Otaku has evolved in interesting ways over the years, perhaps it can simply be defined in the Western world as a person who enjoys anime culture. But often we like to think of someone who is Otaku as a geek! Perhaps a gamer - a geeky, game lover, cosplayer, even though there's so much more to it, NEETS, Gamers, hikokomori are all related personalities with shared interests. But if you're looking for characters that come under the umbrella of geeky anime girls, look no further! Here are the best geeky anime girls and the best otaku and gamer girls in anime!
22. Tsukino Usagi from Sailor Moon - before Sailor Moon became Sailor Moon, Sailor Moon was herself a fangirl and a big fan of Sailor V at that: a superhero and pop culture icon that had her own show and game.
Usagi Tsukino was a big fan and aspired to become a superhero just like Sailor V.
She would often frequent the arcade to play the new Sailor V game with her crush, it's fair to call her a gamer girl, even if she wasn't well practised at playing games, so she gets her own cute little mention in this list!
21. Haruhi Suzumiya from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya
Anime - Haruhi is the leader of the SOS brigade, a school club obsessed with the supernatural that is on the lookout for aliens - something’s she’s obsessed with. She can easily be described as extroverted and attractive, but quirky and has a geekiness about her too. She feels obsessive about the paranormal, she lives in her own world and laments the behaviour of anyone she considers ‘normal’, which is almost everyone, and she also cosplays in every other episode (Otaku mode, check!)
20. Nao Kamiya
from iDOLM@STER
- a girl who is easily flustered trying to express herself, Nao Kamiya is an awkward secret otaku girl. She wants to become comfortable in her own skin and with being feminine and so decides to embark on her dream career, to become an idol, the most feminine thing she can think of. She joins 765 Productions, the company that trains all the idols in the series, to become more cute and girly and confident being and feeling feminine.
19. Maddy Iroaya from MegaMan NT Warrior
Anime - Maddy is one of the main villains in the original MegaMan NT Marrior run.
In this alternate future, the Internet has developed to such a point that people use ‘NetNavi’ to travel through a parallel online world which has the potential to impact our real world.
Alongside with her NetNavi ‘Wackoman/Colorman’, Maddy is introduced as being able to control the whole of Tokyo’s traffic system, causing car crashes left, right and center, even threatening the lives of our main characters. She eventually becomes a friend and ally to Lan, along with her fellow World Three members.
18. Erika Karisawa
from Durarara!!
Anime - a cool and peculiar, often hyper and enthusiastic girl who is a member of Dollars, an online gang with a group split between doing good and doing violent crimes.
Erika was once part of a far more dangerous group in the past, where she had the role of being an interrogator.
Her partner Walker worked alongside her as an arsonist, but the two of them really bond because of their Otaku vibes. She’s a big lover of anime and manga, it ends up working into her everyday life and at one point she was even told by Dollars to stay in the car during a raid because she would be too recognizable! Erika is also a cosplayer and a fujoshi, a fan of romantic male relationships in manga and novels.
17. Sensei
from Denki-gai no Honya-san
Anime - she spends her time working as a clerk at the Umanohone manga store and lives alone in her apartment. She picked up her nickname thanks to her dream of becoming the next great mangaka and she works hard at it too, staying overnight in the back of the store living off convenience store onigiri and bottled tea, forgoing a shower and washing in the sink instead. She is an avid reader of manga and often dresses in a quirky way, she could be described as shy on the outside due to not being confident with her outer appearance, and she prefers to escape in to manga than do anything else.
16. Yuuki Asuna from Sword Art Online
Anime - the premise of this story is that Asuna just wanted to try out a new game that her brother got, but ended up trapped in Sword Art Online alongside another 10,000 unlucky individuals.
Death in the game world means death in real life and as a result Asuna locks herself in a tavern for several weeks.
But she eventually realises that staying in a locked room forever cannot work - that she must go out and fight. She proves herself to be a worthy adversary, slaying monsters at incredible rates for EXP.
After beating SAO, she continues to game putting her avatar into ALfheim Online where she receives the nickname ‘Berserk Healer’ from her tactic of rushing in headfirst with a rapier despite being a healer.
