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RIP Amy Howard

Posted: Mon Mar 22, 2021 6:38 am
by davemerrill
we learned recently that Amy Howard Wilson, the voice actor of Nova in the 1979 series Star Blazers, had passed away in February. Her family and friends are still stunned, and this includes the thousands of friends she made while visiting anime conventions in the 1990s and 2000s. I wrote a short piece about Amy here:

https://letsanime.blogspot.com/2021/03/ ... ilson.html
Group_Shot_1awa5.jpg
Group_Shot_1awa5.jpg (101.46 KiB) Viewed 2960 times
Amy's third from the left in this photo of Star Blazers cosplayers at AWA 4 (1998)

Re: RIP Amy Howard

Posted: Wed Mar 24, 2021 11:43 am
by usamimi
I was so sad to hear the news. She was a guest at A-kon around....oof, 10 years ago, I think? and that was the first time I was able to meet her. She was so sweet and funny, a real loss. Great piece, Dave.

Re: RIP Amy Howard

Posted: Mon Mar 29, 2021 5:27 am
by Fireminer
davemerrill wrote: Mon Mar 22, 2021 6:38 am we learned recently that Amy Howard Wilson, the voice actor of Nova in the 1979 series Star Blazers, had passed away in February. Her family and friends are still stunned, and this includes the thousands of friends she made while visiting anime conventions in the 1990s and 2000s. I wrote a short piece about Amy here:

https://letsanime.blogspot.com/2021/03/ ... ilson.html

Group_Shot_1awa5.jpg

Amy's third from the left in this photo of Star Blazers cosplayers at AWA 4 (1998)
I wish to ask this: Why were the voice actors for Star Blazers went uncredited? I've talked to a voice actor, and we conversed about how important the credits are to voice actors. Basically if they want to seek any gigs by themselves, they need the credits to point to as credentials.

Re: RIP Amy Howard

Posted: Wed Mar 31, 2021 1:56 pm
by davemerrill
One of the first Star Blazers voice actors to surface was Michael Chechopolous, who did the voice of "Volgar", a minor character from an arc of the first season. When we interviewed him, one of the questions we asked was, why didn't the voice actors get screen credit? And the reason he gave was that the Star Blazers dub was non-union, and therefore credits weren't required.

Re: RIP Amy Howard

Posted: Fri Apr 02, 2021 11:00 am
by mbanu
davemerrill wrote: Mon Mar 22, 2021 6:38 am Amy's third from the left in this photo of Star Blazers cosplayers at AWA 4 (1998)
Was Star Blazers fandom in the late 90s mostly people who had watched the original broadcasts as kids, or was there something that caused a revival?

Re: RIP Amy Howard

Posted: Fri Apr 02, 2021 11:38 am
by davemerrill
mbanu wrote: Fri Apr 02, 2021 11:00 am
davemerrill wrote: Mon Mar 22, 2021 6:38 am Amy's third from the left in this photo of Star Blazers cosplayers at AWA 4 (1998)
Was Star Blazers fandom in the late 90s mostly people who had watched the original broadcasts as kids, or was there something that caused a revival?
It was all people who'd seen it as kids, that's my recollection. The difficulty of physically getting Star Blazers in front of eyeballs made it tough for the property to get any sort of traction among the younger generation. The DVDs were expensive and not widely distributed, the show had vanished from broadcast and cable TV, anime fandom in general had moved on to other things. Star Blazers didn't have a licensing or publicity team behind it the same way Robotech did, and I think that really makes a difference as to how well a property is remembered.

There was one fan who was spearheading a "Star Blazers Revival" project and his plan was to get the show airing in syndication on UHF television again, just dust off the 78 episodes and put those on TV instead of Pokemon, and somehow the kids will stop watching Pokemon and will watch Star Blazers instead. Now, I loves me some Star Blazers, but that scenario simply isn't going to happen.

Having Amy and other voice actors as con guests definitely put the series into the spotlight in terms of the show would get mentioned every time they were a guest at a convention, but without a show people could see on a regular basis, there's no way for it to get any sort of traction.

I'm pretty sure way more current anime fans have seen Star Blazers 2199 than have seen the original show.

Re: RIP Amy Howard

Posted: Mon Apr 12, 2021 11:33 am
by Drew_Sutton
I definitely remember Amy as a mainstay of the AWA guest roster though I don't know that I ever spent any meaningful time around her outside of being an audience member in a panel. But that was a powerful obituary, Dave. May her memory be a blessing to you and the rest of her family and friends.