In progress, I am writing this at 12:30 AM. This will be updated over the course of two days somewhat intermittently. If I add things, I’ll update accordingly with an update tag.
This is primarily the work of Patrick Galbraith, whose work is in the book Otaku: The Struggle for Imagination in Japan.
Please consider looking at the full interview and walkthrough. They’re both publicly available:
https://www.patreon.com/posts/115711535
https://www.patreon.com/posts/111088075
There aren’t that many sources to list here, it’s entirely based off Galbraith’s book. That said, some additional material is Kaiichiro Morikawa’s work (notably in The Moe Manifesto), and if you have access, Birth of the Personapolis (the original title is 趣都の誕生: 萌える都市アキハバラ). That book was what I used for some of the close-up shots.
This video isn’t to present an entirely apocalyptic vision of Akihabara. Instead, it focuses on the shifts. I think it’s a bit more elegiac. From my experience in Akihabara, it feels less like Morikawa’s “public” space, where the interests have spilled into public zones. While I’ve never been to Akihabara before coming to Japan, I have watched a lot of material around it, and it does seem to have more of an edge on impromptu public events.
There was one thing that wasn’t covered, and I never got to ask, and that’s the role of Tomohiro Kato - the spree killer. His attack - despite not being an otaku himself - once put Akihabara in the spotlight. After Kato’s Akihabara spree kill, the government executed the infamous “Otaku Killer” Tsutomu Miyazaki as a show of nontolerance of violent crime. It was interesting that they chose Miyazaki to punish Kato, who was attacking people in Akihabara.
Footage is possible thanks to a lot of maintained videos, specifically from older YouTubers such as:
Below is anikura, which is a somewhat different kind of fan engagement. However, it does have a lot of overlap and in many circles is seen as otaku activity. It often shows up a lot more outside of the cultural core of Tokyo:
Huge thanks to the playlist of materials provided by ErmiAnime, https://www.youtube.com/@ErmiAnime
Unfortunately because of bad cataloguing practices I have some videos I forgot where I got them from, so once I find them I’ll add them here.