In honor of National Anime Day, which is celebrated on April 15 every year, I came up with 10 anime and manga facts about myself to share with you guys.
1. My first anime was Sailor Moon. My first manga was DNAngel. Technically.
Every morning before I went to school, I watched this cartoon on TV called Sailor Moon. This ordinary girl named “Serena” transformed into a superhero to fight evil space demons. She had a talking cat, an awesome group of powerful friends, and an epic romance. I loved every minute of it. But I had no idea that it was anime or even what anime was at that point. I was officially introduced to anime in the summer before I started high school with Gundam Wing, which became my favorite anime of all time.
Even after I became immersed in anime, it took a while before I discovered manga. I was walking to class one morning when I spotted a picture on the ground. It was a printout of a cute anime guy with purple hair and red eyes. I didn’t recognize him. A friend later identified him as Dark from the manga series DNAngel. After she explained what manga is, she lent me copies of Inuyasha and Fushigi Yuugi. The rest is history.
2. I took Japanese in high school—but not because of anime and manga.
For most anime fans, the desire to learn Japanese kicks in after they get into anime. For me, the Japanese classes came first. In eighth grade, representatives from my future high school visited my middle school to help us plan our schedules for freshman year. I chose Japanese as my foreign language elective…because my academic rival at the time dared me to. I was scared to death that I had made a horrible mistake, but I stuck with the language through all three levels.
I won’t pretend that the language and my hobby didn’t go hand in hand, though. One time a group of visiting Japanese students invited my Japanese class to a Humanities class presentation. We played a game where we had to guess the meaning of kanji characters painted on calligraphy paper. The first character was “heart” (“shin”), which I immediately recognized as the symbol that appears on the forehead of the villain Nakago from Fushigi Yuugi. I had to have it! As I saved my clueless classmates from embarrassment, I thought, “Thanks, Yuu Watase!”
3. I used to collect character pins.
My favorite thing to buy from an unnamed anime store I frequented as a teen were pins. These $5 pins were miniature likenesses (“chibi”) of anime characters that I would stick to my clothes and backpack. The first two I bought were Inuyasha and Miroku from Inuyasha. Later, I added ones like Kurama (Yu Yu Hakusho), Nakago (Fushigi Yuugi), Yohji (Weiss Kruez), and Shuichi and Kumagoro (Gravitation).
Sadly, I lost most of the pins. The safety backs kept popping off. Sometimes I would notice and recover them in time—Miroku has jumped ship several times—but they were usually long gone before I knew anything had happened. It broke my heart (and drained my wallet). Eventually, I stopped buying them.
4. My first anime soundtrack was from Outlaw Star.
As I noted in my 2020 iTunes Play Counts post, I love collecting anime songs and soundtracks. Well, my very first album was the second Outlaw Star soundtrack.
I saw the CD in the display case when I went to a local comic book store one Saturday morning. I initially refused to buy it. Twenty dollars for a single CD seemed ridiculously expensive to me at the time. But I changed my mind and my dad took me back to the store that evening to get it. I’m glad I got it. The album has the full version of the second ending theme “Tsuki no Ie,” character songs like “Setsuna” and “A Date,” amazing instrumental songs, and the short versions of the first opening and ending themes. It was money well spent.
5. Anime and manga paved the way to K-Dramas and K-Pop for me.
When I was knee deep in anime burnout, I started looking for something to fill the void it had left behind. I found that something in Korean dramas (K-Dramas), ironically thanks to anime.
My first K-Drama was Boys Over Flowers, a live action remake of Hana Yori Dango. I knew the plot fairly well since I owned the first volume of the manga and had watched a few episodes of the anime. Before long, I was glued to my laptop, watching episode after episode of the drama on Hulu. When I was done with that one, I jumped into classics like My Girl, Coffee Prince, and You’re Beautiful.
Entering the world of K-Dramas was scary. I knew nothing about Korean culture. But K-Dramas possessed many of the same traits that I loved about anime and manga: gorgeous guys, comedy, twisty plots, love triangles, and best of all, catchy soundtracks (via K-Pop).
6. I was in two (horrible) anime clubs.
I didn’t have many good experiences with members of the anime and manga community. Neither anime club I joined worked out.
I attended my first anime club meeting in my sophomore year of high school. It took place in a small classroom after school. There were a ton of people I didn’t know packed into a tiny room, gathered around a tiny TV. Then we watched Grave of Fireflies, which is quite possibly the most depressing anime ever made. I never went back.
The following year I tried the club again. On one hand, things were better. The classroom was much bigger, the group was relatively small, and we watched cool shows like Hellsing and Trigun. On the other hand, some of the members, namely the vice president, didn’t want me or my friends there. The racism, combined with the fact that I was tired of paying high dues without seeing any of the promised benefits, made me quit the club again. For the final time.
7. I often incorporated anime into my college research papers.
As an English major, I had to write tons of research essays and discussion posts. Sometimes in my quest to find a topic to write about, I found inspiration in odd places. Naturally, anime and manga were one of my usual sources.
Case in point: In my Freshman Composition I class, we had to pick an interesting quote from Mamet’s “Between Men and Women” and write about it. I chose the lines that begin, “Why with one rather than another?” Then I launched into a whole discussion about the Saiyuki characters, explaining why I prefer Sanzo over Gojyo even though Gojyo is physically more my type. Thankfully, my professor appreciated my creativity and gave me full credit.
8. I rented a lot of anime from Blockbuster.
Blockbuster was an important element of my anime addiction. My dad and I went there every weekend to rent movies.
The Blockbuster closest to my house was basically three shelves in the back of the store near the horror section. It was full of nothing but video game anime like Street Fighter and well-known stuff like Dragonball Z. I exhausted their selection pretty quickly. Later, we switched to a huge branch nearby. It had two whole rows of DVDs! That’s where I found more current shows like Excel Saga, Dragonhalf, and GTO. No matter what else I rented, I always picked up the Yu Yu Hakusho movie. Good times.
9. I hate lending manga.
My friends constantly ridiculed me for how uptight I was about my manga. Yes, I did wrap them in handmade plastic covers at times. So sue me! Those books cost $10+ a pop. I wanted to take care of them. Still, people had been nice enough to lend me their manga over the years and I wanted to return the favor with my friends. That’s where I went wrong.
My friends were nowhere near as careful with my manga as I was. Friend A returned volumes with chocolate stains spread across multiple pages where crumbs had fallen inside and melted while the book was in her car. Friend B ate chips while reading, smearing the ink and leaving behind greasy fingerprints. Friend C gave my manga to all of their family members and school friends without my permission. Friend D had to replace a volume because it got soaked in the rain. It was a never-ending nightmare.
To this day, it pisses me off when I look at the frayed edges, scribbles, and stains in my precious manga. I shouldn’t have let the behavior go on as long as I did.
10. I suck at building models.
As much as I enjoy looking at the awesome mecha models people show off online, it’s a hobby that never caught on with me personally. It was kind of fun but mostly frustrating.
For my first and only experience, I bought a model of Deathscythe Hell, the Gundam piloted by Duo Maxwell on Gundam Wing. It was $20 at Walmart. Deathscythe (and its various iterations) is my favorite Gundam and Duo is my favorite pilot, so it seemed like a fitting place to start. ZOMG, that damn thing had a million pieces! I spent all day putting it together, stopping only to eat lunch. By the time the sun set, I was done…and very disappointed with the result.
I didn’t understand then that a lot more work goes into building these models than just putting them together. Between the required effort and the overall cost, I decided that I would not be building another one.