Ok welp, the title is pretty explanatory but here I go.
Okay so I got into anime around when I was in 7th grade (??) so it’s been a couple of years. Here came my friend, she was the one that got me hooked on Fairy Tail, the anime of my downfall.
I loved Fairy Tail so much, I binge-watched the anime daily, bought wall scrolls, scale figures, the works.
So ofc, over time I picked up some of the language and such, and with that “knowledge”, I counted tennis match scores in Japanese when I played tennis.
Over time, I became more obsessed with FT than my friend who introduced me to it. I remember that I fangirled over the characters and the ships all day and night, I obsessed over Gajeel Redfox as well (but now I obsess over his voice actor, Wacchan more now LMAO). I started on other animes like SAO and Blue Exorcist, but my true passion still lied w Fairy Tail. I began metaphorically pushing and shoving my friends to watch anime and such as I went. I got some people into some, but mostly they probably thought I was vv annoying. I legit tried to relate everything to anime, mostly FT lmao.
I was pretty open about my love for FT, and looking back, it was pretty gross.
So, finally,
this is where my rise from Weeb-Dom begins.
So eventually I joined Instagram as a Fairy Tail anime account. I explored and posted and such. I followed a lot of ft accounts ofc. They were pretty big accounts and they would sometimes complain in their caption about the weeaboos in their life and such.
Eventually, I discovered the meaning of “weeaboo” and how it’s definitely not a good thing. Thankfully I was smart enough to know that I was becoming one. Slowly but surely, I made little changes to my self to not become a “weeaboo”. I stopped pressuring people to watch anime 25/8, stop counting in Japanese while playing tennis, and so on. I also found Crunchyroll, where I discovered a lot of anime series like Say “I Love You” and Free Iwatobi Swim Club. I was expanding my horizons outside of Fairy Tail.
The social network had honestly saved me from becoming a close-minded weeaboo obsessed w Fairy Tail all day. I have met many of my close friends today because of anime, but it wouldn’t have been possible if I only knew the few I had known before and had the pushy attitude I had in the past. A lot of that old stuff that I have from my Fairy Tail phase I’ve taken down and have even sold a couple items to some other FT aficionados, but I still have quite a few left so the amount of merch I still have really comes to show how into that series I was.
I still enjoy Fairy Tail, but I dropped the anime ages ago, and I’m only keeping up w the manga occasionally. I’ve watched quite a few series right now, currently I’m trying to keep up w 15 of the seasonal updates at once, and it’s been quite an armful. I also began to learn about all the “behind the scenes” works w anime, especially w the seiyūs, hence my account lmao! I have also since deleted my Fairy Tail anime account for the obvious reason of lack of interest and effort to maintain the account.
So even though I made quite a fool of myself in the past, I think those experiences mixed with the will to change and a sense of humility really has increased my enjoyment as a supporter of anime industry.
When I was little, I liked Star Wars. Normal stuff when your dad is a sci-fi geek, and I didn't LOVE it, I just appreciated it. I'd only ever seen the original trilogy until one fateful day shortly after I turned eleven. My dad bought a box-set of the prequels from a thrift store. And for some ungodly reason, I fell in love.
Attack of the Clones was my favorite. I watched it at least four times a week, and cold quote pretty much the entire thing. The other two weren't as 'perfect' (ugh) to me, but I still loved them. I started carrying a lightsaber with me everywhere. I made my own Jedi robes. I tried to learn alien languages. Probably my worst moment was when I told all of my friends that I had a mental link with a Jedi in an alternate universe. (I actually believed it too)
VERY fortunately, this didn't last forever. I grew out of it when I was 13. To this day, I'm still a Star Wars fan, (enough to geek out and own a Rey cosplay) but I have never sunk down to that level of cringe.
Kind of a sweet little story I guess, but after seeing the story about the crack ship poem I got reminded of this.
