Densha Otoko (literally “Train Man”) is a multi-media narrative which started as a novel before becoming a TV drama, film, and manga series. Yamada Tsuyoshi, a shy otaku who regulars Akihabara, whose life changes after he rescues Saori, a sophisticated woman, from a drunk on a train. The high-class Saori gifts Yamada a set of cups from Hermès. Emboldened by her gratitude, Tsuyoshi seeks advice from an online forum based closely on 2channel as “Densha Otoko”, where anonymous users cheer him on as he awkwardly navigates pursuing “Hermès” and his own self-improvement.

A ‘cinderella’-like story for optimistic single otaku, the rising popularity of Densha Otoko coincided with the “Akihabara Boom” of the mid-2000s. Most resources used for identifying locations from the drama date back to its time of airing and were presented in a very Japanese Web 1.0 Otaku Database kind of way. The maid cafe where Yamada was a regular seemed to close around the height of the Covid pandemic.

Some of the TV drama’s most iconic locations, like the meeting place outside the Shinjuku Monolith, have become sacred sites for fans.According to an art website, the statue at Shinjuku Monolith is called “TO THE SKY” and was installed by artist Kiichi Sumikawa in 1990. It also appeared in a shot from Shinkai’s 5 Centimeters per Second.

Related to the background narrative of class differences, the physical locations where the drama was shot play a key part in spinning the story. Densha’s parents’ home is from a much lower-class neighborhood than that of Saori, and his workplace is closer to a regional black company than a stock company’s corporate headquarters.

Densha Otoko also had a short-lived stage play adaptation produced by HoriPro.

The second special also calls attention to a lament among otaku popular at its airing which has seemed to become even more pronounced since: that Akihabara has become less and less of a perfect home for ‘actual’ otaku, and instead more of a corporatized and sanitized tourist destination re-imagined to cater to the taste of ‘regular’ people. This sentiment has been echoed in stories since, like Magical Destroyers.