7.1. What is an otaku?

Otaku is a polite word that means "you" (see also 10.1. What are the personal pronouns of Japanese? ) or "your household" or "your house". Taku means "residence" or "home" and the o- in front of the word makes it more polite. Because of the respect implied the meaning becomes "your home". Serious anime (Japanese animated film) fans and computer geeks started calling each other otaku, which is not terribly weird, since it does mean "you", but normally people would move to less formal words once they get to know each other. From this, people outside the anime world began to use otaku-zoku (roughly, "the otaku people" or "groups that say otaku"), and it has now come to mean "somebody that gets fanatical about their hobby" when used in such a context. From this usage, American anime fans have taken to using the word otaku to mean "anime fan", without, necessarily, the pejorative overtones associated with the word in Japanese.

Edited from a post by David Luke.

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