About Me
-Lesbian
-Crazy Cat Lady
-Elementary School Special Ed. Paraeducator
-Part-Hobbit, Part-Tardigrade, Part-Black Hole
-Horror/Halloween Fanatic (here's my IMDB horror movie list as proof:
https://www.imdb.com/list/ls040722666/)
-Outside of anime, I love other stuff like Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, Star Trek, Stranger Things, Supernatural, Black Mirror, The Chronicles of Narnia, Lord of the Rings, Mad Men, Queer as Folk, Disney movies, Xena: Warrior Princess, Nurse Jackie, and Call the Midwife
My Ratings
10-God-like; the emotional resonance with the characters or themes felt personal to me (ex: Aggretsuko Season 2, Madoka Magica)
9-Favorite; emotionally resonated with me on a deep level, felt special to me, had memorable characters that I related to, or just really REALLY enjoyed (ex: Gyakkou Burai Kaiji, Dragon Ball Z, Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Kai)
8-Great; a solid show that I enjoyed more than usual (ex: Haikyuu!!, Boku no Hero Academia, Hataraku Saibou)
7-Good; it was enjoyable but didn't have the "wow" factor to me (ex: Barakamon, Log Horizon)
6-Okay; sometimes fun, sometimes boring, or I couldn't connect to the characters (ex: No Game No Life)
5-Mostly boring or forgettable...
4 and below - Just bad...I probably won't even bother to finish a show that's this terrible
My Anime Story
When I was but a wee smol child in elementary school, I watched shows like Pokemon, Digimon, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Dragon Ball Z, Sailor Moon, Tenchi Muyo, and Gundam Wing. Watching Toonami or Fox Kids after school was my favorite time of the day and at one point my folders were decorated with DBZ and Digimon pics I printed out...heck, my 10th birthday party was DBZ themed! It was my childhood fantasy to be a Super Saiyan. (And the weird thing about it is that I wasn't even all that much of a tomboy as a kid)
Then when I was a teenager, from 2003-2007, I casually watched some anime on Adult Swim. Stuff like Death Note, Inuyasha, Bleach, Samurai Champloo, Blood+, Paranoia Agent, FLCL, Cowboy Bebop, Trigun, Eureka Seven, Lupin the 3rd, Fullmetal Alchemist, and Blue Gender. I was also briefly obsessed with Naruto when I was in high school, but the infatuation didn't last long because...
In the summer of 2007, I discovered the wonderful world of j-pop...in particular, the pretty boys of Johnny's Entertainment. I was mainly a fan of Hey! Say! JUMP, but I also came to love NEWS, Kis-My-Ft.2, Arashi, Kanjani8, Sexy Zone, Johnny's WEST, King & Prince, and SixTONES. So, rather than anime, my niche Japanese interest was male j-pop idol groups. I even watched some j-dramas that my idols appeared in, like Kinpachi Sensei and Sensei wa Erai.
(I even have a mydramalist account to keep track of all the Japanese movies and dramas I'm currently watching and want to watch:
https://mydramalist.com/dramalist/AmandaBear)
Every member of Hey! Say! JUMP is my waifu (but especially Yuto and Chinen):
(It was also in early 2009, when I turned 18, that I found out I was a lesbian...so then it made sense to me why my love for the j-pop boys wasn't based around a physical attraction) *ahem* Anyway, I continued following Johnny's groups and then in 2010, my freshman year of college, I discovered Super Sentai and the tokusatsu genre. I watched a few Sentai shows and bought some merch like Figuarts figures to feed my Sentai obsession.
My 21st birthday was a rainbow-themed Sentai-filled trash heap of goodness:
(*let's skip over the years I became obsessed with k-pop, My Little Pony: FiM, Game of Thrones, yadda yadda*)
It was in July of 2017 when I finally decided to learn Japanese. My primary reason was so that I could read and understand all the interviews in the magazines featuring my precious Johnny's idol boys. Unlike anime, k-pop, or even toku fandom, there aren't too many international fans to translate these interviews and these boys have been a steady part of my life for so long that I really wanted to get to know them better. Be part of their world so to speak. (Oops, an accidental Little Mermaid reference...) Plus, I considered it a good challenge and I thought it would be nice to watch Sentai and j-dramas and understand the original Japanese. And it most definitely is a challenge because I'm writing this in November of 2018 and I've only just entered the intermediate stage of Japanese language learning.
Then, for one reason or another, I started watching interesting Youtube videos discussing anime. Guys like The Anime Man, Digibro, Gigguk, Super Eyepatch Wolf, and Mother's Basement. I also started getting various anime recommendations from people. Some from a girl I dated who was really into anime and some from my students in the Anime Club I lead at the middle school I work at. And I thought, "Hmm...maybe there's something more to anime than I thought." Also, my Japanese learning journey got me more interested in anime (and I realize that it's usually the other way around and that anime is the gateway to learning Japanese for most people).
So here I am, ready to watch ALL THE ANIME. For fun and for Japanese language immersion.
My goal is to eventually become a Japanese-speaking trashcan.
Wish me luck!
All Comments (6) Comments
wish you many many happy returns of the day, have a good one!
Love your username and profile pic, plus it was nice to read your story. If you're into into Sentai and don't mind getting a bit sugary, you might try checking out Precure (Heartcatch would be a safe place to start).
Regardless, thanks again and stay strong girl! *thumbs up*