Curry Zawa Kaoru's Creative Counseling - “How do I tell if the person I'm talking to is into canon, yume, or BL?” Hold your horses, otaku detective.

First, I think you should forget about trying to figure out a "quick and easy" method of identifying what kind of otaku someone is.

It’s true that some conditions, like certain illnesses, need to be detected early.

To do that, you have to answer all sorts of sensitive questions, even if the doctor is someone you’re meeting for the first time. You even have to hand over samples of your stool and urine, expose your body, and let them peer into your internal organs through your anus.

It would be a lie to say I’m not embarrassed, and every time people try to console me by saying doctors don’t care, I feel baffled, thinking, “Why are you prioritizing the doctor’s mental state, someone who has to look at my anus, over my own?”

If you want to get to know someone deeply in a short amount of time, you have no choice but to act rudely toward them by asking overly direct questions or observing them persistently. This only causes them to withdraw, making the answers we seek even harder to find.

When it comes to medical exams, since they’re a matter of life and death, I wouldn’t think a doctor had no sense of personal space if they asked me how many times I urinate in a day, even if I only met them two minutes ago. But doing that during an otaku classification test is way too risky, and there’s really no need to find that out so early on anyway.

While it’s true that failing to clarify things early on could lead to life-threatening accidents, like thinking you’re doing a good deed by giving a yumejoshi a BL fanfic featuring their favorite character, the fact that you’re giving someone something without even knowing their triggers in the first place means your judgment is as off as bringing a handmade ornament as a housewarming gift.

Ultimately, stepping on a landmine isn’t just caused by a lack of understanding of the other person: it’s caused by trying to get too close, too fast.

Now that we live in a world where people, both online and in real life, casually talk about liking manga and anime, perhaps it’s time for us otaku to rethink the concept of personal boundaries.

In fact, saying that you like manga and anime in modern times may be equivalent to telling someone that your hobbies are reading and watching movies: a vague answer that draws a clear line about the amount of personal information they're willing to reveal given your current relationship.

Therefore, the first step is to rein in that urge to pounce on someone who likes manga and anime with questions like “BL? Yaoi? Do you prioritize official pairings? Where do you live? Are you on Instagram?”

As for how to specifically determine the other person’s preferences, the only sure way is to ask them directly.

You could try to identify their preferences or favorite pairings based on circumstantial evidence, but that’s essentially the same as when gossip speculates that two people are dating before they've announced it to the world. It’s not official information. Assuming it's canon could lead to new misunderstandings and big problems.

As I mentioned at the beginning, you should avoid trying to figure things out too early, as if you were conducting a cancer screening. However, just as it’s not uncommon to find yourself in a situation where you’ve been at the same workplace for ten years but haven’t become friends with any of your colleagues, it’s not something that will automatically be revealed just because time has passed.

In other words, you’ll need to take things step by step to draw the information out, but you shouldn’t focus too much on just getting it.

It’s often said that one of the worst traits of otaku is rambling on and on about what they want to say. However, people who try so hard to listen to the other person that they don’t say a single word about themselves and desperately fuel the conversation by asking questions are just as bad.

In general, introducing yourself first is the polite thing to do when you want to learn someone's name. In the same manner, you might need to put yourself out there before other people will share about themselves.

However, just because you play the BL card doesn’t mean the other person is obligated to respond by playing the yume card. Unless they trust you, no matter how much you open up, they won’t reveal their hand. Be prepared for the fact they might just keep it to small talk about the anime they’re watching this season.

In other words, you won't find the information you seek until you genuinely get along with someone.

As for how to get along with people, I’d suggest looking elsewhere for advice. All I can offer is that perhaps the key is to talk about things other than manga and anime.

A while back, there was a rather painful incident where someone at a marriage agency for otaku started telling people to develop interests outside of otaku hobbies. I suppose this means that if you only ever talk about otaku topics, you won’t be able to get close enough to people to even consider marriage.

Since your goal isn’t marriage or making friends, but simply wanting to understand how to discern otaku types—which is as otaku as it gets—you might eventually find the answer just by continuing to talk about manga and anime.

However, if you’re looking to move things along as quickly as possible, I feel that mixing in other personal topics alongside otaku talk might actually help you close the distance faster.

If you’re at a loss for words when someone brings up a topic other than manga or anime, I don’t think you have a knack for making friends yet, so you’ll just have to take your time and gently probe for their interests.

It's especially hard these days because there are so many manga and anime titles out there. Even if you do take the time to ask, it’s becoming more common for the conversation to turn awkward because the person you're talking to doesn't know the series or pairing you're talking about. If you’re going to dig deep, be prepared for that possibility.