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#43: Megan R

Age: 33

Location: Iowa

When did you discover anime? Share as much as you remember. Weirdly enough, anime can be found scattered throughout my childhood. I can remember singing along to the theme song for Maya the Honey Bee on Nick Jr. I can remember getting completely absorbed by Sailor Moon during junior high. I watched Pokemon not because of the games (which I somehow was completely unaware of), but because I thought Pikachu was cute and Team Rocket was funny. Despite that, I wasn’t aware that these shows were part of some larger thing—I just though they were just another sort of cartoon.

I wasn’t really aware of anime as this separate, larger thing until 2010, when I was well into my 20s. For that, I have Jacob Chapman to thank, back when he was making video reviews as Jesuotaku. I started watching his reviews simply out of curiosity but his analysis made me curious about a number of the shows he reviewed. Eventually, my curiosity was too great, and I can clearly remember going to Best Buy and mentally debating for something like five minutes over whether to pick up Romeo x Juliet or Ouran High School Host Club. I went with the latter, loved it to pieces, and never looked back.

What appealed to you about anime when you first discovered it? I’ve always loved animation in all forms, but anime simply told different stories and looked different from the Western animation I was used to. It was more ambitious in some ways and way more friendly to both older viewers and to women.

How did you find anime to be friendly to older viewers and women? I don’t know if anime itself was necessarily all that friendly to older folk and women at the time. Manga fandom was a different story. Both then and now, it’s always skewed toward an older and more feminine audience so I fit in right away. I was able to find plenty of interesting articles and critics to follow and learn from, especially since it was so easy to discover new voices thanks to the popularity of Manga Moveable Feasts. They were these regular events where a particular blog would host all sorts of articles around a particular series or mangaka and they were a veritable cornucopia of interesting insights and reviews. Sadly, the manga blog scene has died down since then, but I look back at that time fondly and it’s part of the reason I started writing my own reviews in the first place.

As for anime, the fandom at the time was largely centered around forums.  I didn’t really enjoy larger ones like the ANN forums because the conversation was so repetitive, shallow, and sometimes juvenile.  I didn’t really find a sense of community until I found a smaller fan forum where some of the posters would host regular stream nights.  These became the equivalent of must-see TV for me as I would chat with the regulars while we watched half a dozen episodes of some scheduled series along with shorts, AMVs, random Youtube videos, even clips of joshipuri wrestling [female pro wrestling in Japan].  It wasn’t exactly legal, but anime streaming was only just becoming a thing in those days and this format felt more personal and personable than simply marathoning shows on Hulu by myself.  We came from all over the country, if not the world, and ranged in age widely, but that didn’t matter in the chat so long as you have interesting conversation or a few jokes to make.  Some of those regulars are still online friends of mine and I talk with them on Twitter on the regular.

What would you say was the most popular anime at the time? 2010 was not a great time for anime, considering that so many shows were going out of print and streaming was in its infancy. I think the biggest show at the time was Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, as far as visibility and sales.

What was it like to be a part of anime fandom at the time? It’s weird that I got into this fandom at a time when it was most decidedly on the decline. That awkwardness could be felt on the anime forums where I hung out. There was more than a bit of pining for the glory days of the boom years, frustration with the lack of quality titles (and thus, the proliferation of piracy), but still some hope and plenty of discussion.

Could you go into detail about the decline you perceived? 2010 was a bad time for both the anime and manga industry. Those few companies that survived the recession in one piece were simply trying to stabilize things and that wouldn’t start truly turning around until Bandai shut down not too long after. The manga scene was in even poorer shape and that wouldn’t come to a head until the next year when Borders shut down and Tokyopop followed them shortly thereafter.

I was largely oblivious to this at the time because I was still trying to learn as much as I could about this strange new world of fandom. There were so many shows for me to catch up on, so many books to read, and so much history I wanted to learn and understand. I didn’t have the same frame of reference that others did. I didn’t really grasp that things were not in great shape until the 1-2 punch of Borders and Tokyopop. I had only just started collecting manga at the time, but I remember being awed by their selection. I couldn’t have known at the time that those long aisles full of books were just about to go away. The Tokyopop shutdown was the first real big fandom event that sticks out in my mind, even if the biggest impact for me personally was that it might affect my ability to finish getting the full run of Fruits Basket. It’s only in retrospect that I can look back at that time and realize just how diminished it was compared to even two or three years later.

So it’s not still on the decline, in your opinion? Oh no, not at all. If anything, it’s the healthiest it’s been in years. Streaming and simulcasting breathed new life into it and made anime more accessible than it ever was before. As for manga, it took the publishers a little longer to gather themselves up and start rethinking their approaches, but they found the big crossover hits and license rescues they needed to succeed. If anything, the manga world is entering into some interesting and unprecedented ground. We’re seeing publishers takes risks again and dabble in genres they wouldn’t have even during the boom years of the 2000s. It’s a brave new world out there in manga, and I for one am eager to see just where it goes.

As a fan who got into anime later, did you ever feel unwelcome or like you needed to study in order to grasp people’s comments and jokes? I may have been late to anime and manga, but I had been online for many years and had floated around the edges of some of the major fandoms of the 2000s. I’ve also always been the sort of person who tends to read voraciously and likes to learn as much about any new interest as much and as fast as possible. As such, it didn’t take me too long to adapt to anime and manga fandom.

How did becoming an anime and manga blogger change your participation in fandom? I learned how to better express myself and to really articulate what made the works I consumed good, bad, or something in between. Ever since I was a kid, I was the sort of person to savor the media I loved by myself instead of sharing it with others. I knew in my own mind what I liked or didn’t like, but that approach meant I was never really called upon to explain or defend those preferences to others. By writing reviews, I learned to exercise those underused portions of my mind and to hone my writing skills to best express them. Of course, critique is like potato chips: once you start, you can’t stop. I couldn’t apply these critical skill to the manga I read and not do the same for the shows I watched. I might not always enjoy every show I watch or book I read, but I feel like I get more out of it regardless because I can explain what does or does not work instead of settling for “this was good/bad/ok/whatever”.

What’s the biggest contrast between anime and manga fandom then and anime and manga fandom today? The biggest difference between anime and manga fandom then and now is how instantaneous and free-form things are now. When I started, those fandoms were largely contained within forums and blogs. It was possible to forge communities within those spaces, but it was more limited and distant. Now it’s so much easier to connect thanks to social media and simulcasting. Just through Twitter, I’ve met people and learned things that I would have never known or encountered otherwise. The fandom also feels more lively since shows can be watched as they premiere in real time and you can watch the conversation grow and evolve with it live.

