Sunday, August 17, 2025
Knowing Your Audience
The
relationship between visual novels and their Otaku characters is an
interesting one due to fact much of their audience are themselves
Otaku. As such these players will identify more with characters from
this archetype. For this article the definition of Otaku will be
limited to those with a strong interest in anime, video games and
associated activities rather than other types like the tech Otaku.
You would expect then that visual novels would lean into giving them
an enlarged importance to try and reel them in, but the reality is
quite a mixed picture. A surprising trend is how common it is to have
Otaku characters push their negative traits in a self-deprecating
manner at their own expense. Of course some titles do present the
Otaku as a whole positive being in order to appeal to their audience
and these hand wave the negative elements away so they can completely
lean into the fantasy. Beyond the extremes of positive and negative
traits, there are various Otaku characters for whom this trait is a
part of their human experience rather than its sole defining element.
It might be an important trait to them yet it never overpowers who
they are as a person and it is explored in an even fashion. Let’s
obsess over our waifu and uncover how this character archetype manifests
in its various forms.
Self-Deprecation
A
fairly common outline for depictions of Otaku characters in visual
novels is to have them embody some of the negative associations with
this type of person. These come in a variety of forms from
immediately obvious physical traits to flaws in their personality and
all are unappealing in their presentation. However, they are not
mutually exclusive with positive traits but rather overwhelm them
when brought forward by the characters’ own inability to control
themselves and their Otaku interests. The most striking and obvious
unflattering trait of Otaku is the correlation between being an Otaku
and being overweight. Outside of villain characters, there is a high
chance for an overweight character to fall into the Otaku camp, drawing a clear line of causality. Take Hashida Itaru from Steins
Gate or Akao Mitsuru from Amanatsu, each one is visibly overweight
and it is the first thing the player is going to notice about them
before they even open their mouths. It is no coincidence they then
quickly establish their Otaku tendencies which naturally leads the
player to connect the two. Of course this pair of characters are not
bad people but there layer of self-deprecation to their initial
depictions. As for the idea of it being an undesirable trait we can
look to Cara Olivia’s transformation in Sankaku Ren'ai: Love
Triangle Trouble! where she starts out overweight and slims herself
down during the story and this is treated as positive
transformation and is the version of her the player can romance. This further reinforcing the idea of it being the desirable weight and the
previous one as not attractive.
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| Media in general is not kind to overweight characters |
Not all Otaku characters are
overweight and many just look like the rest of the cast, but even
here there is often a layer of negative traits originating from their
personalities. The idea of an obsession taken to an unhealthy degree
is a commonly used element in such characters. Manifestations of this
aspect can be unsolicited outburst about their specific interest which made
them an Otaku like Matsushita Outa from AI: Somnium Files who often
talks at unnecessary length about things like his obsession with
A-set. The other characters often react by giving him awkward looks
as if not sure how to deal with him or just telling him to shut up
which highlights this tendency as a negative breaking of social
etiquette. Then there is the largest and most personality distorting
trait, anti-social behaviour. From avoiding contact with people to
being actively unpleasant to those who attempt to interact with them,
the Otaku character can fall anywhere within this spectrum. A
particularly extreme example of this is Nishijou Takumi from Chaos
Head who has so completely retreated into his Otaku interests as a
form of coping mechanism that even well meaning trespassers are met
with either hostility or a stone wall. So the question now becomes,
why is the Otaku such a negatively presented type of character in
visual novel when so much of its audience fall into this
group? To find the answer we must look beyond visual novels and
realise this depiction is found in many other mediums related to
anime. The common line
through them is one of self-deprecation for humorous effect where the
negative aspects of the audience can be drawn out for a moment of
common levity between creator and player. Every negative element from
their appearance to their unsolicited outburst is designed to offer a
feeling of empathy with the characters even if it is one born of a
shared awareness of how society views them and the player’s own
experiences of similar things. It is just another path the developers can use to
get the player to care about the cast. The elephant in the room here is Nishijou Takumi who is
most definitely not meant to be funny and his actions do not invite
sympathy. Here Chaos Head uses the negative traits of the Otaku as
means of distancing the player from Takumi so they might watch his
decent into madness fully aware of the foundations of this decision
making. In many ways it is the horror of our own weaknesses writ
large and how such things can twist a person.
Self-Importance
Trying
to appeal to an audience can be done through stroking their ego by
proxy through the overly positive depiction of certain characters.
