Hi from PinkAppleJam (Cambridge, UK)
Posted: Wed Aug 07, 2013 4:05 am
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
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