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#89: Andrew C-P

Age: 16

Location: Washington, United States

When did you discover anime? Back in winter of 2014. I was browsing images on the internet and came across a gif of Haiyore! Nyaruko-San, which I found to be pretty funny. So I decided to check out an episode or two to see the source material. I never expected to get into anime, but I really liked watching Nyaruko, and I ended up watching everything there was to watch. Both OVAs, both seasons, and both mini series. I had learned pretty much everything there was about that show. I even waited patiently for the third and final OVA to come out that following June. I also re-watched entirely right before June. Never in my life had I been so fascinated by one show.

After Nyaruko, I watched others throughout that summer of 2015, and finished Attack on Titan, (I watched the anime and got up-to-date on the manga), Sword Art Online (as much as people hate it, I still love it, especially the light novels), Kill la Kill, Himouto Umaru-Chan, and some others that I can’t recall. This may not seem like a lot, but I was the guy who was reluctant to actually watch anime, so watching all of that was a lot for me.

What appealed to you about anime when you first discovered it? The humor. Even though Nyaruko was chock-full of references I didn’t understand until later on, I still found it to be really funny. I had never seen a show with as characters as vibrant as these.

What would you say was the most popular anime at the time? Let’s see: this was 2014. I wasn’t super into anime yet then so I wouldn’t exactly know, but I think Attack on Titan was still super popular. I can only guess at this because kids at school were still wearing Attack on Titan shirts.

What was it like to be a part of anime fandom at the time? I wasn’t really a part of the fandom per se. I liked anime, but I never got involved with the community until late August of 2016, when I got into a Discord server about anime. Then, the next month, I joined a cat café themed server revolving around just liking anime in general. I now host my own server centered around my all-time favorite anime Spice and Wolf.

How did you get into Spice and Wolf and why is it your favorite? I got into Spice and Wolf from one of those “Top 10” YouTube videos. I really loved the story. Despite what the title may suggest, there is nothing fanservice-y about it. It’s about a merchant who happens upon a wolf deity who is trying to get to her home in the north. On their way there, they happen upon many economic schemes to profit from. I recommend it to anyone who asks.

Could you tell me more about Discord servers for fandom discussion? Sure! You join a Discord server by receiving the invite link from someone inside the server. That sounds exclusive, right? They aren’t! A lot of people post their server invite links in a public place so people can join. The first one I joined, I found the link on the Crunchyroll forums right around the time I started using Crunchyroll. It was a Discord server for a group I unknowingly joined named “Shenanigans.” From there I got to talk to lots of cool people, and join other servers that people had made, who have their own awesome people in them.

Do you remember your first convention? I have never been to a convention. I don’t think I’ll go to one until after I turn 18, mainly because I show that I like anime around my friends and family. Anime is like a secret passion for me.

If it’s secret, who do you tell about it? Who don’t you tell? Why not? The only people I tell about liking anime are people online. I don’t tell my IRL friends because I’d be made fun of. I used to have their same mindset as well, thinking it was all weird weeb shit. Because of that, I don’t really care.

You said kids wore Attack on Titan shirts to school. Did that mean anime fandom was generally socially acceptable? Whether it was cool or uncool to like anime really belonged—and still belongs to—what social clique you are in. The clique I was in wasn’t very keen on anime, but there were plenty who were.

How do you think you’ve grown as an anime fan since discovering anime? I don’t believe I’ve grown much. I still watch just to watch it, and I watch what I want to watch, no matter the horrible reviews (cough Sword Art Online cough). Everyone has different likes and dislikes, and that’s just fine.

Andrew can be found on Crunchyroll. 

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#88: Samantha F

Age: 32

Location: Rhode Island

When did you discover anime? Share as much as you remember. I first discovered anime when I was eight years old. I was visiting family, and my uncle knew that I loved Robotech, Transformers, and shows that that “futuristic” vibe. He invited me to check out a new cartoon. It was on VHS, the video was grainy and warped – like it had been transferred to other tapes a bunch of times, but I was intrigued.

I sat, entranced, as the C6250’s whistle blared through the TV’s mono speakers, as the wheels began to turn and the camera shifted to a view of train tracks stretching into an endless blackness.

Then the logo appeared: “Galaxy Express 999.”

Honestly, at the time, I had no clue as to what I was getting into. And, really, who would? I was freakin’ eight! The cast didn’t speak English, might as well have been moon speak for my mind at the time. Then the subtitles popped up: they were hasty, rife with misspellings, and flashed by so fast. But I got a few words, and I could get the gist.

That said, it wasn’t the words that mattered. The characters said mountains through their visual language and their tone. Maetel’s distinct knowing sadness, Tetsuro’s desperation to leave everything behind… it spoke volumes.

It became sort of our monthly thing. I’d visit, and we’d watch more Galaxy Express 999. By the time we finished, I was hooked. I had been to a few anime club meetings, and I just wanted more, and more, and more.

By the time I turned twelve, I was ready to begin buying my own anime. I actually picked up my first tape—which contained two whole episodes of Ranma 1/2—at the flea market in Taunton, MA.

What appealed to you about anime when you first discovered it? Honestly, it’s hard to really state what it was. There was just so much that was different from the norm. The visual language, the characters, the general setup were so unique, so different from other cartoons. They didn’t talk down to you, and they expected that you’d be able to understand concepts that just did not exist in western cartoons. People died and mourned, people didn’t always find that happy ending, and sometimes, the best path of action was that which would bring real pain.

Yes, there were silly shows like Dirty Pair, but it just felt like there was so much more to the world, so many places to explore and discover.

What would you say was the most popular anime at the time? I can’t say for certain, as this is going back about twenty-four years now. But, at the clubs, we’d watch a lot of titles like Dirty Pair, Patlabor, and Devil Hunter Yohko. The last meeting I went to was in 1994-ish – I was about ten, and the group was in the middle of Sailor Moon R and Ghost Sweeper Mikami.

What was it like to be a part of anime fandom at the time? Dear lord, where do I start? I was in a bit of a weird spot, being a kid who was jumped in. But that never really seemed to matter. It was always a welcoming community‚we’d watch, we’d talk—and yeah, they’d tell me to “shut the fuck up” when I started saying something stupid, but they still let me, an eight-year-old kid, weigh in on things with an equal voice. It was just a welcoming, super supportive group of geeks and social misfits, who were united in the search for awesome anime.

Wait, this was with your uncle and his anime club? Tell me more about this dynamic. That it was! Basically, my uncle was an… “interesting” person. He introduced my brother to Star Wars, and me to anime. Not long after we started watching Galaxy Express 999 together, he decided it was a good idea to introduce me to his club. It was, well, a group of adults, all guys in their 20s and 30s, and they gathered at one of the members’ homes. A couple of people had tapes—sometimes they were taped off of TV (like Voltron, Star Blazers, and Saber Rider and the Star Sheriffs). Others, they were whatever could be rented from CJ’s Video (a little mom ‘n’ pop shop in Bristol, RI – now defunct). Other times, though, one of the tape-bringers had a treat. “Newest shit, straight from Japan!” In 1992, this meant that we were watching titles like Sailor Moon, Yu Yu Hakusho, and Tekkaman Blade. Mind-blowing stuff. Kind of hard to comprehend when you’re eight years old and there’s no subtitles, though. (heh)

Now, after watching the day’s episodes, the group would sit around, and basically bullshit about the shows they’d watch. I wish I could tell you what about, exactly, but we’re going back 25 years now. I remember that they basically did go talk about what they really dug about the episodes, and what didn’t work. We’d talk about favorite characters and how shows stacked up to other titles that we saw at the time.

And, well, as someone who was part of the club, I was given a pretty equal voice. If I liked watching Sailor Mars kick butt, then I could say it. If I thought that Cyber Formula GPX felt like Speed Racer, I could bring it up. At the same time if I was saying something stupid that wasted valuable meeting time, they’d be quick to call it out like anybody else—with a quick “shut the fuck up, Mike.”

