Bonus – Live at JACON 2008 with Paul Chapman and Joey Snackpants

Since it’s been a few weeks since the last release and we only just finished recording Show # 70, here’s a live podcast we recorded at JACON 2008 for the dearly departed Snacktime Online podcast to tide people over in the meantime. For this bonus installment of AWO, the role of Gerald will be played by Paul Chapman from the Greatest Movie EVER! podcast and the role of Clarissa will be played by Joey Snackpants, whom we interviewed back in Show # 18.

34 Replies to “Bonus – Live at JACON 2008 with Paul Chapman and Joey Snackpants”

  1. Another amazing podcast…you know, sometimes I think the ‘event’ recordings are more energetic, more ‘live’ if you will than the structured ‘casts. Not that the usual stuff sucks, but there’s more fun, or something.

    Funny thing, but somehow I don’t think that basic opening question ever got answered, i.e. what exactly is WRONG with fandom and fans now. Oh, it danced around the ‘not wanting to pay for stuff’ thing some but not a single mention of the whole ‘every con is SPRING F’ING BREAK YAAAHOOO’ thing that seems to be happening.

    Barbarians at the gate and all, na mean? Fall of the Otaku Empire.

    No, cosplay chess is NOT the gladiatorial games. Or is it?

    Because here’s the thing that got glossed over: Yes, it’s the best of times insofar as if you have the money you can get just about ANY classic anime show from Japan (almost. No Blue Noah on R2 DVD, nor StarzanS) but the potential of any of the American companies bringing those over is now none and none (where before it was slim to none).

    Sure, Mediablasters is giving us GoLion (and that needs a review, kids) but ONLY because it’s piggybacked on Voltron. Mediablasters won’t ever bring any of the OTHER shows like Daltanius or Combattler V or…well, you know.

    “Well, idiot, download or buy the HK boots, you prig!”

    I don’t do that. I won’t do that. yeah, I know, I’m cutting my own nose off and all that crap, but I’m living my belief and stuff.

    Joey and Paul did a good job…well, Joey did most of the talking and that’s cool. I’m sorry he doesn’t seem to ‘get’ Odin, but with time, with time…

    I feel the need to discuss the ‘Crooks Nippan’ thing but later.

    Now I will cook a hamburger and drown my sorrows in a big bottle of coke.

  2. I resent the whole 4chan mentally of “buying anime is for suckers” deal.

    I noticed alot of rereleases from ADV lately. Yeah, they sure are having it hard. Personally I think MediaBlasters is the best R1 company now, given that most of the shows I’m buying are from them.

  3. Listening to these “old school” anime fans proselytise about the good old days always makes me feel uncomfortable; Joey Snackpants “OMG I had VHS” rant here was like the powered-up version of the niggling annoyance I got listening to Rob Fenelon on your earlier shows.

    VAGUE CAVEAT: I’ve not met any of these people, save Helen McCarthy (who was extremely friendly and awesome) and don’t wish to come across as if I’m making a personal attack on them here, but …

    Everybody has had something, be it a band, a hobby, video gaming, whatever, grow in popularity to the point where one doesn’t feel cool and special for liking it anymore. Everybody has found people who like the same things that they do that they, personally, don’t like, or that like those same things in different, distasteful ways.

    In the UK in the early Nineties anime was far harder to come by than in the states – the barrier to entry being an NTSC compatible VCR that could cost you the equivalent of $600 to $1000 in the UK. I for one love the fact that the internet allows me to watch old shows, keep up with new series from Japan, and buy the best versions of the shows I love from wherever those shows are available – I don’t feel less of an anime fan because I can now watch anime.

    I think it’s fair enough to bemoan people not buying shows, or people watching on Youtube (to be fair, that’s not massively removed from watching a show on TV), but suggesting that these people don’t contribute to the fandom by dresing up as Cloud in 2008, when they would have if they dressed up as Captain Harlock in 1995 is utter bullshit.

    Rambling Conclusion: A few months ago, my father gave me two DVD boxes with printed out covers, in which was the entirety of the Seventies Mazinga Z, in Japanese, with terrible Chinese subs – a series I would not be able to buy in any way, let alone any English compatible way. He did this because about twenty years ago he gave me a tape, copied from a work Colleague, of the English dubbed Mazinga Z, and told me it was a cartoon from Japan; ever since then I’ve been in to anime to some extent; I’d say we’re in the golden age of anime fandom. Fight the good fight, Daryl, AWO.

