1993

[kndy]

Hi everyone...For those involved in the fandom for a long time, what are your memories from 1993.

[SteveH]

1993. Well, I had a decent job, I was going to cons as a guest, Tekkaman Blade was wrapping up, Nishizaki was gearing up for Yamato 2520 and Giant Robo was completely destroying my mind with its amazingness.

I was making monthly trips to Chicago to visit Yaohan (now Mitsuwa) to buy magazines and see if Pony Toy had anything new and exciting. OTOH the Dollar was going completely in the tank against the Yen, prices were getting super stupid and it wouldn't be long before Uchino International (owner of both the Yaohan mini-mall chain and Pony Toy) washed its hands of being in the US of A and sell everything to a Hong Kong company. Or maybe the whole Hong Kong thing was a tax dodge. Anyway.

If not for meeting (in person) Dave and his crew, if not for Tekkaman Blade, if not for that insanely cool teaser trailer for Giant Robo at Project: A-Kon I may well have bowed out of our floating world.

[davemerrill]

The club in Atlanta was 'Anime X' and we met at a local arts center in a converted elementary school in Dunwoody, a tony suburb of Atlanta. We'd meet once a month and show about six hours worth of movies, TV shows, and anime. We'd go to Phar-Mor and buy cheap Fuji VHS tape for the club library. There was a local anime-based BBS, but anime fandom hadn't yet become computer-based. Most of the anime we were watching came from tape trading through several different networks of friends, or through a local Japanese video rental place.

I have absolutely no recollection of what was shown at the meetings. Patlabor, fan subbed Yamato movies, Ranma 1/2, Giant Robo, Gundam War In The Pocket, Tekkaman Blade, I guess.

Usually after the meetings we would invade somebody's house or my parent's basement (I was still living with the folks) and order pizza and watch more anime or something rented from the local Blockbuster or Hollywood Video. If there was a convention happening we'd go to it even if we weren't really interested in what the convention was about. We'd usually throw a party for New Years or the 4th of July.

Every summer we'd fill up a couple of cars and drive to A-Kon in Dallas. If Streamline had a movie out we'd see it, usually at the theater at Georgia State University, which seemed to be the only place in town that would book entertaining foreign stuff, as opposed to the artsy foreign stuff.

We hadn't started working on AWA yet - plans for that would start in 1994.

[gaijinpunch]

I graduated high school and went to college. Exposed my roommate to my subtitling setup. What muscle I had from playing football went away. I stayed the same weight but got terribly soft. I also started my Japanese degree. While I don't use my language that much these days (other than to mainly communicate w/ my son and his mother) it no doubt opened tons of doors for me.

[greg]

I was a junior/senior in high school that year. By 1993, I had established myself as the sole anime nerd at my school. The skaters knew what Akira was and maybe some other stuff like Vampire Hunter D, but the normals would just say, "Japanimation? You mean like Speed Racer?" (Assuming they knew even that much.) There was an independently-owned video rental store (back when they use to exist) that was within bike-riding distance that had a section on the back wall reserved for anime. 1993 is also the year I had discovered the Anime Archive BBS in Phoenix, AZ where I lived.

I think 1993 is when I read that article in Protoculture Addicts about living and working in Japan as an English teacher, and I knew that this is what I wanted to do after college.

[PinkAppleJam]

1993 was a weird transitional year for me between school, SNES gaming, and starting tape-trading. My dad was a video-nasties fan in the 80's so to get obscure Italian horrors he knew how to hook up two VHS players. This knowledge was passed down to me (!) which enabled me to do tape trades of obscure stuff like Ranma. I definitely saw Akira, got Ranma 1/2 ep 1, Fire Tripper, Outlanders on one tape. I had also started getting hold of old Johji Manabe comics (the ones translated by Studio Proteus). I copied and copied and copied the art, as well as the old Super Nintendo catalogues and magazines which featured UK artists drawing influenced by anime and manga.

It was the year in secondary (high) school where we did SATs to prove what exam grades we were capable of doing before hitting the real things in two years. I got decent results, which led to pressure from teachers who didn't give a monkey's about the weird girl drawing in the corner, for me to get good exam results, and derailed my straight-to-art-college plans by having to do a different (more varied, so I suppose fair) further education route. However I just wanted to be left alone with games and comics, so I was a bit bitter. I set myself back on my comfy-path after pleasing all the people who needed pleasing with exams, yecch.

[SignOfZeta]

Let's see...

In 1993, I think, I bought the US Manga Corps LD of Project A-Ko.

I ordered a lot of stuff from places like Nikaku Animart, which is evidently still in business, and a bunch of places now long gone. Image Anime, Books Nippon, JAM Group, etc.

I didn't have a tape trading hookup back then and I was poor so it was mostly domestic releases. I think Nausicaa was my only import LD back then. I had a raw copy of Char's Counterattck. Most of what I experienced was through books or model kits. I think Animerica was around by this time, also Anime UK, and Protoculture Addicts.

Evidently, according to a thing I just read, the US LD of the first Tenchi Muyo OVA was out in late 93. That was a pretty big deal since it was a near carbon copy of the JP original with English Closed Captions and a dub track. Until then most US releases were not the greatest quality, but this disc is still one of the best looking ones I own.

[yusaku]

The year 1993 was an anime dead zone for me. I was in college and the college was located in the middle of the wilderness. The nearest town was eighteen miles away and the town only had one stop light. What little anime I got to see was due to my best friend bringing his tv and a huge video collection to his dorm room. I was into Disney stuff and dramas then. None of the major outlets were selling anime like they are now in Mississippi. I was a poor college kid living in a dorm in rural Mississippi. There was not much anime floating around there.

[danth]

My main anime memory from '93 was playing Lunar: The Silver Star on my then-girlfriend's Sega CD. Still probably my favorite game ever.

[gaijinpunch]

The year 1993 was an anime dead zone for me. I was in college and the college was located in the middle of the wilderness.

Mine wasn't that far out, but to put it into perspective, I was excited to upgrade from FIDOnet to the real internet... and then I realized what that entailed. My school was tiny and in the middle of nowhere. Email replies were painfully slow... basically FIDOnet reply times. Uggh... wasn't until I went to UT Austin that I fully realized exactly what the interwebs was.