my yearly excuse

Every year for the past, oh, 17 years, I have the same excuse as to why I can’t get much of anything done in the late August-September time frame. It’s all because I helped start an anime convention in Atlanta back in 1995, and AWA has been such a blast every year that I continue to be involved.



This year is no different, I’m handling several events and panels over the course of the weekend, and preparation for same has taken up the free time I’d normally use to write Let’s Anime columns.

What’s happening this year at AWA 2011? Thursday night at 7 we do this thing called the SUPER HAPPY FUN SELL, where anime fans dig through their closets and bring out their pre-loved manga, DVDs, old VHS and laserdiscs, toys, games, plushies, model kits, prints, cassette tapes, fans, kimono, record albums, and other less identifiable items to sell to you at bargain prices. I find neat stuff at this sale every year and I predict this one will not be any different. Bring money!



Then later on Thursday it’s Dave’s Old School Classroom. I wasn’t going to do it this year, mainly because at previous shows it’s always been this late night Saturday thing and I was tired of spending my Saturday night catching-up-with-friends time in a video room showing “Legend Of Marine Snow”. So this year it’s moved to Thursday at 10pm in the Kennesaw room and I’m going to take the audience through the anime work of Shotaro Ishinomori, including little-seen gems like Sabu & Ichi’s Detective Stories and 30,000 Miles Under The Sea. You’ll need your AWA badge for these events so show up early Thursday to get squared away!



Friday night is of course Japanese Anime Hell; I’ve been doing it at AWA since 1997, a two-hour compilation of entertaining and inexplicable found video that works within the themes of Japan or animation or both. Or neither. To be honest I never thought it would become as popular as it has, but I could say that about AWA in general, which will have more than 12,000 attendees this year.



There’s a whole bunch of stuff going on at the show on Saturday but all I’m responsible for (other than a certain gathering for fans of a certain show) is a panel at 7pm titled “Stone Age Mecha”, anime and manga robots of the pre-Mazinger Z era. Expect some Mitsuteru Yokoyama action in this one.

On Sunday at 1pm I’m on a panel with representatives from other Atlanta anime conventions, and we compare and contrast our various shows, talk about dealing with hotels and vendors, and generally swap trade secrets. I don’t live in Atlanta any more, so my eligibility as an AWA representative is dubious at best, but this gives me a chance to catch up on all the gossip. And that’s important.

At 3:30 there’s a talk entitled “My Life On The Super Robot D-List”, where experts like Richard Hoelsher and Drew Sutton and me discuss various robot anime shows that never quite caught on with the public. And there were a surprising number of these near-misses, some entertaining, some terrible. Then I have to run over next door at 4pm and do a panel on “Spooky Classic Anime”, all about Shigeru Mizuki’s Ge Ge Ge no Kitaro and Akuma-Kun, other shows like Yokai Ningen Bem, Obake Q-Taro and Kaibutsu-Kun, and even some Dororon Enma-Kun thrown in for good measure. And then before you know it the con is over for another year!



Of course AWA’s packed with attractions besides my humble involvement; guests include seiyu Naoko Matsui (Dream Hunter Rem, Katsumi Liqueur in Silent Mobius), artist Yoshitoshi “Serial Experiments Lain” Abe, voice actors Todd Haberkorn, Vic Mignogna, Amy “Nova” Howard-Wilson and Brina Palencia, industry figures like Carl Horn, Neil “Totally Lame Anime” Nadelman and David Williams, animation director Tim Eldred, artist Bob DeJesus, musical acts MOON STREAM and The Suzan, among others. There’s a formal ball, the famous AMV awards, a giant artists alley, classy costume contest, karaoke, maid cafes, video games, a manga library, a huge dealers hall, RPG games, three 24 hour anime video rooms showing damn near everything, a whole programming track dealing with cosplay, Midnight anime parody Madness, several loud dances, and this year a skit event, so you can shut up about your damn skits.

AWA 2011 happens September 29-October 2 at the Cobb Galleria Convention Center/Renaissance Waverly Hotel in what’s technically Atlanta GA! See you there!

spreading the japanimation gospel

In the days before "anime cons", we had to express our enthusiasms for Japanese cartoons in different venues. This meant hurling ourselves at the gates of the local comic book, Star Trek, Dr. Who, gaming, fantasy, and sci-fi conventions. But could the world of anime succeed in a head-to-head battle with Mr. Spock and/or Darth Vader? Yes it could and it did, and we have the con publications to prove it.



I know nothing about the Kansas convention advertised here, other than that it featured fanart of Grandizer and therefore caught my eye. But soon, the spectre of Japanimation found its way to my home town in the form of the Atlanta Fantasy Fair.



At the time Atlanta's largest fandom convention, the AFF started in 1975 and by the mid 1980s had realized these big-eye cartoons from Japan could very well be an attractive inducement to potential Fantasy Fairers.



Not to be outdone, other Atlanta SF cons also jumped onto the Japanimation bandwagon with both Starfleet-booted feet.



You'd think a convention called Dixie-Trek would be strictly Trekariffic, but they embraced the philosophy of "IDIC" and expanded their worldview to include Dr. Who, Blake's 7, comic artists, and eternal con guest Brad Strickland. And Japanese animation.



