Female otaku: Geeky gals' fantasies every bit as goofy as guys'
By Masuo Kamiyama
Contributing Writer
http://mdn.mainichi.co.jp/waiwai/0506/18geek.html
Eight minutes away from JR Ikebukuro station, adjacent to the Sunshine City building complex, one comes to the mecca of female geekdom: Kei Books -- which operates two large stores selling products related comics and animated cartoons, and Mandarake, the more recently opened branch of a major chain specializing in used manga "classics."
"Guys give me romantic comic books to try to attract my attention," a 24-year-old woman from Ibaraki Prefecture, shopping at Mandarake, tells Aera (6/20). "This time I only sold 10 books, and bought five. That's nothing, really; once my friend from Iwate spent 100,000 yen on comics."
In the current patois, girls who men have seduced through such stratagems are referred to as "fujo," literally a spoiled or rotten girl. Infatuated with manga or cartoon characters, they daydream continuously of the kind of emotionally stirring encounters within their own world of fantasy.
"We may very well be rotten," giggles a 21-year-old who works as a shopkeeper. "When I'm on the train, I might see a pair of good-looking young guys and my imagination starts churning scenarios and won't stop. I'm a rotten girl, so I guess it just can't be helped."
After such women marry, they can keep their spoiled status, substituting the character "fu" as used in "shufu" (housewife) or "kifujin" (a lady of rank) with a different character pronounced "fu" but which means "rotten."
Other examples of their specialized vocabulary include "yaoi" and "boizu rabu" (i.e., boy's love, sometimes abbreviated BL). Yaoi applies when the progagonist in a manga or novel makes a reappearance in a spin-off or sequel. BL refers to an original work. Other often-used terms include the letter "x," which is used to link two male characters who engage in "coupling," pairing off to form a romantic relationship (or engage in sex), with the former indicating the active participant and the latter the passive. In the popular comic "The Prince of Tennis" (abbreviated "tenipuri") for example, "Tezuka x Fuji" means Tezuka took the more aggressive male role and Fuji the passive role in the relationship.
One reason why these fujo females, or geeky gals if you prefer, head for Ikebukuro instead of the nerdy male mecca of Akihabara is because they tend to avoid shopping in the same stores.
"I really get turned off seeing male otaku drooling over those figures drawn with enormous breasts -- disgusting," grunts one.
"The comic market that appeals to cliques of female readers has become as big as the male-oriented sector," says the manager of Mandarake's Ikebukuro store, which opened last year. "Store rents in this area aren't that high, so it was easy for us to open up a shop."
Aera identifies some of the major cliques for geeky gals as "gunji" (comic stories about men in uniform); "namamono" (which appeal to fans of actual male actors); and "teni-puri" (a term derived from "Tenisu no Ooji-sama" (The Prince of Tennis), which first appeared in Shonen Jump magazine from 1999.
Ranging in age from early teens to their 30s, geeky gals tend to converge on such shops on weekends after paydays and often carry home several tens of thousands of yen worth of merchandise -- a sure sign of dyed-in-the-wool geekdom.
The more successful publishers catering to fujo groupies are reaping big financial rewards. Last year, a major comic fair held at Tokyo's Ariake rang up single-day manga sales of 6 million yen. But does this fascination with fantasy figures indicate the fujo have sworn off real sex? Apparently not.
"As far as I'm concerned, they're completely separate entities," laughs a gal in her 20s, who says she's enjoying a normal relationship with her boyfriend. "One has nothing to do with the other." |
