In high school, I was in the anime club.  For the most part, no one spoke in broken Japanese, or cosplayed outside of cons and specific cosplay events.  Honestly, most of us didn’t even cosplay.

We kind of devolved as a club (we didn’t do anything but watch artsy anime and Miyazaki movies).  One day, though, a girl came and began hanging out with us.  I knew her from other things, but had no idea she was into anime.  We talked about anime we both liked, and then started talking about things outside of anime.  I discovered we had a lot in common.  We started hanging out, and she would frequently stay over at my house.  It grew to the point that we were practically living together.

Then she began talking about her fanfiction.  Now, don’t get me wrong, I read fanfiction and even write small stories sometimes.  But she hadn’t actually written it, she would just talk endlessly about her “story”, and her self insert original character.  I’ll call her “Rose” (about as generic as her character’s actual name).

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Little long I know. Its worth while, this girl actually made middle school for me unbearable. Because of her friendship I was bullied, made fun of, and actually had a real hard time making friends besides her. Here is my story. And note during this whole time we were both being bullied.

When I just started going to middle school I met this girl named, lets call her Amanda. Since, from a young age, I was awkward and a nerd from the start, we hit it off really well. She was shy, I was shy; she liked video games, I liked video games etc etc. She was great at first. We would hang out and eat lunch together like normal kids for our age. She introduced herself as Kagome, that she was half Japanese and used to live in Japan. (She looked nowhere near half Asian at all, but seeing that I have a half white/half Hispanic half sister looking mostly Hispanic I brushed it off.) I thought it was pretty cool that she was Japanese in fact.

As I got to know her things got strange.

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So since coming to this university I’ve come across a lot more uncomfortable weeaboo-related situations than I ever really wanted to. I mean, I’ve been in contact with some really extreme weeaboos before- I gravitated towards a lot of big yaoi/yuri fans in high school just because I needed people I thought would be supportive of my identity. ~Shockingly~ they were not. But I’ve never met so many in one place, I guess. (I have stories about my high school days, but those are for another day).

I like anime and manga alright, it’s not my biggest passion in life and I’ve never been to a con, but it’s pretty neat in my book. Whatever, I’m cool with people who are big into it. But there are just some things I really don’t think are okay.

Easter weekend. I live seven hours away from my university, so I have to fly home for the holiday. I’m sitting outside on a railing waiting for my cab to bring me to the airport. Nothing horrific happened to me, but as I’m chilling there, I hear two young women start up a conversation. Apparently, they’re friends, and members of the anime house. In my school, we have programmed suites; I live in the LGBT housing, there’s an athletic program, Russian language, etc. The entire anime house is pretty much what you’d expect, and it’s uncomfortable. I don’t say this from pre existing prejudice, but because I have been in and met people from anime house, and it’s pretty, well, interesting.

From their conversation, I gathered that they were on their way to a con. One, let’s call her A, had never been to one before. B was lecturing her on con etiquette.

A: “I want to meet someone at this con, you know? I mean there have to be asians there. But I don’t know how to flirt.”
B: “You don’t have to flirt at a con. You just glomp people.”
A: “Seriously?”
B: “Yeah, like, you don’t even have to ask. It’s a con, that’s the point. If you see someone cosplaying as a character you like, you can just grab them and tackle them and stuff. That’s what cosplayers are there for.”
A: “Oh, okay. I’ll try that!”

I’m pretty much horrified by this conversation. The fact that someone is being encouraged to invade the personal space of cosplayers, and being told that it’s totally acceptable, and that real world rules don’t apply to cons. I look up, and it turns out A is this girl my friend was considering asking on a date- until he found her OKCupid profile which said that she “doesn’t date non-Asians, so don’t even think about it”.

My cab came before I even had to make eye contact with them thankfully, but seriously, if anyone at whatever con they were going to was groped by either of those girls, I’m really sorry.

I cannot believe I actually heard someone verbally saying that cosplayers are free game to be harrassed and “glomped” without asking permission. I think that’s what gets me about this story. “Don’t worry, that’s what they’re there for.” Ugh.

For starters, I’m not an anime fan. I’ve never been really interested in anime, but I had a friend who was. Let’s pretend her name is Ashley.