This enlarged focus on the Otaku character is an interesting contrast
with the self-deprecation found elsewhere since it tends to plaster
over or downplay any flaws. Yet the two are not mutually
exclusive given the humour of the later can be used to distract from
the aggressively nature of this wish-fulfilment. One manifestation of
this attempt to appeal to its audience is to have the Otaku
characters form the majority of the cast and for the events and story
to focus around their Otaku activities. For example, Sankaku Ren'ai:
Love Triangle Trouble! is formulated in such a way to allow the Otaku
characters to shine brighter then any other members of the cast and
their interests are demonstrated by proxy to be important and
enjoyable as they are at the centre of the cast’s world. Adopting an
all-consuming approach favouring the Otaku does come at the cost of
limiting the title’s appeal to that specific group given the way it
unlikely to resonate with a wider demographic.
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| Hard to believe she is important in saving the world |
So a less
pronounced version of this focus on the Otaku members of the cast can
be in the visual novel’s best when not creating sure a narrowly
directed title. The result are games like Steins;Gate where the Otaku
characters, like Faris Nyannyan and Hashida Itaru, openly display
their interests while occupying key roles within the narrative. They
are never depicted without some negative traits but the positive ones
coupled with their irreplaceable actions in the ultimate resolution
of the conflict present an overwhelmingly positive impression. Overall the reasons a
developer might choose to pander to a major section of their audience
is pretty self explanatory since the Otaku is hardly the only example
of this attempt focus a title’s appeal with different mediums and
genre’s choosing different character archetypes. What
differentiates the Otaku character is way it often sits right next to
the self-deprecation as with Hashida Itaru who at once has jabs at
his expense while also being an irreplaceable member of the team.
Tightrope walking like this is not something other styles of
wish-fulfilment tend to engage in.
Just Another Part of Humanity
Making
a character an Otaku does not mean it needs to be their only defining
trait and they can have other elements while still being clearly identified with that group. This
is an attempt to stop the accidental pigeonholing of these characters
by the player who expects a simple cliché so might not properly
engage in the subtleties of the character’s emotions. In order to
create this diversion of focus, the other aspects of the Otaku cast
are established first to frame these as the pillars of their
development over the course of the story before moving on to their
Otaku elements. Inaba Meguru from Sabbat of the Witch is an encapsulation this approach. She is a gaming Otaku but does not
initially present herself as one and instead has a fashion sense and
bubbly personality which set the player’s expectations for her
and it is only later that the true extent of her Otaku nature becomes
obvious. Even then the game is careful to make sure that initial
impression is not completely overwritten through making this
transition be connected to the protagonist, and by extension the
player, becoming more intimate with her. As such it is their romance which
becomes the focal point of the player’s perception of her while
allowing the Otaku aspect to be part of a textured and well rounded
person.
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| The way she looks and acts is not what you would expect of an Otaku |
Another option is to place the Otaku character in a situation
where they interests play second fiddle to the dangers they face and
overall story progression. Death end;Request is not a narrative where
the characters can indulge their interests and they have to put them to
one side in order to face up to life and death situations. Lydia
Nolan is pretty open Otaku and has many of the traits associated with
the archetype, such as her obsessive level of interest in otome, but
outside of a few jokes about it there is little focus given to it.
Instead it is a part of her interactions with the rest of the cast
and a way to create an endearing impression on the player in a short
amount of time so when bad things start happening to her the player
has a reason to care. This is a very blunt instrument to gain the
player’s sympathy but the tension and relentless march forwards of
the plot do a lot to obscure the blatant nature of this manipulation.
What links these two approaches is their attempts to push the Otaku
as an aspect of what it means to be human rather than a caricature to
be mocked or elevated. This is mainly done in titles where the Otaku
element might be invasive, such as with genres like horror, action or
focused romance, and works to de-emphasize the treatment of a person
as a single characteristic in order to make their journey more
compelling.
Conclusion
When
characterising a group of people who make up a large section of your
audience the general wisdom is to appeal direct to them, but Otaku
characters in visual novels lean into far more varied styles of
presentation. There is a tendency towards the use of deprecation as
means to create empathy with the negative traits of the Otaku from
the similarity of their resulting actions and the player’s own
experiences through a layer of humour. Forming a textured character
in some titles means using the Otaku aspects as a part of a whole
picture and the person is not defined only via their Otaku nature but
rather showing it to be an element of the human experience. Then
there are the games which just follow the common wisdom and make the
Otaku the centre of the universe either through focusing on their
activities or by having them save the world. It is interesting to see
how the knowledge of one’s audience has such a profound effect on
the group's depiction within the narrative and how various visual novels
have sought to address it.
