How to better understand otaku culture through Rhythm Heaven

Since its recent U.S. release, Rhythm Heaven (aka Rhythm Tengoku Gold) has been described by other sites as quirky, tough, off-the-wall, strange, and weird. I'm from Tokyo, and I have a slightly different take on why this game is so awesome.

This game obviously isn't really about shooting piston pins into a square on a conveyer belt or about filling robots with fuel. I don't know that it's really only about rhythm, either, though that's a big part of it. There's something about Rhythm Heaven that speaks to the Japanese otaku in me. I'm going to try to explain what that is now.

In stage 1-2, you're a boy in a three-boy choir. If you don't sing your part exactly right, the boys next to you look at you with a sad face. And it makes you, the person playing the game, feel guilty for sucking. In a really sad way. This "guilty for sucking" feeling is very common among otaku. Have you ever seen the movie Train Man? Train Man is always, always apologizing for sucking. And then when the pretty girl tells him to stop apologizing, he apologizes for apologizing.

A typical otaku goes to work in the morning, works hard, keeps his figurine-collection a secret from his colleagues, and doesn't utter a word about his video game collection to his family at home. But on weekends, or after work even, he slips quietly out of Akihabara station and shuffles in a controlled, excited manner to his favorite venue, whether it's an anime shop or a maid cafe or a teen idol concert.

And then, when he gets there, he unleashes his inner excitement. Otaku are way too shy to bust out with their own made-up dance moves in front of other people. So instead, they go to organized concerts behind closed doors and darkened windows where everyone in the audience is focusing on one thing--the girl on stage--and they learn organized dance moves like the monkeys do as part of a fan cheering squad in stage 1-4.

This is a dance called otagei, a word made up by combining the word otaku with the character gei, often used to describe the arts. It is a native to Akihabara, possibly one of the newest dance forms in the world, and consists of repeated synchronized movements like waving arms, clapping, and chanting while a young idol girl sings on-stage. You see the guys in the crowd doing it in the video that Margaret posted in February of the girl singing the in-game song, too.

Finally, let's talk briefly about the lizards in stage 3-1. The object of this stage is to wag your lizard's tail in unison with the other lizard's so that he'll fall in love with you. The movement is a simple up-down-up-down, but as the beat gets faster, it's hard to keep the stylus' movements controlled. Even a tiny mis-wag will make him go all sad face on you. I don't think it's a coincidence that the big scary yellow lizard is female and the tiny cute green one is male. To a lot of otaku, women are scary, reptilian, over-the-top creatures.

Maybe I've smoked way too much pot, but I think Rhythm Heaven can be a conduit for gaining a deeper understanding of Japanese otaku culture. By playing this game, you can really understand what it feels like to feel guilty for sucking, to do organized dance moves with a bunch of monkeys, and to not be scared away by big aggressive lizard women.

Rhythm Heaven home [Nintendo]