2018-07-14

I started an otoge and it's changed my outlook on life.

The other day my friend was working at the Ikemen Series booth at Anime Expo, and curious about what that was, I downloaded the app for one of the games from the series on my phone the next day.

That was a week ago. And since then I've slowly reconfirmed why I had never before downloaded games on my phone.

First off: I don't play video games. I like other types of games just fine—I would never say no to Cards Against Humanity—but I just haven't developed the skills for video games. We never had game systems in our house growing up, and the only time I would play video games as a kid was when my family went to Target to buy something, and I'd stand there playing the Donkey Kong demo at the video games/CDs/books section. (Mostly I was interested in the Goosebumps books.)

As a kid I never practiced playing fighting games with my friends. I never played RPGs with expansive worlds and developing characters. I never learned how to shoot at armed opponents to kill them. Despite being conditioned to believe that the arcade (or "game center", as we called them in Japan) was the place where you received the magical pen that would turn you into a Sailor Scout, I never bothered to find out where the nearest ga-cen to my house was.