By Bryan Hartzheim
Otaku Fantasy
Densha Otoko translates to Train Man. It's a semi-autobiographical account of a geeky fanboy's pursuit of Japanese hotness that has been translated to the screen. A bit of background is in order: an otaku, returning home from a shopping trip to anime/video game/hentai capital of the world Akihabara, bravely stands up to a drunken salaryman on a train and rescues a very pretty girl from the drunk's harassment. The girl is very grateful and asks the otaku for his address so she can send him a present in gratitude. Her elaborate thank-you arrives in the mail a few days later: an expensive Hermes teacup set.
This is too much for the otaku to bear; confused, afraid, excited, he tremblingly begins to log frequently onto an online chatroom titled “Poisonous Men” and receive advice from the regular habitants -- other losers and bored women, who reside in the room. He tells his brethren that he is courting the heavenly “Hermes” and he, Trainman, needs help on what to do. The otaku goes through a series of dates, an amazing set of Victorian hard times and trials and tribulations, but eventually lands the girl of his dreams.
More amazingly, Train Man is sub-headed. “A true love story," it's grainy origins are traced from the otaku himself: he copied and kept each and every thread of every chat and anthologized them into book form. The copies spread by word of mouth and the book was eventually made into several manga comics, and, finally a film and TV series, serialized just days apart; the TV series concluding just last October and finally completely released on DVD format last month. It was a huge sensation: books were bought, theatres were filled, DVD's and clothes were rented, teeth were gnashed. I was witness to a veritable orgy of Train Man love the minute my expatriate feet touched muggy Japanese soil. As I write this, there appears to be a Train Man play or musical about to debut.
Why the cause celebre? Well, the idea that a geek could find the courage and will to change from the advice and encouragement of strangers all over the country is primed naturally for easy adaptation and marketing fodder. There is nothing inherently intriguing about the story of loser-gets-the-girl, but the premise is attractive and helps explain why Train Man caught some fire even before it became the smash multimedia hit. Otaku have such a cultural stigma here, much more than a simple bookish nerd would in the states. I've seen grown men, comics jutting out of their briefcases, vociferously deny allegations of otaku like they were being accused of child molestation or membership in the yakuza mafia. The otakuza, on the other hand, are far less intimidating but just as socially repellent.
The idea that one of these creeps could somehow manage to get a beautiful girl through a superman-type stunt is really unbelievable stuff. The film and TV series, however, throw in another hook; we see each and every member in various settings of the chatroom post his and her ramblings directed at the anonymous Trainman. There are real people behind those faces, the screen formats argue, united in their hope for Trainman's success and each one a uniquely cheery version of Miss Lonelyhearts.
Not quite. In one of the series' few flaws, the online characters are not so much people than bizarre caricatures of people, robots with various programmable personalities -- the muscled goon, the lonely nurse, the bored retiree, the hermetic systems analyst set on “cheer mode.” There are ten 45-minute episodes, two 80-minute specials, and one feature length film dedicated to this ordeal. That's about 700 minutes of chatroom footage, and the most hostile character these guys can drum up in here is some crippled ex-basketball star too angry at the world for his own fate to offer kindly advice to the Trainman. In other words, the filmmakers would have us believe the entire WORLD (or at least the entire Japan) is on the side of the Trainman, and these sad and bitter fellows had better get with the computer program.
If the creators have ever set a cyber foot inside a chatroom, they would know that the Trainman's story just smacks of hagiography. The mantra of the chatroom posters is, “The girl you want is alone; on your side is ALL OF US.” Really? I know a few gentlemanly chaps who like to make regular appearances in these rooms to torment the weak when they're down. A typical posting would be something more like this:
Trainman
(19:39): Hello everyone! I just met the girl of my dreams and now I am very nervous as to what I should do next. She asked for my address and somehow now I have her phone number. Should I call her and ask her out for a date?
Anonymous
(19:40): Die :D
Yes, there are assholes in the world too. It's not something to shy away from, but the writers are too afraid of upsetting the carefully choreographed fantasy on display, that of plucky geek and his cohort of online cheerleaders wooing the maiden‘s heart, to show the world honestly. I mean, come on! Even the grumpy basketball star eventually sheds a tear at the innocent posturing of one of our hero otaku's sentimental posts.