So I was sort of coming out of the weeb stage (I wasmaybe about 15?) and my English class had gone to this poetry event. They had a competition going and my teacher was really trying to get us all to submit something. I've always loved writing, so I wanted to give it a go. But I had no idea what to write about exactly.
Now this wouldn't be the first time my weebness had snuck in under the radar - a few years prior I'd won a local competition for a short story about a guy named Ichigo. I was that kid. But at this point I was really, REALLY into Vocaloid. Which leads back to the poem.
I ended up writing a poem based on The Disappearance of Hatsune Miku. In case anyone did forget/didn't listen, its basically about the programme malfunctioning and being deleted by its user, but from the programme's perspective. Everyone thought it was pretty cool, and I ended up being one of the winners. Actual proper poets read this with no idea it was based on bloody Miku.
And that's the story of how my weeb interests helped me win two writing competitions.
I started my weeb phase at a really young age, if I can remember correctly. It was in the fourth grade when I stumbled across some MMD animation on youtube and essentially became obsessed with vocaloids overnight. I distinctly remember sitting at the dinner table and “drawing” a horrifying picture of Hatsune Miku with a head twice the size of her body and eyes the size of the moon. I was constantly annoying my parents by playing Po Pi Po on repeat for hours. I begged my mom to get me a bunch of vocaloid plushie keychains and some overpriced Zatsune Miku cosplay, and she eventually caved in. I used to blast vocaloid music and dance along with the MMD music video very poorly. I shipped Kaito x Len (eugh) and I used to make the plushie keychains of them make out and gross stuff like that.
Things really only got worse when I moved on from vocaloids, though. I got really into Inuyasha, Black Butler, Hetalia and Soul Eater. I was never any good at using technology so instead of scribbling all over anime bases in MS Paint, I printed them out and scribbled on them in colored pencil instead. I was convinced that because I liked anime I had a chance at becoming a famous mangaka in Japan. I started reading a shit ton of manga and watching anime. I managed to convince everybody at my school that I was Japanese. I picked up a few words and phrases in Japanese because I had an English to Japanese dictionary and a Learning Japanese game for the DS Lite, so pretty much all my classmates were convinced because I could “speak Japanese”. To this day I can still introduce myself in Japanese but I wish I couldn’t. I decided that wasn’t enough so I found those disgustingly racist “how to act/look like a Japanese girl” articles online and followed their advice. I straightened my hair, bowed at people, wore “kawaii” outfits and tried using makeup to “look Japanese”. At one point I even tried to tape my eyes. Somehow I even convinced my teachers I was Japanese.
A couple of my friends and I tried creating a manga at one point. It was called “Evil Is Weird” and it was the kind of weeb garbage you’d expect. The main character was a demon girl named Veenah whose dad was the grim reaper (because that makes perfect sense) and it was like a slice of life, high school drama type “manga”. Veenah was the generic snide, smart ass goth girl. There was an angel character named Odessa who was a total Mary Sue, and we added some bland as fuck love interests as well as the obligatory nerd character. Then we scrapped all that and started over completely, changing Veenah into an alien magical girl (because that’s never been done before) with a samurai spirit guide and making everyone’s names Japanese.
At one point I got a tray thing from an Asian market and thought it was a bento box. It definitely wasn’t, it was just a tray thing, but I started packing my lunches in it. I left it in the bin with everyone else’s lunch boxes and spilled rice all inside the bin. Nobody ever cleaned the rice out of the bin and it got all yellow and gross. At the scholastic book fair I got the really poorly drawn Christopher Hart-esque “anime” poster. Hell, I had the How To Draw Manga books by Christopher Hart. I got two pet mice and named them Artemis and Mamoru, and they peed on my How To Draw Manga books.
Thankfully, my weeb phase started to die off around the time middle school started, but I still have some of the stuff from my weeb phase. I have two kimonos, the English to Japanese dictionary and one of the Evil is Weird comics. For a long time I wouldn’t even go near manga or anime because if I did all the memories of the stupid shit I did back then would come flooding back to me and I’d die of shame. Recently, though, I’ve been revisiting anime and this time around I can be much less of an obnoxious, blatantly racist and fetishistic asstown.
