Have you ever had to stop and think, what is it that I'm doing? Why am I doing this? Where is this gonna take me? Where is this all gonna go? How am I gonna end up? And sometimes the answers to those questions aren't the clearest. Sometimes we may never get an answer for it, but we still have to learn to move forward and keep going no matter what. And on today's episode, it's gonna be a little different.
And I don't have an anime or anything to go over today, but I really wanted to cover and convey how I got started with this podcast and what it means for me to basically keep it up. ["Taku Liberation"] Hey, what's going on, guys? My name is Nate, and you're listening to the Otaku Liberation, a show where we help you break free from the chains that are holding you back in your life by connecting some biblical principles with themes from your favorite anime.
All right, and without further ado, let's get into it. So like I said, this week is a little different because not a particular anime per se, like I normally break down my episodes, but this is more or less how the Otaku Liberation came to be and how it was birthed more or less. And it started, so it started actually earlier this year, this is in 2023 when I'm recording this.
So in January, my church, we go through a 21-day fast every year, the beginning of every year, it kind of helped get us right for the upcoming year and essentially just start off right. And this year, it was the most intense fast I've ever been on ever. Like, I mean, it was pretty brutal. And what I did was I basically it was all liquid fast. So no solid food for 21 whole days and only juice, water, protein shakes, and lots of soup, lots and lots of soup. I was sick of soup at the end of this.
But of course, while you're doing that, also you're praying, it's praying and fasting, right? So you're praying constantly in the Word, constantly in God's presence and just really trying to connect with Him. And during this time, I felt like it was the closest that I've ever been to God and because I've ever been in my faith. And like I said before, it was the most intense fast I've ever been on. So it's no coincidence that those two things correlate, right?
But it was one particular moment during this fast that really shined a light on this whole thing and kind of gave me the idea to essentially create this podcast. And during the fast, that's when Blue Lock, Blue Lock's first season was airing weekly. And I remember there was one particular episode where Isagi was trying to get Baro to basically work together like an actual teammate and not just be Baro. And Baro wasn't having it.
And no matter what happened, no matter how much Isagi tried to coerce him, and Nagi tried to help, Baro just wouldn't listen and the team was suffering for it. And actually they ended up getting scored on because Baro was being stubborn and he got the ball taken from him and then the other guy scored. And it was in that moment Isagi was sitting there. He was like, you know what? Forget it. He's like, I need to adapt to him.
I need to basically recreate myself and use Baro in a way that essentially helps me. And the reason that that particular incident spoke to me really is Isagi as a whole, but it was in that moment because there's a concept of recreating yourself.
You know, when what you've been going through, what you know as a status quo essentially, when it doesn't work out the way you want it to, instead of slamming your head against the wall, keep trying the same thing over and over and over again, you can just take a step back and try to change a few things or do what he did and just recreate yourself essentially and into a different version.
And the reason why that spoke to me so much during the fast and stuff like that was because up until that point, I've been pretty much doing life my own way, the way I thought was right, the way I thought I should be doing this, I should be doing that. You know, I need to do this because everyone else is type of thing.
And it was in that moment, it's kind of, I felt like God was speaking to me and just like, no, I need you to basically break down your old way, which is never gonna work and embrace mine. And I mean, that spoke volumes to me and then, and just here sitting here recording, recording talking to you guys about it, it speaks volumes now.
And that, you know, when we try to do things our own way, right, in any aspect of life, when we try to go against, you know, the plan, the purpose that God has for our life, we'll find out sometime sooner than later, but eventually we all find out that that it's just not gonna work, it's just not gonna work the way you expected it to. And that's in any avenue of life, it can be in relationships, business, fitness, anything that you name it.
If we try to do it ourselves and go our own way without God, without following his example and his leadership, then it's just gonna fall flat and blow up in our faces. And honestly, now it may not just be as dramatic as we think it may be. And other times it very well may be that, it may just literally blow up in your face and you're sitting there like, man, what do I do?
But anyway, so it was in that moment when I realized, and you know, I said, you know what, Lord, just take out everything that is me, now who I was and really just pour into me. And in taking that, right? And just taking that mindset, taking that approach, it shifted a lot of things for me in my perspective and took a lot of weight off my shoulders because it's like, you know what?
No matter what I do, no matter what it is that I'm trying to do, I'm just gonna give it to God and let him lead me with it, right? I'm not gonna try to force anything anymore. I'm not going to, you know, just hustle, hustle, hustle, grind, grind, grind, grind, grind, and for something that it's not gonna work out. Cause now I'm not saying to not hustle and grind cause we need to, we all had to put it forth our own effort in this. But the thing is God wants a partner, not a puppet, right?
So he wants to do this with us, right? He wants us to do it with him and not go off on our own and not go ahead of him, but to go and step with him. And that was something that I didn't really understand for the longest time. And I'm still understanding more of it each and every day, right? Cause there's certain aspects that I understand more of and I do better with and then not.
And that's just a part of life and growing up, you know, as we get older, we get more mature, wiser, things like that. So there's a lot of growth and honestly, that's actually a good thing. It shows that you're one, you're alive, right? And you just get to learn new things, right? New things about yourself. And honestly, that's a beautiful thing, at least to me, right? You may have a different opinion about it. You may have a different experience with it.
