History and… Stuff
Sometime in… 2002, I guess, Randall Fitzgerald set out to create a website where he could do anime reviews and news and all sorts of stuff like that. It turned out that, over the next 3 and a half years, he was a lazy bastard and updated it very slowly, if ever at all. He looked around for some nice volunteer workers to slave over a hot keyboard and help him flesh the site out. That didn't really happen.
Now, in 2006, Randall had the bright idea to turn the site into a more news centric, blog-style site when he noticed that news was easier to update and that his love for figures was not extremely well represented in the English speaking community…
Why am I writing this in third person narrative style? Ok, I was looking around online in early 2006 and I noticed that only a few people were doing figures, so I figured I'd toss my hat in the ring and also cover American news.
I guess with the site I am sort of trying to merge the hardcore with the domestic and also add my own spin on things. I might not always say something everyone likes, but I guess that's how you filter out your audience. Anyway, it's been pretty fun so far, and hopefully the site will continue to grow, and I can keep it handled by myself, and balance my full time programming job. I will do my best!
Oh, and maybe one day, all the big companies will start replying to my e-mails. T_T
Otaku? You know that's offensive, right?
I wanted to address this because I've talked about it privately a few times with people, and I've seen articles about it popping up some places.
At this point, in America, it's almost "more otaku" to use a term like Akiba-kei or any of the other terms for nerds that are in common usage in Japan. When I said more otaku, I mean to say that it is something that can clearly seperate those truly into the community from the dub-loving "kawaii"-spouting fangirl/fanboy. I don't want to start up the flaming here, because that's not what this section is about. Akiba-kei is likely a term most fans haven't even heard of, but by Japanese standards it's a better way of expressing the love of Akihabara culture. I understand this, and I have chosen not to use the term because that is not who I wish to appeal to, or who I feel I relate with the best personally. I'll give a bit of background.
I got my first taste of anime when I was 10 or 11 when I caught the end of Macross II on IFC. i had no clue what was going on, but I knew I dug what I was looking at. Shortly thereafter, I found Dragon Ball Z on television and gave it a look. To me, the story was epic and engrossing. However, at that time, the only thing dubbed was The Saiya-jin Saga so Cartoon Network looped those episodes until Funimation started putting out the Namek Saga for broadcast. I watched religiously, I set VCRs, I kicked people out of rooms. This went for a while until I got to the end of the Namek arc and Cartoon Network looped it back to episode one. I thought I'd die. Goku had just gone super saiya-jin and the shit was flowing ever towards the proverbial fan. I couldn't take it. I went online with our 28.8kbps dialup and started searching furiously. I came across the old sites like Black Goku and stuff. I'd found a repository for the DBZ I so despirately needed. I found out a lot had been cut, because in this online world, everything was straight out of Japan. So, as it went, I downloaded episodes in .ram format and, in my trusty old real player, I eventually amassed and watched all 291 episodes of Dragon Ball Z. From the first appearence of Radditz all the way to Ubuu and the final Tenkachi Budoukai tournament. This was before the days of widespread fansubs, long before bittorrent, and before most cities had affordable broadband. It wasn't that long ago, but the scene was drastically different.
That sort of thing there is why I chose not ot use terms like Akiba-kei. I am not wishy-washy about my devotion to anime, manga, games, figures, and the like. I am not ashamed or uncertain of the depth of my affections for this part of my life. So far as hobbies go, they are the objects around which I center my world, as it were. Surely, they're not the only things, or the most important things, but they are second on the list, basically. I made this site as a way to cover news from all over the world regarding anime for people like me. People that read Genshiken and completely understand the attitudes and ideas. People that have Otaku no Video dreams of their own.
So, I want to sum this up by pushing the point directly. I made this site to help me become a better otaku, someone that others might even turn to for answers to their own otaku questions. I made this site to bring people who are new to the otaku arena into it in a way that I feel is more proper than the accidental stumbling through bad English dubs and creepy American cons that so many of us had to work our way through to find out how much we could really love this lifestyle.
I'm not going to shuffle around the word otaku, and I'm not going to change it, because when I said otaku, I knew what it meant and I meant to say it. Otakus are a great bunch, and they always have been, regardless of Japanese social stigmas and preceptions. I'm not going to bother going into the gross misuse and over application of the term by Americans to themselves and their friends, but please understand that this is not the manner in which I feel I am using the term. I know who I am talking, and it's the people who stand in line for 5 hours at Comiket for the doujinshi, and not the people who play DDR at cons in their trendy clothes and poorly made costumes of mainstream characters. They have little or no understanding of the art or the country of origin, even. They are not my target audience.
