An index of prominent figures in the early anime fandom?

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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Fireminer
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Re: An index of prominent figures in the early anime fandom?

Post by Fireminer »

Figured that I should post here a list of websites that old school fans might find interesting:


[SPOILER="The list"]Analysis
- The Golden Ani-versary of Anime
- The Land of Obscusion
- Let's Anime
- Colony Drop
- The Anime Archivist
- Animehead's Retroworld
- The Anime Nostalgia Facility UK
- Writing on the Moon
- Akemi's Anime World

Podcasts
- Anime Nostalgia: Blogspot & Tumblr
- Akihabara Renditions
- Vintage Anime Club Podcast
- The Anime of Yesteryear

Archives
- Seiyuu: http://www.usagi.org/doi/seiyuu/
- English anime magazines: Anime Nostalgia Bomb
+ Anime Fringe: Anime Fringe
- Japanese anime magazines: Anim'Archive
- Merchandises: Anime of Yesteryear
- Screenshots: Gary's Anime Page

Encyclopedia
- Western & Japanese comics: Comiclopedia
- Old fandom stories: Fanlore
- Mechas:
+ Gears Online
+ MAHQ
- Ghibli's works: GhibliWiki
- Hajime Kanzaka's works: KanzakaDex
- Takahashi Rumiko's works: Furinkan
- Kia Asamiya's works: Shades of Nemesis: A Kia Asamiya/Studio Tron site
- Western & Japanese comics: Comiclopedia

Series-specific websites
- Bubblegum Crisis:
+ Raven's Garage
+ The Bubblegum Crisis Sanctum
- Slayers:
+ Slayers Universe
+ KanzakaDex Forums
- Macross franchise:
+ Shawn & Graham's Macross World
+ Macross Compendium (new & old)
- Gunbuster: The Gunbuster Index
- Patlabor: Schaft Enterprises
- Alice 19th: Casting the runes
- Revolutionary Girl Utena: Empty Movement
- Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Legend of the Galactic Heroes Information Center
- Space Pirate Captain Harlock: The Captain Harlock archives
- Hana yori Dango: Pride & Prejudice

Honorable mentions
- Anime Redshift Chronicle (compilations of monthly contents from various retro anime blogs, several of which are on this list)
- Ghibli Blog (news related to Ghibli Studio)
- Cartoon Research (The main focus is on Western cartoon, but there are some research articles regarding anime)
- Sequential Tart (a magazine focuses mostly on American comic, but with some articles on anime)
- The Old School Otaku Lounge (A forum where you ask questions to the old-school fans)
- Anime Origin Stories (An interviewing project which you can share the story of how you first get into anime)
- Helen McCarthy: A Face Made For Radio (Personal website of the author Helen McCarthy)
- Jai2 (Personal website of the translator Frederik L. Schodt)
- Animejin (Defunct UK anime news & analysis website)
- The Unofficial Robotech Reference Guide (Resources if you want to read into the tidbits of Robotech)
- Atlanta Fantasy Fair (In-depth details about several fantasy, science fiction, anime, etc. conventions in Atlanta)
[/SPOILER]
Fireminer
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Re: An index of prominent figures in the early anime fandom?

Post by Fireminer »

Sorry for the above post. It seems like the [Spoiler] tag on another forums does not work here.

Say, does anyone here have any idea about the anime clubs that Joe Vecchio joined in the 1990s? I can only find out about Anime X, but he mentioned somewhere that he was affiliated with two clubs.
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DKop
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Re: An index of prominent figures in the early anime fandom?

Post by DKop »

Hey thanks for throwing up my Anime of Yesteryear on that podcast list. We try and cover things other podcasts rarely or never did so far. Anime World Order is another good one.
Fireminer
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Re: An index of prominent figures in the early anime fandom?

Post by Fireminer »

DKop wrote: Fri Apr 19, 2019 3:25 pm Hey thanks for throwing up my Anime of Yesteryear on that podcast list. We try and cover things other podcasts rarely or never did so far. Anime World Order is another good one.
Yeah, I really did forget about AWO. Thanks for pointing that out!

Also, anyone here have any other suggestion?
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Re: An index of prominent figures in the early anime fandom?

