Friends, colleagues, fellow anime lovers – do you find yourself frequently surrounded by fine people who seem unable to grasp the true brilliance of anime? Have you ever wished there was a way to make them see the light, without having to waste too much time or effort on it? (or risking going to jail) I know you have! I regularly see articles and posts promising to share the secrets of indoctrinating your loved ones to share your passions, only to bombard you with unpractical, unproven methods such as *finding out what they like and watching an anime together that matches their tastes*. Ain’t no one got time for that stuff.
Today, I’m here to show you some simple basic methods you can do at home to turn anyone you want into an otaku for absolutely free!
Don’t worry, if you are of the vocal subset that specifically want to get your girlfriend interested in anime, I have you covered as well. Just read all the way to the end of this article for some personalized advice targeted to your specific needs. Don’t just skip to the end…I’ll know!
Where other methods essentially ask YOU to do all the work, spending your precious time and resources to create a slow learning program for your friends that may not payoff before months down the line, I am here to offer a sure-fire fast acting alternative.
1. Choosing an anime
Remember your friends are people (mostly) and people are simple and all the same. There’s no need to waste your time with a complicated psychological analysis to try and properly determine their tastes. Simply Google most popular anime and you’ll have your answer. In fact – here I did it for you. Most watched anime is Death Note, Naruto, FMA and SAO just pick any one of those and you should be fine. If you want to be topical, because new stuff always beats not new stuff, Boku no Hero Academia, Attack on Titan or One Piece are your choices du jour.
Remember sticking to super popular stuff has the dual advantage of not only guaranteeing that your friends will love it, but also being fairly easy to find dubbed. Because making people read is a surefire way to lose them.
2. Don’t make people read
Pretend subs don’t even exist. If possible, use the most localized dubs available. Spare your friends the uncomfortable experience of dealing with unfamiliar words and weird sentence structure. But DO occasionally drop random anime words. I would recommend itadakimasu before eating or kanpai when toasting. If you’re a girl maybe drop a few Yoroshiku-ne here and there in your most high-pitched voice.
No more than that though. A few words will mark you as special and unique. Your friends will want to be part of that exclusive club. Use too many and it will make them think they have to take a class. Ewww. Whatever you do, don’t start explaining the context or background of these expressions. You’ll just ruin it.
3. Fanservice
Even people who don’t watch anime know it’s a great place for T&A. The only reason they aren’t all watching it yet, is because they may be under the mistaken impression that animated T&A is not as alluring. I’m almost sad for these people.
As a public service, begin inundating them with x—rated fan art, promo art used for body pillows and saucy figurines. You may not know all your friends’ specific fetishes, and obviously we are not going to spend time figuring them out, so just flood their inboxes with every type of fanservice available.
Yuri is always fine, but be extremely careful with Yaoi. In fact, you may want to pretend that doesn’t exist either until your friends are well established otakus. When in doubt, just send me the pics, I’ll let you know.
If you’ve followed the above, at this point, your friends are all die-hard anime fans but just in case, here’s one more tip.
4. Bribe them
Invite them over for drinks and/or food and make them watch anime until it becomes a habit for them. Tell them your hot sister/brother is really into people who watch anime. Let them know that the studio/streaming app is running a contest and viewers can win stuff. People love free stuff. It doesn’t even really matter what. Tell them it’s coasters or something.
You can’t really expect anyone to do anything for free these days so you gotta provide incentive. Just make sure to stick to your budget. If you’re going to spend any substantial amount on this, then you might as well just buy new friends.
As an extension of this, you can start introducing them to the truly impressive wide-ranging world of anime merch. People love even not free stuff! After decorating their rooms with a dozen figures of the same chara, they may eventually want to see the anime these are featured in.
As for all you boys and queer girls who are trying to get your girlfriend into this truly fine art form. I never see this for boyfriends for some reason. This is the moment you’ve been waiting for. No gifts or begging needed at all. The very best part is that there is no possibility of this method backfiring, leaving you suddenly single.