By 1988 the anime fan community in Atlanta was secure enough in its masculinity to break down the walls of tradition, smash the prejudicial, provincial attitudes of the bourgeouis, and run the darn anime rooms themselves. And when the convention wouldn't give us a room to show anime, we would just rent a guest room and bring a few VCRs and throw a TV Party.



By the early 1990s the march of technology was unstoppable and new video formats were making the old fashioned VHS tape a thing of the past.



I was on staff by this time and had chiselled my way into running the anime room, the schedule of which is an informative document showing exactly what people wanted to see in 1990. Or at least what *I* thought people wanted to see. And no, I am not responsible for the typos, as amusing as it might be to contemplate watching something called "Riding Beam".



By 1991 I was running both video rooms, as evidenced by the trend towards Godzilla films, Twin Peaks, SubGenius propaganda, and my very favorite Star Trek episode.



Here's a tip for time-travelling anime room programmers - as much as you like Future Boy Conan, nobody wants to watch 13 un-subtitled episodes of it in a row starting at 2:30am. Take my word for it.

By a strange coincidence the last year for the AFF was also the first year for AWA and our energies became focused on our own convention world, leaving the comic book and Star Trek conventions to wither away, deprived of the life-giving force of Japanese cartoons. Don't let your convention die - show some anime already! Preferably RIDING BEAM or ORNGE ROAD.

(thanks to Devlin Thompson for much of this archival material)

the golden age of scanlations

Once upon a time there were people who loved Japanese comics SO MUCH that they would, on their own recognizance, take the original Japanese comics and translate them into English! All by themselves! And then they’d distribute these translations to the world at large, unconcerned with things like “copyright” or “trademark” or “intellectual property”. Of course this whole business has generated a lot of press lately because of the amazing ability of the vast computer networks that surround us all to transmit and distribute information faster than human minds can even conceive. And to think the doomsayers and pessimists always assumed the assault on mankind would begin with killer robots and death rays!

This may astonish today's computer-enabled youth, but scanlations existed long before cheap terabyte drives and broadband connections. In fact these stone-age “scanlations” didn’t need computers at all!



This advertisement appeared in the BOOKS NIPPAN ANIMATION FAN CLUB NEWSLETTER (vol 4) from sometime in 1985. Is this the first attempt at wide distribution of a possibly unauthorized translation of Japanese manga? Could be. Translator and Gunbuster star Toren Smith was always ahead of the curve; he went on to build a career out of authorized, licensed Japanese comics through his Studio Proteus organization.


(alternate Art Frahm cover available upon request)

The prototype scanlation seen here appeared as a companion booklet to the official Shogakukan release of Urusei Yatsura volume 1. You’d simply hold the UY manga – purchased through Books Nippan, of course - in one hand and the translation booklet in the other, and through a complicated mental process not fully understood by our top scientists, the meaning of the Urusei Yatsura story will become clear to you.



One wonders just how popular this particular marketing plan was; Viz would begin publishing officially-licensed Urusei Yatsura in English in a few years. Shogakukan had already released several volumes of Urusei Yatsura in a dual-language format as an English-language teaching aid. Or as a Japanese-language teaching aid, these things swing both ways (these handsome sepia-tone tankubon were also produced for other series, including Sasuga No Sarutobi).



Rather than a strictly commercial product, these 80s UY scanlations were a more upscale form of the ‘translation packets’ being distributed by various fan organizations throughout the 80s. Anything that would fit onto photocopier glass was Xeroxed like crazy – song translations, possibly inaccurate episode guides, character sheets, articles from trade publications – if it was about anime it got distributed, copyright and original intent of the author be damned. It is with this blithe disregard for intellectual property that anime fandom first established itself upon our shores, a mark of Cain that all must bear in shame and/or glory. Of course, the way I figure it, anime fans spent 20 years producing and distributing pro bono advertising for Bandai, so it all evens out in the end.

(I can't wait to find out what that cutie Lum is saying!)

what I did on my vacation

Been a few weeks since anything new popped up on the old Let's Anime. Why is that? Huh? It's because the end of summer is traditionally a time for reflection and contemplation, a time for spiritual and philosophical renewal, and also a time to squeeze in a little vacation. Which is what we did.



So we went to Tokyo and took a lot of pictures and did some sightseeing and bought a lot of neat stuff, and that's part of why there hasn't been any new Let's Anime action here. Another reason is the upcoming Anime Weekend Atlanta, happening September 18-20 in the Cobb Galleria Center and Renaissance Waverly Hotel in what is technically the city of Atlanta!

As one of the founders and a continuing bad influence I naturally have many important duties at AWA, one of which is the late Saturday night event known as "Old School Classroom". This video-room event is basically a clip show featuring snippets of those crazy old Japanese cartoons that have all the kids excited. This year's theme is "1960s" so that means everything from Astro Boy to Tiger Mask to Cyborg Big X to Cyborg 009. That event is going to wrap up with an entire episode of "Honey Honey", even though the cartoon is technically not from the 1960s. But it's my panel and I can do whatever I want.



Another AWA event I'll be at is the Sunday afternoon extravaganza known as "Thirty Years of Star Blazers". That's right, it's been thirty years since Star Blazers first burst forth upon American television sets, and we've assembled an all-star cast of fans and pros to talk about this seminal experience, including original Nova voice actress Amy Howard Wilson, Starblazers.com webmaster and comic author Tim Eldred, and other notables.

