No One Understands Onimai
What if I told you that Onimai isn’t just some weird lolicon pandering show, but actually provides a useful case study in understanding the psychology and origins of Japanese anime manga fandom? Of course, on the surface this anime is anything but intellectually stimulating. Onimai is weird. Extremely weird. And the more you think about the premise, the more bizarre it becomes, but I think many of the show’s detractors fundamentally misunderstand Onimai and its appeal.
For the uninitiated, Onimai, full title Onii-Chan wa Oshimai or Onii-Chan is done for, is a lightly controversial anime manga series about a shut-in NEET named Mahiro Oyama who gets drugged by his younger sister, Mihari, and is magically transformed into an middle school aged girl. For whatever reason, instead of patenting her invention that can reverse aging and change someone’s sex, Mihari uses her new pharmaceutical miracle drug to save her brother from being a NEET instead of selling it to big pharma which is weirdly wholesome, I guess.
As the story progresses, Mahiro adapts to his new body and role as Mihari’s little sister. Eventually he starts going outside and even enrolls in elementary school. Again, perhaps just a little weird.
The original manga was actually extremely popular in Japan. A 2020 web poll of the manga readers most wanted to see adapted into anime, Onimai placed third. Beating out Chainsaw Man and Spy X Family. A 2021 poll placed Onimai at seventh. Just one place below Spy X Family and barely edging out Komi-San Can’t Communicate. But the Onimai anime faced a, let’s say, troubled debut in the West. Unsurprisingly, the illustrious Western anime journalistic class panned the show. Writers for Anime News Network referred to the show as “pure lolicon garbage” and centered on a “pedophilic gaze.” Another referred to the show as “horrific.” For totally separate reasons, the show became the center of a minor Twitter controversy of whether the show counts as a kind of transgender allegory. For what it’s worth, Mahiro uses the pronoun “Ore,” which is generally seen as a very masculine way of addressing oneself.
But I want to argue that viewing Onimai as a story about the pedophilic sexualization of young girls or as a transgender story is, in both cases, reductive at best. Rather, I want to make the case that Onimai is the product of the specific characteristics and consumptive behaviors of Japanese otaku. Onimai is a story about seeking alternatives, particularly of how what seems to be a problematic attraction to fictional girls is really a way to escape hegemonic norms of sexuality and gender.
To unpack what I mean here, we have to start by what otaku are, where the subculture originated and how that origin is deeply intertwined with an affinity for cute girls or bishoujo. Most people are familiar with the term otaku as a slang term to refer to someone with an obsessive interest, typically in the realm of anime and manga. The term originates from the Japanese word お宅 which is a kind of formal way of referring to one’s house. But the lesser known history of otaku is that the modern image of a person, typically a young man, with extreme affinity for anime and manga, originated with male fans of shoujo manga. Prior to the 1970s, the style of Japanese comics most popular with boys and young men was called gekiga, literally dramatic picture. Gekiga utilized bold lines, sharp angles and dark cross- hatching to create a sense of realism, the aesthetic anthesis of the soft lines, round shapes and light shading that are prevalent in modern manga.
During the 1970s, while gekiga began to stagnate and lose relevance, Shoujo manga, ostensibly aimed at girls and young women, underwent a major transformation. The largely female Shoujo manga artists began to experiment with more complex, mature and even sexual themes in their work. It’s from here that the bishounen, or beautiful boy, character originates.
It’s from bishounen that the bishoujo characters that are so ubiquitous in modern manga and anime descend. The development of the bishoujo, and by extension lolicon, is most associated with the manga artist Azuma Hideo. While erotic gekiga did exist, Azuma instead took inspiration from Shoujo manga, taking the aesthetic trappings of shoujo manga and applying them to create cute, round girl characters. In 1979 Azuma, among other shoujo inspired male artists, published the fan magazine Cybele, which was most known for an erotic parody of Little Red Riding Hood created by Azuma, kicking off what later would be described as the “lolicon boom.”
At this point it’s worth briefly exploring the etymology of the word “lolicon.” A portmanteau of the term “lolita complex,” the phrase originates from the 1955 novel Lolita by Russian novelist Validmir Nabokov. In the book, a middle-aged literature professor known only as Humbert Humbert becomes obsessed with and sexually abuses a 12 year old girl. Understandably, because of this origin Lolicon evokes highly suspect images of illicit predators and illegal relationships with children in the Western imagination.
But in the Japanese context, that association isn’t as clear. Consider the subculture of Lolita fashion that is popular in Japan, which is really only related to the Nabokov novel in a perfunctory way, if at all. During the so-called lolicon boom of the 1980s, the term lolicon generally did not refer to older men sexually desiring young girls but rather a more general affinity for fictional girls often associated with male shoujo fans.