Get a girlfriend who likes anime: Tada!
I hear you saying girls don’t like anime, but you are completely wrong. Just go on any random forum (I dunno maybe Yuri on Ice or something) and you will find dozens of passionate fans explaining how all these female anime watchers are ruining the medium. There’s an epidemic of them out there. You may not have noticed because we don’t tend to leave our house much, but we do exist. A lot of us have blogs too!
But you don’t want to break up with your current girlfriend because you loooooooove her? Gah – you are so spoiled! Fine, make everything complicated! OK then, for those precious few that for some reason won’t sacrifice true love for the sake of anime, I still have one last solution for you: Yaoi.
There you have it folks. No longer do you have to suffer the burden of being surrounded by people who are blind to greatness. This method is 100% guaranteed. If you followed each step correctly and your friends still do not like anime, please make sure that:
- your friends are emotionally/intellectually capable of liking anything;
- your friends aren’t simply lying to you because they are your secret nemesis;
- your friends aren’t tsundere; and/or
- your friends are in fact people (not a pumpkin on a broom, because that could be the issue).
Unfortunately, at this time we cannot provide any refunds for any reasons. Thank you for using our easy guide on How to Convert People to Anime Without Really Trying.
If you show a non-anime fan something that is similar in genre and tone to what they do like, it tends to stick pretty fast. It’s how my friends got me into anime.
In my case, I am big on science fiction and action, so when they showed me Gundam 00, that was my big entry into anime. I was also a big fan of Alfonso Wong’s Old Master Q, a Chinese 4-panel comic, so that’s how I got into the fluffy 4-koma mangas of Manga Time Kirara.
I am not an anime person but Boku No Hero Academia got me hooked. I think it’s a good anime for beginners. What other animes have a similar genre?
Honestly there are a lot. The shonen genre is very rich. It’s a little more gorey but have you tried Attack on Titan? I’m partial to Hunter x Hunter myself. It also has a lot in common with BNHA
I did watch Attack On Titan! I’m gonna watch Hunter x Hunter next!!
I hope you like it! I loved it myself!
extremely late to this but i did love Hunter x Hunter!!!!!!!
I never get long term feedback! This really rocks. And I’m glad you loved it!
Naruto
If it isn’t Ghibli or Shinkai it is damn near impossible to get my wife interested in an anime. She did like Rurouni Kenshin but that was a long time ago. Then I made the mistake of Perfect Blue. There were no warnings. It was part of a GKids series, fer chrissake! Who would show THAT to kids? I read two different reviews and they both made it sound like a cool Hitchcock move but didn’t mention all the trigger scenes.
WTF????
Fantastic movie…millenium actress could possibly get her to trust anime again?
Two words – Studio Ghibli! 😉 😛
Well…
It’s worked for me… 😛
Haha, I liked this. I wanted to write a witty testimonial for you but it seems my brain can’t manage that right now. Rain check?
Can’t wait!
And I thought this was about SAO where everyone is a person who got converted to anime.
I haven’t seen it so maybe it is…
I got my brother to watch FMA brotherhood, just by turning it on while he was in the room, he got hooked and watched the whole thing. Even though he knew it was an anime and understands what a dub is he got super confused by how nicely the voices matched the lip movements and asked if it was really anime or if it was western. Still haven’t seen any pay off yet, but I figure I won’t know until Christmas or possibly next summer.
Once you go FMA you don’t go back
My own three step program:
1. Show them Fullmetal Alchemist
2.????????
3. Profit
good plan!
I forgot to make the distinction that I meant Brotherhood XD
Recommending popular shows can backfire. You convert them to anime and then they force you to watch shows that bore you to tears. Introduce them to SAO and you’ll have to watch all of it (they’re about to start a year-long season – fun if you don’t like it yourself, no?).
That’s not possible…people are all the same with the same tastes…
The sweet sweet irony of being stuck watching boring anime with people you more or less tricked into liking the medium.
