Making a distinction between the girl you’re dating and an Anime character who has the same first name is probably a good idea.

How many times do I have to revise it? My girlfriend’s name is Yomiko Azuma, not Readman. And she wears completely different glasses to that Anime character too. Besides, Yomiko is a common name, and if I’ve ever got a chance with this lovely woman then I’m going to have to stop thinking how much she looks like a fictional character I once had a crush on as a younger man.

But all the same, I can’t help but have Yomiko Readman remind me of the girl I love. Excuse me if this is a personal post, but I’ve decided to expand on my last Animated Spree post which dealt with what a man watched when he was in love. There seems to have been a popular demand for it.

Yomiko (Azuma), has given me permission to write another article involving my relationship with her. But I’m putting my foot in it and I’m going to address the Azuma/Readman dichotomy first.

A long time ago (about a year ago actually, when I was just starting out reading manga and Anime) my eye came across a series called Read Or Die. A bit later I actually got to read it. I was mad, insane. As you can imagine, I became a fanboy of that character at that age, hoping I could comfort Readman in her loneliness after losing her precious Donnie. And I felt the pangs of my own loneliness when I recognised that she wasn’t real and couldn’t love me back, no matter how much I pined for this woman.

I’m progressive to be sure, and I support independent women to be happy without a boyfriend or a husband. But Yomiko Readman broke my heart, not just because she couldn’t love me, but because there was nothing I could do about her pain. She wasn’t real, and I had to accept that. As silly as Read or Die tended to be as a manga, there was some real pathos to it that hit me as a young man that stays with me today. Sometimes, like Yomiko Readman did, you can pine and suffer over what was essentially your own fault. I’m not going to spoil the ending of the manga further than that.

Two years of hopping from misguided and naive real world and Anime crushes and I began to despair that no woman would ever love me. I was shattered. Until the other Yomiko came along. The one who was real, and had a strange habit of looking at me funny when I met her in that bookshop we always ended up meeting in, and glancing at each other, on the occasional Friday. First time I saw her I went in there to buy Astro Boy manga, but I remembered I’d seen her even before that, blushing as her friend caught her peeping at yaoi out of curiosity. And that is why I thought, at first, that she was a fujoshi.

A normal woman would have slapped me for that, but she was different. We exchanged a conversation: “I’ve seen you in here before, what are you reading?” I said. “Hot Gimmick” she replied. “And it’s not yaoi just because it has girly guys on the cover”.

I was a bit bold, so I offered to give her my phone number. She took it, and called me when she felt like it.

I needn’t go into the private matters that occurred in the two weeks we’ve been involved, but basically the point I want to address in this post is that sometimes when you think the sky will fall on you and you’ll be crushed, dying a virgin forever, there are people in this world that come into your life and remind you it’s worth living.

Ok, so this is a long post. Allow me to sip some manly tea to sustain myself from my romantic gushings. Basically I’m writing this article because of one thing, I’m going on a date with my girlfriend tomorrow and if she bothers to show up my life is likely to change. And all I can really think about is hardly Anime, but what the hell I’m going to wear when I leave the house to meet my destiny.

Nonetheless, the lesson I have to learn is that Yomiko (Azuma, the real one) will never be Yomiko Readman, because she’s a completely different person to that character. Hopefully she sticks by me long enough to build a meaningful relationship. And let me tell you, it’s pretty hard leaving behind your boyhood to become a man.

I’ve done sociology for school, and I know this from it. Masculinity is fluid, not one person can define it as a wholeness. There are “multiple masculinities”. I’ve forgotten which theorist said that, but that’s the last of my worries right now. The point is, which masculinities are accepted, and which aren’t?

I’m hardly the typical Aussie bloke, particularly because of my condition. I didn’t call myself the Asperger’s Anime Blogger because of my incoherence sometimes. It’s part of me. My girlfriend is aware of my condition and she doesn’t mind. So what am I afraid of?

I guess I am afraid of holding onto something solid, instead of a fleeting dream. I’ve been wishing and hoping on first stars in the sky for a girlfriend for years, and not once did it come true. Until now, I’ve never had a stable relationship. This is big for me. And as you can imagine, it’s big for any Anime and manga fan. The first time they ever go on a real date with somebody who isn’t two dimensional or possessing of paranormal abilities of any kind. (My girlfriend is not a Magical Girl, and she’s hardly confident enough to face a threat to the universe. But lately she’s been confident enough to approach me, so who knows?)

I’ve had my heart broken before, and that’s probably why this is so hard. One too many times I’ve been standing, waiting for Godot-girl, who is always mentioned by those who wait, but who never shows up. There is the hope of meeting my true love, which was usually crushed and stomped on by those who thought it would be funny to see what would happen if they could make me cry.

I don’t know where I’ll be with Yomiko in two years time. But if I am successful, I will have found a love which is true. If not, it’s probably likely that I’ll be heading home to meet bitter disappointment.

But all I really have to do, is walk through the door of that bookshop to meet up with her. It’s not like I haven’t met up before, it’s just that now I’m one of a couple and it’s possible that this might continue into something bigger.

Ok, calm down NGP. Enough gushing. Let’s get to what Anime you watched this week!

Well, I can’t say I really watched a lot of Anime at all. All I really watched was all six episodes of Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace, which is a British TV spoof horror show set up like it’s a show rejected from the 1980s. It was pretty funny, but I’ve been so busy I hardly remember anything but fragments. I watched a bit of Detroit Metal City, but somehow metal satire isn’t what I need at this time of focusing on romance that doesn’t involve rape.