Oct. 13, 2025
Imported junk food may not be good for your heart, but it's good for your soul.
█ Canned strawberry milk and 3 slices of white peach castella from H-Mart.
I'm an otaku-- to absolutely nobody's surprise. Anime and manga are a huge combined part of my life right now. I cosplay, I make AMVs, I draw my sily little comics and write my silly little fanfiction. This isn't news. Or at least it hasn't been for the last decade or so. But up until I was about 17 or 18, all of this was... well, not unfamiliar, but still new. When I was a little kid, not even out of elementary school yet, I was bullied a LOT for the things I enjoyed-- not just by my childhood peers, but my brother and sister too... which is horribly ironic, since they're the ones who got me into anime and manga in the first place.
█ The first manga I ever read-- Not the best material for a 3rd grader, but oh well.
I loved reading manga; Yu Yu Hakusho, Bobobo, Case Closed*, Zatch Bell, Tokyo Mew Mew... Every time my siblings came home from Barnes & Noble with a new book, I'd beg them to let me read it. But eventually, when my siblings became angsty teenagers, they decided that anything I liked was suddenly stupid and lame. So eventually, they put all their manga volumes and anime DVDs in storage, where I wasn't allowed to read or borrow them, since they weren't mine. And eventually, I stopped asking. This wasn't just the case for anime and manga-- it was just about everything that I found interesting-- but anime and manga were my first real interests, and being bullied for liking them took my passion for them away for many, many years... until 2013 rolled around.
█ Surprise!
Suddenly, when I was invited to hang out with some friends of a friend-- some of the people I now consider to be dearest to my heart-- I was reintroduced to my lost love in the form of Attack on Titan. Disclaimer: I don't actually like it all that much, it's far too depressing and gory for my taste. But when everyone gathered together on those precious Sunday afternoons and decided to watch "this cool new Japanese cartoon that was being aired on Netflix", I felt myself feeling that spark of interest that had been lost for nearly a decade. Suddenly, liking weird foreign media was cool again! And I could watch it with people who wouldn't judge me for it! Although I don't care much for it nowadays, it still holds a place in my heart as being my gateway back into the passion I'd lost as a kid.
█ Young Neon in Eren cosplay (featuring a random Jean)
Nothing, really. But as I was eating a slice of the castella and lounging around the house, talking to a friend about going to my local Barnes & Noble to buy the 3 volumes of "My Dearest Patrolman" as an early birthday present for myself, it got me thinking that despite it all, I'm probably in a much better place than I was as a kid, where I can feel free to express myself and talk about my interests without judgment, and be as creative and cringe and free as I so desire.
You still won't be able to convince me to read One Piece though.