Now that the Otaku Diaries main events are over, the Reverse Thieves have seen it fit to hit us with all sorts of tidbits, from the number of people who were officers in anime clubs (13) to the number of man-crushes on Daryl Surat (greater than 0) to the number of people who own hugpillows.

Some of the trivia also sounds like it came straight out of anime. And assuming that everyone told the truth as they were expected to, that’s amazing. For example, the person who broke up with his girlfriend after canceling a date to watch Yu Yu Hakusho reminds me of a manga, Fujoshi no Honkai, where a closet fujoshi breaks up with her boyfriend by telling him that she’s “spending time with another man,” when in reality she bought a cake to celebrate the birthday of her favorite character. And when you realize that something like a manga based on the daily lives of otaku is trying to mirror the reality of the fandom, it’s almost like the beast feeding itself.

But really, looking at this trivia hodgepodge, I think it hits me harder than any of the previous Otaku Diaries posts just how similar/dissimilar we all are as fans of anime and manga. We are all united under the banner of Japanese comics and cartoons, but that sturdy felt cloth hanging high above us belies the sheer variety of places we come from. Gone are the days that anime fans all came from a single nerdy source of science fiction fandom or from watching the Pokemon on the TV. And though I use the term “anime fan” to encompass both those who watch anime and those who read manga, there are even people who almost exclusively focus on one or the other. All of it is surprising and yet none of it is.