It was a strangely liberating experience for someone who grew up in a pretty strict household—to be treated as an equal among people far older than I was, and to actually be able to discuss something I genuinely adored without being blown off as “just a kid going through a phase.” Nowadays, I wonder if they were humoring me, but if they were, I still appreciate it greatly.

Also, what did your parents and siblings think about your interest in anime? At the time, my brother really didn’t give a rat’s butt. He was 10, and he was just starting to find his own passion in music—particularly the drums. And, for many years, it stayed that way. He’d be the charismatic musician, I’d be the gawky anime and gamer geek. It wasn’t until about 2005? when he asked for a few examples of anime for a college course he was taking. I loaded him up with the essentials for newcomers—Akira, Cowboy Bebop, Afro Samurai, and so on. And, while it didn’t ignite a passion in him, he did come out to say, “I get it. I see why you like this so much—and I’m behind ya, 100%.”

My parents, on the other hand… they weren’t too thrilled.

My uncle was my dad’s brother. The two really didn’t have a good relationship to begin with. In one of my father’s anecdotes from his childhood, he tied my uncle up to a tree with a leash and left a bowl of food and water like a dog. He called my uncle “Tree Boy.” No word of a lie.

But anyway. He saw the whole fascination in anime as a bit creepy, because, to quote him: “My loser brother watches that queer shit and he amounted to nothing.” He tried to dissuade me whenever he could.

My mom, on the other hand, thought it was a phase—something I’d grow out of, and just outright abandon by the time I hit puberty.

Yeaaaaah, about that. Didn’t happen. In high school, I and a few other classmates started our own little tape trade—we’d make copies of shows we had, and trade them among ourselves.

Does your uncle still watch anime? What does he think of your work in the fandom? Sadly, I haven’t talked to my uncle since my grandfather passed away in 2002. Don’t even know where he lives anymore.

Was the Internet a part of fandom at the time? The internet as we know it didn’t exist! We had clubs—gatherings of like-minded fans, where we’d watch shows on VHS that were brought in by a lead member. The tapes were grainy, often fifth or sixth generation copies, but they were our lifeline as fans of a medium that was pretty much underground.

Do you remember your first convention? I do! Mikkakan in 2001 was held at Merrimack, New Hampshire’s Radisson Hotel. This was the definition of a tiny convention. Only 33 people attended the event, including guests and staff. Still, it was an eye-opening experience—to walk the halls of the Radisson, and see people milling about, talking about shows like One Piece or Hellsing like it was nothing.

That said, I think Neil Nadelman’s panel at the event was something truly transformational. Sure, it was just a talk about localization. But, for some reason, his passion and adoration for the medium spoke to me. It told me that I wanted to be involved in this industry for as long as I could manage.

Sixteen years later, and I’m still at it, writing away night after night. 🙂

When and why did you start Anime Herald? I started Anime Herald on September 19, 2010. I originally launched the Herald because, well, [the place I wrote for before,] Anime Dream was starting to slow down. Matt (Brown—former Anime Dream Editor-in-Chief) was losing steam, and I was still churning out content on a near-daily basis. I saw the writing on the wall, but I didn’t want to stop writing about anime. So, I broke off.

Anime Herald actually began as a bit of an amorphous blob—anything that came through, I’d try it—and believe me. Some of the earlier content got weird at times, while I was trying to figure out what would stick. But, anyway! It slowly took shape—first as a repository of personal essays, editorials, and reviews.

Eventually, things started to solidify as I found formats that worked. I started learning which article formats that would pull in readers, and which were just becoming dead air. And, eventually, it just kind of took shape to the format you see today. Met some amazing people along the way, many of whom I’m proud to call my friends, and it’s just been a crazy seven-year ride.

How has being an anime reporter changed the way you watch anime? How has it changed the way you interact in the fandom? Honestly, becoming an anime reporter was both the best and worst thing that could happen as a fan. I say this jokingly, of course, but there’s a nugget of truth beneath the humor.

I started my formal anime career (not counting the little fan sites I ran in 2000-2001) at Anime Dream, as a reviewer. At the time, I had a pair of fantastic mentors: Matt, and and editor that I only knew as “Elfshadow.” They both taught me a lot about how to approach a show from a more critical lens—to spot elements like mise-en-scene and color usage to sell a mood. They taught me about narrative and dialogue tropes, as well as things like “bank shots” (shots used repeatedly through the course of a show to save money on animation) and sakuga (sequences of noticeably higher quality, used to highlight a particularly important scenes).

Matt and Elf also taught me how to tell when those seams that hold a show together were starting to slowly unravel. After reviewing shows about four or five years, you start to just take on that mindset—that analytical bent, where you’re slowly tearing down a show or film, silently noting what works and what doesn’t while you form your opinions.

Right now, I live my life in the news feeds. I pop open J-Blogs like Otakomu and Comic Natalie while I’m drinking my morning coffee, and I cruise through sites like Animate Times, Crunchyroll, and Anime News Network from the time I get home from work, to the time I go to bed at night. I’ve been doing the beat for 6-ish hours a day, seven days a week, 360-ish days a year since 2008.

And, really, that adds another layer to your approach to anime—I’ve found that, more often than not, I’m dissecting not just the nuts and bolts, but the people who make the shows. Suddenly, I’m thinking about who made the show, which studio put it out, and so on and so forth. So it’s started to factor in that calculus as I watch.

Honestly, as for interactions? I’ve always been a private person by nature. This isn’t on purpose; I’m just a bit of an introvert. Working as an anime reporter, managing our social media accounts and the like, has really allowed me to open up a bit. I’m still an awkward, gawky tech geek, but I’m someone who can talk more openly, and who can throw down in a good conversation.

Heck—if not for Anime Herald, I don’t think I’d have the guts to even attempt—let alone host a panel at Anime Boston each year. It’s been a great way to kind of lean into the challenges of talking with people.

Since you discovered anime, how do you think you’ve grown as an anime fan? Oh wow… I don’t even know how to answer this one! For about as long as I can remember, I’ve been an anime fan. So, I mean… it’s very much a part of who I am, and what I do.

As a fan, though, I think being jumped in that early, being able to see that little slice of a community at an early age, is something that stuck with me. Though I stopped going to the club meetings, it was a super special time in my life. I was able to see amazing things, and experience incredible shows with people who were genuinely passionate about anime. If I hadn’t met them, I probably wouldn’t be watching anime today.

And, to be honest, I always wanted to bring that feeling of camaraderie and community to the world, somehow. Still not sure how to really do that.

That said, it’s inspired me to really take an interest in helping new fans, spreading the good word, and to generally helping to make this fandom a better place whenever possible.

Samantha can be reached on Twitter and her blog. 

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#87: Mudakun

Age: 50s

Location: Southwestern Ontario, Canada

When did you discover anime? How many exposures did it take?

First infection: Tobor the 8th Man. My first impressions: “Wow, good story, but really low budget cartoons. Johnny Quest is kewler but this is still fun…”

/years go by/

“Must study, study, study reading for next class, revise next chapter major paper. if up before 7:30am can watch Star Blazers every weekday. Holy Shyte, that’s some elaborate plotting. Music is cheesy but catchy…”

/Again, infection clears, years go by/

Hanging with friends, one of them has an older sister who puts on a movie night for everyone, with food. Seems one of her friends was originally from Japan and a relative sent a VHS of this kid’s cartoon called Totoro…

“OK, in Japanese, no biggie, friend provides sotto vocce commentary.
A bit later… “Oh, by the same studio, dubbed, here’s something about a princess called Mononoke.”

(“Oh fuck… doomed now… What’s this Kiki thing?”)

/Two months later/

“Amazing what one can do with usenet groups and Free Agent/ Xnews, even with dial-up… overnight… every night…”

“CHECK OUT THE FANSUBS on this thing called Spirited Away! The subs have explanatory footnote subs!”

