The idea is that these people, these weird, utterly impassioned people, followed their dream and through perseverance and guts managed to Otakunize the planet. It’s a wish-fulfillment fantasy, but it’s also only a slight exaggeration of what Gainax really accomplished (don’t believe me? They’re *still* playing Cruel Angel’s Thesis at half the Pachinko parlors in Ikebukuro).
This OVA was aimed squarely at people like me and my wife. It is no understatement to say that it changed our lives when we first watched it in 1999, brand new Otaku, to whom all of the references went over our head. We were Kubo.
The show inspired us not only to become “Otaku no naka no Otaku”, amassing a collection that makes the folks in the interviews look like pikers, but to create our own circle of friends much like the ones in the show. We watched anime, cosplayed, did conventions, put ON conventions. The works.
But that was only Part One…
In 2001, we started an anime licensing company, and we even came close to bagging the original Fruits Basket. Unfortunately, 9-11 (and the fact that we had NO idea what we were doing) put an end to the endeavor, but it was fun while it lasted.
But in 2019, inspired by the same spirit, if not quite the same medium, we started a successful publishing house. Now, one of our bigger series is being shopped around Hollywood by an agent, and a screenwriter has expressed interest in adapting. Who know? It may well become an anime some day!
So, if you watched the show as an historical document and thought, well, that was pretty cool, awesome. If you watched it and said, "Ugh, this show sucks," then I'd hate to live in your brain. But if you watched it and said, “This is a blueprint for my life,” then you got the message, because Otaku no Video is the blueprint for the lives of those who made Gainax, designed to inspire the next generation of Otaku! 🙂
