Younger fan, here to learn
Posted: Sun May 07, 2017 7:43 am
Hey there!
At a fresh, wide-eyed 24 years of age (ha ha...ha...) I can't claim to be part of the older generation of fans, but anime has been part of my life for basically forever. Like many fans my age, I rode into the wide world of anime on a wave of Pokemon and that 20th Century Fox release of Totoro. I didn't know what I was actually watching then, it'd still take a while for that, but even in the innocent 90's, when that trailer for one of those Ranma movies would come on at the end of the Pokemon tapes, there was a certain glimmer in my eye. I didn't know what I was looking at, but I could tell, this was different, this was the real stuff, and the fact that it wasn't present anywhere else in my limited world only gave me reason to want more of it.
My further searches took me through some fond experiences that, unfortunately, kids these days will never have again: going to the local libraries and used bookstores, and checking out the tapes of Blue Seed and Patlabor that some librarian expertly placed right on the same shelf as Scooby-Doo. My parents were, well, awfully confused, to say the least, but by this point, I was set on what I liked, and under the fine tutelage of the dudes at DVD rental stores, I was well on my way to becoming a full-fledged anime nerd. By the time I was in middle school and high school, I was hyped up and fed on an exclusive diet of Tokyopop and Shonen Jump.
In a lot of ways, being such a huge fan impacted my life to an irreplaceable degree. When I was younger, I was dead set on becoming a voice actor in anime dubs (I saw it as being the only avenue for a talentless gaijin to be part of the industry) and while that never happened, pursuing it is what first brought me into the acting field. In much the same way, my fascination with the themes and stories that were taking up so much of my time led to an interest in writing my own stories, and now I'm aspiring to be a fiction writer and playwright. I have no idea if I would have turned out the same, had my good pals Totoro and Pikachu not been there for me back in the 90's.
As I got older, however, my tastes got a bit different. I still enjoyed anime and manga, but in a more thoughtful way than I had before. I started examining it, writing about it, and researching how the modern works that I liked came to be the way they are. Moreover, I discovered that, while I still have a fondness for certain current work, most of the modern stuff just lacked the same spark that lit my fire back in the day. So, my research began going backwards, tying connections from what I'm consuming now, to the things that made them all possible. And as I learned more about older anime, older fandom began to show up on my radar as well. I was fascinated by the tales of the pre-modern-internet fandom days (it still boggles my mind that it was even possible) and eventually I realized. If it wasn't for the generations of fans that came before me, their passion, their enthusiasm, that the things that set me on my path, the Tokyopop volumes, the Blue Seed tapes, that one Ranma trailer with the guitar riff that's still been in my head these 20-some years, may not have been there at all.
So, I'm here not as much for purposes of nostalgia, but as a writer with a strong desire to learn new things. I would very much like to know more about the good old days, the shows and stories that inspired them, and all the people involved. And also, I just find it a shame that few new fans these days know that such a passionate, driven fandom was around those days at all. Though I've never had any real contact with the former generation of fans before now, I owe them a lot. It's time I got to know them better.
Sorry for the overlong intro, by the way. I promise I didn't mean for it to turn out like this.
At a fresh, wide-eyed 24 years of age (ha ha...ha...) I can't claim to be part of the older generation of fans, but anime has been part of my life for basically forever. Like many fans my age, I rode into the wide world of anime on a wave of Pokemon and that 20th Century Fox release of Totoro. I didn't know what I was actually watching then, it'd still take a while for that, but even in the innocent 90's, when that trailer for one of those Ranma movies would come on at the end of the Pokemon tapes, there was a certain glimmer in my eye. I didn't know what I was looking at, but I could tell, this was different, this was the real stuff, and the fact that it wasn't present anywhere else in my limited world only gave me reason to want more of it.
My further searches took me through some fond experiences that, unfortunately, kids these days will never have again: going to the local libraries and used bookstores, and checking out the tapes of Blue Seed and Patlabor that some librarian expertly placed right on the same shelf as Scooby-Doo. My parents were, well, awfully confused, to say the least, but by this point, I was set on what I liked, and under the fine tutelage of the dudes at DVD rental stores, I was well on my way to becoming a full-fledged anime nerd. By the time I was in middle school and high school, I was hyped up and fed on an exclusive diet of Tokyopop and Shonen Jump.
In a lot of ways, being such a huge fan impacted my life to an irreplaceable degree. When I was younger, I was dead set on becoming a voice actor in anime dubs (I saw it as being the only avenue for a talentless gaijin to be part of the industry) and while that never happened, pursuing it is what first brought me into the acting field. In much the same way, my fascination with the themes and stories that were taking up so much of my time led to an interest in writing my own stories, and now I'm aspiring to be a fiction writer and playwright. I have no idea if I would have turned out the same, had my good pals Totoro and Pikachu not been there for me back in the 90's.
As I got older, however, my tastes got a bit different. I still enjoyed anime and manga, but in a more thoughtful way than I had before. I started examining it, writing about it, and researching how the modern works that I liked came to be the way they are. Moreover, I discovered that, while I still have a fondness for certain current work, most of the modern stuff just lacked the same spark that lit my fire back in the day. So, my research began going backwards, tying connections from what I'm consuming now, to the things that made them all possible. And as I learned more about older anime, older fandom began to show up on my radar as well. I was fascinated by the tales of the pre-modern-internet fandom days (it still boggles my mind that it was even possible) and eventually I realized. If it wasn't for the generations of fans that came before me, their passion, their enthusiasm, that the things that set me on my path, the Tokyopop volumes, the Blue Seed tapes, that one Ranma trailer with the guitar riff that's still been in my head these 20-some years, may not have been there at all.
So, I'm here not as much for purposes of nostalgia, but as a writer with a strong desire to learn new things. I would very much like to know more about the good old days, the shows and stories that inspired them, and all the people involved. And also, I just find it a shame that few new fans these days know that such a passionate, driven fandom was around those days at all. Though I've never had any real contact with the former generation of fans before now, I owe them a lot. It's time I got to know them better.
Sorry for the overlong intro, by the way. I promise I didn't mean for it to turn out like this.
