>>119725
>I still don't feel like I'm an "otaku"
Why?

It's completely arbitrary.

I don't think there's a threshold for how many anime/manga/VNs you need to watch/read to be an otaku. If you consider otaku activities and culture to be a major part of your life and identity, then you can call yourself an otaku.

also saw it

When a 2D girl makes you moemoe~ you've successfully become an otaku.

>>119725
You need to have a waifu that you would lay down your life for

>>119726
I think it's probably because Touhou is the only franchise that I familiarized myself with, lots of anons here posts shabs that I can't name, and I feel like an idiot every time i encounter an anime girl that I'm not being able to name.
Also I've been meaning to get into Umineko and Ryukishi07 stuff but I keep lazing around... maybe I will one day

Going just by numbers is silly because anyone can watch a few hundred anime without particularly caring about them or otaku culture. It's also fine to experience many different interests/series and like all of them, or be more deeply into just one or a few things. Many touhou otaku are like that, they don't care about much other than touhou. Neither is less 'otaku' than the other. 'Otaku' is more a measure of how deep your passion for something is, which is impossible to measure and also rather arbitrary. In short, you're just an otaku when you feel like it.

> how deep your passion for something is
Otaku is also I feel a measure of how different your passion makes you from others. Just like, for a normie example, there are fans of a sports team and then the stereotypical beer guzzler with a painted face you imagine when you hear "the team's fandom," there's a gulf between someone who's seen Evangelion and someone who can't let girls into their apartment because of the posters. Even if you aren't a mega consumer, the conversation where you can't really talk about your interests is a big milestone for otakudom. Touhou is frequently like that, especially once you've actually played the games, but there are ppl just in it for the girls' designs too.

There's no rule and I personally believe it to not even matter beyond just describing things like the general atmosphere of a website or a rough outline of your interests as a whole. For example, a "gamer" will most likely refer to himself as such to signal a certain interest and not necessarily to show off or pride himself in some way.

>>119725
>animes and read like 2 mangas
Start by actually paying to terminology. It isn't 'animes' and mangas' with an 's'. It's just anime and manga even when plural.
As for what constitutes as an otaku, well, that's not an easy question. For some, it merely means being some huge geek/nerd about a particular hobby, essentially turbo-autism. That's why there are train otaku, military otaku, anime otaku, etc. For others, and probably the most seasoned old-school otaku, it's an entire subculture that goes far beyond the adopted western sense of the word. Personally, if you're really interested in what that subculture was all about, I'd do some research on fan spaces in japan from the eightes and nineties, and perhaps even the early 2000's too. There are also books in english regarding the topic too, such as 'Otaku:Japan's Database Animals' and 'Otaku and the Struggle for Imagination in Japan'.

>>119739
Otaku isn't a status symbol, after all. It's just something you are.

I don't understand the mentality of shitposting about otaku culture if you don't consider yourself one or get most of the culture surrounding it...

>>119732
I was almost in the same boat as you until not long ago when I decided to branch out a little more, and I think that is perfectly fine. Touhou is a massive franchise that has been an integral part of otaku culture for well over two decades. You are still an otaku if you are just hyper-specialized in a single franchise, some people are just like that.
I do think it depends on the franchise, though. If someone was only specialized on, say, Blue Archive, I wouldn't really consider them an otaku as BA just isn't culturally relevant enough to otaku culture. It might be a bit unfair and kind of a cop-out to say this sort of thing is a case-by-case basis, but that's really just how it is. In my opinion, at least.

If you can't name every shinkansen train model currently in operation you're not an otaku.

EVERYONE RUN THE TRAIN OTAKU FOUND KISSU

>>119744
If you can't name 30 race horses with history in the JRA then you're not an otaku

>>119736
>'Otaku' is more a measure of how deep your passion for something is, which is impossible to measure
No, it's possible. Just buying merch or being obsessed with lore of a franchise or the history of a hobby isn't quite close to becoming top 5% in your field just so you could insert your interests in there with others having to look at that, or analog drawing your favorite shabs with your blood - and drawing them so you'd finish on the day that's related to them by Chinese and Western horoscopes, but you shouldn't take too long, unless it's intended to use brown colors instead of red colors. Actually , it's even different for different people doing same thing. There's a person that wears their favorite franchise merchandise with no issues, and then there's the person who just can't get themselves to wear even an abstracted Easter Egg hint - if the latter gets themselves to wear it, it's more of an otaku achievement than for the former. We could start differentiating and categorizing the ontology, standards, and features of this.
What's most interesting isn't any of this "pedantry" (it seems fun to me), but, what IS "otaku"?
>and also rather arbitrary
My agreement is 100%.

