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!
The thing that really kills me is that this was published in 1996?! Someone who worked for Archie comics must've been a fan themselves, I mean, talking about buying Japanese books and imported Laser Discs? That wasn't terribly mainstream back then...
Yeah, I remember a lot of friends in high school started talking to me either from seeing me draw (lol I did a lot of bad anime fanart back then ), seeing me read manga/anime mags, or finding out that I ran the anime club. AH, MEMORIES.