Friday afternoon I will be holding forth on a topic near and dear to my heart, a panel about Western literature that has inspired Japanese cartoons. This doesn't just mean Nippon Animation World Masterpiece shows, either! Lots of crazy stuff you never knew existed or didn't really feel the need to know existed awaits your eyeballs.

And of course Friday night at ten PM you must not fail to attend JAPANESE ANIME HELL, the original crazy clip show highlighting the weird and wacky, the failures and the fantastics, the disturbing and the damned paraded across the screen for your entertainment.



So if you happen to be anywhere near Georgia in the next week, you owe it to yourself and to future generations to attend this year's Anime Weekend Atlanta! Once it's over I promise regular posting here at Let's Anime will resume with all possible speed. Isn't that right, Inflatable Prince Planet?

i am terribly sorry.

Still in crazy busy mode. Anime North went well and there was much classic anime discussioning, but I still have obligations to fulfill and miles to go before I sleep, or at least before I get a free couple of hours to write something on this blog. In the meantime you should go out and purchase this:



It's the latest issue of Otaku USA magazine, featuring a big article by yours truly all about Captain Harlock and Galaxy Express 999, with extra sidebar material by Tim "Star Blazers" Eldred! Additionally there's work by the always great Darius Washington, Mike Toole, Daryl "Destroy" Surat, and others much more talented than myself. So don't let my lazy behavior keep you from wallowing in 1970s Japanese cartoons, go buy magazine! Talk at you soon!!

the quiet time is not so quiet

Apologies for my lack of blog here for the past few weeks. I've been busy as heck on a few real-life projects that have taken my time and energy that otherwise would have been spent talking about thirty-year old Japanese cartoons, and for that I am deeply sorry. At any rate here's what's been going on instead:



This weekend is the Toronto Comics Arts Festival which I am a volunteer at. It's two days of indy cartoonist stars and legends of comic art meeting the public at the Toronto Public Library Main Branch - and it's free! So if you have a free couple of days it's well worth your time.

Two weekends later:



That's right, it's Anime North, Canada's number-one Japanese animation festival! I'm on staff at that show as well. Additionally, I will be on a "Classic Anime" panel Saturday at noon, and Sunday at 1pm I will be delivering an illustrated lecture on the influence of Western literature upon Japanese animation (meaning: Captain Future, among other things). And Saturday night... well, Saturday night is special.



That's right, Anime Hell returns to Canada for one night only of cerebral-cortex-crushing video madness. Followed by TOTALLY LAME ANIME: AFTER DARK!! Don't miss it.

And then I go to a wedding and then May is over and I spend June goofing off. Er, I mean, writing for Let's Anime!! Of course. See you then!

the yamatocon excuse

I realize Let's Anime posts have been thin on the ground since Christmastime, and I do apologize. Part of why this is, is because I wrote an article for the Star Blazers website about Yamatocon, the 1983 Star Blazers convention in Dallas Texas. This article is now up at Starblazers.com for you to read and enjoy!

I also wrote a short review for the upcoming OTAKU USA magazine, and that took a little time away from the dear Let's Anime. And of course every week over at Mister Kitty I provide commentary for items of questionable quality culled from our vast comic book collection. So it's not like I ain't been busy.

At any rate we should have something goofy for you here in a little while - so don't touch that dial!

anime clubs - our glorious unwashed heritage

Dateline - the middle of the 1980s! All over America groups of like-minded young people from all walks of life are gripped by one obsession - running anime clubs! We were utterly convinced, for some reason that now escapes us, that once a month a library meeting room or apartment complex community center or campus media area MUST BE filled with people watching big-eyed Japanese cartoons. Traded through the mail, bought from bootleggers, badly dubbed or fan-subtitled on the sly in some PBS station, but mostly in raw Japanese - it didn't matter. Brains overheating, we strained our intellects trying to figure out who was doing what to whom and why, but years would pass before decent translations revealed that most of the time our conjured-up plots were more satisfying than the original versions.



(flyer for C/FO Atlanta circa 1987)

However, events on the 20-inch TV screen were frequently overpowered by what was happening in the audience. You see kids, fandom as we know it today- a glossy wonderland filled with sexy cosplay gals, fueled by media empires shoveling material down as many gullets as possible, and linked together in an instantaneous high speed multimedia data "internets"- did not exist. Oh no sir. In the old days "fandom" was a leper colony of dweebs, misfits, rejects, and failures; people who had formed a deep and unhealthy relationship with fantasy and/or science fiction somewhere during their third or fourth beating courtesy that jerk in the 6th grade. Fans in the 80s were seeking shelter from the storm, looking for secret redoubts where they could commiserate with fellow rejects, dream of a better world, and argue about Kirk VS Picard.

Anime fandom was doubly cursed; being devoted to children's cartoons, it was looked down upon by Trekkies; and being devoted to JAPANESE children's cartoons, it was rejected by every red-blooded American fan who felt Walt Disney and Warner Brothers were the be-all and end-all of ink and paint. So the point of all this is, your typical anime club meeting was full of the rejects that the rejects had rejected. For some of us, being wise-ass teens who cared not a whit what a lot of beardo failures thought, being rejected by the Space Command Klingon Middle Earth Glee Club was a proud badge of honor. For others, anime fandom was just another monthly meeting of the Secret Chosen, and they sat through Be Forever Yamato just as they sat through "Amok Time" at the Trek club meetings or "Caves Of Androzani" at the Dr. Who club meeting. Hey, as long as those club dues got paid!



