To say that I like anime is a bit like saying I like chocolate – it is a wicked understatement. While I am not completely obsessed with it, I do have a slowly, selectively growing collection of DVDs of the series and movies that I have become strongly attached to over time, as well as a few novelty items that I treasure.
I blame this little need of mine on my grandmother. While in her care as a three and four year old child I would watch two hours of cartoons each day. She would sit with me and watch Casper the Friendly Ghost in the afternoon. In the mornings I would sit at the foot of her bed, right on the very edge of the corner, as close as I could get to the T.V. that sat on her dresser, and fill up on Aqua Boy, Speed Racer, and Kimba the White Lion (known more formally as Jungle Emperor). It was during those wonderful, imaginative hours that I became a devoted student of animation.
I have always enjoyed animation and have nurtured my little addiction through constant care and feeding over the years. A steady diet of the standard American fare – Hanna-Barbera, Disney, Looney Tunes, Popeye, Marvel and DC Comics – served as a reasonable substitute for the real thing – Japanese Anime.
Kimba and Speed Racer were only the beginning of my love of Japanese Anime. To me, being limited to only those two was akin to giving a child a taste of coffee and then refusing the request for an actual cupful until s/he is an adult. I filled up on Speed Racer and Kimba whenever I could, investing myself thoroughly in the storylines and the characters. I wanted Speed Racer’s Mach 5 racecar so badly that it hurt to watch the show. When a die-cast car that looked like the Mach 5 hit toy stores in the late 70s, I did everything I could to get it. And I still have it, secreted away where my son can’t find it. After watching Kimba, I would prowl around the house on all fours saving all the jungle animals from hunters and terrible dangers. I was wise, fearless, and loyal. To this day I have a thing for a hero or heroine with long, white hair.
When these two shows suddenly ended I starved. It was years until Voltron: Defender of the Universe emerged from across the sea to satisfy my anime sweet tooth once again. Just as before I could be found waiting for the show to start, sitting cross-legged and entirely too close to the T.V. each afternoon. I longed to operate one of those amazing robotic lions. I wanted Keith, Commander of the Voltron Force, to care about me and not Princess Allura. I could not stand the fact that she would wear a pink uniform while piloting the blue lion. It was a travesty.
And then came Robotech and I was lost. After vicariously following Rick Hunter into the cockpit of a Veritech Fighter, and getting caught in the hyperspace jump of the SDF-1 Battle Fortress in an effort to escape the Zentraedi forces, I knew I needed my own Veritech Fighter. And I have one – in a box of priceless trinkets and treasures – safe from the hands of my children. The Robotech series ran for 85 glorious episodes and it became clear during the first year it ran that I was hooked on anime. I haven’t looked back since.
The following storyline came to me as the original Fullmetal Alchemist series that I had been watching came to an end. I feel a tremendous letdown upon the completion of an anime series that I have become fully invested in. This response - of which I have suffered countless times over the years - along with my limited knowledge of anime fandom and all of its nuances, got me thinking. How deeply engrained in a fan’s life does anime become? How much devotion is too much devotion? Where does reality end and the anime begin in the mind of the serious fan? When does the line between the two cease to exist? My imagination started to spin…
Paradigm Shift
"You’re crazy,” Melanie said as she twirled the wooden coffee stirrer in her fingers.
“I’m what?”
“I said, you’re crazy.”
Jess looked at her friend and drew her brows together in irritation. “I’m crazy. Why am I crazy?”
“Kane.” Melanie took a sip of her latte and glanced at Jess over the rim of the paper cup.
“Kane.”
“Mmmhmm.”
Jess cocked her head and sat open-mouthed for a moment. “How, exactly, does Kane make me crazy?”
Melanie set the cup down and leaned forward. “You like him.”
A blush inched its way over Jess’ cheeks. “Yeah, so?”
“A lot.”
“So?”
“So,” Melanie continued, “you’re acting like a school girl.”
Jess leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms. “I am not acting like a school girl.”
Melanie snorted. “Yes, you are.”
“I am not,” Jess said again and looked out the front window of the coffee shop. A young mother walked by pushing a stroller down the strip mall’s sidewalk.
“You are,” Melanie replied and held up her hand as Jess prepared to argue with her again. “Listen. Whose image is on the desktop of your computer?”
Jess refused to answer and simply stared at Melanie.
“When you logon to any site that has them, who’s your avatar?”
Jess drew her brows closer together until they seemed to form one continuous, undulating line of irritation on her forehead.
“How many different pictures of him are there in you’re My Pics folder?" Melanie pressed her. "How many times a day do you look at them?”
“What, exactly, are you trying to say?”
“I'm saying that I think you’re a little fixated.”
“Yeah, well he makes me happy. Tell me how that’s bad.”
“He’s not real, Jess. That’s how it’s bad.”
Jess tightened her grip on her arms, her finger tips pressing hard into her biceps. “Listen,” she snapped, “not all of us are blessed with your life. Not all of us can walk into a room and feel at home with whoever happens to be there. Some of us…”
“Are scared of real people,” Melanie said quietly. The frown on Jess’ face deepened.
“I’m not scared," she snapped. "It’s just that most people I meet lead boring, mundane lives and couldn’t care less what happens around them. They don’t do anything to make things better.”
“But Kane makes things better? He’s a cartoon, Jess. An anime hottie. He’s two dimensional in the truest sense of the word. He does the things the writers create for him to do and looks the way the animators draw him to look. He’s not real. He’s not flesh and blood.”
Jess blinked back the tears that were starting to fill her eyes. She reached down and picked her purse up off the floor and shoved her chair back. “Well I’m flesh and blood and my feelings are real. I’ve had enough of this conversation.”