>>119744
Shinkalion prepared me for this...

You are not otaku if you don't know about 2chan.

>>119725
Otaku is by definition just a hobbyist who spends a lot of time on his hobby.
It's not like there's a hard threshold after which you become otaku. You can watch hundreds of Animes and still be normie.

And besides I think it's pretty silly to care about a label in the first place.

the norms the

Some would argue its ascent into being accepted into mainstream culture in the early-mid 2000s effectively ended it as far as the classic definition goes. Following that, nobody can really be an otaku anymore unless you were grandfathered in, but you wouldn't even have any new media being produced for your ilk anyway so you'd just be sitting there reminiscing or telling people on the internet about the good old days.

>>119778 is right, "otaku" in English language is a dumb dinosaur misnomer with corrosive cross-national baggage that's stinky toxic ballast.

Just name yourself something new, like choudamashijin or something. Be sure to define what in the damnation do you mean by this in binary dichotomy verbal logics terms so it's not just another useless, pointless, expendable meme (VERY IMPORTANT!!!?)

>>119778
>but you wouldn't even have any new media being produced for your ilk anyway so you'd just be sitting there reminiscing or telling people on the internet about the good old days.
Do you have any idea how much Anime was made before it became mainstream?
Not three lifetimes would be enough to watch all of it.

>>119792
x4 speed multiwindowing, my beloved wwww

>>119790
I am a "Japanimation Extraordinaire". My appreciation for Japanese animation and the female characters within is beyond all measure.

>>119792
I think a subculture has to be alive in the present in order to be able to experience it. You can go back in time as a curiosity but the context for it to exist as it was is lost. If your subculture specifically has to do with something in the past, that's its own thing.

I am wæb

>>119804
A wæåbøø?

I'm a retard

>>119808
Slander

It's a bit of a blurry line but I think you can make a list of milestones/point system to check what level of otaku you are.
Level zero would be not even knowing that something's japanese in origin and just came across the media or merch. Assume a girl having some hello kitty sticker or a kid catching an episode of yugioh on TV with the 4kidz dub or a movie like kimi no nawa
Level one is a bit of a high gap where you'd be actively watching an anime, presumably from start to finish. So dubbed demon slayer or frieren's journey since everyone's buzzing about it. You're watching it because it's highly mainstream.
Level two is is the point just slightly before watching subbed stuff, you seek out numerous anime because the media form itself interests you. You're watching it because you're curious about anime media specifically.
Level three is similar to level two but you've got more than 20 to 30 shows watched. At this point you're not icked out by watching it with original japanese sub. I think this is where most modern anime fans are and the starting level where you'd be called a weeaboo.
Level four is where you'll start branching into manga as well. This is the point where it's more of a point system rather than a linear progression point, but if you've started reading manga as well you probably aren't gonna stop at one or two.
Since reading light novels is a much bigger time investment than manga, it's level five and the line where once crossed, you can't really not call yourself a weeb at this point.
Past level five is where I'd draw the line between "weeaboo" and "otaku". It's at this point where you're not really "passively" coming across something interesting to consume but actively searching for something very specific or picking up something with a steep time investment. You get your first proper obsession at this point and seek out as much extra content for some franchise as you can, a "completionist" sort of thing where you'll start checking official japanese sources for news on whatever got you hooked, and naturally also your first visual novels and the like. You've also heard enough raw japanese to know a reasonable amount of words and the japanese grammar, might be working towards studying it for real as well.
From there on out it really is just a point system. You might've had a few character crushes but you might discover a genuine waifu that you'll be thinking of for years and years. naturally you'll be studying japanese by this point, so the level you're at with that is also points. Reading and watching the media in raw japanese, reaching the point where you don't use subs at all, etc etc.
Basically you're a mere weeb up to level 5, and from level 6 you're an otaku but depending on how much you've invested, high level otaku might not really even see you as one.
I think once you hit level 4 most people just naturally progress towards 5 at varying speeds, whereas at 3 there's a cutoff barrier where people get enough of their fill and move to something else at some point later

when you start being ashamed of the label instead of being fascinated