Who payed the critics

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

I had Otaku No Video out of the library for a full three weeks before getting around to watching it. I had been put off by its reputation as a film with in jokes only truly understood by hard core anime fans.When I finally watched it, I found I had been mistaken. Although it has many in jokes, they do not spoil the fun of the movie. The true appeal of Otaku no Video is its loving yet still hilarious depiction of otaku. It explores virtually aspect of fandom, making it look fun even as it mocks it. It's enough to make you go on eBay or JBox and try to find a garage kit!Also, the film actually makes you care about its characters. Kubo and Tanaka are genuinely sympathetic, even to a non-otaku. Yes, they are socially awkward and obsessive, but the movie deals with this issue pretty well. For example, Kobu is shown to have been an obsessive tennis player before he was an otaku. As he asks at one point, why is playing tennis constantly fine while watching anime obsessively is bad?This is definitely a must for any anime fan, or any rabid genre fan for that matter.

I loved this anime! It's so hilarous and dead on in its presentation of anime fans and nerds in general. The anime is basically about this tennis jock who gives up his beautiful girlfriend and jock's life to be an anime nerd. The presentation of the "Otaku" in the film was very eeriely similar to how nerds behave here. I laughed hysterically...

Although there are four pages of extensive liner notes that explain every inside joke, reference, and parody, I feel that you have to have lived in Japan, with all these things going on around you, to truly appreciate this video. I didn't, so a lot of the jokes fell flat for me. The faux interviews were great--up there with Spinal Tap and Zelig--but the animated sequences weren't even up to par with Gainax' TV animation, and Otaku No Video is supposed to be an OAV (which usually garner a larger budget). Until the end, there really wasn't any animation that was striking--just reference, joke, look-alike, joke, joke, reference, and mainly to old television shows that I've never seen or didn't particularly care for.Beyond that, I have absolutely no idea how much has been fictionalized in this dramatization of the creation of Studio Gainax, so I don't know what's ridiculous or what's real (i.e. (spoilers) did they really can him while he was on an extended business trip to China/did his ex-girlfriend really saddle up with his conniving boss to oust him?)

"Otaku No Video" is to anime fans what "Trekkies" is to "Star Trek" fans. When you're watching this thing it's hard not to find yourself nodding "Yeah, that's me" or "I remember when that happened to me." ONV is something that anime fans can rally around and say with pride/shame "This is who we are!" The boys at Gainax were just brilliant with this. Not only are there more cameos and references to the world of anime/manga than even a Otaking can count, but they story is filled with characters that are just like people most anime fans know. And the interviews with "real" otaku are just a riot. And the thing that makes them funny is that you know that there really are guys like that out there. So otaku of the world take pride. Our mission to Otakunize the world has only just started!