Deja vu?

I mentioned I had a psychology textbook. Yes, I have taken psychology 101. One thing we discussed is the concept of deja vu, as like this: You have a dream at night. It will depict something: a place, a person, a thing, and you forget about it. Then, a week later, a few months, or maybe even years later, you see something that is exactly like the dream you saw. This has happened to me several times in the past. This also happened to my best friend in high school; he swears up-and-down that in the late 1990s, he dreamed playing a first-person shooter that did not exist. In 2000, he played a game just like the one in his dream; it was called Perfect Dark. I then told him about the time I had numerous dreams that took place in a location that I later saw was a level in Sonic Adventure; only my earliest dream of said level occurred several years before SA was even in the conceptual stages. We're hardcore gamers like that, but we know what deja vu feels like.

Now, I haven't experienced deja vu again recently, but I am, as the locals say, "Totally calling it!" right now. A few weeks ago, I had a dream. In this dream, I am . . . an otaku. Not a general anime otaku, not a video game otaku (which would seem the most likely possibility for me) but an otaku for a very specific franchise. No, not Avatar. I dreamed I was . . . an Evangelion otaku. In the dream, I am introducing Rebuild of Eva 1.11 to my mom. Mom has seen two anime films in real-life: Castle in the Sky, and Howl's Moving Castle. She loved both of them. In my dream, she wanted to expand her horizons. But, also in the dream, I walk into the room, since I apparently had already seen the movie like 15 times and had it memorized, therefore I didn't need to watch it again. I saw . . . that she was watching it in English. Like a true otaku, I get uppity, telling her that Eva, unlike Miyazaki movies, is not meant to be watched in Ingles, but Nihongo. I grab the remote and switch the subs on. The current scene showed Shinji and Misato, which, as anyone knows, I think sound a hell-of-a-lot better in Japanese. Mom gets uppity, saying that her aged eyes can't read subtitles very well. I respond along the lines of "FOOL! You dare mock the voice of Megumi Ogata!? Do you not realize how much you're ruining the Eva experience!? Eva is set in Japan; they wouldn't be speaking perfect English to begin with!" I can't remember anything else, but that's not the end of it.

Now, I had a dream last night, again with me as an Eva otaku. It's sometime in the future, since I was mentioning the Funimation release of Rebuild 2.22 on blu-ray. I was playing a video game with some friends, then at one point, I compared someone to Touji, then someone else say, "Dude, stop comparing everything to that Japanese cartoon you won't shut up about! Besides, didn't you used to mock Eva fans back in the day, always making fun of the fans of that pale-skinned girl that's always on the ads?" I responded with, "That . . . was a younger, more naive me, when I had only seen the older, and very obviously flawed Eva tv series. Granted, Rei is not one of my favorite characters, but since having read the manga and having seen Rebuild, I have come to respect her, as well as her fans. While I may not share the, um, same adoration for her as the Rei-worshippers, I have come to understand that they too are passionate about the greatest work of animation ever committed to film." And one smartass added, "Oh really? I thought all you freaks wanted to share was hentai of the female characters." Which then prompted me to act like a male version of Asuka, scaring them away with my assholishness; they all ran away before I could catch them. Still, that's all I can remember, and the dialogue is not word for word.

Getting back to the first paragraph, I fear that these dreams are a premonition. I mean, look at the evidence: I own the first 7 volumes of the manga, I have written an Eva fanfic to completion, I have read several Eva fanfics, I bought the blu-ray version of Rebuild 1.11 shortly after it was made available on Amazon, and Rebuild is currently being distributed by Funimation, (WHICH ONLY CONFIRMS THEIR CONSPIRACY TO TURN ME INTO AN OTAKU! Well, just an Evangelion otaku mind you, BUT AN OTAKU NONETHELESS!) which will probably still be in business long enough to release all four films in the English-speaking world. And let's not forget my pre-disposition towards works of science-fiction, or this message I printed in an earlier blog:

"I have reason to believe that the Rebuild series, once completed, could equal or even best Eureka Seven for best anime in my opinion. It would surpass Miyazaki's films, too. That's how good this first film was; I see that potential."

And what was E7, my current favorite anime, influenced by more than anything else? Exactly.

Peoples, I am printing this now, perhaps to coincide with the video release of Rebuild 2.22 in Japan, but I print this now: I may very well betray my nature should I really find Rebuild to be the best (something) ever. If that happens, then the xm0123 that you know right now will die. He will forget about every mindless diversion that is not a video game (Unless if there's an Eva video game that's awesome . . . Shit! If there was an Eva game that gave me full interactivity of the Eva world, then I'll be exactly like Keroro, only substitute Gundam for Eva!) that is not Eva-related, except to say that nothing that is not Eva sucks in comparison. All because I may or may not be experincing deja vu in the future. Pre-cognition is a bitch.

P.S. If I ever refer to Misato as "Mai Waifu," you have full permission to slap me.