The Old School Otaku Lounge

Hey gang if you wanna see what the A-Kon II program book looked like, check out this Twitter thread: https://twitter.com/BabyBlueFriday/stat ... 4258789378

(amended twitter storm of mine follows:)

I was at that A-Kon but I have no idea where my copy of the book wound up. There's some bad fan art of mine in this book. This was from 1991, A-Kon's second year (the first & only AnimeCon in San Jose was also 1991). A lot of the staff were anime fan pals from the EDC days of the 80s, this con was the Next Fandom Step. We filled two cars full of Atlanta anime nerds and drove 12 hours down I-20 to Dallas for this show, which acted as a yearly summit meeting between the Los Angeles & Atlanta anime parody dub groups of Corn Pone Flicks & Pinesalad Productions (meaning: water gun fights).

The program book editor got some static for his irreverent editorial style, which annoyed & confused some of the old-style SF/gaming fans of the DFW area, for whom A-Kon was just one more media fandom con to attend. This tension came to a head at the third A-Kon, when the East Coast vs West Coast water gun fight was interrupted by con security. The Security staff was made up of gaming/SF con staff veterans who held Japanese animation and anime fans in contempt. There was an altercation in a hotel stairwell that involved a con security staffer and the con program book editor; stupid behavior all around. Program book editor left the con & didn't return for years. Security staff hassled us the remainder of the weekend,

I went to the first ten A-Kons; the early days were summit meetings for anime fans from every point of the compass, daisy-chained VCRs copying fansubs for all comers, half the attendees writing or drawing anime-type comics for Eternity or Antarctic. A real gathering of the tribes. Of course anime cons popped up everywhere and A-Kon got less vital for anime fandom as a whole, and the con focus wandered further afield from those silly Japanese cartoons, and we all got too busy to drive 12 hours every May.

At the time, as a 22-year old know it all, I felt A-Kon was more "real" while AnimeCon/Expo was corporate and soulless. Certainly the Expo I attended ('96) was all official licenses, approved screeners, few fan panels or fansubs, while A-Kon was almost all panels of fans gushing about (& spreading misinformation about) their fave shows, fansubbers swapping tapes, parody dub premieres, and goofy drunken antics. You combine the 90s iterations of both conventions and you kind of have what we've got now, fan panels over here, Crunchyroll over there, cosplayers everywhere.

Cool write-up - always like seeing the guest and panels lists from these much older events, even if they make me sad I wasn't able to attend.

davemerrill wrote: ↑Mon Mar 12, 2018 8:56 amfans gushing about (& spreading misinformation about) their fave shows

This is, frankly, something I really miss about fandom. Speculation was common because it was either a pre-internet or dial-up era when information was hard to come by. There was something really magical about all the rumors and stories that people heard and told. Yeah a lot of stuff wasn't true and a good deal of it was nonsense but there was something special about the time--there was a sense of wonder and mystery. I remember rumors that you could resurrect Aeris in Final Fantasy VII, for example, or somehow get General Leo into your party in Final Fantasy VI. None of these rumors were true but the fact that there even could be rumors spread by word-of-mouth and no reliable way of verifying it (i.e. a much less Wild West internet environment that's also much larger) was something wonderful, I think.

Very cool... My first A-kon was I think 3 (or maybe it was 4). I do recall the legendary fight after the water gun thing, so maybe I went to 4. I went to most of the minicons as well... admittedly though, most of what I did in those things dupe like 20 VHS tapes all weekend long. Oh, the good old days. These young punks have no idea how easy they have it.

To add on to this trip down memory lane (sorta), I had a family friend come up to Chicago (where I live now) to look at apartments with her daughter as she'll move here soon. She's into theater, cosplay, all that jazz. She talks about how pumped she is for the upcoming A-kon. Holy cow! I was kinda shocked it was still going on.... but I guess why wouldn't it? (I do believe some of that old Dallas crew are the ones that throw it now, no?)

On a weird side note: As you seem to have been active in the Dallas scene, does anyone know what happened to Donovan?

