QueenieChan.com - LiveJournal - The Dreaming: Otome Culture?

QueenieChan.com - LiveJournal - The Dreaming: Otome Culture?

QueenieChan.com

[	website	\|	queenichan.com - Manga/Comics	]
[	userinfo	\|	livejournal userinfo	]
[	archive	\|	journal archive	]

The Dreaming: Otome Culture?

[Feb. 9th, 2007|11:09 pm]

[

Current Mood

busy

]

The Dreaming: Vol3 is due in November 2007, and I'm 2/3 of the way through inking already. Paul and Katie is helping with the toning (yea!), so hopefully I can get it finished quickly and move onto the next project!

About Otome:
Has anyone been paying attention to the word "Otome" lately? It's been around for a while in Japan, but only recently has it crossed into English-speaking articles such as this one from Time magazine, this post and also this one from Mainichi New. For those out of the loop, the word "Otome" is named after a stretch of road in Tokyo called "Otome Road", which caters exclusively to that high-spending, formerly-ignored section of the Pop Japan cultural behemoth - the female otaku. Yes, "Otome" is the female version of the "Otaku" (though there is also the term "fujoshi", which literally means "rotten female"). Edit: It's official now, Asahi says that "Fujoshi" are "female otaku who like novels and comics about love affairs between men."

Edit: Thanks for posting these YouTube videos up. Watching these probably give a better perspective of things than what I wrote. The SPENDING POWER of JAPANESE FEMALES in FANDOM...!!
BL Fangirls in Ikebukuro
Fujoshi in Ikebukuro (part1)
Fujoshi in Ikebukuro (part2)

Now, we in the West have all heard the term "Otaku" before, which in Japan at least, refers to an obsessed fan of anything. The word has been misused in English to mean "Obsessed Manga/Anime/Video-gaming fan", both male and female, but now it appears a new category has to be created for the female otakus, the "Otome". This is because the female otaku culture is so different from that of the male one, with entirely different spending patterns and a different style of self-expression. In fact, from my experience with both die-hard "Otaku" and "Otome", the two don't have any common ground at all. No wonder a shopping strip has to spring up in Tokyo to cater to these fangirls - they have money to spend, just not on what we traditionally associate with Otaku-dom.

"Otome" means "maiden" in Japanese, and is a very appropriate label for describing the female Otaku, mostly in the way they imagine themselves. It's a word laiden with connotations of purity, innocence, feminine beauty, virginity, flowers, lace, angel wings, princesses in exotic lands, and oddly enough, POWER. And female power at that, though not of the mature, sexualised female kind. "Otome" does NOT represent "moe", overly-sexualised women with E-cups, or the sort of half-naked, writhing raunchiness you'll find in hip-hop music videos. "Otome" are princesses, noblewomen, celebrated stage actresses, full-plated armoured valkyries, magical girls and priestesses. It describes a kind of female state that is powerful, but not sexualised. Instead, all the sexualisation can be found in the mountains of Boy's Love manga/doujinshi, which consists solely of boys getting it on to gratify a female audience. In other words, the "Otome" culture is one which revolves around the female mind, projecting on the world a female-exclusive point-of-view, with ideals of feminine power, and where men are all but irrelevant except as emo-porn.

From that perspective, Usagi from "SailorMoon" qualifies as a borderline "Otome", while Sakura from "Cardcaptor" is too. More fitting of the "Otome" label is Chris from "Suikoden III", called the "Silver Otome" in the game, and the Princess Zelda from the "Twilight Princess", who exudes a cool air of authority. You can bet that all of these properties involve beautiful, androgynous guys as side characters, so that the female fans can draw BL doujinshi about them. Conversely, Asuka and Rei from "Evangelion" are not really considered "Otome", because while they are powerful teenage females, they are aimed primarily at a male audience. That doesn't stop the "Otome" from drawing Shinji and Kaoru BL doujinshi though, and it's interesting to point out that while the "Otome" read alot of BL manga, they are even more likely to gravitate towards popular shounen manga with tonnes of pretty boys. Indeed, it's difficult to say whether the "Otome" read alot of mainstream shoujo manga, unless you count BL manga as part of mainstream shoujo (which I don't). Certainly I see tonnes and tonnes of Full Metal Alchemist, Death Note, Hikaru no Go, Gundam Wing, Naruto and Princess of Tennis BL doujinshi. Otome gravitate to the well-springs of bishounen-hood, where these days are more likely to be found in shounen manga.

