Blindspot: Trying to Find My Way Into Anime

[divider type=”space_thin”] I am a jack-of-all-trades lover of cosplay, books, board games, and losing at Super Smash Melee. I’m open to new experiences and love trying new things. Despite these qualities there is one form of nerd entertainment that I’ve never been able to get into. So, my beautiful nerds, I have a confession to make: I don’t watch anime.

Am I a bad nerd? I have been genuinely intrigued by the premises of some “must see” anime shows. It’s just that I can never truly get sucked into an anime the way I can with most other live-action or animated shows. I meet and talk to nerds all the time and I often get a funny feeling that we would have had more to talk about and connect on if I had been more into anime. I’d find myself leaving some conversations feeling like a defective nerd for not being more interested. This phenomenon got me thinking. I love animated shows like Rick and Morty, Steven Universe, and Futurama — why doesn’t anime captivate me the same way other shows do?

TL;DR At first I attributed it to my short attention span. I’m sure I’m not alone in this — I’m so used to Reddit and other media where I can get my news in short headlines, often heading to the comment section for the “Too Long; Didn’t Read” that condenses a long article into a small, manageable teaspoon. It’s gotten to the point where I can hardly get through a whole episode of a TV show without going on a long thought-tangent, which I’ll often snap out of and realize I’ve missed a sig…