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I was a child of the 70s, where AOR radio stations ruled the FM airwaves, hair got taller, and the cool wrestlers were Dick The Bruiser and Bobo Brazil. It was then I learned that jumping ramps with a ten-speed was not such a hot idea, and when I discovered (though not realizing exactly what it was at the time) the world of anime through the "genius" of Sandy Frank and Battle of the Planets. Every afternoon we'd all watch the show over at Tony Fontana's house, mainly because the house had a loft where we could practice our G-Force 'swooping' maneuvers onto the first floor couch.

Fun as it was, like all things it did not last, and I coasted thru the remainder of elementary and jr. high school blissfully thinking of basketball (what do you expect in Indiana?) and more importantly basketball cheerleaders. Getting ready for school one morning, I happened across WTTV-4 Indianapolis 6:30ish in the morning and immediately saw what I thought was the absolutely coolest show I had ever seen (admittedly I was 13 at the time). These big egg-like robot suit things were rampaging through a city and kicking some ass and making this whiny singer cower in fear. It of course was Robotech. Right before Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors and right after the RFD-4 Ag Report show I had found coolness.

Fast forward to the college days

When I entered Purdue University in 1989, I quickly hooked up with the campus SF club where I met this strange fellow off to the side who had these cool looking books and had a bunch of tapes. A group of us later in the evening wandered down to a viewing room in the library where I saw the first untranslated anime I'd ever seen, the first Dirty Pair OAV (of the series, the prison planet one, on Nolandia). I've been hooked since that day. In the spring of 1990, a loose-knit group of friends and I had formed around the anime 'thang, and began watching shows weekly in the attic theater of the Cary Quadrangle dorm. Later that year it would turn into the Purdue Animation Club, which still meets to this day in that theater.

My tastes evolve every once in a while, but I still maintain these as my top five anime of all time:

Lupin III: Castle of Cagliostro
- action adventure comedy of the finest degree, you'll never beat it (unless the only exposure to it you have is the Streamline dub).

Riding Bean
- Sonoda, cars, guns, great character design, chicago setting, Shelby Cobra GT500, enuff said.

Maison Ikkoku
- greatest animated TV show ever. period.

Giant Robo
- awesome music, fantastic retro character design, good production quality, style, style, and more styyyyyyle.

Wings of Honneamise
- read Carl Horn, read Neil Nadelman. I cannot find words that would describe why I love this film better than those written by these gentlemen.

I've been around the online anime community since 1989 when I was introduced to rec.arts.anime, that burgeoning community of information which was bursting at the seams with 20, sometimes 25 posts a day! wow! Back in the days before the web, scanning ftp sites for cool pictures or synopses or scripts was the order of the day. One of the infamous ftp sites was venice.mps.ohio-state.edu, known as 'venice'. In the early days, I was known in the anime.net.community as 'Ryan' or 'The Other Ryan'. People who knew me called Ryan Mathews 'The Other Ryan', as we were two of the most frequent posters in the days when many waited for the latest Hitoshi Doi synopsis post or cel-buying spree report.

Oh, and I won the grand prize in the Turnpike Uber Contest mentioned in the 'About the Turnpike' section :)

I'm a big anime convention junkie. Drove 40 hrs from Indy to San Jose with 4 friends to get to AnimeCon '91. Won their version of a game show, Anime Remote Control. Returned to Anime Expo '92, won Anime Remote Control. Returned to Anime Expo '93, won the game show. Was warned I could not compete in any more game shows, so I created The Game Show, which ran at AX '94, AX '95, Otakon '95, AX '96, AX '97, Anime Central 98, Anime Central '99 and for next year's Acen2K. In addition to those above, I've also attended multiple Project A-kons, 2 of the YanYams (Anime America), both AnimeEasts, AWA 2,3, & 5, Otakon '99, AX '98, and lord knows why, became the chair of . Never made it to Katsucon or Fanimecon, always occurred at a bad time of year for me, though I may hit Fanimecon 2K.

