Category: Male

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

Age: 24

Location: Chicago

When did you discover anime? Share as much as you remember. My early exposure to anime when I was a kid was pretty much through Toonami and Pokemon, basically finding it on TV. I think I would go on after that to find out that manga existed through Shonen Jump. This was back when Dragon Ball Z was on TV and in Shonen Jump, so it worked out for me since I was generally more restricted from watching TV at that time. High school was when I started watching more anime in particular because I could start looking online, which is what I consider to be more of a formal beginning.

What was that second beginning like? Did you just log on and find anime again right away? I call it a second beginning because of how I approached it. In the beginning, my anime fandom was just passive consumption of what was available on TV. I was just taking what was coming at me.

However, around high school, I got my own laptop and that was the point when I started to actively look for series myself. Watching anime had always been an interest of mine since starting to watch Toonami, but suddenly I was in control of what I was watching.

I started with the stuff I knew, series that had appeared in the Shonen Jump magazines I’d read like Hikaru no Go or Death Note. I started getting into watching airing anime at about the time Code Geass was ending and that’s pretty much what I consider to be the starting point of the fan I am today.

What appealed to you about anime when you first discovered it? Honestly, I was too young at the time to really have a good answer. I probably just thought it was cool. I was really into Gundam and Power Rangers, so maybe I just had a thing for giant robots.

What would you say was the most popular anime at the time? I’d say probably DBZ or Pokemon at that time, but I can’t really remember.

What was it like to be a part of anime fandom at the time? I didn’t really try to participate in the fandom at the time. I was content with my personal enjoyment. Even when I started going online to discover anime, I just watched alone and never really tried to engage in conversation in comment sections or chats.

Where online did you consume anime fandom? Were there legal channels yet? When I started out, I didn’t know much about the legal channels, so I downloaded anime illegally. I actually tried to participate myself in the fansub community. I’ve always been a stickler for English grammar, so I tried to do a lot of proofreading for subtitles.

Of course, that’s changed a lot. Today, I watch anime legally.

Can you tell me about the first time you made a friend through anime fandom? I didn’t really start participating in communities until I joined the anime club in college. That’s really when I started being more social about things, with group viewings and trips to the local anime convention. Before then, I had a couple of friends also discovered an interest in anime, but we had already been friends for a while at that point. The first friend I made through fandom was probably a blogger I met after I started my own blog. I asked him about his blog as I was just getting started and we’ve basically been chatting about anime ever since.

You went from not participating in fandom to blogging about anime. What changed and when? In college, around 2011, I made the random decision to start a blog because I thought it might help me improve my writing. At the time, my main hobbies were solving Rubik’s Cubes, playing video games, and watching anime. I didn’t think I had the expertise to really write about Rubik’s Cubes and I only really played one game at the time, so I decided to write about anime. From there, I started reading other people’s posts and that’s when I really started getting into the fandom.

What’s the biggest contrast between fandom then and now? I don’t think I have an interesting answer for that since I wasn’t really into the fandom in the beginning. I’ve definitely become a lot more exposed to vastly different opinions since I started, which I’m willing to guess is more a result of the fact that I’ve become more of a participant than a result of the fandom itself changing. It could go either way. Of course, availability has also gotten a lot better in the present, which has been pretty nice.

Marth can be reached on Twitter. 

Age: 25

Location: Atlanta, Georgia

When did you discover anime? Share as much as you remember. I liked anime before I knew it was anime. Watching Dragon Ball Z Sunday mornings before it hit Toonami, then moving on to Adult Swim. My fandom really grew from raids to my local video store before I started podcasting in 2009.

Can you elaborate? What defined something as anime to you later? So my comment, “I liked anime before I knew it was anime,” is mostly referring to reruns of Speed Racer or Gaiking that I saw in Motel 8s I stayed at as a kid when my family and I were moving cross country. But then there were shows like Dragon Ball, Yu Yu Hakusho, and Rurouni Kenshin when I started to realize that these shows were from a different country. It wasn’t until I hit Inuyasha that I started to realize that all these shows were recognized as ‘anime’.

What appealed to you about anime when you first discovered it? The sense of atmosphere. A lot of the shows I was watching (Yu Yu Hakusho, Rurouni Kenshin, Inuyasha) had a distinctive Japanese air to them. That familiar sort of otherness has been a major pull for me.

