I remember having a few select anime friends that I found by chance. One was a guy a year older than me on the basketball team with me. We were out at a weekend tournament and between games he was like “I gotta eat to recharge my chakra” and everyone just said haha because he said weird stuff sometimes. When everyone else walked away I quietly said to him “soooo you watch Naruto?” He was one of my best friends at that school for years after that haha.

Another was a kid who watched bleach and I’d talk about new episodes with him at his locker. One time I had to do a speech for some election thing and one of the things I mentioned was talking about bleach with him. It was a Christian school so they were weird and had to approve the speeches ahead of time so we didn’t say something covertly sexual in front of the whole school or whatever. So the teacher who reviewed mine was like “what does this bleach line mean? What does it imply? Is it something inappropriate!?” And I had to spend like 15 minutes explaining that it’s a tv show we both like and not some hidden code.

I’m still taken aback sometimes when I see girls who watch anime. Back in the day, it guaranteed that girls wouldn’t come near you.