"Otaku," originally, is a polite Japanese pronoun meaning "you." However, it has also come to mean someone who is an obsessive fan of something -- and by obsessive, I mean putting their fandom, whatever it may be, before such niceties as bathing, eating, or the biological drive to reproduce. In English, "otaku" has come to mean one specific species of obsessive fan; that of Japanese animation, or "anime." Otaku watch anime by the boatloads; they absorb every aspect of Japanese culture they can find like a sponge; they all want to be anime voice actors when they graduate from high school, despite the fact that they will never watch anime dubbed into English -- it's subtitled or nothing, because they are all very apt at detecting minor emotional inflections of a foreign language.
As you may have guessed already, I am not an otaku. And I find those who are at best mildly amusing; at worst, rather annoying. (Indeed, I will often mock them when I get the chance.) They are devoted to their fandom to the degree that they sprinkle their everyday speech with Japanese words and phrases; they consume Pocky and sushi and sake at every chance; they spend inordinate lengths of time babbling about the deep mysteries of Evangelion or Gundam Wing (hint: there aren't any). Japanese culture, people and animation are far superior to anything coming out of America, and they throw fits when you refer to anime as "cartoons," as this word should only be used in reference to those things America makes which are for kids and kids only and could never be as cool as anime.
Of course, I'm making broad generalizations here. Not all otaku are this "bad;" or, rather, not all anime fans are otaku. There are people who can take a shot of FLCL with a Chuck Jones Daffy Duck toon as a chaser, and find the aspects of each that make them both remarkable. If they go to anime conventions, they don't dress up as their favorite Dragonball Z character and stage mock battles with other people who have dressed up as their charater's enemy. Instead of Pocky, they much Nestlé Flipz, which can be found at a third of the price in grocery stores nationwide. I'd like to count myself amongst these "normal" fans of anime. Still, to be a fan of anime, or animation in general, is to be one amongst otaku, for better or worse, so let's let them have their day.
Otaku Unite, directed by Eric Bresler, is a seventy-minute documentary of otaku culture. Compiled from countless hours of interviews and convention footage compiled over the last three years, Otaku Unite! aims to be a well-researched, wide-reaching mirror on the colorful otaku lifestyle, and it succeeds. The presentation that went into Otaku Unite's production was pleasantly high. It would be easy to take a Camcorder to a bunch of anime fests, interview people in hallways and booths, and slap it together in Windows Movie Maker and sell it as a documentary; to tell the truth, this is what I was expecting. I was pleasantly surprised, as I always am, when Otaku Unite! surpassed my expectations; this is a documentary on a level that could easily go on PBS.
Otaku Unite! blends both fun and knowledge well. One of the "fun" characters is John Cook, or DJ Johnny Otaku, the self-proclaimed "hardest-working anime fan in the Tennessee Valley, and damn proud of it." We follow along as he visits an anime convention and takes place in a "cosplay," or costume play, competition. (The editing when the verdict is announced is genius.) On the other hand is Frederik L Schodt, a "scholar" of manga (Japanese comic books) who has written a couple of books on the subject and gave some good historical background as to the presence and popularity of anime in America. For me, this historical stuff was the most interesting, but it was kind of skimpy in the more contemporary-oriented Otaku Unite. Another fascinating interview was Carl Macek, the producer of Robotech and a man who is still considered an antichrist in some circles; he created Robotech by editing together footage from various anime series so that what us Americans came to know as Robotech] bared a scant resemblance to the original Japanese productions. To anime purists who don't want to see anime edited in any way for American audiences, this is like an infraction of natural law.