Category: 20-29

Age: 22

Location: California

When did you discover anime? Share as much as you remember. When it comes to anime, I feel like my story is a bit of an odd one. I only thought of anime to be some cartoon, considering the first time I ever watched an anime was when I was 5 years old. My first anime ever was Yu Yu Hakusho, but I had only seen it as a cartoon, or rather, that was the label I stuck with since I didn’t know it was called “anime.”

I kept on watching the stuff I’d see on Cartoon Network and Toonami actively, up until Toonami’s departure from TV as a whole, so I was a bit lost and didn’t know where to continue Naruto from, since that was the big thing at the time for people my age, which, I was 9 years old I think?

I went onto Youtube and typed in “Naruto vs Sasuke”, only to find a bunch of AMVs, but I was under the impression that Naruto had died at the end of one of them, so I cried pretty hard at first until, at the end of the AMV, there was a little message. “Want to see more like this? Then go to [pirate site redacted]”, which made me laugh at first, but when I went onto the website, I was so amazed at what I had seen. There were so many anime, subbed, dubbed, I didn’t even know what it meant, I just kept on shouting at the screen, being all like… “THAT WASN’T ON TOONAMI, NOR WAS THIS. WHAT IS ALL THIS? IT’S SO COOL!” I was pretty excited, so I started Naruto from the beginning with it being subbed, only to find the experience to be a better one since I feel as though I missed out on some stuff watching it in English, maybe a script issue or so, which is a possibility.

After finally coming to terms with knowing what anime truly is at that point, I had decided it’d be a little unfair for me to call Yu Yu Hakusho my first anime since it was a cartoon only to me when I had witnessed it. My newfound knowledge of these animations being referred to as anime began with one titled Seto No Hanayome aka My Bride Is A Mermaid, which is honestly the Little Mermaid on acid. It turned out to be a romantic comedy, with quite the beautiful ending in the long-run, so I fell in love with more stuff from that moment on and here I am now, talking about it haha.

What appealed to you about anime when you first discovered it? You know, it’s a bit awkward, but I actually have a video regarding this!

 

The video was on Youtube but got taken down due to the Rugrats sadly, since a lot of this was under fair use too. It’s a weird video, has some odd editing, but I love it, my friend Aidan edited it for me.

Since I don’t know as to whether or not people will have a chance to watch the video, I can explain it here as well:

When I first discovered anime, since I’ll roll with Yu Yu Hakusho being my first and all… I kind of liked the fact it was something different? It had detailed looking characters, the episodes weren’t always just episodic, but also it had… a meaning to it, something that I was aware of when watching cartoons like the Rugrats, although, something felt different with anime. Yu Yu Hakusho taught me about death, which is what I go on about in my video I linked up above.

I was 9 years old when Yu Yu Hakusho ended, but I don’t actually recall seeing it to the very end on Cartoon Network, since the rest of it, I had viewed online at a later point. It’s still my first and it was, as people put it, the gateway drug that had gotten me addicted to everything else.

What would you say was the most popular anime at the time? Dragon Ball Z was without a doubt the most popular anime at the time. I remember it being talked about a lot at elementary school. Even I had fallen victim to it by buying all of the games that would come out… playing them all day until it was time for bed. I even dressed up as Goku for Halloween one time, which feels weird to me looking back on it now.

The next most popular series had to be Naruto though since everyone assumed it was about a ninja in training wanting to rule the school. I certainly can’t blame them though, considering that the first promo for it towards the end literally said, “BUT ONLY ONE WILL RULE THE SCHOOL!” This kind of made kids all around the school do the Naruto run or whenever they would get angry, they would act all wacky like Naruto in an angry state. It was… weird, but hey, I loved having fun with all my school friends like that, haha.

What was it like to be a part of anime fandom at the time? I can’t really say that I was in a fandom honestly. Nobody really liked anything outside of Dragon Ball Z, Naruto, and Pokemon. I used to write Pokemon stories with my friends as a kid. We each wrote the stories from the perspectives of our individual characters, so something unique was bound to happen. It was a fun writing experiment as a kid, it’s more of the reason why I have this undying love for Pokemon regardless of the form it’s in, but only my friends know that. It may be a bit unhealthy since I get a bit too into Pokemon with all the immersive writing, but I like doing that. Don’t let the kid in your heart die!

I’d love to see your Goku Halloween costume or any old photos you’d like to share with me.  Sadly, all our old photo albums are in the storage unit we have. We probably won’t be going to it anytime soon, but I do have a photo of something really special to me.

This is the Macross Delta Walkure 3rd Live Show Blu-Ray. My girlfriend and my friends went out of their way to all pitch in money for this import, straight from Japan. They all know I really love Macross and for years, I’ve wanted official merchandise of it, but it’s always so expensive. Macross to me is honestly the best anime franchise out there, I absolutely love the work that Kawamori Shoji puts into it. I actually cried in receiving this, it made my day. It was recently too, earlier in 2019. It was supposed to be a secret Santa gift, but turned into a late birthday present!

Was the Internet a part of fandom at the time? If yes, how? If no, how did you connect with other fans? I didn’t start connecting with the anime fandom until around the age of 11. I mentioned earlier that I went onto some website called [pirate site redacted]. Well, the website had forums on it and it was my first experience with forums ever. The first real thing I had gotten to interact with on the forums was a fanmade Naruto story, going by the name of “Akira, Kanokage of the Three Mountains.” It was honestly a really cool story and I followed it for years, keeping up with every last update until the story was over. The guy writing it was passionate about the story. Looking back on it, it helped me put the finalized stamp on my dream of being an author one day. It’s a long journey for sure. I stayed away from episode discussions because I only cared about watching anything and everything at the time, but I always went for that fanmade Naruto story, always.

If we talk about how I connect with the anime community in present times, for five years I have been an admin on my page Enter The Fally Zone. I’ve been able to interact with a big community that has differing opinions, yet somehow, good civilized discussions of things with me. It feels nice to entertain people, to make them happy… to connect really. It’s a stellar experience for me that I wish everyone can have. I’ve come pretty far from lurking forums on that weird Naruto anime website and I’m happy that this has been my experience. So many people stop by my Facebook page, reaching out to me, asking how to reconnect with people through different means. It’s a bit odd at times considering my page is mainly an anime page where I entertain people with my opinions, reactions, and writings, but I like being able to talk about the personal side of things with my audience as well. I say audience, but… to me, now? They’re my friends and family that I can’t possibly replace or grow tired of. I love them all.

That’s why I’m overjoyed to do podcasts with my friend Critical Reikan who hosts a podcast called Weebspeak. We do it together most of the time and try to normalize the anime community one topic or interview at a time! This is my favorite one yet:

https://youtu.be/vNCUJ0InugM

It’s a podcast with the Anime Youtuber, Under the Scope. He’s my favorite Anime Youtuber who also values the community and experiences to be had with anime as much as me. I love his content and it’s dragged me out of a slump a few times as well.

I don’t want to lose this connection, ever.

Your anime-focused Facebook page is incredibly popular! Can you tell me what inspired you to start it? Well, I had joined Facebook in May of 2012. I didn’t really get much use out of it considering that a lot of my online friends were on Xbox Live every single day, so if I needed to contact them, it would be there. The same can be said for my real life friends as well since I would just see them every day after summer ends, it didn’t really matter how long we wouldn’t keep in touch for, we kind of just caught up to each other that easily. With that being said, I didn’t really want to continue with using Facebook since it didn’t have a point other than to keep in touch with friends that I haven’t spoken to in a long time or if something were to arise. That’s when my friends had informed me of Facebook groups and how I can probably find some good anime related ones. Upon joining this one anime group, which was… somewhat abusive, I felt a bit turned away from the community, just a tad- to the point where I’d much rather talk about anime everywhere else that isn’t Facebook, that is until I met this guy named Anthony James Cranny, who I refer to as Cranberry haha.