(Anime-X flyer circa 1991)

The problem was this. Anime clubs soon learned what SF clubs had known for years - that in addition to the fandom stuff, they also had to play combination Ward Supervisor / Mommy and Daddy for a parade of flattened-affect borderline mental cases for whom the rules of polite society were merely hypothetical. Legions of middle-aged creeps who did not bathe or launder their clothes, who did not have indoor voices, whose talents for inappropriate behavior were legendary, who could barely show up for their minimum-wage jobs and yet who never failed to miss an anime club meeting. As anime gained in popularity, the middle-aged examples began to be pushed out by their teenage and young-adult counterparts, who shared the same aversions to soap, water, and society's rules, but whose talismans weren't back issues of Starlog, but instead backpacks loaded with videogame systems.



(cartoon from C/FO Atlanta newsletter by J.B.)

I'd once thought that such people were unique to MY city's fandom, but I've since found that they exist everywhere. The following are true stories collected from anime club veterans from around the country. Names have been changed to protect the innocent, and the guilty.

("D.M.", former club officer) At (NAME OF CLUB REDACTED), we had the guy who broke the glass insert window in the door by leaning against it with his gigantic overstuffed Pikachu backpack. Because when you come to an anime club you have to bring your every worldly posession in your backpack, including your heavy 1990s era video game systems.

We had a video tape library. One guy came to a meeting, joined the club, signed in, learned he would not be first in line to borrow tapes, asked for his money back, and left.

There were folding tables in the hallway of the center where the meetings were held. Somebody stood on a table in the hallway. Broke it right in half. We had to pay for that one.

One of our members was driven to the meeting by his mom, who would bring him a home-cooked lunch...during the meeting. If the chairs in the room were not of sufficent quality for her baby boy, she'd go looking for better chairs. If she steals them from the staff lounge, so much the better!

The smell in the room, of course, was terrible. Some people simply do not bathe or wash their clothes on a regular basis. We'd see new potential members arrive, walk in the door and take in the legions of black-clad video gamers hunched in the back delivering death blows to each other, and of course the amazing smell. They would then turn right around and leave.

Eventually the meeting turned into 30 people in the back of the room watching 3 people play video games, 12 people hanging out in the hallway chatting, and 4 people actually watching anime. I severed my connection to the club when the librarian telephoned me AT WORK to complain about the club's behavior at the previous meeting - rather, their behavior AFTER THE MEETING WAS OVER and they didn't have anything better to do but hang out in the parking lot.

("D.S.", former club officer) Truth to tell, the (NAME OF CLUB REDACTED) anime club has been lucky over the years. The worst example of classic foul-smelling fandom we got was in the very first year, a fellow we dubbed "Akira Hat Guy," and after a couple months of being rebuffed every time he asked people to hook him up with bootleg Dragon Ball Z subs, he went away and never came back.



(editor's note from C/FO Atlanta newsletter circa 1987)

Most of the other whackos have been more funny than genuinely aggravating. For instance, P. used an image of Patty Hearst in the club's advertisement in the (NAME OF CONVENTION REDACTED) program book. This inspired one member to complain, saying that this sort of iconography stood in opposition to "everything America stands for."

A subsequent recruitment flyer featured Patty Hearst, Fidel Castro, and Huey P. Newton, tagged with the line "Everything America Stands For."

The kibitzers are a perennial problem, but for us they've never been TOO hard to deal with. This last semester, when the kids were hooting and making porno sound effects during Victorian Romance Emma, we just explained that no, that's not acceptable behavior in a group environment, and they seemed to get the message.

Except for one gal, who said that there was no point in watching cartoons in a communal setting if she COULDN'T keep up a running commentary -- if she wanted to watch something quietly, she'd just do that on her own. To which my reaction was, hey, why don't you go do just that.

("D.3.", former club officer and convention director) Examples: the Too-Old-To-Be-Hanging-Out-With-This-Many-Kids Guy, the "I have what you want, and I won't let you forget it" Guy, the "I am an emotional Black Hole and will suck your generosity dry" guy, the "I compensate for my social awkwardness by memorizing every detail of my favorite shows and reciting them whether it's germane to the current situation or not" guy, the "I compensate for my social awkwardness by professing a deep physical attraction to a fictional character, loudly and frequently" person...

("G.S.", former club officer and convention staffer) Don't forget about "wanna read my self-insertion fanfic guy."

("R.M.", anime retailer, former con staff and club officer) We call him "The Creepy Downloader" because he looks like he's been smoking 3 packs a day for all of his 40-50 years (no idea of his real age, but he mentions an grown-up daughter and an ex-wife)and he downloads everything. The only time he buys stuff is when it's on clearance at Best Buy and then he uses his employee discount. He's only bought 2 things from me in the almost 4 years I've been open (both Newtype USAs for the DVD), despite the amount of time he's spent in the store talking my ear off. He is known to provide either a running commentary or bragging about his collection during the meetings.