Unlike a lot of my peers, I didn’t know any anime or manga fans growing up because I grew up in such a small, rural community. I didn’t get to enjoy things like anime clubs in high school or college. I didn’t attend a con until I was 30. I wasn’t even aware of things like DVD releases of shows I knew as a kid (which is good, because college-aged me would have spent too much money on those old Sailor Moon boxsets had I known they existed). The online part of anime and manga fandom is essentially all I’ve ever known of it. It’s added so many people to my life that I might not have ever known otherwise, to say nothing of the boxsets and books it’s added to my shelves. It’s given me outlets I would have never considered. It’s added so much color to my life that it’s hard to imagine what what my everyday life would be like without it. I may have been a late comer to the fandom, but I’ve never regretted a single minute of it.

Megan can be reached on Twitter and her website. 

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#42: Lynette Cantos

Age: 27

Location: Fort Lauderdale, Florida

When did you discover anime? Share as much as you remember. I can’t recall the year but I know I was eight years old when I watched both of the most popular and recognizable anime series: Sailor Moon and Pokemon. Growing up in Puerto Rico, they were shown at different times based on our cable provider, so WB used to air new Pokemon episodes early in the morning while after school, Cartoon Network showed Sailor Moon during the Toonami block—the first one with Moltar.

What appealed to you about anime when you first discovered it? The storytelling aspect of anime in comparison to Western cartoons is what drew me in. Granted, I still loved and grew up with the classic Nickelodeon originals and the Disney Afternoon block, but the sense of character development, emotions, cliffhangers in anime is something else. I’ve cried more and attached myself more to anime characters so that’s saying something in regards to the powerful storytelling on some anime shows.

What was it like to be a part of anime fandom at the time? Living in Puerto Rico back then, it was a case of being in a small fandom within a small island. It was rare for me to meet other fans that weren’t in the same middle school or municipality as I was because I didn’t have a car, cellphone, etc. in the early 2000s. Then, the last years I was in the island before moving to the U.S. (2004-2007), I started to get more involved in attending local gatherings and cosplay photo meet-ups.

Was the Internet a part of fandom at the time? If yes, how? If no, how did you connect with other fans? Most of my fandom connection was online through early Geocities fansites and anime forums specifically targeted at both Sailor Moon and Cardcaptor Sakura fansites. I even taught myself some basic HTML so I could curate my own Geocities fansites based on my favorite Sailor Moon character (Sailor Venus) and favorite Cardcaptor Sakura shipping (Sakura and Yukito—which nowadays I find it completely problematic).

A group photo from Lynette’s first convention in San Juan.

Do you remember your first convention? What was it, and what was it like?
It was 4th of July, 2004 at the YMCA center in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Back then, our “conventions” were more of a subculture flea market in that local vendors had tables set up at the basketball gym arena and several of them just happen to sell anime merchandise. I remember seeing a post online about how they planned to cosplay at said event so I, my brother, and my former best friend at the time spent two weeks prepping up our first cosplays. The “conventions” were held up on a quarterly basis on Sundays at the YMCA, and over time the attendance grew so much that it wasn’t until I moved away that they rebranded into “Puerto Rico Comic Con” and expanded to the national convention center in the tourist area of San Juan.

Lynette cosplaying as Misato.

I want to hear about your first cosplay! Oh my God, it was a really awful Sailor Venus cosplay LOL. I say this because there’s only so much a 14 year old with limited allowance money and no prior sewing skills could do in 2004. My wig was an itchy and bright Party City-esque blonde wig that I actually bought at a theatre costume shop at my nearby mall and the rest of my set-up (skirt, bow, tank top, shoes) were bought from the street markets in my hometown.

I may bash on it now but at the time, I was so proud of creating something from scratch and I had people take photos of us (myself and my former friend who cosplayed as Kagome from InuYasha), so I got instantly hooked. At that point, I saved up as much of my allowance to evenly budget what kind of cosplays to work on. For my quinceañera, I bought a sewing machine and had my grandma teach me on top of signing up for sewing classes out in San Juan. Besides Sailor Venus, I cosplayed Mimi from Digimon, Aerith from Final Fantasy 7, and Misato from Neon Genesis Evangelion while attending the local cons back home in Puerto Rico.

Lynette cosplaying as Mimi.

How did your fandom experience change after you moved to the US? The biggest culture shock for me was the diversity of anime fans. Obviously, growing up and living in Puerto Rico, most of the friends I had and made during my time there strongly identify as Boricua/Latinx so moving to the US and meeting people who are from different races and ethnicities—especially here in South Florida, where the population is just as diverse—was awesome. However, I had to tone down my Spanish/Spanglish talk and references sometimes so I struggled with that for the first half of my freshman year.

Also, during the first years of living here (2007-2009), I stopped watching anime altogether because of the group of friends I hung out with were mainly into video games or comic books so that was always the main focus within the group dynamic. It wasn’t until 2010 when I moved away from Florida to Virginia that I got back into anime. At that time, my mom created a Netflix account and the first anime I saw was Nana and it was the best worst decision ever. I say this because I was preparing to move away when I started to watch it and my husband and I (back then, boyfriend/girlfriend) were in a long-distance relationship, and Nana is a deeply emotional shoujo anime so I was in tears for weeks.

I thought it was neat how your first site was about a ship you don’t like anymore. How have you changed as a fan over the years? Pardon my French, but I was a weeaboo little shit when I was younger compared to nowadays hahaha. Back then, I used to watch and read whatever I could get my hands on just because it was “anime” and I was a snob when it came to people liking popular anime. Nowadays, I have a secure identity of what I like and don’t like with different anime genres and it’s okay to own it and admit you don’t like certain things and there’s nothing wrong with that or yourself. When I see an anime gaining popularity or traction via social media or cosplay groups at conventions, I’m the total opposite now in that I seek it out immediately because there’s a reason why it’s so popular.

Also since becoming more of an intersectional feminist, I’ve gained a more critical perspective than when I was younger regarding anime I watch. A big example is watching Hana Yori Dango/Boys over Flowers when I was a teenager, and how romantic I thought the relationship between Makino and Domyouji was. Nowadays, I see the problematic and sexist tropes behind it all and some of the scenes like the bullying ones make me uncomfortable to rewatch now. Do I still watch it once a year when I’m feeling sappy? Yes, but now I know better than to long for something like that anymore.

Lynette can be reached on Twitter and Instagram. 

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#41: Justin Stroman

Age: 27

Location: New York

When did you discover anime? Share as much as you remember. Was around the 3rd grade when I stumbled onto a show simply titled Pokemon. Needless to say, at the time, I had no idea it was anime. It just so happened to air on TV alongside other cartoons at the time, and I didn’t think much of it.

In fact, I didn’t think much of it for a while since I didn’t really seek out anything else like it—if it was on my TV, and it was a cartoon, I was gonna watch it.

So truthfully I probably did not realize what anime was or could be like until I discovered The International Channel somewhere around 1999 or 2000. It was a channel devoted to showing, well, foreign creations. The two that I remember was Dragon Ball GT (at a time where we had Dragon Ball Z and all) and Slayers…subtitled.

