William Chow's vodcast series, History of Fan Anime in North America

[mbanu]

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... MyQpwihAJR

By William Chow of Arctic Animation and the Vancouver Japanese Animation Society. (^_^)

[davemerrill]

what does he mean, "history of fan anime"? Animation produced by fans?

[SteveH]

what does he mean, "history of fan anime"? Animation produced by fans?

I suspect poor grammar may be involved. Inelegant sentence construction. I would have written "A history of a fan: Anime in North America" Or "History of Fandom: Anime***" or any number of constructions that don't scan in an awkward way.

[mbanu]

Some interesting perspectives, at least. (^_^)

As an anime "middle schooler", I found his "statement of the obvious" episode was actually a bit helpful for framing the anime fandom stuff I've found online, even though it does veer kinda close to "Back In My Day" stories.

Like the reminder that even though looking at it now it's easy to view rec.arts.anime as just a popular message board like Reddit today, it was only a very specific subset of anime fans who were on Usenet, and was not representative of fandom as a whole... also that that was true to some degree about all online remnants of anime fandom before a certain date, even BBS stuff. Sort of like Chet Jasinski's 1992 impression that maybe only 10% of anime fans even owned a computer, let alone went on BBSes to talk about anime.

I'll say that collectively this also made it easier for me to understand the Cal-Animage script book that DKop scanned from 1991. Knowing that genlocks had already been around for a few years by then, and that fansubbing had already started, it was a bit puzzling to me that a script-book would still be so popular.

[DKop]

Oh, you must mean this thing, now that makes sense!

http://animeofyesteryear.blogspot.com/2 ... al-of.html

[SteveH]

!!!

Stop the presses. Reading other posts tied to that link above I learn much to my shock it appears that one Doug Orlowski is actually here among us! Well hell.

See, Doug, in a way, unknowingly, helped me further on my way into this floating world.

It was either Dec. 1981 or Jan. 1982, it was a con near Detroit (I believe it was a Confusion), I was introduced to Marg Baskin and her crew (and where I first met Ardith) who were all a bit glum because Ardith had borrowed a couple of tapes from C/Fo Detroit, one of them being the first Ziv dubbed Space Pirate Captain Harlock. (the good one and I won't hear anything different). Glum faces because here was a tape they really really wanted to watch, and no way to watch it.

New Guy Steve (me), who was kind of shoved in a corner after first introductions piped up, because I had hauled my massive 42 pound Silvania VHS VCR with me. Oh, suddenly everyone wanted to pay attention to me you betcha. I got the VCR out of my room, hooked it up, and we all watched raptly as Captain Harlock dealt with the evil Zetons. I think we watched that tape 3 times. There was discussion about what a shame it was we didn't have a second VCR to dupe it, if it wasn't copygarded, that is.

Marg said,like it was a deep deep secret, they had a friend in another room that had a VCR and 'other' stuff, maybe he could make some copies. (it may be he was wanting to do some tape cloning for Marg but he only had one VCR? I'm just guessing) So, trusting idiot I was, (and Ardith was very worried about that tape!), I actually loaned my machine and cables to a guy I never really saw, for the purposes of getting a copy of that tape. Everything was fine, I think my machine was in constant use for a day or so, but I got it back just fine, Ardith got her tape back to return to Detroit, and I got my second gen copy which I still have to this day.

It is REALLY strange how some of these people turn up in an unexpected way. Doug, if you are here and I'm relating that story (from my viewpoint of course) correctly, then a decades long belated Thank You for your help.

Some time over the weekend I had heard the name Doug Orlowski mentioned as the person in the secret room.

[davemerrill]

I met Doug at the 1986 Atlanta Worldcon and did some subsequent tape swapping with him as well, and it was great to reconnect with him via this message board.

I might be an old fuddy duddy but man, if there's a way to convey information that is less attractive to me than the YouTube video-blog method, I don't know what it is. I would MUCH rather read a blog post. Even a transcript of a video would be of more utility to me than watching the video itself.

[DKop]

Doug contacted me about him getting stuff together to post on my blog regarding magazines and posters. I posted up a post a couple of months back of the Chirashi that I got from him and put that all on a PDF. I haven't heard from him in a while, i'll send him an email and see where he's at.

http://animeofyesteryear.blogspot.com/2 ... rashi.html

[SteveH]

Doug contacted me about him getting stuff together to post on my blog regarding magazines and posters. I posted up a post a couple of months back of the Chirashi that I got from him and put that all on a PDF. I haven't heard from him in a while, i'll send him an email and see where he's at.

http://animeofyesteryear.blogspot.com/2 ... rashi.html

Oh good, I get to do there here!

You understand that 'Chirashi' just means 'Tear Sheet' or what we normally call flyers, right? It's nothing magical or special or Japanese only, it's just a word that most people wouldn't know jack crap about what it means.

Flyers, handbills, pamphlets- all Tear Sheets. Post no bills= don't be sticking no tear sheets to the wall.

It's like a recent Answerman post. "Hey, what's the deal about "randoseru" " and I just wanted to scream, because 'Landsel or the Dutch 'Ransel' is so dang obvious and not getting it's a loanword that just means 'backpack' (probably technically a haversack given the military origin) and you put away the backpack and start carrying a valise in upper grades because that's more adult should be pretty obvious.

Argh. I'm old and cranky.

[DKop]

Argh. I'm old and cranky.

Oh, your definetely that alright

I got an email back from Doug, hes doing well just been busy with scanning stuff. He say's he checks the forums so he's still around.