Anime tends to change our lives on way or another. These shows have impactful characters, life-like situations and other events that makes us change our perspective of life. In this article, we’ll discuss about anime influence on life!
“Anime is for kids”, the often-said phrase that makes us want to release our sealed Kurama and rage to flip the heavens and the skies. I might be hyperbolizing, but at least that’s how I feel. Who hasn’t heard it while anime-splaining to your so-called “mature friends,” who laugh every time you mention the epic plot of Attack on Titan and its impact on politics? Or the powerful friendship/nemesis relationship between Naruto and Sasaki? Apparently, the only thing they hear is cartoons, cartoons, and cartoons. Let’s be honest, we see trolls all the time with their brain-cell-lacking comments on social media, making fun of anime geeks just to feel important. Well, I see them all the time. Am I the only one who finds it super triggering?
We hear adults or young-adults in general with their on-the-nose mundane conversations, about cars for the “big boys”, kids for the married ones, and work for the workaholics. Lord, help us not to be any of those!
To be fair, this article is not to bash adults or any other people for being who they are. We all have different tastes in different areas. This article is to talk about how anime shaped my personality and helped me get through a lot of difficult situations. Teen loneliness, tough school bullying and even war. I hope I didn’t startle you with that word. It can be a tough reality, but not all lives are sugar-coated. Some of us go through a lot in life, and we need that peak of enjoyment to keep us going. I really don’t want to have a prolonged intro because I know how it could make my ADHD fellas doze off. Without further ado, let’s express!
How anime jumped into my life
I’m sure all of you have different stories about how you were introduced to anime. Some of you got the recommended “death note” from some of your friends. Or simply a procrastination task that dragged you from one website to another, and you found yourself on some weird anime website.
Or you could randomly stumble on an anime DVD in your local store. That is how I found out about anime. I was just casually browsing through these DVDs until my eyes fell on a disk called 11Eyes (please don’t bash me on that anime because I recently understood what a mess the plot was XD)! My world was shaken when I found an anime DVD at that time. Many of you would ask why did you get so happy when you could download anime on the internet? Oh, how I wanted to, but that was simply impossible. My internet connection was 120 KB per second!
As crazy as that sounds, I had no choice but to be happy with what I got, and that taught me patience and appreciation. I’ll be frank if I work with 120kb internet speed today, some things in the house will be broken (so much for patience!). Let’s peacefully move on with that.
Not everyone gets happy with the little things, but a kid like me gets stoked with little rushes of happiness. In time, I started buying more and more… the more I got addicted to these funny little attractive drawings. Colorful wide eyes, amazing hair style, and crazy superpowers. Excuse me, but that’s kids’ drugs, y’all, not just an anime. I had to have it. I needed to have it. Anime influence was the dopamine that kept me going and doing homework super quickly in order to sit down and spend my time watching students fighting over Ben-To boxes with crazy martial arts (If anyone is wondering about the sauce, it’s called Ben-To).
How did it affect my life?
Apart from the fact that anime provided the jolt of happiness I needed to keep me going in life as a kid, it was much, much more. It made me long for a friendship like the one I saw in Naruto, a friendship in which I could express myself without limitations. These limitations that hegemonized the social norms, limited the surpass of what we can really be! For once, all I wanted was to do the arms behind my back ninja run without getting mocked by the neighbor’s kids. No, I had to restrain myself to the fullest. I learned to hide it, to master hiding it. You can imagine being the only kid influenced by anime in such a place. Sometimes you wonder if you are the one wrong for acting in such a way, or if society just doesn’t like the word “different”.
The more I watched Naruto mask away his pain, the more I was influenced to do the same. His character was a display of discipline in a society that shunned him for being different. It’s no different than my case, honestly, or any of your cases, because I’m sure there are many just like me. Some of us were lucky to find ourselves in packs like Asuma Sarutobi’s team, while others, like me, spent their teen years looking for a pack. You can imagine how lonely that felt, but no worries, guys, I’m 25 now. The world is different. I’m in a pack that I’m proud to call my best friends. So, yeah, things do change, and when they do, I’m sure they tend to change for the best.
My cooking skills were no exception!
I’m going to talk about the skill most men used to be embarrassed to talk about, at least in my culture. Anime taught me how to cook! I have said it, people, sue me. Anime food was magical, and when I say magical, I mean it with all my heart.
The food literally sparkles on the screen with colors. Let’s face it, every one of us wanted to have it, or just craved to smell it. One of those were Food Wars, the only war we rooted for here. It was fun and delicious, the only war we wanted to join. Since then, I was motivated to cook Raman. Who wasn’t? Come on, guys, who didn’t sip on instant noodles while watching their favorite show? I know I did. Anime is the ciptadine we had no trouble swallowing. One sip of it and we are hooked and hungry at the same time.
So, I got my butt up and headed to the kitchen. There was no holding back, no testosterone would get in between my food and me. You should see the look on my mother’s face… seeing someone else in the kitchen for the first time, it was priceless. There is no shame in loving to cook food. We should be ashamed of not cooking it for ourselves. We might be darn good at it, you never know! Anime can influence you to do many unpredictable things.
Conclusion
There are so many things I wanted to discuss or talk about. Anime influence had such an impact on my life as well as yours, I’m quite certain. Nevertheless, one article is not enough to cover all of my thoughts about it. The sole fact that anime exists is a luxury I thank God I can afford. It helps us grow from a lot of challenges in our lives. It was the perfect daydreaming escape. We needed it. It was the gateway from nightmares and reality that haunted us. Or simply the gateway from a fixed society. It’s not our fault our communities acted the way they did, because we were not the ones who failed sociology, it was them.
Learning new things and shifting your personality to a better version of yourself is something to be proud of, no matter what caused it. An anime or a tv show on Netflix, it hard to change or grow, admitting it is even harder nowadays. No shame in learning new things watching new shows, something I was surprised to witness with my friends… from anime lovers to death note and AOT fans. This shows the people are beginning to be more open to idea and cultural exchange, I’m glad I’m witnessing these days. After all anime culture is all about being different and acceptance despite all your flaws, and honestly I’m living for it.
That’s it for this post! These were the influence of anime on the author’s life!
Author’s Bio:
Hasan Bakir – A university graduate majoring in English Translation who also adores anime!