Weeaboo Stories

In Retrospect,

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 11:46:12 +0900

Through middle school and high school I knew this girl that was a pretty hardcore weeaboo. It’s pretty funny actually, because I grew up in the Bay Area, which has a huge Asian population (over 50% of my high school was Asian, including her and myself). I guess weeaboos can develop anywhere.

She was obsessed with Final Fantasy VIII and an anime called Fushigi Yugi. She wore her Rinoa cosplay to school and almost every conversation with her always related to how much she was like an anime character, or her trying to apply anime to real life. Her 16th birthday party consisted of her really nice brother giving out “trivia” questions about her, which consisted of things like, “Which of the four gods is a priestess of?” The answer was Suzaku or something. She also had me waltz with her while playing the graduation ball song from FFVIII since I was the only one that knew how to dance.

Looking back, she really had a lot of personal issues and I’m pretty sure she just tried to fill that void in her life with anime fantasies. Her mother died when she was a young teenager, and she was honestly pretty unattractive. Her older sister was very attractive and intelligent, which probably just made her feel worse about herself. Her father once confided in me that they had terrible fights and he was glad that she had friends like me to support her. It was probably easier to be around her since she wasn’t your stereotypical “I’m beautiful and know everything!” type of weeaboo, but it makes me wonder how many weeaboos are just trying to lose themselves into a fantasy world where they’re the heroes.

Looking back, I hope she’s doing a lot better now. I think it’s easy for an obsession like that to turn into a self destructive cycle. It’s all too easy to run away into your anime fantasy world and lose out on real life opportunities, causing you to indulge in it even more to run away. The people I knew like that would try to apply anime to real life and would never go out to learn real skills, because their imagined idealized “anime” selves were already like that. Why go learn martial arts when in your anime fantasies you’re already a master fighter? I hope people like that realize it’s always easy to get back to the real world and become the type of person you really want to be, rather than the fictional ideal anime self most have created for themselves.

Just because you don't like a fandom, doesn't me

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 11:43:26 +0900

Okay, I get it, a lot of people don’t like Hetalia, and I get it that there are a lot of fans who ruin it for everyone else. EXCEPT, there are a lot of people in the fandom who, albeit, are obsessed, but generally harmless, and not the crazy screaming fans. One of my friends, for example, we’ll call her ‘L’. She’s a great girl, kind, caring, slightly obsessed with Germany, but all around cool girl. She’s made a secondary facebook account for her cosplay, and even put Germany in the name, as well as the human last name of the character for good measure.

Anyways, I had this other friend, we’ll call her ‘A’. A had been a nice girl, but fell in with a certain crowd, and changed. One day she had posted a status about hating Hetalia. Being a rational fan myself, I politely asked her why, and got something about France cosplayers groping people without permission. Which I find to be disturbing, but I apologized, and told her the whole fandom wasn’t like that. Then a bunch of other ‘friends’ of mine chirped in with Hetalia hate, over stuff like crossplaing mostly, not even the legit bad fans. Anyways, I got tired of it, and I just unfriended a lot of them because they were just arguing with me to argue, I think even A got in on it with the hate.

So about a month or so later, L had posted a status on her cosplay account about the character Germany, and there was a nice, friendly conversation going on. Suddenly, out of nowhere, A suddenly comments saying “Love Germany, fucking hate Hetalia.” So, having been frustrated by this girl’s hate, I call her out equally salty. It’s one thing to randomly state you hate it, but to SEEK OUT a girl who has done nothing to you to leave a comment like that is beyond logic. Anyways, it disintegrates into a fight, and she attempted to attack me personally, before generally getting butt-hurt and leaving. Mainly because I wouldn’t let A come and aim her hate at L. Anyways, A got blocked by a lot of people involved, and doesn’t bother L anymore.

My point here is that yes, there may be stupidity in this fandom, same with any fandom, but there are genuinely nice people in it who have done nothing to deserve shit over it. However, there are people who are just nasty, hate a fandom, and just looking for people to subject to hate.

It’s not right to go seeking out and cursing at nice, innocent fans just because you hate a series.

Also, I’d just like to say that Although I read this blog for the stories, most of the people discussed here might actually be nice people, and should be spoken to rationally, and politely, because they’re just new, and overzealous. The term weeaboo is a little offensive. These people are really just inexperienced, over-excited noobs that probably grew up as social outcasts. With proper guidance, they will eventually come to understand social situations, and that Japan is a lot different from how they think.

