pages from C/FO Magazine V2 #3

The roughly mid-90's and earlier (generally pre-Toonami, pre-anime boom) era of anime & manga fandom: early cons, clubs, tape trading, Nth Generation VHS fansubs, old magazines & fanzines, fandubs, ancient merchandise, rec.arts.anime, and more!
runesaint
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Re: pages from C/FO Magazine V2 #3

Post by runesaint »

_D_ wrote: Thu Feb 14, 2019 8:58 am . Still have lots of old fanzines like Marg Baskin's Anime House Productions Anime Janai. You can get some of those in digital form now I think.
I purchased a bunch of those back in the day - if you can direct me to them I would greatly appreciate it (quick google search just leads to lots of Gundam Double Zeta stuff)
Fireminer
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Re: pages from C/FO Magazine V2 #3

Post by Fireminer »

davemerrill wrote: Sun Feb 17, 2019 5:38 am Meri's company Phoenix Entertainment sold Project A-Kon earlier this year to another convention organizer, so it's kind of the end of an era. But she ran Project A-Kon from 1990 until 2019. She also ran several other smaller conventions in the Dallas area from time to time.

The EDC's founder Derek Wakefield turned the club over to Meri somewhere around 1986, but she was already the driving force behind the club - she edited the EDC fanzine NOVA, she wrote newsletters, she held meetings, she arranged screenings and panels at Texas conventions. Basically she organized a circle of anime fans that made the Dallas area a real center of anime fandom. In 1989 she and the rest of her fan circle decided they should put on an anime convention and see how successful it could be, and that was Project A-Kon.

There were other anime clubs in Texas - there were busy C/FO chapters in San Antonio and Austin, other anime clubs in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area, and a thriving scene in Houston by the late 1980s - but in the mid 1980s Meri and the EDC crew seemed to be the only club with a reach beyond Texas.

Of course in the late 1980s the national C/FO would be based out of San Antonio. When the national C/FO collapsed, the organization continued under other names for a few years. However, the San Antonio group never organized conventions and would vanish in a few years.
According to Derek's writing, he retired from EDC in 1987.

Anyway, thank you so much for your information! But can I bother you some more about the collapse of the C/FO network? Why did that happened? Was there any build-up to the event?
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Re: pages from C/FO Magazine V2 #3

Post by SteveH »

Keyword 'Randall Stucky' if I spelled it right :)
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Re: pages from C/FO Magazine V2 #3

Post by davemerrill »

I wrote a long post about this yesterday and the board ate it, so here I go again.

The national C/FO went away for a few reasons, all of which amplified each other.

1. Fans didn't see the need for a national organization when they could get anime tapes from their local clubs and anime news from magazines like Animag.

2. The editors of the C/FO Magazine quit. Since the C/FO Magazine was pretty much the only unique benefit of being a C/FO member, there wasn't much incentive to join any more. The new editors didn't do nearly as good a job (ask me how I know!)

3. The leadership of the club was handed over to (as Steve pointed out) Randall Stukey in San Antonio. I think I can safely describe Randall as sort of a "by the book" kinda guy. A motion was passed requiring local C/FO chapters to have a certain amount of national C/FO members in each local club, and not many chapters met this requirement, because, as mentioned earlier, there wasn't a lot of incentive to join the national club. Consequently a lot of C/FO chapters became their own independent anime clubs. The San Antonio C/FO eventually turned into Fans of Anime in South Texas (F.A.S.T.) and the C/FO pretty much devolved back to being the club in Los Angeles.
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Re: pages from C/FO Magazine V2 #3

Post by davemerrill »

to continue - the C/FO organization grew out of the SF club in Los Angeles and as a result had a formal organization with officers and elections and parliamentary procedures and all that stuff. A friend of mine visited LA in 1987 and at the C/FO meeting he attended they held a vote to decide whether or not to hold a vote to decide what kind of cake to have at their tenth anniversary meeting. That's the kind of organization it was. There was a separate periodical called "Shop Talk" where club officers would discuss club rules.

When Robotech hit in 1985 suddenly a LOT of new anime fans got into the fandom, and they were not *at all* interested in that kind of organization. In 1988 when these C/FO chapters found themselves suddenly independent clubs, the practical difference between being a C/FO chapter and being a local City Anime Club was nothing. Nothing changed other than the name.

In this same time frame, clubs like Anime Hasshin were able to publish a regular newsletter that was mailed out like clockwork to hundreds of anime fans across the country (and the world), without any of the officers or rules or nonsense that the C/FO became known for.

Another reason the C/FO lost influence was the situation that happened when Randall Stukey described a San Francisco couple as "video pirates" in print; this couple sued and won. It made Randall, and by extension the C/FO, seem like fussy wanna-be lawyers harassing their fellow fans over technicalities, more interested in arguing and what we'd later call "drama" than any sort of fandom. And I can't disagree with this assessment.

