>>1 the term has a long and complex history. the word literally means "radio waves" in japanese. After a mass murderer claimed in court that he was recieving "radio waves" in his head that told him to kill people (he was schizophrenic), the term denpa became associated with schizophrenia. it then went through a semantic widening, becoming term for mental illness in general, and then to just odd people. since in japan, odd people who are somewhat strange in the head (autistic) tend to be otaku, the term became associated with otaku. for example the anime "denpa kyoushi", the term refers to the main character who is an otaku. So here, denpa came to describe socially weird otaku type people.
At the same time, there are two other uses of the term in japan. Firstly, stemming from this otaku definition, a particular genre of music which pushed anisong type jpop to the extremes was also labelled as the genre "denpa". Sometimes this genre is called "denpa-kei" or "denpasong", and it's closely related to the genre called "akiba-kei". The archetypal band in this genre is probably mosaic.wav, if you want to look them up.
On the other side, "denpa" was used to describe a particular kind of psychological horror visual novel genre, used closer to it's original meaning relating to schizophrenia. THose visual novels tend to center on themes like not being able to trust your own senses or your own mind, reality falling apart, mental illness, and delusions. There's a lot of debate in the vn community over what counts as "denpa", but most agree that games like shizuku, chaos;head and subahibi fit.
Finally, in the context of this website, denpa is being used to describe that kind of strange, socially detached otaku, who is the target userbase here. The term was co-opted by certain people to describe a strange genre of youtube video in which some "denpa" type person would vlog with some sort of artistic intention and purposefully designed against the algorithm. You can read more of that in this dedicated thread →/read.cgi/lounge/1751553719 , so you may see people using it describe that genre as well. Frankly the whole thing is a mess.
the term has a long and complex history. the word literally means "radio waves" in japanese. After a mass murderer claimed in court that he was recieving "radio waves" in his head that told him to kill people (he was schizophrenic), the term denpa became associated with schizophrenia. it then went through a semantic widening, becoming term for mental illness in general, and then to just odd people. since in japan, odd people who are somewhat strange in the head (autistic) tend to be otaku, the term became associated with otaku. for example the anime "denpa kyoushi", the term refers to the main character who is an otaku. So here, denpa came to describe socially weird otaku type people.
At the same time, there are two other uses of the term in japan. Firstly, stemming from this otaku definition, a particular genre of music which pushed anisong type jpop to the extremes was also labelled as the genre "denpa". Sometimes this genre is called "denpa-kei" or "denpasong", and it's closely related to the genre called "akiba-kei". The archetypal band in this genre is probably mosaic.wav, if you want to look them up.
On the other side, "denpa" was used to describe a particular kind of psychological horror visual novel genre, used closer to it's original meaning relating to schizophrenia. THose visual novels tend to center on themes like not being able to trust your own senses or your own mind, reality falling apart, mental illness, and delusions. There's a lot of debate in the vn community over what counts as "denpa", but most agree that games like shizuku, chaos;head and subahibi fit.
Finally, in the context of this website, denpa is being used to describe that kind of strange, socially detached otaku, who is the target userbase here. The term was co-opted by certain people to describe a strange genre of youtube video in which some "denpa" type person would vlog with some sort of artistic intention and purposefully designed against the algorithm. You can read more of that in this dedicated thread →/read.cgi/lounge/1751553719 , so you may see people using it describe that genre as well. Frankly the whole thing is a mess.