I’ve never been to Japan myself, though I have been interested in their complete culture for many years. With common sense, they’ll soon realize Japan’s culture is a lot like any other modern culture, and that manga is not as popular as they think, and that otaku in japan are creepy people who don’t go out. Though I like the romanticized american version of being an otaku. It means ‘family house’ and from what I have seen of anime fans is that when petty stupidity is not in the way, we bond together like family.

Pardon my rambling, I just hope people will read this and maybe have a little bit of compassion for your fellow anime fans. -Fyre

Spoiled Rotten

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 11:42:20 +0900

A few years ago I was working at a bookstore for a seasonal job. Another girl and I were in charge of the manga section and wrapping up the sexually explicit stuff. Me and the girl were your >>normal<< run of the mill anime fans. We always laughed and talked about Weeaboos that came in the store which was pretty much every day. The girl had trained me to ID anyone that tried to buy any of the mature manga because it’s illegal to sell that stuff to minors and it’s not good if a parent comes back to the store pissed off that we sold porno to their kid.
One morning, me and the assistant manager (who was younger than me and Asian who we will call H) were at the register and saw a large group of loud middle schoolers come into the book store. There was a choir contest at the local high school and they came to the mall to have shop and kill time before the contest started. Most of them headed towards the teen sections and a few stopped at the manga. They were giggling and speaking in the basic broken Japanese and weeaboo language. The talked about Hetalia and started to gush over Gravitation and about recent yaoi porn they just saw. They suddenly got in a huddle and started giggling and whispering. The assistant manager was confused and asked what the hell they were doing. I told her I had no idea and said they were probably weeaboos. She looked at me crazy and was just about to ask me what a weeaboo was until one of the middle schoolers ran up to the counter and screamed, “Konichiwa!!!! Watooshi wa “K” Desuka! Genkeys!”
Now H was not the kind of girl to let stuff go especially when it’s raciest to Asians which is normally assuming their nationality. First of all, she is not Japanese, she was Vietnamese and Chinese. Second, I could tell there was an anger storm building up in her that I had never seen. She stared at this girl for about 3 seconds before saying, “Excuse me?” The girl named K looked at her with a smile and lifted her hand in the air and yelled the same thing in an even worse pronunciation. H looked at me and calmly said, “I’m going to lunch before I do something I regret. Can you please keep an eye on the store?” I said yes before she quickly walked away to the back slamming the door. K looked at me and tilted her head to the side and said, “Nani!?” I sighed and told the girl to please keep it down because we are in the bookstore. I also informed her that the girl she just spoke to in what she considers Japanese to was not Japanese but Chinese and Vietnamese. She then asked me “Does she know China-kun!? He’s so kawaii!!!” I then said “No…do you mean China from Hetalia China?” and she squeeled and said “YES! CHINA-KUN! She knows him!?” I then replied, “No…China isn’t a real person, it’s a country…” She then replied, “Ahhhhh? Baka!” and ran back to her friends.
After a while, the store got really busy and I was alone behind the counter looking up books for customers and ringing people up. During the middle of the rush, K and her group of friends set down a large stack of manga. There was a buy 3 get on free for TokyoPop manga so I had to make sure I paid attention so I didn’t have to do the transaction over again. The line was already long and I didn’t want to stress over fixing mistakes. Each time I was about to scan a manga I would look at the binding to make sure it was TokyoPop and redo the whole thing. I literally, I shit you not, scanned about $300 worth of manga WITH the discount. In the middle of a stack there was a few explicit manga in the middle of the stack. In my scanning frenzy, I noticed them and put them aside. I put aside about 10 copies of yaoi manga and a few copies of Battle Royale which is one of the most graphic manga I’ve ever read. After I was finished ringing stuff up and placed the manga in the bags I told them the total. K stared at me in disbelief and glared. She put her hands on her hips and stomped her foot pointing at the stack of rejected manga. “What about my Yaoi desu!? Yaoi is sugoi and I want it!” I shook my head and said, “I’m not allowed to sell that to anyone under the age of 18. It contains graphic material that isn’t supposed to be viewed by kids.” The girl growled and slammed her hands on the counter and said, “I know what in it! Kawaii boy sex! They are having butt sex and making out and it’s hot! I don’t care what the rules are, I want my yaoi!” The people in line started to get really irritated and started to get impatient. I once again told K that she was not allowed to sell it to her and said that she had to pay and leave so I can get the other customers through the line. The girl continued to argue and whine and her friends started to join in as well. One of the smartass kids said “If you can’t sell us this, then you can’t sell Lord of the Rings because they have sex in that.” Suddenly, H came up to the register and said, “But it’s not primarily about sex. You guys cannot buy the wrapped merchandise.” Something in K snapped. She started screaming, “THE NIGGER AND THE DIRTY CHINK WON’T LET ME BUY MY MANGA!!! I WANT IT NOW!” The store went completely silent. H had had enough. She grabbed the books in the bag and put them behind the counter. She moved me to the side and leaned in. She started to scold the girl in Chinese and switched to Vietnamese in the middle of her rant. She then told the girl that if she didn’t leave the store, this “dirty chink” was going to make her leave by force. While she was ripping the girl a new one, I called security to come up to the store. The girl continued to throw a temper tantrum and grabbed one of the displays and threw it on the floor. She then threw herself on the floor and started screaming “Help daddy” in Japanese. Suddenly security ran in and asked her to get up. She then kicked and broke the glass counter and started rolling around on the ground. The security had finally picked her up by her arm and started to escort her from the store with her friends. Before she left, she managed to spit at H and called her a baka. The girl was lucky that H was too far away for the spit to hit her. I’m pretty sure that girl would be dead.
Later we found out that she was the daughter of a wealthy business owner who pretty much got what she wanted. Go figure.