Okay, so I’ve had three posted submissions on here about other people. I think it’s time I roast myself a bit. I see a lot of people saying how they ‘used to be a weeaboo’ on here, but they never go INTO that. I’m gonna go into that.
I wasn’t the worst weeaboo, I wasn’t even the worst among my group of weeaboo friends. I was, in a sense, the gang leader of my weeaboo group, though. I’m not proud of that, but I was at the time. I never got into the spouting off broken Japanese habits, I never idolized Japan as a whole, I never obsessed over people of asian ethnicity (because they were asian, I did fan over idol groups from Japan and Korea with my friends, though). I did glorify anime as the best art form, though, and I was pretty obsessed with it as a hobby. Okay, really obsessed. It was bad. I collected boxes from the Pocky I bought and kept my Ramune bottles. My room was just a museum of all things Japanese pop culture, in all reality. But it was clean! Crowded, but clean. (I’d wash the bottles, etc. No food in my room, no dirty laundry, everything had a place, etc). I started off watching anime as a kid with what was shown on local TV; DBZ and Pokemon to start with. Anime that aired on Adult Swim when i got older is what, I think, shoved me into the whole weeaboo thing. InuYasha, FLCL, Lupin, etc. Then I figured out 'oh man I can watch it online’ and it just went downhill from there. My brothers referred to me (still do) as weeaboo. It was bad.
Anyway, I wanted to shortly go through some of my cringiest moments as a weeaboo with you guys, I figured you’d get a good bit of amusement from it. These incidents range from when I was in early middle school all the way to early college (graduated two years ago I think now)! I’ll try to keep them in a somewhat chronological order.
I think a good one to start off with was with how I made my first anime loving friend. I was in early middle school I think, and somewhere along the line, me and this other girl found out each other had liked Ouran High School Host Club. Prior to this I had no idea who this girl was, but I had seen her around obviously. At this point I was an awkward kid who was just getting into the emo phase, I wore nothing but Hot Topic and had horrible haircuts 24/7. I instantly latched onto this girl though and we constantly talked about Ouran. All the time. We’d doodle it and give each other notes about it. We started talking online eventually and it branched out to fanning over other anime and manga series from there. We also talked about other stuff as well, she had horses and I thought that was so cool! This in itself isn’t so bad, but she was one of my friends that I dragged around constantly and swept her up in a lot of weeaboo antics, so I thought how I met her was semi-important. We will call this friend T. My first weeaboo friend, we still talk a lot actually and make fun of ourselves a lot.
My second main weeaboo friend, I met in a later middle school math class. She was a grade or two above me, and holy moly, she was SO COOL. Ignoring the fact that she was somehow in my mathclass (grade differences), the first thing I noticed was her shirt. 'Will work for shonen.’ I need to talk to her NOW, was basically all I could think of for the entire class. Eventually I did get to talk to her and we clicked pretty quickly. It started off a lot like how I met T, talking about one series and branching out to others. Let’s call this friend J. J is the friend who really got me into yaoi and RP. And MAN did we get into the yaoi rabbit hole, pretty deep.
T, J, and I ended up hanging out a lot. We had some other friends but they weren’t part of the inner trio we had going on. One who still stands out in my mind, outside of our trio, is a girl I’ll call N. N was very weird. She wanted us all to call her 'N-chan’ and acted (I do mean acted, she did this intentionally) like a sad moe girl all the time. She cried very easily (over things like her eggs not being cooked right), and was in love with every boy (but could never bring herself to ask them out). I think one of the worst weeaboo things N had done was spent the majority of money her grandmother left her when she passed away on manga… She never had any money, and when she got it–it went right into her weeaboo collection. The worst part about her weeaboo stage was herpersonality of wanting to be an anime girl. That’s pretty much all that needs to be said there. She was a nice girl, but she just irked me a lot.
