by Ryan Mathews

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November 1998

I needed an example, though, to illustrate what I was talking about. The one which came readily to mind was a comment in Animerica by artist Adam Warren dismissing criticism of his Bubblegum Crisis comic adaptation as "the usual fanboy-on-a-high-horse stuff". The criticism? Warren had decided that tuff girl Priss would look tougher if she smoked. This annoyed fans of the series, who correctly pointed out that Priss hadn't lit up a cigarette in any of the eight episodes. Valid criticism, I thought. I mean, a smoking habit is a non-trivial character trait, if you ask me. It's not like he was just changing her hairstyle. But Warren had decided that anyone who disagreed with him, a professional artist, was a geeky fanboy.

There was one problem with using this example, however. It's five years old. I could hardly just assume that the attitudes held by professionals back then still held true today, could I? Then it hit me. Didn't I write a letter to Animerica on that topic? And wasn't it published? I dug through my stacks of old issues (I have the complete set) and found what I was looking for: a letter from me, published in vol. 1, no. 8, almost exactly five years ago.

Unfortunately, the bit about the Adam Warren comment had been cut by me at the editor's request, since my original letter had been much too long to publish. What remained was mostly criticism of Animerica for their defense of Carl "the Butcher" Macek, who around that time had released his travesty of a dub for Castle Cagliostro.

As I read through my old letter, I was struck by the sense of pessimism about the future. Things looked bad in '93. I'd like to quote a bit of the letter, if I could.

You praise Streamline for "keeping their eye on the prize". The fans have a prize, as well. For about fifteen years, more for some, we have dreamed of a day when anime would be as easily available in the U.S. as it is in Japan, when we will no longer have to rely on the generosity of fan-translators and fan-subbers.

Now it looks like that dream will come true, albeit in an incredibly perverted form. Yes, we will get to see our favorite new titles released quickly in the U.S., but it won't be the same story that was released in Japan. ...

Anime fans are angry, angry and bitter. Angry because we see everything we cherish about anime being sold out and find ourselves powerless to prevent it. Bitter because when we suggest that this is wrong, we are chided for being selfish, stuck-up, and completely unaware of market realities.

Hopefully, in the future, dubbers will come to have more respect for the story that they are dubbing. Until then, fans who want to experience the story as it was meant to be told will have to fall back on synopses and scripts to use with their unsubbed, undubbed anime.

Back then, I worried that dub-only releases would become the standard. Today, nearly everything comes out subtitled at the same time as the dub. Back then, dubs were awful, with horrible voices and butchered scripts. Today, dubbing has improved to the point where I actually prefer the dub of El-Hazard to the original (what heresy!). Back then, anime wasn't easily available. Today, there are Japanese Animation sections in almost every video store.

So live it up, fans! These are the good days. If only we could get more anime on optical media, LD and DVD, they'd be perfect days...

Speaking of DVD, I am so close to buying a player. I just need a good anime title to show up on DVD to make me pull the trigger. Everything released so far falls into one of two categories: "Stuff I Already Have on Laserdisc" and "Stuff That Sucks (in my opinion, of course)". I'm leaning towards the Panasonic A110. If anyone has a better suggestion, let me know!

This is technically the Thanksgiving column, even though by the time that holiday arrives, the December column will have been on the net three days. So I'd like to give thanks for all of you, my readers. I am so grateful to see how this column has grown. At the last count, it was being read by well over a thousand people each month. I have had many site owners write to tell me how their hit counts have soared after appearing here. So to all of you reading, thank you, and I promise to do my best to keep you coming back.

On to the sites!