Life Imitating Anime: Anime Makes Me Do Strange Things

So have you ever felt like doing something after watching an anime? You know the strange sensation to live out what just happened to recreate the magic, get in touch with characters or something else. Okay maybe not everyone does that but as embarrassed as I am I admit to doing that quite a bit. Well I’ve been feeling like that ever since watching the latest episode of Angel Beats. I wanted to understand the one thing that Kanade was looking forward to after Yuri ruined her life. Aorii and I went out to get some dinner and brought back some mapo tofu from a local Chinese restaurant. It was great. I can sympathize even more with her and how she was denied her one simple pleasure.

As I alluded to earlier this is not the only time I’ve been prompted by an anime or game to try something new or at the very least become interested in something new. I mean I’m easily influenced by my hobbies so this sort of happens all the time for me. As my About Me page states I am easily influenced by anime/manga so I end up doing strange things to satiate my boredom like Nagi from Hayate no Gotoku! I wanted to and still want to learn to play the guitar after watching K-ON. At the same time I wish I was better at playing the trumpet after Sora no Woto happened. As much as I like music I never really got into playing seriously since I had to choose to spend my precious time with either music or art. My choice was art. I don’t regret that decision but at some point I still want to learn to play the guitar. In the same vain iM@S made me want to learn choreographed dance.

As far as purely otaku stuff is concerned I remember suggesting to my friends in my anime club that we should play basketball. This was a purely Basquash-inspired idea since we were all watching at the time. It was fun but I can’t say I’ve done that again. After recently experiencing To Heart 2 I’ve also adopted Ruuko’s “Ruu” pose in which she raises her hand as a greeting. Now I find myself doing that too sometimes as a greeting or when I’m particularly excited for some reason or another. I’ve done the same with various anime poses or gestures such as the ojou-sama laugh and Macross Frontier’s “Kira.”

When it comes to my professional interests it is still evident that those seeds were planted by anime and games as well. Though it may not be apparent nowadays I was quite enthusiastic about giant robots as a child. I really wanted to build my own one day and that spurred my interest in science fiction and soon afterward actual sciences. At some point I wanted to be a mad scientist and arguably I still want to be one. My current studies in genetics sort of just happened as well but I have a feeling Metal Gear had a huge hand in shaping my path towards the most fundamental of biological studies. It’s kind of strange now that I think about it that mechs somehow forged my career path.

There are countless other examples where I’ve been influenced to do various things under the influence of my otaku hobbies. Sometime I think it’s a little silly to get so much of my drive from anime and games but let’s face it. The truth is that it’s impossible to separate my greatest interests from myself as a person. For someone who has been watching anime and playing video games since as far back as I can remember there is no point in that. That’s why I’ll continue to do silly things due to my hobbies regardless of how strange it may seem. At least I’m not the type to flaunt the truly odd behavior to the general public. I only do the really embarrassing stuff with my otaku friends but otherwise I’m just a rather normal though shy person to everyone else.