(OTAKU TO YOU) Three years ago, the serene Tokyo bedroom community of Hanna was shaken by a series of grisly crimes. Four pre-teen girls were abducted, molested and mutilated in a serial killing-spree The New York Times described as so "un-Japanese." But the perpetrator, who had sent bone and teeth fragments to the grieving families, couldn't have been more Japanese. The murderer enticed the children to his six-mat in Saitama, then molested and murdered them, recording the gruesome details of his deeds on the hard-drive of his computer. When police finally caught up with Tsutomu Miyazaki, they found the 27-year-old living in two realities. By day he was a sullen apprentice at a local print shop. By night he lived out the fantasies he had internalized from avidly watching his collection of more than 6,000 slasher videos and pornographic manga, or Japanese comic books. In defense of his warped client, Miyazaki's attorney claimed that video and reality had merged; Miyazaki couldn't tell gory fact from gory fiction. After Miyazaki's much-publicized trial, one thing was clear: A new generation of anti-social, nihilistic whiz-kids had arrived. Dubbed the otaku-zoku, or otaku for short, these are Japan's socially inept but often brilliant technological shut-ins. Their name derives from the highly formal way of saying "you" in Japanese, much like calling a friend "Sir." First identified by SPA! magazine in 1986, the otaku are Tokyo's newest information-age product. These were the kids "educated" to memorize reams of context-less information in preparation for filling in bubbles on multiple-choice entrance exams. Now in their late teens and twenties, most are either cramming for college exams or stuck in cramming mode. They relax with sexy manga or violent computer games. They shun society's complex web of social obligations and loyalties. The result: a burgeoning young generation of at least 100,000 hard-core otaku (estimates of up to 1 million have been bandied about in the Tokyo press) who are too uptight to talk to a telephone operator, but who can kick ass on the keyboard of a PC. Zero, 25, is a self-proclaimed otaku who flunked out of Keio University's math department because he didn't like being ordered around by teachers to whom he felt superior. "They couldn't deal with someone like me," he recalled. "Now I'm independent and I don't need to deal with anyone like them."