The popularity and reach of lolicon at this time also complicates notions of there being some kind of clean distinction between upstanding, mature, “serious” anime and degenerate lolicon garbage. Shows like Space Battleship Yamato, Mobile Suit Gundam, or Super Dimensional Fortress Macross, which are often held up as examples of “serious” and “mature” anime, all feature a cute girl character who became popular with and often sexualized by fans. Miyazaki Hayao’s directorial debut, The Castle of Cagliostro, became extremely popular with lolicon fans, specifically because of the character Clarisse. Miyazaki, for his part, hated the fact that his character was so popular with lolicon fans and publicly expressed his ire at this reality, but the popularity of Clarisse among lolicon fans ultimately played an influential role in raising Miyzaki’s profile as a director.
It’s in this context that we see otaku start to take shape as a term for someone with an unhealthy and often dysfunctional relationship with anime and manga. Funnily enough, this connotation of otaku originates from the popular lolicon fan magazine Manga Burikko. Starting in June of 1983, Nakamori Akio began publishing a column in Manga Burikko entitled “Otaku no Kenkyuu” or Otaku Research. In it, Nakamori begins to denigrate manga anime otaku, particularly those with an affinity for lolicon or fictional girls. He describes otaku as failed men and their affinity for fictional girls and women over real ones is symptomatic of psychosocial dysfunction as well as mental and sexual immaturity. He argues that otaku are unable or unwilling to grow up and assume normal adult responsibilities and roles like joining the workforce and raising a family. The crux of the problem for Nakamori and his protege Eiji Sonata is that otaku have an immature, perverse, and “disgusting” affinity for fiction over reality.
This description brings us back to Onimai and its main character Mahiro. Mahiro is, for all intents and purposes, the pinnacle of this “failed man” that Nakamori described. He becomes despondent over his inability to measure up to his genius little sister and becomes an otaku NEET as a result. The fact that literally turning back into a little girl effectively cured him of being a NEET reinforces the contention that otaku are immature and unwilling to grow up.
But I’d argue that it’s not the becoming a young girl itself that explains Mahiro’s improvement in mental state, rather it’s how this position removes the difficult societal expectations he felt burdened by, which is ultimately why I don’t think this is really a transgender allegory. There’s reference in the manga how Mahiro and Mihari used to have a very close relationship as kids, but Mahiro slowly closed himself off because he couldn’t live up to the expectations of being Mihari’s older brother. I think Mahiro’s position as someone who’s unable and uncomfortable with the societal expectations foisted upon him helps to explain why this manga is so popular, particularly among Japanese viewers.
While a case can be made that the anime in particular sexualizes Mahiro, I don’t think the fanservice is really what draws people to the series. I imagine that if you were to ask people why they enjoy reading or watching Onimai, I highly doubt you’d get a bunch of responses saying that they’re in it to get their rocks off to Mahiro. Most people would probably say something about how they enjoy how the story is fun and lighthearted. But moreso, I think Mahiro’s pre transformation dilemma resonates with many readers, which is an underrated reason for Onimai’s popularity and surprisingly broad appeal.
In the early 1990s, the Japanese asset price bubble popped, plunging the Japanese economy into a deep economic malaise that the country has never recovered from. The bad economy left many young people adrift, unable to find good jobs and start families. It’s not a coincidence that it’s also around this time, in the early 1990s to mid 1990s that we see the affection and desire otaku show for fiction characters, particularly bishoujo, take off in popularity.
While the Japanese economy writ large was struggling, the anime manga industry was booming. One show in particular, the 1995 Neon Genesis Evangelion, transformed the anime industry with its explosive popularity. One of the most concrete demonstrations of that popularity was the reaction to the character of Rei Ayanami. Rei was apparently so obscenely popular and so appealing to many otaku, that Eva reportedly increased the market for character figurines 10 fold.
One of the effects of Eva was not the “normalization”, per say, of being in love with a fictional character, but such feelings certainly became much more common after the show came out. It wasn’t uncommon among otaku for their first love to be a bishoujo character like Rei. Unsurprisingly, this trend would continue into the late 1990s and 2000s with the development of an entire genre entirely dedicated to the escapades of cute anime girls.
In his book Otaku and the Struggle for Imagination in Japan, the cultural anthropologist Patrick W. Galbraith, who has basically become the preeminent English voice on otaku and lolicon, describes an interview he did with a man named Honda Tōru. Honda struggled with depression and suicidal ideations, finding solace in anime, which is says “saved his life.” He attempted, unsuccessfully, to quit being an otaku and join “normal” society. As he explains, loving fictional characters is a “low-cost, low-stress” way of finding meaning in a society increasingly beset by economic and social woes, where traditional norms of masculinity and success become less and less attainable. Honda’s story is representative of many of the other voices that have appeared in Galbraith’s works, people who find solace in the 2D world after being alienated from the 3D one.
