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Boite Diabolique
Posts: 26
Joined: Thu Jan 09, 2014 6:06 pm
Anime Fan Since: 1994
Location: Queanbeyan, NSW, AU

Hello there

Post by Boite Diabolique »

Hello there. I’ve been lurking in the forums for a little while, but have finally decided to join and make myself known. I’m a 40 year old Australian who lives in a country town not far from Canberra. I first encountered Japanese pop culture around 1980 when the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) broadcast the live action series “Monkey!” which was a NHK show based on “Journey to the West” and dubbed by the BBC (with dub direction by Michael Bakewell who did most of Manga Entertainment’s early dubs in the 1990’s). I can’t remember which anime I saw first; “Starblazers” or “Battle of the Planets”, about when I was 8 in 1981. I loved “Starblazers” as I was a bit of a sci-fi nut at that age. Sometime around 1982, the colour 1980 version of “Astroboy” was broadcast. It still remains one of my favourite shows.

At around age 10 I got into model kits and about the same time various “Crusher Joe” and “Macross” model kits began to appear in places like Kmart and toy and hobby stores. I bought a ton of those even though “Crusher Joe” was never released here and “Robotech” wouldn’t be broadcast for another couple of years. We moved around a bit prior to me entering high school (dad worked for the Department of Agriculture), always seemingly to smaller towns. At the time most country towns only had one local commercial TV station and the ABC, and soon the Japanese cartoons dried up. So did the Japanese sci-fi model kits (they still stocked Tamiya and Fujimi kits though) I did manage to see a few episodes of “Robotech” in 1986 as well as “Run For Life (Run Melos!)”, but that was about it for nearly 10 years.

It wasn’t until I moved to Canberra in 1994 that I rediscovered “Starblazers” via video shops. Siren Video in Australia was importing the Manga Entertainment label from the UK and by coincidence had just started to ramp up the release schedule. I bought a ton of titles, Akira, Honneamise, Project A-Ko, Patlabor movies, Macross Plus etc. Sometime in 1996, one of my flatmates mentioned these was an anime club at the local university. I went mostly to see the Patlabor episodes, but eventually came to every screening and even ended up running it with a friend when the original two guys running it gave up on it. We battled through the last half of 1998 and all of 1999, but had to give up as we weren’t an affiliated club with the student union (we were renting the theatre for screenings like the original guys who ran it) and it was just too difficult to run. During this time I discovered garage kits (of the Hong Kong bootleg variety) and made a few of those, but regrettably gave up on them in the late 1990’s (not enough room in the flats I was renting).

I later helped another club at another uni across town. I helped out on their first con in 2004, but I think by 2005, I had sort of had enough of the fan scene. I sort of felt a little alienated by it. I still watch anime but have ditched a lot of the participation in fandom. I have over the years tried to get back into the participation part, but feel a bit disconnected due to the way parts of modern fandom operate. Anyway that’s my story in nutshell. Thanks for reading.
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usamimi
Posts: 2783
Joined: Fri Jan 25, 2013 2:00 pm
Anime Fan Since: 1987
Location: The Lonestar State
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Re: Hello there

Post by usamimi »

Welcome! Always cool to have people outside of the US join--I'm always interested in hearing how the anime industry looks in other places from a fan's point of view.

I totally agree with you on the fandom participation thing...it's hard for me, too. Sometimes I'll try to dip my toe into series-specific forums or communities for newer things I like, but then it seems I'll quickly get discouraged by OTHER FANS, of all things. And I, too, am also boggled over some aspects of "modern" fan-interaction. (I'm still not super-keen on Tumblr...the only reason I'm active there is for my podcast and such, really. It helps get it out there without me working too hard on it, at least.) So far, this forum is one of the few that I feel like we all are kind of on the same page. It's really comforting! Even when people here don't always agree, we never seem to like...REALLY fight about stuff, which is nice.

