So I've got a confession to make. I'm evidently not otaku enough. Well at least in comparision to some of the stuff I've been reading and listening to. I try. I don't go out much. In my free time, I either write, blog or watch anime and movies - all of which are solitary activities. The majority of my free money goes to buying DVDs.But according to here or here and it's even hinted at here, I'm missing the boat somewhere. And what that boat might that be? The wanting an anime character girlfriend boat. I don't get it. Really, I don't. Maybe it's the fact that anime girls, well, aren't that attractive. Ocassionally there's one or two where the artwork is enough to catch my eye, but in comparison to the earlier issues of Witchblade or Danger Girl, they don't even rate. In most cases, I can't suspend my disbelief far enough to make them sexual objects. Occasionally a show manages to come close (like the shower scene with Aya at the beginning of Tenjo Tenje), but for the most part even the most blatant fanservice doesn't really do anything for me.But for some people, well they just take it too far. In the rant on Anime Diet (the first link I posted), the guy just went on and on with misconception after misconception (I'm still hoping he was joking). And that's what I've been hearing out of the hardcore otaku culture, is a lot of assuming that women are shallow golddiggers. It's like they've taken all of those stereotypes from off the television and superimposed those on real women.All I have to say is they aren't real. Seriously, you can't reach through the television screen and touch them. I don't get it at all.But then again, I don't understand skydiving either. So I'm willing to give their fetish a little bit of leeway. If that's what get's their rocks off, I'll look the other way.Except that it's getting worse. A quick trip around the blogs and I'm finding that not only is there a subculture of anime fans like that, but a really loud subculture of anime fans. With fetishes so unrealistic that it makes me shake my head. It's starting to make me wonder. Am I the only anime fan out there that doesn't have a fetish for anime girls? Are there other people who feel that anime is great entertainment but taking it beyond that is a little, well, creepy?Occasionally, I'll see or hear older fans that say the same things I do, but I wonder if we aren't the minority. Or am I just not otaku enough to understand.
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