“Jess, please wait…” Melanie reached out to grab her friend’s arm, but Jess avoided her.
“Leave me alone,” Jess snapped and pushed the chair hard against the table. “You don’t understand. You don’t know what it’s like.”
“I know that it scares me for you.”
“Well don’t let it," Jess barked. "I’m fine. Just leave me alone.” She turned and headed for the door, shoved her way between two people coming in and stepped out into the chill fall air. Down the block she could hear the approaching rumble of a MetroBus and she glanced over her shoulder. It was the Westside 210. That would get her home. She picked up her pace and reached the bus stop just as the last waiting passenger stepped on board. The red laser of the card reader ticked off the fare from her rider card and she moved down the aisle. The third seat behind the driver was empty and she slid in and stared out the window at the traffic passing by. She blinked several times and sniffed, then settled in for the fifteen minute ride to her apartment complex.
When she reached her apartment Jess slid the key into the lock and turned it until she felt the tumblers shift and the bolt give to the pressure. The knob twisted easily beneath her hand and she felt a certain amount of relief as she stepped over the threshold.
Melanie hadn’t been entirely wrong. The apartment was covered in “Dragon Sorcerer” paraphernalia. Figurines of all the characters lined the mantle over the fireplace, Kane’s figurine in the center. Posters of different scenes from the series hung on the walls, nearly everyone featuring a heroic, sensual Kane as the main focus. He watched her from all sides of her home with chestnut brown eyes, his long brown hair caught back in a braid, dragon sorcerer tattoo on his right forearm. DVDs of the movie and every volume of the series were scattered on the floor, the jackets covered with scenes from the show.
Jess tossed her purse on the couch and kicked her shoes off. She casually ran her hands over the blanket that lay draped across the back of a chair as she walked into the kitchen, her fingers following the curve of Kane’s face where he stared up from the soft nap. In the kitchen she opened a cupboard and took out a glass, a scene from the movie stenciled around its circumference. She filled the glass with cold water from the fridge and then carried it into her bedroom.
The largest poster hung there, beside her bed. Beneath it was a small bedside table with a drawer. There were manga stacked on top and on the floor all around the bottom of it, all of them “Dragon Sorcerer” volumes.
She sat down cross-legged on the floor and looked up at the poster. The series’ characters, Benish, Johnto, Whistia, Flaegen, Merrin, Beck, and Kane, all stared back at her, their eyes filled with warmth and hope. Her own eyes filled with tears once more and she let them fall, didn’t even bother to blink as they rose and slid from her lower lashes and fell onto the backs of her hands.
Melanie doesn’t understand, she thought to herself. She doesn’t know what it’s like. She belongs here. I don’t. I never did. I want to go home.
The poster blurred in her vision, the lines of the drawings becoming disjointed, the colors shifting and twisting around one another. After a minute she felt ill with vertigo and started to close her eyes to rid herself of the feeling. In the instant before her lids sealed out the spinning image she saw it, a dragon symbol beside each character, in the spaces between one character and another, all the same. She held her breath, kept her eyes locked in position, willed them to retain the odd focus that allowed her to finally see what had been missing all along. When she felt confident that she knew it, could recreate it, she blinked and looked at the poster straight on. The repeating dragon symbol was gone. She scrambled to her feet and rushed to the poster. With frantic hands she marked each place where the symbol had been, the tip of the pen she had grabbed off the side table shaking as she drew.
Eight points stood out on the poster when she stepped back and looked it over. Seven characters from the series with a symbol between each one, except where two symbols sat beside one another. The pattern was incomplete. A soft cry rose in her throat and she stepped back. The glass of water she had left on the floor tipped over as her foot brushed against it, the glass breaking as it hit the wooden floorboards. She let the cry escape her lips and reached down to pick up the pieces.
I’m so stupid, she thought as she gathered the shards into her hands. Nothing will change this. This is forever. She looked down at the broken pieces of glass and closed her hands around them. I can’t do this forever. The fine edges sliced into her skin. I can’t. Blood rose from the wounds, pooled in her palms, dripped onto the floor at her feet. She shuddered at the pain, closed her eyes and imagined all of it gone, all of it dark and silent and still.
She looked one last time at the poster and could not stop the wail that poured out of her throat. She let the shards fall to the floor and covered her face with her bloody hands, sobbed uncontrollably until the room began to spin again. She reached out on instinct to steady herself, stumbled and fell against the side table, checked her forward momentum as she caught herself against the wall, the bloodied palm of her right hand flat against the surface of the poster on top of the two dragon symbols drawn side by side.
There was a flash of light, a moment of firm resistance, and then a slow yielding beneath her hand.
Jeshria?
Her head snapped up.
Jeshria!
She saw her fingers lost somewhere inside the poster and jerked her hand violently back. Something brushed her fingertips before they came free of the paper.
JESHRIA!
A man’s hand shot out from the paper where her hand had been, directly between the two symbols. It was grasping, searching, the fingers spread wide and shaking with effort, a dragon symbol tattooed on its forearm.
Take my hand, Jesh! Please!
Without thinking she reached out, put her hand in the other. Blood from her palm spilled onto his.
Jesh! His hand tightened. For the love of all that’s holy, she’s bleeding! Help me! Jesh! Hold on! I’ve got you!
There was solidity in his touch, and warmth and life and familiarity. "Kane," she whispered. She plunged her left hand through the poster and felt a second hand grasp it. More hands gripped hers, then there was a brief resistance and pressure.
The corners of the "Dragon Sorcerer" poster curled inward, broke the tape’s adhesion to the wall, and floated free. It landed on the floor beside the shards of broken glass and slowly soaked up the water and blood pooled on the wooden floorboards.
~ Peace and possibility
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