And I thought Revisionist Fairytales were a Grai

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 11:41:03 +0900

And I thought Revisionist Fairytales were a Grail.

Not a particularly long or bad story, but sometimes the ghosts of fandoms past come back to haunt you. There I was, sitting in English class, and we were reading revisionist fairytales, such as The Tiger’s Bride. And next to me sat a girl we will refer to as weeby chan (the letters confuse me).

So, weeby chan loves anime. LOVES. IT. She’s told me on multiple occasions that she couldn’t live without Hetalia, not to mention anime in general. I used to be a major Hetafag— another story for another time, and I hadn’t come out as hating Hetalia to weeby-chan yet, because I was afraid for my health and well-being.

In the story, the main character talks about how the South of Italy is a place full of lust, warmth— a very “sexy” place, so to say. And apparently, it breeds a certain kind of person who embodies the feel of the place. I know we all know where this is headed.
Now, this is the clincher— I used to absolutely LOVE Romano (when talking to Hetalia fans these days and I want common ground with them, I tell them that I dislike Hetalia save for Romano (because I have a minor-non-weeby-fancrush on him) and France (because I think he’s hilarious.). And for those of us who don’t know, Romano = South Italy. So Weeby-chan, knowing this gem, turns towards me and procedes to make hideous “PFFFFFFFF” noises in my general direction, spraying spit and weeb juice all over me.
She begins to jam her elbows into my breasts (I am very short, she is very huge) to get my attention, and when I finally look over there, she has the following words of unthinkable knowledge for me:
“Romano.”

I’m left there, covered in spit, with jabbing pain in my breast, sides, and stomache— anything within her arms reach, only because she read the name of a country in a fairy tale.
I precede to mhm at her and turn back to reading. But god, there is a reason that I turned away from the Hetalia fandom, and it’s not because I disliked the series.

Milanoo Strikes Again!

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 11:38:47 +0900

Welcome to another round of Why Milanoo is Not That Great!

First of all, I love this blog to death. It’s not only eye-opening but it gives AWESOME advice on cosplay, lolita-clothing, general etiquette, etc… and I’ve learned much from this. Heck, I pretty much changed after reading this blog. But enough of that, let’s get onto the real action.

This happened last year for Fanime 2010, but it’s bad enough to cringe about today. I had enough money and enough courage to cosplay that year, but I didn’t know about milanoo until it was too late. I wanted to cosplay as Hiyori Tamura from Lucky Star because my friends said I looked and acted like her (now that I think about it, I don’t think acting like her was a good thing at times). Sooo I bought this Lucky Star summer uniform from Milanoo. It looked really nice from the preview picture, and I patiently waited for the delivery. When it finally came, it was a size too big and the collar was very thick, ill-fitting, and shiny. SHINY. My mom took one look at it and said that even she could do better than that (which she actually could). She was disappointed enough to fix it for me the day before the con (A BIG thank you to her. She made the huge sleeves smaller and fixed the collar). It was semi-decent, but eh… it wasn’t like anything in the preview. I didn’t bother to file a complaint because I didn’t think it would be worth it at the time. Besides, it’s Milanoo.

