Lately I've been revisiting an important part of my formative years: Japanese cartoons and comics. Anime refers to the animated cartoons, whereas manga refers to the original comic series. I was always one for manga, not anime. I've always loved reading over watching - there's something about the written word. I got into the entire subculture when I was about ten years old, thanks to a friend who was very enthusiastic about Korean and Japanese pop music and a constant influx of Studio Ghibli films as a young child. My parents were talking about divorce, but these discussions quickly became moot when my father became seriously ill. I had recently transferred schools from a non-religious private school to a Catholic school, after my only friend at my first school transferred to another school. I had poor social skills and didn't make any friends. It was not the easiest time of my life.

In my experience, most of society doesn't care or doesn't think too highly of anime fanatics. One is either called an otaku (Japanese slang for someone who spends all their time at home playing games or watching anime and has poor social skills) or a weeaboo (Western slang for someone, usually of non-Japanese descent, who loves anime to the point of exporting various words into their daily vocabulary. For example: "Anna-senpai, your keychain is so kawaii!" The issue is not with the Japanese, but the blind worship of Japanese culture at the expense of misunderstanding it and the deployment of language in a manner that is obstructive to communication.)

I already had trouble fitting in at my new school. I didn't need the social stigma of being obsessed with manga in addition to that (to be fair, my love of it at the time was best characterized by obsession and not a healthy hobby or way of life). It was my belief at age eleven that letting anyone know about my love for Asian music and pop culture would be a factor in my eventual isolation. This was exacerbated by the fact that none of my classmates were like me; all of them were Caucasian and Catholic. That is not to say that they were inherently close-minded or insular, but rather that the divide between my Taiwanese-born and raised non-religious household and these families seemed so vast. Emphasizing the differences would make the rift look unbridgeable. I wanted to be included. I wanted to be respected and liked, and for that, I had to be respectable.

Respectability is a funny concept. It's got both an internal and an external definition. We've got to respect and love ourselves, and we'd like others to respect and like, if not love, us as well. As Aristotle noted, we're political animals - we're not meant to be isolated. But each person's definition of respectability varies, and we’ve simply got to live with that fact, because it takes all kinds to make a society. It'd be a lie to say I've never presented myself in a certain manner in order to better fit another person's definition of respectability. But it's a difficult line to walk when certain aspects of oneself can either be lionized or denigrated by others depending on the person's definition.

For the longest time, I wanted to dissociate myself from the scoffs and the disbelieving statements that other anime fans got – “You like anime?” – as if manga was published for the express purpose of being stuffed under mattresses whenever friends came over. I got my respectability – people who knew of my academic accomplishments and work ethic. But I didn’t have friends whom I could share all of myself to. The fear of being disliked once my personality was investigated remained a massive dilemma all throughout middle school and high school. Needless to say, the most difficult period of my life transitioned to an uneasy adolescence, where I had a lot of acquaintances, but few friends. My worst enemy in my pursuit of companionship was predictably, myself.

As I progressed through honors and advanced placement classes, my workload increased to the point where I gave up on reading manga. Most of the iconic series have long, convoluted storylines and an ensemble cast, so keeping up with one’s favorite characters can be a real drag when one has a heavy schedule. I thought to myself: It was a phase. And thankfully I’ve grown out of it now.

Somewhere between the summer after graduation and the first few weeks of school, I made a promise to myself to toss respectability to hell. It hadn’t worked out in high school and I wasn’t happy with who I was. I was going to respect who I was and I was going maintain healthy relationships with the things and people I loved. If the people that I loved or that loved me changed, then so be it, because I wasn’t about to put myself through four more years and a potential lifetime of loneliness because I couldn’t find people who would like me for all my idiosyncrasies. I still didn’t get back into manga at that point though – three years’ worth of comics would require days to read through, and I didn’t want to dedicate time in the face of making friends I wanted to keep around for at least the next four years.

This past November, I was told, via the wonderful chasm of the Internet that is Tumblr, that Naruto had finally ended. It is one of the most iconic manga series ever created, with over 100 million volumes sold worldwide. It spanned 1999 to 2014 and stands at an astounding 700 chapters. Its fandom is massive, and is dominated by young teens, many of who love and worship various characters to the point of terrifying some of the more mature readers (someone once described the behavior of Uchiha Sasuke fans as “dry humping.” It is an apt descriptor.) It is also my favorite manga of all time.

The plot is very long and convoluted, as is with most manga series, but its themes center on ideas of loneliness, belonging, and family. In other words: it is Chicken Soup for the Soul for any angst-ridden thirteen year-old who believes that absolutely no one understands them and no one ever will. At the height of my loneliness in sixth grade, I clung to that series and carted at least one volume with me everywhere just as Elder Price must have clutched onto the Book of Mormon everywhere his Super Mormon feet (and Jesus and the Angel Moroni) took him.

That November, in fits of love, sadness, and the pure sensation of “I feel old now,” I returned to my favorite pastime during puberty. Reading stories about these ninja (most of whom have tragic histories involving death of family members and close friends) and how they overcame their loneliness to achieve their dreams and built families really hit close to heart. And I thought to myself, that’s what I needed when I was thirteen. I was so lonely and I didn’t think that anyone could understand this loneliness. But Uzumaki Naruto, the main protagonist, had no parents or family to take care of him. The people of the village he lived in either detested him for something beyond his control or paid no attention to him. His dream was to become the leader of the village so that he’d finally get respect. (In the end, he does become the leader. He achieves this goal because he learns to love his village and its people and to win the respect of its residents.) And by reading myself in the fantastical stories of other people, I felt a little less alone. And judging from the love that the series gets, so do millions of other people.

And perhaps I should have listened to the first opening theme song more carefully:

Don’t try to live so wise
Don’t cry because you’re so right
Don’t dry with fakes or fears
Because you will hate yourself in the end

Because I sure could have used that in high school. But I got there in the end – through a long and convoluted journey of self-actualization. But with less death and destruction. I’ll leave that to the pages of Naruto. No matter what others think about anime fans or what conclusions people jump to regarding my own suitability to become their friend as a result of my pop culture consumption choices, I know my own worth now. I have friends whom I talk politics with, friends whom I talk comic books with, friends whom I talk fashion with, and friends whom I talk anime with. It’s nice, having a variety of my interests represented in my life. And now, I can listen to the opening theme music and think to myself, remember when I was so lonely? and look how far I’ve come, and this is the sound of my childhood.