Previous offenders: A boy of immense size and girth that we refer to as "Gundam Boy". Originally "Star Trek Boy" for showing up with a TNG communicator pin, TOS insignia belt buckle and Klingon logo watch. Known for completely inappropriate comments, especially toward anything with a vagina. He's on the watch list of every convention in town and automatically has his badge punched by security at NDK so they only need one time to pitch him out. Another guy managed to drive some of the older club members out because he would smoke clove cigarettes outside and tended to blow it onto people's faces. Not good for some of those club members who got headaches just by being in the same neighborhood as a charcoal grill.

Then there was the Boopster, who also hit on anything female; before, during, and after his marriage. He started up clubs in every town he moved to for the sole purpose of getting freebies from the anime companies. He would then turn around and try and sell the freebies at meetings, telling one of my female friends "I love making money off these stupid fanboys", like it would impress her. He also demanded (and eventually got, just to shut him up) a free badge one year from (NAME OF CONVENTION REDACTED) because during the Dead Dog (party), someone joked that Boop should be the Con Bartender, which he took seriously. So he shows up at the staff room saying "I'm the Con Bartender. Where's my badge?"

("D.M.") One club meeting the TV and the VCR and the tapes were all stuck inside (NAME OF FAN REDACTED)'s car, which had been locked with the keys inside. So as we stood around waiting for the locksmith, (NAME OF FAN REDACTED) offered a temporary diversion. Since (NAME OF FAN REDACTED) was infamous for forcing his unsolicited adult-themed Inspector Gadget fan artwork on unsuspecting victims, we all were relieved when his suggestion turned out to be a dramatic reading of the first-ever fan fiction devoted to the then-new STAR TREK THE NEXT GENERATION series. However, our relief did not prevent us from leaving the room at an amazing speed.

("S.M.") Oy. I've never had a problem with (NAME OF FAN REDACTED) but I know all about the Captain Linger Brigade from my time behind artists alley tables-- you always know the people who won't buy anything, because they're the ones who stand there for half an hour telling you their fucking life story. Because that's why I sit behind that table full of books and merchandise; so I can hear some sad bastard's autobiography.

("H.S.B.", former con staff) Let's see, we had one guy who made his own anime shirts & hats using bottled paints, glitter, & iron-ons. He also would make crappy pasted together flyers for (NAME OF CON REDACTED) without asking anyone in charge of the con if he could. I think this was the guy we dubbed "Master of the Folding Cane."

("Z.C.")Here we've got a balding guy who looks to be about 40 or so. I don't know his name, but he has several distinguishing characteristics:

- May or may not still live with parents
- Suspicion of failure to bathe
- Appears to be slightly mentally challenged
- Dislikes heavy violence (to the point of shouting THAT'S VIOLENT!!! loudly whenever he sees anything over his "threshold")
- (and the punchline!) but collects a whole lot of really disturbing rape-o-rama hentai.
I honestly don't know whether I should feel sorry for him, or to stay far, far away from him.

(the following video is a compilation of camcorder video recorded at Denver-area anime club meetings over the course of several years. If you want to know what anime club meetings were like in the 1980s, this video has it all. Bad hair, two TVs in parallel, and that same exact blackboard that was in the back of every single room every anime club ever had a meeting in. It's all here, people. Provided courtesy of Gimme Anime, your home for anime merchandise!!





("G.S.") You've made me recall our club's last few breaths...our club president was in place for almost the entire run of the club, so in our eyes, even after he stepped away, those of us left still treated it with the respect that it was still his. When it came to the end when the fans were just too much and we hoped to find some like ourselves who would respect it and take over we came up empty. For months I wrote in the newsletter how we were looking for people to step up and start helping out and so on. I was always met with silence.

We talked to the old prez, and told him why we were going to retire the club, and he agreed. I then went to the one guy we could count on, who was running the college club on opposing weeks and was reliable to show up, and told him what was up. He agreed to do the last few meetings for us. We also asked that he not revive our club, at least not under that name, as we believed it belonged to the guy who started it, and wanted to retire the name with its legacy intact.

So our final newsletter was published a few meetings before the end, we even had all the programs timed out that all our series would end on the same night. We compiled those last few meetings onto a tape per meeting and passed them to the aforementioned reliable guy.

Let's just say my final editorial was less than chipper, and announced the end of the club and why. We were mobbed that night with people who were upset that we'd just end the club, and they all wanted to know what they needed to do to help out....to which we really didn't have much to say as well, this club is retired, where have you all been the last few months when we asked for new blood?

Why, they were sitting in the stands watching the shows they expected us to keep bringing them without any contribution.

And this scene was replayed across the country. The availability of anime in Blockbuster and Best Buy and Wal-Mart and damn near everywhere else, combined with the sense of community engendered by the keyboard-pounding march of Wired Nation, meant that the very concept of getting together once a month to watch Japanese cartoons became an anachronism at best. When forced to deal with the constant antics of the Loser Battalion, club organizers found themselves taking a good hard look at why they were wasting their weekends showing cartoons they didn't make to people they didn't like. Most anime club officers moved on to staff anime conventions, which compress a whole year's worth of anime watching, tape trading, foul odor huffing, and window breaking into three days. This saves time, if not sanity. And who knows? The tide may again turn and anime may again become a hidden pleasure available only to those 'in the know', and perhaps we'll be back to meeting in undisclosed locations to enjoy our favorite cartoons. However, if there is a next time, we'll be a bit more... selective in our membership.


