Let me tell you a story. A sad story. A very tragic story. A story of my past, and what it relates to what I was writing in my last post.
We must go back to the time I was "friends" with a bunch of conformist nerd assfucks back in high school. I don't remember exactly when this happened, but I know it had to be sometime between mid 2001 and late 2002, for reasons I will explain later.
One of the people in this posse was a girl who was an anime otaku, and I mean that in a literal sense. This girl fit nearly every stereotype that English-speaking anime fans have about fangirls, minus loving yaoi. (That last one not being present because I live in an extremely homophobic community, but I digress.) Look at my article on MAL about why I hate the anime fanbase; this girl fit 4-and-a-half of the points on there. I say half because she never admitted to liking anime boys over real life boys, but she was definitely guilty of watching anime only for "hawt guyz." Granted, she never called herself an otaku, she never hated an anime simply for popularity, (She was a
heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge
fan of Inuyasha.) but all of the other points applied to her. Also, she claimed to be an expert on Japanese pop culture.
She had something none of us did at that time; broadband internet. With this, she could acquire fansubbed anime. She would play it for us anytime we visited. This was how I was exposed to anime like Battle Athletes; through her. One curious thing about her fansubs was that they usually had the intro and ending sequences edited out, to both shorten the length, and conserve memory space. This is an important detail.
One day, she played the first two episodes of what she called a "shoujo" series, which, in her words, was basically Japanese for "chick flick." But hey, I had seen a couple of chick flicks, some of them were good, so I figured, why not? I saw the two episodes, and I came to the same conclusion of this show that I had for every other anime I had seen in my life at that time, "Jesus! This show sucks!" Oh yeah, my "friends" called me out for this, "You're just too used to American cartoons!" To which I would say, "No. I hate it because this anime sucks; I call it like I see it." But what was the name of this anime? My lady "friend" said it was, and I quote, "Fushigi Yugi." And without being able to see the title sequence, that is what I came to know of this series, this boring, lifeless, sexist, retarded anime.
In mid 2003, the start of my senior year, was when I had a falling out with these "friends." I called them all out for their bullshit, and basically said I never wanted to see any of them ever again for as long as I live. This is one reason I have never given out my true name on the internet; I don't want one of them knowing my whereabouts, because if they did, it would completely fuck things over for me. However, keep in mind, my reasons for leaving them wasn't because they were anime whores; it was for much, much more serious reasons. And as I have admitted, if they had shown me Trigun or Eva, I wouldn't have spent four years straight avoiding all anime and manga.
Now we flash forward to late 2007. I was getting into anime for the first time, good anime. However, I was running short. I wanted to watch an anime that wasn't on adultswim.com, but where? Well, some of my online colleagues at the time were talking about anime they liked, and one of the series they recommended was a series called "Fruits Basket." One of them even said that even if you hate shoujo, you'll love Fruits Basket. I had read parts of the Cardcaptor Sakura manga, so I knew there was good shoujo out there, even for a 20-something American male such as myself. Low and behold, on one of my days off, I see an online ad from Funimation.com (the conspiracy goes back that far, no, even farther! It was their dub of the older FMA anime that "converted" me, so this wasn't unusual) advertising a series called Fruits Basket, and it even said, "Watch the first 3 episodes for free!" Well, like I said, I liked a few chicks flicks, so I figured, why not?
So I started watching the first episode, then, about halfway, I started getting the strangest sense of Deja Vu, like, I had seen this somewhere before, but I ignored it. I figured a lot of shoujo just used similar art styles.
But about a quarter of the way through the second episode, (hey, I was bored, okay?) I finally figured it out, "Hey! This is Fushigi Yugi! Or . . . is it!? What's going on, here!?" I stopped watching (you should know why by this point) and hit up Wikipedia. "Was Fruits Basket just an Americanized title for Fushigi Yugi?" (Hey, I didn't know better at the time; titles do get changed sometimes when they're licensed.) Upon my research, I found myself laughing maniacally; I had never seen Fushigi Yugi. All this time, that stupid know-it-all bitch thought Furuba was Fushigi Yugi! Well, keep it mind, pirated materials don't always get it right; some of my ROMs have incorrect titles in the file names, so maybe fansubbers get the wrong title too. Also, this was before Furuba was even licensed in America, hence why I said this happened between mid 2001 and late 2002; fansubbing wasn't quite the "art" that it is now. Because of this, I actually apologized to the NPF, since I had claimed I hated Fushigi Yugi, when I really should've bashed Furuba in an "anime you don't like" thread I posted in. (Yeah, this was before late 2008, so I was still active on the NPF when I figured this out.)
Of course by now, those "friends" probably realized the truth too; they probably figured it out even before I did, but this is the truth; I have seen Furuba in Japanese AND English. And, in all honesty, it sounded better in English. In fact, it sounded really good in English. I didn't know who any of the VAs at the time were, but it doesn't surprise me now that Laura Bailey was the lead female protagonist. Sadly, no matter how good the dub is, it can't save a project as insipid as Furuba. And that's why this is such a sad story; good dubs can't save bad anime, and the real reason many self-proclaimed nerds don't have friends is not because they're shy, but because they are elitist, know-it-all assholes. They're probably hiding out in the NPF right now; that would be their ideal environment.