Anyway, onto some awkward weeaboo things I did with my friends, sorry that was a bit of a long intro, I’m not very good with keeping things SHORT-short.
1. COSPLAYING. This comes to mind instantly and I cringe every time I think about all the stuff we did. T, J, and I cosplayed a lot. We had only ever been to one con together, but we cosplayed a lot regardless. At our houses, on walks, in Wal*Mart, in the mall, at school… Oh man.
On our sleep overs we’d geek out in general. We’d talk about anime, watch it, watch random videos, chill on our laptops… Cosplay… Sometimes we’d try to make videos so we could get popular online. I remember this one time T and I made this horrible cooking video (out of the box cupcakes) as Matt and Mello from Death Note… And I think another one of us dancing in my room? It was so bad. I want to mention I cosplayed Matt for my school picture one year in high school. It wasn’t even a good cosplay, which makes it so much worse.
T and I cosplayed Axel and Marluxia from Kingdom Hearts to Wal*Mart (more than once), and the mall. I PAINTED MY REAL HAIR RED FOR THIS. I looked like a greasy late 90’s cultist mallgoth, acne included. I want to say, and I still think this today, T did a damn good Marluxia. I felt so bad when her weapon broke AS SOON AS WE GOT OUT OF THE CAR for our first convention, it looked amazing. Once T, J, and I cosplayed all at once at the Wal*Mart plaza as Marluxia (T), Japan from Hetalia (J), and Konata from Lucky Star (me). We went around acting like fools and taking selfies like no other. We still have these pictures and they make me die on the inside, but I can’t bring myself to delete them because of the fun we had together. We also cosplayed a Black Butler group to Wal*Mart and Starbucks. That group was T, my boyfriend, I, and two people we had visiting. This is one of my submissions on here actually, it’s titled BDSM 101.
2. OUR FIRST CONVENTION. Our first convention was a magical experience, but it was also a mess. A mess. First off, T and I were in our senior or junior year of Highschool, J was a year out, and our other friend M (who is now actually my husband) was a year or two out as well. I somehow convinced all these people to go to this expensive, large, out of state con with me and somehow convinced my parents to let us go and put the initial payment on my dad’s card. M was in charge of getting the hotel because he had gone to this con MULTIPLE times prior. He never got the hotel. I had to get it. 17 year old me, no hotel booking experience prior. A month before the con. Everything is booked. I got really mean about this to everyone and I felt really bad about it but this was supposed to be THE BEST WEEKEND OF OUR LIVES™. I found a hotel that was a good taxi and train ride away. I nabbed it. The ride to and from the con to this was horrible. But we all thought it was worth it. When we finally got to the con, hell broke lose between T, J, and I. Mostly J and I. T was very shy at this point still. J and I were just screaming basically. 'AAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!’ and just waving at everybody and everything. We were overwhelmed, young, and annoying. We gushed over everything, it was so bad. We rushed T out of her dad’s van and her prop weapon broke. Looking back on it, J and I were really rude, even to our own friends there. Somehow poor T ended up carrying a lot of our stuff and we had made M into our guide and rescuer at the hotel room (foot rubs plz, heels hurt). I feel like J and I were causing all these little fits while M and T just tried to enjoy the con. I also made a horrible cosplay of Ciel from Black Butler at the con as an excuse to be able to touch M. M cosplayed Sebastian from Black Butler. I had a huge crush on him at the time and was desperate, and I would not back off. I was even dating J at the time of doing this, to make matters even worse. I was a horrible teenager, I really was. But with my Ciel shield on, nothing was stopping me from having M carry me around and dote on me for the sake of being in character. Because I did this, J made an Undertaker from Black Butler to go with our cosplays as well. Because we were from the same series, we got even more obnoxious. Why was I such a miserable little thing? Oh, J and I also got into a really rude and immature tag match with a Vash cosplayer, we stopped once we got yelled at. We were both really red-faced. This con is when it really started to kick in that I was actually a weeaboo in denial.
