Hello and welcome!
Please make yourself at home and talk about your favorite old anime and manga. If you know what rec.arts.anime was, you’ll feel right at home.
If you’re up for it, reply here with a brief introduction including early anime memories and where you are today.
Here’s my intro.
The first anime I remember seeing on TV was Star Blazers in the late 70s, but the first one I would fight to watch (because it was up against Days of our Lives, which my sister was addicted to) was Robotech.
I knew it was Japanese in origin but I didn’t realize the extent to which it was bowdlerized at the time (to be fair, I was 9 or so).
My first subtitled anime experience was a friend in high school giving me copies of Macross DYRL and Castle of Cagliostro on VHS and it was, frankly, mindblowing.
My first commercial anime purchase as tape 1 of Bubblegum Crisis for like $40 for 45 minutes. Since $40 was 10 hours of pay at the time, I never bought the rest of the show until DVD sets.
My first Con was anime expo 93 in Oakland (I think, I did go to a con in San Jose but I can’t remember if it was AX92, Anime America 93 or 94).
I worked as a film projectionist at AX for a couple of years (we got to do the world premiere of Memories, that was fun) and then I worked security for another 2 years after AX moved and didn’t have a film theater anymore.
About 15 years ago my personal and professional collided and I was hired by one of the original anime/manga distributors in the US and am currently their director of IT.
It’s been a long, strange, trip watching anime go from the thing you got teased for to having star athletes do poses from their favorite shonen on the field.
It may be a little “get off my lawn”-y but I still love the older stuff compared to most of the new. Give me hand painted cells over painted backgrounds, shot on film, over 3dcg any day of the week.
hear hear! I echo the appreciation for anything hand drawn and with Sels. One of my favorite anime, Legends of the Galactic Heroes - is beautifully rendered. (same with Rose of Versailles and many others of that era, Vampire Hunter D too!). I’ve been trying to find a production cell from them for ages, either that or Serial Experiments Lain.
Super cool that you could get a job in an industry you love and can appreciate.
Also, is it intentionally spelled aniime, or was that a typo in the forums name? Just curious
Funny coincidence – my wife has just gotten me to start following Legend of the Galactic Heroes. I’m reading the light novels (not much time for speed-running 45 hours of anime), and I also picked up the Vampire Hunter D novels.
She’s said that there are a few active Discord communities for Legend of the Galactic Heroes. Are you aware of anything on the Fediverse?
Oh man, I saw Macross: Do You Remember Love in a Daiei store in Hawaii, like in 1985? It was playing in some store display for electronics. I probably stood there watching the entire thing. I wrote the store the next day asking “WHERE DID YOU GET THIS?”, and they forwarded it to the guy who owned it. He was super nice and wrote back. He was from Japan and did business with the store, back and forth between Hawaii and Japan, and had picked it up in Tokyo. Anyway, that really galvanized the whole anime thing for me.
But watched a lot of Tranzor Z (Manzinger Z), StarBlazers, and the two (wildly) different Voltron series beforehand. And of course, Robotech.
