Animation of Nippon Inter-Mediary Exchange (A.N.I.M.E.)

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!
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mbanu
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Animation of Nippon Inter-Mediary Exchange (A.N.I.M.E.)

Post by mbanu »

One of the counter-culture clubs that developed in reaction to the rules-based approach of the late 80s C/FO and often remembered today for being the birthplace of Animag (including the Animag BBS) and rec.arts.anime on Usenet. (^_^)

Mark Crispin of the Urusei Yatsura Mailing list shared a few memories in 1992:
Mark Crispin wrote: Ann and I were friends and co-conspirators in the `disorganized fandom' movement (see below).

Ann was the `president' of the A.N.I.M.E. club, which office basically meant that it was her house that got trashed by 100+ rabid anime fans each month. Ann would walk around wearing her happi (a type of Japanese jacket) and try to keep some vague semblance of order. Everything was very informal; VCR's, LD players, and monitors were strewed around throughout the house, hooked up in complex ways that would amaze the designers of the Internet. Soda was on the honor system, with a cup nearby to collect the cash.

Often, after most people (in particular certain under-aged individuals) would go home, we'd break out the Creme Lemon or similar material. We spent a while trying to determine the original of `Brothers Grime X-Rated Cartoons'; I had picked it up via mail order since the anime origin seemed obvious. It was clearly anime, of 1970's vintage, although re-cut to fit the 1980's US porn standard (e.g. the same sequences shown about 500 times...). I don't think we even figured out what the original was, but it seemed vaguely familiar to Ann and some of the others.

Ann's house was interesting. She lived with a few other girls -- I never quite figured out how many -- and what seemed to be a zillion cats. Anime posters, books, and video tapes were strewn throughout the house, a fair number of these of the bisho^nen and bisho^jo variety. We'd swap ribald comments, and more, on various of the characters. Let's just say that I have some nasty pictures of Lum that Takahashi Rumiko never drew! ;-)

Those cats were something else. They were feral cats that Ann had taken in, or rather that were hanging around for free food. They were otherwise completely wild. I remember a freezing cold winter night (or maybe it was just a Bay Area summer night -- not much difference) with several of us were huddled together under a blanket for warmth in the living room until we got the bright idea to turn on the heat. The heating was electric under-the-floor. About 30 seconds
after the heat was turned on we realized what a horrible mistake that was. Apparently, the cats had decided that the heating grills was the perfect place to piss, and the entire room filled up in short order with gaseous cat piss! We're talking serious poison gas here! ;-)

It's funny to laugh about it now, but it sure wasn't funny then!

A.N.I.M.E. at that time was very disorganized. This was one of its beloved features. Many of us were fans who were totally disgusted by organized fandom and its power-tripping Secret Masters (and mistresses) Of Fandom in general and by C/FO and Randall Stuckey in particular. A.N.I.M.E.'s was a departure from organized fandom -- it was disorganized fandom. It was great! I hope the new leadership have kept this in mind, including the recognition that the main
function of president is `pick up the mess afterwards.'

Ann initially brought up the idea of an anime newsgroup on September 22, 1987. The original suggestion seemed to come from Eiji Hirai. At that time, the idea was to create an alt.anime newsgroup. Eiji posted a call for votes for rec.arts.anime on October 31, 1987, with votes to go to Ann. By November 3, Ann had received 13 votes, and started lobbying. I don't have any records of the subsequent progression, but by January 1988 rec.arts.anime was a reality and in
February 1988 there was redistribution of rec.arts.anime to JUNET and BITNET.

All good things do come to an end. I moved in October 1988 in the wake of a messy divorce. [How Ann and Chris aided me by, among other things, deflecting my vindictive but stupid ex's attention from my girlfriend is another story. I won't go into here. Suffice it to say that I owe them an amazing debt of gratitude that I won't forget.] Panda and its mailing lists were shut down at the time, and packed on a moving van. I stayed at Ann's house for a few days winding up my
affairs in the Bay Area. Ann's cats were utterly freaked out by my dog! Then I left for parts unknown (including to me). Ann and Chris headed south for LA about a month later, marking the end of that household and that stage in A.N.I.M.E.'s existance.
(https://groups.google.com/forum/message ... h1Dp6wihEJ)

Supposedly the club morphed into Foothill ANIME after Ann Schubert left, and still has meetings today: http://foothill.anime.net/
mbanu: What's between Old School and New School?
runesaint: Hmmm. "Middle School", perhaps?
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Re: Animation of Nippon Inter-Mediary Exchange (A.N.I.M.E.)

Post by mbanu »

Another reminiscence from Calvin Wade, from (if I read correctly) A.N.I.M.E. in 1983, before it was called that (Apparently A.N.I.M.E. was originally the name of the newsletter):
Calvin Wade wrote:I took a temp job with Hewlett Packard. It was there I ran into a gentleman who was also interested in anime. I was mildly surprised because he was an older man in his mid-40’s and an engineer. Heck, I was in my early thirties, so I guess I should not have been startled. I don’t remember how the subject came up (might have been the subject of giant robots), but we discovered we had a common interest in anime. We even traded a few tapes of material. He told me about a local meeting in the area, and told me I could meet the person who ran this monthly get together at a local comic book store. It was there I met a woman named Ann Shubert, who held an anime meeting at her home on the fourth Sunday of each month. Ann gave me permission and her address to attend the next meeting.