Yes, that’s right, subtitled. I can’t tell you how odd that was, but I can tell you how I remember the subs were also yellow… Anyway, it started with that, then TechTV started Anime Unleashed, and my interest in anime began right here.

What appealed to you about anime when you first discovered it? I have to think at the time it was the stories that drove me than anything else. Most of the cartoons that I watched like Scooby Doo, Tom & Jerry, etc, and even stuff like Power Rangers generally were set for kids to enjoy, so that meant you’ll get comedy sets, monster of the week, etc. Pokemon had some of that too, but the overarching goal was Ash’s journey to become a Pokemon Master. There was a story driven reason to tune in each week. The look of anime might have also been a factor as well.

What was it like to be a part of anime fandom at the time? Very much a quiet thing. Like nobody I knew went out of their way to talk about anime unless it was on Toonami. Forget about buying anime—the only places I could figure out where it was was at FYE or Suncoast, in New Jersey. It was at least a good hour or so by train going from NY to NJ, and the only time I would ever go to the mall was if the whole family was. And I discovered magazines like Otaku USA and Newtype pretty late.

Was the Internet a part of fandom at the time? If yes, how? If no, how did you connect with other fans? While I think you could do a bunch of things thanks to the internet in the early 2000s, I wasn’t old enough to buy anything online, or find out where to watch anime online, or… well, yeah. I was very much a TV person. So I can probably say it impacted others, but not me personally.

So truthfully, I didn’t really connect with many fans around the 2000s.

How did you start connecting with fans then? There were two times where I began connecting with fans: 2008 and 2010.

Inspired by what my friends did in high school, I had the bright idea of starting an anime club… as a freshman in college. I only knew one person at the school who was interested in anime, and that was through a summer program. So it was a case of convincing students before classes started (each class had about 20-30 people), then making my case to the Student Council why the school should have an anime club. For me, it was a very harrowing experience as I’m introverted by nature. I think it took about a month and a half before I had my club officers and six other students that said they’d be interested in joining the club! Anyways, I was President for those four years, and those four years were a mix of stress and regrets yet remains one of the best experiences ever. It was great to meet a number of people who liked the same thing I did, and generally do things I’ve never done before with people that were super passionate about anime. While there are many things I’d like to take back, there are also many things I will cherish for a long, long time.

In 2010, one of those anime club members happened to be a writer. I began desiring to write about anime and manga—I ended up asking about teaming up to start a blog. That blog turned out to be Organization ASG, or Organization Anti-Social Geniuses, sometime in late December. Six years and five months later, I still had no idea this would be the result, as I’ve found friends, met cool people, and traveled to Anime Boston and Anime Expo as press, which I used to believe was for only for super popular (and more established) outlets, and cover a convention. Like anime club, there are many things I’d like to take back but there are also many things I will cherish for a long, long time. Unlike anime club, I hope there’s a lot more experiences to come since I’m still maintaining the site.

Do you remember your first convention? What was it, and what was it like?
The first convention that I went to was New York Comic Con 2006 on a Sunday. I remember because I went with my mom. It was definitely a culture shock since I had never seen so many people that were into all of this, including anime or manga.

My first strictly anime convention I went to was the second New York Anime Festival in 2008. Just like NYCC, just seeing people in cosplay, all the items in the dealers’ hall, etc, I had never experienced anything like it.

When you went with your mom, whose idea was it? What did your mom think of the con? It was definitely my idea to go, but naturally I was not going alone! I guess I was either 16 or 17 when I told my mom about NYCC and she decided she was coming with me since it was my first convention and first time at the Jacob Javits Center.

My mom was shocked at the amount of people that was there, mainly because I don’t think she knew there would be this many fans of comics and stuff. But aside from that and her desire to buy certain art materials that she saw, I can’t remember if she felt any other way about the con.

You said, of your first con, “I had never experienced anything like it.” Could you elaborate why and how? So I think the biggest event I can say I went to where there was a lot of people was a basketball game when I was a kid. The only thing I remember was the stadium I went to (Continental Airlines Arena, where the Nets used to play). School plays had a lot of people (parents and relatives) watching their kids singing on stage, and those were something else since I had to be the one singing!

But just going to NYCC felt different. For starters, it meant a lot of walking around. It meant discovering ways to buy anime (or manga). It meant seeing people in costumes (and finding out what cosplay meant!). For someone who relied heavily on anime on TV and whatever VHS I could find in stores, it was certainly a new experience to me.

Now that you’re a blogger, how has your view of the fandom changed? How has your participation in the fandom changed? Before starting all of this I didn’t really have a view of fandom since I didn’t interact with most of it. But in starting a blog and interacting with not only bloggers, but fans and industry members either to learn information or get quotes for a story, I’ve basically met a ton of passionate people who love what they do. Do they love working on a costume a week or a day before a convention? Probably not. But I’ve met those people and they will spend long hours to express what they love, and that is cool. While there’s always issues, I’d like to think the positives far outweigh the negatives within fandom.

I guess the best way to answer how I participate in fandom is I try to contribute in some way. There are a number of ways to show support for what you love, whether it’s buying anime BDs or manga, cosplaying, drawing, or shooting videos. Before blogging the only thing I did was watch whatever was on TV, then find anime on YouTube (not knowing it wasn’t legal at the time to watch them) and then read manga. Now I’m actually way more aware of upcoming anime and manga, I’m probably watching more anime than I would’ve without blogging, and of course, I try to write about either industry or things happening in the community.

So I’d say my participation in fandom has changed considerably since I started blogging.

Justin can be reached on Twitter. 

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#40: Videogamep

Age: 21

Location: California

When did you discover anime? Share as much as you remember. I discovered it by watching Naruto on Toonami in 2005. From there, I started watching Zatch Bell, One Piece, Bleach, and other shows on Toonami. I didn’t branch out beyond that or get involved in the larger fandom until 2013, when I watched Angel Beats, Sword Art Online, Fullmetal Alchemist, Attack on Titan, and several other popular shows.

What appealed to you about anime when you first discovered it? I always liked the particular style of fantasy action you see in long-running shonen that just wasn’t done in other mediums. It had a certain type of cool that I had never seen anywhere else. I had also never seen a TV show with that much of an overarching story or that much complexity. I had only seen American cartoons (and Pokemon) before that, and those rarely had any overarching plot and were largely directed at a younger audience.

What would you say was the most popular anime at the time? Naruto, no question.

What was it like to be a part of anime fandom at the time? I wasn’t really a part of the fandom at the time. I didn’t use the internet as much back then and didn’t know a lot of other fans. What I remember most is watching and discussing the latest Naruto episodes with my younger brother, who began watching it even before I did.

Tell me more about your younger brother. How did he get into anime? Did he stay into it up until today? My younger brother got into anime pretty much the same way I did. We would both watch Pokémon as kids, and he started watching Naruto on Toonami shortly before I did. He isn’t as into it today but he still occasionally watches action shows like Attack on Titan.