“That familiar sort of otherness.” What characterizes that feeling? There seems to be a certain sort of melancholy in Japanese culture that permeates throughout anime and Japanese media in general, actually. When I was younger, I gravitated to this idea that what made things beautiful was the fact that they were finite and didn’t last forever. Growing up with this mentality, a lot of the imagery you see in anime really struck a chord with me. Now I understand that what I was so attracted to was the representation of the concept of mujo [the Japanese aesthetic of impermanence], and even though I didn’t logically understand it at the time, it resonated with me on an emotional level.

What would you say was the most popular anime at the time? Maybe YuGiOh or Dragon Ball Z. Hard telling, especially when you consider Pokemon was still in full swing.

What was it like to be a part of anime fandom at the time? I didn’t even realize it was a fandom, it was just a friend and I.

How did you and this friend bond over anime? Who liked it first? I was definitely the anime fan first. It was kinda a moment in time for him, but it stuck with me. Our bond was getting away with watching shows that were way too adult for us.

Today, we’re friends on Facebook and such, but we don’t really talk to one another. His family ended up moving away. It’s been years since I’ve seen him. He probably still thinks of anime fondly, but I highly doubt he seeks it out.

“Too adult?” The first show that springs to mind was a goody by the name of Doomed Megalopolis. Some of the images I saw from that still haunt me, and I say that unironically. Part of me wonders if it’s really as bad as I recall… Another was the original Vampire Hunter D, might have been a few other older 80’s OVAs that kinda blend together at this point. It was more stuff our parent’s didn’t want us watching, but there were some gems in there so it wasn’t all naughty: The Escaflowne and Ah! My Goddess films, as well as Char’s Counterattack (not knowing what Gundam even was!), some Inuyasha movies as well.

How did you become aware of the presence of other fans aside from you two? I joined an internet video game forum which had a fairly prevalent anime sub-community. At the time I was passionate enough to start a gaming podcast, but I couldn’t keep up with all the new games financially. I didn’t want to quit podcasting, and anime was free with a fast enough internet connection. So thus I started my first anime podcast and got wrapped up in podcasting where I met a lot of folks through Twitter who listened to the show.

What forum was that? The forum that I went to has since died then come back in various forms, I would have to track it down to see if it I could even find it to be honest…

Is your first anime podcast still up? Do you have a link? My first podcast is still up… and it’s kind of an embarrassing secret to be honest! I mean, I was doing it in high school, so there’s a lot of face palming that goes on when I listening to it as an adult. I took everything I know from Mike Dent’s Friday ACE, one of the best anime podcasts to grace iTunes in my opinion. But I probably won’t link it unless pressured, I feel super embarrassed, but if you search hard enough… it is out there lol

How did you go from consumer of anime to creator of podcasts and other things? For me, it’s hard to simply enjoy something. If I enjoy a product, I seek out others who also enjoy it, and from there I feel a need to produce content as a form of homage and to deepen the bonds I’ve made. It feels good when you write and article or record a podcast and see other people enjoy it. It feels even better when your friends enjoy it!

That’s why I created Wave Motion Cannon. I really value the whole idea of giving back to the community, and that’s what I try to do with the content I create.

Can you tell me what interacting with Wave Motion Cannon readers has taught you about the newest generation of anime fans? The longer I participate in the blogger/podcaster circle, the more and more I realize that I am less of a casual fan than I realize. However, I feel WMC attracts fans who are more than casual, maybe part of what we do causes them to be a tad less casual (which I suppose is kinda the goal of all bloggers to some degree). The type of folks that look for analysis tend to be less casual than you standard fare by design, so perhaps that’s at work?

However, funnily enough, I have more interactions with the new generation of anime fans at work than anywhere else! And the best part is that they have no idea that I love anime as much as I do, let alone that I run a blog. I have had grown men over 35 puff out their chest and proclaim they were learning Japanese to watch anime without subtitles, and 20-somethings walk in with tattoos of Miyazaki characters. One guy tried to convince me to watch Berserk, even taking it as far as to do a Google image search on a work computer! One gal said she drew hentai and I had to pretend I didn’t know what it was (usually saying something like “you mean Chinese cartoons?” throws them off your trail). So to me, this is the exact fandom I saw 10+ years ago, just the faces change. hell, they’re still going on about the same shows: Berserk, Death Note, Fairy Tail, etc. It feels weird to interview the lead animator for Naruto on the weekend only to go into work saying I have not idea what any of it is while promoting WMC tweets on my phone simultaneously.

What do you do for a living and why do you hide your fandom at work? I work as a systems trainer in the corporate office of medical information company. The main reason I hide my fandom is due to the stigma that still surrounds anime fandom, a stigma that is fueled in part by the very same people I hide my fandom from. A lot of the fans in my own workplace are a tad on the socially awkward side to the point they are numb to the embarrassment, which is kinda harsh to say, but it’s true. That’s one thing that has not changed over the years, anime fandom is still in a ghetto in many ways.