  4. I agree with Steve Harrison, live tapings seem to be a lot of fun. I wish I could of been there for this one. I came really close to going to JACON this year, but I ended up not going for lack of a place to stay.

    Hopefully I’ll remember to plan ahead for next year’s JACON so I can find a place to stay. I guess the hotel is out of the question, huh?

    -Jaime/KB

  5. As an old school fan, even I’m sick of old school fans congratulating themselves for using VCRs and the US mail back before it was cool or whatever. Can we finally move on now? Thanks.

  6. I would figure part of the allure of cosplay would be to make a unique costume. Personally, I’d be disappointed if I spent the time, money, and effort to make a costume and then went to a convention only to discover 30 other people wearing the exact same thing. I also thought that one of the appeals of cosplay was to bring attention to neglected or unknown shows, but there’s no need to do that with something as wildly popular as Naruto, Bleach, or Final Fantasy VII. My question remains: if you take out either of these motivating factors, what’s the point?

    YouTube is far removed from watching something on TV, because it sidesteps the entire process of licensing fees and advertising, which are some of the primary ways anime shows recoup their investment.

    As for the Mazinger thing, I hope the fuzzy feeling of nostalgia counterbalances the fact that by buying those DVD sets, you’re essentially supporting organized crime rings.

    Knowing the history is important. No, I don’t agree with the whole “it was better when know one knew about it but me” ideology. That’s a value judgment. But fans should know how we got to where we are today, and how things are different, and why exactly things like piracy matter.

    It is indeed a great time to be a free-loading anime fan. You can find DVD rips of commercial releases with a few clicks and keystrokes, if you want. You don’t have to pay for anything, and you can still get all the enjoyment you desire from the medium. That sounds like the definition of having your cake and eating it, too.

    Whether it’s a good time to be an animator or an American distributor, well, that’s another story altogether…

  7. >by buying those DVD sets, you’re >essentially supporting organized >crime rings.

    Funny you should say that, as Toei (the official licensor) has extensive links to organized crime themselves!

  8. Nobody bought those DVDs. In fact, I guess my father was indirectly stopping those organised crime rackets from profitting, like a true anime hero.

    Drawing attention to neglected shows is a fine motivation for cosplaying – I suspect that more common motivations, and the ones that don’t preclude wearing the same costume as 30 other people are a) expressing your love for the character and b) being the prettiest.

    As for the Youtube/TV thing, you’ve a fair point – I was mainly getting at the fact that a shows popularity on TV doesn’t neccesarily translate into DVD sales, or even brand loyalty (though it works far more effectively for the latter).

  9. Nostalgia really defines this episode…

    However the anime industry did themselves in.. mainly by flooding the market and charging way too much for it. They need to adapt–we don’t need another stubborn MPAA/RIAA-like industry. The internet provides us with Youtube quailty anime subs that people seem to have no problem watching, and it also provides us with nicely produced 720p HD vids. If the industry won’t adapt and the anime stops coming.. well, it stops coming I guess.

    On another topic: I’ve heard part of the Macross TV dub.. Edward Elric is that you? MUHCROSS!

  10. The whole HD Bluray thing doesn’t concern me as I have a tiny 22″ TV and no PS3 (Videogames haven’t interested me since the early 00’s). The only thing 1080P does for me is fodder for screencaps.

    Personally, I’m fine with the way anime DVD’s are now. It’s people too stubborn who think they’re too expensive.

    OT but I watched the FOTNS movie for the first time (even though it was the Streamline dub with the sappy ending no one liked).

  11. Let’s put it this way: if I lived in the U.S. or Europe or Japan or any place where there are established anime distributors, I would have many more legally bought anime DVDs or related merchandise than I currently do.

    I do have some official boxsets (say, Ghost in the Shell: SAC), which I bought during visits to the U.S., and a few singles, some of which were actually officially released where I live and thus I thankfully didn’t have to pay ridiculous extra fees (say, the Cowboy Bebop movie and Paprika), or were aging imports that ended up in bargain bins (A Wind named Amnesia), but that’s the exception rather than the rule. There’s really no organized anime distribution I can deal with, mostly a bunch of individual importers who do whatever they want.