Can you tell me about the first time you met another anime fan? Was it in person or online? Aside from my brother, the first anime fan I met was a kid I knew at elementary school who also liked Naruto. I don’t remember a lot of details but I remember talking about it with him during recess. The first time I got involved with an anime related community was through editing on the One Piece Wiki back in 2012, which I still do today.

How did you get into that? I originally started because I was (and still am) a huge One Piece fan and I browsed there fairly regularly. I started editing by correcting small spelling and grammar errors and kept going from there. I’ve stuck with it because I’ve gotten more involved with the community there and I like making sure the wiki is good quality. I’m also a content mod there, which is a step above ordinary users but below admins. I’m not as active as I used to be, but I still edit there fairly frequently.

I also started blogging about a year ago, and I’ve gotten even more involved with the community through that.

How did you express your interest in Naruto? Did you create art or write stories or anything like that? Aside from watching the weekly episodes on Toonami, I began buying Naruto video games whenever I found out about a new one and could talk my parents into getting it for me. They were usually fighting games that I played by myself against the AI, but I also sometimes did matches against my brother. I still have all of the games today, and I think I ended up getting about nine or ten different games, some of which I still play occasionally. I also started reading the manga weekly after my brother picked it up. I had always watched the dub, so the manga was far ahead of what I was familiar with, but I was so eager for new content that I read it anyway. I even bought some Naruto trading cards once, although I never did much with them.

Do you remember your first anime convention? What was it like? My first anime convention was Anime Expo 2014 (I had dropped into a smaller convention for a few hours once, but I didn’t really do anything). It was a lot of fun, but the lines are what I remember most. That was the year the computers they used for badge pickups broke, and I ended up waiting in line to get mine for three hours in July heat and some of the events had such long lines that they filled up before I got to go in. I’m still glad I went to the con, though. I got to go to a lot of cool panels, even with the lines, and it was the first time I had seen so many fans in one place. I had so much fun that I’ve gone every year since, except now I always buy premier badges so I can skip the lines.

What’s the biggest contrast between anime fandom then and anime fandom today? I wasn’t that involved with the community until around 2014, but what I remember most from the early days was how huge Naruto was. Toonami would always promote it heavily, every fan I met knew about it or watched it, and it was one of the first shows I thought of when I thought “anime.” Back then, especially among people my age, the main source of anime was Toonami, so all of the biggest hits were shows from there. Bleach and One Piece were also pretty popular around that time, but Bleach didn’t come around until a little later, and One Piece never quite caught on in like the other two.

Videogamep can be reached on Twitter and his blog. 

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#39: Emma Bowers

Age: 33

Location: Los Angeles, California

When did you discover anime? Share as much as you remember. My father got me into it. He was a huge science fiction buff, and he started renting VHS episodes of anime at the Hollywood Video. Iria, Ghost in the Shell, Neon Genesis Evangelion, etc. I was about 15, and started to branch out into other genres of anime. Slayers, Ranma 1/2, Fushigi Yugi, Black Jack. Eventually, once I ran out of options at the video store to rent, I started purchasing videos. I remember discovering Cowboy Bebop this way. I had a part time job as a busser and all of my income went to buying these tapes (and eventually DVDs). I got a job at the Suncoast when I was 16, and I was on cloud nine ’cause I got a 35% discount (which was great when you were spending $30 on 3 episodes of subtitled anime), but I also took it upon myself to promote and recommend anime to people. At the time, the only anime on TV and easily accessible was Dragon Ball Z and Sailor Moon.

How did your dad discover anime? I’m honestly not sure how my dad first got into anime. He was very much into old science fiction, and as he was drawn to a lot of the anime sci-fi, I’m sure that’s what got him in to it. My Dad died about 10 years ago, so no idea if he’d still be into it now.

What appealed to you about anime when you first discovered it? It was so different in terms of its themes and story telling than the animation you saw in the west. With the exception of Ralph Bakski films, and Heavy Metal l, it was the first animation I’d seen that had adult themes. I also was amazed at the on-going story arcs so many of them had.

Back at Suncoast, did you ever see shoppers looking for anime specifically? I did run into a lot of other fans, and it was funny ’cause at the time I was going through my “elitist weeb” period. So here I was getting into all these new up and coming anime like Cowboy Bebop and Trigun, and everyone who came into the store just wanted the newest tape of Dragon Ball Z. The funny part was, I was moving to Los Angeles and my LAST week of working there, a guy came into the store and said, “Hey… last month, you recommended this movie… Princess Mononoke… and it was really good… thanks!”.  It makes me laugh at how snobbish I was about stuff like that. I’m a lot more “live and let live” now when I meet people who don’t have the same tastes or interests in anime I do.

What would you say was the most popular anime at the time? Hands down, Dragon Ball Z. It was on TV, and this was before streaming options. So it was the easiest to access. I once tracked down some fansubs cause I wanted to see all the stuff that Cartoon Network had edited out (these are those infamous subs where you had Goku dropping f-bombs). I was really into DBZ as well, but after I while I got into a snobby phase where I didn’t like it ’cause I felt people were too into it and over looking other titles.

What was it like to be a part of anime fandom at the time? I’d say, harder. This was pre-LiveJournal, let alone Facebook, Twitter etc. so when you’re a 16-year-old living in Albuquerque, you experience a lot of isolation. When you did meet other anime fans IRL, you ran the risk of hanging out with people who were toxic and even predatory. I made some friends via the IRC chat, mailing lists, and just even emailing people who had fan pages I liked, but it really didn’t have the strong communities like it did now.

You had a mixed bag experience online at the time. Can you tell me about the first time you met other fans IRL? The first time I met fellow online fans was at Otakon 2001. One of my buddies met me at the airport in Baltimore and I just remember seeing him face to face and thinking ‘WOAH’. These days it’s really normal of me to meet internet pals at cons and in a very casual manner (“oh hey. we’re at so and so panel/we’re at this bar, come by!”), but to meet someone for the first time in The Meat Space was really surreal and wrapped my mind.

Emma, 17, cosplaying Milly at Otakon 2001.

Do you remember your first convention? What was it, and what was it like?
Yes. It was Otakon 2001. That’s pre 9/11! I cosplayed as Milly Thompson from Trigun, my very first cosplay! I got so much positive attention from it and it was so amazing to be surrounded by that many people who loved the same stuff I did. It was also before it was easy to shop online, or merch was available at malls, so I went back home with like, $300 worth of anime crap.

What kind of stuff did you buy? Do you still have it? Oh man… I bought a TON of Japanese untranslated manga (lol, I couldn’t even read Japanese at that level), lots of art books, ufo-catcher dolls, little pins (I bought one of Saito from Rurouni Kenshin. i remember this ’cause he was my favorite character in Kenshin and my friend at the time was REALLY shady about this. Always going “ew! why do you like him! he’s UGLY.”  Like I said, it was a different time), and a few CDs. This was important ’cause at the time, anime cons were the only place you could get CDs that were not bootlegged. Sadly, I’ve moved a few times/changed a lot of my interests and I’m an anti-hoarder, so all that’s left is a Cowboy Bebop art book.

