The Days of Anime Hasshin

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: The Days of Anime Hasshin

Post by runesaint »

I sent music reviews at one point to the Rose. I would of course change them a lot now.... but.. I am glad that I was 'part' of something for a while.
davemerrill
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Re: The Days of Anime Hasshin

Post by davemerrill »

I sent *so much* bad fan art to The Rose.

Lorraine would print darn near anything anybody sent her, which meant you'd see really accomplished Bob DeJesus art next to not-so-accomplished art by people whose enthusiasm didn't match their skills, like me. But the point is that The Rose came out on time and was always a big, solid, cover-all-the-bases zine, with reviews of just about everything. Not a lot of anime fanzines can match that track record.
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usamimi
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Re: The Days of Anime Hasshin

Post by usamimi »

davemerrill wrote:I got in touch with Lorraine Savage recently, and I should have a big Let's Anime all about Anime Hasshin coming up next month!
Very cool! I look forward to that. :D
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SteveH
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Re: The Days of Anime Hasshin

Post by SteveH »

davemerrill wrote:I sent *so much* bad fan art to The Rose.

Lorraine would print darn near anything anybody sent her, which meant you'd see really accomplished Bob DeJesus art next to not-so-accomplished art by people whose enthusiasm didn't match their skills, like me. But the point is that The Rose came out on time and was always a big, solid, cover-all-the-bases zine, with reviews of just about everything. Not a lot of anime fanzines can match that track record.
Ya know, Dave, your art has never been bad. Uneven, maybe, a little sloppy at times, sure, but not bad. We've seen bad.

The one thing I used to bag on you about was that whole 'leave the back bar off all the 'E's ' thing. I hate that crap. It's pretentious as all hell and hard to read. So there. :)

(and no, not JUST you, ANYONE who uses that. It's as bad a Fong Fu on a Chinese/Asian restaurant menu. Or Comic Sans. *brrrrr* )
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Re: The Days of Anime Hasshin

Post by davemerrill »

I have been scanning a selection out of 60+ issues of The Rose and there is some fan art of mine in there and my signature has the "E" with the missing vertical, so get ready, Steve!!! Honestly I can't remember my justification for that. I must have seen it somewhere and thought it was cool.

One thing that isn't cool is me getting irritated at 25 year old fan feud stupidity- there's an editorial in an early issue where Lorraine details the following:

a new anime club published their newsletter, in which there was an editorial where the club detailed its purposes and aims, one of which was stated as to NOT be like OTHER clubs that were "run as dictatorships for the benefit of the friends of the officers", that "didn't publish zines on time", and a whole list of other offenses - and then the editorial went on to name these clubs. Anime Hasshin was one of those named clubs.

Lorraine sent a "WTF, plz explain yourself" letter, which led to a long, passive-aggressive screed from the club prez, defending his accusations poorly - claiming Anime Hasshin had failed to deliver a fanzine that, in fact, Anime Hasshin had nothing whatsoever to do with, for instance. It was a real low point for fandom in general and that club in particular.

Why on Earth anybody would waste time and energy and paper and ink to go out of his way to pointlessly call out some nerd club on the other side of the country, that he wasn't even a member of, that he had no contact with, and that was happily over there doing its thing without bothering anybody... well, I wish I had that kinda free time. I'd be irritated if I was paying money to be a member of a club that was wasting my dues on this nonsense.

Punchline is that Anime Hasshin lasted a good ten years after that stupid incident, while the other fan club faded away and now is a footnote of a footnote. Ugh, so irritating.

There's also a really entertaining piece about Anime East and their "Tezuka Awards", which was this attempt to have some kind of Emmy or Oscars for the anime field, and which the Tezuka Productions people got involved with, and which didn't work out so well. I remember kind of raising my eyebrows at the time at the whole idea of having some kind of fakey awards thing, but I never made it to Anime East so it wasn't on my radar, really.
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Re: The Days of Anime Hasshin

Post by SteveH »

I suspect the whole 'Tezuka Awards' dealie was nothing more in the end but a group of fans wanting to somehow get some reflected glory for doing the award.

What would the point be? Back then we know the awards would go to KOR and Ranma 1/2 and Bubblegum Crisis and maybe Nadia. Maybe. Oh, and Robotech.

I think the deal with the complaining guy was he wanted attention. I'm sure he couldn't turn out a 'zine as nice as I remember the Rose being and likely figured Lorraine would either not respond or rush to give him free 'zines to show she's not a bad person. I assume this got around as part of the 'zine trading agreements in place back in the day (send one get one).
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Re: The Days of Anime Hasshin

Post by davemerrill »

the other guy writing the accusatory club editorial... well, I don't want to call anybody out, but let's just say he ran an anime club in San Antonio, Texas, that had gone from being a chapter of a national org to an independent club, and that his name rhymed with Schmandall Scmukey.

Oh, to heck with it. Here you go, everybody.

Here's what appeared in The Rose #18 - Lorraine's letter to FAST about their newsletter allegations, Randall's reply, and Lorraine's reply to the reply.
letter1.jpg
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This was Lorraine's letter to Jack Thielpape, who was the contact for F.A.S.T., the club that had at one point been C/FO San Antonio.
Following is Randall's letter. Note the typeface; all their zines used this same tiny typeface, which these days I need a magnifying glass to read.
letter2.jpg
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"I have no desire to start an argument with you," he says. Yeah, see, you don't start an argument, and then say you don't want to start one. Because you started one yourself.

Lorraine's reply:
letter3.jpg
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The patience she displays here is amazing, and her statement - "I decided there needed to be one more anime club in the world and I put myself in the position to do something about it," is just about a perfect summation of how we all felt at the time, we were out there putting meetings and newsletters together and some guy hundreds of miles away deciding we weren't "doing it right?" Come on.

I don't know how long F.A.S.T. lasted, but as of The Rose #18 Anime Hasshin had more than a decade of active anime fandom ahead of it, long after F.A.S.T. was gone and forgotten.
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Re: The Days of Anime Hasshin

Post by SteveH »

Well, f**knuts, Dave, why didn't you just say 'more Stukey Madness' and I would have instantly understood. Yeesh! :)

I recall jack being a pretty decent guy so looks he got caught in the middle of the crap. OTOH he may have sent a private letter (not published) that told Lorraine "Hey, sorry, wasn't me".

Stukey really had some challenges when it came to understanding people it seems.
davemerrill
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Re: The Days of Anime Hasshin

Post by davemerrill »

the Anime Hasshin article is up at Let's Anime now!

http://letsanime.blogspot.ca/2017/03/in ... sshin.html
SteveH
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Re: The Days of Anime Hasshin

Post by SteveH »

davemerrill wrote:the Anime Hasshin article is up at Let's Anime now!

http://letsanime.blogspot.ca/2017/03/in ... sshin.html
Outstanding job, as usual. :)

To this day I deeply regret not sending her any money for her 'zines. I really should have but at the time I was kind of poo-pooing that whole aspect of fandom. And dirt poor. 20/20 hindsight is too powerful sometimes.
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