Cranberry, as I call him, is a very funny man and he had a lot of heart behind his words, so naturally, when I was invited to his new anime Facebook group, I was delighted. Thing is, we only knew of each other from seeing one another’s comments but hadn’t really had many conversations yet. That’s why in this new group of his, what got him to notice me was this post made by a girl named Gracie. She listed off every anime she watched, so I thought to give her a big list of anime recommendations in return, to which… she never came back after that. Cranberry saw me being talked up by all these people in the comment section after that and since my name on Facebook wasn’t my real name at the time, it was “Fally”, his reaction was, “Falsworth?! You’re here in my group?!” He then added me as a friend and he got down to business, saying he wanted me to be an admin, that I’d be good. I was a bit shy at first, but everyone loved my cheerfulness, my free-spirited mind, my young heart, and the relation I would have with anime whenever I spoke of it.

One night, Cranberry was drunk and he had just got done watching a non-stop run of The Twilight Zone. He came into the group, made a big post asking, “How many of you think that Fally should make a Facebook page under the name of Enter The Fally Zone? It’s not just mine, but one of his favorite shows and I think it’d be cool since the young lad takes people to a world that only he knows how to display.” It was a bit embarrassing to see him talking me up like that, but everyone else started commenting freely about me as well, saying that I should go for it, that one day, I could probably make a living off of it, that if my dream in life really is to be an author, then this would be the first step out of many, to be a writer, learn the ropes, and experience things that I never thought to.

Thanks to that, on January 20th, 2014, just a few days before my birthday that would be on January 23rd, I started my Facebook page under the name of Enter The Fally Zone. Now, the thing about it is, while it may be big now, there was a time where I almost lost sight of what I wanted to do with it. I was too stuck in the mindset of… making serious posts. I would interact with people, I tried too hard to gather a following for the page, but I also was so strict on my admins, who were good friends of mine that I wanted to help me out. I was pretty mean, I got absolutely stressed out over that page at the start because I wanted to be big… I wanted it to, well, I wanted it to look professional in case I ever was given a job opportunity, be it an article writer, reviewer, anything writing related really. I feel like it wasn’t until late 2015 that I finally realized what my page truly was for the people who view it. That’s when I feel like my page really started, not that day on January 20th, 2014, but sometime in March 2015 actually.

Surely you know of the series Kyoukai No Kanata! [Beyond the Boundary]. It’s one of my favorites honestly, as it is a very moving story in the long-run. Well, in March 2015, Kyoukai No Kanata: I’ll Be Here – Movie 1 was released. I watched it two weeks after it’s release. It was a recap movie, but I was reliving those powerful moments from the series when I had first watched it back in 2013. As I was posting about it, this guy that goes by the name of Alejandro (I’ll refrain from using his full name) had commented. Alejandro said to me, “You’re one of the better admins out there you know? It’s hard to find an anime Facebook page owner who is as down to earth as you are.” I thanked him, replying with, “Really now? I didn’t really think I was doing anything all that different, I just like to post my feelings about things, be it sad, happy, or angry honestly.” Alejandro replied with, “That’s what makes you great! You’re human… every other anime Facebook page just posts memes or mocks people for asking the anime name, even though some people may have problems with reading. You on the other hand always let people know how you feel and that makes us feel things too, it’s why a lot of us come back, or why I do at least.”

Alejandro and I got to talking about the saddest anime we’d ever seen when he told me Clannad resonated with him because his girlfriend died but he was determined to get stronger and keep living. “That’s why I decided I’d start helping everyone I meet, be it friend, stranger, or someone who just hates me,” Alejandro told me. “Helping people… making them feel welcome, being able to spread happiness to others so easily when they’re done… it’s something that just comes naturally to you, Fally. You probably don’t realize it, but the reason why I’m able to tell you my personal story, despite you not knowing anything about me beyond these comments is that I know you, I know the type of person you are already, so keep up the good work and never lose sight of it.”

I was crying from all of it, honestly, I was. I felt like telling him that I was sorry for his loss, but I thought that would be in bad taste. I only told him that for him, I’ll keep making people happy every single day if I could. That became the goal for my page. I post about anime, games, movies, all sorts of media… but that can take a backseat at times when a person just wants their day brightened up; that is the thing I value most. Because of Alejandro, my cold streak towards my page and what I was doing had been broken, but with it came the vision I should have had for it from the start.

I know this was really long… but that is what got me to start my page, but also what inspired me to keep my page going further. Fame is nothing to me, I just want to make people smile during their hardest times

What was it like to go from anime content consumer to anime content creator? How has that transition affected your relationship with anime fandom? Honestly, it’s hard to say. I’ve always been one to think outside of the box when it comes to anime, always looking for a deeper meaning, which I think I can thank Yu Yu Hakusho for, but other pieces of media have helped shape me into this person who desires more from the things I watch. Futurama and Rugrats are two of my favorite cartoons out there, not for comedic reasons, but for the valuable storytelling that can be found within it, the imagery is just powerful in a lot of them. With that being the case and all, when I did become an anime content creator, I didn’t feel much of a change until I realized what I’m bad at.
I’d honestly say that going from an anime consumer to an anime content creator was only jarring when I realized that people wait for my opinion on something. I felt like a regular consumer until once again, another thing happened in 2015. In 2015, Death Parade had come out. If you were to watch Death Parade and go onto Facebook hoping to see people talking about it, then you probably would have found a small community, but nothing big. I watched Death Parade weekly, talking about the themes presented in each episode, starting these big discussion threads, it was a lot of fun! Seeing those threads go from 10 people talking to 70 people talking to a whopping amount that reached the hundreds, being able to watch the size of my page grow while gaining thousands of reach along with these posts was stellar to me. When the Death Parade Blu-Ray was announced by Funimation, there were so many people tagging my page in the comment section of Funimation’s post saying stuff like, “I watched this thanks to Enter The Fally Zone,” and so forth. It was pretty cool and for the times to come after it, I knew that people had this expectation of me to really go in depth with the things I watch.

Do you remember your first convention? What was it, and what was it like? My first convention was Anime Expo back in 2015! It wasn’t the best experience since I had gone with my father who isn’t fond of anime at all whatsoever. His only anime watched is Dragon Ball Z, but he’s pretty toxic towards things he doesn’t understand, so being at the convention with him… seeing how he was a bit rude to the cosplayers, yeah, I didn’t really like that.

There were two panels where my father never questioned the look I had in my eyes though, one of them being the DAISUKI Industry Panel and the Pony Canyon Panel with guest Tomoyo Kurosawa!

The DAISUKI Industry Panel was mainly them talking about how many companies they’re involved with. The special part about it was Shou Aikawa’s appearance though since he came to state that he was disappointed in anime. He wasn’t fond of how anime can have all these genres, yet somehow fail to properly utilize all of them, which was his biggest concern that anime wouldn’t be able to adapt for later times at this rate. As for the panel with Tomoyo Kurosawa, she’s known as the voice actress behind Oumae Kumiko in Sound! Euphonium. I was really excited to hear about her role of Kumiko since that was the character I was fond of the most in the show. Something about her stood out, so to hear Tomoyo Kurosawa voice how she felt about her, talking about this identification within the character, it felt… magical. You just don’t get to hear those stories anymore from people after they get matched to a character.

I really enjoyed my time even though my father said a lot of questionable stuff that frustrated me. I think he was happy to see me get so passionate over something though, so maybe it wasn’t bad as I thought it was back then you know?

Has your dad come around at all regarding anime and your fandom? What does the rest of your family think? Answering honestly to that, it would have to be no. My dad doesn’t like anime, he still only has Dragon Ball Z under his belt, since he refuses to watch anything else, even if I know he’ll genuinely like some shows. He showed me so many martial arts movies as a kid, so you think he would be open to martial arts anime right? Nope, not at all apparently. It is a bit disappointing, but he at least understands how amazing animation can be. He thinks animation in general, for all things, has come a long way, which is true.

