Otaku2 Interview: Okada Toshio

24.06.2008 by Patrick W. Galbraith

Okada Toshio, the "otaking" and seminal Gainax producer who popularized otaku culture with "Otaku no Video" (1991) and his "otaku studies" academic lectures and books, recently commented that otaku are dead. We caught up with the enigmatic man at a lecture at Loft Plus One in Shinjuku to get to the bottom of his mysterious, and influential, prescence.*


You have changed your look and lost a lot of weight, and also changed your opinion on some things. Can you describe what is happening with you right now?

Okada Toshio: Well, I am a man who changes my hobbies and interests every few months, so things are always new and confusing. I've been really wondering what to do with my life for some time now. I am 50 years old now, an adult without any clue what it is I want to do with my life from now on. I am not sure what the future holds, but then again I was never sure to begin with. I always just went forward wihtout thinking if what I was doing was right or could become a lucrative career.

You have been a producer at pioneering anime Studio Gainax, an executive and a lecturer at the University of Tokyo. You are currently a lecturer at Osaka Institute of the Arts. What would you like to do next?

OT: I want to talk. (laughs) My favorite thing to do is talk live with people, share thoughts and laugh together with them. The only thing that I regret is I only speak here at Loft Plus One. (laughs) No, seriously, the staff here is great and I have no complaints, but I think I would like to do something bigger someday. That is, I want to speak live at the Tokyo Dome. The way I figure it, there are maybe 10,000 people in Japan who actually want to listen to me. There are 130 people at the Loft Plus One events, so if you apply the same the formula of how many albums a band doing live performances sells I think there are about 10,000 Okada fans in Japan. I really am jealous of bands with their music that draws people. I just talk, so that puts me in category of writer talents. How many of such sucesses are there? Miura Jun, maybe. I think I would need at least a five person panel to achieve a mass talk live success. I could talk with Anno [Hideaki], but I don't think there would be balance there. (laughs) If possible, I would like 50,000 people to hear me speak, rather than just a few hardcore fans coming regularly.

Do you want to continue to talk as a scholar of otaku?

OT: I think I just want to talk and experiment. There are no more theories. I am really just doing things by the seat of my pants. I've already done what I needed to do.

What are your thoughts on the recent tragic happenings in Akihabara? I have been told that you fans are asking you for a statement on your blog.

OT: This is not my incident, or not the one of my generation, this is the one you all have to deal with. It will shake you and you will know how it was for us, your older otaku brothers and sisters, with Miyazaki [Tsutomu in 1989]. I was shocked with Miyazaki because I couldn't tell the difference between him and my friends. It could have been any of them, or me, who were arrested. When the otaku bashing started, everyone decided it was bad to be an otaku and we were all different from Miyazaki. But for my part there was some small percentage that understood Miyazaki in some small way. I do not feel that way with Kato [Tomohiro of the Akihabara Massacre in 2008]. Symbols and events become concepts that bind people together. For the Olympics, it is the "go for it, Japan!" slogan. Maybe its similar for the events with Miyazaki and Kato. Anyway, I feel the Akihabara incident greatly resembles the school shootings in Columbine in the USA. Society became stratisfied and the American dream of making it was revealed to be a lie. Youth who lose hope then turned destructive. Isn't is similar to Kato, a temporary factory worker without prospects?

So then why Akihabara?

OT: There are two reasons I can think of. One, he wanted to kill lots of people and otaku are easy to kill. Yes, we are weak. He would not have been so successful other places, even crowded places, because the people there wouldn't be so weak and easy to kill. In my generation, otaku were known to be gross and unpopular, but people hadn't yet realized just how weak we were. That may be one reason I don't identify so much with this incident. Here, all three sore spots of otaku as gross, unpopular and weak are revealed. The other reason why he chose Akihabara is because he identified with the place. Whether he really was otaku or not makes no difference, but it was the world he thought about and so the place he decided to attack. It is not so different from students who attack their schools. For Kato, he thought about Akihabara and all the happy moe activity there and resented that happiness. Perhaps we can say things might have been different if there weren't all those maid cafes in Akihabara.

You mentioned that there is a gap between fan generations, or yours and that of today. Can you elaborate on this?