Ashley is a nice person, but she went through a phase when we were 12 where she was your typical weeaboo: Wore crappy non-official merchandise, used Japanese words out of the freaking blue, et cetera. Thankfully, she wasn’t a glomper.

This was in 2006. It so happened that at that time, the world football (soccer) cup was taking place. We were at school, but during a free period, just chilling with some friends. We were listening to the radio, they were narrating a match between Japan and some other country (I think it was Brazil but I might be wrong). Most of us were cheering for Brazil because, well, Japan didn’t stand a chance.

But this Ashley (who by the way knows NOTHING of football) was obviously cheering for Japan.

Loudly.

In Japanese.

In butchered Japanese.

We joked about it, since the Brazillian team was a million times better.

She got mad and literally chased another friend around our school’s soccer field, stole her shoe and made her run barefoot on the mud to get it back. All because we didn’t support her beloved Nihon-desu.

Thankfully she’s changed a lot. But this is a terrifying story I’ll never forget.

K-pop is really popular at my school. Lots of students like it, including me.

I also happen to like anime. At the end of last semester, one of my classes was on a field trip. One of my friends, who also likes anime, brought a couple issues of Ouran High School Host Club for the bus ride. We read the mangas together in our seats, and it was a lot of fun, because we both like that series. I have lots of fanart stored on my ipod, and just as we finished the mangas and started browsing through the art, a girl in the seat beside us asked what we were doing. She seemed really interested, so we let her read them while we continued with the fanart.

Let’s call this girl Annie.

Annie and I were already acquainted by this point in the school year, and she seemed like a regular person. What my friend and I didn’t realize is how much we influenced Annie that day.

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I’ll start off with explaining a little bit about myself.  I’m not really into anime or any of that stuff (unless you count ATLA), but I hang out around a few people who are.  After telling this story to a friend who is into anime he recommended that I submit it here.  So here it is.

In order to move up in my Church I had to take an overnight trip with my youth group.  When we got to the hotel I was assigned a room with this girl, lets just say her name is Kelly.  I had heard from a few people that she was a little weird, but I myself am a little weird so I didn’t think much of it.

 ”So! Tell me about yourself!” I said once we were alone.  She began with explaining how much she loved Japan and how she was going to move there.  I asked her what she loved about Japan she just said, “everything!”.  The next thing I asked her was where she lived.  She told me that she lived in, let’s say the town’s name is Springfield, but she wanted to clear up that where she lives isn’t where she’s from.  She’s actually from a distant planet that is at war with Earth.  They have captured her and are holding her hostage and forcing her to live the life of a mortal human.  I nodded my head nervously at this.  ”I wouldn’t expect you to understand.” She said.

We left the room to go meet up with the rest of our group and I heard people talking in the other hotel rooms, a common sound in a hotel.  ”Do you hear that?” She asked.  I didn’t know what she was talking about so I said no.  Then she began to explain how her sixth sense was kicking in and she heard the whispered of those who had died in our hotel. (We were staying at a Holiday Inn, a pretty nice one actually.)  I told her that I didn’t believe in ghosts like that and she simply scoffed and continued talking about her past psychic experiences.

When the night ended and we had all retired to our rooms I had settled down with a magazine and prepared to fall asleep.  Before I did she interrupted me to tell me that if I didn’t see her in the middle of the night it was probably because she was familiarizing herself with the New York pack because, you see, she’s a werewolf.  At this point I just gave her a look and went to bed.

Late into the night she played some game on her Nintendo DS.  Around 3:00 AM I told her to please turn it off and go to bed.  She refused and declared emotionally, “THEY NEED ME!”.

And that was one of the weirdest people I have ever met.

The first time I went to a convention, I was advised by a few veteran friends to cosplay for the “full experience”.  Surely, I agreed, but I wanted to cosplay a simple character that can be easily recognized; I went with a casual pikachu.  

I was pleasantly surprised to recieve attack-hugs, since I didn’t know they were a trend, but I wasn’t bothered;  Back then, when I was five feet tall, nobody dared to really jump me.  Somebody even threw a plush pokeball at me, which I received with slight displeasure but I easily brushed it off, since I knew it was meant in jest.

Everything was going fine until I was purchasing a drink from a vendor. I suddenly felt a strong pain in the back of my head, as if somebody were punching me.  It chanced upon someone as a swell idea to assault a child with a heavy plastic pokeball from behind, throwing from quite a distance.  They were of a large group, and I received two more witless pokeball pelts from them before one rushed up to retrieve the pokeballs, briefly apologize—and only due to my obvious glaring—and scurry off.