After that I learned that making your cosplay is much more fun and let’s you make the cosplay how YOU want it to be. I’ve also learned that being weight-conscious won’t help anythinggg. So I got over that silly fear and decided to dress up in something more unique (aka Touhou. By unique I mean a challenge to make cosplays for XD ) I’m still a novice at cosplay, but I hope I’m improving. I have my mom helping me with how to sew and such still. This is my most recent and first handmade cosplay from Fanime 2011 (Great con btw. It’s really worth checking out if you’re somewhere in the Bay Area) : http://tinyurl.com/3w3afdf

I’m that awkward kid with the giant red bow on her head. I hope it’s good enough for a first time handmade cosplay.

So I Can't Like Someone Either?

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 11:38:12 +0900

Let’s begin simply that if any of the readers have crushes on movie celebrities/ TV stars/ singers/ cartoon characters/ voice actors or anyone really famous, I’m not judging. It’s totally fine and normal for someone to feel like that, I just don’t like it when it’s rubbed into my face and I’m pretty sure others don’t appreciate it as well.

Anyway, I was over at a friend’s house, we’ll call him E [which I am currently having the pleasure of ignoring because of his ignorant behavior-but that’s something completely irrelevant].

So E and I were chilling and listening to Pandora whilst browsing through YouTube videos. We both have a fondness for similar bands [English, Japanese, German, etc], so we get similar band results for our Pandora stations. Suddenly, this Japanese band begins to play [I can’t recall the name] and E starts spazzing about it.

Now it’s not my favorite band, but E-Dear God, he’s obsessed. He’s in love with the lead singer and everything about her.

So then he goes on to tell me how much he loves the lead singer and how she’s so hot and how he’s going to meet her one day and how he’s in love with her voice. So I felt a little uncomfortable and a bit self-conscious about it, but I went along. He also bragged about how he’s going to buy the posters and a glow-in-the-dark wristband with their name on it.

I then tell him that I’m not too fond of her voice and the sound of the band-He flips his shit. He talks about how she’s so hot and super pretty and that they’re the best band ever. So he decides to go on their Facebook page and point out how many fans they have. I finally give up and decided to change the subject. Then we went onto Mega64’s YouTube channel [if you don’t know ‘em, it’s fine, they’re a pretty cool video game group though] and started watching their old parody videos.

I decide to input my commentary occasionally, saying how they’re hilarious and go to Comic-Con and PAX a lot, and then came up a comment about one of the guys in the group. I think that one of them is pretty cute, but I don’t babble on and on about them. I turn to my friend and go ,”Haha, I love Shawn. He’s cute”.

The look on E’s face. My God. He gave me this disgusted look as if I just explained a sexual fantasy between Shawn and I. Then he went ,”Um… Okay.” and continued watching.

Really? Really?

You can go on and on about this girl I don’t really care for to the point where I feel self-conscious about myself and just uncomfortable with the whole situation, but I just can’t make a simple comment about someone I think is noticeably good-looking?

Is this a good idea?

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 11:37:11 +0900

The weaboos at my school were planning a Host Club over facebook. They added me as a friend before I really met them, so I am able to see what goes on on their wall. I saw a note that was titles “—————High School Host Club Constitution.” I thought “Welp, this is sad… Hopefully our club commissioner sees the flaw in this.”

Here is a passage of the club constitution that basically summarizes what they will be doing:

This club will serve the social needs of ————— High School by acting as a specific type of social club. A normal social club is a club where two people, (usually unfamiliar with each other), will go to either look for a new partner, or just make friends. In specific, a high school host club is a club where the students of the high school can go to meet specific people called hosts or hostesses. When students come to the club, they can choose a host or hostess of their own liking. The host or hostess will entertain the guest to the best of their ability. In our club, we will try to teach both hosts and guests alike important social skills and the value of making connections with other people.
I am disappointed to say that this club was passed and is an official club in our High School. I was able to ask how they’re going to do this today and they don’t seem to know what they’re doing yet.

'You're so lucky to go to a school with so many

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 11:36:37 +0900

TITLE:

'You're so lucky to go to a school with so many kawaii asian

Not too long i hope.. Just had to share this annoying experience.

I go to a magnet high school in my area with kids coming in from several different counties. Being a competitive school to get into, only 15% of the 3000+ applicants get in every year. One of the main counties that send kids in has a very large amount of Korean/Japanese/Viet/Chinese/Philipino/etc communities, so the major demographic in my school is Asians. And I’m a white looking Spaniard-Cuban, so I get regarded as ‘the Hispanic girl who got in instead of me’ by everyone i meet after I tell them what high school i go to. BUT THAT’S NOT WHAT I’M HERE FOR.