What’s the biggest contrast between anime fandom then and anime fandom today? I’d say the biggest (and best!) difference in fandom is the variety of people. My first cons/groups, it was all cis, white people. I had lots of friends who had very conservative or centrists views, friends who’s imitate response to gay characters or same-sex shipping was “ew” or some very narrow minded shit like that. Now I got a ton of friends who are different ethnicities, many of my friends identify as queer, or trans and I think that’s wonderful that they feel safe and comfortable enough to do so. I go to cons and see so many different people, which is a great sign, it means anime has become more accessible to different groups of people. I think a lot of that is owed to american broadcasts like Toonami and distributions like Crunchyroll and Funimation getting simultaneous releases that you can watch for free or cheap.

Emma can be reached on Twitter. 

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#38: Tommy Phillips

Age: 32

Location: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

When did you discover anime? Share as much as you remember. Technically the first anime I saw was Speed Racer in the middle of the night on Cartoon Network. And like all kids, I watched Pokémon. But in 2001 I got into Cardcaptors, Sailor Moon, and Tenchi Universe. I was a big fan for a while, but then I turned 17 and was “too cool for anime.”

Fast-forward to 2007. I drove by an anime convention in Pittsburgh (Tekko) and proceeded to make fun of all the cosplayers. My mom called me out on my hypocrisy—I had cosplayed Darth Vader to the premiere of Episode III. So I took a closer look at this anime thing. Seeing how much fun all the cosplayers had at the con melted my heart, and my now-soft heart was ready for anime.

On the night of May 14, 2007, I watched InuYasha for the first time—the episode “Mistakes of the Past”—and I’ve been hooked ever since. I’ve been to approximately 35 cons in the last 10 years. I’m an otaku now, and I’m never looking back.

Your mom sounds like a classy lady. My mom was a first-grade teacher for about 20 years up until her forced retirement due to various health problems. She always looked out for the kids who were getting bullied. Her ability to help the children who were not as popular made her very popular with her parents as well as her students. So it only seemed natural when she pointed out my hypocrisy in making fun of cosplayers when I had in reality cosplayed just a couple years earlier. Thanks to her, I gave up my “eminence front” of being too cool for cosplay, and eventually fell in love with the art myself.

Why do you think your first reaction toward cosplayers was judgement? I was bullied from my very first day of first grade. There was definitely a pecking order in my class, and I was at the bottom. As the years went on, and I got older, and other kids left my school, I moved up in the hierarchy. Eventually I became the bully, making fun of others. That included the cosplayers I saw. It was wrong, but I never realized it until that day my mom called me out on it. I became the very thing that I had suffered from, but my mom set me straight and I’ve been a different person ever since. Becoming an otaku literally changed me from being a bully to being a friend to those who are bullied. The best lesson I learned from my experience is, don’t give into hate.

What appealed to you about anime when you first discovered it? It had to be the fact that female characters were strong, especially in stuff like Sailor Moon, Tenchi Universe, and InuYasha. Strong female characters seemed so new to me, growing up with only American male-oriented cartoons. It was characters like Sailor Mars, Ayeka and later Sango who won me over.

What would you say was the most popular anime at the time? Probably Bleach at the time of my renaissance in 2007. Fullmetal Alchemist was big too.

What was it like to be a part of anime fandom at the time? It was a much more relaxed atmosphere than it is now. Instead of all the political crap that has popped up within convention communities, people were much more accepting of everyone.

How has anime fandom gotten more political over time? I think the defining moment for me was at Colossalcon this past year, when a skit involved beating up a Trump cosplayer with a baseball bat and the masquerade hosts chiding the audience if they weren’t for Bernie Sanders. Don’t get me wrong, I’m no Trumpster, but there seems to be so many political causes these days in Facebook groups that receive hundreds of likes while actual discussion of con activity gets pushed to the bottom. I guess my best answer is that the transition from anonymous discussion on message board forums to putting your name out there on Facebook groups in the past five years has led to people feeling the obligation to push their political views in places where it really doesn’t belong.

Was the Internet a part of fandom at the time? If yes, how? If no, how did you connect with other fans? Yes, I found fellow fans on a website called “Christian Anime Alliance.” At the time, the forums were active and helpful. Also, I’d use YouTube to look up videos from Tekko to see what I missed at the con in which I made fun of people at first (then recanted).

Has your religion continued to figure strongly in your anime fandom? While the Christian Anime Alliance is practically dead, my Christian views still heavily affect the way I watch anime. Over the years, I’ve found many links between my faith and what I watch. It may not be intentional, or it may very well be so, but I’ve seen connections between various characters and Biblical figures. My favorite has to be the connection between Kuniko Hojo from Shangri-La and Moses. Not many people have seen Shangri-La, which is a shame, because it is an utter masterpiece. Kuniko runs away from her people, before having that “burning bush” moment that brought her back as their leader, and after many trials she ends up leading them into their “promised land.” It’s a beautiful parallel that helps me enjoy the series more, and definitely cements Shangri-La as one of my all-time favorites.

Do you remember your first convention? What was it, and what was it like?
Erie Anime Experience 2007—a tiny con but with great cosplayers, a friendly guest (Kyle Hebert), and a video game tournament where I recorded my one and only win at Super Smash Bros. Melee. It was an amazing experience for a con virgin.

What inspired you to begin blogging about anime? I honestly can’t remember the exact reason I decided to start blogging, whether it was something I thought long and hard about, or whether it was just a whim. In any case, I began my blogging journey in February 2008, and while it hasn’t been all sunshine and roses, I feel as if I’m better off now than I ever was before. I’ve found my niche and I’ve crawled into it nicely. While my original goal of blogging was to blog both anime and sports, I’ve discovered that my true blogging passion is for anime, and I now only blog about American football seasonally.

What’s the biggest contrast between anime fandom then and anime fandom today? I think the biggest difference between fandom when I first became a fan and now is the way we interact online. In 2007, everything was still on message board forums. You’d have specific categories to make your posts, and you’d have to make sure you played by the rules. Now everything is social media. There’s Facebook, where you have to make a splash or otherwise your post gets buried, Twitter, where hashtagging is key to get anyone to notice, and there’s Tumblr, which is meme city. The best example I can give is the IchiHime fandom. For those who aren’t familiar, IchiHime is the abbreviation for fans of the romantic relationship between Ichigo and Orihime from Bleach. In the late 2000s, IchiHime had its own message board where fans could post to their heart’s content, and moderators made sure to keep the site free from needless bickering. By 2016, when “we won” (IchiHime is canon now), the Tumblr wars were overwhelming. Opponents of IchiHime purposely tagged their vicious anti-IchiHime posts with “pro ichihime” in order to start fights. Obviously there’s a big difference between then and now, and it’s obvious what I prefer. What will fandom look like in the 2020s? That might be up to Mark Zuckerberg to decide.

