What was it like being an anime fan before the internet?
What was it like being an anime fan before the internet?
Isaiah Hill
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Hudson Hall
Depends where you lived. If you were a Jap of course there were plenty of outlets to channel your autism. In the West there was way less, and "anime" as a category was not something that really properly registered in the minds of many people at all until later.
Isaiah Nguyen
Dubious hardsubbed VHS tapes from a similarly dubious video store and saturday mornings were all there were
Bentley Sanchez
What is your definition of "internet?"
Nicholas Edwards
Completely before the internet or like late 90s/early 00s when the internet still wasn't as widespread? I remember trying to look up info on One Piece in like 2002 (don't remember exact year but had to have been before it started releasing in the US) and not really finding much other than a summary of the first chapter on some website. It's possible I just sucked at using the internet though on top of being 10 years old.
Jose Baker
Up until about 2006 when torrenting really started taking off, you'd just have basic shounen manga, basic dubbed shit on cable TV, and occasionally the Sci Fi Channel would show something like Armitage III. Anything more obscure was relegated to VHS tapes found in the darkest corners of the darkest video stores. I remember when DVDs got big, there was a huge craving for season box sets that resulted in a lot of direct-to-video releases of less popular anime stateside.
Xavier Collins
I remember in the late aughts watching anime on YouTube in 8-10 minute segments. I was on a dial-up connection. I would sit and read a book as I waited for the videos to buffer. I got a lot of reading done in those days.
Carson Roberts
smoke a bowl, everyone piles into the 1992 piece of shit car, we drive 35 miles to a smelly video rental place because rayray said some guy saw a bunch of anime vhs there.
burn cd's and and trade them with friends. 600 megs of anime was a lot because everyone only had dial up and a t1 line was for rich kids that could afford the 400 dollar a month bill
Elijah Thompson
you mean weebs used to actually have friends before they could talk to other weebs on Yas Forums? Sounds nice desu senpai
Eli Morgan
I would just make my mom drive me to Hollywood Video.
Sebastian Perez
this still depresses me. The popularized internet really fragmented offline nerd communities in a way which destroyed them.
Leo Gutierrez
Go to trade shows, I guess?
Also depends on the region you're from and to what degree you're a fan of anime.
If we use western otaku-level as the baseline then these people coincided with the start of "newsgroups" to shitpost about anime.
Xavier Sanders
Don't forget trading fansubs at conventions or by mail order. If you're lucky you might have had access to some not entirely shady importers that could secure you some extremely overpriced raw VHS from Japan.
Austin Cooper
well, there really wasn't "weebs" back then because an identity surrounding anime wasn't really a thing. It was more like "whoa bro check out these weird asian cartoons, lets smoke weed and watch them"
the weeb thing started with koreans and anime expo
William Lee
>well, there really wasn't "weebs" back then because an identity surrounding anime wasn't really a thing. It was more like "whoa bro check out these weird asian cartoons, lets smoke weed and watch them"
It probably should have stayed that way desu. Then maybe anime fans wouldn't have developed the stigma in the West that they have, since the stereotypical image of Western anime fans now is obsessed japanophile who wants to be Japanese
Zachary Miller
Less cringe
Camden King
Pretty much whatever was on the saturday morning line up was it.
Early internet we had the anime web turn pike
Easton Murphy
It's not 2010 anymore, dad.
Jaxson Stewart
This is a good question for the digital natives.
Ayden Morales
Back then I didn't even know what they were called and just thought of them as 'sexy japanese cartoons' I remember going to some bootleg rental place and getting street fighter because it was a familiar title. Boy did watching cammy get beat up by bodyguards and chun get sliced up by vega awaken something inside of me.
I slowly began working my way through their selection and occassionally getting hentai. Now, seeing ranma's tits was common so I thought they were just liberal. Watching some big dick monster/some ninja snuff some schoolgirl qts further activates my fetish and I quickly learned of what it was called when we got dial up. I think that's how I discovered Yas Forums. It was Yas Forums and I think /d/ that allowed guro and I finally sated my fill.
Before that time everything was a void. What the hell is this even called and why did my pre teen pee pee long for it? I brought shitty localized manga hoping for more but was too embarrassed to admit my fixation so I brought them in secret and just got titles through trial and error.
Camden Bell
Anime fans are normalfags now. It's somehow worse.
Matthew Bennett
somehow i feel i was lucky.
my country had 2 or 3 public tv channels with anime on it, so it was very known among people. this from the mid 80's to arround 2007.
so you have the boomers with stuff like doraemon (my dad was a fan), the 90's boom (with tv shows dedicated to anime, even obscure shit like hentai on a public tv channel at late hours, based as fuck) and the early-mid 00's faggits.
yeah, you could bully the shit out of weeaboos, but at the end of the day even our local version of hooligans/gopniks watched naruto and sakura card captor.