/Infection now chronic but manageable/

/Fast-forward to the present/

“Aww snap, nothing I can rouse myself to blog about this month…”

Conclusion: No Anime club, no Genshiken analogue… Despite repeated prior infections, Ghibli Anime Moms were to blame.

What appealed to you about anime when you first discovered it? Its storylines.

Could you elaborate? Contemporary Japanese visual culture and its diaspora instances offer both narrative density and layered complexity. That the stories also wander into schmex, attraction and (ulp!) romance turns out to be a side-benefit that I had no idea that I would later enjoy.

As a kid, while it was obvious that 8th Man was poorly “English-ified,” and bits of its “Japanese-ness” would bleed through. Skip forward to watching Star Blazers every weekday morning at 7:30 AM from 1979 to 1980. Wow. Long, continuous story. I missed large chunks, so I watched it through again; TV stations back then would just loop episodes after a full season or run. Rocky and Bullwinkle was notorious for this in North American practice. Another fun thing: the “English-ification” (remember, I’m not yet a fan, so terms like “localization,” “dubs,” etc. miss something) had clearly removed some things and glossed over others. What exactly was that WWII battleship? No Google back then. Oh my! Those layers were interesting but not yet seductive.

Star Blazers might have been the second to last dub I ever tolerated. Mononoke was the last.

I can’t stand dubs. Worst offender ever: New Dominion Tank Police. My ears! My ears!

In 1989 I was very into international cinema. When I saw Akira at a rep cinema, it wasn’t as a fan of Japanese animation—hence my sotto voce droning out of “Koy-aani-squat-si” during the slow-mo office tower window shattering scene—and yes, enough other film snobs in the theatre laughed too at the obvious reference. Otherwise, my only other take on it was “only adults are allowed to kill” as a rule governing the action.

Fast forward to studio Ghibli products. When I snagged a grey copy of Spirited Away, I found that the fansub group on that version had gone full footnote-cray-cray, with running explanatory top-subs to supplement the dialog subs on the bottom. Obsessive subtitles and then obsessive scanlations of complex, long-running manga like Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei added a few more layers to the feast.

More layers:

Stories that were not afraid of sexuality, longing and romance as well as loss and regret and were not handled in the usual US-style “comic code”/ Hollywood keep-it-simple-because-the-audience-is-bored-and-stupid manner. Somewhat closer to European practice, but uniquely Japanese.

Their manner of cultural appropriation of anglo and euro/ western cultural artifacts, settings and mythologies—which the naive took as mimicry was what was what “the west” had been doing with “exotic cultures” since 1800 at least. It is jarring and then fascinating to see the full Adrian Piper Cultural Appropriation model being done back to us by a parallel, late high modernist mass culture that does not share our Judeo-Christian cutural underpinnings.

They don’t care a toss if we are miffed about how they use our stuff. Santa Claus and machine-gun toting miniskirted exorcist “girl-priests” fighting vampires? Sure, why not? All part of the same crazy gaijin culture bag along with German layer cakes. Grab the surface forms, ignore as much of the “lore” as you please. Suddenly WE are the spear-waving “natives” in the Johnny Quest intro. We get drafted to be Hadji.

“To recognize an alien cultural practice as different from one’s own, and as inaccessible to understanding with respect to content, is implicitly to recognize one’s own cultural practice as a cultural practice, with its own rules and constraints.”

—The Logic of Modernism, Adrian Piper

A final style point about Japanese anime and manga: their makers assume you will re-watch and re-read multiple times with obsessive attention to detail if you get hooked. They won’t hold your hand but they pack a heck of a lot into a single page or a short scene. It’s hard to explain, but if you read Korean Naver-derived manwha, you can immediately “feel” how thin it is in comparison—all while it is far more cinematographically dynamic, in a minimalist way. (PEAK was a great exception to this, then it vanished)

So, hmmmm, yup; the storylines.

Was the Internet a part of fandom at the time? If yes, how? If no, how did you connect with other fans? USENET leeches!

Do you remember your first convention? I was a lapsed science fiction fan, and I started attending Worldcon in the early ’70s. Haven’t done any anime manga cons, except: Comiket special 2015 and Comiket winter 2015. As my Japanese is non-existent, it was more of a cultural field trip than a con experience. My internal monologue: “I am illiterate and my feet hurt… Great cosplay… Oh, I can’t smoke out by this dumpster? Embarrassment…”

How did you end up blogging about anime and manga? How has blogging
changed the way you participate in the fandom? The immediate effect was to stop bothering senior bloggers with insanely long wander-off-into-left-field 3 AM insights dropped into their comment sections.

I started blogging because I got hooked on Genshiken, as author Kio Shimoku re-activated it for its “second generation.” I had enough university critical theory, as well as deep suspicions about the roots of some of its sloppier applications, but I also knew that you could misunderstand it creatively to jury-rig bits into an art form or a story. I saw that happening with Genshiken and then with Genshiken Nidaime. That eventually dragged me into “the old straight pale euroethnic guy watches the Japanese married with kid(s?) mangaka cut and paste fan studies and Lacanian cultural analysis, then (OMFG !!!!) gender studies detritus into a university club ensemble manga.

Let’s see: Cultural anthropology themes in the first few chapters of the original then Dr. Saito Tamaki’s Beautiful Fighting Girl cut-n-paste-ins. What of the new version? The club is taken over by fujoshi and then you create a cross-dressing boy who wants to be a fujoshi, but isn’t, etc… Google is your friend.

What? Why are characters repeating signature lines from a prominent Japanese (studied in America) academic who is an activist lesbian fujoshi? This odd “theory moe” approach went on to land me a place at an obscure fan-studies related academic conference. That was fun, even when it turned out to be 98% rotten.

Currently I watch from the sidelines as different groups nudge and elbow their ways, concerns and their stories into weird little anime episodes and manga chapters. Unlike academic/ social media posturing fights, at least you get an anime or manga out of the debates.

In your experience, how is anime fandom different today than it was back then? “Then” in my case must include my first brush with early 1970s Star Trek “hard’ science fiction fandoms. The local Star Trek fandom in my neck of the woods was, in retrospect an occult pit of university age slash fen who barely tolerated the geeky high-school guys and kept “those fanzines” away from our eyes. In retrospect I was so clueless it hurts to remember it. Larger sci-fi fandom was a lot more of a geek guy thing with far more cheesecake and fun binge-drinking. The convention arguments were just as “talk-louder-than-you” but the subjects under discussion were a tad more interesting than “this starship can whomp that starship.”

I kept away from the usenet fan discussions of the late ’90s and early 2000s. Wasting bandwidth on convention ego displays while on a dial-up modem seemed pointless. I was mooching the early electronic music alt-binaries groups where the culture was: ‘I am nym [early Internet speech for “anonymous”], this is neat, I post it as a gift.” Holy crap! my PC is now a music studio. Oddly enough many of these folks liked to sample anime theme songs, which led to the discovery that a few newsgroups over…

Today I find that Web 2.0 and 2.x innovations have allowed all manner of fannish affinity-interaction models to flourish. Some I find convenient, like WordPress blogs and Twitter. Others less so and still others opaque. Tumblr is work for me; Instagram, huh??? Different fans and groups interact differently. Some are not my thing, other even toxic but I can always close the tab and never return. What I now prize is not the illusion of a “social” spread across the net but the tone of a blog or a series of posts.

Mudakun can be reached on Twitter and his blog.

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#86: Reuben

Age: 24

Location: Boston, Massachusetts

When did you discover anime? I grew up in the Pokemon generation but never actually got into Pokemon. The first time I encountered Pokemon when I was five some kid was showing me his card collection, which included a Pikachu that had been edited to have Darth Maul’s face. I was a scaredy-cat as a kid and became scared of Pokemon for a bit.