(C/FO Atlanta newsletter fan art by M.M.)

My thanks to all who participated in this project. May this facilitate the healing you so deeply desire.

COSPLAY THAT TIME FORGOT

Cosplay... in the before time.

(warning: this column contains blurry, low-res images. Please do not adjust your eyes.)

Before "cosplay" was a household word, before cosplay.com and the culture of tribes of teens dressed as anime characters wandering from one hotel ballroom to another, like slightly-more-liable-to-have- bathed-recently Deadheads, had permeated every aspect of anime fandom, in the dark mists of prehistory, even then cosplay still existed. Only recently has documentary evidence come to light, enabling us to finally visualize these anime costumer pioneers.

The March 1987 issue of ANIMAGE gave the Japanese audience a glimpse of what their American counterparts were doing with fabric and foam core. Yes, Virginia-san, there are American anime fans! And they cosplay, too, as was seen in a photo spread helpfully titled "That's American Costume Play!" The Jigen and the Raideen are unidentified, but the modified Gatchaman outfit was created and modeled by Pat Munson-Siter , whose work in the field of pre-1990 anime fandom has rarely been matched.



This was not the first ANIMAGE to highlight the champions of foreign otaku (even though the word "otaku" was still in the infancy of its usage) but it would not be the last. Three years later Project A-kon came into being - the first American anime convention, depending on who you ask and what time of day you ask them - and ANIMAGE was there, in spirit if not in flesh, with yet another look at those crazy Americans and their fandom for cartoons in languages they can't understand.



As captured on film by Jack Thielpape, the Dirty Pair pose provocatively as the looming spectre of Captain Harlock ensures a complete absence of any funny business, pal. In the late 80s-early 1990s there were several sets of Dirty Pairs costuming throughout the fandom convention world - one or two in California, a few on the East Coast, and the pair pictured here, who hailed from Georgia and who were actually real-life sisters. Their dedication to the Lovely Angels led them to create several sets of costumes based on the differing suits seen in the TV series, the film, and the OVA releases - even the silver suits from the Takachiho novel (and the Crusher Joe film).

As A-Kon flourished the culture of costuming permeated fandom, and even in late-night after-parties the cosplay spirit can be seen.



The latest in Arcadia-crewmember off-duty loungewear is sported by "S.H." as he digs through a pile of cassette tapes. Yes, cassette tapes, the year is 1992 and Project A-Kon is reeling through the teething pains of its third, crucial year. Meanwhile a Vampire Princess Miyu wonders who these people are and why they're in her hotel room, preventing her from sleeping. As these images were culled from private videotape, identities of our models have been concealed to protect the innocent.

Three years later in Atlanta the first Anime Weekend Atlanta would sport anime costumers from a wide variety of genres and shows. Though we were a few years away from full-blown Sailor Moon Fandom Explosion, the show's effects were being felt even then, as sets of Sailor Scouts competed for the attention of the male anime fan demographic, which had yet to be joined by legions of squealing yaoi anime fangirls. Here we see the first ever Sailor Moon costumer to take the stage at the AWA costume contest, as well as a improvised kickline with a hastily recruited Sailor Mercury.





Cyborg 003 and 001, from the 60s and 70s series Cyborg 009, made an appearance as well, highlighting the lingering influence old-school anime had (and has) over certain of the surviving otaku of the area. 003 is portrayed by L.H. while 001 is portrayed by a stuffed doll. Neither possess cybernetic powers.



Here we see an example of the near-ubiquitous Ryoga. Ryoga was a character from Ranma 1/2 who got lost a lot, and sometimes turned into a pig. It was a great costume for regular-looking guys who wanted something colorful to dress up as, included a backpack so they could carry their stuff around, and had a ready-made comedy skit that could be rolled out at a moment's notice - run into any crowd of people and holler "I'M LOST!" Boy, that didn't get old AT ALL! Not in the slightest! It's as fresh today as it was back in 1995 when we were already thoroughly sick of Ranma 1/2 in general and that character in particular! Also seen - Princess Kahm from Outlanders, about to cut somebody's head off.

AWA would grow from a few hundred at its first show to over eleven thousand attendees at its most recent gathering, but at the early conventions you could easily fit the entire costume contest and its judges and audience in a medium sized ballroom in a small-to-medium sized airport-area off-ramp hotel. Even the judges got into the act.



Lorraine "Anime Hasshin" Savage here sports a Yamato crew uniform as she sits next to future Dark Horse Manga editor Carl Horn, cosplaying as future Dark Horse Manga editor Carl Horn. Costuming at the second AWA was of an order of magnitude more impressive than the first year - most notably the Tatarek-built Patlabor Ingram, which was constructed entirely out of space-age foam-core and was mobile enough to enable the wearer to navigate fairly well. The handgun, however, was non-operational. Other, more recent cosplayers, attempting to add functional handguns to their regalia, have attracted the bemused attention of the police department.