Having no real idea of what to expect. I was blown away when I attended my first anime meeting in someone’s home. First, there were lots of people attending this gathering. They were of all ages – from high school, to college, to working adults. TVs were placed in various rooms and on each, a different anime show was being shown via a VCR. I later learned the structure of a meeting consisted of several of the guests bringing anime features they had, and sharing them with everybody. By sharing, I mean that copying was allowed if you brought your own video recorder. And many people were copying like mad.

The meeting had the atmosphere of one large party. People brought sodas, chips and other things to munch and eagerly accepted your presence. There seemed to be all races involved. I was sort of surprised with the ease that people got along with each other.

Having been in California for about six months, I was just coming to grips with the fact that I was not in the mid-west anymore. As an African American, even in the 80’s, I was constantly aware of the race barrier in our country. What I was finding was that out here in California, race was not as much an issue. Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Caucasians, and more got alone just fine.

I had run into a group of people with the same common interest as myself and I loved it. I began attending this monthly get together and it was a blast. I met individuals who became friends I would have have for life. And there were girls in attendance. Some were real babes – and others were not. But, what the hell, they were as equally interested in anime as the males. And it really was a party – heck we even held a bar-b-q in the back yard.

[. . .]

Our club developed it’s own fan based newsletter, A.N.I.M.E. (Animation of Nippon Inter-Mediary Exchange) – to be handed out at meetings. And man, did we copy tapes! Sometimes you wound up with 4th , 5th, or worse generation copies. Hell, the color could be completely gone – but we snapped it up. And I shudder to think what the electric bill was for our host on that Sunday. After all, the meeting ran from about ten in the morning until 5 or 6 in the evening.

Eventually, the meeting got so big, it was decided to move the gathering to a local community college. We were able to procure a lecture hall and gained access to the audio-visual equipment there to present anime on a whole new scale. Thus, now instead of meeting at Ann’s home and running up her electric bill, we had a somewhat more formal location to met. This was not necessarily better, but it gave Ann a much-needed break. And besides, now features could be shown on a big screen.

While less of a party, the size of our meeting got bigger and more well known in the area.
(http://www.elderblackgeek.com/?p=87)

(According to the archived copies of the Foothill ANIME website, it looks like they lost their college affiliation sometime between 2012 and 2014, and now share a space with the CA-West anime club.)
mbanu: What's between Old School and New School?
runesaint: Hmmm. "Middle School", perhaps?
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Re: Animation of Nippon Inter-Mediary Exchange (A.N.I.M.E.)

Post by mbanu »

And a third, from Randall Miyashiro, on running the club in the early 90s and its contribution to producing AnimeCon '91:
Randall Miyashiro wrote:Her house would be packed with a good 100+ people who brought their VCRs and collections to trade. Most of the Animag (pre-Animerica) staff was from this club. This is where I met James Christiansen who was a friend of Ron Gross who I met through the Boy Scouts.

So I managed to meet many of these cool people and eventually ran the club (as well as the anime programming at Wondercon) when it finally left Ann's house and moved to Foothill.

[. . .]

The core group of my club and Cal Animage Alpha (the other big club from the 80s) with the help of the Baycon staff went on to create Animecon 91. This later became anime Expo 92 to present. The first Expo had 1,750 people compared to the current 44,000+. Back then the entire staff could fit in one large room (I was part of the dealers room staff) as we often did, or go out for dinner together.
(http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/bbs/php ... 812#449812)
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runesaint: Hmmm. "Middle School", perhaps?
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Re: Animation of Nippon Inter-Mediary Exchange (A.N.I.M.E.)

Post by mbanu »

One puzzler is that although Mark Crispin claimed that A.N.I.M.E. became popular as a reaction against the C/FO, it also had relatively close ties with the C/FO -- one of the 1987 C/FO newsletters listed the president of C/FO at the time as Mark Keller of C/FO Hayward, and that C/FO Hayward's meetings were basically joint meetings with A.N.I.M.E.:
Image
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Re: Animation of Nippon Inter-Mediary Exchange (A.N.I.M.E.)

Post by mbanu »

Image

A puzzler from the Venice FTP mirror. (^_^) Early photo-doctoring? Some other story? The file is dated July of 1992, but there's no context behind it -- 1992 would have been the tail end of Animag, right before staff started moving on to work on the new Animerica.
mbanu: What's between Old School and New School?
runesaint: Hmmm. "Middle School", perhaps?
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Re: Animation of Nippon Inter-Mediary Exchange (A.N.I.M.E.)

Post by SteveH »

If we were using T.V. computers and software, we could go "That con badge! Zoom in! Enhance! " and bam, we would know it all.

But all that would do in the real world is produce a blurry mess. :)

I rather liked Animag. It seemed like a scrappy, "We like this junk!" kind of publication. No corporate master, no agenda.
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Re: Animation of Nippon Inter-Mediary Exchange (A.N.I.M.E.)

Post by DKop »

It was really a generally published fanzine that had more to offer than a typical fanzine. I know a few years back Trish Ledoux was telling me that in their Zeta Gundam episode synopsis they translated roughly what they thought was going on in the story when they watched it, which looking back they did a pretty good job id say.
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Re: Animation of Nippon Inter-Mediary Exchange (A.N.I.M.E.)

Post by zimmerit »

mbanu wrote:A puzzler from the Venice FTP mirror. (^_^) Early photo-doctoring? Some other story? The file is dated July of 1992, but there's no context behind it -- 1992 would have been the tail end of Animag, right before staff started moving on to work on the new Animerica.
Anime Expo '92 was held in July. Guests of honor included Mikimoto, Tomino, and Terasawa. http://animecons.com/events/info.shtml/ ... _Expo_1992
Sean // zimmerit.moe
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