My real name is Paul England. I've actually dealt with greg at a games forum extensively, but I actually stumbled upon this place when I killing a little time, Googling some old fan sub groups. (I'm a sucker for nostalgia.) I can't quite place them, but I already see some familiar names.
While I grew up on Battle of the Planets and Star Blazers, I didn't get "into anime" until some years later, when I had heard about Akira, and subsequently went to the local comic store to see what else they had. This was before you could rent any of this stuff, so $35 for a 45 minute VHS tape was mostly out of my grasp. After a friend showed me how to use the modem on my parents computer, and got me started on FIDOnet, I was well on my way to losing thousands of hours of my life. I was involved in the local anime group showings for about a year until I got some money out of an insurance settlement (my house was broken into) and I got first an Amiga 2000 (but soon after opted for a 1200 and a SuperGen). Everyone can guess the rest.
The group I subtitled with, NT-Anime, in the Dallas area, mainly redid stuff using widely available scripts, but we did a few original titles as well. We just didn't have access to many translators, so that was hard. We did have several guys with crazy Laserdisc collections though. I look at Yahoo Japan now and see how much those $2000 sets of discs now cost on the used market. Ouch! One feat we accomplished was remastering Maison Ikkoku (the whole run) from the Arctic Animation scripts. They were heavily edited (as one could imagine) and retimed from scratch.
Anyway, turning a part of my hobby into my profession seemed to make sense. I majored in Japanese, and always planned on getting a business minor (or double-major) but that didn't quite work out. I did, however, move to Japan right after graduation to figure out what I wanted to do. By that time, either I was burned out, or the anime industry had already taken a turn that rubbed me wrong. Maybe it was both. But, the hobby basically stopped for me then. I sold my subtitling set off and my VHS/SVHS collection (of a few hundred tapes) and moved on. I was getting back into music, and didn't have a lot of time on my hands anyway, as I was working as an English teacher in one of Tokyo's worst companies. A couple of years later, still living in Tokyo, I got back into one of my original passions: games. I turned that hobby into a very successful side business (that I still run today), however, real life is catching up with me, so the side business gets a huge chunk of my free time, and that hobby is on the back burner except for the few odd moments when I actually have free time on my hands. Much like with anime, I'm really only interested in the stuff from the "glory days". Very little new games excite me, which is a bit of a shame. At 37, I guess there's a small chance I'm growing up.
My total tenure in Tokyo is very close to hitting 13 of the last 15 years. I got the JLTP L-1 back in 2006 (when I lived in Hawaii, oddly enough) and then did two dry runs of the new format (N1) in 2010 and 2011. In 2010 I missed the cut off by a point (not even a 1 percentile point) and in 2011 I hit the passing mark on the nose. Ironically, I could now translate quite a few titles, but I lack the interest. Out of all those years in Tokyo, I've never even had my TV antennae set up. The extent of what I've watched here is Chibi Maruko with my son. I do go back and watch some older stuff raw from time to time. I got the hankering to go through Maison Ikkoku (watching every episode 4-5 times when subtitling off of an LD some how just wasn't enough) so that's what I'm working on now. My job is quite stressful, and that's an easy way to decompress. I don't have to think when I watch it. I might try some other TV shows when that's over. As for new stuff, I just stick to the odd theatrical release that either appeals to my nostalgia (which thus far has only been Redline), or tries something new.