As we pass the mid 1990s, we move into a more documented world of cosplay - email mailing lists, digital cameras, and the world of the World Wide Web, which as we all know was created to facilitate the distribution of high quality images of sexy women - would all lead to anime cosplay becoming one of the dominant forces in anime fandom. Gatherings of anime fans today are a swirling mass of strangely garbed people taking photos of each other, the need of otaku to document their strange behavior an irresistable force of nature. But was it always thus? Yus, it wus. These recently unearthed images from 1983 are proof.



As we see from these video images - captured on a rooftop at Constellation, the Baltimore SF Worldcon, in 1983 A.D. - anime fandom was alive, relatively fit, and could stand sunlight for minutes at a time. Representatives of Gundam's Zabi family pose regally, Yamato crewmembers engage in an impromptu kickline with Leader Desslok (what is it with cosplaying fans and their attempts to imitate Rockettes?), and we see actual photographic evidence of Aviator Sunglasses Kei Yuki, as well as several different stages in Captain Harlock's development from skinny space pirate to chubby space couch potato. Upper left: Leader Desslok and Sasha share a moment.

Difficult it may be to concieve of a time when Matsumoto characters were the mainstream of anime fandom and not some kind of atavistic throwback, but pictures don't lie, even if they're low-res video captures. The influence of classic anime continues to linger in cosplay, as the recent AWA attracted Saint Seiya costumers, Yamato costumers, Harlock cosplay, and even 1984-era Macross crewmembers. Is anime costuming moving full circle, back to segregated rooftop gatherings of different Harlock iterations? I hope not. Though, after a long convention season, lord knows we could all use a little sunlight and fresh air.

(images used in this article courtesy Animage, R. Fenelon, and promotional AWA videos produced by M. Murray.)

AWA next weekend

It's been light on the posting here at Let's Anime, because I've been busy getting ready for the 14th annual Anime Weekend Atlanta, which happens next weekend in, yes, Atlanta. There will be a wide variety of classic anime programming at the show for you to enjoy, including an entire video room devoted to classic anime (it's the Tyndall Room, look it up in your program book when you get to the show).

Highlights?

Peter Fernandez and Corinne Orr (Speed Racer, Trixie, Marine Boy, Ultraman, Thunderbirds 2086, etc) will be guests and doing panels and autographs, etc., throughout the weekend.



I'll be doing the Old School Classroom thing at 11pm on Saturday night in the Classic Anime room (Tyndall), which is a thing where I screen old clips and discuss their relative importance or lack thereof. This year I'm doing my Super Robots panel, which features clips from every super robot anime series from the 1970s (minus two).



Patrick (Otaku USA) and I will be doing a presentation on the 1978 film "Message From Space" on Saturday at 1pm.

I don't know if it counts as "classic" yet, but Walter Amos will be doing a panel on Legend Of Galactic Heroes at 11am on Saturday.



Ed Hill's Magical Girls panel at noon on Sunday focuses on the Studio Pierrot shows like Creamy Mami, Pelsia, and Magical Emi.



At 1pm on Sunday there's a panel about Rose of Versailles.



At 3 on Sunday Neil Nadelman and I are doing a two-hour thing called "Anime Time Machine" where we take a look at anime from 5, 10, 15, 20, and 25 years ago.

If you're an old-time anime veteran, you're welcome to drop by the "Veterans of Anime Fandom" panel on Friday at 5 and share your stories and reminisces with the crowd.

Thursday night AWA's trying something new; the SUPERHAPPYFUNSELL is a garage-sale style sale where individuals sell used and previously-loved anime DVDs, tapes, books, manga, cosplay items, you name it. So if you're at the show early, stop by and check it out.

See you at AWA!

animanga A.P.A.

In the latter half of the Reagan Era, fan artists and writers couldn't communicate via the Information Superhighway or "texting" each other on our "cell phones" - we had to use Stone Age tools like Xerox machines and staplers and the US Post Office. What the hell am I talking about now? Why, Amateur Press Associations, or A.P.A. for short.



(Queen Millenia art by Paul Sudlow)

The APA has been around in one form or another for a long time - our Founding Fathers used "Committees Of Correspondence" to disseminate information in the heady days of the American Revolution, and your saintly, silver-haired grandma probably sent "round-robin" letters to friends and relatives around the country swapping news and recipies and gossip about What Really Happened To Uncle Bob. The fan APA isn't too different - it's basically a self-published magazine where each member produces his own submission. Everybody sends their pages - enough copies for every member of the APA - to a central collator (or "Offical Editor"), who puts it all together and mails the collated magazine out to all the members. It is, or was, a complicated yet old-fashioned way for creative types to share their work with others, get feedback on their current projects, network with other like-minded individuals, and sometimes engage in hateful, vitriolic arguments over the most useless topics imaginable.



(cover to #1 with art by Paul Sudlow)

For Japanese anime fans in the 80s who wanted to write and draw about their favorite characters, the APA was the way to go. In 1986 a Tennessee undergrad named Paul Sudlow started one with the working title "Anime And Manga APA". This was later changed to the vastly superior "Animanga", a fairly obvious combination of the two words that has since gone on to be used by a wide variety of publications and organizations. But in the beginning it was simply an APA made up of guys (and a few gals) who liked to talk about their favorite Japanese animation.