I just know for myself, you know, I've learned more about myself the last two, maybe three years than I have my entire life, right? And again, I'm only 25. So I haven't been on earth long at all. But again, the last two to three years, I've learned more about myself and my, and, you know, and of course with my faith and things like that, and just learn to accept myself, which was the biggest thing. Accepting all of me, right?
You know, the anime lover, the video game lover, the hard worker at work, the loving son, loving brother at home, and, you know, and the man of God above all, and really trying to figure out how to incorporate all of those things into one, right? Because again, I don't want to speak for myself, but I know a lot of people probably relate to this, is that you kind of go through life with a bunch of different masks, different hats, you know, different titles that we have.
And eventually we get so good at the compartmentalizing, there we go, you know, each aspect of our life for a different occasion. Like I said, you got the, okay, I'm the employee from nine to five, you know, come home. And now I'm the husband from, you know, 5.30 to midnight, something like that, whatever. Or I'm the dad during that time from like seven to nine. You know, you have these different roles that you're trying to fulfill. And overall, and then you just feel drained, right?
You feel drained because you're not fully embracing who you are. You're embracing parts of it, like I do believe all of those things are part of who you are as a person.
But when you have to switch it up every time, you just put on this mask or this hat, you know, for this person or at this particular time, at this event, then all that constant switching, and then sometimes you have more than one person around who you act different with, you know, then you got to switch back and forth during that time too. And all that just wears on you. It wears on you mentally, spiritually, physically, like it just drags you down, drags you through the mud.
And honestly, what we really need to do is to kind of, again, all the work starts inward, right?
All the self-work starts inward and just really say, okay, one, acknowledge the different aspects of your life, the different aspects of your personality, of you, and find and really sit down with yourself and ask how can I incorporate all of these things into one, just to be the same person, no matter what scenario you're in, no matter where you're at, no matter who you are with, and especially when you're alone, right?
Because honestly, our true sales is happening when we're alone by ourselves, we're on devices. And, you know, whether that's a good or a bad thing, I leave it up to you, there's no judgment whatsoever. But it really is a reality check that's gonna honestly hit you in the mouth because that's what it did for me.
And I think once we at least have an idea, now you know how to have it all figured out right this moment, but once you have an idea of who that all encompassing person is for you, the who you are as a whole, then I believe you, is when you can start moving forward, when you can start moving past, you know, moving past your past and be able to, essentially just move with a purpose, right? And not just kind of mold through life and just kind of, you know, going through the emotions.
But now you can actually have a purpose, you can have a direction to go. And it just gets easier because, okay, I know who I am. So because I am who I am, I know there are certain things that I won't do and there are certain things that I will do, right? And once you have that guideline, that structure, then you're sitting pretty at that point because you are sitting ahead of, I argue to say maybe 80 to 90% of everybody else in the world, right?
Because whether they're too young to understand this or whether they're too set in their ways because they're older and they don't wanna change, they don't wanna take the time to do the work and to really explore who they are. Or and then maybe someone, they do know, they just don't know how to go about it, right? And it's all these different things. We were all in different areas, different walks of life. And one solution is not gonna work for everybody.
But I do know once you figure that out, once you come to terms with all the aspects of your life, the good, the bad and the ugly, and realize all of that is me, all of that is me, all of that is who I am. And one, that's awesome because then you have the power to change it, right? Any negative, bad aspects of yourself that you deem as negative, right? Not necessarily what everybody else thinks about you, but what you think or think is that you wanna change, then you can change them, right?
Because now that you're aware of them, you can address them and you can take the step necessary to change them. And then on the flip side, you got areas of your personality of who you are that you really love and like, and you think everybody's you love and like, right? So now you can strengthen those areas. You can take steps to really, you know, step outside your comfort zone and really just get out there, put yourself out there, right?
And it kind of tied back to the reason why I started this podcast, right? Is because, you know, hey, I love anime. I mean, I seriously love anime. Honestly, 99% of the stuff I watch is anime. And, you know, is it obsessive? Yes, that's why I call this the otaku liberation. You know, otaku is you pretty much obsess over some type of thing, whether it's your hobby or something like that and an animes it for me. I mean, I honestly don't see a problem with it. I'm not hurting anybody.
Yeah, just good entertainment, something I enjoy and something I can talk about all day, right? And then I chose to combine that with my faith and Christianity with God, because I know on one hand, anime has a lot of bad reputation or I know it did in the past, before it became really mainstream for, you know, a lot of animes have different demons and zombies and all type of creatures and stuff like that on it. Cause, you know, that's just the story. That's my sales, right?
And for me, you got to come into it with really a mindset of, okay, this is entertainment. I'm not taking it too seriously. I'm not, you know, reading too much into it cause it is a story and I'm just, I'm here for the story. I'm here to be entertained, right? And now I know it's different coming from an older mindset, right? When you got kids and younger people who are impressionable, I do understand, you know, the concerns of, you know, parents of guardians of what their minors watch.
