Hi from PinkAppleJam (Cambridge, UK)

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PinkAppleJam
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Hi from PinkAppleJam (Cambridge, UK)

Post by PinkAppleJam »

Hi everyone, thanks for the account activation, Anime Sennin ^^

I am Laura Watton-Davies (née Watton), a UK anime and manga fan, illustrator, workshop host, games artist. As a teenage anime fan I was involved in a number of early UK anime print fanzines, I also wrote into a lot of early UK games magazines (usually reader's pages) and got letters and illustrations printed. I imported a lot of stuff from the states in English in the 90's, too. I've always been into comics and animation, I wanted to become an animator when I was 9 after seeing numerous Who Framed Roger Rabbit "How-Tos". I had loads of fandoms as a kid, TMNT being one of my biggest. Anime and manga style sort of helped me get into drawing other stuff, other than athropomorphic animal humanoid creatures XD

I don't know how many other UK western anime fans are on here, so some of you may have heard of our UK anime fan perspective. For those of you who haven't - IMO, even though we had loads of anime on TV in the 80s and 90s (early UK anime fandom encompassed Children's BBC showing BRB International shows such as Dogtanian, Willy Fogg; we had Mysterious Cities of Gold and co-productions like Thundercats etc etc; we were lucky enough to have Star Fleet thanks to Gerry Anderson's legendary puppet shows, and Battle of the Planets was one of the very first anime shows I ever watched on telly), we had nothing until Samurai Pizza Cats riding on the coat tails of TMNT and it was never outright "this is anime from Japan".

In the 90's Manga Video started releasing stuff for the post-pub teenage/young adult crowds on VHS. There were shows we got via US Manga Corps and Streamline like 3x3 Eyes and Project A-ko but it was mainly Legend of the Overfiend for a long while, until other titles like Magic Knight Rayearth got released, showing a slightly softer side. The introduction of DVD (and subsequent disc-importing) balanced out the genre choices a little more. On VHS, suddenly anime went for 15 years as silent imports, polished into a western product (the Battle of the Planets "it's all written in an alien language!" is legendary for this) kids shows, to this fashionable import (which I think parallels the US viewpoint of anime imports?). I think we didn't even get kaitenzushi bars outside of London until after the year 2000, but I reckon we've sort of caught up now..!

Aside from obscure shows viewable on satellite or cable channels some TV watchers were able to view, we had no Sailor Moon*, Robotech or Starblazers booms on our five terrestrial channels (we've got digital channels now, shockingly), but we did have Pokémon/Digimon, then suddenly anime went from being percieved as "all that violent stuff from Japan" to "all that babyish cartoon stuff from Japan". Being an anime fan, you can't win ^_- Though Ghibli films are always shown via Arts Picturehouses each time a new one is released, and Channel 4's Film 4 always show Ghibli marathons annually, so it's getting better - though I think we have a long way to go regards UK folk's opinions of what anime actually *is*.

(*Oh yeah - if you were lucky you could view Sailor Moon via RTL2, in German!, via SKY satellite, some afternoons in 1998! And because of our PAL video systems, you could politely ask kind European penpals to tape their anime shows in their native language, send them to you and hope the VHS casettes would arrive intact! Unless you had a million pounds, a lazerdisc player and NTSC conversion access, and some techy friends who obtained imported subtitled copies of things...)

So yeah, thankfully multi-region DVD players and internet access has made it a lot easier to be a UK anime fan (or at least catch up on the shows and series you could never afford to watch some years back.) I'm still into it all, I think there's a little bit of anime fandom that never dies once it's embedded inside you somehow. My website is http://www.pinkapplejam.com. I was detemined to do something with my fandom and use it in my illustration, basically that has been my mission for 20 years now.

I'm very curious about how pre-Y2K anime/manga UK fandom and US fandom match and differ. Thanks for reading my mini-history! Any questions please shout! Can't wait to get stuck into the boards :)
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usamimi
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Re: Hi from PinkAppleJam (Cambridge, UK)

Post by usamimi »

Welcome! I recognize your username from Tumblr, nice to see you here! :D Back in the 90s I had a penpal from the UK who was also an anime fan and he would periodically tell me that sometimes in the past it was hard to get releases in the UK because people thought all anime was Hentai or something like that. >__> Dunno how true that was, but I actually get kinda jealous of UK anime releases because sometimes they're so much CHEAPER than ones here in America. (Esp. blu-ray ones.) One of these days I really should invest in a region-free DVD player. :lol:

Also, love your website! Your artwork is so fun and colorful, I love it! :D
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PinkAppleJam
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Re: Hi from PinkAppleJam (Cambridge, UK)

Post by PinkAppleJam »

Thanks Usamimi! I think I came across this forum thanks to one of your posts on Tumblr, too! <3

Yeah the global DVD price market is really odd. Japanese fans grey import Western DVDs because they are cheaper, this is a big problem though, as of course if no money goes back into anime, no new stuff can get made! :cry:
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Re: Hi from PinkAppleJam (Cambridge, UK)

Post by greg »

I'm looking at your homepage now. Wow, you've done a lot of comics and such, for sure! That must've been an exciting thing to be a part of fanzines and the like.