While my dad doesn’t like anime, he is happy that I can speak so passionately about it to people and that I have a following. He really wants me to make something of myself, but it can be a bit disheartening at times when he won’t read my written pieces that I’ve posted on Medium, but it’s what I’m used to from him, so I guess there isn’t much to be said.

The rest of my family are into anime because there are other anime fans within my family, such as my cousin Jonathan who has shown everyone in his household Interstella 5555, the animated film that uses music directly from Daft Punk. My mom also watches anime a lot thanks to me and is always recommending series to her brothers. My grandma watched Case Closed with me a lot when she was around, which was quite nice as well. My grandpa, on the other hand, he doesn’t really like to read when he watches his shows or movies but he did sit there giving his full attention to Kids On the Slope because it reminded him of simpler times. I catch him humming the anime rendition of “My Favorite Things”, every so often too, it’s nice.

My family isn’t against anime, they can find some things weird at times, but other than that, they think it is a great medium. They really think my passions to get involved with this industry in some form is wonderful, so I hope to please them at some point in the future, not for their sake, but for my own, since I have a lot of people who believe in me.

Isaiah can be reached on his Facebook page and Twitter. 

Age: 23

Location: Cambridge, Massachusetts

When did you discover anime? Share as much as you remember. I will separate this into three discovery periods: before I knew of the term “anime,” when I first learned about the term anime, and finally my rediscovery of anime and what it can really encompass.

Until I entered high school in America, I grew up in Hong Kong. When I was still an elementary schooler, one night I was watching TV and airing on the TV was some cartoon movie that enthralled me. It was in a Cantonese dub (of which I understood basically nothing) with rough English subtitles that would appear once every couple of lines. Eventually it was past my bed time and I had to submit to my parental overlords who would have just forcibly torn me away from the TV otherwise. It killed me that I had no idea what this movie was even called (much less that it was a Japanese cartoon) and I only realized much later after I had learned of the term anime that this movie was in fact Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. I went through the same experience again from half-watching Princess Mononoke, also presented with a Cantonese dub and shoddy English subtitles during those same childhood years.

I did not actually learn of the term anime until a friend of mine introduced me to Naruto during my middle school years. Today this is probably one of my marks of shame from my earlier days as an anime fan, but I rewatched the original Naruto TV series including filler at least three times. It didn’t take long after Naruto to check out the other Shonen Jump fare, and then I had a phase of watching a bunch of shoujo anime after getting a bit tired of shonen fighting stuff. After that I proceeded to much of the male otaku-pandering harem series. I began to watch most of the airing series that was being fansubbed at the time as I proceeded into high school until I reached major anime burnout. The show that really broke me was K-On. I had a revelation that the shows that otaku were hyping up as the “must check out” shows or the “best anime of the season” just did not really appeal to me anymore. Even those shows aside, after being burned too many times by anime with great beginning episodes that would then be completely unable to sustain their premise for their full running length (Gonzo anyone?), I was really questioning whether or not my heart was really in anime anymore.

My re-discovery of anime I have to credit 100% to the Anime World Order podcast. I very well may not be an anime fan today if I had not found their podcast during my high school burnout. It really opened my eyes up to just how many gems there were back in the ’70s/’80s/early ’90s and to get in the habit of just trying to learn more about who is actually involved in creating the anime I watch and love. It also really opened up my eyes to the fact that anime is not just Shonen Jump adaptations or a cesspool of otaku in-jokes and tropes, but it really does have the capacity to take on a much wider diversity of fictional material. Helen McCarthy summarized this well on the AWO interview with her (at the 5:58 mark):

“Anime is an adventure playground and like any adventure playground you’re only going to get out of it what you take in with you […] if you go looking to try new things, explore new genres, and look around for challenges, then anime is going to provide that.”

The pursuit of challenges is what keeps my anime passion alive. Every time I see a side of anime I’ve never seen before, my otaku expiration date pushes back even further. My hope is that I will never hit this expiration date, so long as I remember that watching anime does not have to be limited to the titles that trend with the anime fandom at large.

What appealed to you about anime when you first discovered it? For my elementary school story, the main feeling I came away from having half-watched both movies was “Wow, I did not know a cartoon could portray such a compelling story.” My prior exposure to cartoons was things of the nature of some of the older Walt Disney cartoons, Tom and Jerry, CatDog, and Rocko’s Modern Life to name a few. While I enjoyed those as a kid, we can all see that these are comedic endeavors that completely unlike the aforementioned movies. Those movies imprinted upon me a much deeper, lingering feeling of fulfillment.

Although Naruto marked my initial foray into anime, I have actually fallen completely out of caring about it at all. That being said, when I first watched it I really thought it was a fresh breath of air from all the Western cartoons done in episodic format. I actually love a lot of the DCAU cartoons but I feel like there is a limit to how far or deep you can take a story when constrained by that format. The serialized nature of Naruto and other series like it grabbed my attention and I grew a much stronger attachment to characters from long running series like this. This is not to say I necessarily dislike anime that take an episodic format, but an anime series portraying a single story that runs for the length of one or more cours returns a particular feeling of immense satisfaction when done well. I can’t say the same for most of the Western cartoons I watched when I was younger. I was also fascinated by many of the cultural differences from Japan that were exhibited in some of the anime I watched during this time, and so there was definitely an appeal of adventuring into a culture very different from my mostly Western sensibilities.

The appeal of anime since my rediscovery of it has taken a much more fascinating turn. Prior to this point I did not really take to the cel-animated style of animation but I’ve grown exceedingly fond of it the more stuff I visit from the ’70s and ’80s. It saddens me to think that it practically a dead art at this point. (If I’m not mistaken Sazae-san was the last anime to use cel-animation and if the production for Sazae-san cannot keep it up… well nothing else can right?) The amount of artistic and narrative diversity that was possible during the ’80s due to the booming economy in Japan at the time is something that I have not really found in anime of recent times; with any luck crowdfunded anime will continue to carve out its own niche though. That aside, I also have bizarre theoretical nostalgia for the ’80s which my parents find both puzzling and amusing.

Just to clarify, even though I have primarily been focusing my attention on anime from the ’70s and ’80s since my rediscovery, I do think that currently anime is doing pretty well and when I do finally get around to watching some more recent anime it is not that hard for me to find something I would like. I am just in no rush to watch anime that everyone is talking about, and I am hesitant to watch shows as they air for fear of being let down by the end.

You grew up in Hong Kong and then Cambridge. Can you tell me how anime fandom was different in each city? I should clarify here. Until high school I grew up in Hong Kong. During high school I was in New Jersey. For undergraduate schooling onwards I was in Cambridge. So I’m not really sure I can say I “grew up” in Cambridge since I was already in college at that point.

As someone that cannot actually speak Cantonese (I can understand a very small amount), my experience is unlikely to be representative of actual fandom in Hong Kong. I also did not attempt to interact too much with fandom in Hong Kong. I think what stands out to me the most over there compared to the states are the sort of properties that were represented. I can remember walking in random malls and seeing illustrations and merchandise for Astro Boy casually in areas. Even more so for stuff like Doraemon. Doraemon would be broadcast dubbed on the Cantonese language channels. Basically you can clearly see representation of the set of anime or manga properties that are huge across East Asia but are virtually unheard of in the West. Many of these properties are popular to large audiences, not just self-proclaimed anime fans. As far as people at school (I went to a British private school taught entirely in English so again, possibly not representative), there were kids who were into those huge Shonen Jump titles like Naruto, Bleach, One Piece, and so forth. I do recall someone reading a localized (into written Chinese) Sgt. Frog manga volume. I wasn’t even aware that this was released in the states or that it had a following until checking just now. In my head I had thought of this as another “popular in East Asia but not in the West” property.

