Guests' Web Picks

    "The fandom of Yukito Kishiro, best known for his Gunnm/Battle Angel Alita manga, would not be as we know it today without the Internet. I would like to begin by putting the three most important Gunnm websites into a historical context, and then reviewing a few of my favorite sites around the Net." -Daniel Snyder....cont'd....

    "Fortunately not all is doom and gloom. It was nice to find that the Anime & Manga Resource List,which was the links site before the Anime Web Turnpike came to be, still exists. Its interactive format is a nice touch I've always liked, giving it an appealingly anarchistic layout which invites exploration." -Marco De la Cruz ....cont'd.....

SOME PEOPLE FLY
Yukito Kishiro's Fandom in Cyberspace
by Daniel "Sungazer" Snyder
and his hat, Fiona.

There are advantages to being a fan of manga rather than anime. The subs-vs.-dubs debate becomes irrelevant, and flipping is held to be a universal evil. You can refer to panels and page numbers rather than hashing through episodes. Once you have the original Japanese, you don't require any special equipment. And, you can feed your craving as often as weekly or monthly, year 'round (mangaka permitting).

The fandom of Yukito Kishiro, best known for his Gunnm/Battle Angel Alita manga, would not be as we know it today without the Internet. I would like to begin by putting the three most important Gunnm websites into a historical context, and then reviewing a few of my favorite sites around the Net.

First and foremost was Marco De la Cruz, a physics graduate student at the University of Toronto. Marco, AKA Kimji, had been most noteworthy for his Bubble Gum Crisis operations before, in 1995, he put up _Broken Angel_. BA was not the first English-language Gunnm site, but it was the first of note, because it set the benchmark standard for every site that followed.

To this day, when you surf around the Net, you will find cookie-cutter anime and manga fan sites. *STORY* *CHARACTERs* *WHY I LIKE IT* *PICTUREs* *MUSIC AND VIDEO* *SIGN MY GUESTBOOK*

   -Marco never touches the ordinary.

In BA, he shows not only his love for Kishiro's work, but his analytical mind at work in Kishiro's world. Marco has analyzed how Gally's plasma torch would work, and what the physics behind the city in the sky are (though the latter has been removed to be edited). Marco not only took Kishiro's world seriously, he caught glimpses of the wonders that could come from it, and channeled his love into what creativity he had to offer.

I encountered Marco's page in December of 1995. I was young, and still thought manga was a fruit. In fact, it was Marco's fan fiction, especially his crossover with BGC-"Nemesis", that made the most impression on me. I was still digesting the whole idea of fan fiction when a question got stuck in my mind--if Dr. Ido was from Zalem, and Gonzu was from the Scrapyard, wouldn't they speak differently? How would they have acted towards each other when they first met?

By way of answering, I wrote my first fanfic, "To My Beloved Daughter". Other questions soon came to me. What was Hugo's feeling about spine theft when he began? Why did Gally become a Motorballer? My solution was to write more fan fiction; and so I started exploring the world Kishiro-sensei had created through prose. I set up a webpage to display my writing on: _Seraphim of the Scrapyard_. Evermore, there's been a tendency among fans to pose and solve questions in fan fiction format.

So, by mid-1996, two important Gunnm sites were well-established. The third came in October of that year, though it was actually a Japanese page. Ryunosuke Tsukano had worked with Marco in the past, cleaning up the English on his _Gunnm DataBase_. Ryup's longest-lasting contribution, even before he sponsored a mailing list, was the New Kansas Chat Room.

The Chat Room is an HTML-based CGI program that allows anyone with a forms browser to add to the sporadic, spontaneous discussions of Gunnm, or whatever's being talked about. Though the chat room has let its fair share of pigs into the parlor, it has had the positive affect of being a central place to meet new people and post links to one's latest and greatest works. A great number of the stars of the Gunnm community have made their debuts in the New Kansas.

I'd now like to introduce a few of the best sites in the wide wild world of the World Wide Web:

Scott "Esdoc" Sandwick.
_The Motorball Poet's Page_

I confess, I have kind of a freewheeling attitude about letting fanfic onto my page--if it's Gunnm, it goes. Scott's separated the grain from the chaff here. His selections are about the lesser-known characters in the Gunnm world, and he's even taken the chance to create and adapt some completely new parts of it. Scott intuitively understands the Motorball mindset, and it shows in his page.

