My Mother, the Weeaboo

This story is rather old (from when I was about 15), but I was regaling this tale to a friend of mine and realized it was entertaining enough to put here.

Now, both my mother and stepfather are rather weeby but my stepfather’s interest is mostly in martial arts. They are both also raging narcissists, with my stepfather being an insecure and massively authoritative loser, and mother’s particular brand being histrionic, which might give this story a little bit of context. Relevant facets of this include that she makes everything about herself (especially my hobbies and interests) and also believes herself to unquestionably have it worse than anyone else. Oh, and she’ll do just about anything for attention.

Cue her walking in when I had Toonami on in the background and seeing Gaara (an emo redhead, possessed by a demon) screaming about blood and she decided that this show perfectly represented her life, with all the edgy characters (namely Gaara ad Sasuke) being hugely relatable to her. So, after that she ALWAYS had a Naruto AMV on her computer and was always trying to make me watch them or the show and if I didn't she'd blast it full screen in view of everyone while cold shouldering me. One particularly mortifying one I remember was ‘Naruto x Ino – Piss on You’ which…thanks mom, I really needed to see that, I guess.

I practically had to beg her not to order cosplay outfits (she did anyway but I least managed to convince her not to wear them outside), and if she saw ANYONE in public—even a little kid—who seemed willing to talk to her at all, she'd stop them to talk to them about Naruto and how it related to herself, often trauma dumping on them to liken herself to the emo characters. If we saw some stranger wearing Naruto merch, she would chase them down to talk to them. Again, regardless of age. Once she saw a neighborhood kid wearing one of those black coats with the red clouds and she watched him through the window for several minutes before going outside and walking down the street to talk to him until he got uncomfortable and went back to his house.

She was often on the phone with family members and took their willingness to be on the phone with her as an opportunity to talk about Naruto and after many unreturned calls, she vented about being abandoned. I told her that she had been talking AT them about things only she was interested in; to which she'd accuse me of invading her privacy and listening in on her loud phone calls, which took place in the living room and often on speaker phone (not to mention she had JUST recounted them to me herself while bemoaning the situation, but from her perspective).

I tried to show her other anime, hoping such a high concentration of fandom was due to having only one show that she liked, but she wasn’t interested. In fact, if you tried to talk to her about any other media, it got drawn back to Naruto. How Peter Parker leaves Mary Jane to protect her? Or Harry Potter leaves Ginny Weasley for the same reason? That trope is called ‘the Sasuke thing’ according to my mother.

This cumulated in a friend staying over at my house who happened to wear a Naruto night shirt that night (or rather, a large shirt as a night shirt) and I warned her not to let my mom see and she assured me, “OH, I know!” and we both laughed. Unfortunately, she left said shirt at my house, and during one of my mother’s usual rifling through my things she found it and stole it. Of course, she vehemently denied this, but she went to visit my aunts (her most common captive audiences) for Thanksgiving and they told me she was wearing it when she arrived there (and then proceeded to try to convert my four-year-old cousin into a Naruto fan).

After that, when I got my license, I told her she would not be receiving any rides from me (she is capable of driving but sees it as beneath her) unless she could refrain from bringing up Naruto AT LEAST while we were out — even then, she slipped up a lot (“omg there was an AMV about Sasuke to this song!”). I began to walk away if she brought it up to me, lock myself in my room if the show, soundtracks, or AMVs were being played, and made good on my ultimatum not to drive her anywhere. She eventually learned not to bring it up to me.

Until she found Facebook, and THEN she made a nice, normal account that she added me to. AND A SEPARATE ACCOUNT that she added our family, some of my friends who liked Naruto, and everyone she knew on that was essentially a shrine to Naruto, including albums of each character with essays about how the character related to her/how beautiful they were/why she was just like them. She would even insist that no one liked Naruto as much as her, that no one else understood the characters like she did, and even claimed to be one of the first American fans out there (this was not true, I want to say the series was almost 10 years old already at this point).

Lastly, anyone aesthetically pleasing in any way was compared to some Naruto character or another. My other cousin had black hair and my mom was going through her sister's Facebook albums and called me in to point to a picture of him and asked, "doesn't he look just like Sasuke?" to which I left the room.

She’s never obsessed over anything quite like that before or since – though she’s always been prone to wearing my clothes, adopting my style, and pretending to like my music (while insisting she liked it first, and these groups were new at the time) – but to this day she harbors a thinly veiled Naruto obsession. I’m very low contact with her, so I don’t know if she watches the show about his son or not. I guess this is more ‘my mom the Narutard’ than ‘weeaboo’ so I guess I’ll throw in the time when I made the mistake of letting her try some mochi that I ordered at a sushi restaurant. She lost her mind and next time we went out, ran away from our group to run up and down the street asking every restaurant, which were mostly U.S. fast food chains and NONE of which were even Asian cuisine, if they had mochi and would get angry at the confused employees when they didn’t – but the point was that she wanted everyone to KNOW she liked mochi, and more than anyone else!