We tend to romanticize the past and the C/FO in particular is held up as this glowing golden age of fandom, but a lot of that is because we're looking at surviving fanzines and flyers, we're not seeing the arguments and the lawsuits and the reams of pedantic nit-picky time-wasting nonsense that drove people away from clubs like the C/FO.
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Re: pages from C/FO Magazine V2 #3

Post by Fireminer »

davemerrill wrote: Thu Feb 21, 2019 6:27 am When Robotech hit in 1985 suddenly a LOT of new anime fans got into the fandom, and they were not *at all* interested in that kind of organization. In 1988 when these C/FO chapters found themselves suddenly independent clubs, the practical difference between being a C/FO chapter and being a local City Anime Club was nothing. Nothing changed other than the name.

In this same time frame, clubs like Anime Hasshin were able to publish a regular newsletter that was mailed out like clockwork to hundreds of anime fans across the country (and the world), without any of the officers or rules or nonsense that the C/FO became known for.

Another reason the C/FO lost influence was the situation that happened when Randall Stukey described a San Francisco couple as "video pirates" in print; this couple sued and won. It made Randall, and by extension the C/FO, seem like fussy wanna-be lawyers harassing their fellow fans over technicalities, more interested in arguing and what we'd later call "drama" than any sort of fandom. And I can't disagree with this assessment.

We tend to romanticize the past and the C/FO in particular is held up as this glowing golden age of fandom, but a lot of that is because we're looking at surviving fanzines and flyers, we're not seeing the arguments and the lawsuits and the reams of pedantic nit-picky time-wasting nonsense that drove people away from clubs like the C/FO.
Though it was about voluntary community service, I was actually in an organization which torn itself apart because of the inflexibility of the leadership in a similar fashion.

Also, I presume that it was a libel lawsuit?

And, if the only thing for people going into C/FO about the time it collapsed was the fanzines, then how did subsequent fanzines survived after magazines like Protoculture Addicts, Mecha Press and Mangazine began publication?
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Re: pages from C/FO Magazine V2 #3

Post by DKop »

Fireminer wrote: Fri Feb 22, 2019 4:07 am
davemerrill wrote: Thu Feb 21, 2019 6:27 am
Another reason the C/FO lost influence was the situation that happened when Randall Stukey described a San Francisco couple as "video pirates" in print; this couple sued and won. It made Randall, and by extension the C/FO, seem like fussy wanna-be lawyers harassing their fellow fans over technicalities, more interested in arguing and what we'd later call "drama" than any sort of fandom. And I can't disagree with this assessment.

Also, I presume that it was a libel lawsuit?

That would definitely fall under libel, since that comment gives this couple of negative perception about them that cannot be proven. Fandom has a way of backstabbing each other for personal gains, but that's just people in general.
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Re: pages from C/FO Magazine V2 #3

Post by davemerrill »

Fireminer wrote: Fri Feb 22, 2019 4:07 am
Though it was about voluntary community service, I was actually in an organization which torn itself apart because of the inflexibility of the leadership in a similar fashion.

Also, I presume that it was a libel lawsuit?

And, if the only thing for people going into C/FO about the time it collapsed was the fanzines, then how did subsequent fanzines survived after magazines like Protoculture Addicts, Mecha Press and Mangazine began publication?
I have somewhere some screen caps of the courthouse information on the libel case, but I'm not sure where it is now.

Stukey took a hard line against for-profit video piracy, which is fine, okay, but when your organization is at the same time engaged in the reproduction and distribution of copyrighted material (just without the profit), video piracy is a weird hill to die on, and to call out specific people in your organization's official newsletter is a Bad Idea on at least five levels.

There is another thread here on this board where I posted pages from one of Stukey's C/FO newsletters where he spent three pages arguing with Robert Woodhead over the cost of AnimEigo's first VHS release, which he felt was priced too high, and would not be successful. I think history has conclusively judged who was right in that debate.

Anyway, that kind of debate-school arguing was NOT what people wanted to see in their anime club newsletters.

As far as the anime fanzine scene goes in the 1987-1992 time period goes, as far as I know most non-professional anime fanzines were local club zines. There were a few general anime zines like Alec Orrock's FSTS, which published translations of the manga "Twinkle Idol Stars", and my Let's Anime, and Anime Hasshin had a regular newsletter that frequently published 32-40 pages of fan art, articles, news, translations, and classified ads for other fanzines, conventions, and other fan news. Of course by the mid 1990s, computer BBS networks and online services like AOL, GEnie, and Compuserve had their own areas for anime fans, and Usenet's anime groups were also thriving, so print fanzines post 1995 were becoming outdated.

Certainly having something like Animag or Protoculture Addicts or Animenominous or other professional magazines available in the comic book shops made the fanzines and newsletters less essential, and once Animerica began publishing things got pretty slick.
Fireminer
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Re: pages from C/FO Magazine V2 #3

Post by Fireminer »

I am researching about Joe Vecchio. Is his work "The Hotel Ichiban" and "Maison Ikkoku: The Musical" one and the same, or two separate plays? Was "Maison Ikkoku: The Musical" being played on any theater? And what has he been doing since making the play?
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Re: pages from C/FO Magazine V2 #3

Post by Fireminer »

Also, did Joe do this podcast?
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