What an informative article. Looks like I have some people to bribe.
Me…every time I check my phone…
I must admit, SAO was my husbands gateway drug. From there it was easy to use his love of scifi and gaming to drag him to Log Horizon. Now he’s working on the Gundam series. Hah! Got him!
Oh my look at the trooper go. He’ll be binging Natsume in no time
You are ON POINT, today. I am soooo lucky that my family loved anime.
Seriously though, I always used Death Note as a taster lure people in but it always ended up with them only liking Death Note! Forshame!
Oh now that’s a conundrum… Maybe ease them into code Geass
Good shout but to be fair I’ve given up on them now haha. That reminds me, Lelouche is getting a follow-up soon, right?
I think so. And new is always better
You are a genius
That’s what I keep telling people! They don’t belive me
Not to mention that if your friends are big nerds, it might be easier to get them caught up in the medium as well!
I only talk to super cool people who pretend not to realize they’re pure awesome. I have standards!
You win, Irina. You win.
I don’t know how to respond to this. Too embarrassed.
“your friends are in fact people (not a pumpkin on a broom, because that could be the issue).”
NOW I UNDERSTAD THE PROBLEM! Thank you Irina! Don’t know what I would do without you.
Happens to me all the time. Pumpkins are the sneakiest fruit..(wait are they veggies?) See what I mean!?! Sneaky
I’ve tried. It doesn’t work much. Many people confuse anime with children’s cartoons. They only know about 1) Disney 2)Hannah Barbera 3)Loony Toons and 4)Pixar (which is pretty much like Disney). They don’t know Ghibli and don’t want to know. They don’t care that there are stories for adults like Sakura Project or Golden Time or even Welcome To the NHK, which is about unemployment and job scams that’s very relateable to the real economy in the real world. I agree that Dubs are the way to go, but most people don’t even realize that Star Wars and Marvel movies are cartoons with live-action actors most of the time. Tell them and watch them get angry and defensive. And they’ll watch those stupid superhero movies all the live-long day, but suggest another country has more interesting stories without superheroes and “How dare you!” reaction. Sigh. And don’t even get me started on all the SJW crap that’s infected and ruined Star Trek, and the last couple Star Wars movies. I just hope we’ll see more Green Hell scifi in the future.
They’re probably tsundere
That would be wonderful, since Tsundere eventually wears off in the long run. They’ll have to discover this themselves if they don’t die first. Anime can save lives, but it only works for those willing to accept that animated stories don’t have to be for small children. That’s a huge hurdle. Many people won’t accept that, but will take their kids to see Transformers movies, which are animate and ultraviolent. Or Marvel movies which animated and usually comedy violent. Those sell movie tickets. Can Americans accept animated stories without explosions and violence? Are they even capable of watching Barakamon? Or wait long enough to understand the subtext of Sweetness and Lightning? I meet way too many people couldn’t be patient that long. Sigh.
Lego movie was pretty huge. so was inside out and zootopia. all of which tackle some intricate themes with very few explosions. Anime is mostly marketed for kids in Japan too so I’m not sure there’s as big a divide as you describe.
When my brother, who has 5 kids, found out about Ghibli he recommended it to me like it was his biggest secret sharing reveal of all time. He was that excited he’d found these mainstream animated movies which have been coming over here since the 1970’s, and even watched a few of them with me back in the mid-80s on VCR tape but totally forgot about them. Porco Rosso is a great example of animation for all ages. So is Sora No Woto, though its technically slice of life and moe. The characters eventually get re-used in K-On. Sora is older, and also more serious. Only enlightened people will sit still and watch it though. Its a downside of California. All the enlightenment is fake. Minds are just as closed as everywhere else, they just talk like they’re open. Sigh.
I successfully managed this the other day. Got my friend to watch every episode of attack on titan in about 3 days and he loved it. Wanted to try it because he was ‘curious’ and said that if I watched it, it must be good..
Attack on Titan! I knew it. Popular is always best!