Today’s otaku have it better. The label has lost some of its sting; concurrently, more sites of "otaku-ness" have sprung up. Tokyo’s Akihabara has become probably the most recognizable otaku town in the world. Local authorities have embraced that identity, holding frequent festivals and welcoming fans. Increased public recognition has also helped broaden the culture; no longer confined to the image of an person-less room overstuffed with pop-culture flotsam, otaku can take on more positive meanings. It’s not just the obsessive, withdrawn loner — though that picture may never completely dissipate — now it can be the ardent, passionate expert.

"It’s a slippery term, as a lot of my interviews demonstrate," Galbraith says, "A lot of people mobilize that term, with all of its historical baggage, but also all of its present meanings. I think because otaku is such a loaded and powerful word, it’s useful to talk through the possible ways you can make the label significant in your life. Whether good or bad." Galbraith has taken on the label for himself: since discovering VHS copies of Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind and Bubblegum Crisis as a youngster in Alaska, he’s become a self-proclaimed otaku. He’s cosplayed as Super Saiyan Goku from Dragon Ball Z and led audio tours of Akihabara, not just as a scholar, but as a participant.

That gives him a different perspective than some of his more theoretically minded colleagues. And it goes hand-in-hand with a strong sense of responsibility toward his subjects. With Otaku Spaces, he consciously set out to counter the myth of Miyazaki, the madman alone in his room. "It's too much of a temptation to fall back on these stereotypes and tropes," he says, "without someone there to check you on it." His check is the people he talks with, often spending hours on a single interview. As his work reveals, they can speak candidly and with remarkable self-awareness about being otaku — whatever that means to them. Far from Miyazaki's empty room, they occupy spaces of life, surrounded by the things they love and eager to tell their own stories.