Forum - View topicThe Old Days
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Jih2
 Posts: 403 Location: East coast |
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I'm pretty sure this subject has not quite been explored in this way but if it has been I apologize.
Every so often I begin thinking about the old days of anime, when VHS fansubs were the only way one could see a series that wasn't on TV. When the R1 industry didn't really exist. VHS and laserdisc ruled the day and fans payed tons of cash just to see something new. For some reason I find myself wishing that I had grown up in anime that way, with a friend lending me a VHS tape in raw Japanese with nothing but a 3x5 card in English to explain what was going on. Most people from back then think it was horrible. When I tell them that I almost wish I had been around back then they give me funny looks and begin to talk about how great things are today. Now, by no means am I railing against how "bad" it is in today's anime industry, heck things are great, I just wish I could have experienced that strange time when it was just tapes and if you were lucky you could get a few tapes from some fansubbers making tapes in their basement. Does anyone else wish they were around back in the 80's anime scene or had been through it? Why or why not? By the way, I'm only 18 and I began actually buying legit stuff when I was 13. |
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JacobC
ANN Past Staff
 Posts: 3728 Location: SoCal |
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Heck no. I'm happy with the goods being as accessible as they are now, given how hard it is for me to enjoy anime in the first place with my parents around.
The only thing I wish was missing from modern anime fandom is the prevalence of post-license fansubs and the goons that attack licensors and dubs. What a greedy generation we are! That's about it. I'm lovin' DVD shelves stuffed with titles and the internet's wide range of info about shows and ways to sample them. My pocketbook is limited and I enjoy dubs pretty well, y'know? |
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IchigoK90
 Posts: 1634 Location: Scarborough, Ontario |
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80s? Nah
Growing up mid-90s to 2000. Now that was fun. Admittedly I wish was a bit older during those years but I actually miss watching Anime on VHS. I grew up on watching Neon Genesis, Princess Mononoke and other anime releases on VHS. I even remember watching some old Megaman cartoon series. Whether it was anime or not it was still sick to me. Besides DVDs though better picture and sound, still disappoint me because theres never to rarely any good DVD special features. |
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Quark
 Posts: 710 Location: British Columbia, Canada |
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I too started watching anime mid 90's, and sometimes I do feel nostalgia for the days when I could only rent tapes, or get fansubbed tapes. It somehow seemed a little more special, because it was so hard to find, so that when I did find anything anime related, it was a big deal.
But on the other hand, it's so cheap, and so easy to get now, that I can easily accumulate a large pile of different series, so there's always something to watch. Collecting it is definitely still a lot of fun, but I guess in a different way than it used to be. But like another poster said, it has become so easy to get a hold of that newer fans are totally unappreciative, and feel that they are entitled to as much free anime as they want, without giving anything back. |
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r-18
 Posts: 62 Location: northren oregon |
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been there done that played dungeon and dragons with cardboard cutouts and watched anime i could not understand but still liked; in no way do i yearn for the days of my youth excerpt fir the youth part. BTW I'm 56 and even if anime disappeared tomorrow I'd still watch the stuff i have over and over again.
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Randall Miyashiro
 Posts: 2451 Location: A block away from Golden Gate Park |
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The industry changing over the last 30 years has been almost 100% a good thing from my perspective. Those "good old days" were extremely expensive and I remember saving up a ton of cash so I could buy one 7,800 - 9,800 Yen Laser Disc which only contained 2-3 episodes. The occasional movie was fine, but OVAs and television series really cut into my budget. This might be why I find it easy to drop $400-$600 a month at TRSI since that would traditionally be about the price for a 13 episode OVA series back in the Good Old Days.