15. Tamiya Nika from Switch Girl
Anime - a girl with the ability of a switch girl, in that she can change personalities freely - but there are only two other people who know about her special skill, her childhood best friend and a handsome guy who also possesses the same on/off personality skill. One who is able to switch between two personalities is often a common otaku girl archetype.
In public she appears perfect, beautiful, and outgoing but in private, she is messy, introverted and totally absorbed in her manga. Perhaps not exactly an anime, Switch Girl is a manga and live-action series that centres on Tamiya Nika, the most stylish and admired girl at her school.
Little do others know that at home her room is full of trash, unwashed mugs and full of piles of manga that have fallen off the shelves.
Extremely awkward in this form, she struggles to act normal around her crush, which leads to some hilarious and cute circumstances.
14. Fubuki from Arcade Gamer Fubuki
Anime - not to be confused with Fubuki from , Fubuki Sakuragasaki is a powerful gamer who, with the power of her Passion Panties, is able to enjoy amazing success in the Best of Arcade Gamer tournament, meaning that she becomes the greatest Arcade Gamer in the world! She is known for doing a magical girl transformation using her ‘passion panties’, in which state she is able to best anyone and everyone. However an evil organization is using the same competition for their own means and it's up to Fubuki to stop them. Arcade Gamer Fubuki may be a self-reflective parody of the whole gaming anime genre and Fubuki is one of the most powerful gamer girls in anime!
13. Narumi Momose
from Wotakoi: Love is Hard For Otakus
Anime - the name may give it away but this is a definite must for this list! It follows characters Narumi Momose and Hirotaka Nifujiare, who are an otaku couple. Narumi is a shy office worker who hides her fujoshi lifestyle and Hirotaka is a charming company man who is a game otaku, possibly a real life scenario! This series explores the roles otaku plays in peoples everyday lives. Narumi is quite reserved and studious, she doesn't want otaku to interfere with her work, whereas Hirotaka does not care and open flaunts how great he is at his games.
Though she’s nowhere as aggressively open about it as her love interest, Narumi really adores manga, anime, games and the like. The two seem perfect for each other but have different ways of loving otaku in their relationship.
12. Aoba Suzukaze
from New Game
Anime - a graphics artist newly employed at the Tokyo video game company Eagle Jump, she is a very talented artist and quickly rises through the ranks to become lead designer, even taking over the position of her idol Kou Yagami. Although we don't really get to see her game in the anime, we learn she is also a very keen gamer. She has a quirky, young and free spirited side to her and game design is most definitely her thing, her passion and everything she fangirls after.
11. Shiro
from No Game, No Life
Anime - Shiro is an eleven-year-old super genius NEET, hikikomori gamer who, along with her brother, Sora, are known as BLANK, two human gamers who were transported into a universe made entirely of games ruled by Tet, the god of games. Even though the siblings managed to defeat every human player online, it means the only enemy left is a literal god.
Despite her intelligence, she finds it difficult to read the moves of real people and read their emotions and behaviour, it is a whole language of its own and she finds their spontaneity confusing and must rely on Sora for help.
Their goal is to subdue all the civilizations in Tet’s world so they can challenge him one more time.
10. Kaho Hinata from Blend S
Anime - reknowned around town as a great and avid gamer, she works as a waitress at Café Stille, a maid café where everyone plays to a stereotype. Kaho, who is one of the youngest, plays the tsundere, which totally contradicts her actual personality.
She’s bubbly and cute but loves to visit the arcade whenever she can and big crowds tend to gather around watching her dance away on DDR (though they could be looking at more than her scoreboard!).
She once got locked inside the café overnight but really was terrified about whether the battery on her console would last her until the morning!
9. Kirino Kousaka
from Oreimo
Anime - Kirino is one of those perfect girls, a high achiever who seemingly lives a perfect life, with really good grades, amazing at sports and pretty enough to even model part time. Needless to say she is looked up to and idolised by many. But she has a secret, she is actually one of those ‘perfect in public, otaku at home’ archetypes and spends any money she has on adult rated games, manga and figurines to fuel her obsession! She manages to hide all this from her family and especially from her brother Kyosuke, who she never gets along with - until she misplaces an 18+ game and Kyosuke finds out her secret.