Even after I got over that fear, I was still sort of “anti-Pokemon” for a while (since I became a big Animaniacs fan and reading online that WB canceled Animaniacs in part because of Pokemon got me angry). I also remember seeing a primetime special advertising the FoxBox when I was nine and the ad for Fighting Foodons was so terrible it almost turned me off of anime forever.

Fortunately, that year was also when a movie called Spirited Away was playing in theaters, and every single person who’d seen it was talking about it like it was the greatest thing ever. I had to check out what the fuss was about. And then I became obsessed.

What appealed to you about anime then? With Miyazaki’s films, the sheer beauty of the animation was the primary appeal for me. The stuff I got into on Toonami around that time. ( Shows like .HACK, Ruroni Kenshin, Yu Yu Hakusho.) They weren’t as amazingly animated but I was intrigued the serialized plots more complex than what I was seeing in American cartoons at the time.

What would you say was the most popular anime at the time? After the initial burst of Pokemon‘s popularity, Dragon Ball Z was the most popular title when I was getting into anime. I never got into that show; I tried, but it was in the middle of the series when my family first got cable in 2003 and I couldn’t really follow it, plus it dragged out a lot. Sailor Moon had already left TV so that was before my time. Meanwhile, I got into Naruto before it became super-popular in the states.

What was it like to be a part of anime fandom at the time? It was exciting to discover stuff. My mom started working at Waldenbooks and would show me the cool new stuff in the manga section (there were also manga like Chobits she discovered out of her own curiosity and wouldn’t let me read but enjoyed herself). Anime club in middle school and high school became my social life.

Ii’s neat your mom was interested in manga. Is she still? What did she think about your interest, especially as you and your sister got older? My mom’s had health problems. Her vision has gotten worse and she’s sort of fallen out of reading in general (still can do audiobooks though lately I’m afraid she’s a bit distracted by constant phone messages from a couple of very needy friends of hers to stay focused listening). She still will watch anime with us (having a Fire Stick and the Crunchyroll app now makes it a lot more convenient since she doesn’t like watching longer shows on the computer) and is totally supportive of our interests as always.

Tell me about your school anime clubs. Middle school anime club was run by an art teacher and was mainly focused on drawing while mostly Ghibli movies played in the background (one week I convinced the teacher to play Cat Soup and I think I scarred her for life). Anime club in high school met twice a week at the library, one day for viewings and one day for general socializing. It was the biggest club in the school, 50 or so members, even bigger than the football team! Though we did also sort of cheat those numbers by allowing recent alums to attend.

Was the Internet a part of fandom at the time? I was already reading general animation message boards such as ToonZone and Animation Insider before I got into anime in particular, so those communities ended up being my primary online places to discuss anime. A couple years into my time as a fan I discovered torrenting (I wanted to see the version of One Piece that wasn’t butchered by 4Kids); I stopped in 2007 after Geneon closed and I became serious about getting anime legally.

What inspired this change of heart? Seeing that piracy was actually hurting the industry enough to shut a major company down.

Do you remember your first convention? What was it, and what was it like?
Anime Boston 2004 sold out but my parents were able to get me tickets to the dealers room on Sunday (that year they sold separate tickets for the dealers room and the general con). 2005 my mom took my sister and I to the real convention. I cosplayed Shigure Sohma, my sister was Tohru Honda. It was fun, though conventions got significantly more when I started going with my high school club in 2008 and didn’t need my mom there.

Reuben’s Masami Eiri cosplay.

I would love a photo of your cosplay to include! Sadly don’t know where they are if we still have any. Oldest cosplay photo I still have is from 2009 when I went as Masami Eiri from Lain.

For you personally, what’s the biggest contrast between anime fandom then and anime fandom today? There’s two big contrasts, one good, one bad. The good contrast is ease of access, now pretty much everything is freely and legally accessible (or, well, it was before Amazon Strike started buying everything up this year). The bad contrast is that it seems the uglier side of fandom has become more visible. For a long time if someone told me they were an anime fan I almost always knew I could get along with them; now I have to be a bit more careful to make sure they’re not THAT type of fan. For me personally the dividing moment between those two mindsets was when one of my former high school clubmates, who was also the boyfriend of my best friend, went full GamerGater.

Reuben can be reached on Twitter.

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#85: Keith

Age: 36

Location: Sidney, Maine

When did you discover anime? My first anime series was the original season of Voltron back in the mid ’80s. I was a huge fan of the series as a kid, even though I didn’t know what “anime” was.

It wasn’t until the late ’90s and the advent of Toonami on Cartoon Network that I discovered Voltron‘s origins but also discovered Sailor Moon, which aired as a replacement for Thundercats after that show had gone through all its episodes twice. Although dismissive of the “girl show” at first I started getting into the story, characters, and the art. Besides Voltron, other shows followed like Robotech and Dragon Ball Z. Everything snowballed from there.

What appealed to you about anime when you first discovered it? I’ve always been an animation fan, but anime had an approach to art, characters, and storytelling that wasn’t insulting to my intelligence like many American shows produced at the time.

What would you say was the most popular anime at the time? This was 1998, so the big shows for American audiences were Ranma 1/2, Tenchi Muyo (Both TV and OAV), and Evangelion. Pokemon and those shows hadn’t come to America yet.

What was it like to be a part of anime fandom at the time? Being in Central Maine, it was just me and my best friend. During school one of my friends was an exchange student from East Asia who was the only other person who was familiar with anime outside of Akira, so it was kind of lonely.

Did you meet your best friend because of anime, or did that happen after? My best friend and I have been friends since we were 11. He knew of anime some time before I did. It wasn’t until I got into it that we started becoming big time otaku and started watching everything we could find. A lot of what he had watched was from the old Sci-Fi network back in the early ’90s, whereas I didn’t get the channel until 1996.

Also, how did that exchange student join your duo? She really didn’t. We had an art class together and when I started getting into anime by my senior year. She said she used to watch that stuff when she was back home growing up. She ended up giving me a Right Stuf catalog and we became friendlier during the year. Unfortunately, I lost contact with her when I graduated. Like I said, she was the only person I knew at that school who knew what anime actually was instead of “that Akira stuff.”

What was the first fandom you got really invested in? How did you express your fandom? I was a He-man kid! When I was very little (kindergarten age) I was big into He-Man and the Masters of the Universe! I knew all the characters and had a number of the figures, vehicles, and playsets. I was into that until about 1988 when the original series was ended. After that was G.I. Joe and I never really got out of that. I still collect those little figures and this past year my collection topped 500 figures for the first time. I also got into Silverhawks, Thundercats, Voltron, Centurions, Inhumanoids, and a bunch more of those good ’80s cartoon shows and toy lines.

Was the Internet a part of fandom at the time? It certainly was. Back in those days a lot of people had free Geocities websites (myself included) and a lot of places to find fanfiction and message boards to go to, even if those sites were basic ones.

A screenshot of the Sailor Sun Fan Fic Collective, Keith’s Geocities page.

What was your Geocities site? HA! It was the old Sailor Sun Fan Fic Collective! That site was where I stored and “published” my Sailor Moon fanfiction series. It was a single series that was over 150 stories by the time I ended it, since I was trying to write my novel at the time. I first got into that when watching Sailor Moon and started imagining my own character involved so I just started writing. The story started right after the second season and took things in a much different direction away from the Monster of the Week type stuff the show did.

The pen name “Soul Tsukino” was one of the fan characters I created, I also had a wedding, a childbirth, mixed both Tenchi Muyo and Ranma 1/2 into it, and basically broke every “rule” of fanfiction there supposedly is out there. I use it as a talking point in my “Damn Write!” writing panel at conventions as a way of telling people that I’m not an elitist when it comes to fan iction. “I wrote a 150 story Sailor Moon fanfic series with TWO self-insert characters, an otakukin, involved Sailor Pluto getting married and having a kid, mixed in both Ranma and Tenchi, and gave Kodachi Kuno cancer, and I apologize for NONE of it!”. I kept up that series for 11 years and really cut my teeth as a writer with it.