I went to a boarding high school in New Jersey and I didn’t leave campus much because I was lazy and going to town required more walking than I cared for at the time. So I can really only comment on the situation at school. I think besides what I’ve already said, it appeared to me that there wasn’t a lot of interest in an organized club setting for anime (although I feel like it could have been different if the school actually allowed for non-athletic and non-theater extra-curricular activities). There were however people with at least some kind of passing interest in anime; their presence was not very visible though so to this day I’m not entirely sure how many people actually cared about anime. This is when I really understood that there’s a whole population of people who consume anime but do not speak about it whatsoever.

College in Cambridge was a pretty huge letdown as far as anime fandom is concerned. Admittedly, if I was still the same fan I was when I was getting into this stuff I would have fit right at home. There were a lot of people to whom anime is essentially a bunch of memes. While I do actually think one great aspect about anime fandom is that people can celebrate it in so many different ways, it was a letdown for me that I had so much trouble finding people who would also want to take it seriously. I’m not gonna pretend like every anime is some kind of cinematic masterpiece, because that is not true at all. At the time it struck me as strange that anime fans had so little interest in seeking out things worthy of that kind of recognition. Stepping aside from my biases, there’s definitely a lot of that internet awareness of anime fandom that would be represented by anime fans at my school. So if you were the sort of person who was constantly on top of the zeitgeist of anime fandom, quickly jumping to one hot otaku property after the next, you would have had a great time.

You spent a lot of time gravitating toward much older anime. What appealed to you about those over more modern titles? When I first saw a non-Ghibli cel animated anime, I was still in my relative infancy as an anime fan and the aesthetic did not appeal to me at the time. It’s funny that since then I now tend to gravitate much more to older titles. Probably the biggest driving force during my transition to older titles is wanting to get away from the glut of moe titles that kept getting pumped out. Before that point most of what I was watching was that moe stuff and at first I thought it was quirky and fun but later on I realized I was just lying to myself about liking that stuff anymore. There can be shows with moe elements that can still be good provided other quality aspects (plot, characterization, etc.) are there. However, the balance wasn’t really there when I was really getting sick of it. Nowadays anime seems to be doing a lot better than simply completing a checklist designed to cater only to the moe fanbase.

So older anime had a lot less moe stuff crammed into it. On the other hand, there’s a ton more mecha stuff there which I previously did not care for. I no longer have any resistance to mecha shows now and do enjoy greatly the ones that I have seen. I still don’t think I would call myself a huge mecha person though. I do really like the level of detail you see with some illustrations of robots. It is a shame that the animators who can actually animate robots in 2D are dwindling out.

The hand-crafted feel of cel animation versus the technically cleaner aspects of digital animation is something that I enjoy greatly. It’s really great whenever some window shatters or a building gets demolished and you can see the individual bits of debris and rubble. People spent weeks painting cels for something that amounts to a gorgeous second long shot. Whenever the camera perspective switches I’m blown away because everything in the shot has to be redrawn each frame. The warmer color palette gives a different vibe than that of modern titles. In any case, for many of these aspects there’s not necessarily a technical reason you couldn’t do these things in digital animation. However, there is one thing that was certainly different in the ’80s and that was the economy in Japan.

The amount of money that got pumped into the anime industry as a consequence of the ’80s bubble economy would allow for these super detailed and time-intensive shots. Not all old anime is like this of course, but at least the possibility was there. Besides that, the crazy amounts of money that would get thrown around would enable the production of strange, extremely non-merchandisable titles such as Angel’s Egg, To-Y, and Bobby’s Girl. Success or not, there is something fascinating about creative output in anime unrestrained by commercial considerations. If you wanted to pick a single decade to look for as much anime that is unlike anime you’ve seen before, unquestionably the ’80s is the place to go.

Putting aside my preference for the aesthetics or the experimental stuff of the time, if I were to try and sell someone on the concept of going back and checking older anime it would be that titles that have withstood the test of time are worth checking out. It’s hard to identify if an anime title is going to have any staying power at the height of its popularity. So the only reasonable way to unbiasedly test this I think is to simply wait and see. Especially nowadays, fans move rapidly from one show to the next. Here’s are modern examples of things I don’t think pass the test of time. How many people honestly care about The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya anymore (well, they weren’t doing themselves any favors with that second season)? How about Lucky Star? On the other hand, people will still bring up Akira as one of these cinematic masterpieces. Somehow fandom over Legend of the Galactic Heroes has persisted for all this time despite only very recently getting an official release for the first time. Old school fans still talk about Bubblegum Crisis. A couple of years back Carl Gustav Horn cared enough to assemble writers and put together a gorgeous 25th anniversary fanzine for Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honneamise. To me, that is a strong signal that those particular titles are at least worth checking out. An argument could certainly be made that since so much less stuff made it to English speaking audiences back then, it was easier for fandom as a whole to rally and concentrate around a small subset of shows compared to now. But hey, people still care about this stuff more than 25 years later. Why not find out what all the fuss is about?

What was it like to be a part of anime fandom at the time? I did not really try to connect with anime fans until high school. There did not seem to be a whole lot of interest in anime at my school when I tried asking around, and so I eventually started an anime club in hopes of finding other fans. Unfortunately basically any extracurricular activity that was not sports or theater was shafted because there were credit requirements related to these and so even though a bunch of people expressed interest in an anime club at my first administrative meeting, very few people could actually come to showings I held after school. To be honest I did not really have a good sense of direction for what I wanted to do with the club until I was a senior and had experienced my rediscovery of anime. It was also during this time I began nurturing my love of old anime. The goal I set that year was to try and break people’s preconceived notions of anime with every showing I did and try and make it a little educational by talking about some of the background details of how the titles came to be. So I would show titles like Royal Space Force, Project A-ko, Angel’s Egg, Gunbuster, and the early ’90s Black Jack OAVs to name a few. That being said, the anime club was really just one guy I had not met before I started it, and my friends most of whom were not really anime fans. The people that attended did tell me later after I had graduated that I showed them some really interesting stuff that they would never have associated with anime normally, so I guess I did achieve my goal in the end. I think there might have been more anime fans than I was originally led to believe but perhaps none of them were interested in going to an anime club. I say this because at a completely unrelated event I was talking to a friend about the unfortunate passing of Satoshi Kon and why this was a big deal, and someone I barely knew chimed in and said “Oh yeah I heard about that too!” I was shocked that someone else in my high school would even know of the name Satoshi Kon.

Then after that was college. Even though I went to a very nerdy college, I really did not connect much at all with anime fans I met there. It honestly was a really hard time for me as an anime fan to have to come to terms with the fact that I had so little in common with other anime fans in my age group. I am aware that what I am saying would probably anger some of the older fans who may have had to endure bullying for being into anime and would have killed to find any other anime fans. With the exception of one person (Hi Steve!), I basically did not meet any anime fans who really cared much about both old anime and the people who worked on them. Even putting aside old anime, people who went to the anime club in college were not particularly interested in having serious discussions about anime either. Apparently the club used to be open to the public but from what I hear, too many old folks being around turned off students from the showings so it was closed off by a previous club president who had graduated by the time I was attending. While I am sure this was done with good intentions for the students, I was pretty bummed out that had I only attended a few years earlier I would have been able to meet a bunch of older anime fans. The one time during those years I felt a really strong connection with other people about anime was during a summer internship in Tokyo when I was 20 years old; basically all the actual employees in my team were middle aged software engineers. That same summer I was again reminded how out of place I was and still am; I was cel shopping in Nakano Broadway and I realized that the only people that ever walked into the cel shops (I spent hours upon hours just looking at cels) that were younger than me were the kids of couples that were much older than me. It is not easy for me to be reminded frequently about my interests are quite out of place with other fans in my age group. I would love to meet other fans in-person that are into old anime regardless of their age but I do not really know of a way to do so easily. I think most people tend to socialize within their age groups so I am not sure there is an easy way.