I suppose the TV series does a better job at fleshing out these characters with some anime-like broad humor, replete with exaggerated reaction shots, than the brief film. The film resembles an attempt at art, however; the director sets a gentle and restrained mood, and the pacing is quick and exciting so you don't notice any of the many inconsistencies or inanities in the plot, such as the total lack of interesting dialogue between the two leads. It eventually comes to nothing, though; the otaku and girl somehow, inexplicably wind up in each other's arms. Movies today are far too long, but the film of Train Man could've been 20 minutes longer to flesh out the actual physical, not metaphysical, aspects of the romance.
The series, though, is just another display in a laundry list of Japanese prime-time weepies, severely hampered by formulaic tendencies located within the soap-operatic medium, and using a cloak of chatroom convos to mask its ordinary, gooey sweet center. Trainman will encounter a hurdle, this obstacle will be met with some huffing and puffing, possibly a teardrop in the eye, and then our hero will hop over this hurdle with the ease of an Olympic athlete. Every episode we are treated to at least one monologue concerning the value of love and sacrifice. And we are almost always treated to characters bawling blankly like idiots at their screens.
Would the omitting of sentimentality completely erase the odor of excrement wafting from this series' whole? Well, no. The premise itself is not up to snuff. Such a plot is uninteresting, devoid of conflict, so the writers invent an obsessed admirer to try and sabotage Trainman, but why must our dream girl be forced to choose between a pathetic wimp and a reformed otaku? The film gives absolutely NO reason why the female lead, the gorgeous Miki Nakatani, a woman so young, pretty, kind (she gives an otaku the time of day), and smart (speaks fluent English) would be single. The series attempts to explain this salient question of the even hotter Misaki Ito through a past trauma of a lying boyfriend, but this account just doesn't fit the bill. Never mind the fact that the angelic dream girl resembles nothing close to a developed character -- beautiful, intelligent women have no trouble courting dozens of guys, and not all of them will be the creeps that Trainman is conveniently faced with as sole competition. The series inadvertently even gives us an example of an overlooked specimen: a good-looking guy pins down the drunken salaryman on the train after our Trainman stands up to him. No reason is given as to why our dream girl make a pass at Trainman and not this other handsome dude.
If the series has one redeeming quality, it's the realistic performance of the lead otaku, Atsushi Ito (no relation to the above). All the film's otaku needed was a cool haircut and he was instantly transformed into a good-looking guy. Even his mannerisms ringed false; when nervous, the twitching of lips and eyes looked more like a man suffering from Turrets than social discomfiture. Not so with Ito. Scrawny, greasy, fuzzy-haired, he looks the part, all right. He also stutters CONSTANTLY throughout the entire series. While it can be grating, I dig the verisimilitude of the act; one is reminded of Kurosawa's Ikiru and its stammering parasite Watanabe or, more recently, the gawky mouth-breathing of another stubborn weirdo, Napoleon Dynamite. Ito is also amazingly attuned to even the wardrobe of his character; when he settles into his Gundam t-shirt, he seems to relax and lose the anxiety from wearing the tweed jackets and designer denim he must sport around his girlfriend or in public.
Atsushi Ito's performance is about the only believable thing in a supposed “true love story.” This beggars the question: who is to verify the veracity of this story? The Trainman and his girlfriend have chosen not to reveal their identities to keep their privacy. Possibly the reality of a fictional adaptation is neither here nor there, but when critical acumen is dismissed by simply saying it really happened, we can see just how much Train Man has benefited from that little sub-heading. At the very least, we should consider and expect more for dramatic reality. One may ask: how has the relationship progressed? Has the otaku's irritating personality quirks caused much shrieking and rending of hair? How hot is this woman really? Inquiring minds demand to know.
For those dedicated to the pursuit of higher learning and speaking truth to power, the original chatroom threads for Densha Otoko:
http://www.rinji.tv/densha/