This is significant, because BL doujinshi market is where the "heart" of the the "Otome" fan culture lies. Apart from cosplaying amd Butler cafes, what the "Otome" do in full-force is fan-related works. This brings to mind the differences between fangirls and fanboys, and how differently they express their love for whatever it is they're obsessed by. At the gaming studio where I work, you can always spot the textbook Otakus because they have a row of anime character models on their desk, subscriptions to Moe-type anthology magazines, Hentai posters of french maids, and several gigabytes of hardcore hentai manga on their computer. You don't seen anything of that kind with the Otome. Nearly every Otome at the studio is drawing a BL doujinshi, they have stacks of BL doujinshi/manga sitting on their desk, and one or two may come to work dressed in Gothic Lolita-style clothing. Buying model kits isn't something that Otome do, they want emotional stories to go with their porn, and the whole point of Otome-ing is so they can actually get involved in producing fanworks.

No wonder the big established companies have such trouble reaching out to the Otome and making money off them. The fact that they thrive off fan-produced works means that the fans are the ones doing the entrepreneurial work, while the big companies recruit popular doujinshi artists in the hope of making SOME money. They also employ more subtle ways of attracting female fans - by having scores of pretty boys in shounen manga. Certainly, there has been an explosion of that in Shounen Jump, which a decade ago would have been unheard of. Try reading "Air Gear", by Otaku-favourite Oh!Great. If you're familiar with his previous work "Tenjou Tenge" (a seinen work), then you probably know that Oh!Great is the kind of artist who loves bouncy boobs, hentai porn, and tough guys. The amount of bishounen in "Air Gear" astounded me. I didn't see many bishounen in "Tenjou Tenge", but they are crawling out of the woodwork in "Air Gear". Someone must have pulled Oh!Great into a corner and said "Sensei, we need bishounen characters, please". And so in comes Akito/Agito and his brother at the end of vol4, and then it started raining bishounen. And "Air Gear" got enough female fans to vote "Akito/Agito" as their number one favourite character.

Now that's an influential sub-culture, and one that revolves purely around what women want. It's curious to contrast this with the Western World, where neither music, comics nor Hollywood makes that big of an attempt to capture women's dollars. It's not that they don't try, but because Otome culture is built from the ground-up as something by women for women, and entirely excludes men from the whole process. The male exclusion thing is an important part of the equation. I just can't imagine a sub-culture growing up in the west that is entirely female-centred, because the gender-divide isn't as great as it is in Japan. It's interesting to observe, though, especially the non-sexualised aspect of the Otome culture. In the West, I can imagine feminists becoming furious at the idea, because part of the feminist revolution is that the empowered woman is one that is able to control her own sexuality. Well, certainly "empowered women" can also include those who have zero interest in feminine sexuality, and who define female power as something irrelevant to men altogether?

Random Art: Some stuff I just realised I haven't put up anywhere, including my DeviantArt account. Since that's been dominated by "The Legend of Zelda" fan manga, I decided not to put it up there. So it ends up here instead.

A self-portait of me, for "The Australian" newspaper.
Ironically, this was inked by the G-pen, though it shows me holding the Saji pen.

Stuff I drew at Supanova last October, and completely forgot about until now.

Link

Comments:

From:

pinkapplejam
2007-02-09 01:49 pm (UTC)

(Link)

Now this is really strange - as yesterday I posted up about "Fujoshi". An alternate version of "otaku femme" you describe?