    And then there’s the problem of region-locked anime downloads. I go to D2D and want to legally download Fist of the North Star, but I can’t. I want to buy anime from the iTunes store, but I can’t do that either.

    I even had to jump through some technical hoops in order to be able to *pay* for the Crunchyroll downloads Gonzo is offering “worldwide”.

    If the companies involved really want to fight piracy worldwide (and it really must be, since anime isn’t just downloaded by U.S., European or Japanese nationals), they need to give more alternatives to people like me, who would want to contribute if they gave us a fair chance.

  12. It is indeed a great time to be a free-loading anime fan. You can find DVD rips of commercial releases with a few clicks and keystrokes, if you want. You don’t have to pay for anything, and you can still get all the enjoyment you desire from the medium. That sounds like the definition of having your cake and eating it, too.

    Paul/nj: Morning Edition today had a story about people in China who download high quality fansubbed encodes of American TV shows within moments after they’ve been broadcast. Everything about the story from the bootleggers to the fansubbers to the downloaders to the rightsholders sounded like an EXACT mirror of the situation and attitudes going on with anime in the US. You can read a transcript of (and listen to) the full story here.

    Funny you should say that, as Toei (the official licensor) has extensive links to organized crime themselves!

    There is a pretty big difference between “every single business in Japan has to pay tribute to organized crime in some form or fashion” (which is true) and “organized crime syndicates are primarily responsible for the manufacture and distribution of bootlegs” (which is also true). The yakuza and the triads sure as hell don’t grasp the concept of moe.

    As an old school fan, even I’m sick of old school fans congratulating themselves for using VCRs and the US mail back before it was cool or whatever. Can we finally move on now? Thanks.

    If you’re listening to Rob Fenelon or Joey Snackpants talk about these days and inferring from their testimonials that they’re patting themselves on the back for how great they are compared to everyone else, you may be neglecting the full context of these stories. The reason it is so important to reiterate the fact that US anime fandom was built on analog piracy is because 1. not many places talk about this fact anymore and many people don’t know it happened, 2. the mentality that arose from said practices carries on to this day where it has in many ways become a liability due to the advent of digital distribution methods.

    Though in defense of digital distribution, it’s at least dethroned the so-called “gatekeepers to the fandom.” I got an email from “Regan Strongblood” over at Anime82 who wanted to trade me copies of the English dub of Daimos (which he apparently has all of) for the godawful Ambassador Magma anime, clips of which are sure to surface this coming Otakon. I turned him down because I always abhorred the concept of “tape gods” who hoarded crap and kept it from the “have-nots.” Unlike so many of our guests, I have never done a single formal trade for anime, ever. I’d just make copies for people I knew under the guise that perhaps at some point they’d be in a position to return the favor.

    If I truly did have all of Ambassador Magma–and for the record I do not–I would simply throw it out there on BitTorrent for anyone who wanted it as a giant “fuck you” to every jackass on eBay or a comic con dealer’s room who wanted to charge $25 a disc for VHS captures burned onto DVDR. So while I would like copies of Daimos so that we could review the entire Robot Romance trilogy, no way am I trading for it in this day and age.

    suggesting that these people don’t contribute to the fandom by dresing up as Cloud in 2008, when they would have if they dressed up as Captain Harlock in 1995 is utter bullshit.

    Except Cloud Strife isn’t an anime character whereas Harlock is. Before anyone thinks they’re going to be SO SMART by mentioning Advent Children/Last Order, those didn’t come out until 2005 and cons were overstuffed with FF7+ cosplayers for at least eight years prior. Besides, the character designs between the videogames and the anime are always altered a bit, and I can tell when people are using one or the other. If I sound overly pissy over this, it’s because it’s 2008 and I’m still getting whacked by Buster Swords and the like in the hallway.

    On another topic: I’ve heard part of the Macross TV dub.. Edward Elric is that you? MUHCROSS!

    I might not have ever posted it (I don’t remember), but I did a quick interview with Vic Mignogna where even he says “Macross” instead of “Muh-CRAWSS” like in the ADV dub. When I pointed this out, he said they were specifically instructed to pronounce it that way during the recordings, even though the Japanese audio quite clearly says “Macross” in a manner much closer to how it was pronounced in Robotech.