Tommy can be reached on Twitter. 

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#37: Hag

Age: 27

Location: Australia

When did you discover anime? Share as much as you remember. When I was eight years old, I lived in a house that was pretty huge and in the countryside. It was very strange, with different family members living at far ends of the building, so my mother would sleep with me in my room and we’d watch TV together in the dark, with light-loving moths and bugs fluttering around the CRT [a type of older TV].

Back in those days, SBS Australia, the multi-cultural government-funded channel, aired Evangelion. My mum, who is admittedly a bit strange, watched it every Saturday. I would have been asleep at that point, but I was of course lying on my mattress, eyes glued to the screen. Naturally I didn’t understand much of it, but several specific scenes and images stuck in my head. The surprise when Unit 01 moves, the strange Angel that invaded the computer systems. The giant eyes in the sky, the shadow that eats the city. Rei talking to herself. The sound of the automatic system as it plunges Eva 01’s arms into the body of the berserk Unit. Asuka’s ride going under Kaworu’s control, and of course, congratulations. I have vivid mental pictures of the scenes, the structures, the gigantic machines themselves. Then, the show was gone, my life took a turn for the worse, and I never got into anime beyond kid stuff like Pokemon until the 2000s. But those robots. Those Eva units will always be beautiful to me, and they coloured me as a mecha fan even without knowing anime as a medium.

What appealed to you about anime when you first discovered it? I think the directorial approach. If you look at western cartoons, they’re very much done in a “flatter” style. Meanwhile anime is constructed like it’s a 3D set. It makes the show feel like an actual place rather than, say, a comic book or a drawing. Naturally not all of either medium is like that but that’s what originally struck me with Eva and the reason I came back into anime.

What would you say was the most popular anime at the time? As a child it changed over the years, but we got Pokemon, Digimon and, strangely, a straight Animax dub of Cardcaptor Sakura I was rather enamored with. All the kids liked Dragon Ball Z, but I wasn’t into it. I remember the merchandise littering the schools and sports centers though. When I was forced to live in China I encountered different anime series, where dubs of Nadia [the Secret of Blue Water] rubbed shoulders with Jura-Tripper and Hikarian. I quite liked those, they were very different from what I saw in the west. I didn’t really cotton onto their Japanese origins though.

What was it like to be a part of anime fandom at the time? There really wasn’t one in Australia I could find. I lived in a place that could best be described as plains of sugar cane and bug-infested forest ringing spread-out future development zones and tourist-laden beaches. My mother would rent VHS tapes of “cartoons” at the video rental store, so I found the anime section for my Sakura Wars video and Slayers occasionally, but they were just movies to me.

Why did you take a break from anime? What brought you back? I kind of didn’t have any strong way to keep up with it, I guess? The way my life twisted around was that I ended up living in foreign countries and the television was always useless, there was no time to establish broadband so no downloading or fansubs, and when I made it back to my home in Australia we had what was colloquially known as “third world internet” for a long time. Television took ages to even cycle in American cartoons, so my focus was on things I could actually get: videogames. Naturally I encountered anime-styled characters and Japanese games and became aware of it, but it was only really when I started searching for gamers on the internet that I became aware of people talking about it. A few arguments later, I had broadband, and watching Lucky Star on youtube after seeing someone’s slow-loading forum banner gif of the intro. The limit was 12GB so naturally I burned that out in a week.

What was the first show’s fandom you really invested yourself in? I mean, consuming/creating fanworks, buying merch, etc. Well I found a Lucky Star imageboard, but I just read the doujins [doujinshi] posted as I sampled other shows. The first time I REALLY got into something was Gundam 00, which led to the rest of the franchise and me buying model kits and even DVDs. I joined the forums over at MAHQ, realized I hated these people, and instead followed the show from Random Curiosity instead. There were fansub wars, arguments in the comments, and I fell hard into the drama. I eventually found other places as I watched through Gundam, a lot of them actually small groups of specialty fans on unrelated forums for toys or mecha or sci-fi. I didn’t really get the fujoshi thing until I was in the middle of Gundam Wing though, and it was like a whole new world was opened up to me. Not that I’m big on that sort of thing but I can enjoy it as a part of culture. I think it’s actually necessary for modern Gundam fans to get some joy out of flirty gay-tinged stuff because the nasty “fans” won’t let you enjoy anything else.

How did you begin connecting with other fans? Mostly internet forums. I’d just play around in comment sections on fansub sites and blogs. Instead I connected with people on forums over other interests like games or purely on the basis of friendship born from familiarity, then get them into anime by bullying them into watching it. We’d be relatively insulated on our opinions, then the inevitable march of social media and internet memes dragged into the gravitational pull of places like 4Chan and much later Twitter, where I’m at my most comfortable.

What’s the biggest contrast between anime fandom when you got into it and now? Probably the fansub wars. Back then there was constant drama, name-calling, nitpicking and bullying. With Lucky Star it was A.F.K. or Guerrand, with Gundam 00 it was Nyoro~n or Conclave Mendoi [all names of fansub groups]. The drama and possessiveness was amazing and half the people seemed to care more about the subs than the show. These days proper simulcasting has completely destroyed most of that, and the only people who fansub are ones who really want to do a specific show out of interest. It’s a lot more peaceful, though naturally there’s still plenty of bastards who rant and complain about the lightning-fast subtitles they get (sometimes for free, not like piracy has gone anywhere), forgetting when it took days or weeks to get a show subtitled. Keeping everyone happy is impossible.

Hag can be reached on Twitter. 

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#36: Alex C

Age: 19

Location: Madrid, Spain

When did you discover anime? Share as much as you remember. I knew about anime since I was little, maybe when I was around nine. I watched One Piece, Bleach and Naruto everyday on TV. Later, I kind of forgot a bit about anime, but I re-joined the anime fanbase when Shingeki no Kyojin [Attack on Titan] started to be broadcasted.

What appealed to you about anime when you first discovered it? The style (I love manga style) and the stories.

Were you a manga reader before you watched anime? Why did you like its style?  I started reading manga right before getting into anime, so you could say I became a manga reader thanks to anime. I really liked it because it was more aesthetically pleasant than usual superhero and American comics to me. Also, I found interesting to read backwards back in the day. I was some kind of weirdo.

What would you say was the most popular anime at the time? Naruto or One Piece.

What was it like to be a part of anime fandom at the time? I wasn’t in the fandom itself because I was a child, but when I started to watch anime again, with SnK, it was exciting. I would discuss every episode with my friends.

Tell me how you connected with other fans when you got into Attack on Titan fandom. I didn’t really get into the fandom because I have never been a huge fandom participant. Aside from the classic “shitposting” and memes, I didn’t really connect with other people via internet for Attack on Titan. In real life, though, it was different. My friends and I would spend hours talking about how some character or some scene made us feel. We would spend hours trying to mimic the voices of our favourite ones, too. Bit of a childish habit we keep nowadays.

