Sunday, May 14, 2006

Something Worse Than Wapanese
Yesterday, I came across this. Its this guy's LJ rant about how he is otakukin, and everyone needs to respect that. Otakukin? Excuse me? Is someone starting a religion based on an anime?

For it to make sense, you need to be familiar with Otherkin. An otherkin is someone who believes that they are an animal, fairy, elf, ect. on the inside. that they have the soul of that creature. To a lot of people, otherkin beliefs sound stupid. Otherkin beliefs fit, to an extent, with pagan beliefs if reincarnation and other worlds. The idea behind otherkin is that the creature you identify with does exist in some other realm. For instance, there are many pagans who believe that fairies, vampires, unicorns, and dragons exist on the astral realm. The astral realm is thought of as the realm of the unconcious, sort of like where dreams come from, the realm spirits and angels exist in. The animal otherkins are more believable, and is based on the idea of reincarnation. Therians [animal otherkins] believe that they have the soul of a particular animal. There are a wealth of theories on how an animal soul ends up in a human body, such as the animal's soul getting accidently shoved into a human body at the last second, or the animal soul not having its memory erased when it was reincarnated as a human.
While you may not agree with these beliefs, they're pretty harmless. They stretch things a little, granted, but they at least have launching points in established beliefs. And, all the things otherkin idnetify as have some basis in mythologies, folklore, or zoology. Fairies were once held to be completely real, as were dragons and unicorns. These are outdated beliefs, certainly, but they were, at some point, widely held beliefs.

Then, there are the otakukin. Whats an otakukin, you ask? They are people who believe they have the same spiritual connections that an otherkin has to a mythical creature, except with an anime charater. As in, "I was Inuyasha in my past life. They made the anime about me." yeah. Just like that.
This is all based on the idea that fictional people have souls. I think that, if you're going to argue that something has a soul, it has to have an idependent conciousness. that means it needs to be able to think and make desicions for itself. So, it can be argued that animals and humans have souls, that angels and demons [or whatever names you choose for non-physical entities] have souls, and [maybe] that plants have souls.
But, anime and video game characters are only as real as their animators and voice actors make them. The character can have a 'personality' that would be expressed in the way it is drawn, and how the actor voices it, but once the animators and actors are done, the character is just a bunch of lines on paper or polygons on a screen. Its almost difficult to tear this idea down without saying that this is just insane. But it is-lots of otherkin claim to be otherkin because they want attention, or because its a coping mechanism. I'm not saying all of them do it, because that isn't true, but there are many people who do that. But at least otherkins have the common sense to choose a creature with a historical or zoological basis! But what events lead someone to think that they're really Sailor Moon, or any other anime character?
Otakukin are people who cannot tell reality from fiction. They simply do not realize that the character they think the are never existed and will never exist. It is fake. there is no semblence of proof whatsoever. Nothing.
As mentioned before, someone would probably become otakukin as a way to cope. I can actually use personal experience here. I was seven or eight when my parents got divorced, and it was pretty devestating and scary. Around this time, I was a big Sonic fan. I loved playing the old sega games and reading the comic books. I even had a Sonic halloween costume. When the divorce was finalized, mom and i moved to a new town where a lot of the other kids made fun of me. So, I started pretending I was Sonic. Sonic spent most of his time saving the world. In the games, Dr. Eggman was always threatening everything Sonic cared about, and in the comic books Sonics friends were always getting kidnapped and turned into robots. It made my problems seem smaller. After all, both my parents were alive. Nobody I cared about had been turned into a robot. No one was trying to take over my world. Really, I was on the right track to becoming an otakukin. Only I grew out of it. And...When you are seven or eight years old, its okay to act like that. Kids that age dont have the coping skills older children do. Otakukin, however, are not children. Most of them are adults. Whats their excuse?
I'm still trying to fathom this, so there will be more ranting soon. I'm just amazed that there are people out there who seriously think they're final fantasy characters...

For more on Otakukin check out A Public Warning About Otakukins
And From Fiction, An "Official" Otakukin Site

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