  13. On the subject of those tape trading times, I was never a big fan of the tape trading thing, even though I understand why it existed.

    My big problem with the concept was that getting that initial seed seemed rather difficult to obtain. I mean if you’ve got nothing to trade and you’re dealing with someone who will ONLY do trades, you have to find someone to give you something of value without a trade before you can even start. This seemed to artificially restrict the audience who could see the work and, in general, slowed things down. Anime fandom wasn’t exploding during the tape trading days the same way it was during the digital fansub days, and there’s a reason for that.

    I guess I also understand that there was the need to expand your collections and perhaps the fandom felt the need to force people to make that investment and buy the Japanese LDs and VHS’ so they’d have something to trade and thus, spread things out. Thankfully we’re not in those times any more, although it’s pretty clear that we’ve shifted a bit too far in the other direction. I guess we need a happy medium where people aren’t tape gods (that was the greatest casualty of the rise of digital fansubbing) but aren’t total moochers who would never, ever buy anime.

    Just some random thoughts.

  14. Daryl has an excellent point that digisubbing didn’t really change U.S. fan attitudes towards the sanctity of copyright; the basic lack of respect for it already existed, and merely got ported to a high-speed connection.

    It wasn’t quite as clear-cut as that in the 1980s, I could argue–for example, at least half of the anime that was going around then on tape had its origin in a free Japanese TV broadcast (I make the point because so much TV anime today is on pay channels in Japan, and thus isn’t even given away the first time). That still didn’t make duping copies of TV shows for other people legal–judging by OTAKU NO VIDEO, the practice was common among fans even in Japan, though.

    But as for movies and OAVs, yeah, the thing was to try and find the guy who had actually bought the commercial Japanese LD (or, before that, the VHS) release. I knew one guy who had a fairly small collection–a dozen tapes–but they were all tapes he’d imported legitimately. That guy was supporting the anime industry directly and actually, whereas I was only doing so in arguments and in theory.

    Because I was so young when I became an otaku myself–and because I didn’t come to it out of some more inter-lekshooal tradition like SF fandom–I can’t really object too much in spirit to whatever today’s youth choose to do with their anime, their manga, and their conventions.

    They say tape trading obliged you to be social, but when I was thirteen I wanted to be social with people I actually liked, not middle-aged creeps, just because they happened to have the anime I wanted. There was a seedy thrill in having to score cassette copies of BGM inside houses smelling of unchanged diapers and Church’s Chicken, or duping tapes while some dude’s Annie Wilkes-like mother hollered half-senile threats in the next room, but…no, I think that socially, it’s more healthy today. About a hundred times more healthy.

    As you’ve seen from the feedback on A.W.O., it’s also not true that younger fans absolutely won’t watch older stuff. And even cosplay–I actually saw a teenaged couple at Kumoricon last year doing Harlock and Emeraldas.

    But while having a distinctive outfit, or calling attention to an old show are certainly valid reasons to cosplay, they miss the simplest reason of all–cosplaying because you just happen to be a fan of the character and the series. Understood that way, it’s not strange at all that Naruto, Bleach, or FF would have the most costumes–they also have the most fans.

  15. Wow, nevermind. I just did a quick search on Google for “FOTNS streamline dub” and the first thing that came up was IMDB’s entry “Hokuto no Ken”.

    I guess I should of done the Googling before hand, huh? Sorry guys.

    You can delete these two posts now.

    -Jaime/KB

  16. Gerald pretty much summed up my incoherent point (which, for the record, was in support of Daryl’s opinion on the podcast, and also in support of me whinging at the internet) – I basically don’t think that you are a “better” or “truer” anime fan if you struggled to find VHS back in the day than if you bittorrent something today; both are of little value for supporting the industry in comparisson to buying an official copy, but of equal value (in the long haul) in terms of getting to see the anime you want to see.

    Just to be picky, I could have gone for an anime character instead of Cloud, but that would have meant googling for the name of a character from Naruto or Bleach, and then finding out whether that character was a popular target for cosplay. Related Question: Has cosplaying videogame characters/videogame character fandom always gone hand in hand with anime in Japan, or is that a recent invention?

