The word “otaku” has come to mean a very specific thing in the West. It is generally taken to mean “an obsessive fan of anime and manga”. In Japan, it is a different matter. There the word can be applied to being a passionate fan of anything. Anime and manga certainly, but also trains, military, games, or building electronics. Generally considered oddities for not fitting into social norms, they didn't gain notoriety until the late 80s. At this time a number of incidents, including the infamous “Otaku Killer” in 1989, caused a shift in perception of otaku to being deviant and dangerous. Enter “Otaku no Video” (1991), a two-episode Ova produced by the legendary Studio Gainax that captures the essence of what being an otaku truly means.

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In 1982, Kubo is a young college student involved in his school's tennis team and seeing his girlfriend Yoshiko.