The Old School Otaku Lounge

I was working on a column about Kokusai Eiga-sha, and had to research a few shows I was totally unfamiliar with, which lead to me looking up NANAKO SOS and LITTLE POLLON, both of which were based on manga by a guy named Hideo Azuma. So I had to look HIM up and it turned out that he did a volume of autobiographical manga titled "Disappearance Diary". That rang a few bells; I'd spent a good hour standing in local shop The Beguiling reading the thing and I really liked it, but didn't buy it at the time. So the next day I went over to the Beguiling and luckily the manga was still there - but not any more, as I bought it.

http://www.amazon.ca/Disappearance-Diar ... 8496427420

http://www.inkstuds.org/?p=3362

Azuma has a great cutesy cartoony style; very "80s". He worked on SF gag comics and sexy "lolicon" style comics - they say he invented the genre - and his workload was astonishingly, punishingly heavy. At one point he said "screw this" and just vanished - went to live in the woods as a homeless guy among the homeless guys, eating out of dumpsters and drinking as much as humanly possible. The book follows his journey from manga artist to alky to gas company pipe installer and back to the manga world. I love this kind of behind the scenes stuff, wish more of it would come out in English, Azmua's work in particular.

The Beguiling still around? What about Silver Snail? They used to be the best place to get anime items including garage kits back in the day. I also remember all the hassles The Beguiling used to have until Mark Asquith on TVOntario started to use them as a source for Prisoners of Gravity. Then, no more raids...

The Beguiling is still in the Annex next to Suspect Video and Honest Ed's, still the best comic book store in the country. The Snail moved from their Queen St. location to Yonge St north of Dundas; I haven't been in their new store yet. Most of the neat stuff on that stretch of Queen is getting priced out of the neighborhood.

Dragon Lady over on College closed, if you remember them.

Yeah, I remember lots of the old stores when I used to go travelling back in the day. Ditto with stores in Winnipeg and Minneapolis. My bud's store is pretty good for bringing in stuff. I figure just about anything that can be ordered has passed through there of late including much Japanese stuff. Those model kits and statues are expensive but someone is buying them...