Otaku no Video (1991)

Memorable, crazy movie

How sad is this?

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

This grab bag video features a fictional (and animated) story line of how some college anime fans came together, lost their other friends, flunked out, started an animation studio, got rich and eventually got to live out their futuristic sci-fi dreams. Actually this part was a thinly fictionalized and slightly idealized re-telling of how the real life GAINAX company came about. What makes it special, though, are its hilarious (live) 'documentary' interviews with anime fans which play like outtakes from some Japanese version of Slackers. Strictly for fans of the genre, - non-fans of anime will be confused and likely bored by all of the inside jokes and cryptic references, and even devoted anime fans might need to glance at liner notes from time to time - but this is a clever and entertaining exercise intended for insiders. Recommended if you are already an 'otaku'(obsessed fan).

I loved this anime! It's so hilarous and dead on in its presentation of anime fans and nerds in general. The anime is basically about this tennis jock who gives up his beautiful girlfriend and jock's life to be an anime nerd. The presentation of the "Otaku" in the film was very eeriely similar to how nerds behave here. I laughed hysterically...

Although there are four pages of extensive liner notes that explain every inside joke, reference, and parody, I feel that you have to have lived in Japan, with all these things going on around you, to truly appreciate this video. I didn't, so a lot of the jokes fell flat for me. The faux interviews were great--up there with Spinal Tap and Zelig--but the animated sequences weren't even up to par with Gainax' TV animation, and Otaku No Video is supposed to be an OAV (which usually garner a larger budget). Until the end, there really wasn't any animation that was striking--just reference, joke, look-alike, joke, joke, reference, and mainly to old television shows that I've never seen or didn't particularly care for.Beyond that, I have absolutely no idea how much has been fictionalized in this dramatization of the creation of Studio Gainax, so I don't know what's ridiculous or what's real (i.e. (spoilers) did they really can him while he was on an extended business trip to China/did his ex-girlfriend really saddle up with his conniving boss to oust him?)

A video made by otaku, for otaku, about otaku. This is what Gainax set out to do in 1991, and it not only succeeds, but is the funniest (yet hilariously true) view of the obsessive fanatic I have seen! Any seasoned fan of anime will be brought to a smile by the tongue-in-cheek look in the mirror that Gainax has produced. From the joys of cosplay and the endless nights of watching tapes...garage kits and the industry in-jokes...cel thieves, magical girls...it's all here, folks! And the fake live-action otaku interviews are simply priceless. Watch...and learn. Maybe someday you too will aspire to be...the Otaking.