ANIMÉted

It happened at McDonald’s. They weren’t facing each other. Their arms were crossed over each of their chests. Both pairs of noses were stuck straight up into the sky. My friends’ fight looked like something out of an animé, and I was the character that was sweat dropping beside them.

“Guys?” I said timidly, holding my hands in front of me as a protective barrier, “Did I miss something?” Two seconds ago they had been talking about shoes—not the video with Kelly, but the actual material things—and had been getting along just fine. And then suddenly her shoes were redder than hers, and she said hers were way cooler than hers and I was getting ready to headdesk. Sometimes my best friends were so bothersome.

“What?!” they both demanded, turning their pointed glares toward me. At this point, if I was in an animé my sweat drops would be multiplying, I could almost feel them trying to leave the picture in my mind and get onto the back of my head in reality. I cringed, backing as far into my seat as possible, in turn, causing it to topple over.

“I gotta go,” I said, grabbing my generic messenger bag and dashing off in an overdramatic fashion, imagining awesome sound effects and cool, colorful backgrounds for my quick getaway and completely forgetting to put my chair right-side up. Life would be so much more awesome if it was an animé.

But my life wasn’t an animé and my best friends were fighting. At school the next day they both demanded (speaking over each other, naturally, seeing as they were still mad about their argument over shoes) why I had run off and told me I needed to come to their super special awesome parties—both planned on the same day at the same time.

It was time for me to make another getaway. I politely said, putting up my hand barrier once more, “I’ve gotta go to gym guys!” smiled brightly, ignored their shouting behind me and dashed off to Chorus. If only I had known that I actually needed to go to Art before I reached the classroom.

At lunch I tried to hide from them again by eating with someone who, if my life had been an animé, would totally not be one of the main characters… only one of those recurring ones that seemed to steal all the fans away from me for being apparently awesome despite the fact that no one of the main characters could see it. Someone like Bakura at the beginning of Yu-Gi-Oh!

I asked him what I should do about my best friends and their argument and the unfortunately planned parties and after sipping on his Ramune and ruminating on the question he finally replied, “Well, the last time my friends got into an argume—”

“Shut up, Bakura, you don’t have any friends,” I cut in, completely forgetting that he wasn’t actually Bakura, just the guy that would play a character like Bakura in my animéted world.

He soon corrected me though, with a confused look. “My name’s not Bakura.” I blinked in surprise as he transformed before my eyes, changing from my favorite animé character in my favorite childhood show into some kid that went to my school.

“Hm,” I murmured, “I’m still going to call you Bakura though.” He looked even more confused. It was surprising to know that someone holding Ramune had never watched one of the most generic animé shows ever. And then a lightbulb came in on my head, but that’s too American-style cartoons for me, so it’s more like a bright light flashed, my face light up and little squiggly lines started floating around my head. “I know!” I said excitedly, “You’re going to come over to my house and we’re going to watch Yu-Gi-Oh! All one million episodes! And we’ll duel. And it’ll be even more super special awesome than both of their parties combined!”

He looked at me like I was crazy and asked quietly, “Isn’t that the show that’s like a knockoff of Pokémon?”

“No! It’s over nine thousand times better than Pokémon!” I replied excitedly. “Seto Kaiba has the same voice as Brock from Pokémon when Pokémon had real Pokémon! It’s awesome!”

This seemed to only confuse him more, but he agreed to the idea of having a Yu-Gi-Oh! party with me, seeing as he—like Bakura—didn’t actually have any friends. I just hoped he didn’t want to dominate the world like Bakura, for some reason I couldn’t imagine him as a good leader.

Bakura showed up at my house right on time, looking a bit skeptical. But he didn’t have any friends, so it didn’t matter. He greeted me with a friendly hello before shuffling in to my house.

We sat down on my couch, each holding a bowl of Ramen, while I turned on my TV. It took him a while before he realized Bakura was only a supporting character that was a bit of a pansy.

“Hey,” he said quietly as I was changing to the next DVD, “You said I was like Bakura?”

“Yeah,” I replied, not looking back. I had all the Yu-Gi-Oh! DVDs except for GX because that’s not real.

Apparently that made him angry. “I’m not a pansy,” he snapped, “And I do have friends. And I don’t have some crazy alter ego that’s…crazy. And he’s not even a main character.”

“So?”

I looked over at him, eyebrows rising. Bakura was a soft spoken kid, and his yami was just as soft spoken but in a diabolical way. There weren’t any outbursts from him. I watched as the kid stood up and left my house. Somehow I couldn’t relate this scene to any particular anime, now I just had three friends that probably weren’t on speaking terms with me.