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The story
Akihabara was once known as a hub for PCs and home electronics, while Shibuya was branded the “town for young people” — a place with little connection to otaku. There’s even a well-known story from 2006 in which a voice actor fan meetup had to hastily change its venue away from Shibuya. This time, though, an ad for “The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya” was reportedly put up at Shibuya’s famous Scramble Crossing, and nearby shops even hosted voice actor handshake events. On 5ch, this sparked surprised reactions that Shibuya has now joined Akihabara and Ikebukuro as an “otaku town.” Discussion ranged widely — from historical theories on how Akihabara became an otaku mecca in the first place, to the stark contrast with the 2000s when Comiket attendees were mocked behind their backs as “gross” (kinmo-☆), to claims that otaku culture has gone so mainstream it’s been “Uniqlo-ified.”
Twenty years ago, in 2006, a “1,000-yen off-line meetup” was held, hosted by voice actress Yurika Ochiai (known for roles like Konomi Yuzuhara in the bishoujo game “To Heart2,” now going by Yurika Tomori/Yurina Hase), and I, a fan, attended. Despite the shockingly low 1,000-yen entry fee, attendees got to enjoy Ochiai’s home cooking and even receive an autograph — a truly dreamlike experience.
This meetup has become something of a legend online, but Ochiai had originally planned to hold it in Shibuya. Just before the event, though, one prospective attendee said, “Shibuya is the town for young people — for Akiba-type otaku like me, stepping into Shibuya’s territory feels impossible,” and the venue was changed as a result.
Borrowing that attendee’s words, in the 2000s Shibuya seems to have clearly been the town of “young people” (the popular, non-otaku crowd), while Akihabara, by contrast, was the town of otaku.
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Read the original article here
What people said
Why did it turn into this weird otaku town?
Maids, cosplay, idols, figures…
none of that has anything to do with PCs or electronic parts, right?
How did this happen?
PC users and 18+ PC eroge (adult visual novel) users overlapped way too much.
Maid characters were a huge hit in eroge, so maid cafes exploded onto the scene.
Then it shifted into concept cafes, and the town became an erotic one.
Simple — the people who loved PCs and electronics were also into anime.
PCs → PC eroge → cosplay cafes based on PC eroge → maid cafes
First of all, you don't have a daughter.
Heck, you don't even have a wife.
Not sure what bishoujo game this is from, but Haruhi has crossed over into the Three Kingdoms world too now, so it's not even unnatural anymore.
She'll end up getting killed in a war, so don't do it.
and this after they'd shoved Animate off into some corner of town.
They built an even bigger one closer to the station.
Ikebukuro has morphed from "the capital of Saitama" into a giant Chinatown.
Looked around Yodobashi Akiba and about 95% of the people there were foreign tourists.
Back around 2010, nobody could've imagined this.
Even back in 2005, Comiket attendees were mocked behind their backs as "kinmo-☆" (creepy/gross).
Seeing it now welcomed into Shibuya as a bright, wholesome culture really feels like a different era.
Anime, games, voice actors — it's all gone mainstream now, to the point TV proudly covers it.
And with the internet as developed as it is, there's less and less need to even go shopping at a physical store in the first place.
Back when Michopa (a famous gal-fashion influencer) was the queen of gal style, she used to say she's an otaku too —
and she's actually really good at games.
Even when the parents' generation are otaku, they get married and raise their kids bonding over video games.
That's the kind of town Akihabara used to be, after all.
Once redevelopment kicked in, that ship had sailed.
Anime and manga are mainstream culture now, to the point the government officially champions them as policy.
Otaku identity itself has become stale, over-consumed content.
There's zero bottom-up innovation happening anymore — it's just the same marketing approach getting rehashed over and over.
What's called the "otaku community" today feels similar to the '90s, when high school girls all started buying up luxury brand bags and Louis Vuitton's brand value cratered as a result.
If you swap in "anime IP" for "brand name licensing," it's basically the exact same phenomenon.
https://imgur.com/a/XsXAIsJ
Shibuya now
https://imgur.com/a/qh5hEIz
Lol, all the people are just gone.
Makes me feel old, realizing I've reached the age where even the "back then" photo feels pretty recent.
Both look like they'd smell — deshou! (a "nazokake" riddle punchline; doing my best Nezucchi impression, the TV comedian famous for this riddle format)
Come to think of it, do today's kids even gather in physical places anymore?
Or is everyone just glued to their smartphones?
There's basically no young life forms to begin with.
like, "if you're into this hobby you can't go wrong."
It's become the ultimate basic staple.
Even department stores hold anime events now.
Otaku actually buy the stuff they want, after all.
And if you line up your merch for a photo on social media, you're guaranteed likes.
The shift toward "real-life" experiences is kind of right on the money — you can't get the maid cafe experience online.
Then again, Vtubers ended up filling that role instead, and even that seems to be fading now.
Background and key points of this discussion
Akihabara’s identity as an otaku town took root through the 2000s, when the spread of home PCs became intertwined with adult-game culture, and offshoots like maid cafes shaped the neighborhood’s image from there. In recent years, though, a surge in inbound tourism has pushed the ratio of tourists so high that, from locals’ perspective, the “otaku town” character is arguably fading. Opinions in the thread split between those who see otaku culture going mainstream as a positive, and those who view it more critically as having been thoroughly consumed and flattened into generic content by marketing — the “Uniqlo-ification” argument. It’s also worth noting that the original article only reports on ads and shop promotions in one part of Shibuya; it doesn’t mean the whole of Shibuya has become a permanent otaku commercial district the way Akihabara has.
※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (News Speed+) thread “[Culture] Akihabara, Ikebukuro, and now the new “otaku town” Shibuya — “The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya” at the Scramble Crossing, voice actor handshake events at shops.”
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