(Pardon the big lump of pre-posted bloggery text!)
~~~~~~~~~~~
Literally meaning "rotten girl" (OLOLOLOLL!!), this term "Fujoshi" covers all, from yaoi-buying fangirls to those who like to visit females-pretending-to-be-bishounen-male butler bars (a stab at the maid cafe's, no doubt), and includes those who cosplay a lot and go to geek meets.

Personally I don't think I am quite fujoshi, even though it is a term for geeky girls, I think it's aimed at rabid BL fluff-fans.

It's common for traditional otaku to just be consumers, and I really find it a shame when talented yaoi doujin-makers just make sex versions of their favourite comic series - they never really go off to develop stories, characters and scenarios of their own, and ride the coat-tails of other successes.

Also I thought the literal translation was a bit mean. I mean, "rotten girl"? Otaku comes from beng a stay-at-home, being on the internet all the time or watching anime. I guess a few of the girls really are rotten, what with their shota-complexes to rival guys' Loli-complexes XD But still, it seems like a strange label, but some of the girls in the videos are quite happy being labelled "rotten girl"s.

YouTube links;

BL Fangirls in Ikebukuro
Fujoshi in Ikebukuro - cafe, meets
Cosplay, BL, Cafe

(all subtitled!)

...A female backlash to the immense amount of moé that is around in Akihabara?? Seems Akihabara ("Akiba") is for the guy otaku... and Ikebukuro for the female otaku/fujoshi~!
~~~~~~~~~

A response I got was,

"I read about this inSatsuki Agaraki's column in the January 2007 issue of Newtype.

Apparently there is a trend wherein two words are joined together, creating a whole new word. In the case of FUJOSHI we have the words "Fujo" & "Joshi" which by themselves mean "woman". However, the 'fu' is written with the character that means "rotten".

Also, when a girl becomes totally obsessed with boys' love, she then becomes a KIFUJIN, which ordinarily would mean "noblewoman," but when written using the other 'fu' character, it becomes something like "elite depraved girl."

Your comments regards Otome are interesting because it expressed exclusivity for women, but I do wonder sometimes about how damaging the culture is in general and how tougher it makes it for original works by new artist/writers, when such famous series continually get almost always "sexified" at ComiKet to sell copies..?

(Reply to this) (Thread)

From:

queeniechan
2007-02-09 02:04 pm (UTC)

(Link)

Oh, thanks for posting that. :D I have come across the term "fujoshi" on other blogs/forums, though not in the media. That's part of the reason why I hesitate to use it, apart from the fact that it is definately a negative term. Language is a mutable thing, and I didn't think it's fair for the term "Otaku" to have lost its negative connotations in the west, whereas "fujoshi" literally means "rotten girl" (in kanji), so it's not a term that is likely to lose the negative connotation. I also think that "Otome" describes how the fangirls see themselves, rather than how other people (fans?) see them.

And I don't think the culture is any more damaging than the "moe" culture and avalanche of H-manga you see coming from the guys, in terms of fandom anyway. But in terms of original artists getting the shaft, yes it IS incredibly damaging. Not so much in Japan, but in other parts of South-East Asia like Taiwan and China, where there are alot of talented artists who's greatest ambition is to become the #1 BL Queen (aka doujin artist). I don't want to diss people who draw fanworks for fun, but at the same time, I can't help but feel that the fan culture is pulling everything down the drain. When the rabid fans have such a narrow interest, it ends up hurting the main market as well, because the big companies only want to make money.

In fact, you're already seeing this in Japan. When I mentioned companies wanting to tap into the Otome culture, they often recruit from the ranks of popular doujin artists. I saw some of their manga from the folks at work, and GODDAMN they are AWFUL!! Doujin-kusai is the right word - because these artists haven't been trained by the apprentice system, the art is very subpar, and the whole thing lacks polish. In terms of a "professional", they SHOULDN'T have made the cut. But they are, and that's why we're seeing a drop in artistic standards in some fringe manga.

But at least these are original works, if BL stuff...

...

Re: ...

Otome-Otaku

Re: Otome-Otaku

Re: Otome-Otaku

FFF (is back)

Re: FFF (is back)

THE DREAMING

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Re: HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Re: HAPPY BIRTHDAY!