I like to collect all kinds of anime con junk, especially video or audio footage of convention events and panels, if you have any, PLEASE LET ME KNOW ! :)  I'll trade for such minutiae. I like to keep momentos (program books, newsletter issues, etc) from the cons and seem to have become a de facto source of historical info in many such matters.

One of the earliest things I had seen as an anime fan were the 'original' two parodies of Dirty Pair by Pinesalad Productions. The video quality was many gens down but it was some of the funniest stuff I'd ever seen. I quickly became a devotee of the sub(sub?:)-genre of anime fan parody dubs. At AX '92 I became familiar with the works of Seishun Shitemasu (Robotech III, Voltron:Hell Bent for Leather, Ranma 1/3), Corn Pone Flicks (X-23 part II), and saw some of Sherbert Productions first stuff. I begun to collect all kinds of the parody tapes, and eventually started a group of my own (Magnum Opus Productions). I think I may have collected the largest amount of fan-made goofy dubbing & subbing material in the country. Why? why not? :)

As such, I think I'll help guide Turnpike visitors by looking at the sites in the Parody Groups section of the Fan Subs/Dubs page.

- Decent layout (even with the dreaded Geocities pop-up), but lacking in new content for quite a while, and unsure on the availability of their titles. Includes partial scripts of some of their works.

- newer guys on the block, a few pages still under construction on the site. Newer parody group that have been around since early 98, I believe. Their stuff may not be for the faint of heart, but they are the first to capitalize and produce a Pokemon parody dub.

- Brand new design, find out more about the guys behind all those wacky films and also Bad American Dubbing and of course some parody dubs.

- Page hosted by animation company White Radish, head of which was one of the co-creators of this classic parody dub of Project A-ko footage, known as 4F. Not much new info (as if there needed to be :) since the re-mastering of the video footage was completed last year.

- Sparse site of mainly text info of descriptions of their past projects. Can't comment on their work as they are one of few groups I haven't seen any material from.

- Site of my own parody group, offering Fanboy Generation X, FGX2, Death Racer: Passenger 69, and X-Files 2030: Stagefright. site includes notes on all the productions, bios, some behind the scenes stuff, and a "FAQ" and editorial on making your own parody dub.

- Neko-sama (in the parody realm) focuses on subtitling parodies and music videos.

- Site is either temporarily down or gone. Housed sound archives of clips from the first 3 (of 4) Dirty Pair parodies produced by Pinesalad Productions. If/when it comes back up, it is definitely worth a visit.

- Group based in Minnesota, apparently Odin is the only thing they produced. There are downloadable clips of their production, instructions for getting a copy of the dub, and snippets of what would have been their future work.

- One of the old time groups, with a lot of material. Site has a relative large amount of info including production notes, scripts, and upcoming schedules. A sampling of audio clips would be nice to see, though.

(Should be in the Parody section, but was put elsewhere, got that Jei? :)
*ouch ouch ouch!* I'll let him know. -Nikkou.^^;;;;
- A few young guys in Ohio starting out with goofy dubs. Haven't seen their stuff yet, but the upcoming project titled 'Dub of the North Star' sounds like it might have some promise.

(Not on turnpike but worth a gander)
- New site about Seishun Shitemasu put up by the original founder of the group (though not directly involved with any of Seishun's works since their original Voltron parody), Peter Payne. Since the destruction of the old Seishun Shitemasu site (literally, a server exploded, and they had no backups), now the only source of info about the most prolific fan parody dubbing group. This site is rather bland however, not as much simplistic charm as the old site. I would note though that now in addition to the Corn Pone Flicks site, we are now crafting a new Seishun site, The Seishun Shitemasu Room Party.

Thanks for reading the ramblings, see you at a con sometime soon, usually at a Midnight Madness showing :)

Ryan Gavigan
(gavigan@soyokaze.biosci.ohio-state.edu)