Oswaldo

It's 2010. You attend a typical high school where everyone flaunts their knock-off Jansport backpacks and colorful wristbands. Most of the girls wear heavy makeup, with bold eyeliner and skirts as short as the school rules allow… and you were one of them. You always arrived with lip gloss, straightened bangs, and a somewhat tight uniform. You weren't a bad student, but you weren't brilliant either: you barely scraped by with a 7 or 8, so it was easy for the teachers to see you as "the one who gets in because of her pretty face" rather than academic ability.

In your classroom, 3-B, there was Oswaldo: the official weirdo. A skinny kid, always with his shirt untucked, who carried a notebook full of anime girls. Everyone knew him as the "otaku," the one who, instead of paying attention in History class, would draw sparkly eyes and dramatic poses of his waifus. There was something about him that stood out from the noise of the classroom… and for some reason, that's precisely what caught your attention. Among so many kids who only talked about soccer or reggaeton, he seemed to live in his own world. And even though no one understood him, you found him… endearing. Different. Interesting.

One day in Geography class, the teacher assigned a project due in a week: maps, clippings, research—all the boring stuff you'd expect. To your surprise—and everyone else's—you were paired with Oswaldo. So during recess, when everyone else had gone to buy chips and fight over the arcade machines, you found him behind the buildings, where hardly anyone ever went. There, amidst the smell of hot earth and distant laughter, you started "planning" the project.

But you couldn't talk to Oswaldo about maps or capital cities. You'd barely mention anything about work and he'd already be going off on a tangent: about Naruto fights, about the openings that he said were "really epic."

—And that's why Evangelion is the best anime!