I don’t like anime. I haven’t since I was a Sailor Moon überfan when I was ten years old. There is nothing less appealing than two purple-haired ninjas battling it out with giant katanas 
while wearing bathrobes. Except for being in a room full of obese basement-dwellers dressed up as purple-haired ninjas battling it out with giant katanas while wearing bathrobes. Oh yes, I’m talking about the anime kids.
Of course, somewhere along the course of my life I committed some great misdeed, and Lady Fortune decided to throw at me the worst of all punishments. One of my friends is… an anime kid.
When we met, I never would have suspected that she was infected. She smelled fine, dressed normally, and never once did she use the word “kawaii”. Then, one day, I stayed the night at her house. For most of the night, we just watched TV and talked. Then I excused myself to go to the bathroom. When I returned, she was sitting on her bed, reading a book. Backwards.
“Uh, Reno, why are you reading that book backwards?”
“Because it’s a manga,” she replied. “A Japanese book.”
I died a little inside. “They read backwards?”
“Yeah. Rather than flip all of the panels when translating the books into English, they just print the book backwards.”
I could only manage an, “Oh.”
Another time, she delivered the [heartbreaking] news that she would be attending AFO (a crazy anime kid convention in Orlando where you’re sure to encounter a handful of the aforementioned purple-haired ninjas). I asked her if she was going to dress up. To my relief, she said no, but broke my heart again as she tacked on “because I don’t have a costume”.
After eight years of friendship, I’m still hesitant to go shopping with her. She always has to stroll through the manga aisle to peruse the latest backwards books that Japan has pulled out its ass. Always has to make that pit-stop in F.Y.E.’s right-back corner to see if the Naruto DVDs have dropped in price. The scenario plays over and over in my head whenever we’re in the bookstore: Gorgeous Man sees Other Voices, Other Rooms (or something) in my hand, “oh, hey, you like Capote? Me too! He’s great – hey, do you want to get some coffee with me or something?”, just then, Reno chimes in, “ohmygod, hey, Berlin, Wolf’s Rain DVD on sale for $2o!”, Gorgeous Man scowls saying, “oh, I didn’t realize you were one of them. Never mind.” So I have to distance myself from her when she’s hunting manga, making sure that I make it known to all passerby that I do not, in any way, like anime. It’s actually a lot of work; having an anime kid for a friend (when you have a vehement dislike for anime kids) is like having an incontinent dog; it’s a lot of maintenance and at times you wonder if it’s even worth it. But then you figure it must be, since you’ve kept it all these years.
