The Old School Otaku Lounge

I thought I'd throw up one of these, my account was approved about a week ago but I was busy with Thanksgiving craziness and work, so I just got around to posting.

Anyway, I was pretty heavily involved in VHS tape trading back in the mid to late 90's, especially DBZ tapes, which is actually how I found this website. I was trying to see if any of the people I was friendly with back then (namely Ramza from Dragon Ball Blast) ever started another website/fansubbing group. Of course they didn't (it's pretty crazy how a ton of people, including myself, all disappeared at the the same time when VHS died and digisubs came around), but I found an old interview with Ramza hosted on animepast.net. That led me to the breakdown of how Toei lost the original audio masters to Dragon Ball/Dragon Ball Z and Fist of the North Star, and then to the forum. I also used to post on the old (now defunct) anipike forums, if anyone here remembers those.

So, hopefully I can contribute something anyway, I'm at the point now where I'm not too wild about what's coming out of Japan and there aren't many places left to discuss older titles, so I'm definitely glad to be here.

Welcome Ben! Always good to see new faces around here!

Hey Ben! I came here looking for old acquaintances also. I like the people here, but did not find any of my old group. It makes me wonder what happened to everybody else. A lot of the older group stop going to the Anime conventions and it is kind of hard to pic out our "clique" anymore. It was easy back in the 90's to spot anime fans because you see them at the comic book shop, the conventions, or the anime section in the Video stores. Now everything is online now. You can watch anime for free if you know where to look. There is so much online now; most people are staying at home in front of their computer screen now. I plan to go to AWA con next September and plan to meet one of the chatters in this group there. You are invited. Me and Davemerrill from this site will be there.

Welcome to the forum! Maybe eventually those old, familiar names may find their way to this site. That's one of the intentions of the forum here, at least.

Welcome to the forum Ben! Always good to see another DragonBall fan join!

welcome!

yusaku wrote:Hey Ben! I came here looking for old acquaintances also. I like the people here, but did not find any of my old group. It makes me wonder what happened to everybody else. A lot of the older group stop going to the Anime conventions and it is kind of hard to pic out our "clique" anymore. It was easy back in the 90's to spot anime fans because you see them at the comic book shop, the conventions, or the anime section in the Video stores. Now everything is online now. You can watch anime for free if you know where to look. There is so much online now; most people are staying at home in front of their computer screen now. I plan to go to AWA con next September and plan to meet one of the chatters in this group there. You are invited. Me and Davemerrill from this site will be there.

Thanks for the warm welcome everyone, and in particular for the invite from Yusaku. I will have to see what my schedule is like in terms of cons for awhile unfortunatley, I'm actually a lineman for American Electric Power, and I work crazy overtime in the winter. That's actually why I just got back around to replying, I live in Ohio and we were pounded with snow and freezing rain, I'm just now catching my breath after pulling a 72 hour work week. Summers end up being best for me, fingers crossed on a good (as in none) tornado/high wind season anyway!

Welcome to the forum!

I'm at the point now where I'm not too wild about what's coming out of Japan and there aren't many places left to discuss older titles, so I'm definitely glad to be here.

I think most of us are here for that exact reason. :3

Yes, those old Dragonball fansub tapes and the history behind them can be fascinating in their own way, can't they? Besides the work I did chronicling their history, the pages on the site of which I see you found, I personally have a bit of a soft spot for them and will watch them on occasion. Do you still have your tapes? If you want anything, you're welcome to let me know. And speaking of Dragonball fansubbers, I've spoken to at least three of them recently (including the Ramza that you mention). Interesting people.

Welcome!

AnimeSennin wrote:Yes, those old Dragonball fansub tapes and the history behind them can be fascinating in their own way, can't they? Besides the work I did chronicling their history, the pages on the site of which I see you found, I personally have a bit of a soft spot for them and will watch them on occasion. Do you still have your tapes? If you want anything, you're welcome to let me know. And speaking of Dragonball fansubbers, I've spoken to at least three of them recently (including the Ramza that you mention). Interesting people.

Welcome!

I wanted to definitely get back to you about the tapes (and thanks for the welcome of course): I DO still have some, they are in storage in my Dad's basement. I lost a lot of them along with other VHS fansubs when an old building we used for storage had the roof fall in due to snow (I grew up on a farm and we had some old out buildings). I will dig through these and see what is still there, I can't remember exactly, because I gave away a lot of my old VHS tapes as well (never thinking that Toei had lost those audio masters of course, and they could be really important to hang onto). At one time I had full runs of DB, DBZ and DBGT, but I gave away my DBGT subs when Super 7 put out really high quality VCD fansubs of the series (that were made by dubbing the Japanese audio onto the Cantonese VCDs). Anyway, I'll go through them when I have some free time and get you an updated list.