The Old School Otaku Lounge

Akage wrote: ↑Fri Oct 13, 2017 1:01 pm

SteveH wrote:I remember it well. BOY do I remember it well. I think it actually got around to 85 Yen to the Dollar at one point.

This happened during 2007-2008 as well. I remember receiving invoices from my deputy service, ShoppingMallJapan, and being in absolute tears. There was a lot of really nice production artwork being sold on Yahoo Japan during this era. I was glad to have a really good paying job back then.

I always wondered where the notion of charging $10 for a 330 tankobon manga came from. I always figured that it was factoring in the licensing, translation and printing fees.

Playing catch up on posts:
85 yen to the dollar wasn't even the floor. I lived in Japan but got paid in dollars. 2008 was when it started but soon after the Earthquake in 2011, it got as low as 74 yen to the dollar. So painful. I had a small, word of mouth only deputy service a la Shopping Mall Japan and the exchange rate really killed it.

Those were some tough times.

Not from October like the photos, but a couple of 1979 newsletters from February and December showed up on archive.org:

https://archive.org/details/1979-02-cfo ... -screening
https://archive.org/details/1979-12-15-cfo-bulletin/

I'm guessing "Banner the Squirrel" is Bannertail? The mentions in the February newsletter of screenings "courtesy of Toei Doga" is interesting, I think Fred Patten mentioned this before? They were trying to convince Hollywood to consider releasing their things in the U.S., and were hoping the C/FO could help, if I remember correctly... might just be my imagination, though. Does anyone else know more about the C/FO & Toei connection? This happening while anime spread domestically through grey-market UHF shows as mentioned in the KIKU thread.

Also interesting the complaints that the C/FO was over-emphasizing Japanese animation.

mbanu wrote: ↑Mon Sep 20, 2021 9:04 am I'm guessing "Banner the Squirrel" is Bannertail?

Programming choices are interesting too -- how did they decide what to play when?

Banner the Squirrel was between Brave Raideen and Getta Robo G, for instance:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07iM9PT-buE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gs7_WmSF8oA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBwUkopZDt0

I love seeing these old anime club newsletters. Just reading about what they were up to last month is fascinating. I had to put together items like that for our newsletter and at the time I was not sure if it was worthwhile at all, but I had no idea years later we'd be interested in what kind of costumes people were wearing at what SF convention.

I know Fred Patten had contacts at the Tatsunoko and Toei offices in Los Angeles, and he'd spoken before about how the C/FO was used as a sounding board and/or test market for shows these companies were thinking of exporting. It pays to be in the entertainment capital of the world, I guess.