What was online fandom like? Were there certain sites you visited to connect with fans? I mainly shared my things with the other Internet fans of AoT on Twitter or some pages of Tumblr (I didn’t really get into Tumblr though, some people told me it’s a really strange site) through hashtags and all of that. I did specially connect with the Spanish fandom of AoT, since there were some funny simple jokes about the names of some characters in Spanish [Mikasa, for example] and that kind of stuff.

Living in Spain, do you watch anime with English subtitles? I watch anime with both English and Spanish subtitles. I do prefer the English ones though, at least the ones in Crunchyroll are more… “likable” to me, for my taste. Also, I have had some bad experience with Spanish fansubs who weren’t able to do translations that made sense at all.

Was it more difficult to get anime in Europe than it might be for US fans? Back in the day, maybe. I’m sure around 2013 there already were some official and licensed anime streaming sites on the Internet, but you know, a 14-year-old guy with no knowledge of how anime licenses work would watch anime in whatever site he found it on—even not-so-legal sites. Nowadays, I do my best to find and watch anime that has been licensed in official sites in order to help the community to get more anime. I am currently even looking for a job in order to be able to spend money on things like that—premium memberships in sites that I think deserve money and support. But in general, I think that it shouldn’t have been VERY difficult to find official anime in Europe in 2013. You just had to look for it, and I hadn’t the knowledge nor the patience to do it. It’s kind of embarrassing.

How did you watch Attack on Titan? Were you able to get it legally? Like I said,  I didn’t get it legally, but once the anime got licensed and the manga came to Spain I tried to contribute to make up for it purchasing three copies of it for some of my friends that didn’t watch the show or read the manga. Since then, they became anime fans, and bought almost every AoT manga they brought here.

What’s the biggest contrast between anime fandom when you got into it and now? I think the community hasn’t changed much: it has just grew a lot. In that context, the number of fans of some specific type of anime has grown, while some other types have always had a ton of followers. It’s not that the anime fandom has changed, it has grown thanks to the broadcasting services’ work and the new territories anime is exploring. I think there is nowadays an anime for every type of person, and thus, every type of tastes.

Alex can be reached on Twitter. 

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#35: Omar

Age: 18

Location: Italy

When did you discover anime? Share as much as you remember. Back when I was eight, a channel called Italia 1 used to broadcast old episodes of One Piece and Dragon Ball Z.

Even if I didn’t know it was anime, I looked it up a few years later when that channel restarted both series from the beginning. After that, I got caught up in this world and now I’m here sharing my story.

What appealed to you about anime when you first discovered it? I felt it was different compared to other cartoons. I didn’t know it was anime, but I felt a distinct degree of quirkiness from it that satisfied me. Its over-the-top elements really spoke to my younger self’s soul.

What would you say was the most popular anime at the time? Not a lot of people knew what they were watching was anime. For them it was just another Sunday morning cartoon. Before I was even born, Mazinger and other Go Nagai works were really big. Then Italy entered the DB and DBZ era. After that, during my childhood, a lot of people watched Naruto. However, even if shonen anime dominated the scene, there were plenty of shojo fans who would watch everything ranging from Cardcaptor Sakura to Sailor Moon. I also have to mention Captain Tsubasa, which was known here as Holly & Benji.

What was it like to be a part of anime fandom at the time? I don’t think I’ve ever noticed a local fandom. My local comic book store didn’t have a lot of customers and most of them were really reserved. My friends weren’t really big fans, having seen only Naruto, Death Note, and Fullmetal Alchemist. After I grew up I joined the international fandom on social media and now I’m here.

Why don’t you think there was a local anime fandom in Italy? I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to throw you off with that answer. When I said there was no fandom, I meant that many people didn’t look at anime as a Japanese product. They didn’t make a distinction between animation from Japan and animation from other countries. That applies to the general public. I think fans are people who care about a certain product and are knowledgeable about it.

There was a fandom, but it was rather small compared to the amount of people who watched anime during their childhood but didn’t even know the people behind them.

When did you first discover the international fandom scene? When I was 14, i.e. after joining international media in general. As I got more and more accustomed to English, I started following international trends on every social media. I didn’t even have a proper way to watch anime back in the day. Italian TV stopped investing on new shows like back in the day (when I wasn’t even born) so I had to rely on the Internet to find new shows. I ended up on pirate sites (shame on me) , as legal outlets were extremely limited (they still are, but at least now I can watch on Crunchyroll and we even have local legal streaming sites, such as vvvvid.it). After befriending some folks on those sites’ forums, I started following anitwitter and from that moment I joined the international fandom.

What was the fandom internet like when you first began participating? Not really different from what it is now, I only joined four years ago. The main difference is that there is way less drama now, and plenty of interesting threads to follow. I don’t know if it’s only me, but I feel like anime criticism has become way more refined nowadays.

Have you ever been to an anime con or other in person fandom event? Only local cons, in one of the main cities in southern Italy. As you might imagine, there aren’t a lot of attendees so the con is really small and is lumped together with an yearly book festival. Not that I’m complaining about, I always manage to score some good findings and I’ve met the best Italian manga critic there [Dario Moccia, in Omar’s opinion].

Do you remember the first time you participated in fandom? Like, created fan content (art or fiction), wrote a blog, anything like that?  I’ve never been really good at writing my thoughts down and all my anime drawings are tracings (I’ve done those only for fun though, never posted them online and never took credit). I guess my best contribution to the fandom was sharing my thoughts with other people on forums (my English isn’t good enough to write anything in a blog post and nobody would take me seriously here in Italy). I prefer reading think pieces and original takes on a show to sharing my own views.

Your English is amazing. Anyway, how did you start making friends through anime fandom? I didn’t make a single friend in real life through anime. Maybe because other interests in other fields,but not because of anime. The people I’ve befriended online became my friends either because they shared my interests or because they didn’t and we ended up exchanging arguments in a peaceful manner. I never shut anyone out simply because their opinions were different from mine,but rather I tried to understand them and while some people refused to have a friendly chat about something and got angry for no reason, other people took as a chance to discuss with me about things they love, as I’d offer a different insight. However, I don’t get to travel a lot and the only other country I’ve ever visited is Morocco (my parents’ home country), thus I’ve never met an online friend in real life. As soon as I get the chance I will though.

What’s the biggest contrast between anime fandom when you discovered it and anime fandom today? Like I mentioned earlier, I think it’s criticism. Maybe I wasn’t following the right threads, but current day anime criticism feels a lot sharper.

Omar can be reached on Twitter. 

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#34: Ink

Age: 38

Location: New Jersey

When did you discover anime? Share as much as you remember. My earliest recollection of anime, not that I knew it as such at the time, was watching Star Blazers on Saturday morning. It was the one of the first shows scheduled for that broadcast day, and my six-year-old self loved it. Ultimately, however, it was just another cartoon to me back then.