3. ANIME CLUB. Oh, anime club. I may have only gone to a handful of your meetings, but you still left quite the impression on me. I hated it. We had a lame anime club. That’s what younger me though. And honestly, I don’t think you could call it an anime club. I really don’t. There was no anime viewing, no convention planning, no order to anything. All these kids did was sit around and talk in the art room for 40 minutes. Most of the time I was out with a handful of friends in the halls yelling and running around. The club was invited to go out and paint on the Starbucks windows, and they did. I didn’t go because I was getting self aware at this point. I went to see their work though and it was all horribly drawn anime OCs all over the place. Neon pinks, greens, yellows, and blues everywhere. People were very confused and some of them even made fun of them as they were painting. That’s when I quit anime club.
4. THE OUTFITS. J and I constantly tried to look Japanese for about two years. We wore very bad decora inspired outfits. Necklaces and hair clips everywhere. We’d get all gussied up and then go flaunt at the mall and eat Chinese food. Of course, we’d stop by the FYE for some Pocky and Ramune! Emo hair, short plaid skirts, knee highsocks. Anime tshirts, plushies, hot topic accessories, the works. It was bad. We even looked up online tutorials for how to look asian. Eventually we toned it down a bit and just started dressing in cute ways that incorporated the styles we liked. By the end of figuring out how to not look stupid, we looked pretty good I think. The end result of that way of dressing followed me until my first year of college (I basically described it as very low-key gyaru hime inspired). I’m too lazy for it these days, and since I’m getting older I don’t think it works anymore. Some days J and I would try to dress up our other friends, like T or some others. The one we always tried to 'improve’ was E. We loved and hated E. We always told each other 'E has so much potential but she just doesn’t use it’. E was a really nice friend, and like T, was really quiet and shy and J and I stepped on her a lot too.
All in all, I do cringe thinking about how I acted. But, I had really good times with my friends. Those sleepovers and all that junk was, still to this day, some of the best times of my life. I kept all our little momentos, like the con books and our doodles. I can’t delete the cringey old cosplay pictures. When I see an older person acting the way I did, I judge them. I always try to not judge kids though (I mean I do but not as bad), because I’ve been there. I did that stuff too, and while that doesn’t make it perfectly reasonable to act that way, it’s understandable to me. I grew out of it, so I assume they will too–I hope they will at least. I still watch anime and read manga, but I’m just your average geeky adult now. I went and saw Deadpool, and all the other Marvel films. I collects American comic books more than I do manga now a days. I stopped drawing only anime, and prefer to draw western styled cartoons. I haven’t touched my cosplay box in forever. Anime is only a minor hobby of mine now. And, this obviously wasn’t all we did here in the post, but, this is long enough as is so I’m going to end it here. I don’t really talk to any of my old friends, except T. We talk a lot. We’re all friends on social media but that’s really about it. It seems everyone is over the weeaboo stage from my old little gang!!
Okay, just a warning before I start, this gets pretty twisted and involves toxic relationships, assholes, rape jokes, sexual abuse, and (of course) weebs.
Names are changed to protect people
Gets me into anime- Red
First girlfriend- Orange
Poor child that get dragged in with me (sorta)- Yellow
Creepy older weeb- Pink
Amazing friend that saves me- Green
Me- Blue
Okay, this is a fairly long story as it takes place over 5 (very long) years. But we’re in this for the long haul, so strap in and come along on my amazing weeb filled adventure.
My mom travels for work a lot, and I thought that this new place would be no different, but I ended up staying there for nearly 3 years. You see it all started with me meeting Red, who lived in the complex I had just moved into. For whatever reason, I hated her right away, but she was my age, we went to the same school, and I like to give people the benefit of the doubt. Boy do I wish I listened to my gut telling me to stay away.
