Category: North America

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.

Age: 26

Location: Washington, DC

When did you discover anime? Share as much as you remember. Like many ’90s kids, I started off with Pokemon and Digimon, but back then I didn’t even really consider or know that it was a Japanese product. It was only until I watched Spirited Away for the first time and watched the extras that I understood what anime actually was. Shortly after I came across Fullmetal Alchemist, happily bought all 13 volumes for $25 a pop, and the rest is history.

What appealed to you about anime when you first discovered it? The stories were so different than the American media (mainly games, TV shows, and comics) I consumed that I couldn’t stop watching. Especially coming to FMA during my last year in middle school, it was my first introduction to cartoons that went deep into adult themes, conflicts, and ideas. So perhaps a part of it was being drawn to something that was a little more “adult.”

You’re one of many to say you were interested in anime’s “adult” themes. But can you elaborate on what that means to you, ideally with examples? When I speak about “adult” themes, I have two examples I can give. The first is the original Fullmetal Alchemist series during the Ishvalan War arc. When it was released, the wars going on in the middle east were still pretty fresh. Being able to watch one of those episodes, change to any major news network channel and see scenes of the wars going on really stuck with me at the time. Of course, there have been and continue to be series that cover current events (war or not), but FMA was the first series where I experienced that direct parallel. And when you’re a young teenager just starting to develop your tastes and ideas about the world, I think it was pretty pivotal. Another example is Welcome to the NHK, which goes really deep into issues of depression, the value of friendships, and dealing with growing up. Granted I was midway through high school when the series came out, but Welcome to the NHK was one of my first series with more relatable adult themes that made me evaluate my own life and relationships.

What would you say was the most popular anime at the time? Absolutely FMA and Inuyasha. Basically anything that was on Toonami or Adult Swim around the 2005 era.

What was it like to be a part of anime fandom at the time? I feel like a part of it was the beginning (some say golden age) of forum fandom. Everyone had their particular website, and their online screen name or persona. Around that time Gaia Online was huge, so being a part of fandom also meant having your dumb little avatar as well.

Please tell me what it was like to be on Gaia Online. (I have never been on it, so go into detail!) Gaia Online was definitely a strange place in retrospect. It was a forum that allowed you to customize an avatar with special monthly items. However all of those items were heavily influenced by anime/manga/games, but they got around any copyright stuff by being non-specific. For example when Naruto was a big hit, they released a bunch of ninja-related items—one of them being the signature headbands—but without any of the symbols from the show. Everyone I knew ate. it. up. At the end of the day, everyone was just trying to make their avatar look as close to their favorite character as possible. (And if you paid up, you probably could!) The people behind the site knew their audience for sure. From there it was basically an all-purpose forum with fan discussions/convention talk/cosplay how to’s/role playing. I actually met a lot of my earliest convention friends through the site.

How did you participate in fandom at the time? Funny enough, the way I mostly participated with fandom was staffing at cons. My senior year of high school, I started staffing for Anime Iowa and, long story short, the Programming Head couldn’t go that year and I took up the role. While I was still only a few years into the actual fandom at that time, I really dove headfirst into organizing the events people went to in the first place!

How did you connect with other fans? This answer definitely flows from the previous, but I connected with other fans through the convention scene. My home con for a long time was a ~3,000 person event out of Iowa. With a con that small, it was really easy to make friends and connections, and I still keep in touch with a lot of the people I met there. Some of those connections got me to go staff at other cons around the country as well.

Did anime inspire you to learn Japanese and become a translator? Oh, absolutely. My path to learning Japanese definitely started with wanting to learn what the shows were saying, but once I started taking it seriously in college, anime-comprehension became much more of a secondary reason. I was lucky enough to have professors who introduced much more broad aspects of the culture, so while I still watched shows and tried reading raw manga, I learned real fast not to rely on my nerdy media as a sole means of practice. I’ve heard similar stories, but classmates in my Japanese 101 classes who were only there out of their love of anime dropped real fast.

