Back in the Day

Here are a few pictures from the mid 1980s when I was a big anime fan and booster of manga. The first two pictures are of me. The one with the lady was taken at one of the Baycons where I ran an anime room. The people you see in the last pictures where at a meeting in my house in Santa Rosa, California, where I was showing anime about once a month. We would get between 10 and 20 people from the entire Bay Area to drive up, from as far away as Dublin, California. One of the attendees (not pictured) was Joe Rosas, who became a major Marvel Comics colorist a few years later (bust is out of the business now, like so many others). Most of the people would just hang out and copy my tapes, so they were usually in the other rooms doing dubs. Trading shows was a popular activity in anime fandom.

Back then I was very active in spreading the word about anime and manga because I felt it was good stuff that fans of science fiction movies would appreciate of they gave it a chance. I also wanted to see Hollywood pick up on it and bring a lot of it here so we could have quality, translated copies. It took years, but my wish came true. Though not exactly like I wanted. Many shows I loved still aren’t available on DVD. Many get dubbed badly and edited when they come over here. Fortunately, there are better dubbing jobs these days. Some of the Disney dubs of Miyazaki movies were decent (Castle in the Sky being the exception. Horrible casting choices except Cloris Leachman). I was pushing hard as a fan to get this stuff notices, so I showed it to people in Hollywood and comics. I actually got meetings with a couple TV execs. One at the WB when it was starting. But they went nowhere like most Hollywood meetings.

Still, I am glad to see Anime has taken off. It’s just a shame that the business in Japan has slid from where it was in the 80s. But it’s nice to see so many anime titles available in video stores. There’s even an Anime Network now.

Hey, that’s Kaoru, isn’t it?  She went on to be a great success as an SF/Fantasy writer under the name of Hikawa Reiko.
I remember those meetings...you had them in Santa Rosa and in Sonoma, too.

Posted by  on  11/29  at  04:46 PM

Yep, that’s Kaoru. I think that was when I first met her at Bay Con ‘84.

I don’t remember having any meetings in Sonoma. Just at my house over on Funston street.

I wonder what happened to all the kids in these pictures.

Posted by  on  11/29  at  05:31 PM

I looked up her pen name. Here’s her picture on a SFWJ website. It says she has two kids with her husband.

Posted by  on  11/29  at  05:43 PM
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