What’s the biggest contrast between anime fandom when you got into it and now? I feel like fandom now is better than it’s ever been. We have access to so much content (both official and fan created) that there’s something for every fan to enjoy. So many shows are available 24/7, and best of all there is a viable way to actually pay for what we consume. The convention scene has advanced a lot from years past as well, as we get better guests and panels.

Just overall, the fact that that we’re having this conversation, the fact that you’ve started this project means that the anime community has developed into something phenomenal. None of this was possible over 10 years ago, and we’re doing it now!

Josh can be reached on Twitter. 

Age: 34

Location: New Jersey

When did you discover anime? Share as much as you remember. I had always been aware of the spiky-hair designs in the back of gaming magazines (envelope art and import shops in places like Electronic Gaming Monthly). I was into games, and games alone, but had been growing to notice how clearly some aesthetics were distinctly Japanese. It wasn’t until a friend (who was into American comics, namely Spawn) prodded me to check out a super cool cartoon the following weekend that I finally learned what “anime” was. What I saw was the second episode of the original 1996 syndication broadcast of Funimation’s Dragon Ball Z English dub.

What appealed to you about anime when you first discovered it? I always enjoyed, even as a kid, getting in at the ground level of any new product, movement, or “fandom”. I don’t think I recognized it at the time, but there was a thrill in knowing things before anyone else, and trying to project what might catch on. (Later in life, I’d find my calling in marketing. Go figure.)

Otherwise, it was just how “different” anime felt. It was clear this was something unique compared to the other shows on at the time; I think to things like the USA Action Extreme Team lineup (Street Fighter cartoon among all the other video game adaptations). For Dragon Ball in particular, it was a serialized story with an ever-growing cast of characters. It could be an investment (in all senses of the word: emotional, time, monetary). For someone who moved a lot as a kid, it was also a way to quickly find new friends that had a similar intense degree of enthusiasm; if you were into it, you were INTO it. Twenty years later, I’m still running a Dragon Ball website!

What would you say was the most popular anime at the time? From my perspective it was Dragon Ball, but obviously Sailor Moon was the next thing we could grab onto. Anything in the “Japanimation” section at Blockbuster was second-tier by virtue of it simply being available (Vampire Hunter D, Akira, Ghost in the Shell, etc.), followed by whatever aired on Sci-Fi’s Saturday Anime block.

What was it like to be a part of anime fandom at the time? My perspective has always been one of in-person but also unique in that it was not just online in terms of general discussion with other fans, but also from a management perspective. I got into Dragon Ball in 1996, and began my website in January 1998. Sure, it was garbage for a while, but it quickly grew into something significant. Dragon Ball web traffic was insane over the next few years, and having a second-generation Dragon Ball fan site ready to go for the upcoming boom meant learning a lot of lessons about design, presentation, moderation, content management, etc. Quite frankly, it was an amazing self-discovery process by proxy of anime.

For quite some time, “fandom” was defined by learning more and more about the show, and therefore learning more and more about what was changed in its dub. I’ve come to the conclusion that we as the new fans effectively ruined all legitimate discourse of the series for several years. There were no meaningful discussions about the series itself anymore; it was all about the changes. It took years and years for that to recover, and only did so once we finally received uncut/bilingual products and were able to let the franchise rest/die for an extended period of time to then refocus… and quite frankly, for us all to grow up a little bit.

What inspired you to start your own Dragon Ball website? Were other fan sites part of it? When I started my site in January 1998, there was already an established base of comprehensive, well-known, authoritative Dragon Ball fansites (namely Wuken’s Suushinchuu). I didn’t feel that I had anything to add at that level, but I was still desperate to get involved and produce SOMETHING. That started with VegettoEX’s Ultimate DBZ Links Page on my AOL web space. Even then, I still had nothing to really offer; everyone knew all five or six of the good sites already, so who needed a links page?! It was a way to get started, though. I quickly found myself recording audio files and writing (terrible) reviews, so that helped the site expand into VegettoEX’s Home Page. Even THAT began to take a turn with the kind of content and news coverage I wanted to focus on, and at some point in 1999 it became Daizenshuu EX, which I ran until 2012 with our merger with Kanzentai into Kanzenshuu.

