OTAKU in Western nations

[I3uster]

I have Naruto volumes right until the part where it became really fucking bad.

[Kat]

^<3 Me too.

[Ivan The Mouse]

Almost no manga market here; No DVDs except pirated ones with subs; No much care about anime by the networks and sure as hell as I won't trust them with it anyway because our MTRCB, our media content board, will censor the hell out of it.

Motherfuckers.

[Polly]

I have Death Note manga and LNs, and a few volumes of Claymore and Berserk.
There are a few bookstores here that sell manga, but it's mostly just shounen shit in which I'm not interested.

As for anime, I don't think anything other than Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh and such stuff is licensed here. The only way to buy anime is to order it, and then there's the issue of 'Murricans having different coding for their Blu-Ray stuff. And even if that weren't a problem, there's still the issue of BD box sets costing hundreds of dollars that I don't have.

So I just settle for living a pirate's life.

[Kat]

but it's mostly just shounen shit in which I'm not interested.

Claymore and Death Note are shounens.

[Polly]

But they're not shit.

[Kat]

That I'll agree about though, but please specify. You probably mean "Big 3"?

[Spinach]

I have tons of Jump. I used to still get it monthly but my subscription ran out and IDC enough to renew it. My little sister went through a phase where she bought a few harem and shoujo manga and after she left that phase she just gave them to me (and I happily accepted because I like girl comics!). As for anime I have Samurai Champloo, Bebop, TTGL, Eva, Sword of the Stranger, Rebuild, Haruhi, Skycrawlers and Redline.

The only regretful purchase there being Eva. Still haven't watched it since buying it huehuehue.

[Polly]

Yeah, things like Naruto, Bleach... you know, mainstream shounen action.

Though, the number and quality of titles on sale is getting bigger and better.

[Kat]

We actually started with mostly some obscure things and Bleach and One Piece are newcomers to the market

[Polly]

With us it's reverse.

It started with popular titles like the Big Three and Death Note, and now we have Great Teacher Onizuka, Black Cat, Battle Royale, as well as some older classics like Battle Angel Alita.

[I3uster]

German manga translations go way back and we leech from them obv.

There even was a German Jump-like magazine thing called Banzai which got cancelled because people prefer buying the volumes. Since that shit was way more expensive than a Jump.

[Kat]

Great Teacher Onizuka was one of 'starter titles' that got people hooked up on manga. I have whole collection.

Christemo will never live it down, but you have good taste in that field, Polly.

[Polly]

German manga translations go way back and we leech from them obv.

There even was a German Jump-like magazine thing called Banzai which got cancelled because people prefer buying the volumes. Since that shit was way more expensive than a Jump.

Our titles are still mostly released in English.

Only a few of them, like Death Note, have been translated into Croatian thus far. I hope it stays like that.

[Kat]

I think that anything Polish is superior to VIZ, imo. But even fan translations are superior to VIZ.

[Polly]

Half my left temporal lobe got fried within a second after I first saw the translated volumes of Death Note.

I think manga should not be translated into Croatian. It's weird as fuck. And the translation was clunky.

[Kat]

Well, Polish Naruto translates every technique into awkward Polish equivalents, and made Killer Bee rap about raping Sasuke when owning him in a fight. I didn't get to read A vs Sasuke, bet I bet there are rape jokes too. Because black people.

[I3uster]

It's funny because our translations put in needless profanity to make the stuff seem more MATURE thus tainting weeb purity.

And then they do TRANSLATORS NOTE: KAGEBUNSHIN MEANS SHADOW CLONE anyway.

consistency

[Kat]

^So ironic given that German language Naruto animu is so censored.

[Gilgamesh]

I live on the East Coast of USA and I'd say there's a pretty decent market for anime and "otaku stuff" over here, at least compared to how I hear it is in the mid and southern section of this country. When I was in High School there were big enough groups of people openly expressing their love for this stuff that multiple groups of friends formed around it. It was common enough that they had manga in our school library and nobody would really question you for carrying around anime or manga. I think the only time I was treated as a bit weird or unsavory was when I was trying to explain how my interactive anime porn novels were totally legitimate works of art. Granted, I was pretty terrible at everything (as every teenager is) so I'm sure I came across as obnoxious about it. In my college we have an anime club literally called "Genshiken" (which I went to once and found wasn't for me, but I don't even watch much anime anymore so obviously also everyone still acted like High Schoolers and I've been out of HS for a couple years now) and a gaming club where Kingdom Hearts was voted the best video game ever (make of that what you will).

On a less personal level, I'm pretty sure the USA is home to some of the biggest non-Japan anime conventions. More telling is that we also have tons of small "local" ones. Lots of people go there to waste obscene amounts of money (I've only been twice, but both times I walked away with two figures and some manga). Of course this stuff will never be popular enough here to be anything more than a niche market and a somewhat under-recognized subculture, but if you know where to look you'll see it thriving.