The surface and flipside of AKIHABARA, then and now
The surface and flipside of AKIHABARA, then and now
It has been a long time since I have been to Akihabara.
A friend of mine got a CRT TV, so time it is to go looking for VHS and playback equipment.
As everyone says, “Akihabara has become a town of con-cafes and foreign tourists,” and from my perspective as a resident of Akihabara for about two years, the shape of the town is changing rapidly. However, talking about Akihabara only from that point of view is just a rehash, so I will try to think about the next steps in various ways.
First of all, there are still figurines and video games, etc. in certain areas, which remains a strong point. Nakano Broadway is biased towards retro products, so Akihabara is the best place to find a full range of products. However, the touts of con cafes and maid cafes fill the streets, and the area visible from the street is full of prize figures of jump characters and gacha game series to appeal to foreigners. For me, as an otaku who prefers daker things, I felt some form of mismatch.
Whether it is three-dimensional women (idol culture) or Jump characters, of course they are part of otaku culture, but it is a culture of people who are somewhat on the “lightside”. While this culture should exist because some otaku are looking for “fleshiness,” the two elements of con-cafés and prizes are too prominent, and tourists are looking for them, giving the darker otaku in Japan the impression that Akihabara is no longer “theirs” at first glance. Books and PC parts can be bought online, and the card game culture can give off the smell of money.
The MANDARAKE tower is still packed, and the soft vinyl store in the annex has a particularly nice selection, but that is only a few percent of the Akihabara component, and if anything, Nakano has a better selection of this retro, dense element. Nowadays, otaku do not find much reason to go all the way to Akihabara. Instead, the number of tourists is increasing, and the “easy-to-understand otaku culture” that they like is proliferating. However, recently I have been looking at the streamers of Hololive EN and the overseas otaku through them, and I am beginning to think that this may be a good thing as it is.
If it's a sacred place for someone, it doesn't have to be exclusively for the Japanese. The FWMC girls chose Akihabara as the stage for the 3D debut of their holo-EN talent. Fuwamoko, who, more than anyone else, has a greater admiration for Japanese otaku culture than the Japanese, and are prepared to take advantage of their twin status to make “otaku are erotic moe characters that give dreams” a reality. They are determined to be “eroge-like moe characters who give otaku dreams”. Therefore, even in today's Hololive, where basically no panties are allowed to be on show, these girls naturally show their striped panties in Akihabara. Whenever a typical bishojo character appears in Akihabara, there is always a service scene. This is the ironclad rule of “moe moe bishojo” that has been followed in succession since Komugi chan.
Nowadays, when a Japanese character takes place in Akihabara, it is not surprising that he or she is perceived as a “niwaka” (not cultured). We don't appreciate Akiba in its current state. However, English-speaking otaku are forever fascinated by Japanese otaku culture and its symbol, Akihabara, as seen on the Internet, and now that Japan has specialized in inbound travel and made it easier to visit, they are making trips to the sacred sites.
Obviously, it is not a sacred place from the Japanese point of view, but still, for otaku across the sea, it is a “dream” to be bathed in moe in Akihabara, and this is the only such place in the world (well, Nakano Broadway has also seen a crazy increase in tourists). Japan itself has to become a tourist destination due to its declining population. NGO/NSO's pop-up store also attracted tens of millions of yen from overseas customers alone. They are more passionate about subculture (especially in Japan, which was leading the way at the time), and I don't want to extinguish that fire.
Now that Japanese otaku are beginning to split apart, at least for them Akihabara is the very thing they long for, the otaku culture that is the ally of the lonely who never fit in at school, so as long as there are people who love it, it can specialize and evolve in that way. Akihabara, the residue of hope where dreams and moe once existed.