Anime Club no Densetsu: A Tale of Enduring Respect

Note: This story involves mention of an Islamophobic comment in a group setting.

Hello everyone, and welcome back to another long-overdue edition of my anime club storytelling series. Since it’s been quite a while, I’ll reiterate that I wanted to start a blog series about interesting and positive experiences I’ve had as a long-time member of a certain university anime club, because most of the material I see online that’s related to anime clubs is dismissive or derisive. Obviously in environments where many people come together over a shared hobby, there will always be some conflicts; having one thing in common doesn’t automatically mean people will end up being best friends with one-another. But I think there are good reasons to join an anime club or an anime-related group (whatever label you want), and I want to use my voice to speak for that side of the argument.

This story probably requires a little extra personal background about myself. Anime club has been my primary social outlet for many years; it’s where I originally met both my first and my second husbands as well as many of my past and current friends. Back in Spring of 2005 when this takes place I was dating the person who would eventually become my first husband and this story is primarily about him – I’ll call him “E.” E and I were both in our final college semester and he was an active member of the anime club’s administration (much of my direct participation came more after he left the group). As part of his responsibilities, he often got up in front of the room in between showings to provide announcements and information about upcoming club events and other bookkeeping-type items.

That semester, the club was watching a series called Master Keaton, based on the manga of the same name by Naoki Urasawa. The series protagonist is Taichi Keaton, a half-Japanese-half-British insurance adjuster for Lloyd’s of London who’s also a professor, archaeologist and a father – kind of a modern renaissance man. Formerly a member of the military, Keaton’s training comes in handy in that he’s able to “MacGyver” himself and his associates out of some tight situations. It’s a good anime series if you can find it, though it’s long out of print and having just now re-watched the episode I’m about to talk about, I’m noticing that the image quality on the DVD’s isn’t that great, so maybe we can cross our fingers for a nice-looking re-release someday. However, the manga is available in the US so I’d recommend you give it a look.

In episode 25, “Kalihman of the Desert,” Keaton travels to the Taklamakan Desert in the Xinjiang region of China, part of the Uyghur Muslim autonomous region (at least as far as that existed prior to the modern push by China to eliminate their culture – see: Uyghur Genocide). He’s there to value some items at an archaeological dig but butts heads with the professor leading the excavation. The Chinese government has only allowed the group a limited amount of time to work and there’s lots left to dig up, so to save time and resources the professor wants to dig down through the hero Sadiq’s wall – a wall that holds historic and cultural importance to the local Muslims, including the extremely elderly Sheik.

Under cover of night, the professor and his subordinates start chipping away at the wall, causing the Uyghur Sheik to have a heart attack and die from shock. Thus the title of Sheik passes to his son, someone who’s not particularly interested in making friends with cultural outsiders, especially those who don’t seem to care about obliterating important historical sites. As punishment, the son brings Keaton, the Professor, and a couple of associates into the desert. As if to mirror the trials of the hero who sought judgment from Allah and who was memorialized by very wall that was so thoughtlessly desecrated, the new Sheik leaves the judgment on the men’s right to live to the heavens. If they survive their multi-day journey to the Southern road through the burning desert, then they can go free. Of course, Keaton uses his know-how to survive and reach the road despite extreme dehydration and exhaustion.

It’s a good episode of an overall great series. It was also the first time I’d heard of the Uyghur people and their culture; this being the mid 2000’s and therefore a point in time when Islamophobia was beginning to really run rampant, it was also nice to see a portrayal of Muslims that wasn’t outright racist, although I suspect there are likely nitpicks to be made by someone from that cultural group or those knowledgeable about their customs and culture.

Considering that background and the general cultural sensitivity of the story, a certain event that occurred in the darkened room during the viewing of the episode was somewhat startling. As the Professor and his associates began to take their pickaxes to Sadiq’s wall and the Muslim characters expressed their anger and shock, someone in the audience at the anime club exclaimed “ha ha, Jihad.” I don’t remember who actually said this – it was dark, and there were a lot of people present at the meeting – or the specific reactions of others in attendance, but I strongly suspect there were some nervous chuckles and probably someone telling the person to shut up (we have a well-established rule about talking during the showings; at the very least, this person was being rude in that regard). Thinking about it now I feel like my jaw would have dropped in shock. After the lights came up, however, was when when the situation really came to a head.

E marched his way down the stairs to the front of the room, visibly agitated, and when he reached the center of the floor he let loose on the person who felt that they needed to add their political commentary to our viewing that evening. I don’t remember exactly what he said; I more remember the emotional content of what he was expressing, and the stunned silence of the other 50 or so folks with whom we shared the space. I remember how he called out the prejudice specifically and laid out a zero tolerance expectation for that kind of humor. After what was probably just a very uncomfortable minute or so the dressing-down was over and we all returned to our mid-meeting break.