Honestly, I don't know what happened to Donovan. Last I heard - and this was the 1996-1999 time frame - he had some sort of business going where he'd license, import and translate Japanese dating-sim games. He was supposed to be at the first AWA but his car broke down somewhere in Alabama. Part of my one & only visit to Anime Expo involved picking him up at the bus station in L.A., which in the mid 1990s might have been at one of its peaks of scaryness.

Project A-Kon is still owned & operated by Meri Davis under the auspices of her "Phoenix Entertainment Media Group" - I don't know what legal organization ran Project A-Kon back in the day but she's been con chair since day one.

I do kinda miss those days of having one room full of VCRs all taping for all comers. People from the West Coast would bring tapes of weird English-dub pilot films, people from the East Coast would bring parody subs and fansubs, Steve and Jerry would bring their laser-disc copies of Yamato III or you name it, you'd wander down the hall and somebody would have their fansubbing rig busy fan-subbing something new. Maybe we might actually attend an actual Project A-Kon function, but usually it was restaurant to liquor store to room party, repeat X3.

davemerrill wrote: ↑Thu Apr 05, 2018 2:42 pm Honestly, I don't know what happened to Donovan. Last I heard - and this was the 1996-1999 time frame - he had some sort of business going where he'd license, import and translate Japanese dating-sim games. He was supposed to be at the first AWA but his car broke down somewhere in Alabama. Part of my one & only visit to Anime Expo involved picking him up at the bus station in L.A., which in the mid 1990s might have been at one of its peaks of scaryness.

Project A-Kon is still owned & operated by Meri Davis under the auspices of her "Phoenix Entertainment Media Group" - I don't know what legal organization ran Project A-Kon back in the day but she's been con chair since day one.

I do kinda miss those days of having one room full of VCRs all taping for all comers. People from the West Coast would bring tapes of weird English-dub pilot films, people from the East Coast would bring parody subs and fansubs, Steve and Jerry would bring their laser-disc copies of Yamato III or you name it, you'd wander down the hall and somebody would have their fansubbing rig busy fan-subbing something new. Maybe we might actually attend an actual Project A-Kon function, but usually it was restaurant to liquor store to room party, repeat X3.

Or even a nice 1st gen off LD copy of Mazinger Z Vs. Devilman?

(Hey Discotek! How about a DVD of the Go Nagai 'Terebi Manga Festival' shorts? Let people have a taste of Mazinger Z and Great Mazinger et al before they invest in the box sets? You can do it. )

One regret I have is Jerry and I didn't make copies of all the shorts on the 'Matsumoto World' LD. There was some goofy Danguard A and Starzinger stuff going on there, I'll tell you whut. Prime fodder for the CPF Subs treatment.

I will second what Dave said about the normal con pattern. Very little of actually doing con things, mostly about hanging around, parties and going out to eat. Man that one AWA with the Georgia Diner RIGHT NEXT DOOR to the hotel. They were NOT ready for the posse around Peter Fernandez. LOL!

Ya know, it's always been a shame. Given how 'fleshed out' the Gamilas became in Yamato 2199 (and 2202), no more Gamilon Embassy private party. There had to have been joy to see that BOTH designs of Talan made the cut. And who would have thought Barger would turn out really cool?* *le sigh*

*Find a copy on pirate sites, Yamato 2199 Ark of the Stars. Sheer awesome if a bit draggy in the middle act. Gamilons wearing '30s clothing and hanging around the Bradbury Hotel (cf. Bladerunner)? What is there not to like?

davemerrill wrote: ↑Thu Apr 05, 2018 2:42 pm Project A-Kon is still owned & operated by Meri Davis under the auspices of her "Phoenix Entertainment Media Group" - I don't know what legal organization ran Project A-Kon back in the day but she's been con chair since day one.

Okay, that rings a bell. I believe maybe Donovan just ran the video room then? Eventually I think that went to someone else. I remember the endless drama with his POS car. I had to pick him up plenty of times. It didn't even have power steering and he loved it like that.