Met Amuro

In high school, aside from the stuff everyone read — Dr. Slump, Slam Dunk, that kind of thing — I wasn’t much into manga. While the art club kids were tracking down Newtype magazine from somewhere and going on about Gundam this and Evangelion that, I think I was off sketching church bulletin covers instead. Sure, I’d fallen for the look of it enough to build a few of the Academy-brand Gundam kits, but I didn’t know the story and didn’t even know it was Japanese.
Back in the practice room, when downloading absolutely anything off torrents or P2P channels like Napster felt completely normal, I happened to spot someone had zipped up the original First Gundam and posted it. I was bored, curious what on earth had everyone so worked up about it, so I clicked download and waited about a week. Despite ’70s-era animation and cheesy sound effects that should’ve undercut the whole thing, I found myself getting pulled in anyway. That was the day I met Amuro. No melodrama, no forced heroics — just this ordinary, solid kid named Amuro, and what was I supposed to do with him? He goes all-in the second something grabs him, sulks like an actual teenager, gets flustered over his first crush, flails around trying to earn people’s approval, and still keeps trying to see the world clearly through all of it. I wanted to belong to that world — the one that belonged to him alone.
While I was at the language academy in the Philippines, my teacher asked what my English name was. I said I didn’t have one, so she just used my real name — but it sounded off, every time. Same with Australian and American accents later: none of them can nail the “Dong” sound. Ten times out of ten it comes out as “Ddong~” or “Ddeong.”
So when I’d say “I’m Donghoon,” what came back was “Nice to meet you, Ddonghoon.” And 똥 means poop, so that’s not great. I spent a few days thinking it over — David? James? Philip? Alex? If I had to pick one of those, I might honestly be better off just going with “Ddongi.”
Around then I noticed every single Japanese student at the academy just used their real names. Maybe because Japanese doesn’t have closed syllables, but the foreign kids had no trouble pronouncing them at all. That’s when Amuro came to mind. Right — Amuro, that’s going to be my English name.
The next day I told my teacher, from now on I’m Amuro. And it went:
“Amarou?”
“No no no, Amuro.”
“Ah, Amaro.”
“No no no — A. Mu. Ro.”
“Ah, Amuro.”
Anyway, even this one turned out not to be that easy. Still, it beats Ddong, it beats James, and it’s Amuro — a name I actually like — so I was satisfied then and I’m still happy with it now.