  17. Since I am sure Rob would probably never check the comments in here, I feel a bit of a need to respond in his behalf to a few comments (and since I’m the other half of the old-timer duo in the podcast in question)…

    niggling annoyance I got listening to Rob Fenelon on your earlier shows.

    Rest assured, Rob can at times cause annoyances that are more than merely niggling. 😉

    As an old school fan, even I’m sick of old school fans congratulating themselves for using VCRs and the US mail back before it was cool or whatever. Can we finally move on now?

    Yeah me too. If for no other reason than the old-timey panel discussion is getting old, having done it a few times now. I think the reason for mentioning this, though, is less a sense of “We were better fans than you” (though I’ll admit enough egotism on my own part to have had that thought), but the sense that having to put in some effort to get the stuff (a) made you appreciate what you had more, and (b) forced one to have less of a sense of “entitlement”, since you appreciated how hard it was for the people doing the subs and mailing the tapes if at least YOU had to occasionally trudge to the post office and carry a heavy box back home. One could imagine “I’ve only got one box o’tapes, imagine what FansubberX must deal with mailing one of these to scores of people around the country!” Not that that still didn’t prevent the occasional ignorant boor demanding copies of everything you have subbed (and some things you didn’t), but it made those people less numerous. If all it takes to get a sub is to click a link, it is much easier to fall into the “it’s been 2 whole days since this show was broadcast, where’s the sub already?!?” mode.

    The reason it is so important to reiterate the fact that US anime fandom was built on analog piracy is because 1. not many places talk about this fact anymore and many people don’t know it happened, 2. the mentality that arose from said practices carries on to this day where it has in many ways become a liability due to the advent of digital distribution methods.

    Very well put Daryl.

    I turned him down because I always abhorred the concept of “tape gods” who hoarded crap and kept it from the “have-nots.” Unlike so many of our guests, I have never done a single formal trade for anime, ever. I’d just make copies for people I knew under the guise that perhaps at some point they’d be in a position to return the favor.

    I also believe in the “pay it forward” philosophy – I couldn’t have gotten started in this fandom without generous people willing to give me copies of stuff when I had nothing, and so feel it behooves me to try to do the same for other new fans. If nothing else it makes the new ones feel welcome and encourages participation, making it less likely they’ll drop anime because the people involved in it seem to be nothing but greedy assholes.

    But again, there is the historic reason for the development of the “tape god” syndrome beyond the “god”‘s general assholishness. After a while, if one gets a rep as a person willing to make copies for people without demanding anything in return, more and more people would come to you for stuff. Naturally, as this effect snowballs, one can end up having to have one’s VCR running 24/7 to keep up with the tape requests (even if each one is from a single well-meaning individual, having a lot of well-meaning individuals adds up to the same copying load as a few greedy assholes). After a while human nature will cause you to resent all the demands being placed upon you, your VCR breaking down, etc. while getting little or nothing in return, and you will naturally gravitate toward “Look, I can’t keep doing this – from now on I’m only making copies for people if I can get something in return!” And thus, in the eyes of the single newbie fan wanting one tape, you have transformed into “tape god” – because they don’t know of the 37 other single tape requests from other newbies just like them that you got that week.

    But while having a distinctive outfit, or calling attention to an old show are certainly valid reasons to cosplay, they miss the simplest reason of all–cosplaying because you just happen to be a fan of the character and the series. Understood that way, it’s not strange at all that Naruto, Bleach, or FF would have the most costumes–they also have the most fans.

    True, and I don’t begrudge today’s young costumers that. Rob and I were at AnimeNext last weekend and were a bit boggled by the fact that it seemed like half the con attendees were walking around in costumes. More hall costumes than I can remember in forever. Rob reminisced how, at the 83 Worldcon, when they got 20 cosplayers up on the roof (mostly in some form of Leiji Matsumoto based costume – Yamato, Harlock, GE999, etc.) it was the BIGGEST ANIME COSPLAY GATHERING EVAR! Now there are that many costumes hanging out by the soda machine in the corner of the dealer hall.