Our parents talked and it was decided we’d walk home together and that’s how it started. I knew about anime, I grew up watching Sailor Moon I loved it, so I figured when Red brought up anime it was all adorable girls like Usagi making friends and growing strong. 7th grade me was all for that. And she started out small, like an actual drug dealer, showed me Hetalia and I thought that the idea of a history based anime was cool. And I soon made friends with Orange and Yellow and we get a little weeb squad going, even making friends with an older 8th grader, Pink, but she ended up moving on to high school (don’t worry, she returns later).
Flash forward to the summer before our 8th grade year, we’re all closer than ever, Red being one of my closest friends (at the time), Yellow shaping into a talented artist, and Orange making me think I might have it in for chicks. We started to all be into terrible cosplay, but we were harmless (at the time). A lot happened that summer, but I ended up with my first girlfriend.
While I was happily dating Orange, Red started acting weird. But I figured it was just her having a hard time with me dating when she kept falling in and out of bad relationships.
Now while I still watched anime, I wasn’t really a weeb anymore. Though I did try and bond with Red through anime and Homestuck (which I enjoy much more low key), but all the stuff she liked was really sexual and I couldn’t stomach it (later find out its because I’m asexual) or she liked stuff that was just… yuck. But we managed, I thought it was what friends did.
Red continued to get worse. She had been dumped again by this really shitty guy, and was getting really weird about it. At this same time, Yellow had started dating another person in the outer circle of our friend group. So the 5 of us decided to have a movie night to try and cheer Red up, but Orange got lost on the way to my apartment, so Yellow and I go out to safe her from the scary neighborhood she’d never been in before. While we were gone, Red and Yellow’s boyfriend (I didn’t find this out until much much later) had a quick fuck in my bathroom.
Red got worse as 8th grade and the following summer came. I had my weird DeviantArt phase and actually had fun with it, but Red started saying that if I didn’t do things with her more she’d fall into a terrible depression and similar threats about her well being. She held me hostage in our friendship and I didn’t realize it at the time.
Freshman year came, and we met Pink again, who had only gotten worse and now was trying to loop us all into ‘cheerful’ rape rps, to which we all politely declined.
Luckily, my mom finally got called away, where I met Green. And while he is one of the biggest nerds I’ve ever met, he survived his weeb phase and we became fast friends.
I soon moved back to the state where all my old 'friends’ lived. And got to see them again even though my mom was assigned to a different city. Red convinced both of our parents to let us have a sleep over, but she kept trying to get me, 'in the mood’ as she said, with more gross anime and hentai. Clearly not out growing her weeb-ness in my three month absence. It was that night she made her move 'to try and make us closer as friends’. I felt disgusting the next morning and booked it home. Confused by what it meant, I tried to talk to Orange, only for her to break up with me and find out she had been cheating on me for pretty much the entire time I was gone. I was heart broken and running out of people to call friend as I hugged Yellow goodbye and she moved to Florida, but she made it out.
I started talking to Green more and more, I moved farther from Red, and Green helped convince me that she was toxic. I didn’t understand until she called me, pretending that her dad was drunk and trying to kill her but when I called the police it was just her wanting to see if I still cared about her. I cut her off, finally.
Though blocking her on every social media site made me feel better, she still kept finding ways around. Green couldn’t do much from another state, but he was supportive, and helped me a lot, even when Orange messaged me one day out of the blue saying she had made a terrible mistake. But Green pulled me out of it.
All of the weeb is behind me. Mostly. I have a new, amazing girlfriend, Green is still my best of friends, and my new friend group of nerds aren’t weebs (anymore). Sadly, from time to time, Red and Orange will show up out of thin air. Though I hear Yellow has taken care of herself.
My friend (who doesn’t come into the story much) - Carol
Sorry it’s kinda long, I’m a wordy person…
So, I’ll admit, I have definitely gone through a weeb phase. There is no question about that. Hell, I’ve done some things in my weeb phase that I’m not proud of and I cringe when I think back on them, but that was years ago and it’s over. I still enjoy anime, don’t get me wrong, and I still cosplay and buy the occasional piece of merch, but I’m nowhere near as bad/embarrassing as I was. It was a dark time.