I have since moved on to original fiction, which you can find here.

Do you remember your first convention? My first con wasn’t until February of 2002. The very first PortconMaine held at the University of Southern Maine campus. It held maybe 200 people during a single weekend. I wasn’t used to gatherings like that and felt a little out of place with the cosplayers and well traveled otaku. It was fun, even if I felt I wasn’t very high on the totem pole.

Was there a pecking order in fandom? Early on in my fandom it kinda felt like it, even if it was more in my head than anything. You had the people who went to cons, the people who went to the BIG cons (Otakon), the cosplayers, con staff, the con chairs, and stuff like that leading to becoming an “Otaking.” As time went on I realized two things: 1) I didn’t need to watch EVERYTHING and just find stuff I liked, and 2) I don’t need to prove myself to anyone other than myself.

In your experience, what’s the biggest contrast between anime fandom then and anime fandom today? The availability! Sure there was stuff in the stores like Suncoast, Sam Goody, and the video rental stores, but nothing like we have today. Anime wasn’t being dubbed into English as much as it is today and we certainly didn’t have streaming sites like Crunchyroll or Funimation’s site that made finding this stuff much easier. More anime shows up on TV now where as back then having anime come to Cartoon Network was an EVENT.

The convention culture hasn’t changed that much, it’s just gotten bigger. Using bootlegs and fandubs at cons is more frowned upon now (thankfully). In Maine, we have more annual conventions now than we did back in 1998 and even rural places like this can get anime now. It’s also more socially acceptable to be an anime geek now than it was back then.

Keith can be reached on Twitter. 

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#84: Richardson

Age: 29

Location: St. Paul, Minnesota

When did you discover anime? Share as much as you remember. I grew up in Indonesia, where we were introduced to Doraemon on national television in the 1990s. Early in elementary school, I remember waking up on Sundays in time to watch the 8 a.m. broadcasts. (See Quora for further reading.) I don’t think I knew it as “anime” at the time, but at some point I came to learn that it was a Japanese cartoon. Over the next several years, other anime series began airing dubbed in the local language. During days when I attended private English classes, I also remember that many of the students would be watching Sailor Moon on the school television after their class ended in the afternoon.

What appealed to you about anime when you first discovered it? As a child, I don’t think I really considered why Doraemon or other anime series were appealing. At the time, Indonesia was undergoing a transformation in its broadcasting industry. Private television networks began to emerge following deregulation, and the amount of children’s programming exploded. As children, we just consumed what was available to us and eventually that shared experience lived on as a form of nostalgia.

When I moved to the United States in middle school, that nostalgic feeling continued and I began to discover other anime series such as Digimon Adventure on Fox Kids. I also discovered Pokémon as a trading card game through friends in middle school.

When you came to the U.S. in middle school, how did you find anime fandom there to be different from fandom in Indonesia? Pokémon was all the rage when I first arrived in the U.S. That series had not yet caught on in Indonesia when I left. At that time, children’s interest in Japanese media was mainly around manga rather than anime or video games. Because Pokémon did not start as a manga series, its arrival in Indonesia came much later.

To be honest, children aren’t that much different from country to country. There isn’t much difference between Indonesian elementary schoolers talking about their favorite manga during class breaks and American middle schoolers trading Pokémon cards during lunch time. They share the same enthusiasm for what was popular. It’s just the works that were popular were different between the two countries.

But it was probably around this time that I started exploring more anime geared toward older audiences. Eventually this led to my discovering Digimon Tamers on Fox Kids, as the series had a markedly different tone compared to Pokémon.

What would you say was the most popular anime at the time? Doraemon was and remains a cultural phenomenon in Indonesia. If you ask anyone who grew up in the 1990s about the Indonesian-language opening theme song to Doraemon, they will be able to recite most of its lines by heart. As boys became older, they were drawn into Saint Seiya and, to a lesser extent, Dragon Ball. For girls, Sailor Moon was quite popular, as well as Cardcaptor Sakura toward the end of the decade.

What was it like to be a part of anime fandom at the time? Manga had an important role in spreading the popularity of anime, to the point that the most popular manga series often sold more than local fiction novels. (See Quora for more.) Doraemon in manga form was just as popular as the anime series on television. At one point, my family owned all volumes of the Doraemon manga. My siblings and I would read them over and over, and the pages and covers became worn and torn. At school, friends would exchange their recent manga purchases and show off their school supplies featuring their favorite characters. Gadgets from Doraemon such as the Bamboo Copter and the Anywhere Door became part of the Indonesian pop culture lexicon. Children were soon able to imitate the form for throwing the Kamehameha attack from Dragon Ball.

Was the Internet a part of fandom at the time? The Internet did not reach the general Indonesian populace until the mid 2000s. As fans of Japanese cartoons, children could only connect with each other at school when they were growing up. Around 5th grade, acting on a suggestion from my parents, I built a small business renting my own manga and comics collection to other students. At first, it was only to my own classmates, but soon students from other classes began coming to me to rent my collection. Unfortunately, the school forced me to stop my renting business when teachers started to learn about it.

Do you remember your first convention? I only became a modern fan of anime around 2009 and 2010, quite late compared to other fans in the United States from my generation. As such, I only attended my first convention in 2013 at Sakura-Con in Seattle. I was a fan of Sword Art Online, having been a fairly dedicated player of MMORPGs, and was enticed by the line-up of Sword Art Online guests. Being able to meet industry professionals and anisong artists was an eye-opening experience as someone who was learning about this side of the fandom for the first time. When I moved back to Southeast Asia later that year, I began attending regional conventions and events such as Anime Festival Asia more regularly. There, I connected with other fans and learned about how the anime industry has changed in the 15 years of my absence from Southeast Asia.

Today you work for an anime company, MyAnimeList. How did you go from fan to pro? Renting out manga since little might make you think I’ve been a professional since little, but that’s not the case at all. At the time, it was still a child’s hobby, and my parents just thought it was a way to put that hobby to good use. (Even today they encourage me to think about how I can make money from my anime hobby.)

When I started exploring more anime after college, I was already a fairly active editor on Wikipedia. As I began to discover new anime and manga I enjoyed, I poured my energy toward improving the Wikipedia articles of these titles. Last Exile (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Exile) and Twin Spica  (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin_Spica) are two examples of articles which I rewrote from scratch and attained Good Article status. Being a member of WikiProject Anime and Manga helped me develop an eye for researching various materials and sources on the industry. Along the way, I essentially ended up teaching myself Japanese without any classroom instruction in order to help decipher the material I was reading.

I lost interest in Wikipedia at some point and started submitting modifications to the MyAnimeList database to improve the accuracy of information there. MyAnimeList’s database moderating team is always shorthanded, and recruitment drives are held every few years to replenish the moderator ranks after they thin out due to attrition. During one such drive in 2012, I was invited to submit an application to become an anime database moderator. I initially had no intention in applying until one of the database administrators reached out to me after she noticed my meticulous submissions.

As a database moderator, I came to learn more about the industry and eventually renewed my interest in writing again. I began writing occasional industry news stories for MyAnimeList. When we were acquired by DeNA in 2015, we decided to formalize a news team structure to create consistency in our reporting. Based on the objectives we discussed with DeNA, it was decided that my experience as a Wikipedia editor would be useful in creating a MyAnimeList standard of reporting. I was made news managing editor and am still in that role today, while still moderating the anime database on the side.

How did becoming a professional in the industry change how you watch anime and participate in fandom? My watching habits have changed pretty dramatically. I used to be a more prolific watcher, sometimes watching 10 to 15 shows a season. Today, however, I will admit that I haven’t watched a single anime while it’s airing in more than a year. I probably watch one show in any given season now. You might wonder how I can remain an active member of the industry if I haven’t been watching anything, but I will say that this is definitely possible. I’m still aware of all the trends and what titles are popular, but after a while you actually don’t have to watch that much to still stay in the loop with the fandom.

