Would You Marry Your Childhood Friend?

One type of character that’s quite common in anime is osana-najimi or childhood friend, who grew up alongside the main character and knows everything about him. But an osana-najimi isn’t exactly a friend, it’s both more and less. “It’s like they’ve always been there, and you never think about them. Since you were together from the beginning, you can’t remember a time when that person wasn’t around.” In anime, characters like Mayuri in Steins;Gate, Kanna from AnoNatsu, Eriri from Saekano and Houki from Infinite Stratos all have this special relationship with the main character, which is both an advantage (they have information other competing girls don’t have), but also a problem (since they’re so familiar it’s hard for the main character to view them romantically). Childhood friends are a fixture in eroge too, including a favorite of ours, My Childhood Friend is the President.

It’s funny how perceptions work differently in different languages. Once I went with my wife through the drive-thru at McDonald’s, and there was a sign saying “clearance” which indicated the maximum vehicle height allowed, but she was confused and asked me if McDonald’s was allowed to sell their old food in a “clearance” sale like that. We have a house in the Tierrasanta area of San Diego, and when my daughter was small she thought it meant Santa Claus wearing a tiara. More recently, I was showing my Japanese employees around San Diego’s local Asian district, an area of great Korean, Japanese and other restaurants and shops, which is centered around Convoy Avenue. “When I see this street, I think of Convoy from Transformers,” my employee said, as Convoy is the Japanese name of Optimus Prime. (And yes, it’s a reference to the 1978 truck film Convoy, which was a big hit in Japan.)

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