The Old School Otaku Lounge

I have enough time to kill before my next class, so how's about an introduction?

My name is Zack, or Nitro on the interwebs. Dawn/Usamimi brought me here :3

I loved the anime genre when I saw Robot Carnival for the first time on Cartoon Network. When I first saw it I thought "Holy crap, everything about this animation style is so...mature, and amazing! I want more!" To this day, Robot Carnival is still one of my favorite movies of all time. Fortunately, Toonami and the Sci-Fi channel were there to give me my anime fix But I found myself enjoying anime that wasn't broadcast on TV a bit more. Like Utena, Ranma, Fushigi Yugi, and X.....imagine my surprise when I saw X for the first time, at the age of 14 XD.

In high school, I fell for the "zomg ALL dubbed anime sucks no matter what" trap....granted, there are some crappy English dubs, but the people I socialized with at the time never even gave English dubs a chance >/ I remember the universal hate Inuyasha's english dub got...then I saw the dub at Nan Desu Kan in Colorado back in 2002 and thought "...o_O This....isn't THAT bad, you guys. There are worse dubs out there. Much. Much. MUCH worse." Long story short, I like to give English dubs a chance ^^;

I like "newer" anime as well. But not the "moe" crap. "Newer" titles like Eden of the East, Kids on the Slope, and Penguin Drum(which I still need to finish). But I'm more fond of anime from the 90s and earlier. If I wasn't, I wouldn't have considered joining this place XD It seems like such a fun forum from what I've heard. So thank you administrators for allowing me to join!

In my spare time, when I'm not working/video gaming, I like to produce fan dubs and join Usamimi in the world of amateur voice acting. I recently did a fan dub of the Presence short from Robot Carnival, and I'm currently working on a fan dub of the anthology film Memories (as we speak, I'm sending the Magnetic Rose cast their lines). I like doing dubs of older, lesser known titles. And if these titles don't already have an existing English dub like Memories, then bonus points As far as voice acting, the most notable thing I'm in is the Ys IV: The Dawn of Ys English dub that came out a few months ago. But I'm mainly involved in amateur voice acting because it helps me out as a producer. It gives me ideas on how to write scripts, how to send people lines and such. Being in the Ys IV dub has been most influential in how I give voice actors in my projects their lines ^^;

So that's me in a little nutshell. It's almost time for class, so I guess I should wrap this up now. I look forward to meeting everyone!

Yay! I got someone to join!

I think we should take pics of your Robot Carnival stuff, I bet people here would appreciate it. ;D

Hello Zack,

Welcome. Since this board is for people who were fans before the Toonami generation stepped in, could you please tell us a bit more about your pre-Toonami experience?

Looking forward to hearing back from you.
Daniel

Oh sure! Sorry 'bout that. For me, pre-Toonami experience is before April 2000 when Gundam Wing premiered on CN. Everything else before that, I had already seen elsewhere so it wasn't new to me. Anyway, pre-Toonami experience!

With Robot Carnival, I instantly fell in love with how realistic the characters looked (compared to most cartoons I saw at the time), how the music sounded (Joe Hisaishi, you're a genius), and I loved how most of the movie was told without any spoken dialogue. I wondered if all anime was like that. Vampire Hunter D answered that question for me XD I wasn't as invested in Twilight of the Cockroaches as I was the other two films that aired on Cartoon Network in '94. One day, I saw a VHS copy of the movie on sale at a local video store (I lived in Santa Clarita, California at the time). I literally BEGGED my Mom to buy it for me XD And she did, and I still own my copy of Robot Carnival to this very day The movie that started my interest in anime for me.