An important point to emphasize is that otaku are not unable to distinguish between reality and fiction, as is sometimes insinuated. The original concern and apprehension towards Otaku, popularized by Akio in his Manga Burikko column, was that otaku have a perverse and demented preference for 2D women over 3D ones. What I’m ultimately trying to get at is that preference for 2D anime girls is not necessarily indicative of psycho-social dysfunction, but rather as an alternative way of approaching sexuality and gender.
Bringing it back to Onimai, Mahiro becoming a cute girl is symbolic of how many otaku find solace in fictional characters. Mahiro is “saved” from his asocial lifestyle by literally becoming the bishoujo that he and many other otaku idolize. This idea of “saving” otaku from their lifestyles is somewhat of a trope itself, even in anime and manga. For example, Welcome to the NHK is ostensibly also about an asocial, otaku NEET who is coaxed back into normal society. But the popularizer of this idea was the franchise Densha Otoko or Train Man that became extremely popular in Japan during the mid 2000s.
Densha Otoko is allegedly based on the true story from the text board 2channel. The story chronicles a 23 year old otaku who intervenes to stop a group of women from being harassed by a drunk man on a train, hence the title Train Man. The Train Man eventually goes on to date one of the women, known only as Hermès. The popularity of the story inspired something of a paradigm shift in Japan. While the story perpetuates certain stereotypes of otaku slovenly and asocial, it reframed the discussion away from notions that otaku here inherently perverse, sociopathic or dangerous, an image spread by the media in the wake of a series of heinous murders that were wrongfully attributed to anime and manga consumption.
At its core, the idea of Densha Otoko is that otaku are just misunderstood men waiting for the right woman to come along. Implicitly, the idea is that otaku can be “saved” from their lifestyle and said path to salvation lay in entering into a traditional, heterosexual relationship. This is also a theme reinforced in Welcome to the NHK, which follows a similar story beat. In both cases, a traditional heterosexual romance is central to the main character’s “rehabilitation” back into normal society.
Onimai takes a very different perspective on this issue of “fixing” otaku. Onimai is, at its core, a story about a young man who turned into a neet because of his inability to live up to the pressure society placed on him. While works like Densha Otoko or Welcome to the NHK, at least implicitly, suggest that otaku can “grow out” of their obsession and return to societally acceptable states of being, Onimai seems to do the opposite.
Mahiro, instead of “growing up” literally regresses in age, becoming a young girl. But becoming a young girl then frees him from the expectations that crippled his life, eventually allowing him to progressively return to a “normal” life. The popularity of Onimai is reflective of how that story resonates with many otaku, of how manga and anime provide an alternative way to understand sexuality, gender and “growing up” than becoming a salary man who works himself to death and starts a family with a wife and kids he barely sees.
One way to read this is that perhaps otaku are just fundamentally immature and maladjusted. Turning into a young girl as a way to escape social realities seems to reinforce this. But I’m not sure this is the case.
In his book Beautiful Fighting Girl, the psychiatrist Saito Tamaki documents his research and understanding of otaku and otaku sexuality. His key argument is that otaku’s affinity for 2D girls is not the result of sexual perversion and immaturity, but an alternative understanding of the distinctions between “reality” and “fiction.”
Saito uses the Japanese term for reality 現実 (genjitsu) to refer to what’s understood as the “real world.” He then uses the English loan world リアリティ “riariti” to refer to the perceived reality of fictional worlds. He argues that for otaku, genjitsu is not intrinsically better than riariti and that their attraction to anime girls is precisely because of their fictional nature, not because they resemble real 3D women. In the context of Onimai, I don’t necessarily think that most fans of the story literally want to become young girls, but rather the distinct fictionality of the story, particularly in the context of escaping social or economic pressures, is a relatable draw for many readers and watchers.
Ultimately, Onimai is not a story about pedophilia and I don’t really think its meant to be read as a transgender story, though many it is popular with many transgender people. Onimai is the product of particular histories and connotations surrounding Japanese otaku. For those who are drawn to anime and manga because they feel alienated from societal expectations that don’t want to or cannot live up to, Onimai is an interesting thought experiment in what it would be like to live with those expectations removed, to step into the role of the cute girls that, for many, give a reason for living.
Sources and Further Reading:
Galbraith, Patrick W. Otaku and the Struggle for Imagination in Japan. Durham: Duke University Press, 2019.
Galbraith, Patrick W., Thiam Huat Kam, and Bjorn-Ole Kamm, eds. Debating Otaku in Contemporary Japan. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2015.
Saito, Tamaki. Beautiful Fighting Girl. Translated by Keith Vincent and Dawn Lawson. Minneapolis Minn.: University of Minnesota Press, 2011.
