Hello~

[Animusubi]

Hello everyone! My name is Chevelle (feel free to call me that or my username). I'm 30 years old, and I've been a fan of anime ever since I was 5 years old, when one of my first anime experiences were watching Saban's Grimm Fairy Tales on Nickelodeon and seeing Tezuka's Unico play on the Disney Channel. I knew the animation was different, and it peaked my interests towards other animation of the same quality. I watched Vampire Hunter D and Robot Carnival when I was probably too young to be watching them. The first anime VHS tapes I bought were Ranma 1/2, Tokyo Babylon, Tenchi Muyo, and El-Hazard to name a few. Ranma 1/2 is an anime I hold very dear to me, as it started my passion for drawing in the anime style, which I do freelance for a living.

I tried to join an anime club in my area but they didn't want me to join, because I was only 16 and a girl at the time. So I spent alot of time watching anime by myself. No one I knew really liked it as much as I do. I collected many Viz, ADV, Animeigo, and CPM anime VHS at the time, I rented and bought anything I could get my hands onto. But being $30-$35 per VHS, it was hard. And sometimes they didn't want to sell anime to kids like me. I remember coming home from high school to watch Toonami, but I'm not one of those kids from the Toonami generation. I got into it in it's early stages, but as new shows were being added, and old good ones were bumped off, I slowly stopped watching it altogether.

Now that I'm older, as much as I still love anime, and there are still shows I watch eagerly, such as One Piece, I miss the way anime used to be. I don't watch anime as much as I used to and I've become a collector of old titles, even go so far as to just buy VHS because it's so much more nostalgic to me than just the whole thing on DVD. I feel like I can't have the kinds of anime conversations I want elsewhere. Many of my friends I grew up with have moved on from anime, and some of my friends I do have are a little too young that they don't remember older titles or have no interest in them. Tumblr is full of kids. People don't even know of the anime I bring up. I'm looking for a place like your forum, I've been looking for years. I want to make friends with people who know what Orguss, Devil Hunter Yohko, or Kimagure Orange Road are. Know about Yoko Kanno, whose best music was probably Macross Plus. There's so many amazing artists, like Kenichi Sonoda and Tsukasa Kotobuki. I loved their work, and it's sad that most anime art doesn't even look like that anymore. I'm actually getting back into 90's anime, re-watching older series, finishing all of Ranma 1/2 as well as collecting just about everything from it, and looking for titles I either lost or never bought. As well as trying to find other people with as much of a passion for it as me. Judging by what little I've seen so far, I think I found the right place. It's nice to meet you all! (sorry for the long intro, lol)

[llj]

Hey Chevi. It seems with with a lot of us anime fans, we were usually the driving force in getting our friends to watch them, but as you said, they were never as into it as we were, and they eventually grow out of it as friends do when they get older and move on with their lives.

I still watch most anime alone these days. I've only had moderate luck with getting adult friends or my girlfriends to watch with me over the past few years. I used to watch some anime with my sister, but she's largely moved on from it too. Ahh, the hardships of being an older anime fan...

I'm a bit more of an omnivore than most of the posters here, so I can enjoy some of the newer stuff too. I also have a lot of admiration for One Piece. But it certainly frustrates me when some so-called "hardcore" anime fans don't know most anime older than 1998, or refuse to watch "old" anime. That's like being a film connoisseur and refusing to watch black and white films.

[Heero]

Welcome aboard. Your Ranma stuff in your DA is really cute. You should do some Urusei Yatsura too. I grabbed an anthology of UY doujinshi at Comiket a few years back, it's interesting to see various takes on the characters. I've also been re-reading some of the Ranma manga lately, Takahashi's earlier stuff was more "fun" than her more recent stuff IMO.

[greg]

I tried to join an anime club in my area but they didn't want me to join, because I was only 16 and a girl at the time.

That is bizarre. In my experience, anime guys back then freaked out at the idea of girls liking anime. Now it is pretty common for girls to be anime fans, but in the early '90s, it was rare.

I want to make friends with people who know what Orguss, Devil Hunter Yohko, or Kimagure Orange Road are.

Yay, that's us! Actually, I just bought two Devil Hunter Yohko video games this past week: one for the PC Engine and one for the Megadrive (Genesis).

I also like Kenichi Sonoda; he's my favorite character designer. Unfortunately, the Cannon God Exaxxion manga was never completed in English by Dark Horse and it was shelved indefinitely.

Anyhow, welcome to the forum. There aren't a lot of us, so conversations move fairly slowly compared to other forums. That may be a bit off-putting for many, but I hope you'll stick around!

Greg

[Animusubi]

I'm a bit more of an omnivore than most of the posters here, so I can enjoy some of the newer stuff too. I also have a lot of admiration for One Piece. But it certainly frustrates me when some so-called "hardcore" anime fans don't know most anime older than 1998, or refuse to watch "old" anime. That's like being a film connoisseur and refusing to watch black and white films.

Yeah that's what bothers me too. I don't believe you can call yourself of fan of anime and refuse to watch at least a couple older series too, no matter what they are.

