Vindication For The Geek

My life changed and no one noticed.

Do you know how annoying it is to read, watch or listen to something that is so amazing to you that you want to share it with everyone you know but no one else really cares about it? For example, let’s say you just saw a movie that changed your life completely, a movie so inspiring, so filled with deep meaning for you that you immediately apply its tenets to your everyday life and find yourself the better for it. Wouldn’t you want to share this life-altering movie with your friends and loved ones? Wouldn’t you want them to share your newfound joy and happiness? Of course you would.

But what if the movie in question happens to be Gigli or Battlefield Earth?

Now you’ve got yourself a dilemma. You managed to find the hidden meaning in all that garbage, only you saw the beautiful rose growing in that dirty pile of horse poop. But even as you excitedly inform your friends about what you’ve discovered, deep down you know no one else on the planet will EVER see what you saw because when they look all they see is crap. The revelation is hidden once more behind the midden heap; the flower of inspiration has died.

Well, this is how I feel today.

You see, I’ve had a few days free from work and, instead of doing anything productive with my time off (like working on a certain person’s site *cough* *cough*) I’ve been doing something FAR more important; sitting on my butt and watching anime. Hey! Before you roll your eyes in disgust take another look at the title of this website. It reads “The Mighty GEEK”, ok? And I ask you, what self-respecting Geek doesn’t like anime?

That’s right, smarty-pants. Not one.

Anywaste, over the last few days I’ve seen about 8 new-to-me anime series’, 26 episodes each, and let me tell you they rocked my Geeky world. Some of them were so good I immediately wanted to discuss them with somebody to delve the deeper meanings behind certain characters’ motives, or to affirm my own understanding of what might have happened during an unexpectedly convoluted part of the storyline. I was excited; my imagination was running rampant in my head, I kept on dreaming up new plot twists and imagining new adventures for the characters to go on after the close of the show. I was thisclose to calling HoBiscuit to talk about a particularly stirring show I had just seen when I came to my senses and remembered that she doesn’t care about anime like I do. So I decided to call someone else who I could talk about this show with and I picked up the phone and…

Remembered that no one I know cares about anime.

So, here I am nearly bursting with enthusiasm for something that I enjoy so much that I can barely contain my need to share it with others, and yet I’m unable to find anyone to share my joy with. I know most people out there hear ‘anime’ and can’t get past Pokemon, Dragonball Z or some other horrible Saturday morning cartoon, but that’s not what anime is to me. Sure, I could throw out the usuals, like Akira, Ghost in the Shell and Princess Mononoke, but everyone knows those and they’re not even the best out there.

Not by a long shot.

I mean, I could espouse the virtues of comedic gold like Ranma or Golden Boy, or I could tell you how bitter sweet Fruits Basket or Gunbuster is, but you wouldn’t care. I might tell you that if you love action you’d enjoy Ninja Scroll, or that if you like spy movies you’d get a real kick out of R.O.D., but you’d probably nod your head politely and tune me out.

But that’s ok, I’m used to it by now.

I’m just a Geek, a guy who likes his anime, so it’s alright when other people ignore me when I’m talking about the newest anime I’ve seen. It’s fine when everyone else in the room rolls their eyes when I spend half an hour describing the amazing artwork and intricate plot of some new anime movie I got straight from Japan. It doesn’t bother me.

Nope, it doesn’t bother me at all.

That’s because I know that a year from now, maybe even in as little as a few months, all the people ignoring me today will probably be enthusiastically discussing the exact same show I’ve been trying to tell them about all that time. Why? Because it’s being shown late at night on Adult Swim, they Tivo’d it, watched it one day when they were bored and now believe it’s the greatest thing since sliced cheese. And I’ll just sit back with a smug smile on my face and tell them all about the next great anime show they’ve never heard of.

And they, as usual, will ignore me.