Weeb: A Novel [9781250443922]

Overview

A recent college grad moves to Tokyo in pursuit of her all-consuming anime obsession, in a darkly humorous debut for fans of Colored Television and Big Swiss.

Having recently graduated from a prestigious university, a young woman who goes by Rina moves to Tokyo to complete academic research and tutor English on the side. But this is mostly a front for her true obsession: Kagami, the cerebral master alchemist from her favorite anime.

But Rina isn’t like other weebs. With fluent language skills, a racially ambiguous face, and an invented name, she can almost pass as part Japanese. She has meticulously studied Japanese culture, its colonial history, the particularities of its customs and linguistics; she is ambitious, calculating, clever. The only thing that feels real to Rina about herself is her devotion to Kagami. She will do whatever she can to have what she craves: the purest possible experience of him—and, specifically, of his voice, which belongs to a middle-aged voice actor named Fujimoto Fumitaka. With help from her secretly Taiwanese idol-in-training neighbor, the eerily perfect child influencer she tutors, her favorite fan art creator, and an astute hairdresser, Rina infiltrates the Japanese entertainment industry, though the results are not what she expects.

Whip-smart, irreverent, and audaciously satirical, Weeb captures the glittering magical energy of a cult anime, alongside a piercing commentary on race, appropriation, and belonging. As proficient in online fandom as it is in cultural theory, this is a tantalizing, provocative quest that unravels how our desires define and derange us.