Cynde "Khrome" Callera.
_gu-shen, the valley spirit_

Cynde's a spectacular artist, and I was thrilled when she said she was going to start up this site. Cynde's collected submissions from many of the best and most prolific Gunnm fan artists around and put them up on her page in a format that's fun to browse. It's also quick to load and doesn't require frames, two major pluses for me.

Margot "RedSonja" L.
_Pinion of the Seraph Webring_

There was, and is, a Gunnm webring. It added me without my asking. I bitched about this. I bitched because a lot of the sites they had were down. Margot started a webring. She picks and chooses. She adds people only if they ask. I love Margot. *smooch*

Futoshi Nishimura.
_Gunnm Discussion Board_

The Chat Room has its flaws. People come in and post pictures. They get in arguments. They sneeze, and turn the entire screen into italics. Enter Futoshi's solution. The Gunnm Discussion Board is a lot like an old BBS: you post a question, you post replies, you can't set up a table. It's kind of old fashioned, but then, I like that. Most of the better sites don't let image take the place of substance.

Fred "Mr. Milton" Burke.
_Battle Angel Alita_

Fred's the man behind the English adaptations of Gunnm. I want to clear one thing up, he is NOT the person responsible for "She's Young! She's Beautiful! She's a Cyborg Hunter Warrior!" and "America's Newer, Tougher Manga Sweetheart!" (Viz Comics knows, but they're not telling who it is). I digress. Fred doesn't have much of a page, but he does have one important thing, and that's his essay Pathways. This is the essay that sums it all up--what Battle Angel Alita is, why we should care, how to fall in love with Yukito Kishiro. Nobody has said a thing better since Day 1.

That's the best, three sites and six sites more. I encourage every one of you to visit them and enjoy them. I've had the chance to watch this community develop, and it's incredible what's come of it. If you have any questions, I urge you to look at the not-so-small anymore _Gunnm FAQ_:

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About the author's hat:
Fiona is a black Akubra "Snowy River" size 58. A native of Australia, she snuck across the border on Dan's head in 1995 and has been a resident of the state of California since. Her hobbies include forensic volcanology, transcendental medication and the 'World of Anime' reviews. She is at work at present on a solution for world hunger involving worldwide fedora distribution.

I was saddened soon after I began writing this essay when I discovered that the Video Girl Ai site [1] by Warren Fernandez no longer exists. An early favourite of mine, the Video Girl Ai page was beautiful, elegant and functional. It was the first site that came to my mind when I was asked to write this column, a model (I thought) for others to follow. The page no longer exists, and the web has become a somewhat poorer place because of this.

A sadly similar fate seems to have overtaken a great Candy Candy page [2] which I fondly remember (Candy Candy being, along with Spaceship Yamato, my first anime love). I then began to realize why I have slowly lost interest in anime- and manga-oriented web pages.

Anibot note: Images of the covers for the manga are still at Candy Candy.

Fortunately not all is doom and gloom. It was nice to find that the Anime & Manga Resource List [3], which was the links site before the Anime Web Turnpike [4] came to be, still exists. Its interactive format is a nice touch I've always liked, giving it an appealingly anarchistic layout which invites exploration.

It was also with a measure of relief that I accessed Dennis Fukushima's Omohide Poro Poro page [5]. This is one of the rare non-Miyazaki animations which is truly top-notch, and this site is very well made. Web pages dedicated to Miyazaki's films, on the other hand, seem to be influenced by the works they praise, and are generally quite handsome. A good start is Team Ghiblink's The Hayao Miyazaki Web [6].

A somewhat different aspect of the anime/manga culture is nicely expounded over at Host Hentai [7], a series of interesting H-oriented pages. The webmaster (whose bio does not seem to be there anymore) is quite an entrepreneur, not to mention a pretty good designer.

If anything, I am fan of Gunnm, so it's only appropriate I conclude with a few pages dedicated to this wonderful series. It is a difficult task, however, to pick favourites out of so many excellent sites. I mostly remember the older, "classic" ones: Seraphim of the Scrapyard [8], the Gunnm Database [9], and Hyper Future Vision: Gunnm [10], although there are many others which are also very nice and can be readably located through the indexes mentioned above. I'm afraid that my quest ended on a sad note when I realized that The Really Small Rotating Gunnm Gallery [11] no longer exists. It was one of the first Gunnm pages, a delightful site from its very name. It shall be missed.

References