I’ve brought it up more than once here that I’m not a big fan of New Game. I like it alright, but I couldn’t make it consistently through the first season as my wife was watching it, and the same can be said right now for season two. In series like this, I have to really like the characters, and at first I didn’t care much about any of these girls. But most especially, I disliked Yagami Kou, and I really wanted to like her because, you see, she and I share a birthday. That day is today, in fact (August 2).
I knew about Yagami’s character way before I watched New Game because I ran across birthday fanart for her that I queued to post on my Tumblr today. She seemed the cheery type, and since I no other characters I care about share my birthday (or celebrities either…NO ONE IMPORTANT WAS BORN ON AUGUST 2nd), I decided right away that I would like Yagami.
And then I watched New Game.
Yagami is pretty much everything I don’t like in an anime character. Wikipedia describes her as being laid-back (strike) but stern (strike). And of course, she walks around in her underwear all the time (wut).
My dislike for Yagami reminds me that there are people I don’t like in real life, too. She reminds me that for how often I talk about loving others, I very quickly dislike a certain kind of people when I run into them: the extroverts. I’m talking about the people wayyyy at the end of the extrovert scale. I’ve always found these kind of people instantly annoying and when I meet them in real life, it’s like a switch goes off in my brain; instantly, it’s on “I don’t like you…I don’t like you at all.”
But over and over again in my life, starting with one of my very best friends in college (and I’ve told him before that I hated him when we first met), I’ve realized that being extroverted in not a crime, it’s not something that makes you a lesser person, it doesn’t even make you annoying. It’s just part of who you are, and who you are might be someone really incredible.
The truth is, of course, that I’m the one who has the problem, coming instantly to judgement instead of being open and kind. It’s amazing to me that after all these years, and all these times that I’ve been humbled, that I still need more humility. Loads of it. But I hope that bit by bit, I’m getting to a place where my first reaction isn’t to judge, but to love. I think I’ll get there – it just might take one extrovert at a time.
*By the way, I do like Yagami a lot more now than I did at first. I wish she would put on some pants, though.