Not only because of the PAL/NTSC issue, but it seems that we Americans had it much easier in terms of accessibility and variety. Manga Video was pretty much it as far as the UK went, right? It had the nickname "Mangle Video" because they seemed fond of screwing around with anime. before Manga video came to the US, we mainly had AD Vision, US Manga Corps (Central Park Media), and AnimEigo. There had been others, such as US Renditions, that had gone defunct. I think Streamline had disappeared by then too, IIRC.

So yeah, NTSC compatibility meant that my pen pal in Japan was able to record TV shows and anime on VHS and mail the tapes to me in the USA. We always had the option of watching stuff raw. I guess NTSC VHS tapes could work on a PAL VCR, but you really had to yank hard on the tracking to get it to display right. Am I right? I used to send MST3K VHS tapes to a friend in Australia, and he was able to view the videos by tuning the tracking way over to one end of the spectrum.

US Manga Corps was the only company that made region-free anime DVDs, it seems.

Welcome to the forum!
My presence on the Net, with plenty of random geekiness:
My homepage
My YouTube channel
My Flickr photostream
My Tumblr page
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usamimi
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Re: Hi from PinkAppleJam (Cambridge, UK)

Post by usamimi »

PinkAppleJam wrote:Thanks Usamimi! I think I came across this forum thanks to one of your posts on Tumblr, too! <3

Yeah the global DVD price market is really odd. Japanese fans grey import Western DVDs because they are cheaper, this is a big problem though, as of course if no money goes back into anime, no new stuff can get made! :cry:
Awww, yay! I'm glad I could help point you in the right direction!

It's a weird cycle, isn't it? :? At least we have some Western fans that buy Japanese blurays? :lol: (Man, if I had the money, I KNOW I'd be buying more Japanese blu-rays...Urusei Yatsura, Ranma 1/2, Maison Ikkoku, Satoshi Kon's movies, Cowboy Bebop?! Sigh...)
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PinkAppleJam
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Re: Hi from PinkAppleJam (Cambridge, UK)

Post by PinkAppleJam »

Usamimi; sweet heavens yes. My kingdom for UY on DVD completely subtitled without requiring a new mortgage! (At least I got the films and OAVs <3)

Hi Greg! Thanks for the welcome :)

Yes it is very odd how variety worked for us both English-speaking Western countries as anime fans in the 90's. Ages ago in the UK it was the "swear-it-up-to-boost-the-BBFC-certification-for-more-sales" Manga Video (now much different as the now global "Manga Entertainment"); in the 90's, a combo of imported dubs and original dubs with American accents (!).

We did have a few video labels/distributors, some so super-obscure that they didn't make it outside the UK though. For example;

Crusader Video
Kiseki Films
ADV Films
MVM
Pioneer Anime (who were rumoured to have burnt all remaining copies of their UK PAL anime as it did not meet sales expectations!)
Anime Projects
Western Connection.

Old UK Animejin link = http://www.animejin.org.uk/ukfaq.txt

Obscurely, Mitsuru Adachi's 'Touch' and the uber-funny shonen series 'Ushio & Tora' got subtitled only VHS releases before the US IIRC!
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Re: Hi from PinkAppleJam (Cambridge, UK)

Post by usamimi »

I have some of the UY tv series but not nearly all of it...I wish Animeigo hadn't released it in like a MILLION singles DVDs x__x I do have all the movies, though. Beautiful Dreamer is still one of my favorite movies ever.

Man I am still sad that "Touch" has never been released here, manga or anime. :/ It's such a fun series. I need to finish it all one of these days!
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Re: Hi from PinkAppleJam (Cambridge, UK)

Post by greg »

Yeah, we never got Touch in the US! You got that in the UK? Nice! I bought the first volume of the Touch manga for a friend of mine for Japanese reading practice, but I haven't read it yet myself.
My presence on the Net, with plenty of random geekiness:
My homepage
My YouTube channel
My Flickr photostream
My Tumblr page
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PinkAppleJam
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Re: Hi from PinkAppleJam (Cambridge, UK)

Post by PinkAppleJam »

No Touch? No way! We only got a few volumes of it IIRC though, and likely it was THE only anime the UK got that the US didn't!
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Re: Hi from PinkAppleJam (Cambridge, UK)

Post by davemerrill »

Hey PinkAppleJam! I think I'm following you on Twitter (remembered the username).
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