Animezanai

The roughly mid-90's and earlier (generally pre-Toonami, pre-anime boom) era of anime & manga fandom: early cons, clubs, tape trading, Nth Generation VHS fansubs, old magazines & fanzines, fandubs, ancient merchandise, rec.arts.anime, and more!
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mbanu
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Animezanai

Post by mbanu »

An anime club run by Brian Henderson out of Santa Ana, CA. The main reason I figured it deserved its own thread is that a 1989 club video room schedule was preserved by the folks over at the ConFurence Archive (https://confurence.com/about/), a site mostly devoted to early furry fandom but that has a few anime things due to the way these fandoms jumbled together in the early days.

Does anyone know anything about this club?
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mbanu: What's between Old School and New School?
runesaint: Hmmm. "Middle School", perhaps?
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mbanu
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Re: Animezanai

Post by mbanu »

Not sure if it's the same Brian Henderson who was involved with Animezanai, but an anime-fan Brian Henderson left a couple comments on a story about Carl Macek's death:
Brian Henderson wrote:Yeah, I remember hanging out with Carl back in his comic days, he had a TV and VCR up by the register and a bunch of us would go in with tapes of anime to show him. As far as I know, I’m the one that introduced him to shows like Yamato, Macross and Dunbine, he ended up borrowing a lot of tapes from my collection so he could watch them at home. He also called me and told me to turn on the TV the day Robotech premiered. I also remember Lensmen, he almost dragged me down to the theater with a couple of other people in tow to see it. That’s just how things were in the early anime community though, it was so small and insular that people just got to know each other, “big” names or not. There were no superstars or celebrities, there were just fans.

Oh, and I was one of those fans in the back of the room at the Creation Con doing the shoveling. If nothing else, Carl was great at self-promotion and taking credit for the work of others. I really don’t remember it being good natured at all, to be honest, it was our opinion at what he was spewing on stage. Somebody had to keep him honest, at least in the early days. Don’t get me wrong, he was a good guy, I count him as a friend and he got some things done in the anime community that probably needed doing, I just don’t necessarily agree with his intentions or with what he did, at the time that he did it...

Oops, one other thing I wanted to bring up as a “correction” of sorts. Back when Carl’s comic shop was in the Orange Circle, it was called “Carl Macek’s Gallery”, it didn’t turn unto “21st Century” until Carl was no longer directly involved. It always had a small second floor, but that didn’t expand into a full art gallery-style thing until they moved down the street and out of the Circle entirely. In the original store front, upstairs was more storage than anything, but he did have some comic-related artwork hanging on the wall and over the balcony.

Strange what you remember when you’re reminded of something in the past.
(https://manga.jadedragononline.com/blog ... store-guy/)
mbanu: What's between Old School and New School?
runesaint: Hmmm. "Middle School", perhaps?
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DKop
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Re: Animezanai

Post by DKop »

I remember reading that article about Macek some time after he passed away, I thought it looked familiar.

Seeing the girl from California Crisis I got a kick out of that, thats pretty nice of the artist to get as close to that VHS/LD cover as possible.
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mbanu
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Re: Animezanai

Post by mbanu »

The anime selection is intriguing too. The list adds to my suspicion that "What's Michael?" seems to have been semi-popular among anime fans in the Old School era (it was also available through Anime Sacramento around the same time, and the manga was for sale at Nikaku Animart), but you wouldn't know it from its current visibility -- until a few years ago, the most widely available version online was the Chinese dub, and a plan to subtitle the show from scratch because any original fansubs were gone.

This is the first time I've heard of TWD Express -- given the lack of reviews on ANN or MyAnimeList, I suspect it is invisible to a lot of other anime middle-schoolers and new-schoolers as well, although a kindly Old-Schooler (I assume) uploaded the raw onto YouTube.
mbanu: What's between Old School and New School?
runesaint: Hmmm. "Middle School", perhaps?
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mbanu
Posts: 476
Joined: Wed Jan 11, 2017 3:26 am
Anime Fan Since: 2001

Re: Animezanai

Post by mbanu »

Maybe this should go in the "Where's the meeting this week?" thread, but it's also interesting that the club was headquartered in Santa Ana, but the meetings were at the La Habra Public Library -- Santa Ana had a library, maybe they were kicked out? :D Or it had no space? Or was it a case where the leadership of the club lived in Santa Ana, but for various reasons most of the members lived closer to La Habra?
mbanu: What's between Old School and New School?
runesaint: Hmmm. "Middle School", perhaps?
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