By Annie Wei (Beijing Today)
Updated: 2008-03-26 11:10

Wang Fan, a 25-year-old former otaku, has a new Web site at znanziny.com to help other addicts buck what Wang said is an impassive lifestyle.

The otaku culture was once unique to Japan, where people over 20 years old retreat from the world by funneling all their time, money and energy into odd hobbies. The otaku is obsessed over animation, characters, the techniques of media creation, comics, video games, voice actors and just about anything else.

**Retreat from reality

Hu Liangxi, vice director of social education and research at Zhongshan University, breaks China’s otaku into three levels. The serious oaku retreats entirely into his room and refuses to communicate with anyone, even parents. They only exit their rooms to eat. The less serious otaku can still manage basic communication with family. The entry level otaku only associates with other students who go straight home after school.

Hu said an institute in Hong Kong researched the local school-going population and found 7,000 adolescents fit the otaku profile. “I estimate thre may be 20,000 by now,” Hu said. Chen Liru, a physiologist in Guangzhou, said teenagers easily hide from disappointment or failure in reality by retreating into a visual world.

“The generation born in the 1980s is te first group of only-childs. They were spoiled,” Chen said. When it is time for them to step into society and face failure, many abandon ship and become otaku

Hu said otaku are formed by their families. Parents who pamper and dote on their children and worry they may make bad friends prefer to keep them home, where they spend considerable time on the Internet, Hu said. If they spend all their time playing computer games, the parents assume all is well and make sure their meals are always ready.

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