RIP - Aging Otakus No Longer With Us

[yusaku]

Fifty is far too young to not be around. Particularly with our group. I am almost forty now and my plan has always been to have a huge video, video games, and manga collection to enjoy when I am in my late fifties to enjoy. So very sorry to hear you lost your friend. Fifty is way too young! I am going to ride my bike today and have vegetable smoothie today; I am working to improve and protect my health.

[davemerrill]

Fifty's way too young!

[SteveH]

It is really strange that there's a wave of 'my' Otaku Generation folk just dropping like flies. I'm really feeling odd about all this, this sense of unusual doom.

Dave has been crusading for some time now about changing habits and working to be more healthy and of course he's right about that but so DAMN often what's killing 'us' has little to do with healthy or unhealthy choices! Or maybe to modify that, 'cleaning up' one's act (eating better, eating wisely, exercise, moderation, all that) doesn't make one spit of difference if you have, say, a brain tumor.

I was thinking about that. I wonder, if in some small, strange way, we were more susceptible to that due to our video habits? I'm thinking of 4 or 10 VCRs chugging away, all connected by low shielding cables, just how much RF radiation were we soaking in?

Naw, that doesn't make sense. If there was that much RF/EM radiation spraying around it would have damaged tapes.

[davemerrill]

It's been a really lousy year. A few Sundays back we learned our pal Danno Baker died suddenly of an embolism. Danno was an anime fan from the 1980s era, he was in the C/FO, we both worked on zines together, we published a book of comics together, he'd help out when I did Anime Hell in Atlanta and when he moved to Dallas he did Anime Hell at conventions there. He'd just wrapped up his AnimeFest show and I was looking forward to Skypeing with him and finding out how it went, when bam, he's gone.

He did artwork for AWA program books and shirts and made little animated films and had about a dozen blogs, and now his roommate and friends have to dig through all his stuff and figure out what's what, and the rest of us are still kind of dazed.

[SteveH]

Brother, I am sick of this. Sick of this. I'm serious, I honestly believed that it wouldn't be until I was in my 60s or 70s that I would be talking about friends passing away.

It hurts so much that I wasn't able to share the fun of Yamato 2199 with my best friend Jerry Fellows. That he never saw Discotek release Mazinger Z on DVD. That I was never able to get him to AWA.

F**k.

[DKop]

I remember reading Gibson Hokuto no Fogie blog during my days at my crappy call center job a few years ago, and while i'm reading his stories as some foul mouth customer was cussing me out over the phone, it was one of the many antidotes I used to help me get through that place that didn't require booze or drugs like everyone else did at that hellhole.

If it wasn't for Gibson and what he displayed on his site, I don't think I would have started blogging myself, and I really wish I met the guy in person. I am glad Anime World Order and Time Eldred got their interviews with him way before he passed away. I actually found out about him from one of the past episodes of AWO where I replied to one of his comments when he started to do the blog, now that I think about it. I always like telling his Wicked City story when I show parts of that anime for the 18+ panels I do at local cons, which people seem to enjoy to add some context to an anime like Wicked City. Sadly enough, on the episode he was on for AWO I asked him a question about his blog, which I didn't know he responded to my question until I found out about his death. I once again missed my chance to communicate with the guy.

If anything, I think the purpose of this forum is to archive as much knowledge as we can on the fandom of the past, even to go as far as making a documentary about it. I have given the latter much thought in putting my "now achieving" Communication degree to good use once I get out of school.

[davemerrill]

It would be great to have a documentary about anime fandom in the United States that wasn't 85% cosplayers. That would be nice. Nothing against cosplay but when fandom is depicted in the media, it is "people in costumes", period.

[DKop]

Oh no Dave, I totally agree. That was exactly my thoughts when Steve PM me earlier about me stating a documentary in my earlier post. For me it's an idea, and that idea "might" include .05 percent about cosplay, because why should I bother to cater to that crowed when they got 1000 other documentaries about the same damn thing, and a SyFy show with freaking Yaya Han as their "cosplay spokesperson."

Yea, let's be real here, the people who cosplay and the people who don't are about 50/50 at conventions. I'm not against it by any means ( I did a Detective Percy from Riding Bean one year at Animazement, with a REAL FUMANCHU from my face, it was boss), but that's only one part of fandom that is getting attention right now in main media, because its attention grabbing. But anime fandom (and general fandom) is not ALL about cosplay, but I think we all know that on here.

Yea, it seems that you can make a documentary about anything these days, and in my mind, if I did this and people criticized it for not being that well made, then they can go out and do better than me, I am all for that. I'm doing a documentary class next semester at the university I go to, so whatever I pick up in that class that I will apply into making what I want.

[Daniel]

I mentioned this already to Dustin privately, but I think this idea rocks!

Would you at all be interested in making it something of a group project that the people on this board could help out with? There is A LOT of knowledge and experience that the members here could share. Maybe some would do interviews for the video as well.

If so then let's make a new topic so this thread doesn't get derailed.

[DKop]

That's a good idea, you don't want me to disorganize the forum and bring in chaos within a week of me being here