Anti-establishment post-cringe pure-honesty "otaku fashion": a little experiment
Much to the disappointment of myself and Harunobu Madarame, I have become interested in fashion; though
it's perhaps more accurate to say that I've learned to accept my interest in clothes as an extension of
aesthetic expression, instead of a knee-jerk dismisal of it. Though my interest in fashion is still
deeply rooted in how it provides a platform of self-expression and social-commentary through a silent
performance. I've since been personally "working" on ""cultivating""" a personal style: a collision of
the fundamentally "anti-cool" Akiba-kei uniform with a contemporaneous Japanese-flavored
streetwear
style. My aesthetic ultimately boils down to a streamlining of "clusterpunk" and wearing Nijigen Cospa
tees. By most accounts I perhaps dress worse than I did before but my intent was never to seek
validation.
Anyways, this is going to be a work-in-progress project for a while, I am sure of that.
nijigen cospa
(wrote this off-the-cuff; I'll come back and iron this out later ww) Nijigen Cospa is a sub-label of the
Cospa brand, specializing in nijigen (二次元), or 2D, character goods.
The brand produces many officially licensed clothing for popular otaku media franchises, with
products including but
not limited to:
full-graphic printed t-shirts, graphic t-shirts, hoodies, Hawaiian shirts, customized jeans and more!
The key difference between Nijigen Cospa and mainline Cospa are the intended demographic of the buyer.
For example, mainline Cospa will release more mainstream appealing clothes, like merchendise for the
Dreamcast's Anniversary or Gundam, whereas Nijigen Cospa will release otaku goods with a stronger
emphasis on
2D characters.
Sizing tends to fit ever-so-slightly smaller than average American clothes.
or reference I'm 5'9" 130lbs and buy a size large for a slightly baggier fit. Medium can often run a
little
snug. The blanks are medium-weight cotton and fit nicely, however they most likely will shrink in the
drier so I recommend
to size up once from your typical American/European size. If you happen to be in Japan or buying a new
item, the dimensions will (almost) always be included on the Cospa tag in centimeters, so know your
measurements! Sizing might be subject to change on older t-shirts but I'd hazard a guess and say they
fit a little smaller than current Cospa.
Here is a rough size chart:
pit-to-pit
length
small
49cm
65cm
medium
52cm
69cm
large
72cm
55cm
x-large
58cm
77cm
Probably the biggest problem with (Nijigen) Cospa is print fading. It seems to be more of an issue with
specific designs on full-print cotton t-shirts, as the more dry-fit/athletic shirts are less prone
to this. The prints tend to fade rather quickly and is more noticable on the darker color shirts but is
pretty obvious on white shirts as well. For
example, my Yukinoshita Yukino t-shirt faded really quickly since the print colors were more blue and
purple, it started to blend more into the dark shirt.
Look: I was a lazy university student so I threw all my clothes in a washing machine on cold then put it
all into the drier so my "technique" was not "optimal," sure. Though it does still seem to be a problem
for many of their shirts based on used listings online. To protect against this you can wash shirts
inside-out then air-dry, and generally follow the care instructions printed on the tags. Being lazy like
me won't destroy your shirts but they might fade a little quicker than you'd expect from a Triforce tee
you bought at Walmart.
Akiba-kei (秋葉系) is a Japanese slang term; deriving the term from “Akiba” from Akihabara and the
suffix
“-kei” indicting a particular lineage or style. It is used to refer to a specific brand of otaku
who
appear to spend a lot of time in Akihabara, which is widely known as the epicenter for modern Japanese
visual culture. Media primarily consisting of, but not limited to: Japanese animation, manga, video
games and idol music.
These otaku fit the classical image of what the Japanese media outlets of the early-to-mid-2000’s
depicted otaku as, contrary to the vilification during the decades prior to the turn of the century.
This was due to Japan’s somewhat controversial “Cool Japan” agenda which pushed popular-culture to the
forefront of its national relations campaign in order to appeal to global cultures through their unique
art. While beneficial to their global market, relations and perception, many otaku took offense to this
new agenda as they viewed it as a pacification of otaku culture; something they were previously
criticized for being, now being sterilized and normalized. However, I cannot stress enough how this
“pacification” of the otaku image was a necessary evil, regardless of how I or other otaku feel about
it. Hardly a decade prior, the aforementioned Miyazaki Tsutomu had become the face of otaku across the
nation and tainted the subculture as denpa otoko– disillusioned, disassociating men. Men who were
unable
to distinguish twisted fantasy from reality. Biased media coverage painted a favorable conclusion and
brought national attention to the dangers of otaku media. Housewives whispered on the streets about how
they couldn’t believe their neighbor’s son was watching Urusei Yatsura and drew pretty young
girls in
school notebooks. “Cool Japan” attempted to reconstruct the troubled history of otaku media within Japan
through sterilization. Consequently, the modern otaku image transformed and resulted in the harmless
plaid-shirt bandana-wearing slightly-overweight otaku who spoke with slurred speech who wandered the
streets of Akihabara, occasionally saving women on trains.
Many social critics such as superflat artist Murakami Takashi have likened post-war Japan as having
become emasculated. Murakami believes pop-culture icons such as Sanrio’s Hello Kitty have tainted the
country in a permanently pink warm-blanket, in the process shifting their focus away from the errors of
old by means of kawaii character goods. Taking Murakami’s analysis further, we can conclude that
the
prevalence of moe> and kawaii> within media, especially otaku media, likely stems from a
similar source.
Akihabara has enjoyed its own unique subculture surrounding and is exemplified in Akiba-kei, a subset of
the more general otaku culture, but retains a unique identity within the larger subculture. Thus,
Akiba-kei has evolved to become a more quote-unquote "performative" aesthetic that is characterized
through
a masquerade of Golden Age otaku idiosyncracies, though that isn't to say that it's disingenuous. In a
sense Akiba-kei is the Japanese take on clusterpunk in that they are both attempting to capture
the pure-hearted essence of the socially-unaware, transforming the traditonally percieved absent-minded
"uncool"-ness of otaku a more deliberate aesthetic decision.
