The Evolution of the Otaku Room
- Categories: Anime, News
- Date: Apr 16, 2010 10:30 JST
- Tags: Anime Goods, Collections, Comparison, Moe, NewType, Otaku
The evolution of the otaku room from 1985 to the present is tackled in the below series of illustrations, showing just how far otaku have come (or, possibly, fallen).
From the pages of Newtype:
Genzai (Translator’s note: genzai means now):

A standard creepy eroge otaku room tour:
Whether this can be described as evolution or devolution is perhaps an interesting question.










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Will someone be so kind as to post the YT video link. I don't have flash and can't even install it since I don't use Linux, Windows or Mac OS X(I use OpenBSB).
somebody should make a prediction drawing on what otaku room might look like in 15 years, and after 15 years we will all have a look and laugh at how stone age our mind was.
plus...
this is already 2010, where is my talking robot cat with a pocket that have all the awesome stuff!??!??!
Devolution... Definitely a devolution. Mainly due to the fuck pillows and the strait up porn on the walls. That's basically like giving up on even the slightest possibility of ever having a girl in your room. I mean I'm a complete nerd so my future prospects depend on a chick being ok with that, but I don't go out of my way NOT to get laid. Its like they declared war on getting laid or something. Or am I wrong and missing the point? I don't think I am.
I agree with you. I dig nerdy and geeky guys who share my love for anime and manga, but I would never date a guy with a room like that. In the non anime/manga world, the equivalent would be some creepy guy with humongous posters of porn stars all over their rooms.
Anyway not that they care anyway; probably only interested in 2D characters.
I'd have some posters of some anime characters from a series I like just to show I am a fan, maybe also an epic Deadmau5 one (would it mix? :P) But porn? Pfff. I like it when they wear clothes (im talking about girl characters).
Seeing a Hatsune Miku poster in her normal costume is better than one where shes naked... Lol you kno what Im saying?
I wonder if he would commit suicide if a fire were to consumes his room.
Good evolution.
Haha I saw this on Desudesu about a week ago~
But yeah I noticed it kinda went from grungy + robots to clean + girl figures/posters
I wonder if you broke into that house and stole all that stuff (thats if he ever leaves) how much could you sell all that stuff over the net for
damn nice system he gots there!
lol... I actually have that same wire shelving as in the 'genzai' pic... It also makes up my desk. I got the idea from okama's workspace. :3 (I was already buying that type of shelving for bookcases, it never occurred to me to make the new desk out of it too!)
Other than that, I'm more pre-moe otaku...which fits because I don't go in for the whole moe craze. But with even more emphasis on gaming over anime. (I have an arcade cabinet~)
Maybe even a little more conservative like the paleo-otaku, and I do have a couple 'model gun' lying around to scare the living fuck out of people. (Unintentionally, I assure you! It's not my fault I forget to hide them before inviting in the mormons or JW's when they come knocking!)
Genzai means now...and Moo means moo....and keikaku means plan
I really want to see how a fujoshi's room looks like.
Where does the guy puts his clothes? I didn't saw any closet...
haha, you think he has more than one set? poor naiife.
man its sad i can spot a laserdisk player in a drawing despite never having seen one IRL.
Should I be proud I have an even more extensive collection than him?
His looks great only because his room is small. And the eroge tower only contains 65 games, a number easily surpassed by anyone dedicated enough.
Proud? Only if you are impressed by little plastic figures and someone who has dozens of pornography games.
yes, I would call that to be proud
You should make a video tour of your room then. I was impressed by the room on this video. First time seeing one of this rooms. Mine looks so empty....
OMG!! Watching the tour vid,... this fella must not eat or poop. Where is the door!!!!
Srsly,...
Nice,...
But where is the sub-woofers? You can't have a good surround sound set up without the sub-woofers. For that deep rumbling effects when playing games. Guess they're forbiden by mom & dad, coz they'll disturb mom & dad and the neighbors.
At least this one is neat and mostly tidy. Unlike some really creepy and scary ones.
At least this otaku, isn't a sole dedicated fanatic to niches.
As I'm sure there are the extremists, that give the rest of us a shitty reputaiton among the commoners.
o.o*?!?!?!?!
looks like otaku's hideout room on video
O//O あの初年。。。
It's 「少年」。’
The last picture left out the 3 boxes of Kleenex and the scruffy beard and mustache on the person sitting in the chair, along with several opened and empty pizza boxes.
I'd love to see how such a room handles earthquakes
all i can say is epic
Way too cramped, that's my main concern. (and look at that tall computer screen)
"Oh, and I have a ton of alcohol. I find this existance quite depressing too."
In my country people think that being a otaku is to watch anime lol
I declare the last room delishuz
if he can afford buying all the things in that room... why not get a place with a separate, better room? :/
that d00d stole my rig. Lulz jk. feels good to see similar rig.
i never thought of that, placing a projector in your room. but still EVERYTHING inside his room is SWEET.
cool room.
I agree. Awesome room.
for some reasons i envy this mother fucker
Notice how the figures have been replaced with Touhou plushies...
This guy is saying : "I'm virgin, and im okay with that"
Hs very confidence of hmself or very stupid...
My dream room would have the normal stuff ppl want like a beast gaming rig, Subwoofer, PS3, HD TV etc.
But I want some figures and a Miku hologram to go with it XD Maybe some posters and a shelf full of my favorite manga and anime.
Why is he saying "キモ?" Is it the person's room or someone else's?
my room looks like the paleo otaku old games and old school stuff im not in to moe
the last pic is wrong. nowadays most otaku are about 4 times the size of the guy in the picture.
godzilla?
Windows were replaced by MS Windows, lol :)
and the price = no girlfriend
you're getting it wrong. its no girlfriend = ability to afford such prices.
true.