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E, my former partner, is no longer really in my life. The last time I saw him in person was a couple of days before one of the cats we owned together (which lived with him after our separation) passed away from cancer. It’s the sort of situation where one doesn’t really feel compelled to discuss other depressing details about moments that are now long in the past. Our divorce was finalized in the mid 2010’s after a very emotionally-exhausting process of disentangling from one-another. I won’t go into extreme detail about why things didn’t work out, partly because it’s not really relevant to this story and partly because the last time I alluded to the details online I had some flying monkeys come out of the woodwork to harass me and I have better things to do than deal with that kind of emotional fallout again. Needless to say, in the years since it’s been really difficult for me to look back at that relationship and feel anything but echoes of the hurt, anxiety, and disappointment that I did at that time. Despite putting in a lot of work through therapy, there are still moments where I have flashbacks, though those are becoming fewer and farther between.

Very recently, though, I’ve begun to reach a point where I’m not instantly punished by a gut-punch of emotional pain when I think about certain moments and experiences in the past, and can acknowledge that there were fun, fulfilling things that happened during those points in my life and with him and people to whom I no longer speak. I’m noticing that there are certain turns of phrase I still use that I can attribute to him. He introduced me to the Yakuza games back when their fan following was tiny and the release of each new game in the series was a small victory rather than a guarantee. His mom helped encourage my love of cooking. He’s the first person I know who actually enjoyed watching sports anime – he was way ahead of his time on that one!

I can’t speak for everyone specifically, but I think generally we’re not initially drawn to people in which we can identify no positive qualities. Toxic behavior and deteriorating feelings rarely exist fully-formed at the outset of a relationship. People who hurt other people rarely come bursting out of the gate right away to cause pain; likewise not all pain in failing relationships is the result of active, malicious harm. However you want to look at it, I’ve reached a point in my life where I’ve emotionally distanced myself from the worst of things and can see each of us in light of who we were at that time and the problems we were both dealing with. In arriving to that sense of acceptance I’ve started to clear away the fog of shame and depression and remember some of the times during which I was happy with him and times where I even admired him.

I also think it takes guts to call out prejudice, especially when many folks with privilege are decidedly reticent to wield it in service of doing that. I’m admittedly weak in that regard myself; I find it easier to say things when I’m behind a keyboard and have time to think and craft thoughtful responses, and I need to consider more how I can get over myself and do a better job as an ally in the moment when it counts. So it’s in that light that I regard E’s actions with a great deal of respect. The rando’s initial outburst was shitty and ignorant, the type of “edgy” commentary that tends to bubble up and escape from the mouths of people who aren’t used to being criticized for it. E could easily have just let it go unacknowledged and not endured any sort of ill-effect for ignoring it. And yet, he instead decided to speak to it, to call it out for what it was – shitty and Islamophobic. It should be the sort of action that’s easy for someone to take – racial hatred and religious prejudice is universally considered despicable, right? (…right?). Instead, though, I think riding the momentum of the status quo is often simpler – it requires no change in thinking or behavior, no self-examination. Don’t rock the boat, ignore the bullies, take the high road… I think sometimes we hamstring ourselves by building an idea of propriety around behaving in an easy, palatable way. But palatable to whom?

There’s a funny fake newspaper headline I’ve seen go by a few times that goes something like “Heartbreaking: Person you Hate Makes Great Point.” Conceptually it’s not difficult to understand that it’s something that occurs, probably on the daily, but I think when it comes to actually acknowledging when that happens we’re not good about it. It’s much easier to oversimplify someone into a villainous stereotype than it is to understand them as a complex human being with various thoughts and feelings. It’s much easier to dump those people in the brain box marked “they suck” and stop thinking about them (or actively dwell on them which is often the case) than it is to accept that we’re all capable of doing and saying good things even if our differences mean that we don’t get along while it’s happening.

I was hurt a lot by E, in ways that I still don’t really want to talk about. I don’t think people who were hurt by someone should feel obligated to go through the exercise of forgiving them if they don’t want to. For some, it’s better simply to forget and move on. I still don’t know what’s the best move for me, but the memories I have of my time with him won’t leave my mind and I’m not sure I’d even want to erase them if I could. All I can do for myself is acknowledge that sometimes people I don’t like still manage to inspire me by doing something exceptional, and the messiness of that is such that it can’t simply be mopped up or swept away.

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Once again I’ve managed to tell a more emotional story, so I’ll try for something a little more light and fun next time. Thanks for reading!