Was the Internet a part of fandom at the time? It was, but I did not really use the internet to try and find other fans during middle and high school. These days I follow a bunch of the Anitwitter folks though. I mostly gave up trying to connect with other fans in real life circles. Some of my college friends who watch anime have tried to appeal to me by claiming to me things of the nature “Miyazaki seems like he thinks he’s the only one who can save anime” or “I can see how Hunter x Hunter was influenced by Naruto.” When I respond “Oh that’s interesting I never heard of that” and then ask them for a citation source or how they know any of this eventually they admit that they were bullshitting me which I do not take kindly to at all. Experiences like this deter me from wanting trying to discuss anime seriously with the anime fans I currently know in person. As a result I now sort of just silently follow the tweetings of (to name a few) the Mike Toole, Dawn / Usamimi and 80s_anime folks of the world. My small (maybe dumb) hope is that perhaps writing all of this may help open up some avenues to connect with other anime fans into older anime.

Do you remember your first convention? What was it, and what was it like? My first anime convention was actually only a little over a year ago, at Anime Boston 2016. Prior to that my entire knowledge of what actually happens at anime conventions was pretty much based the AWO podcast coverage of them. I only went on Sunday and I mostly just spent time in the dealers’ room, especially at the only vendor that was selling cels. Instead of cels, at that booth I ended up buying two Galaxy Express 999 posters, a Royal Space Force poster, and a Macross Do You Remember Love poster. I’m kind of kicking myself for not going for the whole weekend because Masao Maruyama was a guest that year.

Tell me how you got a summer internship in Tokyo. Where was it? Did you speak Japanese? So I actually did three summer internships in a row in Japan. The first in Hyogo Prefecture (near Osaka), the second in Tokyo, and the third in Tokyo. These were all arranged through my school which had a program that you where you could do summer internships abroad. All of these internships were software development related (I majored in Computer Science).

The first internship was for a startup which excluding me and another intern from my school, consisted of literally just my French boss and a Japanese student working there. At lunch sometimes we would use Japanese but for work stuff I would just speak to him in English.

The second internship was for a more traditional Japanese company called Secom, and took place at their research lab in Mitaka city (the same city where the Ghibli museum is located). They asked me what language I preferred to communicate with and I insisted on Japanese because I was trying to get more comfortable speaking it. They seemed relieved and happy to accommodate that request, although we would have once a week English lunch table events which I would go to so they could practice English. Those lunch tables were the only time I spoke English at the company. In the present day my spoken Japanese has atrophied very hard, although I’m still practicing reading and listening. As I mentioned earlier, most of the people in my team were essentially folks in their 40s to 50s who majored in Computer Science back in the day. In other words, the demographic of people who would likely enjoy the same kind of anime that I do. This was exactly the case. I could talk about how great Galaxy Express 999 is and people would respond with pleasant agreement instead of a blank face, wow! Forgive me for tooting my horn a little, but those guys were continually surprised by just how much I knew about older anime properties; actually I feel like I actually don’t know that much compared to the super fans that I follow online. For a presentation I did in front of an audience comprised of people from a bunch of different teams, I showcased some of the cels I bought that summer and invited people to stop by my desk if they wanted to take a look at the rest. One guy who came by was talking about Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honneamise and referred to Hideaki Anno as the director. I gave him a weird look and corrected him, pointing out that the director was in fact Hiroyuki Yamaga. He still wasn’t quite convinced but my supervisor had my back and said “he actually knows a lot about anime.” Most of the people in my team weren’t necessarily hardcore anime fans so much as people who enjoyed anime when they were younger. It just so happens those anime titles were exactly what I was into. As a half-joke I would tell friends in the states that I was finally with my kind of people. It was the first (of very few) major experiences I’ve had offline where I felt like I really had an overlapping anime interest with another group of people.

The third internship was not an internship so much as a summer research experience I did at Tokyo University. I think most students (all of them were graduate students) in the lab could read English decently, which was probably a requirement given that most academia is published in English, but they were no one spoke it at all. It was kind of unfortunate since my Japanese speaking had gotten a lot worse at this point so it was hard to actually engage in conversations about stuff. During my introduction to the lab I did mention (in Japanese) “Hmmm, as far as hobbies I’m into ’80s anime in particular.” After processing what I had said, one of the students responded “… wait we weren’t even born then.”

This reminded me of an amusing experience during my first summer in Japan before my first internship started, where I was in a language exchange thing that was happening at Tokyo University with my Japanese class from school. I didn’t realize it at the time, but apparently my bizarre interest in older anime left an impression on some people there. At the end of this language exchange thing, there was a closing event where on a whim they were someone should do karaoke. Prior to this I had used the opening to Gatchaman in a presentation for my Japanese class so everyone from my class wanted me to go sing the opening in front of a bunch of Tokyo University engineering staff and graduate students, which I did. I’m not even sure the graduate students knew what this was, and it must have been weird for some of the staff to get a flashback to their childhoods.

Was your interest in anime a contributing factor to you taking an internship in Tokyo? Maybe somewhat but honestly I don’t think it was that big of a factor prior to accepting the internship. Completely unrelated to my anime interest, I had read up a lot about lifestyle differences or social issues in Japan. So I was well aware that it isn’t some fantasy land where people casually walk down the street rocking Naruto headbands. Especially coming from Hong Kong and then living in the states, the culture shock wasn’t that big for me by the time I spent my first summer in Japan.

I also didn’t really have this anime fan obsession with Akihabara being the holy land nor did I feel like I absolutely had to make a pilgrimage over there to complete my anime fan journey. I did go a couple of times and at first it was a little overwhelming but honestly overall it was pretty boring for me. If you are down with all the hot anime merchandise and have tons of money, then they will very willingly accommodate that fan interest. But for someone like me whose mind was flooded with obsession over older anime, there wasn’t a lot that catered to me from there. Nakano Broadway on the other hand, THAT is where the old school anime fan stuff is at.

In your opinion, what’s the biggest contrast between anime fandom today and anime fandom when you first got into it? This is a pretty boring answer because it could apply to anyone besides people that became fans after the rise of streaming as a anime delivery mechanism, but it has to be just the sheer amount of anime that is available via legal means. More accessibility is great but ironically the problem of legal accessibility being solved has lead to the problem of too much anime being available. The latter is not actually a problem because it’s as simple as choosing not to watch everything, but I think any long term fans can probably name a person or two that tried to watch everything available every season and burned out really fast. As far as how this relates to fandom specifically, I think an obsession with always trying to stay up to date has lead to overall anime fandom having a very short term memory. To be honest not long after I was getting into anime I think this was already starting to happen, but now it seems even worse. I hope I’m wrong, but I don’t really see the modern equivalent of extreme concentrated pockets of fandom for older properties (whether that’s stuff from when I was getting into anime, or before). It would be a shame to lose that level of fan dedication. That being said, I’m still pretty optimistic that dedicated fandom will still thrive in some form.

Austin can be reached on Twitter and his blog.

Age: 26

Location: Chicago, USA

When did you discover anime? It was sophomore year of high school (I think around 2006?) when I decided to try anime. Things like memes and imageboards were just starting to get popular. So my first anime was Rozen Maiden because I saw so much art of one of the characters.

What appealed to you about anime when you first discovered it? I think it was because it was so different from cartoons I’ve seen before. Sixteen-year-old me found it so cool watching animation made by a different culture: what stories they tell, the style of comedy, and what kind of characters they create.

