, downloading shit off the internet made by others without even giving money back. Why spend the time, money, and effort to acquire a rare doujinshi (let alone draw one), for example, when you can just download it? .”Hardcore” figure collectors can take professional-looking photos, but when is the last time someone sculpted one? When Danny Choo uses his artistic bloodline to actually make something, maybe then he’ll have some street cred. I mean, really, how can you call any NJF otaku when people bitch about $30 being too expensive for a DVD set of their supposedly favorite show? That’s some devotion there. Your love for anime is about as large as the price for a meal for two at Dennys.

But you know what, I don’t think not being otaku is a bad thing or really something anyone should aspire to be (I certainly don’t want to be one). Just like what you like. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being a casual fan. But even casual fans shouldn’t be parasites.”

We agree particularly with the leeching. Everyone will leech at somepoint, that’s to be expected. P2P networks are worldwide and no country is 100% innocent. It is irritating however that so called ‘otaku’ aren’t even prepared to pay for the goods they should cherish so much. There are many stores shipping abroad, there are middleman services for those that don’t. You’ve got no excuse really.

But with that said, we don’t agree that only Japanese can be true otaku. Wherever you are, you can only do your best, and we are sure there are those out there who do exactly that. But leeching and refusing to buy because of cost, can you call that doing your best? No. Step it up.

This is where we attack Danny Choo again; he made it perfectly clear in one of his posts that he illegally downloads the anime he watches. This is the face of the apparently biggest otaku on the blogosphere? You can make your own decisions on that one.

The wednesday awards were tough, with nothing quite happening except a lot of episode previews, we couldn’t find anything worthwhile. So we decided we’d remind you what the OEG is all about.

Remember what the OEG is about.

If you’ve been following us this long or seen our posts, you might have noticed the distinct correlation between how strongly we react depending on how stupid the person is or how much they misuse ‘otaku’. Basically, you act like a moron, we’re gonna bring the pain. But remember, the moment you start feeling depressed or angry about what we’ve said is the moment something went wrong.

We’re not here to make you angry or to make you depressed, you could probably do that on your own just by thinking of the ills of the world. We react strongly because it’s the only way to get it into your head that you’re doing something wrong. Ultimately we’re asking for co-operation, not conformity like many other bloggers out there.

Take a look at the situation. We’re not trolls or weirdos, we’re otaku and we care about both the heritage and the future of our great culture. The moment we bring you down for misusing “otaku” is the moment you should stop, look around and think about things before launching a counter attack about the semantics of the word. We like questions because it means we can answer them. If you sit there, look at your blog and think “Why was I eliminated?” then ask us before you try torching the place, because when you take that approach, you’re gonna get hit back much harder and you won’t like it one bit.

We’re the good guys, the brave crusaders with sometimes questionable means, we’re the anti-heroes, the mercenaries that only fight wars that our within our interest. Fuck the world and skip the foreplay, because we’d all rather be watching Kaidan Restaurant than taking part in the rest of the antics on the internet.

See you soon!

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