I'm curious about something, regarding Lucky Star that is. What should I call someone who is a total nerd, yet is also friendly, sociable, and functional like Kona-chan? I don't think it would be right to call her an otaku, since that's insulting in Japanese, (and also insulting to me) and 'nerd' 'geek' and 'dweeb' could also be insulting. And I myself am like her to a mild degree. (Yeah, I love animation, games, and manga. No, I don't smell really bad.) What should we call ourselves? And that's when it hit me.
We are modern day scholars.
In olden times, scholars were people who read lots of books, scrolls, and more books. They were highly learned of many things. But back in ancient times, the only media that existed was the printed word. Nowadays, in addition to that, we also have television, video games, (well, some games are artistic) the internet, comics, doujin communities, et cetera. Kona-chan even mentioned in an episode that even though Japanese people don't read as many books as they used to, many Japanese people still read, it's just that they mostly read other stuff, like blogs, internet articles, and even manga. But yet, you could still learn a lot from these.
I'm the same way. I read a lot of text in some videogames, and though graphic novel may not be as wordy as regular novels, you still read them like any other book. And though television is often accused of dumbing people down, that is only true of some shows. Some tv shows will actually make you smarter after watching them. Many of my favorite tv shows are intelligent like that; Curb Your Enthusiasm, Futurama, and The Shield make you think, as opposed to something like, say, The A-Team. All you get from that is . . . well, it had a cool theme song. And Mr. T memes.
So that's what we are, 21st century scholars. Kona-chan may not look it, but she's a scholar. And so am I. But I don't play dating sims. Unless if Persona 3 counts.