What was the first anime you got really invested in? How did you express your fandom? The first anime that made me go “alright, this is the best anime I’ve ever watched” is the Aria franchise, cumulating with Aria the Origination. It remains my favorite anime to this day. Fortunately, there isn’t that much merchandise or events related to this show, but I do have the art books, blu-rays, and manga. The day Kawakami Tomoko died in 2011 I was inconsolable. I still get emotional when I hear Athena’s voice.

What would you say was the most popular anime at the time? Probably Bleach and Death Note. I didn’t really pay attention to airing stuff until like 2008, and by then I distinctly remember Lucky Star being all the rage.

What was it like to be a part of anime fandom at the time? I had one or two friends who watched anime as well, but I mostly kept it to myself. I did try showing some stuff to other friends with mixed results.

What were those mixed results? It was more or less a learning experience that different people liked different genres—really, really early on. I showed a good friend Lucky Star and School Rumble, but he enjoyed the more cerebral shows like Serial Experiments Lain and Evangelion instead. I was still in that wonderful phase where I thought every anime was just the most incredible thing ever.

Was the Internet a part of fandom at the time? If yes, how? If no, how did you connect with other fans? The internet was a place where I could freely talk about anime because I was in the company of other anime fans. It was a godsend for someone like me, where I just have to share the ideas filling my head to the brim. I started really getting engaged when I joined the Saimoe community (those voting poll contests to democratically determine best girl popular a few years ago) which eventually led to me starting my own anime blog which eventually led to me making fake anime news.

I want to hear more about the origin of your “fake anime news” blog Anime Maru! I had my own blog that I had been writing for a few years. I was proud of my work and more or less did it for fun, and through blogging I virtually met many of my close acquaintances in the anime community (including you!). But over the years I started losing passion for and I was looking for some way to be different. I felt like everyone has an anime blog and while sometimes a great clever idea or unique insight pops into my head, in the end I was just doing what everyone else was doing. I wrote a few parody anime news articles and not only were they incredibly fun to write, the people I shared them with found them really entertaining. I knew I had a fresh new idea, but I had decently high ambitions so I would need a staff. I took some time off to really plan out my vision, do the groundwork for making a website, and finding a good staff of writers. While the first year was a bit rocky and had some growing pains, I finally found joy and passion in writing about anime again. I’m glad I can contribute to this community in my own unique way.

As a blogger, do you interact with newbie fans? If so, how do you think their perspectives are different than when you were a newbie fan? I think Anime Maru targets the hardcore anime crowd a bit more, as a lot of humor is meta-humor about the fanbase itself or oblique current events in the anime world. But outside of writing, I do enjoy talking about anime especially with new people. One trait newbie anime fans all share is being easily impressed by anime. I think this is because early in fandom they are recommended good shows by people trying to help them, and also by the fact they have not been “jaded” by tropes or cliche. To have that innocence back!

Do you remember your first convention? What was it, and what was it like? My first convention was Anime Expo 2011, for which I flew into Los Angeles for. I never imagined having fun at an anime convention because I couldn’t find anyone interested in going. However, one of the blogs I wrote for at the time offered me press credentials and I just decided to go for it. Besides getting awesome access to guests and not having to stand in line, I was exposed to how fun it was to brush shoulders with “people from the internet” and be in a literal sea of individuals who share my passion. Now I am a regular convention goer.

You had press credentials. So you got paid to write about anime? How did you go from fan to pro? I’m really into anime music. Many years ago I was really into movie soundtracks, and that kind of bled into anime and I began researching anime soundtracks. I was invited by zzeroparticle to contribute on his anime music blog for a while because I could write moderately intelligently about anime soundtracks. His blog was a bit more successful and popular than my little shack at the time, and I got to go to some conventions! My fondest experiences with anime music include Yoko Kanno’s PIANO ME performance at Otakon and Kalafina at Anime Expo. For a soundtrack geek at the time like myself, it was an experience of a lifetime.

What’s the biggest contrast between anime fandom when you found it and anime fandom today? The sheer size and organization of the fandom. Twelve years ago I could easily find a discussion board about anime or watch just about any show using the high seas, but now anime fandom is like a galaxy swirling around thanks to social media. Each fandom has huge rabid communities, and anime has never been more accessible. Anime has become far more mainstream and will only continue to do so.

Kevo can be reached on Twitter. 

Age: 23

Location: Southeast US

When did you discover anime? Share as much as you remember. I discovered anime about four years ago when I was 19. It was right at the end of my freshman year of college. I had watched Pokémon and YuGiOh as a kid, but wasn’t into “anime” specifically (as a medium). So, the first series I saw that got me interested in anime was Soul Eater. I noticed it airing on Toonami and the title caught my eye, so I checked it out. I was really intrigued by it and how it was animated, but not a kid’s show. I had Netflix at the time and found it on there. I devoured the rest of it and then started searching through their catalogue to see what else they had.

I watched a bunch of other series there and got more and more interested in “this anime thing.” (One of the series I watched early on was Angel Beats!, which really got to me emotionally and remains my favorite anime to this day.) That summer was when I found Crunchyroll and Funimation and started realizing that anime was something I was really consistently interested in. I started learning more about different series and reading forums and engaging with anime culture more. Funny story: one of the first anime I watched on Crunchyroll was Oreimo, which I enjoyed, but is quite the anime to watch when you’re new to the world of anime… haha. Anyways, after that, I kept on seeking out more and more and started reading news sites like CR and ANN. That pretty much takes me to where I am today. I’ve seen thousands of episodes and it’s something I’m really passionate about 🙂

What was surprising about Oreimo for a brand new anime fan? I’d love if you could try to remember what surprised you back then that wouldn’t surprise you now. I think what surprised me about it was its take on a very taboo subject that is almost never portrayed in American TV and movies (which is all I ever knew before discovering anime). It isn’t a very good gateway anime, but I think that it helped show me the more niche side of anime early on. And I’m glad I got to see that side earlier on, rather than seeking out anime that I thought I would enjoy because they are more familiar and not “too anime.” If I were to watch it for the first time now, it probably would not surprise me as much, since I’m now a lot more familiar with the ability of anime to portray topics and themes not explored much in other forms of media.

What appealed to you about anime when you first discovered it?
What really appealed to me about anime was that these series were animated, but told mature stories that weren’t “for kids.” And they were cool and funny and could evoke a strong emotional response from me. The aesthetic style of anime is something that really appeals to me. I love anime-style character designs (I’m a big fan of moe/bishoujo).

Has your interest in character design led to active participation? Do you draw or create anything because of anime? A few years ago, I was briefly inspired to try my hand at drawing anime characters. Drawing was never exactly my forte, and while I didn’t think they were bad for a beginner, I wasn’t passionate enough about it to keep it up. So now, I’m just a fan of other artists’ amazing anime illustrations on sites like Pixiv and Twitter…

What would you say was the most popular anime at the time? Honestly, if you had asked me this at the time, I couldn’t tell you. I wasn’t really aware of the greater context and community of anime when I first started. I was interested in the anime that I was watching specifically. I just checked to see what aired in the spring of 2013 when I started watching and so I’d say Attack on Titan, My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU, and The Devil Is a Part-Timer were probably really popular at that time (although I didn’t know about them back then.)

What was it like to be a part of anime fandom at the time? Anime was already fairly popular and accessible in America when I joined, so I was joining thousands of other very passionate fans. It did take me a while before I started learning about the greater context and community of anime fandom outside of my personal experiences with it.

Did you feel like it was hard to be welcomed into anime fandom? Did you feel like people used words you didn’t understand? What was it like to slowly become an insider to the fandom? Although I wouldn’t necessarily say it was hard to become a real part of anime fandom, there was definitely a learning curve when I was first starting out. Originally, I only really knew about the anime on Netflix. And when I tried reading some forums online, I wasn’t familiar with the majority of the series and topics talked about there. Although, I feel like I caught up fairly quickly. This was probably thanks to reading news sites and forums a lot, and consistently finding new series to watch. Eventually it got to the point where I knew about a lot more than I had actually seen—where I could point out series at conventions, even though I hadn’t watched them. And as the amount of series I had seen increased, I became more and more of an “insider” to anime fandom.