All that time, I was continuously looking to other sites to see what they were doing, and more importantly, what we could do better. Something I had always been fascinated with was the series’ music, and while there were decent CD listings in things like Dr. Briefs’ DBZ FAQ, new products were coming out and I was beginning to pick up on mistranslations. I aimed to build the largest, most-comprehensive listing of Dragon Ball music out there, and we accomplished that! I then looked to our music database as the template for other guides we could create. I looked to clean website designs and great color choices like SREDBZ had; I can directly trace back my love of yellow and blue back to Scott’s site right there. I wanted it to be a welcoming site with just the right kind of fun personality, but also that authoritative tone. I don’t think we got there for quite some time, but we eventually did!

The “golden era” of Dragon Ball fansites feels like it ran from about 1997 to 2002. The first generation of raw Japanese and fansub-based fans left an incredible base for us to work from, and Funimation still actively producing the show for the first time gave us plenty of contemporary material to work with. We had a lot of fun, but a lot of us were also still pretty young (late teenage years). We drove the old guard out while we were coming to grips with early Internet culture. While most of it was in good fun (the title tag wars with Planet Namek, for example), there was also a ton of histrionics and grudges that we never truly understood the origins of. Kids being kids.

I looked to the types of dub-specific coverage we were all getting trapped into, and reflected on what we might be able to offer as a simultaneous contrast and complement to that. I brought Julian on board in 2003, which allowed our Japanese news coverage and translations to immediately set us apart. For a whole slew of reasons (web advertising crash, completion of Funimation’s first run of the dub, people just generally losing interest, etc.), most of the other sites of the era closed up shop. At some point, we were essentially all that was left! We had such an incredible base of our own at that point, so I made it a priority for us to stick around and provide the best Dragon Ball coverage we could for as long as we could.

What has been the most rewarding part of running a site like this? I learn something new every day. You might think that after running a series-specific website for nearly twenty years you’ve seen all there is to see, but that’s just not true. Whether it’s a little factoid about the series’ production, some funny new quote from an ancient interview, or even a recently-unearthed character design, there’s always something new out there for you.

Oh, and that whole “making new friends” thing, I guess…! It’s so funny looking back on the days of meeting some random person in a chat room or newsgroup and saying “hey um would you like to work on my website with me?” I can’t imagine handing a password over to a random person like that anymore! That’s how it was back then, though. Today Kanzenshuu is run by four people, all of whom I speak with on a daily basis… and not just about Dragon Ball! These are easily some of my best friends in the world.

Are there any opportunities you wouldn’t have had if you didn’t run Kanzenshuu? My website has served as the basis for everything I do now in my professional life. From content management to design to marketing, it all traces directly back to VegettoEX’s Ultimate DBZ Links Page. When I was in college, there were marketing degrees, sure, and there were IT degrees, sure… but the rest of the curriculum was still trying to catch up with how content on the Internet fit into all of that. While the educators struggled with that, I figured it all out on my own courtesy of Dragon Ball.

It’s clear you have a major connection with the Dragon Ball franchise over other anime series. What is it about Dragon Ball that resonates with you? Have any other series come close to making you feel the same way? I figure I’m the same as most people: what you see first is what leaves the biggest impression on you. Beyond that, though, I love the ensemble cast, I love the music, I love the character designs, I love the writing style… it’s just everything I love wrapped up into one, ever-expanding package.

The amount of head-space dedicated to Dragon Ball makes it difficult to really get absorbed into other franchises. That’s not to say I don’t read/watch other things, and that’s not to say I don’t enjoy some of them an incredible amount, but the bar has been set pretty high. Dragon Ball is just so approachable, so easy, so comfortable, and yet has enough layers to dive into if you really want to nerd out over any given aspect.

That all being said, Futurama is my other not-so-secret love. I’d probably be running the Futurama equivalent of Kanzenshuu today were it not for Dragon Ball. It’s possible and likely that I’ve heard Billy West’s voice more in my life than Masako Nozawa’s, which shocks a lot of people!

Would it be possible to build a site like Kanzenshuu today? Why or why not? It’s certainly possible, but I don’t know what level of crazy you’d have to be to attempt it. I wish people WOULD do it! What we have is the result of four people investing years and years of prior work into something, all brought together into one complete package. It’s something we do because we love the series, and have this irresistible urge to document and share. To start completely fresh? I can’t imagine that. It would have to be with a new series that you place your bets on and hope it becomes something huge; that way you have your foot in the door for everything as it comes out. Start small, but stay comprehensive. That’s not to say we were first in line with Dragon Ball – far from it. We took the downtime opportunities we had, though, and threw everything we had at it at times in our lives where we had the free time to do so. People often ask us what theme we used for the site, or where we downloaded all of our stuff, etc. We have to explain to them that we built it all ourselves, bought it all ourselves, fact-checked it all ourselves, and translated it all ourselves. It’s something that takes time and dedication.