Do you remember your first anime convention? Can you tell me about it? God bless my mother, but for my first con we drove all the way from Northern Illinois to Des Moines for Anime Iowa in 2005. After the friend I planned to meet bailed, I was by myself for the entire weekend. I remember that’s where I saw Bleach for the first time and thinking it was the coolest thing I ever saw. I’ll always remember the Naruto dub premiering on Toonami that weekend too. I actually had no idea what Naruto was at the time, but the atmosphere was pure hatred because of the “Believe it!” catchphrase and it being at the height of the “dub v. sub” argument. I took a photo of a sign in the lobby that said “BOYCOTT THE US NARUTO DUB” with a bunch of signatures, but unfortunately that photo is lost to time. I actually went back up to my room that night, watched the two episodes that premiered, and it quickly became one of my favorite series.

What’s the biggest contrast between anime fandom when you got into it and now? Outside of not having to pay $25 for single DVDs anymore, for me the biggest contrast between fandom then and now is the increased visibility and role of female fans. Of course there have always been anime fans who are women, and maybe it was just my perception at the time, but for a while it felt like series for women were “Shojo Beat adaptations” or “Yaoi.” (I am really happy those paddles are not a thing anymore.)

Now it’s pretty well known that the majority of Shonen Jump readers are women, and in general I think everyone enjoys the hits together more. The most in-depth discussions I’ve had about shonen-sports series (Haikyuu!! and Yowamushi Pedal specifically) have been with women, which I don’t think would have been such a thing 10+ years ago. Certainly a welcome change in my book.

Kyle can be reached on Twitter. 

Age: 30

Location: Millis, Massachusetts

When did you discover anime? Share as much as you remember. I was in college, and my roommate had me downloading Naruto and Bleach subbed episodes for him. I started watching those with him and got hooked. I am not a huge anime fan, but love those two series, Initial D, Shokugeki no Soma, Eureka 7, Death Note, One Punch Man, Blood+, and a few others.

Also, why did your roommate have you do the downloading if you weren’t even a fan at the time? My roommate did not know how to get the shows from the website, so I would show him and then I just started watching them with him because they were on my computer. It was a weird set up, haha.

What appealed to you about anime when you first discovered it? I liked that there were so many episodes of Naruto and Bleach and that the story was so involved. I like that the types of stories are so different from Western media, and yet relatable, with good humor and voice acting.

What would you say was the most popular anime at the time? Naruto, Gundam Wing, or Attack on Titan.

What was it like to be a part of anime fandom at the time? I was not a huge fan, but it was still not fully widespread. Things were only just starting to be sold in stores. The only way to watch the episodes immediately was downloading them from torrents after they aired and fans subbed them for free. Legal simulcast sites didn’t exist.

You listed eight anime you enjoy, but then said “I am not a huge anime fan.” What characterizes a huge anime fan? What kind of fan are you? To me, a “huge anime fan” watches only anime, or mostly anime. I like a lot of media, so anime is just a part of what I like to watch, but not even most of what I watch.

Did you connect with other fans aside from your roommate? How did you meet them? I am a high school teacher now, so I connect to my kids who wear Attack on Titan gear or other stuff, and they can’t believe their teacher knows anime.

Do you remember your first anime-related purchase? How much did it cost and where did you get it? I probably bought some Pokemon-related things while in high school, but I don’t really remember. I don’t have too much gear, other than some Gudetama things I’ve bought for my wife but that is more of a character than anime-related. I’m not sure if i have any anime gear!

Do you and your wife watch anime together? Yes. We watch Shokugeki no Soma and a few others together. Yuri!!! on Ice is on deck for us.

What’s the biggest contrast between anime fandom when you got into it and now? I think the ease that there is to watching it in the states now is the biggest change. Before, you would have to wait a long time to watch it legally, but now it is available from streaming sources pretty soon after release, with subtitles.  Access is so much easier!