Was the Internet a part of fandom at the time? If yes, how? If no, how did you connect with other fans? Yes it was, but I didn’t engage very actively in the anime community, although I really enjoyed reading forums about other fans’ favorite series, etc. After a little while, I started showing and talking about anime with my family and friends.

How did your family and friends react? My parents are really supportive of my anime passion.. When I had just started watching my first anime, Soul Eater, I had to tell my mom how cool it was. She was happy to listen and even watched some episodes with me. Since then, we’ve watched a lot of series together, and she really appreciates the pretty art style and wonderful stories that anime can tell.

I also have friends who are into anime and we go to conventions and have a ton of fun sharing our love of anime together. Pretty much anytime I’ve told someone that I’m into anime, it’s always been a positive response. So, I’m grateful for that.

Do you remember your first convention? What was it, and what was it like? Yes! My first convention was Anime Weekend Atlanta 2013, and it was amazing. I ran around the Dealers’ Room, pointing out everything I recognized. “Look, they have this! No way, look at that!” It was a fantastic experience and I’ve gone back every year since.

What was the first anime you got really invested in? How did you express your fandom? The first anime I really got invested in was Angel Beats! It was one of the first anime I saw and the emotional impact it had on me was unlike any other series or movie I had ever seen. That’s why, even after everything I’ve seen in the years since, it’s still my all time favorite. I bought the songs from the anime and had a wristband with the name of the in-series band on it (the first piece of anime merch I ever bought). And when that one faded, I bought another one!

Now, my room is filled with things like wall scrolls and figures from different series that I’ve collected over the years.

Finally, how is your anime fandom experience different today from when you first got started? I think one of the main things about my fandom today that is different from when I started is that I have friends who are super into it also to share my passion with. When I first started, I didn’t really talk about it much with many people, probably because I wasn’t sure if someone I knew/met was also interested in it. But now, it’s really awesome to be able to express myself and have friends who support that without judgement.

Another aspect that’s different now is my interest in the actual production and industry side of anime. I pay more attention now to aspects like voice actors and animation production studios (my favorites being KyoAni and Lerche). I’ve learned over the years of all the different facets of the anime world. I didn’t know what I was getting myself into when I watched my very first episode of Soul Eater years ago. And I mean that in the best possible way.

Andy can be reached on Twitter. 

Age: 28

Location: Orlando, Florida

When did you discover anime? My earliest recollection of what I would later come to recognize as anime was re-runs of Robotech that played early in the mornings before I went to school. There was something else that played alongside it but I don’t remember if it was another anime. What little I do remember is that my brother and I made sure my father woke us up in time to watch the hour of programming before school. We would watch and he would make us breakfast. This tradition kept up over the years as new shows aired. This is how, for example, I first watched Zoids amongst other things.

By the time I came to understand that anime was different from other cartoons, I had graduated from watching it in the mornings to also watching anime every afternoon on Cartoon Network’s Toonami block. At this time, my interest in military history drew me to samurai which, in turn, led me to the realization that these cartoons I was watching were Japanese and had their own unique term to describe them, “anime.”

It was during these early Toonami years that I really “discovered” anime. I became a forever fan of anime from all genres and I became acquainted with what would become my favorite franchise: Gundam. New Mobile Report Gundam Wing on Toonami got me into Gundam despite my distinct memory of disliking the first episode. My friend, Andrew, continued to nourish my interest as he knew more about the franchise and had better access to other Gundam material from the internet and elsewhere.

I also credit my discovery of anime to the blossoming of my interest in other areas such as collecting and Japanese culture as a whole so I’m very happy that I became a devotee.

I’d love to hear about these additional interests and how you expressed them over the years. Collecting and Japanese cultural studies were the two main tangential interests that influenced my interest in anime and subsequently molded me into the anime fan I am today. The earlier of these other interests was in collecting. I’m not sure what the catalyst for this was but I suspect that Pokémon had a lot to do with it. The mythos surrounding the game always encouraged you to “Catch ‘em All” and so that’s what me and my friends did; we always ensured that we got every single Pokémon in our games. When the card game came out and my brother and I got into that, it wasn’t merely a card game for us. The goal was to get one of each card to scuttle away before ever considering playing with them. When we discovered that these cards also came in a “1^st Edition,” it was a disaster. It was no longer about just getting every card but about getting all of them in the right edition. This trend continued into the emergence of the Yu-Gi-Oh card game but that eventually tapered off in college when I lost interest in the game. I also treated the brief Gundam War card game with the same collector’s spirit but those cards proved to be so elusive that I never finished my set.

An important part of my collecting spirit was encouraged by my mother and that was the safe-keeping of my collection. She always bought my brother and me acid-free plastic pages to keep our cards in at additional cost to herself so that they would survive in the long run. We still have the books of cards and I can say proudly that they are almost all still in mint condition. Things went even further when I got into college and took a museum conservation course. In this space, I learned that if I valued my collections, there were a number of factors that I must always keep under consideration such as light damage, skin-oil degradation, etc. As a result, I am very careful these days with all my art whether it is anime-related or not; everything is handled with museum-grade cotton gloves, the room they are stored in has light-blocking curtains, storage materials are researched before use, and the list goes on and on.

These days, the items I collect vary quite widely. I collect folk art pieces, ceramics, and a number of anime-related items. In the realm of anime, my collecting includes limited-edition physical media releases, various Gundam-related items, film and promotional posters, and animation cels. On my recent month-long trip to Japan, art was definitely my number one expense.

The later of these two interests was Japanese culture as a whole. My interest in Japan actually pre-dated my knowledge that anime was anything more than really cool cartoons. As I began to get into history in middle school, military history became my favored topic. I don’t remember the particular details of how it happened, but during these early years, my exploration into samurai history somehow led me to the realization that all these cartoons I watched so feverishly were Japanese. I feel that I was somewhat privy to this beforehand but this time the revelation stuck and I began to think of anime not merely as a selection of shows that I liked but as machinations of a particular culture.

Nowadays, I’m just generally interested in everything. I enjoy learning about a little bit of everything whether it’s history, culinary traditions, politics, or anything you can think of. Anime is very special to me in this regard as my impetus to research a topic is often related to my observance of it in a show. To give you an idea of how broadly it can work for me, I’ll discuss some examples that stick out in my recollection. From the main character of Princess Mononoke being Emishi, I did some research on this now extinct culture which has given me a much better concept of things like early state formation in Japan and the origins of the shape of Japanese swords. Other shows like Natsume’s Book of Friends challenged my preconceived notions on the nature of yokai which has led me to discover how much more fluid, fleeting, and mysterious the world of the supernatural is in Japan. Even shows that don’t really involve Japan can drive me to learn new things. Sound of the Sky’s unique setting led me to seek out the origins for it and led me to the Spanish city of Cuenca. Reading more about the city and its architecture led me to get better acquainted with aspects of Spanish history that I may have never come across if it weren’t for a Japanese cartoon about cute soldier girls.

So, interestingly for me, my discovery of anime from other aspects of Japanese culture has almost been flipped around and, in the present, anime has become a vehicle by which I can broaden my horizons about both Japanese culture and the world more broadly.

What appealed to you about anime when you first discovered it? At this point, I don’t even remember what drew me to anime at first. My best guess is that, in my earliest years, it was action scenes and vibrant colors all under the guise of cartoons.

As I grew up and watched other shows like Sailor Moon, I became entranced by the depth of the stories contained within these cartoons. This was something completely foreign to me when it came to American programming and I ate it up voraciously.

