Unheard voice

By: Hanna D.

I have always loved anime since I was little. It was the only thing I looked forward to when I got home from a long day of school. It was a way to get me away from people, from life. After I would finish watching an amazing anime like Attack on Titan or One Punch Man, I would like someone to talk about it too. Someone who loves anime as much as me.

In the end, I found out that not many people like what I love to watch every single day. I would walk to my group of friends I hang around everyday and talk about this one fight scene I thought had amazing graphics. They look at each other as if I had just eaten a bug in front of them. It made me feel as if I made the biggest mistake in my entire life. As I go online to social media, I see these videos about people hating anime, even though they never gave it a chance. My dream of talking about it had been crushed into little bits.

Overall, I changed to a person who wouldn’t even look people in the eye. I couldn’t get up and say, “Hey, be my friend.” It was hard, it was hard finding someone who would listen to me, yet talk to me. I was turning into a quiet, awkward person and so people may assume I am always that way and don’t expect to even hear a word from me.

A few years later, I finally had a pretty big group of friends, yet I was in the back when we were walking together. If I tried to speak up, maybe one person would look back, but brush it off like it was just the wind. I thought it was my fault, my fault for being so awkward and shy. At some point, I just stopped what I loved doing for years just so I could not think about it and finally feel like I fit in.

I started talking more, I could join into the normal activities like talking about all the drama that happens around me. I would rant about the problems I have like everybody else does. I could walk with them. I could forget ever watching a “cartoon” that only weird people enjoy.

It didn’t work. I could see online, anime is coming to a rise and so, I went back to watching it again. I enjoyed it so much, I could feel what I had felt in the past, and with people talking about it now, I could open my voice to the world, something I could have never done in the past, but yet again, it was a no-go.

People would say “how you watch anime is not right,” or “you're not a true fan.” People around me, at school, even sometimes at home, are saying these things that didn’t make sense to me. “What does it mean to watch an anime right? Why and how am I not a true fan , what does it mean to be one?” I ask them. They just say I am not fit to watch it, and down I go again to my dark little hole.

I didn’t speak because there was no one there to listen. At some point, I was begging the gods, just send me a sign that some cares. That was until I met ‘that’ person. I have actually known them for a long time, just didn’t have the courage to become friends with them or to get to know them.

As we grew up, being in the same school and space and all, I could hear words from their mouth that would bring me closer to them.

They were different, they talked about anime so freely and didn’t mind when someone said something bad about them. Later on, I became friends with them. They were the one who listened to every rant I had and didn’t mind or care about what I watched. Sometimes we watch the same anime and talk about it for hours.

A few years of being friends with them, I could talk openly. It was easier to speak to people whom I have never met before. I gained new friends, I could feel connections with them. I could act like everyone else, like a normal little girl.

Even to this day, we talk on and off about anime. Sometimes we are down, but we listen to each other’s problems. Having someone who understands your deep thoughts is everything. We lift both our lives up, maybe one day we will reach the sky.

For the Warrior Times, this is Hanna Dang.