Word. Yeah, I`m just being a bit combative for the sake of international comparison. I`m 100% sure (without laying out 5 man for a PS3) that MGS4 is going to be anti-war. I am in full agreement with Marxy`s asseration that the recent case is due to mental illness.

東京・秋葉原の無差別殺傷事件について、東京都の石原慎太郎知事は１０日、都庁内で報道陣の取材に応じ、行政として未然に防ぐことはできるのかとの質問に対して「そんなこと、できませんよ。時代の文明はみんなでつくったもんだ」と述べた。さらに「警察力強化で防げる問題じゃない。人間の内面の問題だ」と指摘した。

　石原知事は「ああいう人間っているよね。ただ、ああいう形で爆発するかしないかってのは、時代も背景にあるんでしょうけど。みんな鬱屈（うっくつ）してるよ、今の日本人は」と吐き捨て、「文明の便宜が進んでも、人間はやっぱり芯（しん）は孤独になっている感じがする」と語った。

He is quite right this time.

Yeah,But that happens in a far away land and Snake is fighting against armed soldiers….

Predate this incident,about two weeks ago,there was a deadly neighbor raped and killed a young woman who lives on the same floor of his apartment,chopped her into pieces and flashed in the toilet.The killer was a computer system engineer who is a heavy addict on video games,so naturlly media focused on “otaku”background too.

But passer-by killings happens so often nowadays(Ibaragi in March,Fukuoka in April and it was coincidence but the day,June 8th was the day 37years old man had killed 8 elementary school children in Osaka 7 years ago)the point of the discussion is why this happens so often instead of
blaming Otakus.

This thread is excellent (love how it ends up probing 40s-60s nationalism).

In any case, I think that `otaku culture` consumers are entrenched and diverse enough to endure any sort of blow at this point. I was as sickened as anyone by this attack (and glad that the Japanese press did indeed pay a lot of attention to the victims, family interviews on TV, etc.) but still bought the new volume of Baki today….

Ace – GTA is not big in Japan but isn`t the soon to earn hundreds of millions Solid Snake the videogameland master of the survival knife?

Is it “sad”? Or is it that many of us are still coming to terms with the fact that we could very easily have been standing in the wrong spot at the wrong time?

That this is a monumental tragedy for the victims and their families does not somehow make it inconsiderate to discuss the why this individual specifically chose Akihabara (as opposed to Shibuya, which he actually drove through) or the why the media is hell-bent on portraying him as a certain type of individual.

Deep reporting. As Shin-Ichi Karasawa and Toshio Okada remark in the book Otaku-Ron, “these days, if you define ‘otaku’ as ‘someone who watches anime,’ you’re describing half of the people on the planet.”

I think Aceface is right…this is what really needs to be addressed. It’s seems exactly like the boom in group suicides a few years ago. Not sure if anyone remembers this incident:
http://uk.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUKT27676320070516

It happened about an hour away from where I live. The Reuters article focuses on the juvenile crime aspect, but if you read the Japanese wikipedia entry, he says almost the same thing – 誰でもいいから殺そうと考えていた:
http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E4%BC%9A%E6%B4%A5%E8%8B%A5%E6%9D%BE%E6%AF%8D%E8%A6%AA%E6%AE%BA%E5%AE%B3%E4%BA%8B%E4%BB%B6