    My personal preference is to see more anime than game costumes, but I freely admit that that is because I just don’t play video games, and so don’t recognize what half these costumes are. But my real beef with some of these cosplayers is that I believe a lot of the costumes I am seeing are store-bought, ordered online. I pay special attention to Code Geass costumes, for example, since I really like that show (popularity-engineered though it is). And I have seen nearly identical outfits several times. If these were made by hand, I’d expect to see more variation in how individuals did their fringing, or the cape linings, etc. I realize that in addition to showing support for one’s favorite show is a large part of the point, in addition to simple identification with “the tribe”, is the main reason for a lot of these kids doing cosplay. But I fear we’re losing a valuable creativity and “sense of ownership” if all one has to do to get a costume of your favorite character is plunk down $75 on a Paypal link. When I first met Sue Shambaugh and her husband, who was wearing the outstanding Reinhard dress uniform cosplay she made, I was awed by her costuming ability with her silvered cloth and filigreed shoulder mantle. But I was surprised by their reaction to my, in my opinion, inferior looking cast plastic mantle – which they liked because it was a wholly different and original solution to the same problem, and offered several advantages their better sewn costume didn’t… I could wear mine with or without the epaulets, for example, since they clipped to the edge of my shoulder piece. His was sewn on in one piece. If everyone just orders the same outfit, there is a loss of that pleasure of discovery of how someone else solved the same design problem (since there are elements in many character designs, and certainly in the LoGH dress uniform, that aren’t physically realizable on real people).

    This has gone on too long already, so I’ll add my really cool news note in a followup post.

  18. Daryl: That really does resemble the current anime situation, in more ways than not, not just in the U.S. but also in quite a few places outside of it.

    Unfortunately, it doesn’t really address the issue of finding some sort of solution, alternative or compromise, but I guess that’s asking for too much.

    In other news, something which is only tangentially related…I finally got around to finishing Hi no Tori and it’s definitely a masterpiece…even for someone such as myself who is still essentially Tezuka-illiterate for the most part, listening to AWO aside. I couldn’t really marathon it in one go, because almost every arc ends up being too heavy (especially the last one, which is certainly the most ambitious and maybe even the most controversial, if the message is misunderstood or certain things are taken out of context), but I did finish it over a week or two. Even though I don’t know if I’ll ever get to read the entire manga, which is a shame, I’ll try to pick up a volume or two at the first opportunity.

  19. I might not have ever posted it (I don’t remember), but I did a quick interview with Vic Mignogna where even he says “Macross” instead of “Muh-CRAWSS” like in the ADV dub. When I pointed this out, he said they were specifically instructed to pronounce it that way during the recordings, even though the Japanese audio quite clearly says “Macross” in a manner much closer to how it was pronounced in Robotech.

    Man, does ADV intentionally screw up their dubs or is that just how it always works out? This might only apply to the robot shows, but there always seems to something amiss. Like in Shin Getter Robo where the script couldn’t tell which robot was which and made non-specific dialog make it look like PTSD kid was going to pilot Getter 1 instead of Ryoma. Or Mazinkaiser where we get Hober Baiders and crap. Or even the Megazone 23 dub where they put in 80’s (and 90’s) phrases to add to the “authenticity” of 1980’s Japan. I know Daryl once talked about how most of these scripts are pounded out with little research. I know giant robot shows are pretty niche to begin with, but there’s no reason to screw up the newbies with dodgy translations and weird attempts at spicing up the dialog.

  20. Back in aught-3 I was excited by a presentation made at Anime Expo by Yukio Kikukawa (producer of Legend of the Galactic Heroes) and Noboru Ishiguro (animation director of LoGH, as well as little shows like Space Battleship Yamato and Super Dimension Fortress Macross), about a project they were developing to animate another SF novel series by Yoshiki Tanaka (original author of LoGH, as well as Heroic Legend of Arslan etc.), called Titania. It was described as another sprawling space epic similar to LoGH, and was to have character designs by Haruhiko Mikimoto (designer for Macross, and many other popular shows). Shortly thereafter I posted on my signature page some concept art based on this same story series by Katsumi Michihara, the artist for the manga adaptation of LoGH (just as a way to explain to folks at the time what we were talking about, since the Mikimoto art shown at the AX03 panel was not available).

    In the interim I was saddened to learn that it seemed very little was happening with this show’s development (or with anything else having to do with LoGH) because Mr. Kikukawa had left Tokuma productions, which owned the rights to LoGH. I was told that the Titania project was Mr. Kikukawa’s, but as a now independent producer he didn’t have as much resources to proceed with it. (Mr. Kikukawa, BTW, was also one of the principals in the Japan 2007 Worldcon committee)

    Well, thanks to a heads-up from my friend and frequent AX co-attendee Bill…

    It looks like TITANIA… IS…. GO! 😉 W00t!

