Welcome to the Secret Shame

Allow me to preface this by saying that I'm not a very big fan of anime. Never have, and probably never will be. There are some shows that I've enjoyed, I'll certainly give you that. And I have more than passing knowledge about the whole anime scene due to my being a gamer, being that gaming has always overlapped anime in the ol' Venn diagram of geekish interests. But seriously, the day I shift myself in the geek hierarchy to join the subculture that gave the world those intensely creepy hugging pillows would have to be an interesting day indeed.

If I wrote stuff that people actually read I'd have to include a sarcastic note to the effect of "Oooh, let the flood of hate-mail begin!", but since I'm not, I guess we can just move on.

Back when I was a young lad fresh out of school, I made some mistakes. Terrible, terrible mistakes. However, these were not sexy mistakes, and such tragically unsexy mistakes don't lead one on a life of dangerous, sexy adventure, which is usually associated with a young man who makes frequent mistakes. Instead, such terrible -- yet downright tedious -- mistakes drive one to live the life of a shut-in. I'm not going to bore you with further details but I've never really found much in the media that speaks to my experiences back then. Not that I'd actively seek something out that forced me to return to the extreme depression and utter isolation of those times, but whatever.

It was wholly by accident that I did discover it last year, and even more shocking that it came in the form of an anime. Welcome to the NHK does a wonderful job of documenting the highs and lows of being a completely unproductive member of society, from having high-flying dreams of realized potential, to seeing those dreams crushed under the lead weight of personal inertia.

I quickly downloaded the entire series and I've been buying copies of the manga as soon as they're released. I'd been thinking of buying the DVDs when they were released here, too. And what a stroke of luck! I found them for sale in the Best Buy in Red Deer.

Well, now that I think about it, maybe it wasn't a stroke of luck. Maybe it was some other kind of stroke. After all, how else would you explain the cover I saw as I eagerly snatched it off the shelf?


What the hell is this shit? There's no way I could bring this stupid thing up to the counter! I mean, it's not much, but I do have SOME pride. I write these posts during my breaks at work and I'm desperately looking around, hoping nobody can see my monitor. And the ridiculous thing is that picture has absolutely NOTHING to do with the show! There's nobody dressed like that in the entire series! They just threw that on there so that some perverted asshole will pick it up, get a nosebleed, then buy it. That's guaranteeing some sales, I suppose.

But not from me, sadly, not from me. All I see on that cover is everything I don't like about anime used to sell one of the few anime that I do like.