The Old School Otaku Lounge

Greetings from Latin America.

A somewhat-old anime fan finally deciding to stop lurking and interact a bit more with the community.

I've been an anime fan since I was around 5 or 6 years old, around '93, when my cousin started introducing me to all this sort of cool stuff, including anime and manga through stuff he bought in San Diego and L.A.. The first titles I watched were Bubblegum Crisis and (I think) Wanna-Be's, and not only did they turn me into a rabid Sonoda fan, but got me into Japanimation as a whole.

I mostly spent my days interacting with the web communities and checking out geocities sites dedicated to titles I liked, and obscure messageboards and other similar places, and occasionally visited the local con or, if I was lucky, got to go to bigger ones thanks to my cousin.

I'm currently trying to build two wikis, have some translation projects, as well as making compilations of old and/or obscure titles from the 80s and 90s and rebuild one of the sites I lost some years ago dedicated to Bubblegum Crisis.

Anyway, hoping I can contribute as much as I can learn from the older ones, and from the young ones who know more than one, as well.

Welcome! Always happy to see new faces!

Welcome to the lounge!

Hello! It would be interesting to hear about how popular anime is in Latin America. I am sure you will learn a lot from the group here.

Thanks for joining!

Welcome!

One of my best friends back in Arizona is from Mexico, and granted he is a bit older than you are, but he has told me quite a lot of interesting stories about anime and other Japanese shows in Mexico. Mexico got a lot of anime the English world didn't, such as Mazinger Z and Candy Candy. When we watched Otaku no Video together, he recognized stuff that I'd never seen or heard of before, because they got them in Mexico. He told me of how Robotech didn't take off in Mexico because the station that aired it treated it like any other dumb kids' show and showed the episodes out of order. As far as Voltron goes, only Vehicle Voltron was released, so it's more popular there than the Lion Voltron.

We also got them uncut

Although it only lasted until 2004-5, when the two main cartoon channels (Fox Kids and Cartoon Network) removed pretty much most of their then-current programming because of a mixture of things (bought by Disney, pressure from Catholic parents groups, loss of licenses, etc.). Animax got axed by Sony a few years ago (not like it was an anime channel anyway: most of their programming had been replaced with reality shows long before that), while local channels were pressured to remove those shows in order to make more space for locally produced talk shows and the like. And people went along with it and anime isn't really well seen here, outside series like Dragonball which are pretty much adopted national icons.

Either, my love for anime was stemmed because of OVAs my dear cousin imported from video stores in California and Arizona, and showed them to me when I was 5-6 years old. I remember watching Bubblegum Crisis for the first time, and HOLEE SHEET, I'll never forget that sensation. And then I discovered La Blue Girl by myself when sneaking into his videotape stash. From there on, the rest is history.

As for Mazinger, I watched the series because a friend of mine had it recorded on tape, and I pretty much liked it, overall. It got me later into Grendizer and Great Mazinger when I finally got the chance to watch them online recently. I owe Mazinger a lot because, without it, I wouldn't be interested or know about Grendizer, and in turn, I wouldn't know about the beautiful Maria Grace Fleed.

I recognize your username from other forums I go to on occasion. Nice to have you on the board!