Ask John: What Turned John Into an Otaku?

Question:
I was wondering, how were you introduced to anime? Also which show was it that you knew you were hooked. Not meaning the first series that you really loved, but the one where you thought to yourself, “I’m otaku now”…. or something like that.

Answer:
Like many fans from my generation, I watched Battle of the Planets & Starblazers on television as a child, and as a high school freshman caught Robotech on television after school. While I wasn’t old enough or cognizant enough to recognize the programs of my childhood as Japanese animation, it was particularly the final chapter of the 1986 Donning Starblaze Robotech Art 1 guidebook (which I purchased at my local mall) that put Robotech in context and enlightened me to the fact that Robotech was actually one example of a larger anime world. If memory serves correctly, I began seeking out and watching untranslated, imported anime in 1989, the same year I began collecting imported anime merchandise. Among the very earliest import goods I ever purchased with my minimal allowance were Japanese illustration books devoted to Dirty Pair and the Cream Lemon adult anime series. (I got started young.) However, my attraction to those franchises was based on a particular fascination for Dirty Pair itself and the sheer concept of pornographic anime. So it was probably the Gall Force series that actually turned me into an “otaku.” I learned of Gall Force at the same time I first discovered Dirty Pair, but I was able to see the Dirty Pair movie several months before being able to find Gall Force. So it’s my curiosity, my longing to learn what Gall Force was – what it was about back in the days before the internet – that fueled my obsessive curiosity about anime.

I’ve never eagerly defined myself as an “otaku” because I’ve always believed that even my relatively hardcore devotion to anime is superficial compared to the wholehearted, obsessive, and compulsive devotion of Japan’s most devoted otaku. In simple terms, I’ve always wondered if I truly deserve the legitimate title of “otaku.” But in my dubious favor, I do have an otaku-like compulsion for hoarding trivia. Of particular note, I’ve kept the very first anime mail-order catalogs I ever purchased from. Images compliment this response. Furthermore, since the late 1980s I’ve kept a hand-written record of every anime I’ve watched – roughly in the order I watched them – and a list of all of the anime goods I’ve collected. The first pages of those long lists are below.