Anyway, hope you enjoy it here!
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Boite Diabolique
Posts: 26
Joined: Thu Jan 09, 2014 6:06 pm
Anime Fan Since: 1994
Location: Queanbeyan, NSW, AU

Re: Hello there

Post by Boite Diabolique »

In regards to fans on forums, I have found to a small degree that if you're not one with the hive mind you're not all that welcome. Also the attitudes on the Anime News Network forum drive me batty.

The Australian market is odd at times. Back in the 1990's we mostly got whatever was being released in the UK, mostly Manga Entertainment’s stuff (this is how Island records marketed their Manga Entertainment label in the UK - potentially NSFW) and also some of Kiseki Video's stuff. When the UK market fell in heap in the very late 1990's, the product stopped coming out.

Madman Entertainment appeared on the scene in the late 1990's and sourced most of their titles from ADV Films. They even managed to get Evangelion on TV which made anime club membership numbers explode. In the last five or so years Madman has had some competition from rivals like Siren and Hanabee. We're getting some really odd titles from Siren, stuff that hasn't had an English langue release elsewhere; Mononoke, the entire series of Monster, Chihayafuru, Dennou Coil etc. The only real downsides are we don't really get BD releases unless there is a UK or US BD release and geoblocking and region coding. The latter two can be easily bypassed though.

Fandom itself has evolved over the years. We really didn't have any cons until the very early 2000's (just a corner in some comic book, gaming and sci-fi cons prior) and a lot of the anime clubs have bitten the dust due to the availability of anime on the internet.

Anyways, thanks for the warm welcome.
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greg
Posts: 2159
Joined: Wed Oct 26, 2011 9:00 pm
Anime Fan Since: 1989 (consciously)
Location: Shizuoka-ken, Japan
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Re: Hello there

Post by greg »

Wow, I never saw any anime model kits at Kmarts in the States back then! In America, I did see model kits as a kid of Robotech, though. I was also puzzled by the Go Bots model kits, because they looked nothing like the real Go Bots toys. It turns out that they were actually Mospeada model kits, repackaged for the North American market.

So wow, two new users who are into model kits! I have quite a collection myself. One of my most recent completions was a Yamato 2520. Last night I resumed working on my Nausicaa model that I haven't touched much in 2 years. Next I feel like starting either a Sakura Taisen model or a Macross model.
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danth
Posts: 308
Joined: Sun Aug 12, 2012 11:00 am
Anime Fan Since: Robotech

Re: Hello there

Post by danth »

Run Melos. This is only the second time I've seen anyone mention that anime.

Hello and welcome!
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Boite Diabolique
Posts: 26
Joined: Thu Jan 09, 2014 6:06 pm
Anime Fan Since: 1994
Location: Queanbeyan, NSW, AU

Re: Hello there

Post by Boite Diabolique »

greg wrote:So wow, two new users who are into model kits!
Actually I haven't made a kit in about a decade and a half. I don't have anywhere to make them or display them. I left most of my model kit stuff at my parent's house when I moved out in the mid 1990's. I still have the three resin garage kits I made back in the late 1990's. I had a fourth one but didn't finish it. I think I still have the box somewhere in my house.

I went to a few hobby shops the couple of times I went to Japan. The one on the first floor of Nakano Broadway was pretty damn good and I wished I had bought some of the older Tamiya car kits (too expensive though). I settled for a couple of old Tamiya catalogues from the late 1980's instead.
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greg
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Re: Hello there

Post by greg »

I started out with HO-scale model trains as a kid, building the houses and such. It introduced me to painting and gluing. Then around 10 my uncle showed me how to make a WWII Spitfire, paint it, and apply waterslide decals. After that, I built a few more planes. In high school in the early '90s, I bought a transforming Macross Valkyrie and my friend helped me build it. It overcame my fear of Japanese instructions. I then moved on to a red Milia Valkyrie Battroid by ARII. I hand-painted it with Testors red enamel paint, but I had no idea about thinning the paint and such. I just globbed and slathered it on. I was not satisfied with it, so it was enough to turn me off from the hobby for over 10 years.