This is just kind of a small story, I suppose, but it still creeped me out, and I’m glad it’s over. I should start by saying I’m a very anxious person, irrationally so, and - much like many internet users - social interaction is not my strong point. When I was 16, I moved from a small school I had been at for most of my school years to a new, very big school. It wasn’t far away from my old school, so I could still see all my old friends, but I was shit scared. Probably more scared than I should have been.
Now, there was the usually initiation into the new school year that (I assume) most schools have - filling out some forms, having awkward chats with your teachers, getting to know the area through a map of the grounds that is essentially useless, getting timetables sorted - you know the deal. My form teacher decides he wants us all to get to know each other a bit better (since some students have been there their whole lives, and some - like me - were new) and so he makes us sit at tables with people and just chat while we finish off some short bits of paperwork, about what subjects we’re taking this year, etc. I was too nervous to actually sit next to anyone, so I find an empty table at the back to get on by myself.
Soon, a guy joins me. I’ll call him Ichigo, because of his obsession with Bleach. He looks a bit greasy, but I’m a firm believer that you shouldn’t judge people from their appearance, so I just smile and then get on with the forms. He starts talking to me, though, and - like I’ve mentioned - I’m not good with talking to people I don’t know, so my usual panic reaction is to laugh and smile, and I do that. He mentions anime, and I mention I also like it. His eyes light up, and I let him lead the conversation for a while. It goes fine, and even though I didn’t contribute much, I feel pretty proud of myself for talking to someone that day, and happy that I might have the chance of making a friend.
Now, because I didn’t have many (or any, at this point) friends, I used to arrive early and sit in the library before registration/lessons start. I liked it because it was quiet and I could get on with work without being disturbed, and I often went there every time I had free time - mornings, break times, lunch times, free periods. But Ichigo notices this and every morning he would come find me, sometimes bringing sweets as a gift for me, and asking me to spend lunch with him. I don’t often want to because I need to finish whatever work I’m doing, and I liked spending time by myself, but I don’t want to offend him and I was scared he would start hating me if I kept saying no, so occasionally I would say yes.
All he would ever talk about is anime with me. He also used to be weirdly touchy with me (and I usually get very uncomfortable when I’m touched, especially by someone I don’t know very well), putting his arm around my shoulders, hugging me, etc. I really didn’t like it. In fact one time he reached out and just stroked my hair, saying very close to me ‘wow your hair is so soft!’ and I just laughed it off, and tried to avoid him for the rest of the day.
Now, at this time I was also starting to befriend another girl in my form group, who we’ll call Carol. I got on with her pretty well, even though I didn’t share any lessons with her, so we only saw each other in form time. A running joke we had was that Ichigo had a crush on me, since he was always following me around and was always offering to buy me things (one time he said he was going to get me the extended edition of one of my favourite films for Christmas, which would have been a pretty expensive gift for somebody, especially considering a) I didn’t spend as much time around him anymore, b) the price cap my friends and I have is usually around £10 so we can afford it, and c) if he had bought me that, I would have felt compelled to buy him an expensive gift as well, which I couldn’t afford) so I just tried to laugh him off while implying that I really didn’t want him to do that, making up some excuse about another friend already promising to buy it for me. And even though Carol and I joked about Ichigo fancying me, it always made me very uncomfortable, and I know he creeped out a lot of other people in our school as well, particularly the girls.
Even though I never went into the Common Room, because it was always far too busy and loud for my liking, Carol and her other friend told me that apparently he used the school computers (which you could access youtube and most video sites on) these animes with lots of young-looking girls and panty shots, etc. Just in the middle of the common room.
There was also the time he brought in this crappy, pervy drawing he had done of a VERY large breasted anime girl in a very small bikini, showing me first of all, and then asking Carol and I what colours he should use to finish it. When we shrugged awkwardly, he actually went and asked our form teacher his opinion on it. Our form teacher, needless to say, looked very uncomfortable.
