7th Otaku Haiku Awards “Excessively Harsh”

The winners to the 7th otaku haiku awards have been announced, with thousands of dollars of cash prizes rewarding those best able to capture the ennui of otaku life in 5-7-5 haiku verse. Sankaku Complex has humbly endeavoured to provide such crude translations of their poetic elegance as are possible in a mere barbarian tongue.

The originals:

The “godliness prize” (grand prize) winner, winning ¥100,000, and with winners determined by user voting:

From the first son on

Each of them turn to 2D

3D home ruined

The 2nd and 3rd place “genius prize” winners each get ¥50,000.

Second:

Thirty-nine years old

Without money, without wife

Without any hurry

Third:

The girl who I like

Without any struggle for her

We talk together

Entries four through eight each get ¥10,000 prizes. The fourth entry, an onomatopoeic representation of “otaku laughter,” attraced much attention, though it is completely untranslatable, and, as might be expected, some of the runners-up were similarly abstruse.

Other highlights:

Sixth (Sagawa is the name of a delivery company):

Today yet again

The man from Sagawa comes

Telling me to sign

Ninth:

She is now my wife

So the author must now be

My father-in-law

And by way of an omake, the ¥50,000 2D and 3D nekomimi character audition prizes:

Sankaku Complex’s contribution:

Otaku haiku

Most lonely of pursuits yet

The harshest of truths