Then in '05 I started the hobby again, still not knowing what to do, but this time I had the Internet on my side and I started learning how to properly make a model. I started getting involved with a few modeling forums, and I thought that if I did videos of me making the models, I could ask people to watch them and get advice from them. Now I have hundreds of people watching my model builds on YouTube. I'm still learning as I go along.

Last summer I bought a few garage kits, but I have yet to build them. On the weekend, I bought some resin primer (I didn't know that resin requires its own primer!) I have a Dirty Pair garage kit of the Lovely Angel and a couple of Bubblegum Crisis figure garage kits waiting to be built.

When I first started up the hobby again in '05, all of my supplies could fit inside of one empty model box. Now I have a workbench with lots of supplies dedicated to model building (well, that and Perler Beads!).
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yusaku
Posts: 257
Joined: Tue Jul 09, 2013 11:37 pm
Anime Fan Since: 1988
Location: Kansas City
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Re: Hello there

Post by yusaku »

Welcome! You will find more anime friends at your level here. It is hard to have friends that are not at your maturity level even if they are into anime. I have noticed this about a lot of younger fans. Now I have run across younger true anime fans who do not have adult responsibilities; and, the depth of conversation goes to nothing when the subject goes to the older anime or leaves anime as a topic. I have a mature perspective when I talk about any topic. The last anime club I was joined I was the youngest person at 27 years old. I was working as a food chemist and everyone else was software engineers or network administrators in theirs thirties, forties, and fifties. Unfortunately, I lost contact with the group. Yet, the reason I am here is because the people here fit the profile of the previous group. You will like it here!
***^__^***
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Boite Diabolique
Posts: 26
Joined: Thu Jan 09, 2014 6:06 pm
Anime Fan Since: 1994
Location: Queanbeyan, NSW, AU

Re: Hello there

Post by Boite Diabolique »

greg wrote:Then around 10 my uncle showed me how to make a WWII Spitfire, paint it, and apply waterslide decals.
I think one of my uncles gave me a WWII German sea plane kit, though I can't remember if that was my first. I made a lot of Matchbox 1/76 tank kits. They were pretty cool as they came with their own little dioramas. I was much more interested in 1/25 and 1/24 scale car kits. I bought one old 1970's Monogram kit (possibly been in the shop unsold since the mid 1970's when the shop opened) when I was pretty young (1985?) and it was dreadfully difficult. The parts didn't fit very well, there was tons of flash on the parts and a lot of tiny parts left over. Dreadful kit.

The Japanese stuff was a lot better. Loved Tamiya's 1/24 scale cars and 1/20 F1 cars (they refused to make Marlboro decals for the McLaren which annoyed me). Fujumi made some great 1/24 scale cars, especially the super detailed Enthusiast Model series which I made a few of in my teens. But the Japanese stuff was expensive, while the Monogram and Revell stuff was cheap, so I didn't get a lot of Fujumi Enthusiast Model kits (seem to accumulated a ton of Tamiya stuff). I also made of the earlier 1980's kits with the electric motors in them (run off one AA battery), which could end up wrecking your hard work (I broke a couple of cars...).

I originally used Humbrol and Testors enamel paint, but soon found acrylic Tamiya and Gunze Sangyo Mr Hobby. I just found them a lot easier to use. In later years I used Scale Auto Enthusiast and Tamiya Model magazines to pick up ideas and tips (pre-internet). There were a couple of Australian magazines I used to read and would often us the adverts to mail order parts and decals for cars. Made the Tamiya BMW 635 CSi Group A Racing car kit into JPS team car used by Jim Richards at Bathurst (local Group A/Supercar endurance race) which pretty cool. Think that was the first time I used an airbrush.
yusaku wrote:The last anime club I was joined I was the youngest person at 27 years old.
Wow! that's quite unusual. Most clubs I've attended 25 was the cut off point!
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Kame-Sen'nin
Posts: 451
Joined: Wed Nov 28, 2012 2:20 am
Anime Fan Since: 1996

Re: Hello there

Post by Kame-Sen'nin »

Welcome to the forum! It's definitely great to hear from members who experienced early anime fandom differently than those of us in the United States, so please keep the stories coming! :D
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