  21. Store-bought costumes are fairly common in Japan, so younger fans who buy them would have no reason to regard it as an inauthentic practice. While there’s a lot to be said for a custom outfit, I think the craft of costuming is a separate issue from the desire to appear in a certain costume.

    In some cases, a fan may actually like the idea of store-bought better, since it reflects the fact there are enough other people out there into the same series, to make these costumes by the batch instead of one at a time. My Royal Space Force uniform was a commissioned work, but I’d rather I could have simply bought one in a store, as that would imply more people were into the movie ^_^

  22. Daryl said that he thinks ADV will be dead by the end of the year. Looks like they’re (almost) dead now. Read ANN or AOD to see the news.

    Wow, so for the most part is Funimation (none of there shows have interest me), Bandai Ent. (only Gundam and Lucky Star) and Media Blasters (probably the only one putting out stuff I care about) are the major survivors here. Animeigo doesn’t count since they’re not like the other companies anyway. I hope that the other three don’t get full of themselves and start go a licensing binge (Funimation, and MB seem to put out the most stuff now)

  23. Well, I suppose another good thing about being an anime fan in the early ’80s is that back then, it was like, 240 yen to the dollar. Which made the $80-130 prices per tape importers charged for anime on VHS all the more galling (and with inflation, that would have been the equivalent of $170-275 per tape today). But what’s truly amazing is that it’s twenty-five years later, and I’m STILL making excuses for why I didn’t buy! I feel like an elderly war criminal.

  24. They’d better get out all of Welcome to the NHK before they shut down. That’s the only show I’ve been buying as of late.

  25. I’ve been meaning to ask. What happened to those mini review segments (like when you review the DBZ Broly movies)? You’re not doing those anymore? Just wondering.

  26. Yeah, and what’s with the outdated hair and clothes? Change ’em! And those friends you hang out with? Dump ’em! And that music you listen to, and that car you drive, and that house you live in…

    You’re no longer the man I married, AWO!!!

  27. I get less enjoyment of of talking about trading tapes than I get from discussing the strange people with whom I associated just to get a copy of Patlabor or a Jackie Chan film. The guy who kept trying to interest me in his homemade rape simulation videos. The guy who kept writing to me about how he liked Japan and anime because there were so few black people into it (wonder what he does these days). A six foot four, hundred pound albino with long hair, a penchant for black overcoats and lipstick. That’s right. You kids can just go download anything you want — BUT I HAD TO DEAL WITH NOSFERATU!

    Would dealing with shitloads of porn banner ads and pop-ups be the modern version of dealing with creepy trading partners?

  28. Would dealing with shitloads of porn banner ads and pop-ups be the modern version of dealing with creepy trading partners?

    I dunno man. But if given a choice, I’d rather deal with a lot of porn banners of hot chicks than dealing with creepy people. But that’s just me.

    Keep up the good work AWO. I don’t mind the “naruto filler shit” (as one anon commenter so nicely put it) as long as it’s good stuff.

  29. I never had to deal with anyone particularly creepy, but it reminds me of another aspect of those days: trading etiquette.

    Somehow going in I knew that it would be a good idea to say please and thank you, and to offer something in return. At the very beginning I had only a meager collection, but was fortunate enough to find people who were willing to give something for nothing. The message I came away with was that the same would be expected of me later.

    And it worked–I netted me one helluva collection over the years. The best moments were finding the last missing episode from a series or an unexpected gem tacked onto something else. It made the hunt that much more rewarding.

    But there were many, many times when I’d deal with someone who didn’t learn these lessons and was all full of demands. Usually I’d try to politely steer them into courtesy-land, and if this failed to make a difference I’d cut them off cold. Then I would inform them of what they should do the next time they approach someone.

    I’m sure I caught the word ‘asshole’ muttered after our parting, but I considered it my humble attempt to up the world’s civility quotient.

    Now, of course, nobody has to say please or thank you to their computer, so we’re well on our way to 199X. This is one reason I’m nostalgic for the tape trading.

Leave a Reply to RheinhardCancel reply