The timing of my joining the MyAnimeList team was rather fortunate. About a year after I joined the staff, I was able to relocate to Southeast Asia for a few years thanks to my day job. This helped me explore the fandom in entirely different ways from the fandom experience in North America. I was able to visit anime conventions in different countries, and travel to Japan was also within reach. The influence of Japan in Southeast Asia is more prevalent than in North America, so it was easier to immerse yourself in Japanese culture, such as attending events by the Japan Foundation, going to concerts by Japanese artists, etc.

It was easier to get carried away by the abundance of Japanese culture events. I convinced myself to attend concerts by anime idols Wake Up, Girls! and THE IDOLM@STER in Japan. I traveled to Singapore to watch EGOIST and vocalist chelly perform live overseas for the first time. After becoming a professional, I became a much more active consumer of the anime culture rather than of anime itself.

In your experience, what’s the biggest contrast between anime fandom then and anime fandom today? The fandom today is a lot more fragmented, but in a good way. There are a lot more options in how one person can enjoy being a part of the anime fandom. Some will limit their enjoyment to just watching anime, but others may be more inclined to attend events and meet creators and artists directly, or even supporting a peripheral industry such as the anisong market.

However, as English becomes the dominant language of the fandom, I feel that the discourse on anime and manga has become less diverse. As North America becomes an important overseas market for the industry, I am concerned about over-representation of North American viewpoints in the English-speaking fandom. We have a term for this in the Wikipedia editor community: systemic bias. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Systemic_bias.)

Personally, I’ve grown tired of the generic narrative of an American fan discovering anime through Cowboy Bebop. There is not enough international coverage of fans at overseas events such as Japan Expo in Paris or Anime Festival Asia in Singapore. There is no discussion of how a series like Alps no Shoujo Heidi became popular in apartheid South Africa, or how Doraemon became a cultural phenomenon in Asia.

Global stories like these are the ones I would like to help uncover at MyAnimeList in the near future in order to help the fandom understand itself better and connect with other members in other parts of the world.

Richardson can be reached on Twitter and MyAnimeList. 

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#83: Austin B

Age: 22

Location: North Dakota

When did you discover anime? Share as much as you remember. I’d say it was in ’99 or ’00 when I was around five or six years old. My older bro and I would run home from school to watch the Toonami programming block on Cartoon Network. We were always excited to see the latest episodes of Gundam Wing, Dragon Ball Z, Outlaw Star, Ruroni Kenshin, etc. All of our favorite anime.

What appealed to you about anime when you first discovered it? It was a whole different world of animation, storytelling. Worlds full of characters, settings and thought provoking themes that some Western animation lacked. It was a form of escapism for me to get away from a terrible childhood.

If it is not too personal for you, could you elaborate on how anime helped you through a difficult childhood? As a child growing up in North Dakota, I was bullied a lot whether it was because my last name sounds funny to kids or my being a skinny, geeky redhead unable to fight back. Anime was helpful in the sense that you had these strong, tough, badass characters that were ready to take on whatever obstacles stood in front of them. Gene Starwind from Outlaw Star and Kenshin from Ruroni Kenshin were always favorites of mine because they were such cool and badass characters that just so happened to be redheads. Anime was a form of escapism that could temporarily make me forget how cruel and unforgiving the world is.

What would you say was the most popular anime at the time? I’d say it was either Dragon Ball Z or Mobile Suit Gundam Wing.

What was it like to be a part of anime fandom at the time? Growing up, being a fan was hard. It felt like many people ridiculed and ostracized me because I was a fan of something that was different. Something that was against the norm, something most people didn’t understand.

Did that make you consider not watching it? Liking anime made me an outsider, but not once did I ever consider not watching it. I enjoy anime too much to do that. Growing up though, liking anime made it really hard to make friends.

Was the Internet a part of fandom at the time? Growing up, Internet wasn’t part of the fandom for me. I just told people I liked anime and I hoped for the best.

Can you tell me about meeting other anime fans? As a child, some people I foolishly believed were my friends didn’t like the fact that I liked shows such as Dragon Ball Z. Not every interaction was bad though. Nowadays, I’d say that most of the friends I’ve made are people I’ve met after graduating high school. The friends I finally have are real friends that do enjoy anime.

What was the first fandom you got really invested in? How did you express your fandom? The first fandoms my older bro and I got into were without a doubt Dragon Ball Z and Gundam Wing. We had all sorts of Dragon Ball and Gundam merch growing up. Shirts, video games, toys, etc. you name it. That was how we expressed our fandom.

Is your brother who got you into anime still interested in anime? Do you still watch together? My older bro and I pretty much discovered Toonami at the same time, so I guess I wouldn’t exactly say he introduced me to anime. We don’t really watch anime together anymore because we’re always so busy with work and life these days. I’d say I watch more anime regularly than my older bro, but we still reminisce about all the classic anime we watched on Toonami. As far as recent anime goes, the two of us really got into Attack on Titan when that first came out.

For you personally, what’s the biggest contrast between anime fandom then and anime fandom today? Personally, I feel that the biggest contrast between anime fandom then vs. anime fandom now, is that it’s much more open. Back then, it felt like being an anime fan came across as weird. Now it’s so much easier to talk about liking anime because it’s much more accessible. It could also be that I might have developed a thicker skin over the years and that I stopped giving a damn if people thought I was weird for liking anime or not. History shows us that people become hateful and afraid of things they don’t understand, but when given enough time and exposure, maybe they can learn to love and respect certain things. Anime is one of those things.

Austin can be reached on Twitter. 

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#82: Zubat

Age: 23

Location: Michigan

When did you discover anime? Anime was something I had seen at various points throughout my life. Growing up, Pokemon and YuGiOh! made it into my Saturday morning cartoon block every so often, and in college some of my roommates would occasionally have friends over to watch whatever “popular” show they had discovered at the time (Sword Art Online and Steins;Gate being the two I remember most clearly). But I didn’t “discover” anime for myself until April 2015, when right near the end of my time at school one of my roommates decided to spend his whole Saturday watching the first 25 or so episodes of Soul Eater. I was present and while at first I only sorta paid attention to what he was watching, by around eight or nine episodes in I had actively joined my roommate in watching something that felt FAR different from and much more emotionally engaging than the usual anime I had been exposed to.

Fast forward some months from there after graduation, and I mentioned to a friend offhand that I had been introduced to Soul Eater and was curious if there were more shows that would be good to start out with. That friend recommended a short 12-episode show called Madoka Magica, and well… judging by the “Puella Magi” in my Twitter handle I don’t think it’s an understatement to say that it literally changed my life. Madoka was a revelation for me—never before had I been exposed to media that was simultaneously so emotionally devastating and uplifting, and it left me shell-shocked for the better part of a week as I grappled with the numerous themes I saw in the show’s story. Though it would still be a few more months before I fully dove into anime, these two moments always come to mind when I think about where I started with anime.

What appealed to you about anime when you first discovered it? One of the key parts of both Soul Eater and Madoka Magica that appealed to me in my first watch was the surprising emotional depth and compassion shown by and towards their characters. I had never seen media that really emphasized the emotional connection between characters besides a few rare cases—before anime, media was often simply entertainment save for that one special show/movie. But Maka’s steadfast pursuit of and desire to connect with Crona was stunning to watch. Here was a show that was saying, “Empathy and compassion and fighting to reach the hearts of others are just as important as the fight happening around them.” Soul Eater was already appealing enough on the action and comedic bits but to have what to me was such a clear emotional message and themes was stellar, and I wanted more media like that.

Madoka Magica hit this mark as well. I related deeply with Madoka and empathized just as much with Homura throughout my first viewing of the show, and the revelation of the show’s finale left me thinking over what it had meant to me for nearly a year.