And honestly, I wanted to bring some good, decent, you know, biblical principles to this, to a genre, to a thing that I just love so much because it's beyond just what you see on the surface, right? Just like with honestly everything in life, with people, you know, stories, you name it. There's always something going on beneath the surface. Some good, some bad. And I want this podcast to highlight the good aspects of it.
You know, the good aspect of just good storytelling, good character development and have things that we can apply, you know, to our own lives, right? And then from using biblical principles as well, cause we can get all the stuff laid out for us in the Bible and to see these principles laid out in the Bible that are written way before any of our time, seeing played out in today, in today's world, today's era with, you know, Japanese cartoons. I'm like, you know, this is easy.
This is easy cause what I come to find out, this is something I was already doing for myself anyway, just looking at different characters, kind of analyze and dissecting them and how they, you know, how they think, why they do the things that they do, why they don't do some of the things that they don't do. And just kind of thing like that.
And when I started my own self or personal growth journey, I should say, and really started working, really doing my own self work and just looking at how it relates to some of the characters that they were going through, especially for like longer, longer running series and whatnot. Cause you actually get to spend time with those characters. You get to see them grow and become more than what they were.
Right. You see where they started to how they ended up, you know, again, my most famous examples is Goku from Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z. You know, if you watch the OG Dragon Ball anime, you know, that's when Goku was a child. And now here we are in Dragon Ball Super. He's a grown man with kids and a grandchild, right. And he's, when he was a child, he wasn't, he was stronger than most things cause he was an alien, but he still pales in comparison to where he's at now.
And just that simple example kind of highlights the whole, the whole thing, right? We were all going through a journey. We're all going through this thing we call life, right? You know, we don't know how it's going to end. We just know that it will end. And I just want to encourage everybody to make the most of the time that we have here and not spend so much time being paralyzed by our own mind. Cause that honestly, that's pretty much it. That's pretty much it.
That's the biggest thing that is holding us back from doing so much more doing what we were meant to do, doing what, honestly, what we're capable of is because we're too afraid to take that next step, too afraid to trust in the process, right? To trust in, to trust in God, right? Trust in God and the saint. Cause he says, he orders our steps, right? He knows what the end is before he even writes the beginning. And we just have to trust in him.
Okay, we're going to get to this end because, you know, he, the one who created everything deemed it so, right? And, and, and yeah, I know this, this type of thing is, isn't for everybody. And that's perfectly fine. I didn't make this for everybody. Cause if I made it for everybody, then it would be for nobody, right? No one will see it, no one will hear it.
But for those who, who, you know, I like me who I know would truly resonate with, you know, us anime lovers out there who also, you know, who love God more so, but we really love our anime, love our, you know, our manga, our video games, things like that, where, you know, for the longest time, they've been deemed as negative, violent, as, you know, demonic, different things like that. We see a different side of it because we're in it.
And this is just a way to kind of correlate the two for those who aren't, who either A, aren't into the anime space or B, aren't, you know, aren't Christians, but you can, you see more than just, you know, you know, say people yelling at you saying, you're all going to go to hell and things like that. It's like, no, that's not what that side's all about. And as for anime, it's not all about, you know, demons trying to take souls from people and bring innocent people into world destruction.
It's not all about that, right? There is middle ground and there are extremes. And I'm sure we've, we've all experienced the extremes and we tend to judge the rest of it based off of those extremes. So, yeah, I just want this podcast to be the bridge, be the bridge between the two, the two things that I love the most in the world, honestly, two of the things I love most in the world, honestly. So love my family, things like that. So don't take that any type of way.
But, you know, just two things I'm extremely passionate about and I just wanted to share with the world, share with people who get it, right? Who get it, who honestly are afraid to express themselves in such a pure way, in such a way that, you know, they're worried about being accepted and things like that. Now, are there some people who are gonna hate it? Absolutely, because there's a lot of people in the world out there who just wanna hate, in all honesty, just wanna hate.
But that's perfectly fine, right? Because, hey, if they're hating on it, that means they listen to it. And they listen to it enough and I do truly believe that guy's gonna work in their heart and, you know, get them on the right path. So anyway, that's it. I hope you guys didn't mind me rambling a little bit on today's episode. So it's a little different, but I promise the next episode, we're gonna get right back on track.
And I believe next up is, yeah, next up is, actually, World Trigger, a very underrated anime, in my opinion. It actually is in my top five favorite series of all time. I love it that much. And again, it's really diving deep into the concept of, you know, camaraderie and, you know, the power of friendship that a lot of shows or media has a trope of. But the way they do it is very unique, at least in my opinion.
And whereas it's not just the power of friendship conquers over evil, but it's how it's applied and how each person within the group contributes to that. So that's just a little teaser for next episode. I'm not gonna go too much into it. But anyway, I just want to thank you guys for tuning into today's episode. And I pray that you got what you needed out of it. And hopefully you learned something new about yourself. Feel free to subscribe to the podcast and leave a review.
I would love, love, love to read you guys' review. And it really helps me improve each and every episode. And always remember, you are the main character of your story and that story doesn't end until he says so. All right, be blessed. And I'll see you guys next time.