Ani-Mania: How Do You Afford Your Anime Lifestyle?

It’s been a month now, here at AniMania — a month of ninjas and wolfgirls, of star crossed lovers and hard boiled crime drama — and I realized that I haven’t even stopped to introduce myself. Travis told me when I started writing the column that I could post a short bio, but each week there were more shows, more reviews, more and better things to talk about than yours truly. And with so many new titles coming out, and so many great old series that deserve to have some light shed on them, there always will be. But here at the one month mark, I decided to take a break for this week, and tell you a little about myself, and part of my own descent into utter otaku geek-dom.

For starters, maybe I should explain the term, otaku. Simply put, an “otaku” is an anime fan. And I don’t mean just any fan. An otaku is a really geeky, hopelessly obsessive fan, whose whole life revolves around buying and watching anime. The only thing geekier than an otaku might be what the Japanese call a “hikikomori”, someone who becomes a hermit, refusing to leave their home, no longer able to function in normal society. Otaku are still marginally functional. They have jobs. So they can buy more anime…

One of the marks of a true otaku is that they don’t just buy the shows — they buy all of the STUFF that goes along with them. There are posters, figures, wall scrolls, models, soundtracks — life sized body pillows of the characters in their underwear — the list goes on. And I decided, right at the beginning, that I wanted no part of it. All of those things smacked of geekery, or worse yet, being a NERD, and I still considered myself to be a normal, well adjusted individual who just happened to like anime. At least, that’s what I thought.

It started with Inuyasha figures. ONE Inuyasha figure. I’d seen them for a while at the Hot Topic store, but resisted getting any, dismissing all of that as a bunch of childish nonsense. But one day, after seeing them for about a year, and feeling particularly nostalgic for that old sensation of buying a “toy” again, I decided to treat myself, and bought the figure for my favorite character, the priestess, Kikyo.

Then I noticed Naraku was on sale. Six bucks! I couldn’t say no to a deal like that. But now I had a problem. It was one thing, to buy one figure, on a lark. Now I had two: Kikyou and Naraku. But Kikyo and Naraku don’t go together at ALL (unless you’re one of those underground Kikyo x Naraku shippers, but we won’t get into that here). Somehow, this led to an epic quest to collect all of the Inuyasha figures. Unfortunately, Hot Topic had just discontinued them. After visiting every Hot Topic within a 50 mile radius, picking up Sango at a con (if it sounds bad, it’s supposed to), and receiving Kagome as a gift, I finally had the whole set, all except for Kouga, but the Kouga figures had some sort of problem at the factory, and came out a little orange looking, so I held off on getting him.

Around the same time, I innocently noticed that I was running out of new things to listen to in the car, so I bought one of the soundtracks for Cowboy Bebop, and two from Big O. Geekery aside, the soundtracks from both of these shows stand on their own as great music, and if you like jazz or bebop, they are well worth a listen. At this point, I was unconcerned. I’d picked up a few toys, but so what? They all fit neatly on one table, and it was fun to buy toys again. And then — well, I’m still not sure what happened.

For one thing, Christmas happened. A close friend of mine was in danger of moving out of state, and as a special gift, in anticipation of all the Christmasses we then figured we’d be out of touch for, he went and did the unthinkable, and got me two limited edition Motoko Aoyama figures. To this day, he won’t tell me how much they cost him, and though I did get him a Shinobu, and later chipped in to buy him a sword, I still don’t feel like I’ve adequately returned the favor.

That next spring, I was at a con (I’d started going to cons by this point), and was able to haggle a great deal on a Rei Ayanami figure. It was “Wedding Rei”, and I ended up having my friend help me smuggle her to the car, because my girlfriend has been wanting to get married since somewhere around the second date, and if she found out I saw Rei in a wedding dress before I saw her in one, she’d kill me.

My girlfriend found out (they ALWAYS find out), and ironically, she didn’t kill me. Instead, she got me a Gothic Rei figure for my birthday. I have a VERY understanding girlfriend. I’d say it was all downhill from there, but it had probably been all downhill the entire time. And so where does that leave things now? Well, let’s see, looking around the room here, my Inuyasha figures are piled on my writing table, along with a very nicely sculpted rendering of Alex Row from Last Exile. A small Rei and Sesshomaru are on top of the computer desk, along with Gothic Rei, who is wearing skirt and sitting on concrete, which can’t be very comfortable. Wedding Rei is on the chest of drawers, with Kikyo, Kagome, two Motokos, and a Haruhi Suzumiya figure.

My girlfriend’s Haruhi outfit is in the closet — she sent it home with me, because she doesn’t have any more hanging space for the rest of her cosplays. My Sesshomaru costume is hanging on the back of the door. There’s a wall scroll in the corner of Yuko, from xxxHolic, and signed by the voice actress, Colleen Clinkenbeard, who also autographed the xxxHolic clock my girlfriend gave me at this year’s ACEN. Another xxxHolic wallscroll is over the bed. The swords from the aforementioned Sesshomaru costume are by the night stand. More posters and wall scrolls are piled around the room. And then there’s the anime. And manga. Man, I’m such a dork.

I’m still not sure just how I acquired all of this stuff. I have this sneaking suspicion that my friends gave some of it to me in an effort to pull me down to their own levels of geek-ness. That, or it’s a conspiracy by the NHK. Both scenarios are equally likely. For my part, I’m blaming the whole thing on Kikyo. Either way, that’s all for this week’s column. Look for more reviews next week, and if there’s something you’d like to see or comment about, feel free to leave a post about it.

(Edward Douglas does NOT own any anime body pillows. Instead, he plots ways to get his girlfriend to cosplay his favorite anime characters.)