Anyway, I'm almost 31. I currently live in a 'burb outside of Dallas (which is a huuuuuge change from where I used to live...a 'burb of Seattle. Long story. x__x) I discovered anime when I was relatively young, around tender age of 5 years old. While my family & I were living in Alaska for a brief period of time, I was surprised to find that the satellite tv we had would often get Japanese TV (I think this might have been because Alaska's a fairly common Japanese tourist spot? I don't know XD) and I would be entranced by the cartoons, even though I had no idea what was going on or what was being said. I started to notice that "style" of animation on cable TV and on VHS tapes at the video store, so I would jump at the chance to watch them whenever I could. I can't remember which movie I saw first--I'm pretty sure it was the old, ancient, pre-Viz release of Galaxy Express 999 that came first. But I vividly remember that that was the first "cartoon" I ever saw where PEOPLE DIED. Which I think was sort of a strange awakening at the time. (I didn't think characters in cartoons could DIE!) After that, I believe the next few things I saw on cable was Unico as well as the dubbed Hana No Ko No RunRun (released here as "Flower Angel"). After that, my mom got a job at a video store and I was given free-reign to rent whatever tapes I liked, which lead me to renting things like The Sea Prince & The Fire Child, A Journey Through Fairyland, Ringing Bell (that movie was TRAUMATIC, man, does anyone else remember that?!), Time Fighters, Clash of the Bionoids, Warriors of the Wind, etc etc. (The best part was that my mom would "borrow" spare tape decks from work and copy these tapes for me if I liked them enough. For a kid back then, I had QUITE the bootleg VHS collection goin' on. XD)
And as I grew, I found out that there was a name for this genre (though at the time a lot of people were calling it "Japanimation") and started learning the different names of creators, artists, and voice actors I liked. And when the internet boom came, I started ordering fansubs, trading VHS tapes, talking to fellow fans, going to anime cons (since I'd been going to comic ones already, anyway! I was elated when I discovered tiny little "Baka!-Con" in the Seattle area...which took up like 3 whole rooms of the tiny Double Tree Inn! XD Now it's huge and known as Sakura-con...where does the time go?!), the whole nine yards. Now that I'm in Texas, I attend Project A-kon yearly, which I really enjoy because it seems very older-fan-friendly. So it all just kind of stuck with me, even now that I'm an old lady. XD (I was actually interviewed in a podcast recently about fandom in general where I talked about a lot of stuff like this for The Armchair Fandomologists, if you're so inclined to listen.)
It's been strange for me over the years to see how anime and manga in America has changed from this...almost SECRET thing to full-on mainstream "genre". Paying $20-25 for a volume of flopped manga in English and $40-45 for a single subtitled VHS tape was perfectly normal for me for YEARS. Having to go to the Video Store and worry about people thinking you were a creepy pervert because the "Japanimation" tapes were shelved right next to where they kept the porn. I still feel sort of strange when I go into a bookstore or similar, and there's HUGE WALLS of manga, and rows of anime. I mean, you can even buy box sets of Dragonball and new volumes of the Sailor Moon manga from Wal-mart, of all places! From time to time, I even see anime titles in the Redbox machine for rent. If you'd told me even 15 years ago that someday you would be able to rent a One Piece movie from a VENDING MACHINE outside of the drug store, I would've laughed and called you insane. Boy, have things changed!
Sadly, when I moved from WA to TX, I ended up selling or even flat-out giving away a good chunk of my anime/manga collection without realizing that some of it's out of print and hard to get again (or just ridiculously expensive). I think one of my biggest shocks was that both Maison Ikkoku AND Ranma 1/2 were both now out of print, anime AND manga. This shocked me (esp. Ranma!) because I remember there was a time when these were Viz's most treasured flagship titles. It makes me sad that they either couldn't afford to renew them, or they just outright stopped publishing them due to low sales or whatever. (I guess at least those got to be finished...unlike the poor Urusei Yatsura manga. :C) I'm slowly trying to rebuild my collection to it's former glory, but it's taking a long time. (I did manage to get all of the non-flopped Maison Ikkoku back, for fairly cheap, through some amazing chance of luck on eBay. I seriously want to strangle these re-sellers on Amazon who keep trying to sell single vols of manga for $30 and up...)
Needless to say, I have a soft spot for anything that would be considered "old school" or "vintage" anime/manga. Some of my very favorites are Rumiko Takahashi's older works (particularly Urusei Yatsura, Maison Ikkoku, and Ranma 1/2), the old Sanrio films (Unico, Sea Prince & Fire Child, etc), old "cyber punk" stuff (Bubblegum Crisis, the original Armitage oavs, etc), Macross (Do you Remember Love and Macross Plus will always be my favorites), old magical girl fluff like Creamy Mami, Fancy Lala, even old Sailor Moon, older Gundam (I love Char, he's such a bad-ass! XD), Kimagure Orange Road, Oh My Goddess!, Tenchi Muyo!, El-Hazard, Robot Carnival, Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind, The Rose of Versailles, ugh I could just go on and on, really, there's so much out there that I love. ;__; I ate up everything when I was younger, heh.
Not a lot of anime coming out now really interests me...there are the odd few here and there, but not nearly as much as in the 80s and 90s, it feels like. I'm not huge on all the moe-moe-over-the-top weird romance stuff being cranked out as of late (esp. this weird infatuation with "big brother/little sister" relationships, ugh), but that's just me. Don't get me wrong--there are some good series coming out now (I loved Kids on the Slope, for example), but there just seems to be a lot less things that interest me the same way they did even in the early 00s. Which, considering the whole point of this board, I'm sure you all know what I mean.
Possibly off-topic, but I also enjoy voice acting a great deal...in fact, my boyfriend and I do a parody fandub of Kimagure Orange Road that we call "KOR Theater", where we take each episode and sort of re-write it to a 10-15 min ep, but keep most of the original plot intact. We started it in 09, I believe, and we're in the last season of it right now. It started off a little wonky, but once we got the hang of it I think it's a fun little project, even though the only people who seem to enjoy it are older geeks like us. XD I was also involved in a fandub of the "Presence" short from Robot Carnival, and I'm actually going to help work on a fandub of all 3 of the "Memories" shorts, starting with Magnetic Rose here soon, which I'm looking forward to.
I've been trying to work on a podcast as well, similar to the whole feel of this board, actually. I just keep getting so busy/distracted with other projects that I haven't really gotten it off the ground yet. x__x I really need to work on that, maybe this summer.
Anyway, enough of my rambling. I'm excited to be here, it's been a while since I was active on a forum.
Can't wait to start chatting with you all!
