Guests' Web Picks

        After far too much procrastination, I am finally sitting down and working on this for the good folks at the Turnpike.

        Even before I had heard of the Internet and was doing my anime networking by starting conversations with strangers who were looking at anime and manga related stuff in stores, fandom was already using the Internet to communicate about favorite obsessions. Now all of this is far before the creation of the web which is a recent addition to the Internet.

        Now we are at the 30th anniversary of the creation of the Internet in 1969 and what was once limited to academics, the military and corporations has exploded into the public eye internationally. When the web came into existence there was an army of UNIX heads who were ready and eager to embrace this new method of communication originally developed so physicists could publish papers on the Internet.

        Many of these were anime fans and anime fandom quickly became a rich source of web pages.

        But access to the variety of pages became important with the growth of the number of web pages. Remember this is way before the days of web search engines. So from this need came specialized list pages for many subjects and the Anime Web Turnpike (http://www.anipike.com/) rapidly became the most well known and respected directory of anime resources on the web. This is where I start almost all my web searching for anime materials. If I don't find it here and then locate it elsewhere, I submit the URL to the Turnpike.

Other resources I have found useful over the years include:

Hitoshi Doi maintains a useful site for those tracking information on many voice actors. He has a database which can be searched by a variety of criteria. Search results include not only roles as voice actors, but also musical recordings and regular acting roles.

Devoted to one of the most well-known, talented and prolific seiyuu in the current anime business. Membership is free and the members get a nice color membership card.

Fred Schodt's web site. Anyone who has more than a passing interest in manga owns Fred's two books on the subject, Manga Manga and Dreamland Japan as well as several manga he has translated. In fact, if you are a long term anime fan you probably own his translation of the Gundam novels that Del Rey put out in 1990. Long out of print I urge people to write Del Rey and ask them to make these available again now that the anime is out in the US.

Del Rey Books
201 East 50th St.
NY, NY 10022 USA

The well known translator of manga is also an anthropologist studying shoujo manga. His web pages are a major resource for this genre of manga and anime.

This massive and well organized web site is devoted to the production of one studio. Studio Ghibli is internationally famous for its high quality and very successful animations. In October of 1998 the site was destroyed by vandals who cracked in from Russia, the restoration of the site continues. Remember to keep good backups of your web pages or you could be in a similar situation.

A specific portion of Nausicaa.Net that has been restored and is devoted to the work of Miyazaki-sama one of the most beloved and respected animators in Japan. Akira Kurosawa on occasion had praise for the works of Miyazaki whom he respected as a great director.

The Right Stuf is well known among fans as a major mail order distributor of anime and related products. One part of their web site that is handy is their searchable database of materials they stock, which can be very useful for title verification for anime available in the US.

There are several electronic magazines devoted to anime. One of the most famous is the web based EX which even has the first year available on CD-ROM. EX is an electronic magazine with high production values including interviews with figures in the Japanese industry, reviews and much more.

        Then there are the otaku, those fans who make anime a significant part of their lives. Unlike some who seem to use the term only for those fans they find offensive, many fans in Japan embrace the title of otaku, warts and all.

Started by otaku turned pro, Gainax has several times produced works of such quality that the entire industry has had to raise their production standards to keep up.

While their products are all in Japanese they have several pages in English including the Diary (http://www.gainax.co.jp/diary/index-e.html) which consists of short, often amusing, reports of the activities of the company and its staff. Their Otaku no Video is an anime title I recommend to all fans. I often show it as a warning to those who are starting to get interested in anime, it usually hooks them.

This cutie is another example of fan turned pro. Noted costume player, manga artist with several titles available in English, rock musician, and TV and movie actress, who could forget her performance as Maria Cruel in the Uratsukidoji movie series. OK, so I admit I haven't seen it yet but the film sounds like a soooo low budget cool take off on Urotsukidoji.

Gainax even produced a whole CD-ROM devoted to Ippongi Bang, the "ASHUUMANTEI" (Manga Empress of All the Asias) Dynamic Ippongi Bang CD-ROM (http://www.gainax.co.jp/soft/bang/index-e.html)
Gainax even put up a web page for her with an English version (http://www.gainax.co.jp/hills/bang/index-e.html) that includes an account of her honeymoon written by her husband.

She often attends US anime conventions so keep your eyes on those GoH lists.

Finally there is the Otaking himself, Toshio OKADA, one of the founders of Gainax who later left to pursue other projects, University lecturer on multimedia and Chancellor of International University of Otaku (http://www.NetCity.OR.JP/OTAKU/univ/index.html)
If you can handle Japanese there is a great Otaking Space Port (http://www.NetCity.OR.JP/OTAKU/okada/index.html) web page, even if you can't handle Japanese the graphics are cool and its worth looking through the pages. Especially find and check the small links page which connects to some interesting sites.

        Well I could go on and on but that's enough for now. E-mail me if you have questions: cowpunk@sirius.com

Gilles Poitras
Profession: Librarian    Obsession: Anime
http://www.sirius.com/~cowpunk/

This article written to the music on the Martian Successor Nadesico CD (CD-001), an anime I highly recommend aimed at the serious anime fan. Want more information on the show, check the Turnpike links.