OT: I think there is a big difference that is clear in what is popular. Take manga, which is selling in the mainstream, and series popular with maniacs, which are not selling. "Clover and Honey" is a good example. Some people just buy it, some are fans and only a few are maniacs who really dive into the series, so it fails to move the masses. The manga becomes nothing but a topic of discussion among older men who compete on who read it more properly. When with others, these tangents don't go well and a discussion never takes off. The media can't talk about otaku as one anymore because we aren't. There is no core literature or readership. I don't think I can explain this well enought to convince you, but anyway.

Do you like any of the stuff popular now?

OT: I haven't really been keeping up all that well, but I recently tried to play the "Higurashi" game and was incedibly disappointed. I mean, I was furious at how stupid and boring it is. It is interesting as a mystery, but worthless as a game. It seems just curious and confused, apart from normal reason, but maybe that is the point.

What kinds of things are you currently into?

OT: I like the old American "Popular Science" reports. I bought the old VHS tapes when I went to the US. I still use VHS and laserdisc because they are easier to manipulate. I can't get used to DVD. The science of the past is really amazing stuff to consider now. It makes me think we have to be very careful when creating sci-fi because you can get it wrong. We have no idea what the future holds, so the truth at the time seems laughable. The reality of the past also is laughable. I also recommend "Project Grizzly." The absolute failures and foolishness make Troy cool. Troy's knife talk is the best!

Do you still consider yourself an otaku?

OT: I don't know if I am an otaku, but I have always liked to analyze things with an eye for the details. Take "Gundam" for example. I was 21 or 22 when I first watched it, and what facinated me about it was the different ways of portraying the nuances of Char in different versions. I had no idea a character could be so complex, because I was reading him as a flat character that does not grow or change. A dojikko [lovable screw-up girl] does not learn because dojikko is her character. I was thinking that Char was a traitor character because he betrayed his highschool friend, Garma. Garma is a brat who everyone likes. When Char basically sets Garma up to die, his death is before a rising morning sun, highlighting the pointless death. But Gundam is like a tiger drama that unfolds gradually over a long time. Personal experiences are tied up in larger events, which avoids it being reduced to sekai-kei. When Char descirbes Garma's death as "because he was a brat" (boya da kara), there is an enormous amount riding on the ambiguous line. Char fights to avenge his family, while the rulers of Zeon are only using Garma's death for politcal gain. There family is rotten, and that is why Char is frustrated, figeting with the coin, quaffing his liquor and saying this famous line about the friend he betrayed. Char is upset about what he has done, but his words are in complete disagreement. What's more, the death of Garma does not hurt Zeon, but feeds into their plans. This can be proven by comparatvely viewing the crucial scene when Char is confronted with Garma's sister, Kycilia Zabi. In the theater version, Char takes off his mask, looks directly at the camera and says he laughed when Garma died becuase he was a brat. The line describing Garma turns out to be about him, and Tomino [Yoshiyuki, the director] promises us this is the truth by filiming it that way. When Kycilia doesn't believe his misgivings, he is further discouraged. None of this is displayed in the TV series. In the movie, Char kills Kycilia, but in the TV series her ship is sunk by the Earth Federation. Char's is only one drama in the wider war. This was the proper ending, but Tomino flaked out and allowed Char, who had become very popular by then, to put an end to everything in the movie. I was really against this, but we cannot blame Tomino for making a popular ending that appeals. It is our responsibility as viewers to careful consider all the series and look for the truth. I think viewers today tend to skim over such details and just enjoy the surface or simple characters. Those who do not explore these depths cannot really be described as otaku.

Would you be interested in making more anime?

OT: As you create anime you gradually lose your reason to do it. Even Miyazaki [Hayao] is ambivalent because he wants people to watch his works, but only once to get the message and move on. His work is all a refrain of his core message, which he retells again and again without getting through. He seems to keep telling it so that viewers will have a fantasy to go after, but he no longer needs to tell it for his own sake. Continuing to create like this is reliving deeply personal feelings over and over. I think that must be hellish. If these things are expressed once, then the creator can be free of them and move on.

Do you have any message for fans today?

OT: The way we view incidents in the real world is influenced by what we see in fantasy. The other way around, what we see and experience in the real world effects the way we view fantasy. It casts everything in a different light. I hope we can all take time to consider this as we watch anime or read manga.


*This is a partial transcript of an over four hour talk live session at Loft Plus One in Shinjuku. It is not a personal interview.