For as long as i can
remember, anime has been a part of my life. From the days of racing home after
elementary school to catch an episode of "Megaman" to taking a course
at Ursinus College for the critically analyzing anime, it has always been an
important part of my daily life. I could never imagine how my week would go if
i didn't take at least 10 minutes out of the other 10080 to read a couple
chapters of a manga or a new episode. Farther than just the overwhelming
entertainment value that i receive from my favorite anime, i have always found
it to be an amazing art form, one that it has been hard to find an equal to.
As I can recall, it
started with Akira. I remember watching it with my dad when I was in elementary
school. I was blown away by the share massive scale of the movie. I never knew
that animated movies could be such large scale, nor did I know that “cartoons”
could tell such deep stories. It was almost too much to handle. We watched it
about three times in the week we saw it. Later on, when Toonami came into being,
it only accelerated my fascination, as I tried to figure out what Anime was.
Every Saturday, it was Yugioh in the morning, then toonami at night. Every
weekday, I would get up at 5AM to catch an episode of “Detective Conan” or “Inuyasha”
from the last night. It was almost like an addiction. Around the time I entered
middle school, there wasn’t much new anime to watch besides “Naruto” and “One
piece”. So, with little-no social life, manga
became the best cure for my boredom. I
actually attempted to make a manga, when I was in 7th grade. It was
so much fun, and such a rewarding experience. However, my drawing skills were
less than developed that time, so I ended up burring it; only to be recreated
the day that my art can do the story justice .Things stayed similar to this,
until I entered High school. I like to think, that was when I truly began to
appreciate anime and manga.
Be the time I reached 9th grade, anime and
manga had dominated m life. I didn’t have many outside interest besides writing
and drawing. I eventually found a unicorn in my north Philadelphia High school.
Friends! Rea, actual people who had the same type of interest as me! The five people I was able to befriend
ended up being my best friends to this day. Looking back, it is still hard to
believe that we were all drawn together by our individual loves for anime. Similar
to “Otaku no Video”, we all had different loves for anime. Leander liked bishonen
anime, and drawing attractive men. Darrah was in it for Magical Girl anime and
wrote her own works. Shyheim (my brother) was pretty much the opposite of me,
but my best friend none the less. Nevada is into J-RPG’s and Ivan studies animation
and wants to create his own anime one day. The school was underfunded and the
clubs were inadequate. Sports, sports, and more spots, was all they had to
offer; with the exception of the film club we all joined. But eventually, our Otaku
passion extended into the Japanese language. I spend two weeks writing a 12
page proposal for a “Japanese culture and Anime” school club. After my constant
nagging (as president), we were approved. However, we received o funding. We
spent the better part of a year learning basic hiragana (Japanese writing system),
Trading cards, spending hours after school, debating our favorite anime, and
sometimes not getting home until 7 or 8Pm. The environment was pure otaku overload.
The club served as an oasis for all of us, in those days. At the start of
summer, we had “otaku pool parties”. We would spend days swimming in my pool,
making onigiri (failing at it), watching anime and other Japanese movies.
Anime united us with a
strong bond that holds, even now. In the summer of 2013, I went with a couple
friends to Otakon; an otaku convention in Maryland. We all went in cosplay, stayed out late
eating sushi, and it felt like those days in high school again. Then, there was
the awkward moment when I return and mu parents wanted me to explain my
cosplay: character, what anime, why I did it, how much I spent on it, all that.
But my family has always been accepting of any cosplay or otaku activity I’ve done.
Mainly because, everyone in my family likes anime in one way or another. My dad
has an entire shelf of “Speed Racer” dvd’s and my mom always watched Naruto with
me on those Saturday nights. For me, being the otaku that I am, things never
slow down. I’m always scouring for new anime, or news of my favorite manga
getting anime. When I’m not doing that, I’m keeping up with yugioh card trading
news, which actually turned out to be a semi-lucrative business( as I have made
enough selling cards to afford my books every semester).Anime has always played
an important role in who I am today. In my younger days, I would always think
to myself, “I wanna be like Naruto.
Even if I’m lonely, I want to succeed too”, or “I want to become a hero like
Edward Elric.” Childish fantasies they may be, but they are strong beliefs that
still hold meaning to me today. Being a “hero”, succeeding against all odds,
believe in yourself, protecting your friends. It sounds odd when I say it out load
but, these are all basic moral lessons that I had derived from my anime idols
over the years,