When it came to shows like Gundam, it was not only the quality of the tale but the technology that drew me in. When I discovered Gundam, I had already developed a fascination with military history and the associated technology that goes along with it.

What was the first fandom you got really invested in? How did you express your fandom? Gundam was undoubtedly my first and still primary anime love. Early on in our middle school days, my buddy Andrew was also a big Gundam fan and so our fan expression almost exclusively centered around one of us getting a hold of Gundam DVDs, games, etc. and devouring those wholesale. With the internet becoming easily available to us at around the time Gundam became popular, we also used the internet to gather as much information about the franchise as we could. We would share links to pages with each other that had Gundam information and we’d read them over and over to try and absorb it all. It was a great time to be a Gundam fan because it was still within the anime zeitgeist and knowing more about it than other folks made us feel good about it.

By the time we hit high school, Gundam’s popularity had dwindled but Andrew and I still continued to love it unconditionally. We continued to express our fandom through learning as much as we could on Gundam, attending Gundam events at the conventions we could make it to, and Andrew even began to build the occasional model. I never have gotten into Gunpla myself which I know is somewhat unusual for a Gundam fan.

Heading off to college didn’t dwindle my interest in the slightest. If anything, this is when my collecting bug began to really sprout with Gundam. I began picking up some smaller figures for display, limited edition media sets, random Gundam knick-knacks, and even some vintage Gundam posters. These latter items were, as you might expect, a little beaten up and so near the end of college, I actually took them to the campus museum’s conservation department to have them tell the best way to preserve them in the future. They now hang proudly in my room in custom-made frames.

Nowadays, Gundam continues to be my central anime interest and the focus of my anime collectibles spending. On my recent trip to Japan, I went to major Gundam places such as Joshin Super Kids Land in Nipponbashi in Osaka, the Gundam Café in Osaka with the Gundam vs. Char’s Zaku II statue, and the Gundam Café in Akihabara. Between these three locations and some others, I acquired over 45 pounds of Gundam merchandise!

What would you say was the most popular anime at the time? During the time in which anime took hold of me, popularity in my cadre of acquaintances was divided along gender lines. For guys, it was a pretty even split between Dragon Ball Z and Gundam Wing. For girls, Sailor Moon was, by far, the most popular anime property.

What was it like to be a part of anime fandom at the time? As someone who became a fan in late elementary to middle school, things were relatively simple. At the beginning, approximately half the class would watch Toonami in the afternoon and we would gather throughout the day in the classroom and on the playground to discuss the previous day’s episode.

Towards the end of middle school, more people began to lose interest so those of us who continued to enjoy anime became excluded into our own clique of nerds. This trend stuck around throughout high school but, luckily for me, the group of friends I developed was strong so I never had to experience major isolation due to anime.

Did liking anime limit who would be friends with you? Are you still friends with any of the group you referred to here? I suppose the answer here would be “in a way”. The core group of friends I developed in high school consisted of three schoolmates and another guy who was a friend of one of them. Only two of them liked anime beyond a fleeting interest in a single show at a time and, even then, my interest in anime was farther flung than even the two who were into anime. We connected based off other interests but the important thing was that my love of anime didn’t bother them. I could talk about something I was watching and enjoying and, as long as I didn’t harp on it too much and get bothersome—which I used to occasionally—they were fine with it. I’m still friends with all of these guys and, having moved back to Orlando after college, they remain my central social group.

For other acquaintances in high school, the response was twofold. Often, my interest in anime meant that I was kept at arm’s length as they didn’t want to poison their standing within the hierarchy of school popularity. For a smaller group of acquaintances who formed the group of kids I was always in classes with, they didn’t much care one way or another; class work remained the focus of our connection for the most part. I’ve reconnected with some of these folks since high school and even discovered that a few have become rather active anime fans up to and including cosplaying around the country.

How did you usually make friends with other fans? Almost exclusively, connecting with other fans was always through physical introduction at parties or at the local card shop with one of my friends acting as an intermediary of sorts. With the advent of Facebook during college, I began making friends through the internet and, now that I’ve started using Twitter, making anime acquaintances has become even more centered in the online sphere. These days, with my expanding presence giving panels at conventions, I’m finally starting to meet more and more people at events for the first time.

Was the Internet a part of fandom at the time? I now know that the internet did exist for fandom when I was beginning my journey but I was completely aloof from it. I connected to other fans almost solely through school friends and, on occasion, friends of those friends.

Do you remember your first convention? I cannot remember the year, but my first convention was Megacon in Orlando, FL sometime during high school with my brother and my aforementioned pal, Andrew. Megacon began as a convention for American comic and sci-fi properties but, by the time we went, they had fully delved into the world of anime (anime fandom, I would later discover, was integral to reinvigorating this convention at this time of my first visit). Having enjoyed Star Trek, Star Wars, and the occasional superhero comic during my youth, this type of convention was great for me. I don’t remember much about the convention guests but I recall being overwhelmed with the rows of shops and the flurry of costumes passing by me. Two things do stick out to me, however.

My first particular memory I have regarding the convention was sitting down on an upper level to eat lunch. The old design of the convention center allowed people on this upper level to look down onto the dealer’s room floor. We didn’t spend a whole lot of time eating but I had an incredible time just sitting there and watching the organic movements of the masses through the crowded hall. I had never seen this kind of thing before and it was incredibly interesting to see. To this day, standing above crowds at conventions and watching how groups of people move about and interact with one another is something I love to do.

My second memory is less particular but it involves panels. I don’t recall the topics, but I really enjoyed sitting in presentations and learning from guests about the background of how my favorite shows and books were created. Megacon didn’t do fan paneling, as I recall, but this interest led me to seek out panels whenever I went to conventions. Over the years, this finally evolved into Andrew and I putting together our own group—originally called NoS Gundam—to give presentations about our favorite show, Gundam. It’s been four years now and our group, NoS Anime, has spread its tendrils beyond Gundam to panels on everything from Evangelion to iyashikei. Were it not for the seed planted at my first Megacon, I’m not sure if I ever would have taken this new and intriguing route into fandom.

Would love to hear about the panels you give. Our group began as “NoS Gundam” in 2014 after my aforementioned buddy Andrew and I kept experiencing a flurry of poorly constructed Gundam panels during the 2013 convention season. We decided that we could do better and so we put together our first panel, “Gundam 101” for Anime Festival Orlando 2014. The panel was a Gundam introduction that went over the breadth of the franchise, its repeated themes, history, and, finally, some recommendations; we even ended the panel with a silly “Identify that Mobile Suit” game which we cut pretty quickly after a few conventions. Overall, however, giving the panel was both fun and successful. I crafted the script and did the speaking while Andrew crafted the accompanying PowerPoint and ran it during the presentations. This has remained our style to this day.

The original intention of this group was to stick to Gundam themes and maybe create a Gundam panel or two each year for conventions. For the following 2015 convention scene, however, we not only produced a presentation on Gundam mecha but also on Evangelion. This Eva panel really began to set the tone for what would eventually coalesce into our panel style. The Eva presentation, “Evangelion’s Religion: You Can (Not) Reference”, looked at the original series’ use of religious references to see how much care the creative team behind Evangelion put into matching their creations to the things that inspired the names. The level of detailed research and the slightly more academic style to this panel have become hallmarks of how our group works.

The work we did for this 2017 convention season has been even more ambitious and rewarding. We got Andrew’s artist girlfriend to make us a proper logo, my brother officially joined the group, and we jumped from three to four panels for our lineup. The original “Gundam 101” panel was completely re-written and a new corresponding PowerPoint presentation created to go along with it. We thought we had created an incredible panel but, having reworked it, we were both just embarrassed by our old work and we were glad to update it to our more refined, current style.

This is also the first year that we’ve been invited to a convention as guests; our first will be WasabiCon in Jacksonville, FL this October. So things are going pretty well for us.

Andrew can be reached on Twitter.