Post by Drew_Sutton »

Thanks for including the AkibaRen team. Glad to see you've included Hitoshi Doi as well; he was the one thing that jumped out at me when I was reading your list. For a first pass, this looks very comprehensive!
Akihabara Renditions: Japanese Animation of the Bubble Economy
Excuse me, I need to evict some juvenile delinquents from my yard.
Fireminer
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Re: An index of prominent figures in the early anime fandom?

Post by Fireminer »

Say, on a related topic, anyone here is Canadian or familiar with the Canadian anime fandom? I am interested in two topics: the conventions (like Anime North), and the French-speaking anime fans (Is it true that Leiji Matsumoto is just as big there as in France?)
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Re: An index of prominent figures in the early anime fandom?

Post by davemerrill »

I'm living in Canada right now and am on staff at Anime North.

Captain Harlock / Albator was huge in Quebec in the 70s and 80s and into the 90s. A lot of 70s series like Candy Candy, Grendizer ("Goldorak") and Albator were really popular in the Francophone world in general, including Quebec, in the 70s and 80s, and anime fandom is currently happening right now in Quebec, but I don't know how much crossover there is between the anime of the 70s and the modern anime fandom scene. I don't know that any of the 70s era fans are still involved in Japanese anime fandom, the way English-speaking fans of Yamato/Star Blazers still seem to be around.

I do know that when we went to see the Space Battleship Yamato Resurrection film in Montreal as part of the Fantasia festival, the screening was sold out and the audience seemed to be very familiar with Yamato and Leiji Matsumoto works.
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DKop
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Re: An index of prominent figures in the early anime fandom?

Post by DKop »

Well it goes without saying that the French love Matsumoto works and are inspired by them, like Interstella 5555, the animated movie tied to Daft Punk "Discovery" album back in 2001. It's really an animated rock opera to electronic music, and tells a solid story that I own and enjoy after all these years later. It got promoted on Cartoon Network that summer of 2001, which is how I first saw it and was amazed on how it looked through short snippits of those first 4 videos. They later showed all four on a Toonami Midnight Run premiere later that year.
Fireminer
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Re: An index of prominent figures in the early anime fandom?

Post by Fireminer »

davemerrill wrote: Tue Apr 23, 2019 5:38 am I'm living in Canada right now and am on staff at Anime North.

Captain Harlock / Albator was huge in Quebec in the 70s and 80s and into the 90s. A lot of 70s series like Candy Candy, Grendizer ("Goldorak") and Albator were really popular in the Francophone world in general, including Quebec, in the 70s and 80s, and anime fandom is currently happening right now in Quebec, but I don't know how much crossover there is between the anime of the 70s and the modern anime fandom scene. I don't know that any of the 70s era fans are still involved in Japanese anime fandom, the way English-speaking fans of Yamato/Star Blazers still seem to be around.

I do know that when we went to see the Space Battleship Yamato Resurrection film in Montreal as part of the Fantasia festival, the screening was sold out and the audience seemed to be very familiar with Yamato and Leiji Matsumoto works.
Sorry for forgetting about you and Anime North!

But do you see many old fans in Canadian anime conventions? Is there a distinction between different generation of fans? Or between English-speaking and French-speaking fans?

Also, I have just found out about this podcast about the Canadian fandom: Zannen, Canada.
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Re: An index of prominent figures in the early anime fandom?

Post by davemerrill »

from what I can determine, there were a few active anime fans in Canada in the 1980s who were part of the larger SF fandom world, and there was a C/FO chapter in Toronto for a short time, but for the most part anime fandom here was pretty quiet. Once Sailor Moon hit, however, anime fandom suddenly became a thing. Most of the people running Anime North got into Japanese anime fandom in the mid 1990s, that seems to be when everything started here. Canada's a big country with a lot of empty space between the cities, and it took a national broadcaster (YTV) to really put Japanese animation into the public eye - like the CBC/Radio Canada did with Albator and Goldorak in Quebec in the 70s.

I know there were several university based anime clubs in Toronto. There's a large Chinese expat community that had grown up building Gundam kits and a lot of anime merchandise was (and still is) available in the community. Anime North had its first convention in 1997, there was a university anime festival in 1995 in Edmonton, and the latter part of the 90s saw anime conventions popping up in most of Canada's large cities.

If there's any continuity between the people who enjoyed Goldorak and Albator in Montreal in the 70s and 80s and the anime fandom that rose up in the 1990s, I haven't seen it. I haven't spent nearly enough time in Montreal, though.
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