I was sitting here the other day thinking about where my renewed love for Anime/Manga came from, and how I got through my burnout phase.
When I think back to my beginings in the early 90's I can't help but feel like a bit of a pioneer, at the time there was very little commercially available over here. Sure you had the staples of Robotech and Akira, but other than that it was slim pickings, Animego was just getting started as was US Manga Corps, ADV was barely a blip on the radar and Viz was still concerned mostly with over priced Manga translations separated into monthly comics. There wasn't much there...
I was a member of a local Anime club at the time, watching 3rd generation tapes sent over from Japan and then fansubbed using an Amiga computer. We would get together for 7 hours once a month and pour through the latest stuff. It was a good time to be alive, I ran a small fanzine at the time and had a lot of fun perusing BBS's for all things Anime related...Then something happened...
We started to see more commercial releases, not just regular Anime, but Hentai as well, there seemed to be a real march towards legitimacy, much of it was dubbed, and horribly at that, but the inroads were there. The problems for me began when it became more and more commercial and there seemed to be a movement to market towards the teenagers. Our monthly club meetings began to feel more like the local highschool social, and it wasn't in a good way, the kids were rude, disrespectful and all the wanted was the "new dubbed stuff" our older membership waned, I stayed for awhile and then went my own way. By this time I had been to Japan a number of times and started collecting, working on my own more anyways.
Then like all young people I ended up going to college and tried to help the Anime club there, but I found more of the same, and even worse as they would ban all sorts of stuff because people didn't like the content. Some I agreed with, but others I didn't. It was hard, I couldn't really afford to collect what I wanted as VHS tapes were costing a fortune, and what was being released was skewing more to the "Big breasted girls and giant robots" than anything with much substance. I saw Princess Mononoke in theaters and loved every moment, but still I felt that the industry had passed me by.
So I walked away...
My ex wife was into some of it, but not the way I once was, I would catch bits and pieces here and there collecting the odd bits, but the passion was gone. I spent the next few years lightly tracking the industry but for the most part not caring. I did start watching a few more series again Please! Teacher and Vampire Princess Miyu: The TV Series but I still felt more on the outside looking in. Then I started reading Megatokyo and found myself wanting to draw again, of course in an Anime style, which led me back online to see what I could find. I started purusing the stores again and found how much had changes and for the better at that, it was exciting again. Not only on the Anime front, but the ability to buy Manga the way it was intended and at a reasonable price was very cool as well.
What got me through the burnout was realizing that what I enjoyed was still there, and with the advent of DVD I could still enjoy it as it was meant in the original Japanese, but still have the ability to throw the dubs on for people that preferred it that way. There was so much new to be explored and amazing people to do it with, and it seemed that age didn't really matter, which is nice since I turned 30 this year, people don't really care, if anything they enjoy having someone around who has seen more of the hobby than they have.
Its good to be back!
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