An ad for the Valley of Wind BBS in California, made on a Tandy Color Computer 3. It had three 9600 baud modems!
Here I will make a page dedicated to notable relics of the golden age of anime fandom from the '80s and early '90s... Back when discovering anime was like stumbling across a secret cave of treasure that nobody knew of. A time capsule of sorts, if you will. These are items from those nostalgic days before "anime" became a household word. We actually called it "Japanimation" at the time. Back then, meeting a fellow fan of Japanese animation meant an instant friendship.
There were so many titles to be excited over. After Carl Macek (the creator of Robotech) left Harmony Gold, he created Streamline Pictures. Streamline made anime very accessible by dubbing the shows in English. They are the ones who introduced Akira to the English-speaking world. There were a lot of other titles they did, such as Fist of the North Star, Vampire Hunter D, Nadia, Lensman, Dirty Pair, Robot Carnival, and more. But there was also other companies such as US Manga Corps, Animeigo, and AD Vision that were releasing anime in Japanese with English subtitles. These companies made the world of Japanese animation available even bigger for us.
I guess around 1991-1992, the locally-owned video rental store on the corner started a "Japanimation" section in the back of the store and holy crap, it was like I'd discovered a magical cave of hidden treasures. There I first saw Bubblegum Crisis. I saw that those videos were the original Japanese with English subtitles and at first I was hesitant. I didn't know what the Japanese language sounded like, and I only had experience with Vietnamese neighbors when I was a kid. Vietnamese can be a godawful language to listen to, and I thought that Japanese would be similar. But dang, the mechanical designs and character designs for BGC were so compelling! Once I mustered the courage to rent BGC, I fell in love immediately. I was already a Blade Runner fan by then, so it was an incredible experience for me. So once I overcame my hesitancy for subtitled anime, I began renting more and more titles, such as Area 88, Kimagure Orange Road, Dominion Tank Police, and many others. That video rental store was pretty awesome.
As far as comic book stores went at the time in the Phoenix, AZ area in the early '90s, there was All About Comics and Atomic Comics. But Stalking Moon in Glendale was the first one that catered to the niche Japanese manga and anime fandom. They also rented anime VHS, sold plastic models from series like Patlabor, and had T-shirts and such for sale too. That store was great. And, of course, there was Tower Records in Mesa in the East Valley. That place had so much Japanese merchandise that it blew me away. It sold so much imported merchandise that was straight from Japan, including anime VHS that were not even translated. Incredible.
So what I want to do here is just showcase items from those days of the golden age of anime fandom. I already have a page dedicated to laserdiscs that I continue to update, so I won't overlap these two pages. Here we go.
Anime art books.
Here's my shirt of the Anime Archive BBS from Phoenix, Arizona. This was a time before I knew much about the internet at all. In fact, later when I was in college, the SysOp of the Anime Archive once showed me this thing called the "world wide web" and it was a fan's website dedicated to Kimagure Orange Road. Far out! It even had pictures. It blew me away.Anyhow, this is the back of the shirt; the smaller inlet image is from the front left breast area. Two local Arizona artists were commissioned to make this shirt.
This was my first AnimEigo Bubblegum Crisis T-shirt.
I bought this Macross shirt at Atomic Comics.
This Lum shirt is also from Atomic Comics.
The Bubblegum Crisis Complete Vocal Collection vols. 1 & 2. These are actually not "complete" because they do not include music from the final episode 8, "Scoop Chase." There is a more complete soundtrack collection that does feature episode 8's music, but that's beyond the scope of this page since it came out several years ago.
The Wings of Honneamise soundtrack was done by Ryuichi Sakamoto. Fantastic music.
The CDs of Kimagure Orange Road, Loving Heart and Sound Color 1.
Kurenai no Buta/The Crimson Pig/Porco Rosso CD soundtrack.
Ginga Eiyuu Densetsu/Legend of the Galactic Heroes CD soundtrack.
Majou no Takkyuubin/Kiki's Delivery Service CD soundtrack.
US Manga Corps even released a Project A-Ko soundtrack. The vocal music for Project A-Ko is in English anyway, so why not? At the time, anime soundtracks pressed in North America were a rarity.
Probably the biggest anime soundtrack at the time that was released for North America was the Akira soundtrack by JVC to go with the movie's release by Streamline Pictures.
Robot Carnival's beautiful OST was released by JVC for North America. Another movie released by Streamline Pictures.
Next: A joke website I made that spoofed a junior high homepage textbook assignment.
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mail: greg -atsign- stevethefish -dot- net