On the other hand the nature of fandom has been directly effected due to the availability of anime in the States. These days we have fans who really find anime a minor hobby or "distraction" and wouldn't pay for it (even if funds are available) or wouldn't make an effort to collect it if more than a few mouse clicks are involved. Granted there is a core group of fans that collect R2 raw releases, buy most of their DVDs as individual new releases, are not complaining too much about BVUSA, will travel to other states and beyond to go to conventions. There just wasn't room for the casual fan back in the 80s. I think we are nearing the end of the nice balance of R1 material available for anime otaku at great prices and are on the verge of entering the next phase. I believe that this progression will only continue since the best selling DVDs in recent years include Afro Samurai, Voltron, Highlander, Witchblade, Miyazaki, and Devil May Cry. The market for otaku oriented series is in a major decline (see all those other posts for details) and series like Haruhi seem to miss their target in projected sales while series that appeal to non-anime fans are selling very well. It comes as no surprise that Batman and Ultraviolet is being turned into an anime series (and even a Dream Theater video) and see this as a growing trend since "fan" oriented series are dying. I believe that anime will continue to become mainstream with the release of Speed Racer, Akira, and Dragon Ball as live action films, but in the process the ratio of die hard anime otaku to casual fan will plummet. and more tie-ins and mainstream anime will be made and released here. |
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RMC
 Posts: 101 Location: Waco, TX |
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What I find particularly cool these days is all the Anime Conventions that you can go to. Seriously, they're all over North America and you can usually find one either in your state or in the one right next to you. This wasn't something we had back in the '80s for the most part and they've continued to grow along with the industry. I love 'em. Especially the Cosplay, because it makes me grin to see people dressed up as their favorite characters.
As for Anime itself, I have to agree with Randall. I'm sorely disappointed to see the Otaku-oriented series plummet like a bird hit with a brick but that's the way of things when something you love gets licensed and becomes global, rather than regional. I'm sure that there will still be Otaku out there - I mean, I've read in several other threads that a lot of the Otaku don't make money but are allowed to continue being produced as a result of the success of the "high-profit" mainstream series out there (read: Naruto, Bleach, etc. Anything that is a huge hit over in the States). So they'll be around a while longer and I'm not fully convinced that they'll disappear. By and large, you're living in Anime's current Golden Age. It's pretty awesome! |
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walw6pK4Alo
 Posts: 9322 |
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I think anime in America is still on its way out despite all these new movies possibly coming out. We all know Cartoon Network and adult swim want to cleanse anime out, and Sci-Fi seemed only to be experimenting with anime once more. Speed Racer will do nothing for anime, it's just so people can laugh at HAHA I MUST WIN THE RACE HAHA all over. And the Dragonball movie will be terrible. Eva, Robotech, BAA, or whatever else was supposed to end up being made will never happen.
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joel_s95387
Posts: 1804 Location: California... The Village Hidden In The Porn |
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I have heard stories about those days, I'm 21 years old so just missed it... I think, and hell no I wouldn't like to have been an anime fan back then. VHS fansubs? I don't even know how that works.
Now we can just download stuff that we want to check out. Of course a lot of people have this as their only means of anime, but some of us use it as a way of sampling a certain series, but this isn't a fansub debate anyways I love where anime is now and I'm glad that I have never owned a VCD in my life. |
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Lee1981
Posts: 109 |
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I guess I could see the underground appeal of wanting to have been a fan in the 80s, but personally I wouldn't want to have to go through all of that just to be able to watch something. Guess I'm not hardcore enough. And I was just a little kid in the 80s anyway so its not like I would have been able to get into it under those kinds of circumstances anyway and there's no way in hell my parents would have let me watch Akira at age 7 either.
 Even in the 90s as a teenager I still wouldn't have been able to afford to watch the stuff, even if the prices had been what they are today, let alone being way more expensive. So it's probably a good thing that I got into it when I did, only a couple years ago, because it seems like the cheapest and easiest time to be into it. Guess I'm not as dedicated and hardcore as some people are.
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Kruszer
 Posts: 8016 Location: Minnesota, USA |
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The answer would be a resounding, "no way" from me.
1. I'm too much of a technophile to wish for a time with obsolete and flawed technology 2. At the rate I go though anime I'd be bored to tears 3. I'm a completist not being able to finish something I start bugs me and with anime that scarce it would be highly likely to happen 4. Doing a reset back to that time would dishonor the fans who worked so hard up until this point to make anime as popular and accessable as it is. 5. I hate "roughing it", heck I don't even like to camp. |
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GhstDreamer
 Posts: 134 |
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I started in early 2000's and I was actually purchasing the fansub tapes because I didn't have high speed internet and and crappy computer. I remember there was only one store that sold anime for like $70 a dvd or $40 for vhs - and they also rented out bad fansub vhs tapes too illegally. I don't really miss the days that anime was relatively obscure - things are a lot cheaper now and much more easily accessible. I like watching my anime both subbed and dubbed and in the best quality possible.
