What does otaku mean?

Otaku vs weeb: what is the difference?

The two words get used as if they were the same, and they are not. Otaku is a Japanese word about depth of devotion to any hobby. Weeb is English internet slang about one specific kind of fan, and it is usually meant as a jab.

The short version is in the table: an otaku is defined by how much they care about the thing, a weeb by how much they care about Japan.

Where does the word otaku come from?

Otaku is written お宅 or おたく, and, for the fan, usually オタク. Taku means house or home, and the o in front makes it polite, so the plain meaning is your home or, by extension, your family. It is also an old, formal way to say you to someone you do not know well.

In the early 1980s, hobbyists at Japanese fan events were noticed calling each other otaku, the stiff, distant you, instead of using names. A 1983 magazine column picked the habit up and turned it into a label for the fans themselves. The tone was mocking from the start.

Late in that decade, news coverage tied the word to a notorious crime, and for years it carried a heavy stigma in Japan. It has softened a great deal since, and plenty of people in Japan use it lightly about themselves, but it can still read as unflattering depending on who says it.

What makes someone an otaku?

Otaku is about the depth of the interest, not the subject. In Japan you can be an otaku of trains, cameras, military history, cooking knives or computers. Abroad the word almost always means an anime and manga fan. The common threads:

• Depth. Knowing the small details, the history and the people who made the thing, not just the thing.
• Time and money. A big share of free time, and often of spending, goes to the hobby.
• Collecting or making. Shelves of what you love, or things you build, paint or write because of it.
• Community. Events, forums and friends who care about the same thing in the same detail.

What does weeb mean?

Weeb is short for weeaboo, a nonsense word from a webcomic that an online forum's word filter swapped in for an older insult in the mid-2000s. It stuck as a name for a non-Japanese fan so taken with Japanese culture that they prefer it to their own, often in ways that come across as performative: dropping Japanese words into English, insisting everything from Japan is better, treating a real country like a theme park.

Today weeb is mostly a light insult, and plenty of fans use it about themselves as a joke. The line between an enthusiastic anime fan and a weeb is fuzzy, and usually depends on who is drawing it.

Is otaku an insult?

It depends on where you are and who is speaking. Outside Japan, calling yourself an otaku is usually a proud, friendly way to say you are a serious fan. In Japan the word has lost most of its sting, but it can still suggest someone more at home with a hobby than with people, so it lands better as a self-description than as a label for someone else.

A good rule: use it about yourself freely, and about other people only if they use it first.

Bring your obsession to oeYYeo

Otaku energy is a gift to a story. If there is a world you know down to the bolts, write an original character who lives in it at /create: a name, a genre, who they are, a voice and boundaries that are always on. Members' characters can be shared by link or kept private.

Or talk to the cast, each of whom has something they care about past reason: Anselm Kovacic and his preflight checklist, Odalys Venn and the city's unfinished ghost stories, Ingeborg Talvane and her ledger of every party she has sent out. Every character on oeYYeo is AI, and chat is for adults 18 and over.

• How to make an original character
• Waifu meaning, another fan word

Read next

• Waifu meaning, explained: Waifu is fan slang for a favorite fictional female character, often with a half-joking romantic attachment; husbando is the male form. Origin and use.
• Anime character archetypes, explained: Anime character archetypes are personality patterns. The dere types pair a surface manner with a warm core. Here is how each one works and how to write it.
• What is seinen? Seinen means young man: a Japanese label for manga and anime first printed for adult men. What it covers, how it differs from shonen, and why it is not a genre.
• How to make an original character: Make an original character in eight steps: name, genre, job, want, flaw, voice, boundaries, then the look, so they sound like nobody else.