8. Umaru Doma from Imotou Umaru-Chan
Anime - another ‘perfect-in-public, Otaku at home’ archetype, little sister Umaru literally has two forms that no one but her brother realizes is the same person. In public she is the ideal student, with good looks and many talents, but she lives a secret life. Reverting in to her otaku form, she’s a two-foot-tall chibi hamster who throws tantrums all the time. She is also a well known gamer at the amusement arcade, where she goes by the initials UMR and she wears a mask to hide her identity.
7. Patricia Martin
from Lucky Star
Anime - Patricia Martin, known as Patty, is an exchange student from America studying at Ryoohighschool along with the rest of the cast. She is a huge anime and manga fan, to the extent that she learned all her Japanese from Anime and Manga before going to Japan. She also speaks like an anime character – even for an anime character.
Surely no American exchange students in Japan are like that in real life, right?
6. Tsukimi Kurashita
from Princess Jellyfish
Anime - Tsukimi is an eccentric otaku girl who adores jellyfish and dreams of becoming an illustrator. She is one of five women who live at the Amamuzukan, an apartment building in Tokyo whose inhabitants all happen to be Otaku. Tsukimi is the youngest of the group, she loves jellyfish, something her late mother instilled in her, and wants to become the best illustrator in Tokyo.
Unfortunately she is too shy and couldn’t even make it to an exhibition on Jellyfish in Art. She is very nervous and a shy, introverted character who is terrified of social interaction, making her a super relatable character for those watching who have suffered with social anxiety, something many often turn to Manga and Anime to escape.
5. Kou Yagami from New Game
Anime - Kou Yagami is Aoba’s role model and the original character designer for Eagle Jump.
She is a super geeky character, dedicated to and obsessed about making games, and is infamous in the company (which is all filled with girls) for being a genius but also her lack of poise.
She often stays overnight at the company and sleeps under her desk in her underwear. Her skills as a designer are known far and wide, and at the end of Season 2 she’s invited to work in France as a designer.
4. Tomoko Kuroki
from No Matter How I Look At It, It’s You Guys Fault I’m Not Popular
Anime - in this anime Tomoko is the stereotypical otaku.
She struggles socially, lives alone and is completely absorbed in her anime and manga, she has difficulty talking to people of the opposite sex and all she wants to do is stay at home to game and read manga. She’s a NEET. She’s an Otaku.
The whole show revolves around the fact that she tries to get out of her social slump, but she’s unable to.
3. Gabriel Tenma
from Gabriel Dropout
Anime - in this supernatural comedy, Gabriel plays the shining, perfect example of an Angel, best in her class, sent to Earth to learn about humans and save them from eternal suffering.
However when she arrives on Earth, she is accidentally introduced to online MMOs.
She gets drawn in to the game on hearing the cries of avatars who need to be healed and tries to help them - byt by the time she realizes the online world is not real, it’s too late and she is addicted.
Now she has no interest in returning to heaven or even carrying out her angelic duties, all she wants to do is sit at home and game!
2. Konata Izumi
from Lucky Star
Anime - with the coolest blue hair practically ever, Konata is an eccentric, smart and athletic and friendly girl who also happens to be the leader of the Lucky Star gang - although she much prefers to sit at home all day reading manga and playing video games instead of doing her homework! In the anime Konata tries to get a part time job at a cosplay café - pretty much her dream job! Konata is the quintessential Otaku from the quintessential slice-of-life school girl anime.
1. Tachibana Sylphynford from Himouto Umaru-chan
Anime - a striking girl with amazing blue hair, Sylphynford is such an interesting character. Raised in Germany by her European Father, she was introduced to Japanese culture by her brother, Alex, who moved to Japan to live with Mom when Sylphynford was still a kid. Absorbing all manner of Japanese culture, she eventually moved over as well. Otaku culture gives her those sweet memories of childhood and she has no need to hide this side of her, it is what grounds her. Going around striking sailor moon-esque poses and ending every sentence with desuwa, it’s almost as though she’s realizes she’s in an anime.
All of these characters are so much fun, often because they are so relatable - they are fans just like us! They definitely make it cool to be an otaku or lover of Anime and Manga, they offer us a sense of belonging because they are so similar to us. Maybe the enjoyability comes from the feeling that we could almost just reach through the screen and connect with our favourite characters.
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