Today? Isn’t it easier to just launch a Tumblr with some magazine scans you can’t read? Run a Twitter account collecting everything you find? Make some YouTube videos talking over game footage? Start up or take over an existing subreddit? Try to clean up someone else’s mess on Wikia?

You can probably sense the combination of jealousy and contempt in that description! It’s just so easy to launch a platform these days with zero costs (other than a lack of true content ownership). We never had those opportunities. Just like most people wouldn’t know how to launch something like Kanzenshuu, we wouldn’t know how to launch something modern and laser-focused in its delivery. We’re stuck in and a relic of the Internet past. We’re not a blog. We’re not a traditional news site. We’re not a video channel. We’re not an official resource. We don’t have quick-bites for people to digest. There’s no money to be made, and no fame to bask in.

But we also wouldn’t have it any other way! I don’t truly hold anything against anyone for wanting to go a different route; just like I made a dinky links page in 1998, people should do what makes them happy and what allows them to have fun with the series they love so much. It’s that personal engagement and sense of accomplishment that kept us going, and I wish that every fan could find something so fulfilling.

What makes my day is when people tell me they “wish there was a Kanzenshuu for ________.” I couldn’t ask for a better compliment.

What’s the biggest contrast between anime fandom when you got into it and now? The obvious answer is probably piecemeal VHS fansubs vs. instant total availability on streaming services and home video. Whereas we would have been happy to get maybe six episodes of the Cell arc subtitled and two episodes of GT in raw Japanese and call it a day at that point, fans can sit back today and binge watch as much of the series (in chronological order) as they want!

That being said, the more things change, the more they stay the same. While in 1999 everyone created their own website with power level lists and Tenka’ichi Budokai brackets with a left-hand column navigation on a black background with website traffic/hit counters, in 2017 everyone has a YouTube channel with “What If?” theories and power level debates with subscription milestone celebration videos.

That’s not to say EVERYTHING truly is the same as it was back then. Something I’ve come to realize is that, when I was getting into the series and discovering its origins and changes for the American market, those changes dominated discussions… at the expense of all other topics. One of the recent projects on our site has been the “Press Archive” where we look back at Dragon Ball coverage from not just contemporary anime and gaming magazines of the day, but also things like newspaper articles and such. What’s clear is how well-versed in Dragon Ball the general anime fan was pre-Funimation, and how accurate the coverage and discourse could be. Sure, there were the occasional outlandish statements and clearly-fabricated tidbits in longer articles, but on the whole, things were pretty great. Once the English dub came to America, it feels like it completely sidelined all new initiatives. Magazine coverage went from enthusiastic to sick-of-hearing-about-it begrudging nods. Fans focused entirely on meticulously documenting all dub changes, yet never diving back to explore and document that original version that was supposedly being tarnished so much. All the meanwhile, an enormous group of new fans were coming in via the Toonami broadcast; being so young at the time, they wouldn’t come online for another five to ten years, shocked to find that the now-old-guard (ourselves still feeling like the “new” fans!) had no respect or nostalgia for the version they were growing up with. Meanwhile, we were simultaneously shocked to realize there WAS an enthusiastic audience for these new voices and replacement music! These people weren’t parroting our opinions back at us; what had gone so horribly, horribly wrong?!

At least for Dragon Ball these days, I’m noticing how fans are simultaneously more specialized and more generalized than ever before. We’re so fortunate to have attracted fans from all walks of life to chat with us on Kanzenshuu; we have the animation experts, the background music experts, the in-universe experts, the directorial experts, etc. On the flipside, we’re seeing more and more fans that aim to have as broad an understanding and expertise as Kanzenshuu tries to present. That’s great for everyone!

And that’s what makes me excited. As Funimation makes strides in accuracy with their Dragon Ball treatment, and as the Japanese industry realizes that Dragon Ball is a global phenomenon and should be treated as such and shared with everyone simultaneously, so too are we seeing that turnaround from the younger generation of fans. They want to know who said what when. They want to know how that ties in to the production. They want to know why certain characters act differently than they remember from watching it growing up. They just want to LEARN. I see myself in them, and that makes me excited to continue doing what I do. There’s still a lot of growing to do as today’s communication platforms and the presenters mature, but the potential for even better news coverage, higher-quality translations, and in-depth documentation is sitting right there! Hopefully people remember Kanzenshuu along the way…! 🙂

Mike can be reached on Twitter.