Nicholas Reyes
I can't remember a time with anime fans and no internet, though the internet from the early days was completely different from today.
Also it was something more or less popular and "normal", what wasn't that normal was to be still into it after your teens and let's not talk about your 20's. From an high school group who liked anime there was barely anyone left after hitting 20 yo. Videogames took a little more but it was all similar with all those kind of things.
Austin Gray
Yeash, I remember going to FYE and suncoast video buying up DVDS for 29.99 with my allowance back in 02'...
Now we can stream everything and I don't even have to watch tv anymore, those were dark times......
Camden King
WHERE ARE THE TRANSLATIONS!?
Anthony Richardson
That FYE was much sunnier and happier than mine was...
Nolan Hall
Smelly.
Nathan Reyes
It wasn't always easy. There was certainly no shortage of shows but to get them, or at least ones that weren't edited for broadcast television, we would often have to venture out into the wilds of our local shopping malls, stores like suncoast or Sam Goodie and hope they had what we wanted to see in stock. And even then we had to play some 30 dollars a tape.
If you were lucky, your local comic shop may have had an anime club you could tape swap at or see showings of bootlegs.
Cameron Flores
The hard part wasn't even finding the tapes so much though. To even know what shows were coming out you had to really hunker down and read actual print media. Some video game magazines would have anime adds or reviews, Gamefan being an early example but most of the more detailed info would come from rags like this. I found some of my old ones recently (not this one) and to be honest it wasn't really what you'd call a quality publication. But it was how we got our info. There was no seasonal charts, you'd just have to get lucky that someone would get the license and put out a advert for it or get a review in some mag.
I tell you it sure was a different experience, but it made for a different kind of fan.
Adrian Kelly
Bad times
>"Gonna watch some anime, Fuck Yeah! They're airing out of order episodes of original Dragon Ball at 4:30 AM on a Weekday! Time to set my alarm and freak out my parents when they're getting ready for work!"
Good Times
>Samurai Pizza Cats was dubbed by people who could not speak Japanese and just wrote their scripts based on what they thought was going on and it is pure magic.
Joshua Green
How does it feel to be called a pleb by someone in 96?
Jace Foster
Here in Brazil it started with people trading VHS and taking a little space of "geek's convetions", there was an era that the people were talking things like "why those guys with japanese anime are there taking our places", now the bigger "geek" events here turn to be all about anime as the main topic, NOW WHO'S LAUGHING? Not me, because anime events turned into shit because of that too. We can't even buy doujinshi anymore because the newfaggots can just think about E-CELEBS/Extremely overpriced things and hearing SAINT SEYA OP 1 AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN, the guy is aways there singing saint seya
Hudson Moore
A lot worse. You actually had to buy fansubs. Can you imagine that shit? Paying for this shit? Absolutely fucking insane.
Julian Sanchez
>we had to pay some 30 dollars a tape.
You haven't lived until you've paid $66/episode in today's money.so that you could blast Mad Machine nonstop.
Noah Powell
I honestly miss when conventions were a bit more low key. You had your bigger events but it all felt more genuine and not people just following a geeky trend. I remember the last time I stopped going. It was an event we went to for a few years but then one year we show up and we're like a good 10 years older than everyone and they're all in Naruto cosplay, blocking the halls doing stupid shit like caramaldansen because "YEAH OMG WE'RE ALL GEEKS HAVE FUN!"
Christopher Martinez
extremely more expensive and tedious
Angel Baker
I forget how much I actually paid for it but I remember spending a least a few hundred on the lodoss OVA vhs set.
Evan Long
>CBR
Fuck off.
Owen Smith
you could change sailor moon with any popular anime from today and it could be a timeless copy paste.
truly amazing
Jackson Kelly
This site has some snippets from magazines and adds and stuff.
Luke Moore
Excellent. Did you get the limited edition Deedlit phone card?
Jackson Brown
pre mid-2000's when no-one had broadband yet and dial-up was too expensive and slow to download anime from.
Having to go to LAN parties or that weird guy in the dorm to leech files or before that, renting the few VHS tapes of gory borderline-hentai anime movies and copying them, having to get up at 6am on a weekday to watch episodes of Sailor Moon etc.
David Sullivan
I'm a millennial, so your stories about getting anime info through disreputable publications is a delectable legend to me. I saw the ass-end of things like mail-in fan clubs, but I never participated sadly.
Xavier Robinson
>$20 for one episode
Matthew Bennett
I did, but I've since lost it. I suspect one of my classmates stole it because we used to take turns hosting get togethers.
Josiah Bennett
20 dubbed. 30+ if you wanted a sub titled tape. Which I always found weird but that's how it was.