The Boston Japanimation Society

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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The Boston Japanimation Society

Post by mbanu »

Not sure if they are still active (Mike Toole mentioned on Twitter seeing some 2014-vintage flyers, and they do have a still up but maybe out-of-date website: http://world.std.com/~thaven/bjs.html). If they are still active, they might be in the running for oldest continuously running New England anime club. (^_^)

Usenet claims it was founded by Jim Whittaker as the Boston chapter of the Star Blazers Fan Club (although the Star Blazers Fandom Report listed the contact person for the chapter as a Jeff Jordan). Not sure of an exact date, but it looks like sometime in 1983.

Anyone have any more info?
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Re: The Boston Japanimation Society

Post by Drew_Sutton »

Mike Toole is here - don't know that he's necessarily that active here, but I am sure he knows. He's always active on Twitter, though, sure we could point him over here.
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Re: The Boston Japanimation Society

Post by davemerrill »

I came across this in a 1990 issue of "The Rose" while scanning zines for the Anime Hasshin piece:
bjs.jpg
bjs.jpg (100.24 KiB) Viewed 3138 times
I believe Toole mentioned they screened "Lensman" at this year's Arisia as well.
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Re: The Boston Japanimation Society

Post by runesaint »

davemerrill wrote:I came across this in a 1990 issue of "The Rose" while scanning zines for the Anime Hasshin piece:

bjs.jpg

I believe Toole mentioned they screened "Lensman" at this year's Arisia as well.
'Arisia' is the name of the -planet-. The good guys would be the Lensman or Civilization, although mentioning the Arisians... actually I don't think the Arisians ever showed up in the Lensman movie (I never found the tv show way back when)... on the other hand, it did lead me to search out and find all those books by E.E. 'Doc' Smith... hm.
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Re: The Boston Japanimation Society

Post by davemerrill »

Mentor shows up in the Lensman TV show, as a Yoda-like character, which fits the anime's Star Wars aesthetic, I guess.

The story behind the convention Arisia is... back in 1941, the first SF convention was held in Boston and it was called "Boskone", because of the Boston locale and referencing the "Boskone" from Lensman. The con got larger and larger until the late 1980s at which point the organizers said "wait a minute", and made changes to de-emphasize the media SF aspects and focus on literary SF. Some organizers wanted to continue with a media SF convention, and they started another convention, which, in response to the Lensman theme of the parent show, they titled "Arisia". This year Arisia was held in January and Boskone in February, and these days Arisia is generally three times the size of Boskone.
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Re: The Boston Japanimation Society

Post by Mike Toole »

Yep, I remember the Boston Japanimation Society!

The oral history, as I recall it, is that Jim started the club, and then it later became the Boston Japanimation Society when it had some momentum and the attendees decided they wanted to discuss and watch more than just Star Blazers. In those days, three people ran the club. The late, great Mike Horne was one of those triumvirs. Jim was another one. The third man was someone whose name I forget, but who was once described as being fixated on lolicon stuff, and who memorably burst into tears at the finale of Minky Momo. Back in the day, man.

I attended a couple of BJS meetings in the mid-2000s, just casting about and looking for people to talk to. At that point, the club was a bit comically elderly - they met in the cluttered upstairs meeting room of a grocery co-op (this ended sometime in the past few years), and decided to watch whatever people brought on VHS (and later DVD) on a 27" TV set. At this point, the club didn't really have officers or a leadership, it was just an informal group of 5-10 anime nerds in their 40s-60s. At 29, I was the youngest attendee at the thing by an obvious margin. (and yeah, this was eleven years ago. Sheesh.) One member was a real character, he sounded exactly like Barney Gumble and was all "oh, you're one of THOSE people, huh!!" when I pooh-poohed the harem anime he brought and pushed Lupin the 3rd instead. The only member with any apparent executive duties was Malcolm, an older gent who spoke in a quavering, nasally voice. He handwrote flyers advertising the club in shaky, spidery writing. I wonder if they worked that well. Here are a couple:
http://imgur.com/a/pKEHf

As one of the flyers notes, the club screenings moved to someone's house in Newton some years ago, but I haven't seen a flyer or any mention of the club in four or five years now. I doubt they still hold meetings. If I see Malcolm, I'd love to ask him what's up and possibly take the name over and restart the club, in some form or another. I don't think it should just be abandoned! Anyway, that's the story of the BJS.
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Re: The Boston Japanimation Society

Post by mbanu »

Wow! Great info, thanks. (^_^)
Mike Toole wrote:I attended a couple of BJS meetings in the mid-2000s, just casting about and looking for people to talk to. At that point, the club was a bit comically elderly - they met in the cluttered upstairs meeting room of a grocery co-op (this ended sometime in the past few years), and decided to watch whatever people brought on VHS (and later DVD) on a 27" TV set. At this point, the club didn't really have officers or a leadership, it was just an informal group of 5-10 anime nerds in their 40s-60s. At 29, I was the youngest attendee at the thing by an obvious margin. (and yeah, this was eleven years ago. Sheesh.)
This seems to be a common method of slow death for community anime clubs that don't have the built-in churn of college clubs, sadly; they reach a certain level of membership and stop looking to recruit younger folks, then when older members start showing up less often, the remaining members find that the age gap is large enough now to create a barrier to younger fans. (^_^;)
Mike Toole wrote:The only member with any apparent executive duties was Malcolm, an older gent who spoke in a quavering, nasally voice. He handwrote flyers advertising the club in shaky, spidery writing. I wonder if they worked that well. Here are a couple:
http://imgur.com/a/pKEHf

As one of the flyers notes, the club screenings moved to someone's house in Newton some years ago, but I haven't seen a flyer or any mention of the club in four or five years now. I doubt they still hold meetings. If I see Malcolm, I'd love to ask him what's up and possibly take the name over and restart the club, in some form or another. I don't think it should just be abandoned! Anyway, that's the story of the BJS.
Malcolm Skerry, according to the Internet. Also a member of the MIT Science Fiction Society. (^_^) No indication what he's up to now, though...
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Re: The Boston Japanimation Society

Post by DKop »

I feel like ive seen that image on the internet somewhere in the past couple of years, maybe you posted up on twitter once is how I saw it.

But sweet, I hope you post more Mike, I think the last time I was in an online chat realm with you was that Colony Drop IRC channel that musta closed down a couple of years back. I just remember you going on about how you wanted a nice Bluray of Crystal Triangle and I mighta told you your out of your mind :lol: :lol:
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Re: The Boston Japanimation Society

Post by Drew_Sutton »

"Come correct our spelling" on the advert - almost sounds like fighting words :lol: Gall Force and GunBuster, in any age, is a decent line up of programming.

Thanks for the quick run-down of the BJS, Mike. I've always wondered about clubs that aren't scholastic/school-based in nature and don't quit meeting because of some incident or spectacular blow-up or failure, do they just peter out or what?
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