Technically, the rec.arts.anime hierarchy still exists, although it’s been severely depopulated. I occasionally see a legitimate message ghost through .misc, though. A far cry from the late 1990s, when .misc alone had hundreds of messages a day.

(Hi, I’m an aging fan whose history with anime begins with the bad dubs of Gatchaman and Nausicaa that circulated in the early 1980s. Pleased to meet everyone.)

Here’s my intro.

The first anime I remember seeing on TV was Star Blazers in the late 70s, but the first one I would fight to watch (because it was up against Days of our Lives, which my sister was addicted to) was Robotech.

I knew it was Japanese in origin but I didn’t realize the extent to which it was bowdlerized at the time (to be fair, I was 9 or so).

My first subtitled anime experience was a friend in high school giving me copies of Macross DYRL and Castle of Cagliostro on VHS and it was, frankly, mindblowing.

My first commercial anime purchase as tape 1 of Bubblegum Crisis for like $40 for 45 minutes. Since $40 was 10 hours of pay at the time, I never bought the rest of the show until DVD sets.

My first Con was anime expo 93 in Oakland (I think, I did go to a con in San Jose but I can’t remember if it was AX92, Anime America 93 or 94).

I worked as a film projectionist at AX for a couple of years (we got to do the world premiere of Memories, that was fun) and then I worked security for another 2 years after AX moved and didn’t have a film theater anymore.

About 15 years ago my personal and professional collided and I was hired by one of the original anime/manga distributors in the US and am currently their director of IT.

It’s been a long, strange, trip watching anime go from the thing you got teased for to having star athletes do poses from their favorite shonen on the field.

It may be a little “get off my lawn”-y but I still love the older stuff compared to most of the new. Give me hand painted cells over painted backgrounds, shot on film, over 3dcg any day of the week.