Patrick can be reached on Twitter. 

Age: 33

Location: Michigan

When did you discover anime? Share as much as you remember. I was about eight and my dad was plowing a driveway for a family friend. When we went inside they turned on “cartoons” for the kids with one of those huge old school satellites. It was the end of Vampire Hunter D where the kids are waving good bye and I was hooked without actually seeing anything. I finally got to see the whole thing years later when Sci Fi used to show anime on Saturday mornings like Project A-Ko, Robot Carnival, and Demon City Shinjuku to name a few.

I also was huge into Robotech and Voltron which as a kid didn’t realize was anime and taken from Macross and Beast King GoLion respectively.

What appealed to you about anime when you first discovered it? City smashing robots and mecha designs mainly. I used to try and make MD Geist armor out of cardboard when we’d play outside.

Who is “we” and did they like anime, too? Do they still? Haha yes, one of the few times my younger brother and I have ever gotten along was over anime. While other kids were outside playing Ninja Turtles we’d make MD Geist armor out of dirt bike gear and cardboard. We don’t see each other a lot but yeah he still watches anime. He has a very bad habit of borrowing without asking… He still has my complete Trigun, Escaflowne, and Nadesico series and i’ll probably never see them again.

What would you say was the most popular anime at the time? If I had to guess i’d say Vampire Hunter D when I first “found” anime and Ninja Scroll when I first started buying anime.

What was it like when you started buying anime? It was kind of a pain. I live in Northern Lower Michigan which is pretty rural and about a year behind on whatever’s current. Back when Game Pro and other video game magazines were popular the backs of them would have ads for stores like The Game Cave or others heck even Paul & Judy’s coin collectibles sold DBZ for a bit. Suncoast video chain used to sell anime so getting it there was about it. VHS ran about $19.99-$24.99 and they didn’t check ID because I remember my friend buying La Blue Girl and his mom tearing the manager a new one once she caught wind of it, then they changed all anime to ‘Must be 21″ for about a week.

What was it like to be a part of anime fandom at the time? You were a nerd that liked cartoons. It was horrible and, before social media, next to impossible finding someone who you could talk to about it. That is, until a shitty show from a property I love started called Gundam Wing…

You said fandom before social media was “horrible.” Were you ever teased for liking cartoons? The fandom before social media was horrible due to the fact you had no one to connect to with similar tastes and if you did, others were too embarrassed to talk openly about anime as if it was childish or taboo.

I remember a “popular” girl who is still a friend ask me about anime all the time when we were alone or away from the clique kids. If you did meet someone near you it was the stereotypical fan who plays Vampire the Masquerade, had samurai swords, and was super awkward socially. Personally for me, I got along in school with people from all walks so I never was really teased about what I watched but I was teased about having/collecting toys but it was all in fun nothing serious. Most people dog on you, then when they come over and see a Transforming Veritech Fighter they shut up and beg to check it out.

Tell me about when Gundam Wing started. How did things change for you, and how did you start meeting other fans? Toonami broke the wall down. There’s no two ways about it. You had Voltron, DBZ, Thundercats, G-Force/BotP’s, and Gundam shows—beginning with Wing. If you talk to most Gunpla builders I’m willing to bet most will even tell you that Wing is what got them started. I loved that Gundam had made it over but I loathed Wing and that’s largely in part to I had the Mobile Suit Gundam movie trilogy on VHS and had seen it long before Wing had showed up. Instantly i was able to see five boys with little quirks of Amuro showing through, a Char clone, Zaku & Leo similarities. I, in fact, was a spoiled brat that was ruined by what had come before and became the uber asshole fan. I even gave it a chance numerous times but I couldn’t get past the turd of a character Heero Yuy was and Relena’s childishness. Give me Duo and Trowa-loaded episodes any day. But to give credit where credit is due: without Wing we wouldn’t have gotten the first Gunpla boom that Cartoon Network and Toys “R” Us started. (Those god awful commercials…)