A year later, I discovered that Sailor Moon was being shown on our local UPN affiliate every weekday morning. I didn't care that it was a "girls show" at the time, I just liked that it was Japan animation (later when I discovered uncut Sailor Moon did I realize that the series isn't just for young girls, heh). The next year on that same station, Sailor Moon was replaced with Samurai Pizza Cats. Me and my friends enjoyed that way more XD

I also learned that every Saturday morning on our local Fox affiliate, they would show Dragon Ball and then Dragon Ball Z. I only saw DB once, but I got hooked on DBZ. I got hooked so much, I bought a bunch of DBZ tapes at Universal Studios. I didn't care if the episodes were out of order XD I wanted to watch DBZ without having to wake up at the crack of dawn on a Saturday. In addition to all that, there was the late night anime shown on Sci-Fi, which was much more appealing than anything I saw during the day. The movies that stood out to me the most were Roujin Z, Tank Police, Armitage, Green Legend Ran, and Tenchi Muyo in Love. And then there were the tapes I rented/bought based on what I read in Animerica magazines. Like Ranma, Utena, Fushigi Yugi, etc...Basically, the anime that they didn't show during the day was more interesting to me than what they would broadcast during the day. And anime was a much more wondrous experience to me when it wasn't freakin' everywhere like it is today @.@

And there you go, my pre-Toonami experience.

Welcome to the forums, nitro! I'm one of usamimi's friends from Washington! :3

Robot Carnival is also one of my first anime experiences and I hold it very dearly. Presence and Starlight Angel being my favorites of the shorts in the film. Cloud also holds an almost spiritual attachment for me because in 1996 my brother Alex, only 6 years old at the time, passed away of a brain stem tumor. I was watching an old recording of Robot Carnival a few months after his passing with my family, and the powerful imagery, music, and story of Cloud brought my mother to tears. That's part of what made me believe that anime can break it's stereotypes and move people.

Sorry to get all sad, but yes, hope you enjoy your stay!

Oh wow, I'm sad to hear about your brother passing away, Ryoran! I think Cloud is probably my favorite in Robot Carnival. I love the music, even though that animation alone does not feature Hisaishi's musical composition. I never did get a proper VHS of Robot Carnival. When Streamline's stuff was later released by Orion Pictures, I bought it from Suncoast. However, it had some weird tracking issues, so I took it back to Suncoast and told them what the problem was. They said they would order a new one for me. So later they called me and told me it was in, so I went to go buy it. It turns out it was the same darned VHS. It was obvious that they just re-shrinkwrapped it. I took it home and it was indeed the same faulty video. Grr. Years later, I caved in and bought the bootleg DVD off eBay, featuring typically awkward Chinese Engrish subtitles that exemplifies Chinese inability to conjugate verb tenses correctly and. I do own the domestic released soundtrack though.

Anyhow, Nitro, welcome to the forum! I found Usamimi's video of her contribution to the Ys IV dub and shared it with my friend Oscar back in Arizona. He is a huge Ys fan and he was elated to learn that the Ys IV fan translation has been released. He and I are PC Engine fans.

@ryoran Nice to meet ya. That's sad about your brother. Robot Carnival definitely has a way of tugging at your strings. Presence, and Starlight Angel are my personal favorites too. I didn't appreciate Cloud as much during the first couple of years I watched it, but now I can I think it was actually Presence that made me feel emotional watching something animated for the very first time, now that I think about it.

@greg Nice to meet ya too. PC Engine games are fun. I don't play nearly as many as I should though I've only played Ys I and II, Rondo of Blood, and of course, Dawn of Ys. I voiced Enzo, and Keith Fact in the dub. Only a few lines, but it was still an amazing experience....that I still need to finish XD I'm at the last couple of dungeons...I just keep getting sidetracked by projects/school/other video games. Oh! I saw your 8-bit cafe video with Usamimi. Very nice. I wish there was an 8-bit cafe near us :/

Welcome!

I'm New so I can't speak for everyone but I'm Happy to meet you ^_^
If you are really in to Presence PM me and I'll Hook you up ^_^

Megazone - Nitro actually did a fandub production of Presence last year: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaVnXy4R0DQ

I got to play the robot girl, which was a challenge for me.