As well as this, he used to constantly compliment me in a very creepy manner, occasionally using broken Japanese, and often telling me I looked like some large breasted Bleach character he had a crush on, and that I should cosplay as her. Then there was also a lot of insensitive jokes he used to make, which I think he did to impress us, but we didn’t often find them funny.
He was also very passionate about the fact that comic books and manga were COMPLETELY DIFFERENT and anime was NOT a cartoon, and all ‘dumb American cartoons’ were stupid, and even though I’m not particularly proud of it, I admit that I did sometimes purposely call anime ‘cartoons’ because he would get so angry about it, screaming about how I was wrong.
Luckily, he dropped out the next year, and I’ve actually made some very close friends since then. I’m still friends with Carol, and we were both glad when Ichigo dropped out. I certainly feel a lot more comfortable around school now, and don’t need to try and avoid bumping into him. Sorry this was kinda long, and not as intense as some of the other weeb stories here, but?? Yeah.
I was a weeb. There’s no way around it. Now, while I still enjoy anime, I have gotten out of that god awful phase. It started around 6th grade. I had my own lunch table filled with various types of nerds, ranging from the mathletes, gamers, bookworms, and Tyson (an alias).
Tyson was new to our district and I happened to be the boss of our little table, so I let him in. I didn’t realize it at first, but he would sneak little bits of weeb talk into conversation here and there. “aw man, I love caramelldansen”, “cat girls are so hot”, “have you ever wanted to be Japanese?”, etc. Now as a small sixth grade girl, I was innocent. He convinced me to look up several different shows and I became hooked.
And one day, I checked out a “How to draw manga” book from the library and brought it to our lunch table. I took a few drawing suggestions until Tyson motioned for me to come a little closer. I obliged and he whispered his request into my ear. Mother fucking naked cat girl. Mind you, I hadn’t even turned twelve yet. I refused and he got pissed, but mainly just glowered in my direction and didn’t talk to me the rest of the day.
As the year wore on, it became glaringly obvious he was interested in me. I had “developed” early and he would make a point of staring at my chest. All the damn time. He would compare me to a loli, anime girl, cat girl, whatever the hell he was jacking off to at the time.
Luckily, I moved during the summer due to a flood and I started my new school. Seventh grade my weeb-ness was at kind of a low (because I was one of the superwholockians, but that’s another horror story for another time). Eighth grade, I got a boyfriend, became more obsessed with anime and mange, got dumped by my boyfriend, and met a boy who I’ll call Andy. Right after my breakup, Andy had consoled me with pocky and ramune. We both looked really similar (short brown hair, freckles, hazel eyes) and so I called him Nii and he called me Imouto. We went everywhere together and I of course called him senpai and all that shit. He got accused of selling drugs and was suspended for two weeks. About a week into his suspension, I got a midnight text proclaiming his love for me (In Japanese, no less). I was swooned for whatever reason and we started dating. He called me Koibito, I still called him Nii. I tried to say “kawaii”, “sugoi”, and “desu” pretty much every sentence. I made myself cat ears.
About two days before he was to come back to school, I was sent to a behavioral hospital for trying to kill myself, but I won’t get into that. Nine days after that, we were back together. Our first date was at the movies, watching the Avengers movie. We sat in the back row, playing the pocky game (oh god why) and drinking ramune. We would make out after school pretty much everyday and hold hands and all that shit. We got to second base (OH GOD WHY) and he would always say that he loved me in Japanese.
I was the greasy weeb that wouldn’t really bathe, that would cut, make shitty art. I would even try bring the fact that I’m really distantly Japanese into every conversation with anyone who would listen. I was into yaoi, I did shitty cosplays (even though I was overweight). We actually dated for three months before I dumped him on one of my bipolar swings.
He slept on a couch, had a katana, liked fedoras, was obsessed with chivalry, and learned Japanese off of google translate. He’s gotten into trouble with the cops several times and has tried to get me to fall for him through my spotify.
I’ve gotten rid of my weeb phase, but I think it went to my little 11 year old sister. God help us all.