Past these first two big anime, shows like Noragami and Monogatari, a KyoAni trio of anime, Railgun, and many more shows continued to deepen my love for the unique ability of the medium of anime to convey deep, powerful emotional themes and stories in a way I had never experienced elsewhere. It drew me in and gave me a way to feel during a time where I was struggling to do so; and even now as I’ve moved into a better spot in life, I still remain deeply in love with the emotions anime creates in me.

If it’s not too personal, could you elaborate on how anime helped you through a difficult emotional time? My senior year of college was one of the most difficult years of my life. I had invested a lot of my emotional energy into my different clubs and their communities in the three years prior; and while I don’t regret my decision to put so much of myself into doing so, I was left completely burned out from those efforts. Combine that with the usual college stresses and a hostile roommate situation and I had little to no energy left to reach out for the support I needed for the entirety of my final two semesters of college. The result of this was me coasting through over 9 months of my life with little ability to express what I was feeling, in addition to being limited in my ability to empathize with others as well. For someone like me who is naturally very compassionate and empathetic and others-oriented, to not be able to express those sorts of emotions was devastating and identity-shattering. It led to me questioning whether all of the effort I put into building up the communities I was a part of for my four years of college was really worth it.

But then I found Madoka Magica. The show that I expected to be a parody of magical girl shows (not joking!) was instead one comforted and encouraged my heart and gave me a way to feel again through its characters, even if I didn’t realize it at the time. Despite how hard it had been for me to connect with others for months up to that point, it was easy for me to understand and connect with Madoka and Homura’s thoughts, actions, and emotions; something about their characters resonated with me, as if I was implicitly able to understand their feelings as if they were my own.

[Major Madoka spoilers starting here] In particular, Homura’s repeated efforts to reach out to Madoka, her continued fight to share her feelings with Madoka despite all the pain and sorrow it brought her, was something I strongly connected with having experienced much of the same over my four years of college. And Madoka’s response to Homura’s efforts was a quiet affirmation of all of my own efforts over that timeframe: “I know just how hard you tried to help me across all those timelines… you were my very best friend.” It felt like the show was telling me, “Even though you’ve been left hurting and weak from your efforts, they didn’t go unnoticed, and they were worth the effort.” The person you are, the person you’ve become is something beautiful, and it’s ok to continue to feel the compassion that’s such a crucial part of who you are.” It was one thing for me to feel the emotions I did towards Madoka Magica‘s characters or to empathize with them as they struggled against the cruel realities of their world, but for the show to speak so directly and clearly into my life at that time… there aren’t words that can adequately describe how much Madoka Magica means to me.

There have been other shows that have had helped me through hard or trying times in my life: Oregairu and Sakurasou both helped me remember and celebrate some of my best friendships from college, while New Game and Shirobako offered me encouragement while I was dealing with the stress of starting to work full-time last year. But no show has ever resonated with me as deeply as Madoka Magica did; it remains the most important show I’ve ever watched and continues to reaffirm the person I am today. It is something I will likely cherish for the rest of my life.

What was it like to be a part of anime fandom at the time? I spent a large portion of my first year watching anime on my own, so it was hard to say I was really part of the larger fandom. I would ask friends who I knew watched anime what they thought would be good shows to watch, but for the most part I looked around every so often for shows and watched what sounded good. Anime was still solely a personal endeavor for me at that point, so it was mostly keeping to myself unless I knew prior of someone who I could talk to about what I was watching and ask for recommendations.

It was many months before I would discover r/anime, close to a year before I considered taking part in any discussions on the subreddit, and my involvement with the Twitter community only started at the beginning of the New Year. At the time, I only connected with people I knew IRL who were also into anime, and would spend time talking with them about what I or they liked and what would be good to watch, later also watching shows together.

Do you remember your first convention? My “first” convention was 2015 ColossalCon in Ohio; I was only there for a day, it was before I discovered anime, and ColossalCon is also… not that much of an anime con (people are there for the giant indoor waterpark, among other reasons). But I have plans in the works to attend AnimeNorth as my first “real” convention next month and I’m looking forward to the new experience that will bring!

It took me a while to respond, and your first con, Anime North, must have already happened! Can you tell me about what it was like? What were the highlights? What surprised you? Anime North was a great experience, if a bit different than my usual norm for day-to-day plans. I’m the type of person who likes to fill every day with plans while I’m traveling so I feel like I’ve gotten the “full value” of my time on vacation, but oftentimes it felt like the best option was simply to wander the dealers room and browse the artist alley without any set “goal” in mind. I wouldn’t say I was terribly surprised by this—I knew there’d be a lot of free time in my schedule where there wasn’t a panel or signing that I wanted to attend—but I was surprised by how much I enjoyed simply wandering and looking around at what all the dealers and artists had to offer, even if I didn’t plan on buying anything from them.

I think the biggest highlight was simply being able to spend a weekend surrounded by other people in the anime fandom. I don’t really talk about my anime interest with many people in my day-to-day life (it’s not something I feel comfortable sharing at work nor do I have much desire to talk about it there), so to spend a weekend with thousands of other people all openly sharing our interest in anime and related fandoms was a pretty joyful experience. And as a smaller part of that, being able to meet some of my Twitter friends who happened to be attending was another great part of the experience. It may seem basic to others, but it was nice to simply have a weekend where I could celebrate my love of anime with friends and many, many others.

I actually also attended Anime Expo recently as well! That experience was mostly similar to Anime North, though on a much larger scale. Anime Expo did have the advantage of having Anisong World Matsuri with Aqours performing on stage, and well.. anyone who’s been following me on Twitter these past four or five months knows how big of a fan I am of Love Live Sunshine, haha. But the AWM concert was an incredible, joyful experience that I hope I get to experience again someday; and beyond that, I actually managed to have a great weekend at AX despite the issues many people reported with the lines (I only missed one event due to a line being capped but was able to attend another event as a result, and I managed to get in all other events I wanted to see). I don’t know if I’ll be attending AX specifically next year due to costs, but both Anime North and Anime Expo were great experiences and I’m definitely looking forward to the next time I can get out to an anime convention.

Zubat can be reached on Twitter. 

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#81: Lauren

Age: 25

Location: Southeastern USA

When did you discover anime? I (or rather my mom with my input) rented My Neighbor Totoro as a VHS from blockbuster when I was a little kid in the ’90s and didn’t know what anime was.

Then I became obsessed with Pokémon around the time that Yellow Version was released (I think I was in 2nd grade). Pikachu and Bulbasaur have been faves since the beginning. My interest in Pokémon waned (though I got back into the games later).

I was in 6th grade when I learned the terms anime/manga from a friend. She and most of the friend circle loved YuGiOh. I initially watched it to fit in, but ended up crushing on Seto Kaiba. This was the horrible 4 kids dub because if legal sub streaming existed at the time I didn’t know about it and DVDs for series were expensive.

I watched Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke on DVD and got hooked on Miyazaki. Fruits Basket was my gateway into manga. I would occasionally read scanlations or purchase volumes of other manga. I would also watch anime on websites where you just clicked play—since I was scared to actually download episodes illegally after the one time my cousin did and my computer got a virus.

I discovered Crunchyroll and Funimation during my senior year of college when I took a class on Japanese pop culture—with that I was able to get into so many more shows.

What appealed to you about anime when you first discovered it? I loved the sense of magic and wonder in Totoro as a child and it still captivated me when I learned what anime was. Similarly, the idea of a world filled with adventure and cute, powerful critters drew me to Pokémon. The pretty boys of shojo were a revelation for teenage me—romance stories that cater to girls’ tastes, dudes that were hot but not Manly!Beefcake!TM and lots of feels instead of the western romcom’s “pervasive bickering is love” trope.

What was it like to be a part of anime fandom at the time? The Pokémon fans who I traded cards with as a child were like me, they didn’t know what anime was. At time I learned the word “anime” in middle school, it felt like a niche interest shared by fellow nerds at my school, people on the Internet who I couldn’t meet and people in Japan – who I also couldn’t meet. So anime fandom was both a bond I shared with my friends and another marker that I wasn’t part of the popular crowd.

