musings on anime fanatics

I've just finished reading 100 or so chapters of Fruits Basket (how cute are Tohru and Kyou together!) and find myself with questions such as "where are the pictures?" and "why are there so many consecutive sentences?!?" running through my mushy mind as I type. Not to mention this reading from left to right (oh imagine the odds!).

It's kind of like what happens after I marathon an anime series...or two in the course of a day. I stagger around the house in a daze due to a combination of sleep deprivation and focussing on an all too small 17 inch screen for way too many hours on end. Anyone who speaks to me immediately after such insane endeavours will find themselves confronted by a Japanese-speaking nitwit who thinks you've just asked her where Kenshin has placed his sakabatou or what Tohru-chan is going to cook for dinner.

Wonder if there's one of those "You know you're an anime otaku when..." forwards going around. If anyone's seen one lurking on the net somewhere, please send it my way, it'd probably be a rather amusing read. Well, here's my contribution anyway (bear in mind that I'm not guilty of all of these points...just a few really, I swear!):

1. You this sentaance reed able to becus you (cheep, dirti kid) fron China/Malayshea cheep, pirated DVD's bye watch allwes so you dodgy English subtitels allreedy uset tu get.
2. You attach the suffixes "-chan", "-kun", "-san", "-sama" and "sempai" to the names of every friend, relative, customer, cat, pet piranha etc that you come across.
3. You regularly pull out Japanese expressions like "baka!", "hentai", "ecchi", "daaaaiiii suuuukiiiiii!", "kawaiiiiiii", "dattebayo" and "daijoubu?" to use in your everyday speech...even with people who have no bloody idea what you're going on about.
   
4. You understand the terms "bt", "irc", "newsgroups", "club box", "divx" and "codecs" and use them well you do.
5. You have more anime series in your downloaded collection than you could possibly finish watching in your lifetime.
6. You find yourself no longer greeting people with "how have you been lately?" or, "what have you been up to recently?" Instead, you ask them, "so what have you been downloading lately?"
7. You have given up on burning your massive supply of anime. Instead, you just buy more hard drives until your computer tower resembles some sort of sci-fi contraption out of Star Wars.
   
8. You regularly get together with other like minded anime fanatics for anime marathons (aka: "Leechfest"). Marathon veterans will know to start early in the morning, skip recap episodes and be able to cut past the opening song/various magical transformation sequences (think Sailormoon or Card Captors) to hit the exact point where relevant scenes start up again in order to maximise the number of episodes viewed in a day. (e.g. A 24 min episode can be easily slimmed down to a 18 min 20 sec clip with the proper practice)
   
9. You have, at least on one occasion, considered and/or have dressed up in cosplay. (WARNING: Freaky webcam link, DO NOT CLICK if you can't stomach any form of wackiness...don't believe me? Wait till she turns to face the camera!)
10. You have more anime opening/closing and image songs on your ipod mini than you have of any current English speaking ones. You don't understand a single thing they sing but that doesn't bother you. I mean, pffffft! Who listens to white music anyway???
    
11. You've been to every single Eminence concert in existence and worship the ground Yuki Kajiura, Joe Hisaishi and Nobuo Uematsu walks on.
    
12. You spend all your hard earned pay on various anime merchandise and DVDs. Wall scrolls, plushies, keyrings, figurines, models, etc.
13. You have once entertained the idea of possibly becoming a seiyuu (Japanese anime voice actor). You don't care that you can count the number of things you can say properly in Japanese on one hand, you like your anime and you're gonna become a seiyuu even if you have to decimate the entire Japanese seiyuu workforce in order to achieve your dream! Muhahahahaha!!!!
    
14. You have at one stage of your obsession or another, read or even written/drawn fanfiction/doujinshi for your (then) favourite series and visited/posted at such sites as Fanfiction.net and Mediaminer, in fact, you have a couple of links to fanfics with your favourite pairings in your bookmarks right now.
15. You are ashamed that when all your other (non-anime) friends get together and discuss current music/tv series/movies, you have nothing to contribute since you've just been plowing through your anime collection without paying any attention to the goings of real life.
    
16. You have built/visited shrines to your favourite couplings. If you're a girl, you most likely have a strange liking for yaoi/shounen-ai (guy x guy) pairings. If you're a guy, yuri/shoujo-ai (girl x girl) ones. You don't really understand why, but damn those bishounens are cute and those bishoujos look hot!
17. You start dressing up in black garb from head to toe, equipping yourself with plastic toy shurikens and nunchucks and running around like you're an absolute retard in order to imitate your favourite ninja character to the point.
18. You have seen at least one Studio Ghibli movie and have at least heard of Neon Genesis, Gundam and Ranma 1/2.
    
19. You are vehemently against dubs in any shape or form. And whenever possible, will watch a series in its original unedited form. (Bah! Choose subs people, subs!)
20. You have been to an anime/gaming convention...heck, you've been to them all!
21. You know what AMV means and spend a great deal of your precious bandwidth/net time downloading these/uploading your own creations.
22. You visualize your ideal guy/girl in anime format or see them with several obvious anime-like features. For girls, these include: extremely long legs, breasts that are larger than her head, a small, high-pitched voice, a tendency to dress in various lolita style maid outfits, huge eyes and a tiny nose and mouth. For guys, these include: gravity defying or long, dyed hair, unusual coloured eyes, a slender, "feminine" face, the ability to fly/jump thirty feet up into the air, fling balls of psychic energy around the city whilst combatting invading alien warriors bent on taking over Tokyo and thus the entire world AND still have time to cook, sing, paint, compose and play music.
23. You have once dated/want to one day date a Japanese guy/girl in hopes that they will posess the qualities listed in the point above.
    
24. You are deeply embarrassed/insulted by this list but find yourself secretly agreeing and chuckling over many of the antics listed and think you'll just go right ahead and copy+paste the whole thing onto your own blog you bastard. Learn to use links damnit. Bad things will happen to you if you don't.
    

*Yawns* Tired now. Apologies for all those not in the know, but see what you're missing out on?