Life of a grade school otaku in the Bible Belt

 I was about eight or nine coming out of an early depression. My mom had taken all my toys and put them in the shed. I was getting old enough not to play with toys to begin with but that left me with an old nes I found in the basement and a vhs player to watch movies. 

My uncle started giving my sister an allowance of five dollars a week so she would learn how to manage money. She was a near Olympic level athlete, and in a few months from now, all those years later will receive her masters in business.   

I broke down crying saying I would have bought my family Christmas present like my sister if I had an allowance so my uncle gave me five dollars a week from when I was about eight till when I want about thirteen. Though I did not ever use that allowance to buy other people Christmas. 

What did I buy? Foreign language anime mags I no longer have and about 12 of 15 vhs anime tapes and later Sega genesis video games. 

I could not read at the time so I went solely by the cover and favored dubs but would buy subtitles only films, so I could watch the animation.

I got into anime from late night sci-fi channel airings and seeing a run of dragon ball z the tree of might sometime in 95.

McKays used books is where I would get my anime from. I loved many films but, Orgus and barefoot gin made huge impression but the two most important were Revenge of the ninja warrior and Ghost in the shell.

I will talk about ghost in the shell someday but for tonight I am going to focus on revenge of the ninja warrior my favorite movie from my childhood, except the tree of might or maybe Godzilla vs the smog monster.

Revenge of the ninja warrior I own on dvd now but haven’t been o a kick to watch since I bought the new copy.  But I was a kid I used to watch the movie edit of kung fu with David Carodene and must have thought man if this was japanimation it would be the best thing ever.

Little did I know how much I would  enjoy the poor dub and cheap edit of the dagger Kamui as it was later released in the USA in the 90s as revenge of the ninja warrior.

It is very psychedelic in its visuals more violent than I should have been allowed to watch and I love it. I am having a hard time articulating how important anime was to me. Disabled Japanese pop culture speaks to me in a way I don’t even understand.

There was a time I watched it with my grandma Joyce and she was psychologically and physically abusive to me and my siblings. She abused my mom severely as a child but I think my mom hoped she had stabilized.

The one of the few happy memories front this era is watching revenge of the ninja warrior eating egg sandwiches she made on the stove I referred to as Cholesterol sandwiches. I was annoying even back then.

I would rapidly put on weight from my mamas Joyce not allowing me to leave food on my plate. I went from being a skinny little kid to being nearly three hundred pounds by the time I was thirteen. I then would over a hundred and fifty pounds in a year eating only one pack of ramen a day for six months while running a mile a day on a treadmill.  This was when I discovered Naruto way before the official release back when toryama world did scanlations in the early 2000s.

Anime is one of my few constants in my life. There is no really thesis to this blog post. Just I can barely piece together my schizophrenic life and maybe that was a trigger even for my mental illness.  I don’t understand it but… Septerra Core has taught me that just around the corner oz was waiting. There was fellowship to be found, I mean those vhs tapes were being sold in the Bible Belt back in the mid to late 90s. Maybe if I made different choices… things would have been better.

But remembering all reminds there is no street cred to be gained. I was never fit in and I wore that as a badge of honor. The people who have seen the same anime as me are likely a bit older and from different backgrounds than I can imagine. 

Though before I finish typing for the day. My parents tried to make it up to us for the rougher parts of my childhood. My mom worked as a hair dresser renting movies from blockbuster including introducing me to Ghibli by giving me a opritunity to watch them finally… by renting them for me. This is how I saw Totoro and princess Mononoke. I even got to see spirited away at the dolls theater by that same uncle who used to give us our weekly allowance.  Things were not all bad in-spite of my moody demeanor as a child and adult.

My mom told me a story about sneaking out to ice skate on a lake… falling through the ice walking home soaking wet and being Beaton and sent to bed without supper for sneaking out. And I don’t mean beat like she was spanked my mamaw Joyce stabbed a man with a fork and shot at an uncle of mine through the wall as a a joke.

My mom went through some serious shit and has done her best to cope with the generational trauma my whole family lives with.

Maybe this word salad makes sense to you but it leaves me empty and confused. Peace love and anime forever… or something like that.