The only thing I miss is that I got a lot of my anime info from this particular anime discussion forum (has been defunct for a long time) I used to belong to when I first started watching anime - it was mostly comprised of hard-core otaku who was also interested and heavily into American animation as well. |
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Patachu
Past ANN Contributor
 Posts: 1325 Location: San Diego |
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I arrived right at the end of the VHS era and I remember the hardships of having to CHOOSE between $30 for a dub-ONLY tape or $40 for a sub-ONLY tape. Or you could order a fansub from someone over the "Inter-net" but you had to pay them $$ for the blank tape and then wait a week or two while it was mailed to you. Or you had to actually (GASP!) make friends and talk to people who would introduce you to new anime series ... shocking, I know.
I'm saying this because I think that, while today's conveniences and technical advances are far more preferable, I think anime IN AMERICA has lost something else along the way. Fans are spoiled. They want everything and they want it now. They don't respect anime -- or at least they don't respect the effort that goes into bringing it from creator to consumer. People don't even think anime comes from Japan anymore. They think you get it off the internet. The camaraderie between fans is lost as well. Now that you don't have to "go out there and meet people" to discover new anime, everyone hides behind a computer and locks themselves in with groups of like-minded fans until you have a thousand bajillion different factions who all HATE EACH OTHER. And I don't mean just the fansub vs. licensed crowd, but the goopy-romance-slice-of-life vs. hot-blooded-mecha-samurai-action crowd, and the bishounen vs. bishoujo crowd, and the yaoi vs. wtf-is-this-crap crowd, and the lolicon vs. normal-human-beings crowd, and yes, even the new-school vs. old-school crowd. It's like, you people aren't here to appreciate the Japanese arts, you just want to indulge your own stupid little fetish and EVERYONE ELSE'S OPINION IS WRONG or something dumb like that. Even conventions, which are the last bastion of "going out there and meeting people," have devolved into retarded mass parties where teenagers and college kids run around acting half their age and the people who actually take this crap seriously are either the ones sitting on the panels, or retired. I have actually witnessed people who say stuff like, "Actually, I don't care about anime, I'm just here to hang out" as if that gives you the right to bung up hotel rooms and scare the hell out of common people just passing through the area. Seriously, what the shit? You know, I'm aware there were a lot of fandumb wars in the Old Days too. I've met these people and heard their stories. But if I had to pick between pasty-faced, neckbearded guys in their thirties arguing Gundam vs. Macross, and shrill-voiced middle school girls trying to figure out which Sand Village guy Naruto would sleep with, I think I know which one I'd choose. I'd choose to pick up my toys and go home. Like I said, I love the convenience and technical advances of today's anime world. But I hate how it has turned everyone into rude, mindless, inconsiderate brats. |
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walw6pK4Alo
Posts: 9322 |
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You can blame the fan in-fighting on there being too much anime.
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Celes
 Posts: 223 Location: Madison, WI |
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I have no desire to re-live what those poor VHS fansubbers had to go through just to get anime, but I think the overall fandom today is spoiled, mean and immature. I'd rather go back to the mid-90's because the fandom seemed much funner back then. The only convention I went to was Ohayocon in 2005 and I wish I had never gone. I'd never met so many jerks in one convention center, especially in the dealer's room. The girl I went with was a big yaoi fan (her favorite was Gravitation) and we were trying to find the Remixes among shojo stuff for me, and so many fellow shoppers would butt into our conversations while we were digging through boxes and bins and tell us how crappy our perspective fandoms were (sometimes both of us at once!) when asked what we were looking for.
Oh, and I also remember while we were waiting in line to register, there were these 3 cosplayers behind us who would rag on every cosplayer that walked by whose costume wasn't perfect or if they couldn't recognize who they were playing as. They were harsh. So don't blame me for wanting to make my Peach Girl DVD order on bestbuy.com, pick it up at the counter using store pickup, and go straight home without being persecuted by my fellow fans for what I like to watch. I only go to a store to browse now when I am with some friends who like or tolerate my anime habbit. |
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