Forum - View topicMeeting anime fans by accident?
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MironBiron
 Posts: 39 |
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have you ever met an anime fan occasionally/by accident?
for example; I was sitting behind the computer at school and noticed that the girl sitting next to me was looking at pictures of 'Gurren Lagann', so I started a conversation and bla bla bla.. another time when I was working in a store some girls were saying Japanese words in a silly way, but I didn't feel like getting to know them because they looked a lot younger than I am.. it's too bad that this doesn't happen more often to me, lol |
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Sheleigha
 Posts: 1674 |
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I was with my friend at a store, and when we were at the till we were talking about our other friend's cat named Ichigo. The cashier was just like "oh yeah I catch Bleach often on TV". I was just like "errr wrong Ichigo! This one isn't a redhead!". It was kind of random and unexpected :p
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Mushi-Man
 Posts: 1537 Location: KCMO |
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There was this person that I sat next to in class and I hadn't talked to her much. One day I noticed she was reading something throughout class and I peeked to see what it was and she was reading Volume 1 of Evangelion. Turns out she had recently been trying to get into anime and manga but the only way she knew how was through adult swim and manga from the library. I introduced her to fansubs and the online anime stores and from then on we've been good friends.
Another time I was talking to a guy I'd non for like 2 years already. He just asked me if I had ever heard of a show called Death Note. It kind of surprised me that I had known this guy for a while already but I had never brought up my love of anime (it's weird because I usually end up in discussions about anime quite often). There are quite a few other times where I have noticed people who were wearing an anime themed t shirt, or started up conversations with people in the anime/manga section. But I don't feel like going through all of those. |
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egoist
 Posts: 7762 |
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Seems like anime fans in England is pretty limited. But I'm looking forward to meeting an anime fan at random, would be quite interesting. But, if it's not a girl, I'm definitely not pushing a conversation. |
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dormcat
Encyclopedia Editor
 Posts: 9902 Location: New Taipei City, Taiwan, ROC |
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I went to Pingsi line to take pictures of trains and deserted coal mines, then bumped into a group of Higurashi no Naku Koro ni cosplayers using the coal mine for a photo session.
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Zin5ki
 Posts: 6680 Location: London, UK |
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If you don't intend to lurk around TokyoToys or the occasional manga shelf at Borders or Waterstone's, chance encounters aren't likely. Conventions (such as this) and university societies are probably the best way to find fans in any concentration, unless you're sated by online forums and whatnot. |
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DuelLadyS
 Posts: 1705 Location: WA state |
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Customer w/ daugther at work: "Excuse me, can you help us?"
Me: "Sure, what do you need?" Customer: "Well, we have this- *pulls out a Naruto Headband with a missing stud*" Me: "Oh cool! *to cashier* Look, a leaf village headband!" Cashier (also an anime fan): "Awesome!" Customer's daughter: "You guys watch Naruto?!" Customer: "Well, this makes things easier!" I run into folks at the DVD stand/ manga rack every so often, but the work ones are always the most fun becuase it's more unexpected for the other party. I also remember directing a customer to the knitting kit on her granddaugther's gift wishlist... and telling her that actually, Shadow Hearts 3 hadn't released yet, so she should ask the clerk about a pre-order. This is aside from the first two years or so on the job, which was full of "You look familiar.... oh! You were a judge at the Yugioh tournament my kid used to go to!" I officaly have a 'rep' at this point. 
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zawa113
 Posts: 7361 |
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Last Spring, I had this horrible lab session at 9:30 directly after an 8 am class. And I just hated that lab, whoever wrote the instructions for these labs was an idiot so each lab was a living hell. So, we all somehow ended up working with lab partners (not assigned). So, everything is going normally, yet boring, I got along with my lab partner well enough and we always tried to get out of there a.s.a.p. So, Spring Break came and I decided I wanted something on my hoodie and I found a Bleach pin of KON, I kinda stopped being into Bleach for a while at that point, but I figured anyone who doesn't know he's KON will just think he's a cute lion thingy.
