rec.arts.anime FAQ

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!
User avatar
Drew_Sutton
Posts: 659
Joined: Tue May 07, 2013 6:19 pm
Anime Fan Since: 1994
Location: Atlanta, GA US/Hackistan, Internet

Re: rec.arts.anime FAQ

Post by Drew_Sutton »

Fireminer wrote: Sun Jul 07, 2019 7:25 am
Drew_Sutton wrote: Sat Jul 06, 2019 2:47 pm I don't know how much more detail you're looking for (and I don't think greg posts here very much more nor do I know how much anyone from the r.a.a days is around here).

Your post bumping this thread up again, Fireminer, I recognized something that I missed before. I recognized another name from greg's post above; it was never a name I'd heard through fandom 'lore' but they sent an email to the Akihabara Rendition's podcast shortly after we first started (it wasn't Conty though). Out of curiosity, I started looking through r.a.a's archives for the person that mailed us, out of curiosity but then I started looking for Conty's post history. According to what I saw, in the early 1990s, he was an editor for r.a.a until about the mid-90s or so, when Steve Pearl took over. While being an editor for r.a.a, he did some translation of the Kimagure Orange Road manga along with Hitoshi Doi, William Chow and others. It also looks like he was involved with Anime Central pretty early on, too. At the time, he resided around Chicago. His usenet accounts were either with work email addresses or local ISP accounts; I tried looking him up on LinkedIn using that but did not find him. He seems to have stopped posting to r.a.a in 1999.
Thank you so much for all that hard work! But can I ask you to clear up a point? This Fanlore page on r.a.a stated that Steve Pearl was the only moderator of r.a.a. Maybe Conty worked under him?
It is possible that Pearl was the only official moderator and Conty worked alongside him. Traffic volume for a niche hobby probably did not need a ton of moderation, even in the wild UseNet days. In so far as official editing of the r.a.a FAQ/Welcome posts (for new subscribers), Pearl was not the only editor.

This is an FAQ posted where Pearl was the only editor, in 1993. This is similar to the one greg posted above.

In 1992, the FAQ post lists both Pearl and Conty as editors.

And the 1991 FAQ only has Conty as editor. I swear when I was searching yesterday, I saw a 1990 FAQ that was also only Conty as editor but I can't find it now.

I would imagine though that whomever was compiling the FAQs would be in a position or trust (or power, whatever nerd cred that is) with the group, including moderation duties, official or otherwise.
Fireminer wrote:Also, is this the William Chow you mentioned?
I am willing to bet yes - there might be a few 'William Chow's in BC, but probably only one that translated Kimagure Orange Road manga and anime and organized a fansub group.
Akihabara Renditions: Japanese Animation of the Bubble Economy
Excuse me, I need to evict some juvenile delinquents from my yard.
Post Reply