Page "Otaku no Video" Paragraph 4

A controversial & humorous part of Otaku no Video was the inclusion of live-action documentary excerpts, titled " A Portrait of an Otaku ".

In these segments, the documentary crew would interview an anonymous otaku, typically ashamed at being a fan and whose face are censored with a mosaic and have their voices digitally masked.

The mock documentary segments serve as a counterpoint to the anime: while the anime emphasizes the camaradrie, creativity, and dreams of mainstream acceptance of otaku, the mock interviews exaggerate its negative qualities.

The subjects run the gamut of the otaku subculture: the interviews cover a cosplayer who now works as a computer programmer and outright denies his cosplay days, even when presented with photographic evidence, but keeps his Char Aznable helmet in his desk drawer, an airsoft otaku, a garage kit otaku, and a shut-in who videorecords television programs for trade, but has not actually watched anything he's recorded.

The interviews also contain fans who engage in a range of illicit or unsavory activities, such as cel thieves, a pornography fan attempting to manufacture glasses to defeat the mosaic censorship common in Japanese porno videos and who is shown masturbating during the interview, and a computer gamer, who looks like Gainax member Hideaki Anno, obsessed with a character in a hentai computer game ( Noriko from Gunbuster who makes a cameo in Gainax's own hentai game: Cybernetic High School ).