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

[davemerrill]

I would love to put together a column on Canadian anime fandom history, but it's such a daunting task, everybody's so widely separated by both time and space (as _D_ says, it's a long way from Thunder Bay to Vancouver), and there's a whole galaxy of anime nerds in Quebec that I don't even know where to begin to find out about.

[mbanu]

there's a whole galaxy of anime nerds in Quebec that I don't even know where to begin to find out about.

Maybe Claude Pelletier of Protoculture Addicts? (http://clodjee.blogspot.ca/) I think both he and the fanzine were based in Montreal originally.

[mbanu]

Anyone else keeping up with this? He's up to Episode 10: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RBaeFxJMqE (^_^)

[mbanu]

Maybe related, William Chow goes on a podcast to talk about getting into anime: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aq6soBD7yPA

[_D_]

I've been listening to some of his podcasts. It's an interesting take on what was going on with the Vancouver scene. It's hardly a history of anime fandom in Canada though as there were many groups and individuals doing things all over the country by the mid 1980s. I don't think he really addresses this. Personally, I never even heard of him nor had dealings with him that I can recall. People in Winnipeg did though.

Currently, I'm actually watching more technical videos on Youtube these days, especially ones on fixing my old Betamaxes so I can retrieve videos for those people who have been requesting them. It's slow going but I'm making an effort to learn as much as possible in a short time. I got 5 old decks from a friend that I am tearing down for parts to be used to restore my Beta Hifi decks. It's no wonder you had to be a factory trained tech to do this stuff. But I have one deck fixed enough to resume doing tapes in Bet X-2 speed. The deck won't track any of the Beta X-3 speed tapes so I am trying to fix another model for just that speed. I'd like to just buy a refurbished unit but they are pricey. Older units that still work are unavailable in my area. Perhaps if I haunt garage sales or put out the word that I'm looking for them I might get a nibble. eBay would be an option but the cost to ship units cross country is prohibitive. Still working on it. But I still have a lot of stuff on VHS to transfer. I picked up another Super VHS deck cheap a few weeks back so I just need to make time to fill a few requests.

[mbanu]

New episode up -- this time on the origins of Arctic Animation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tSiJfsxy4M

[mbanu]

While he doesn't state it, it sounds like Arctic Animation was the very first speed subber; arguably the speed subbing culture is what pressured legitimate companies to create simulcasts, ushering in the modern streaming era of anime fandom. (^_^)

Also a shout-out to Bruce Carlson of the Phoenix Japanimation Society, who apparently hooked Arctic Animation up with their subtitling software back in the day. Between this and their influence on JACO (eventual creators of JACOsub), it really seems like PJS was a real pusher behind early fansubbing, just as much as the Ranma Project (which Chow also mentions).

[mbanu]

Interesting explanation from the episode on the technical aspects of doing fansubs with linear editing -- Chow ends up answering a question I had wondered on, why VHS fansubs often limited the flashy parts to the tape label or style rather than adding splash screens. Adding in extra graphics would have required another pass-through, degrading the tape quality by an extra generation.

Maybe obvious to old-school fans, but that hadn't occurred to me before. (^_^)

[mbanu]

Still chugging along; I thought the 1995 retrospective was interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7PS_OVjmK0

[_D_]

As an update, I've got a working Betamax again and have been archiving many old tapes. Hopefully something comes of it. Of late though I've been trying to archive many of the Hawaiian subbed series tapes but its a daunting task. Some of the tapes have badly deteriorated and now it seems I should have watched many of them all the way through as there are interesting things on them like Japanese game shows and local commercials from Hawaii that are of interest to people. It never ends...