Hello everyone

[tbombaci]

Stumbled upon this site while searching for info on Animecon '91 and I am glad I did! I hate to say it, but I do not recognize todays fandom; it is so different. Things evolve I suppose.

Like a lot here, I enjoyed Anime before I even knew what it was. Running home to watch Battle of the Planets and Speed Racer after grade school. Then Star Blazers and then it was Robotech - I was forever hooked at that point.

I begged my mom to take me to Japantown in San Jose to rent videos at Japanvideo. They had VHS tapes full of Anime recorded straight off of Japanese TV for rental. I then discovered conventions. Countless Creation conventions (Star Trek, "Japanime (lol), Sci-fi in general, etc...) I started volunteering to get in at a discount or for free in some cases.

Then came Animecon. I volunteered for 1991 and I think 1992 - I cannot recall. I then joined the staff of Anime America and with the help of my friend Warner, came up with the full color badges that no one had ever done before. I am pretty sure we pioneered it but I cannot say for certain and it would have happened eventually I suppose.

In the middle of all of this, we started No-Name Anime in San Jose. We held monthly meetings at the Santa Teresa Public Library in San Jose as well as the Main library when it were next to the convention center while ST branch was renovated.

I am also an original founder of Fanimcon. It is amazing to see what our blood, sweat and tears has become. I ended up leaving in 2000 to focus on my new family but those early grass roots years are an experience I will cherish forever.

Life went on, I learned Japanese in College and then proptly forgot most of it over the course of 30 years. I recently, over the last 2 years, have been re-learning and its mostly coming back to me. I visited Toyko and Nagoya last September for a life changing trip. I went primarily to finally "go" and to shop for inventory for my side gig of retro import console games. I did take a couple days to site see and I cannot wait to go back. My trip really put some perspective in my life and I have made some pretty significant changes for the better since. Feel free to AMA.

Cheers,
Tom

[davemerrill]

Welcome to the lounge! It's kind of low-key here most of the time but maybe we can get it a little busier!

[davemerrill]

BTW, I can't remember when AWA switched to full color badges, but it wasn't before 2000. Not for any big technical reasons, just because we were cheap. I know Dragoncon was doing full-color badges at some point in the 90s, which kind of caused a problem when the badge art wound up being reproduced in full color in the local free weekly.

[tbombaci]

I like to imagine we pioneered it but I know its probably not fact. Also, my exposure to cons was only the SFBay area. At that time, I was broke as a joke and joined staff so I could get in haha. Attending a con in a far off place was a serious pipe dream for me back then.

[Daniel]

Welcome! Glad you're here.

[Drew_Sutton]

Welcome to the forum! I'd love to hear more stories about AnimeCon and Fanime if you have them.

Also, was there an immediate jump from watching Robotech and Star Blazers to heading to Japantown for (presumably raw/untranslated) tapes? I did the raw tapes from Japanese video rentals but the Japanese community in Atlanta is much smaller than the Bay Area, so I was already pretty heavily involved in anime fan culture and fansubbing by the time I could reliably get to JP video rentals.