(cover to #3 with great Rich Arnold art)

ANIMANGA would last for fourteen years, through four different collators ("Offical Editors") and 54 bi-monthly or later quarterly issues of self-published comics, fan art, fan fiction, fan speculation, arguments, political rants, travelogues, sketches, works in progress, video swaps, appropriated works, copyright violations, you name it. Members hailed from the States, Canada, Japan, and points between, and ranged in age from 17 year old punks to 40ish fan veterans, most of whom were way better artists than I was. Some members would go on to direct animated films or successful careers in comics or animation, other members would get married to each other, others would start anime conventions or magazines or drop off the face of the Earth and never be heard from again.



(Animecon 91 report illustrated by David Rains)

There were other anime-themed APAs - U.S.A. Yatsura, Hasshin APA, Sasha APA, Endless Road APA, Starsha APA, Bird Scramble (the Gatchaman APA), even APAs devoted to 'esper' themed anime like JUSTY and LOCKE. But I was in ANIMANGA from beginning to end so that's what I'm writing about.



(swell hand-colored cover by Steve Krueger)

APA contributions (or "tribs") varied widely, but a few basics were always there - you'd have a cover or a logo with some kind of cutesy title for your own personal "trib", with contact info so your pals in the APA could call or write when the mood struck them. Imagine doing that on the internet these days! Usually you'd include a segment commenting on the tribs of other members from the previous issue. If you had read their trib and enjoyed it, but didn't have anything in particular to say, you'd just write 'RAEBNC' as shorthand for "read and enjoyed but no comment." The artists among us would try to work up something interesting or unique for the issue - most of the comic artists would either run continuing stories in the APA itself, or use the APA to showcase roughs and ideas for works that were being published elsewhere.



(Andy Temple's Urusei Yatsura fan comics. I loved those things.)

The more accomplished among us would create "how-to" tutorials on lettering, inking, reproduction, and other basics of the comics world. Several fan fiction writers spent their ANIMANGA time serializing their multi-part crossover fanfic epics, and the 'big tent' nature of the fandom of the time meant that your average ANIMANGA would feature anthropomorphic furry adventures, American superhero parody comics, Dr. Who jokes, and Babylon 5 fan art alongside your Dr. Slump drawings and your version of Project A-Ko or your Dirty Pair/Urusei Yatsura crossover fan comic. And if you didn't have anything to say, but couldn't bear to let an issue go by without participating, you'd do the absolute minimum and MINAC ("minimum activity") with just one page saying "sorry, more next time".



(Paul Young draws my "Jet Jaguar" character)


In my mind APAs are part and parcel of the pre-internet days when things were a bit simpler. We didn't have high speed internet, satellite TV, or an anime convention every weekend to constantly demand our attention. The pace of fandom moved slower - many a lazy summer afternoon or rainy day would be spent re-reading APAs or working on your next trib. Fan feuds took months and months to play out in the comments section of APAs, as opposed to the 24 hour blitzkrieg half-life of today's fan fisticuffs.



(JUNKSPACE - original John Ott comics)

And there was always a little tension in the APA - the more traditional American style cartoonists felt threatened by this big-eyed Japanese stuff that was all speed lines and zipatone. The manga style artists felt they were on the cutting edge of what comics SHOULD be. And everybody hated the furries. Members would use ANIMANGA to hash out political philosophies, take jabs at disagreeable aspects of modern culture, or spread malicious fan gossip. Looking back at the APA, it's amazing how seriously we all took this little self-published magazine - pulling all-nighters, spending hundreds of dollars on printing and mailing, all for something that was only going out to 20 or 30 people, tops. I guess that's the nature of fandom - 'fan' is, after all, short for 'fanatic'. In those days there wasn't any time for fence-sitting wishy-washy maybes, it was all or nothing.



(Tim Eldred showcasing some commercial Harlock work)

These days the urge of artists and writers to share their work with the world has been satisfied by dozens of websites devoted to fan art, fan fiction, webcomics and other creative endeavours of all stripes. The societal urge is filled with Livejournals and Myspaces and Facebooks. You can shoot your own movies and share them with the world via YouTube, have your press release blog picked up by Digg or Reddit, and potentially reach millions of people with less trouble than it took us to knock out one APA trib that would be seen by twenty or thirty people, max.



(cut and paste collage cover by me)

This was all just starting to percolate into existence when ANIMANGA took its last bow with issue #54 in 2001; at the time I didn't know what would replace the APA, I just knew that the membership was dwindling and it was getting tougher and tougher to cajole members into actually getting their tribs in on time. Plus, we were all getting older and had jobs. Those of us with creative jobs were finding it harder and harder to spend our leisure time doing what we did all day to pay the rent. Anyway, what ANIMANGA accomplished then is now done in a fraction of the time with a fraction of effort, and the added benefit of not killing any trees.



(Twin Peaks travelogue vacation notes by S. M.)

At the same time, I miss the homely circle-of-friends world of the APA. Even if you'd never met any of the members in person, being part of an APA put one in a select group of people whose membership was predicated upon actual participation. We were all struggling to meet deadlines, all working to make the APA bigger and better, and being part of a group like that was kind of inspirational. I think most creative types are more likely to work harder knowing there's an audience reading their work, even if it is a small one, and even if the only response is the eternal RAEBNC.

(all artwork used in this article is copyright the original artists)