First time, worst time.

Yes. If you make a submission and wish to remain totally anonymous, indicate this at the beginning and we will repost ourselves with absolutely no name attached. 

So, to start this adventure off I will say that I was and still am an anime fan.  I have a shit ton of posters that a friend gave me, even though not even half of them are up due to lack of wall space. I have some shirts, and a few random ass DVDs.  I also like japanese music and some Vocaloid.  But I don’t consider myself a weeaboo.  Most of my friends who are going to graduate high school are major anime fans. It’s kind of disturbing really.  I love them, but seriously.  I can only take so much Hetalia and Vocaloid.

So one day, we were driving back from the mall. It was around 8 or 9 pm and up it was pretty dark and icy.  Typical Midwestern winter’s night with snow.  Well she, she’s a big Canada fan, so we’ll call her Canada.  Well Canada was… Obsessed. Freakishly so.  And she has one of those things in her car that you can plug your music device in to the radio.  Well she was currently obsessed with Meditational Field sang by Kaito.

I like that song as well, and when I like a song I’ll have it on repeat too.  So I couldn’t say anything about it.  Well, she would for some reason not have it on repeat on her mp3 player, and she would manualy change it while driving.  Thing is, she can’t multitask.  So we were on ice with her driving being interrupted by the ending of that song.

Well this went on for a while.  She’d scream at us if we talked during the song or made any noise.  And so she’d split her attention from the icy road to her mp3 player.  At one point she was so spazzy about it, that if someone whispered, she’d rewind it.  And she accidently skipped past it.  So while driving she was staring at her mp3 player and ignoring the VERY ICY road.

And she ran a stop light.  At this point, I was pissed off and I screamed stop.  She looked and stopped.  Almost right in the middle of the intersection.  Not even four feet from her car at the time she stopped, zoomed past this big ass semi truck.  And her car is one of those tiny compact ones.

And this happened because she couldn’t find one measly Vocaloid song on her mp3 player after she listened to it for ten miles.

Now I have implimented the rule in her car that the passanger is in command of handling the music, and will stop at a song whenever someone wishes.

Don’t Vocaloid and drive, kids.
It could almost get you crushed by a semi truck.

I’ve known this one girl, let’s call her “Carla” for now. She brings a bad name to several things, anime and LGBT issues in particular. Carla doesn’t go by her real name. She forces everyone to call her Diamond l or whatever anime character she thinks is “kawaii.” Currently she’s obsessed with Hetalia. That fandom really gets a bad rap from people like Diamond.

She INSISTS that she’s half japanese, even though she doesn’t look it and I’ve met her parents. So that’s why she likes to be called “Kiku Honda” or “Japan.”

In theatre arts class we had to write a group script about bullying. She was the “misunderstood Japanese girl who everyone bullies because they’re jealous of her kawaii looks, “hot yaoi friends” and her fantastic art skills.

Diamond is neither cute or a good artist. She steals other people’s art, tracing blatantly from her laptop at lunch. When she actually does her own art, it’s that Draw-Your-Own-Manga shit. She also plans on moving to Japan when she’s older, and creating a manga with another weaboo-y friend, “Addi-chan.” “Cute” is one thing that does NOT describe her. She has short, afro-like hair, acne covering her face, and never wears a bra.

We take the same public bus to school, and often, she’s been wearing this shirt saying “JAPAN NUKED FOR NO REASON” and on the back it says, “THANKS FAT AMERICANS!!!!!!!” It’s one of those shitty ones made with fabric paint. EVERYONE. STARES.

In GSA, she will blatantly go up to our only two gay guys and say, “You should make some yaoi for us,” or something along those lines. That was one of the major reasons we kicked her out. She unleashes her wrath on this one girl in GSA. Ploy is a thai girl whom Diamond insists is Japanese. Diamond thinks it’s funny to grope Ploy in the middle of meetings, or even regular classes and talk about her boobs REALLY LOUDLY.

Recently, Diamond “casual cosplayed” at school as Fem!Japan. All she did was put on cat ears, comb her hair, wear a skirt with leggings, and say konichiwa to everyone (Which is nothing new.)