So I was at a party last night and since a lot of my friends do enjoy comics, manga/anime or books in general, there is always a time where you can start talking about a few series with several people, which makes the evening even better in my case. And it’s kinda amazing also because the environment and the topics don’t change much from social media.

Like, there were 2 of my friends who generally only watch animes and who were criticizing TG because, well, they found the anime sucks.
And while it’s an opinion I totally share, the only difference with me is that they never gave a chance to the manga so their criticism was about non-canon content and thus kinda void, which tends to make me roll my eyes. 

They argued for 5 minutes about how s1 was good but root a was not making sense and “why did the author do that shit, it’s ridiculous?” that at first I almost joined in to explain that the manga was the real story and not whatever the anime showed (because I mean clearly root a was awful, but at least check if the content is the real deal or not before starting to criticize). 

I know it’s a subject I can be quite serious about though, so I thought “nah Acchan, not worth it”, but the subject came up again at a different time in the evening and so I ended up telling them that it was better to read the true story before having any judgement since the anime clearly was not good (it sounds not friendly but honestly it totally was, we were all having fun). 

Then moving on, we ended up discussing Shingeki no Kyojin with a few more friends, knowing that I’m the only one out of them all who’s caught up with all the content. Some of my friends only watched the anime, one is in the uprising arc, another is working so much that for now they’re just about to switch to Marley’s POV after the time skip, etc. And the thing is, I surprised everyone when I said that Eren was my favorite character (along with Mikasa and Armin).

Obviously my policy is “no spoiler” so I couldn’t say much more than “Sensei gives him proper development over time”, but they were surprised because where they are all at in the story, for them Eren is just some kid who’s really angry about titans to the point that it can be annoying when he’s constantly ranting about them. 

It was kinda surreal though, because obviously where I am, well, between the answers and the fact that Eren has grown so much, he’s really nothing like that kid he used to be, so it’s hard for me to try and get into my friends’ shoes especially considering all that they don’t know.
So anyway, they were wondering about if the plot was going forward well, if it didn’t fall into any cliché zone, if the art style was better and they seemed happy when I said that in my opinion Isayama-sensei nailed it so far. 

We also had some discussions about Berserk (my best friend and I are so in love with it that it’s hard not to mention it when we speak about manga/anime/comics), One Piece, about Bleach, about Ghost in the Shell, One Punch Man, Mob Psycho100, about some animes I didn’t know, about some comics even and I was so surprised because I didn’t know a big part of the world of manga/anime/comics actually touched such a large group of my friends. 

It’s really cool though, because obviously I didn’t use to have the occasion to talk about these up until these last few years, which is why I have my blog (even if the purpose it serves is because I’m probably the only fan

amongst my friends

who has 0 patience to the point of always having to think about theories) and we did cover so many titles (a lot I didn’t know) that I really had a particularly amazing evening.  

tl;dr the thing I want to convey is that IRL there is a stereotype about liking manga/anime (and possibly comics but I don’t read any so I wouldn’t know) that’s making you odd or a nerd or a geek in the head of those who don’t, when it’s actually touching a lot of generations and a lot of different people, precisely because it is so diversified.

For example, I used to be extremely ashamed about liking manga/animes when I was a few years younger, precisely because of criticism coming from people who only had this stereotype in mind. It took me a while to get over it but now I’m really enjoying making those people try a series or two for themselves, to see if they wouldn’t happen to like it too.

This is why I think it’s important to own up to what you like (even if there are always going to be a few people who won’t be impressed), because that’s how a group of ten grown adults, all having different situations in life, ended up exchanging about series they enjoy for basically two hours at another friend’s birthday party (and sometimes it got really passionate :D). 

…Now I’m hoping one day someone amongst my friends will give a try to Kuroshitsuji xDDD (but then again, I blame the stereotypes that the anime glued to the title, despite the manga being different and way better in my opinion). 

Be proud of what you like!!