for about a month, where he learned how to parse manga names (a "name" refers to the rough draft of a manga page, with preliminary panel layout, dialogue and plot, which is commonly checked by an editor before the artist proceeds to the manuscript phase). Later shifting from part-time to full-time editor, Ōtsuka worked as the editor-in-chief of the manga magazine Manga Burikko on a freelance basis. The comments he published in the magazine under a pseudonym became the basis of Ōtsuka's later career as a commentator. It was also during this time that the first official use of the term "otaku" was published in Manga Burikko in 1983, with Ōtsuka still serving as its editor-in-chief. Late in the 1980s, Ōtsuka was involved in the trial of a serial kidnapper and murderer of young girls, active between 1988 and 1989 in Saitama, Tokyo. The suspect (and later convicted perpetrator), Tsutomu Miyazaki, was found to have possessed a large collection of manga, which at the time meant that the manga subculture was "repeatedly" linked to Miyazaki in the press and in popular imagination, creating the image that "young people involved with amateur manga are dangerous, psychologically disturbed perverts." Ōtsuka contested this popular perception, later writing that he "became somewhat angry about how judgment of [Miyazaki's] crimes kept shifting onto otaku hobbies or tastes." In his 1989 book A Theory of Narrative Consumption (Monogatari shōhiron), Ōtsuka developed a theory of media consumption based around the consumption of multiple small narratives that fit inside a "worldview" or grand narrative. This was a large influence on Hiroki Azuma's theories of otaku, and Azuma's writing consequently helped give narrative consumption "canonical status within manga and anime criticism". Ōtsuka has gone on to lecture at various Japanese universities and colleges on the topic of manga studies. In 2007, he received his PhD from Kobe Design University, with the doctoral dissertation titled "From Mickey's format to Proposition of Atom: the origin of postwar manga methodology in wartime years and its development". Works Critical essays まんがの構造――商品・テキスト・現象 Construction of Manga――Product・Text・Phenomenon, Yudachisha, 1987 物語消費論 A Theory of Narrative Consumption, Shinyousha, 1989 システムと儀式 System and Ritual, Chikumashobō, 1992 戦後まんがの表現空間 Expression space of post-war manga, Houzoukan, 1994 キャラクター小説の作り方 How to make The Character Novels, Kōdansha, 2003 アトムの命題 Proposition of Atom, Tokumashoten, 2003 おたくの精神史―― 1980年代論 The Intellectual History of Otaku ―― 1980's Theory, Kōdansha, 2004 Novels 木島日記 [Kijima Diary] Manga 魍魎 戦記 MADARA