The 1985 otaku room should have an MSX or NEC computer if he's Japanese ,a C64 or Atari computer if American, or a Spectrum or BBC micro if British.
If he's rich he'd have a PC-98,Mac,Atari ST,Amiga, or IBM.
And VHS and Beta videos took up more space than DVDs and raws...
kimoo~ >..>
its less cluttered now!
I want a neat Otaku room like the last illustration.
A evolution in tech but a devolution in quality anime :p
TRUER WORDS NEVER SPOKEN.
agree
there are almost always prices to pay in certain times.You either take the risks or not.But in times of recesion the risks cannot be so big,though otaku still buy without problem i guess.Also technology,can i be lazy with stories,they had to rely more on stories when they didn't have the best technology,so you get in one way lazy or other or you can actualy combine both greatness
Plus obvious factor that otaku are almost like test subjects on what they will buy and not.I think some of these anime are truly testing people.
A standard creepy eroge otaku room tour:
*watching video*
That is c r e e p y. . . *shivering*
Whats really creepy is it looked similar to owr own rooms, then you'd know you were truly...
OTAKU.
Its EVOLUTION
soon the otaku's shall rule the world ^-^
they're getting more bishie over time.. how nice.
Mr.Darwin would be proud of this
So otaku learned to clean their rooms?
Yes, since otakus nowdays have more money and anime stuff to buy they need their room clean so they will have more space for new stuff.
I think otaku just cleans the room for the sole purpose of his/her figurines to look good lol!
Yep, as you can see they now have enough room for a bed.
So Otaku are the Extreme gamers who Evolved into hentai?
xD
Super Nintendo, Saturn gamestation....PORN,
PORN, Hentai, BodyPillows, PorNNNN,Laptop
xD
it's all about a new way to fap..
so they used to fap to famicom pixel characters?
...I did. I used to even edit sprites to make them naked for such a purpose...
I would love to have a 2 bedroom apartment and make a room like this~
I'll make sure it's tightly lock and that the door is hidden by a wardrobe~...
It'll be my own secret base~
Afterall with that much stuff you tend to not notice when things get stolen
Having a room behind your wardrobe would be the epitome of coolness. Especially if it was underground.
I do have one room that looks a little like the 1995 room except with a few flat screens.
It's also full of test equipment and vintage computer hardware.
from what i can tell, rooms gotten smaller, rooms are more organized(some are) and prominently richer (and perhaps less healthy)
Yep, rooms are getting smaller and the otakus are getting richer..
When has it ever been healthy?
DOH!!!!
And the artist's art style is evolving too....
Imagine Doraemon vs Kirby.... LOLZ
In the US rooms have gotten larger over time.
The most disturbing thing about the genzai room is no windows.
it has, but there are behind the courtains of girls
There are windows.
The diffrence is that in the last picture they are digital not IRL.
The existance of CCCP means that the MS brand of Windows with all of its bars and windows will be present in any modern otaku room.
Of course I recomend the japanese kind(theme-- Nanami Madobe) of Windows for the added otaku pleasure.
No, not necessarily. You can play back pretty much anything in Unix-like OSes with no problems. At it's very core, CCCP uses libavcodec (through either ffdshow or built-in MPC filters), which is portable to virtually every platform in existence, and was originally developed for Linux anyway. Of course, you have to know your stuff in order to get it to work...
I know a guy with absolutely no windows or Windows whatsoever in his room. Doesn't impede his ability to watch anime in any way.
What does the Soviet Union have to do with anything???
If anything, windows seem to be an accidental feature of the otaku room.
Close the world
He probably bricked up the windows so that he would not have to see the Real World.
The future otaku will sit naked in a sterile white box with a single monitor and a feedback attachment on his dick.
and that's the problem. dbz didn't have enough tea drinking and now the series is dead... for that sole reason.
Window=less poster space.
And less holes for big brother to peek into you.
txen eht nepO
wow... just wow
i think im kinda jealous of that guy in the vid oO
im kinda willing to bet that those guys are marketing strategists, just take a look at all the stuff they can afford with their (most probably) low income
one can only wonder i'd say
At least they aren't sitting around and drinking tea.
Umm... hate to break it to you but shounen itself is pretty generic.
Ah, the perpetual devolution of otaku and anime. Pre-moe was an acceptable time period todays story-void moe-blob vomit is going to end up killing off the industry.
@16:24
I agree, Moe is choking the life out of Anime.
All my shonen heroes are dead and gone.
Has nobody made the correlation, that the window space seems to have been replaced by the ever increasing size of the TV screen?
evolution or devolution. NO, its a revolution!!!
i don't understand why they change the drawing style
hey he is making good use of space. Compare that to messy rooms and it's quit something else.
i wonder how its going to be in the future
I love the room, lots of the things he has I wish I had lol
One of my bigger concerns about rooms like this in general is the fact that the computer gear is all kept in tight confined spaces where heat buildup is quite high.
Anime to me is only second to my computer gear as it is not only my meal ticket but it's what lets me make money to get more stuff :3
If anything I'm the type that treat my computers better than I treat children... :3
@Char
Nah, there are windows that you can't see from the angle (I've never seen a room without a window aside from some lavatories), but where's your defense? You spend most of your time in a cockpit covered in screens, not windows.
I'm facing windows right now, if you know what I mean =p
Good luck trying to get fresh air from a TV.
TV is the new window to your soul
I pose the idea that there are windows, but they are covered with posters or some such as we all know most otaku are as pale as an albino.
I like to have some sun in my room and be able to air it out.
But yes there likely is a window it's just covered with poster or on the wall we cannot see.
well my room is of the same side, and i to far from japan XD!
The "Genzai" is quite standard, but that vid is more like "hardcore"...
One step in da room and i might cum already