Hong Kong Anime Fans Hold an Otaku Demo

by dtshyk
Mar 30, 2009 1:14 AM | 53 Comments

A demonstration parade claiming the improvement of Otaku's status was held in Hong Kong on March 29th. Anime fans marched through the downtown in the costumes of the anime characters. The movement broke out when a local radio program introduced the term Otaku as "men with poor educational background, lacking self-confidence and social skills".

Source: Japanimate

20 of 53 Comments Recent Comments

Alexstratz said:
Well at least they've shown that they've got some courage and self-confidence to go to a gay otaku parade cosplaying. :D I'm sure most of us here won't bother. :p

this is HK we are talking about, the land of fucked up fashion and music like Jay Chou. Maga is as popular as YES! magazines.

infinite_zero said:
Manga's a national hobby in Taiwan :s

True...Although they speak mandarin I don't consider Taiwan a part of China. Let alone a part of HK. To me they're like what Puerto Rico is to USA. They do have a lot of pretty girls in Taiwan though.. A LOT.

OT: Who has seen this movie?

Apr 24, 2009 8:41 AM by dawnwan

Well at least they've shown that they've got some courage and self-confidence to go to a gay otaku parade cosplaying. :D I'm sure most of us here won't bother. :p

Apr 23, 2009 4:42 AM by Alexstratz

Thats frankly the most retard radio station ever then? Thats like a radio station in america callling McDonalds workers poorly educated failures.
(apologises to anyone who does work in Mcdonalds, I don't actually meen it)
XD
x

Apr 23, 2009 1:14 AM by TiamatBunny

I looked up the Ming Pao article and the march was in fact sparked by the TV broadcast on TVB, not a radio program.

Translation of part of the documentaries is here.

Mar 31, 2009 2:42 PM by ShootTheBullet

Oh, come'on. I know you all would love to go out on the streets cosplaying (maybe i would too, hehe). Even if that helps stereotype the "otaku".

dtshyk said:
The movement broke out when a local radio program introduced the term Otaku as "men with poor educational background, lacking self-confidence and social skills".

Sometimes, the truth. We can't deny that.
And we can't say that the ones who went to the "parade" had all that self-confidence just because they did that. They did because they were in a group, a huge group. Would love to see someone alone in the middle of the street dressed as any colorful and shine character.
We watch anime. And sometimes we are embarassed of it, scared of people discovering it and telling us how childish or stupid they think that is. So... we are more timid and closed to other people. besides that, as someone already said it, spending a lot of time at the pc or in front of the tv don't help you getting a boyfriend/girlfriend or getting new and real friends. And that is the vision other people get from us. We can't blame them if thats the side we show. It's mostly our falt.

Still, what the radio said was extremely rude and cruel. No one has the right to say something evil as that of other people without giving them the meaning to aswer back.
And i really disagree with the "poor education" part. I'm doing Biology at the university and there's one professor who gave me classes that has a pos-doctorade at Poriferae (sponges, for those who don't know) and have being playing RPG for 20 years now(I know that's not the same but they suffer from the same prejudice than us). There are better examples than me examples in the comments above.

Well, talked too much and i have a paper to do. \o/

Mar 31, 2009 1:52 PM by Biofoxx

How cringeworthy.

Mar 31, 2009 9:45 AM by Kappaka

was it an anime station? thought it was idiot station

Mar 31, 2009 8:01 AM by Takuya-kun

Oh im so burning down that anime station >__>

Mar 31, 2009 6:06 AM by Icy-nee-san

i consider anime appreciation on the same realm as appreciating art

lack of self-confidence, education, or social skills is not necessarily correlated with being a fan of anime but something that occurs in many facets of society

even lack of self-confidence, education, or social skills has no clear correlation with each other

but i do commend those people for finally speaking up. i dont mind such politically incorrect statements since im too busy with more important things, at least these people gave the effort

but the rest of us, dont get all worked up by these radio f***ing idiots

Mar 31, 2009 5:13 AM by Takuya-kun

They should boycott that radio station.

Mar 30, 2009 11:06 PM by rron1993

This is so funny

Mar 30, 2009 10:31 PM by BlackAssassin

Cosplaying at a parade with that kind of reason isn't very smart.
Stereotypes don't help at all too. I mean, what's the problem of being yourself? Just because you like anime/manga do you have to consider yourself an otaku?

Mar 30, 2009 9:36 PM by Sunao

ShootTheBullet said:
Before the radio show, TVB, the free TV channel that the common folk all watch in Hong Kong aired documentaries about what HK men and women think of each other. The women in HK basically complained that HK men are all otaku, have a lower income than the women, and have poor social skills. That probably sparked the debate on radio and then the demonstration. Here is part one of the documentary on what HK women think of HK men (sorry, no subs):

You mean, the sub is in Chinese (since the video is in Cantonese, I guess that's for the Mandarin speaking people...) LOL at the video documentary.....Lol at war betwen HK women and "Densha otokos"

Mar 30, 2009 7:32 PM by wakka9ca

Manga's a national hobby in Taiwan :s

Mar 30, 2009 7:11 PM by BasakaNZ

Before the radio show, TVB, the free TV channel that the common folk all watch in Hong Kong aired documentaries about what HK men and women think of each other. The women in HK basically complained that HK men are all otaku, have a lower income than the women, and have poor social skills. That probably sparked the debate on radio and then the demonstration. Here is part one of the documentary on what HK women think of HK men (sorry, no subs):

Mar 30, 2009 6:50 PM by ShootTheBullet

I don't know...wouldn't you need some form of self confidence to go out decked in full costume?

I guess it's different for me because I go to a school where we take school spirit seriously...so serious that we are willing to wear gold spandex and anything else that is remotely green and yellow in public, kind of scary. Right...

They should have chanted: RAW RAW FIGHT THE POWER!

Mar 30, 2009 6:21 PM by panda_general

dtshyk said:
A demonstration parade claiming the improvement of Otaku's status was held in Hong Kong on March 29th. Anime fans marched through the downtown in the costumes of the anime characters. The movement broke out when a local radio program introduced the term Otaku as "men with poor educational background, lacking self-confidence and social skills".

I lol @ this

Mar 30, 2009 5:36 PM by JadeMatrix

Lol, it seems like dressing up and marching around would only give otaku a worse name.

I'm not saying it was cool for those radio people to say that, but the reaction was a little extreme and sort of embarrassing. 0_0

Mar 30, 2009 5:04 PM by fdssdfdsfsf

kaminakun said:

death1001 said:
poor education? im studding 2 become a mechanical engineer. i would like 2 know what kind of degree those radio guys have. as 4 the marching ya i don't think that helped

I am a 4th year space engineer ... wonder if those radio guys even know how to perform a Fourier Transform ...

thankfully I am not in Hong Kong right now, else I'll go phone up that station for sure LOL

Lol, not everyone has to know Fourier series by the way... Same thing with partial differential equations.. I doubt anyone outside of physics, mathematics and engineering knows it. It's like expecting cats to do quantum physics (excluding Schrodinger's cat of course XD....) And the number of engineers watching anime is quite high, frankly....

About the social part, it's partially true: spending more time watching anime = less time to socialize. However, the same can be said to people spending too much time on internet (Facebook), they don't get much real life experience (cyber socializing != real life socializing)

But then, it all depends on individuals. It's a bit stereotypical to put everyone under one label but that's how society goes....

Although the parade didn't solve much problem -_-

Mar 30, 2009 4:30 PM by wakka9ca

Plate said:
So dressing up as Naruto will prove you have a good educational background and social skills?

For sure, among those of your species. =)

Mar 30, 2009 3:47 PM by ladyxzeus

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