Welcome aboard. Your Ranma stuff in your DA is really cute. You should do some Urusei Yatsura too. I grabbed an anthology of UY doujinshi at Comiket a few years back, it's interesting to see various takes on the characters. I've also been re-reading some of the Ranma manga lately, Takahashi's earlier stuff was more "fun" than her more recent stuff IMO.

Aww thank you! I definitely want to draw more fanart as well. I am a big fan of Lum, and many characters in the UY universe, so I definitely would love to draw them in the future too! Takahashi's stuff was definitely more fun back then, I feel like around Inu Yasha time her works got more stale. Though I heard the short slice of life stories she's been doing on the side are pretty good still.

I tried to join an anime club in my area but they didn't want me to join, because I was only 16 and a girl at the time.

That is bizarre. In my experience, anime guys back then freaked out at the idea of girls liking anime. Now it is pretty common for girls to be anime fans, but in the early '90s, it was rare.

I want to make friends with people who know what Orguss, Devil Hunter Yohko, or Kimagure Orange Road are.

Yay, that's us! Actually, I just bought two Devil Hunter Yohko video games this past week: one for the PC Engine and one for the Megadrive (Genesis).

I also like Kenichi Sonoda; he's my favorite character designer. Unfortunately, the Cannon God Exaxxion manga was never completed in English by Dark Horse and it was shelved indefinitely.

Anyhow, welcome to the forum. There aren't a lot of us, so conversations move fairly slowly compared to other forums. That may be a bit off-putting for many, but I hope you'll stick around!

Greg

That's funny. A friend of mine works at a comic shop, and someone had brought in a box of Ranma comics, and my friend (a male) said "Oh man, I have a girl friend who loves these comics!" and the guy laughed and said "Whoa, a girl into Ranma? Hold onto that one." I remember being the only girl into back in the 90's, other than the occasional friend who I got to read things. Of course, that changed when Sailor Moon was introduced. So for a while, I felt kind of special, haha. But I was kind of put off the club didn't want me to join. Maybe it was an older club, I dunno.

I think we reached an era where older manga aren't going to be picked up anymore, and that makes me pretty sad. I never picked up Exaxxion, but I always wanted to just for Sonoda's art. I make my weekly pilgrimages to Half Price Books to check out their discounted manga all the time. It's like a godsend.

I am super excited to be apart of this forum, I feel like my journey has finally ended. Heh.

[llj]

Back around 1993-1994-ish, I did see some female seniors in my high school carrying around and swapping Ranma 1/2 tapes from time to time. I'd always assumed that Takahashi's stuff was pretty popular with females even as far back as when I was 13.

Takahashi may have a tendency for repetition and money-milking dragged-out series, but she's an excellent comic artist, IMO, from a formal standpoint. Her pacing, layouts, and sense of panel-to-panel flow is second to none--you never have trouble following what's going on visually in her comics, unlike with other manga artists who often emphasize page design over sequential coherency. In fact, I always tell people to check out Takahashi's stuff if they want to know how to make comics for a mainstream audience.

[gaijinpunch]

Every now and again I go into mandarake... always girls in there, but I guess it's a bit different on this side of the pond.

[Animusubi]

Back around 1993-1994-ish, I did see some female seniors in my high school carrying around and swapping Ranma 1/2 tapes from time to time. I'd always assumed that Takahashi's stuff was pretty popular with females even as far back as when I was 13.

Takahashi may have a tendency for repetition and money-milking dragged-out series, but she's an excellent comic artist, IMO, from a formal standpoint. Her pacing, layouts, and sense of panel-to-panel flow is second to none--you never have trouble following what's going on visually in her comics, unlike with other manga artists who often emphasize page design over sequential coherency. In fact, I always tell people to check out Takahashi's stuff if they want to know how to make comics for a mainstream audience.

I agree that her comics are easy to follow. I never had to look twice at something or feel like I was lost. I think her best art was in Ranma 1/2, though not as much towards the end when the characters started to look too long. And Inuyasha/Rinne is not my favorite evolution of her style either.

Though IMO, Hiroaki Samura's Blade of the Immortal, is a force to be reckoned with, as far as a damn good comic artist.

[greg]

My sister would borrow my Ranma 1/2 T-shirt sometimes. We went to a BBS get-together at a pool hall in Tempe, AZ together. One guy thought it was cool that she would wear a Ranma shirt, and they hit it off that night. They've been married for 12 years now. He's a dingus who won't get a real job to support her, and he is a jerk. But he loves her, so she just endures it and "wears the pants." I don't really care for him a lot because he isn't very friendly and he is immature, but I wonder if things would've turned out different if she hadn't been wearing that Ranma shirt that night. That was around '94 or so, back when anime was an underground thing and the community mainly existed online or in small clubs.

Every now and again I go into mandarake... always girls in there, but I guess it's a bit different on this side of the pond.

Well, we're talking about the mid-90's and earlier. I'm sure you can remember what it was like back then in Texas.

[Heibi]

Welcome to the club.

If you were in the Wichita, KS area we would have welcomed you wholeheartedly into our midst. Our goal at Central Anime was to get everyone possible interested.