In my teens, my hormones brought me to the likes of La Blue Girl on the animation shelf at the local video rental store. I laughed off “anime” like most of my peers back then for its ridiculousness, and stayed with American cartoons for the most part.

In college, I roomed with the inner-city youths from the worst parts of Camden, Philadelphia, and Newark (NJ). I came back to our apartment one day to find all three sitting on the couch watching some brightly colored nonsense. When I asked what it was they were watching, all three enthusiastically turned around and said some variant of, “Oh shit, you’ve never seen Pokemon? You gotta watch this!” I declined and left.

After moving into my first apartment in Pennsylvania, a new friend showed me some VHS tapes he had of a ridiculous show called Dragon Ball Z. We’d hang out and drink and watch it. Fun times were had. He also had a VHS of Maison Ikkoku, which is when my thoughts on anime started to shift. During the same period, Cowboy Bebop started airing on Toonami, and when I saw that, I officially came around to respecting anime. (My friend didn’t initially take to CB as I did, but he came around.)

When I moved back to New Jersey, my mother died shortly thereafter. Shortly after that, Fullmetal Alchemist started airing on Adult Swim. This was what harpooned my loyalty to Japanese cartoons. The breadth of genres and stories I sporadically encountered over 30-some years made me realize that my love for cartoons and anime’s fearlessness for subject matter were perfect for one another.

I’m sorry for your loss. Was the focus in FMA on Ed and Al’s mom part of what endeared you to it? How so? The mother’s death and her sons’ desperation was absolutely what endeared me to that show. Until then, I’d not seen (or at least remembered seeing) anything that dark in anime, and the plot was just sort of a right place/right time sorta thing. I actually wrote this piece for Ani-Gamers detailing my connection with the original series after Brotherhood finished its simulcast. Every year since watching it the first time (once I owned the DVDs), I watch the last three episodes and the movie on October 3. FMA is more a part of my life than any other anime though there are definitely better and more mature titles out there. It’s almost like watching bittersweet home movies.

What appealed to you about anime when you first discovered it? When I saw it as a child, anime was just another cartoon. Bright colors, cool explosions, fun stories.

When I discovered anime as “anime,” it was the maturity of (some of) the stories that were being told as well as the art styles behind them.

What would you say was the most popular anime at the time? Respective to my stages of anime discovery: Star Blazers (Space Battleship Yamato), Cowboy Bebop, and Fullmetal Alchemist.

To rewind just a bit, you watched La Blue Girl at a time when you didn’t watch other anime. How did you even find out about hentai in that case? At the time, I really wasn’t watching many cartoons at all actually. My teenage friends and I were just renting whatever R-rated fare we could get away with at the video store when we came across that… which had a 13+ sticker on it (as I recall) and was in the very front of the store on the regular animation shelf. I remember laughing like mad at the plot and the mechanics involved, but my mind’s forever scarred from lines like “I will now thoroughly and violently penetrate you.” I honestly can’t actually recall when I contextualized hentai as Japanese porn cartoons, but at some point it came to be the thing from which I had to (and still have to) explain to people as “not the norm” for anime.

After you rediscovered anime, how did you interact in the fandom? How did you make friends with other fans? What really got me into the fandom, and not just liking the anime I was watching, was spending more time with fellow fans. I owe my initial dive into the deep end to my friend Ben, who decided we should go to Otakon one year. There, I felt connected but also like an outsider for my ignorance of the medium. It was great to know so many people loved the same thing I had come to, and it filled me with a desire to learn more about it.

Although Ben’s more of a cosplayer than a panel freak, like me, I would had never discovered panels and the infinite fun through learning they bring without, frankly, being bored waiting for him to move for all the people requesting his picture. (He makes a damned good Episode 1-3 Obi Wan.) It was in a panel at the first con I went to by myself, the very first Castle Point Anime Con (CPAC), where I met Evan of Ani-Gamers, and I’ve been contributing to that site (and others) ever since. That exposure has led to interacting with many great people online via twitter and podcasts. Cons tend to deepen those ties from all of us gathering together, and now when I give panels, I love hanging out afterwards and talking with possible new friends!

 

My mind’s memory is that of a dying fly, so you’ll have to forgive the fact that all I really remember about the first Otakon I attended was being absolutely shocked how balls-to-the-wall forward people were regarding wearing their fandom on their sleeves…literally; I felt so out of place wearing normal clothes that my heart for fandom grew three sizes that day. It’s a feeling I would always like to remember.

Could you elaborate on feeling like an outsider? Early on in fandom, I felt like an outsider for just not knowing enough, not showing enough. It felt like my liking of these cool foreign cartoons was not worthy of being around people so fervent in their liking of “anime.” I didn’t know the lingo, and I could only speak to the few shows I’ve seen. I remember thinking, “Oh, god, there’s a history to all of this?!” and kinda freaking out. That was entirely in my own head though, and I’m kinda glad it was. Attending panels is where I learned my love for this fandom as well as what its obsessed with, and I’ve come to see anime fans as some of the most accepting fans out there.

Today you’re on staff at Ani-Gamers, a blog about anime. How did that start? As of this moment in time, I contribute articles and columns to, co-host a podcast (Oldtaku no Radio) on, and perform editorial tasks for Ani-Gamers. It was Evan Minto who started and still runs that blog, and it was he who handed me a business card at the end of a CPAC edition of C.R.A.Z.Y. O.T.A.K.U. to solicit writers. He said he was looking for academic takes on anime, video games, and manga. I said I’m an aimless English major with penchant for overly elaborate analyses. He said, “Welcome.”

How has going from passive consumer to active fan creator changed your fandom? Poetic! I really love the term “active fan creator,” because that’s honestly what I hope I’ve become. To that end, evolving “from passive consumer to active fan creator” has given me social media nightmares (literally dreams where my Twitter feed starts attacking me for the degree of naiveté or incompetence in my reviews/opinions). But dealing with the anxiety is way more than worth it for the payoff of hearing someone say that they read your piece and comment on how it affected them or their views on whatever you reviewed. Creating content that engages while being informative is tantamount to what I aim to do, and to that effect, my fandom has changed to one of bittersweet toil. It’s like being in the marketing department to some degree—a creative job but one with time cards nonetheless. I often feel burnt out for speaking with such passion and craft into a very large void, but those scattered comments, like stars, keep me going further into and along with the fandom.

What’s the biggest contrast between fandom then and now? When I was watching cartoons I didn’t know as anime, those much more intense than I were subbing tapes to spread the love. Now most anime are simulcast legally, supported by a relatively huge fanbase, and dissected/lauded/jeered by the same. This is a wonderful time to be an anime fan. We’ve almost got it all, including creators visiting domestic conventions in person and answering questions about their work. This is high-level stuff! It doesn’t get much better. We should count ourselves lucky and contribute in any way possible to further anime exposure and appreciation.

Ink can be reached on Twitter.