So, maybe two weeks after we get back from Spring Break, when we'd only have two labs left (thank god), my lab partner suddenly asked me what I do in my spare time. I don't usually talk openly about anime with people I'm not sure are fans, but when he responded, he told me he sometimes reads manga online at (scanlation site) and reads Bleach (although by "sometimes", he meant somewhere between "weekly" and "daily". I was pretty much stunned, for one, I'd been wearing a KON pin for over two weeks now on my hoodie (on the pocket, suppose it wasn't the most obvious place) and for the obvious, he was an anime/manga fan and I had no idea. He was mostly into major shonen series, but we never left in a timely manner from lab after that. At that point, I pointed out that I'd been wearing a KON pin since Spring Break and it was more of a "will you look at that?" reaction, I guess it's possible he noticed but didn't say anything at the time on second thought. My school does have a few clubs that tend to attract anime fans in swarms, namely the actual anime club (which I don't really go to) and the gaming club (which I do go to) and I know a few other clubs that also have nothing to do with anime attract fans, but I'd never seen my lab partner at one before or wearing or mentioning anything about anime, so I was blindsided. Strange thing is, I seem to be able to normally tell when someone is an anime fan that I've been around for two months or even less than that normally. Heck, I found out this one guy was most likely an anime fan by getting bored one day and looking at the school's iTunes shared server lists for my dorm building to see if I thought anyone else had good music tastes (according to me) and found an anime soundtrack on one. So yes, this thing at lab was rather accidental and unexpected. |
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Xagor
Posts: 192 |
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I would add places like Forbidden Planet, Orbital Manga and the Japan Centre to that list, but I'd also argue going to places like that is deliberately seeking out other fans rather than having chance encounters with them. There also seem to be cosplayers hanging out at Trafalgar Square sometimes for reasons I've yet to discern. Most of my encounters with other anime fans tend to come through obvious places like the Uni animesoc, or people at YGO tournaments (although you'd be surprised how many watch none, not even the YGO anime. Then again loads of them seem to be into Naruto...). Only proper chance encounters as such have been times when I've not acted on them. Like seeing someone watching Code Geass in a Chemistry cluster at Uni, or someone who read manga on her way back from secondary school when I was younger. I suppose you might be able to count this guy who was into DBZ at the same time I was, then after I went off to Uni saw him at one of those Tokyopop Recon things and it turned out he was still into anime and liked some of the stuff I did. |
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doctordoom85
 Posts: 2094 |
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I met my now closest friend/fellow anime fan by mere chance. We worked together at UPS, and I asked him what the symbols on his baseball cap meant. He said, "Tenjho Tenge" and it took off from there. And he had 3 close friends into anime, so sorta gained 4 anime friends just by one simple question.
I also work at Toys R Us, and there are about 4 anime fans who also work there. I've just been lucky in working with the right people. |
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DuelLadyS
Posts: 1705 Location: WA state |
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I wouldn't be- back when I played in/judged the local tourneys (3 a week, until all the shops closed up within 2 months of each other), it was several months in before I met someone over the age of 15 who got into the game via the anime, as opposed to just seeing it next to the Magic boosters. He was also the first one to know my friend's chosen 'monster tokens' were a set of Final Fantasy 8 keychains. (We're engaged now. )
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Ktimene's Lover
 Posts: 2242 Location: Glendale, AZ (Proudly living in the desert) |
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I work at Home Depot and once saw a girl with a shirt saying "Cute as a bug" with Naruto's Shino. When I was a grocery store bagger, a customer was getting cat food. When I asked her the cat's name, she said she named it after Tetsuo in Akira. She also (I personally prefer anime English dubbed or Japanese subbed. Even if it is crappy, a la 4Kids, I still watch it dubbed because I love anime) said that either the English dub of it sucked or English dubs overall suck.
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P€|\||§_|\/|ast@
 Posts: 3498 Location: IN your nightmares |
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I've been running into quite a number of anime fans recently: One of the guards at the manufacturing plant that I work at (I talk anime with him occasionally), a cashier at Dollar General near where I live. I think it shows that anime familiarity is actually quite common amongst the college aged crowd, and the gradually increasing social acceptance of people expressing their anime interests in day-to-day life. Although sometimes it can be distracting and embarrassing.
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Ktimene's Lover
Posts: 2242 Location: Glendale, AZ (Proudly living in the desert) |
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Past, when one's fandom of anime or any other genre of entertainment is exposed, embarrassment is almost to be expected.
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Redbeard 101
Oscar the Grouch
Forums Superstar  Posts: 16974 |
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Well I've met plenty in the usual places. Book stores, checkout lines at Best Buy/Suncoast, and some when I was in college on campus. Those are pretty normal places I think to meet them. So specifics on those for me I won't waste time mentioning. However the strangest places I've met one would be while working at 2 different jobs. When I mention the jobs you'll see why.
The first happened when working for the state government. I was an employee for the Maryland Environmental Services. I was a "sampler" which meant I went all along the state collecting various samples from sites that contracted us, or our own facilities. Mondays-Wednesdays I would be by myself driving all along the Northeast, Southeast, and Eastern shore of Maryland getting these samples and doing tests etc. On Wednesdays I was on the Eastern shore and one stop was at Chesapeake College. I went to the daycare building to get a water sample. Don't know why they chose that spot but whatever. While I was getting one one sample to take back and the other to test there one of the aides was coming by. I had just gotten back from Otakon the previous weekend and I had taken my work bag to carry stuff at the con. I had forgotten to take all the buttons I got off of the straps of the bag and she saw them and commented on them. She loved the pins and asked where I got them and that started a nice 20 min conversation. After that every Wednesday when I would go there we'd chat for a bit while I got my samples. The other was when I was a waiter for Romano's Macaroni Grill in Annapolis. I was working one night and there was a younger (just out of high school by the looks of it) couple at one of my tables. It was later in the evening so I was doing my side work while taking care of the 2 tables I had left with people. I took their order and when I was at the next table cleaning it and refilling things I heard them talking about how they just couldn't find the soundtracks to a few series they wanted. Seems every store online was out and nothing on ebay. This was when I still worked at Sam Goody/Suncoast. I politely butted into their conversation and mentioned that they should go to Sam Goody as we can special order them. We hardly carried any anime OST's but we could order damn near any that had been released in America. Some even that hadn't (those were expensive though) been. They were surprised I knew what theyw ere talking about and while I did my sidework at the tables around them we talked about various series and movies. Sure enough 2 days later they came into Sam Goody and I wound up ordering 4 different OST's for them. |
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