Tell me about making friends in anime fandom. Amanda is the friend I met in middle school who introduced me to “anime” as a term. Before I just knew I was a fan of Pokémon. Amanda showed me YuGiOh and taught me the terms “anime” and “manga.” Her influence is the reason I sampled manga in book stores and started identifying as a manga/anime fan. We haven’t kept up with each other but are friends on Facebook.

After Amanda introduced me to TV anime and manga, I didn’t make friends with fellow fans until college. I went to a few anime club meetings. It felt refreshing to meet lots of people who shared my love of anime.

In college anime club, I made friends with a fellow Death Note fan named Katie. We talked about which characters were our favs and who should star in a US movie. We decided Cilllian Murphy would be a good fit for Mikami. I have learned that whitewashing is a bad idea since that time so I’m embarrassed of how excited that fantasy casting made me.

Was the Internet a part of fandom at the time? Fanfic was huge for me in middle school. I read fanfic on fanfiction.net . I wrote some in a notebook and shared it with my friend Amanda.

Tell me about the fanfiction in the notebook! I don’t have the notebook full of fanfic that I kept during middle school. I often wrote about idealized versions of myself dating anime boys. Talking with Amanda about our favorite “bishies” (bishonen or pretty boys) was a nice escape during the awkward adolescent years.

How is your participation in anime fandom different now? I now read more analysis of anime, things like Anime Feminist. When I got into fandom, I couldn’t find that thoughtful perspective of fans who are genuinely in love with series/creators but will point out flaws too. It seems like the old days had super fans who gushed over everything vs. haters of certain shows.

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#80: Helen

Age: 26

Location: Washington DC

When did you discover anime? Share as much as you remember. When I was in the 8th grade my mom told one of her coworkers that my brother and I (11 and 13) were still watching Pokemon, which her coworker thought was silly, and sent her home with a copy of Spirited Away. My brother and I found her watching it on our huge old Mac, squished in, and I’ve been a fan ever since.
Also that coworker is now my step-dad and really regrets giving me my anime start.

Why did he say that? He came to regret it because of how big of a nerd I turned out to be (although my mom is sure I’d be an anime fan regardless). They still watch some Miyazaki films and such, and although I like to joke that even my parents saw Attack on Titan before me, I think they only watched an episode or so (you can thank my step-sister for that)!

What appealed to you about anime when you first discovered it? I started watching Avatar: The Last Airbender around the same time as anime, and the AvatarSpirit forums would lead me to anime as well, and one thing that stunned me about ATLA and later anime was that holy crap, you can tell a story with a beginning, middle, and end in a cartoon TV series! No one had ever told me you could do that! I was already a huge book reader so the idea of a having an actual, connected story really drew me in.

What would you say was the most popular anime at the time? I have absolutely no idea. The first anime TV series I watched week-to-week was Romeo X Juliet which I know wasn’t super popular, I’d have to guess Naruto.

What was it like to be a part of anime fandom at the time? I wouldn’t really join the anime fandom for a bit later, I was actually reading more manga before I started watching more anime and I read manga through an elaborate system of book-trading between me and my friends who all belonged to different library systems in high school (we all literally looked at each other one day, realized we all liked manga, and that’s when it really got going).

It was fun, everyone had different things to bring and you had to occasionally rescue a book from a teacher’s trashcan!

What happened that time? One of my friends was, very ill-advisedly, reading a manga during presentations in class (while paying attention, she could practically recite all of the presentations we had just heard) and, while she shouldn’t have been reading in class, this teacher was, like many in my Catholic schools, a bit crazy. So she just snatched the volume out of my friend’s hand, tossed it in the garbage, and we asked a friend of ours in the next period to get it back for us (apparently the teacher never noticed).

Also, tell me more about meeting these friends. How did you all realize you liked manga? I joke that I have a nerd-dar but I really do! I was able to suss out that one girl in my homeroom, one girl in my math/following gym class, and another girl I sat with at lunch which kinda nerdy and since it was such a small school we eventually convalesced into a group (which would grow a tiny bit over the years but the four of us were the center of it). A few of them eventually ended up taking over the Book Club at school and turning it into a secret manga club IIRC, this happened after at least one of them was elected Dictator For Life, but I wasn’t a member of the Book Club so I can’t remember all of those details!

Was the Internet a part of fandom at the time? If yes, how? If no, how did you connect with other fans? Totally, I started spending more time on the AnimeSuki forums and ANN forums as I got more into anime since I loved chatting with people about currently airing shows.

Do you remember your first convention? What was it, and what was it like? Animazement 2008! I’d been looking for an anime convention in North Carolina for YEARS and somehow only found out about Animazement just a few weeks before the 2007 show. I actually did go to a small, one day con in September 2007 first (LibariCon in Fayetteville, NC) but Animazement felt like my first “proper” con. I did two cosplays, cosplaying is an integral part of conventions for me now, had a bunch of friends come along with me, saw the masquerade, met up with a bunch of people from the Animazement forums, did the secret Animazement forum member scavenger hunt, and generally had a pretty great time!

What was the secret Animazement forum member scavenger hunt like? Do they still have that? The secret scavenger hunt was funnily bizarre. These were things you would take photos of and then upload after the con for points to be tallied up, I remember things like “a photo of you in an Animazement t-shirt from any year”, “wearing a school girl outfit”, “wearing cosplay on the toilet”, and “video of you proclaiming your loyalty to [name redacted so my friend doesn’t kill me] of the cookie faction in the cookies vs milk war”.

It must sound really bizarre but it was fun and didn’t hurt anyone which is my own litmus test of if you should go along with something strange and silly or not. And they don’t have it anymore, when I was in college some of the con heads got super pissy that the staff who were also mods on the forums were becoming popular with the con goers (since we talked with them and hung out grabbing food at cons, y’all, we’re all people here and make friends…) so they completely changed the forums one weekend while the main mod was on vacation, locked them out, and that was the end of that. (Well, for at least a few years there was a secretly saved duplicate of the forums elsewhere that was linked to some of us were we heard this explained all in detail, ain’t no drama like con drama!)

What was the first fandom you got really invested in? How did you express your fandom? I guess the first fandom I got invested in in general was Avatar: The Last Airbender, I’m not sure if any other anime/manga/etc I’ve enjoyed has ever had the same scope and size to generate a large, stable fandom. And it was a combination of both the show and fandom that got me into sewing actually, I really wanted an Appa plushie but this was when they were only sold at the theme parks and not year round so I was out of luck in December. So, since I did know how to sew, I made my own plushie, posted it on the AvatarSpirit forums, and got so much of a response back that I went hey, I bet I could do more of these and get more praise, which has spiraled into my deep obsession of making plushies today.

When and why did you start blogging about anime and manga? For someone who hated book reports I found out that I kinda liked talking about what I was reading/watching/listening to? I was trying really hard to keep my Livejournal like a real daily journal so of course anime came up sometimes and I really managed to keep it up first there and then on my own blog for years. I only fell behind in December last year and still just can’t muster the energy to devote time again into it.

For you, what’s the biggest contrast between anime fandom then and anime fandom today? The biggest difference I see between the anime fandom of 2007-ish and 2017 is the size. This is almost certainly partially due to the fact that I went to a high school of only 600 people and none of my friends lived in the same county as me so I was frustratingly alone in general outside of school hours (I wouldn’t get on social media in a big way until I got my college laptop) but even with that I feel like it’s not just my world that’s grown bigger, anime and manga has grown bigger too. It’s strange since technically 2007 should’ve been the end of the “bubble” years, fandom should be smaller! And yet I see even more references all over the place, from daily newspaper cartoons to themed restaurants, today and that tells me that anime and its assorted fandoms are here to stay.

Helen can be reached on Twitter.