The Old School Otaku Lounge

BTW, Thank you Dave for posting that scan. And here I thought I was just sharing some oddity with you, now you can help inform the WORLD by god.

You know, there's a beautiful raw roughness to that flyer. One has to remember that 1984, home computers and desktop publishing was still in its infancy. That flyer may have been typeset, or even painstakingly hand assembled via Letraset dry transfer lettering. Or maybe run off on a Dynamo 'kyron' do-gimmie. I think I see the shadow of strip edge along the lines but you'd get that from typesetting as well.

I'm sure Dave is laughing at my sheer ignorance at this point.

It sure looks like Letraset lettering to me. I don't miss that stuff, but then again, I kinda do.

With regards to their focus on Ultraman/Godzilla, wasn't part of General Products failure to launch in the US in some way connected to their failure to read the tastes of the American anime nerd market, or their inability to deliver goods that the American market wanted, or what? The Ultraman/Godzilla tokusatsu items were related to what the anime fans wanted, and there was some crossover in the fandoms, but largely it seemed to me at the time that the Godzilla people wanted Godzilla stuff and the anime people wanted anime stuff and the twain did not meet. Which doesn't seem to be the case in with the General Products crowd, everything's mixed together.

I know when GP had merch for sale at the one A-Kon they managed to table at, the merchandise seemed to be skewed away from the Yamato/Harlock/009 stuff I was (and still am) into, which I guess was old hat and desperately uncool at the time.

davemerrill wrote:With regards to their focus on Ultraman/Godzilla, wasn't part of General Products failure to launch in the US in some way connected to their failure to read the tastes of the American anime nerd market, or their inability to deliver goods that the American market wanted, or what? The Ultraman/Godzilla tokusatsu items were related to what the anime fans wanted, and there was some crossover in the fandoms, but largely it seemed to me at the time that the Godzilla people wanted Godzilla stuff and the anime people wanted anime stuff and the twain did not meet. Which doesn't seem to be the case in with the General Products crowd, everything's mixed together.

I know when GP had merch for sale at the one A-Kon they managed to table at, the merchandise seemed to be skewed away from the Yamato/Harlock/009 stuff I was (and still am) into, which I guess was old hat and desperately uncool at the time.

That's a good point, I read it more as people in US fandom were more familiar with Godzilla and Ultraman than anime at that point in time but history certainly proved they weren't great at reading contemporary fan interests over here. I think the classic example was people in the US asking for more Dirty Pair merch in the late '80s and early '90s, while GenePro kept responding with "but that's so OLD!" No real consideration for the time lapse between JP and US fandom at the time.

Old GenePro catalogs definitely took a more holistic approach to fandom and mixed up western scifi, Gerry Anderson shows, tokusatsu and anime merchandise together, but US anime fans at the time seemed to be singularly focused on Japanese cartoons and nothing else.

I think the Dirty Pair "but that's so old!" anecdote is what I'm thinking of. America seemed to have a longer churn period for a lot of these properties than Japan was expecting, I think. It's a big country, takes a while for this stuff to work its way into the nooks and crannies, especially if the only way people hear about it is through fanzines and clubs and small conventions.

Can't imagine what it must have been like to be a Japanese otaku at an American anime gathering in the early 1990s and seeing all the interest in Macross, Yamato, Dirty Pair, Z Gundam, Urusei Yatsura, and other boring old yesterday's news properties that were not new enough to be cool but weren't old enough to be nostalgia.

davemerrill wrote:I think the Dirty Pair "but that's so old!" anecdote is what I'm thinking of. America seemed to have a longer churn period for a lot of these properties than Japan was expecting, I think. It's a big country, takes a while for this stuff to work its way into the nooks and crannies, especially if the only way people hear about it is through fanzines and clubs and small conventions.

Can't imagine what it must have been like to be a Japanese otaku at an American anime gathering in the early 1990s and seeing all the interest in Macross, Yamato, Dirty Pair, Z Gundam, Urusei Yatsura, and other boring old yesterday's news properties that were not new enough to be cool but weren't old enough to be nostalgia.

Well, again, and this is from very limited first hand experience, but the reaction would have been "How do you know about this?!". There is just vapor lock in the Japanese otaku mind when it comes to we gaijin. We might know the word 'Gundam' but being able to discuss the evolution of Titans from the ashes of Jion's military (a version of Operation Paperclip?) or something like that, that's deep knowledge indeed, and seemingly thought impossible for anyone outside of Japan to even think about.

There is still an odd, curious insular, provincial mindset in modern Japan. 'Weeaboos' are an amusing curiousity but people like you, me, Tim, Zimmerit (that's another Dave, right?), we're downright scary.

(and I'm probably one of 3 people on this board who knows what Zimmerit is and the super obscure joke using that as a name is )

SteveH wrote:There is still an odd, curious insular, provincial mindset in modern Japan. 'Weeaboos' are an amusing curiousity but people like you, me, Tim, Zimmerit (that's another Dave, right?), we're downright scary.

Sean, actually! Dave was one of the other Colony Drop guys.

(and I'm probably one of 3 people on this board who knows what Zimmerit is and the super obscure joke using that as a name is )

I'd expect nothing less from someone who still spells Zeon with a "J," Steve!