NOW TO THE REAL STORY

I was at a local Anime/Manga merchandise store near my school on my way home from field hockey practice one day. I went in to buy something for a friend’s birthday and pick up a few comic books for my younger brother. As I’m going through, I meet a nice girl my age (Freshman in high school) and she starts off a conversation with me. She didn’t set off many alarms since she wasn’t very unappealing.. she sprinkled a little weeab talk here and there but I was used to it since I was among the weeabs through out my middle school life and i figured ‘hey we all did it once’. We’re talking about series we like and we ask more about each other. Part of the conversation goes a little like this:

Girl: Nehhhhh what grade are you in? I’m a freshy over at Z High School

Me: Ah I’m a freshman too. I’m over at X High School. *insert witty comment about homework or something that she completely cuts me off on*

Girl: Neee!! (I begin to get scared once I heard her say that, i swear i jumped back) You’re so lucky to go to a school with so many ~kawaii~ (she emphasized that word btw dear god) asian boys!! I applied because I saw how many of the cute Koreans in my class were applying, but I didn’t get in .. I bet the admissions office is a bunch of bakanay (oh dear god did I cringe when i heard that pronunciation)

Me: that’s cool…ha…ha……

I paid for my stuff and gtfo of there. The cashier gave me a look of sympathy.

TL;DR Weeab come in all shapes and forms and sometimes will apply to a school just to be with ~*Kawaii Desu*~ Asians.

Con Injuries

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 11:33:26 +0900

A while back, me and my boyfriend went to a convention together. We had worked long and hard on our cosplays which for me included an a prop covered my arm up to my elbow. It had been a present from him and it had some wiring inside making it lite up. Unfortunently, it was was rather delicate. Now, when we got there, we got a lot of pictures and a lot of complements until we ran into a group of Naruto cosplayers. We had been sitting down, resting. They walked up and started talking to me about my prop (which now I know that they probably were really more interested in talking to an Asian), which I happily pointed to my boyfriend and told them that he had made it for me.
They gave him a disgusted look and immeditly asked 'Why a smart kawaii Japanese boy would need help from a dirty nigger'. I was admittedly more then shocked. My boyfriend and I just stared for a moment, not exactly knowing why they would say that. After regaining my composure, I demanded that they apologize. To which they squealed some bull about how kawaii I was being. I recognized it as a hopeless situation and walked away from the situation before my anger got the best of me. The rest of the day it went well, and we managed to shrug off the incident.
Later that night, I was standing by some stairs outside, posing for a photo shoot with him when they re-appeared. Half way through a picture they glomped me down the stairs. I remember landing on top of my prop and breaking it compleatly before slamming my face into the concrete, The next thing I knew I was at the hospital. I had to get all sorts of stiches in my arm from the prop smashing and cutting up my arm terribly. I had a minor concussion, cracked one of my knees, and had broken my nose. My boyfriend told me that the group had run after after he had called the ambulance and apparently were never found by con security. To this day, I have problems with my knee and I still have scars from the prop.

HOW NOT TO OFFEND GENDER AND SEXUALITY MINORITIE

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 11:32:33 +0900

Dear anime/manga enthusiasts,
-Yaoi and yuri cannot be used as synonyms for gay and lesbian. It’s incredibly disrespectful to associate sexualities with types of anime porn.
-It’s completely hypocritical to support gay men because you like yaoi and not support lesbian women, and vice versa.
-Someone is not homophobic for not liking yaoi or yuri.
Gay men and lesbian women do not automatically like yaoi or yuri either.
-Gay men and/or lesbian women should never be asked to perform ‘real life yaoi/yuri’ for you.
-Yaoi and yuri are also unacceptable as synonyms for homosexual relations. They are a type of porn, and as such should not be discussed in polite company, homosexual or otherwise.
-Asking who is the ‘uke’ and who is the ‘seme’ is completely inappropriate and assuming that homosexual couples always fall into specific gender roles.
-Though yaoi often features non-consensual relations, please understand that most homosexual men and people in general are not rapists and that rape is never okay. Please do not try and force your affections on anyone, “kawaii ukes” included.
-FTM and MTF men and women still count as gay or lesbian if they identify as such. They are not ‘faking yaoi/yuri.’