I remember the days when anime was a gentleman's pursuit.

I do remember anime fansites in the late 90s. The feeling of being an otaku back then was much more communal than it is now.

>>117367821

Even their Anime Music Videos were better. Here's the one they sent around campuses in California to drum up interest in anime back in 91.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDO6scjrYR8

It was a different time.

Shut the fuck up, there's nothing glamorous about this shit and there never will be. Pipe down and take your moe like a man.

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Nostalgia's not as good as it used to be.

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It sure has become easier to get shows, that's for sure.

How in the hell did people even watch anime in the early 90s? There couldn't have been many domestic releases, & fan subs were relegated to personal VHS tapes weren't they?

>>117368045

How many of these old usenet logs still exist? I want to see more.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qHFd1ts3ec

Being an otaku in the 80s or 90s was glorious, the majority of the people were really into the hobby, knowing everything about the industry and watching literally everything.
Nowadays is just a bunch of retarded teens who watches seasonal shows only.

>>117367705
I wouldn't mind meeting Manabe Johji. From a modern perspective I only know him for his adult works, but I'd like to read all the stuff he's done.

>>117368148
>and watching literally everything.

Anime was better on average at the time, so you really could watch a dozen shows & half of them would be pretty good.

Wasn't that around the time when really high quality OVAs started becoming commonplace?

>>117368100
>How in the hell did people even watch anime in the early 90s? There couldn't have been many domestic releases, & fan subs were relegated to personal VHS tapes weren't they?
Down here in Mexico we would get shipped from the US to our anime club and sell/lend them out in the fleamarket.

>>117368313

Like an anime library? or was there a huge secondhand market for fansubed VHS tapes?

>>117368100
>How in the hell did people even watch anime in the early 90s? There couldn't have been many domestic releases, & fan subs were relegated to personal VHS tapes weren't they?
Fansubbed VHS tapes existed. I lived in Philadelphia in the 90s and bought tons of fansubbed DBZ movies and DB:GT tapes from this one store that sold them, at the time.

>>117368253
"everything" was a whole different level than today. Even the most cutting-edge non-JP fans were working with a six month time lag.

Also a fuckload more expensive. VHS tapes got heavy real quick and international shipping wasn't as cheap or easy as nowadays. Then again, it was a more communal thing so the cost was split across more people. Even if it did work out to like $40-$50 per tape, that was only like ten bucks per person who would be in the first group watching it. Everyone had a different avenue for how they got their fix, but it almost always came down to knowing a guy who knew a guy who knew this one dude in japan who was so fanatical that he had all the equipment to record and do the subtitles himself.

Then it moved to digital in the mid-late 90s and the cost dropped to almost nothing as long as you were willing to shell out for a second phone line and wait about three days per episode (so long as you didn't get disconnected from the FTP and lose it) You weren't forced to hang out with those other fans who maybe didn't have the best of personal hygene habits.

The social scene changed, that's for damn sure. I don't know if it's for better or worse.

>>117368100
I forgot when exactly, but in the 90s i remember seeing a commercial for Akira on VHS. I soon later saw it in a video store. It was a mom and pop store. It had a surprisingly great anime collection.

>>117367705
Do cons still bring in actual anime producers or do they just pretend cosplayers and youtubers are on the same level now?

>>117369740
The big ones. Most of the unimportant ones bring in retarded things like English voice actors.

>>117368100
When I first saw EoE in 2000 I got some guy on IRC to mail me a VHS tape with fansubs

It's a double edge sword that now it's so easy to find EVERYTHING, but it also comes with casuals and retards clinging to anime as an identity.

>>117367705
>Anyone else feel like it's become too popular?

I feel like anime is getting too close to the point where it's becoming popular enough to cause damage. We're not there yet, but we're coming closer every year.

I remember the mid 90s when exposure was still low, and there was a lot of sci-fi stuff from the 80s floating around on VHS. The scarcity and lack of information made anime feel magical, like there was new shit just around the corner hidden in obscure parts of the net. I guess that's just one of the drawbacks of the internet. Information just tends to condense itself and that feeling of mystery and intrigue vanishes.

>>117368045
He's not wrong. The late 80s/90s are when everything started going to shit.

>>117370645
Cause damage to what?

>>117372043
Our traditional American--and therefore the world's--values.

>>117372043
>Cause damage to what?
See video games and other industries that get too popular for their own good.

Remember when anime cons had guests from Japan? Now it's all faggots from localization companies and American voice actors trying to pimp their DVDs.

>>117372315
All of those industries were things that could be made anywhere

Anime and manga can ONLY be made in japan, dumbo. Unless every studio decides that they're only going to market to normalfags, nothing will change. Even if anime and manga got as popular again as they did in the early 2000s, people watching and reading would have no way of changing the things they didn't like, unlike video games and comic books and shit like that.

>>117372315
That's not an answer.

>>117367893
>>117367821
>>117368148
>>117367705
is this board fucking serious

like

/a/'s standards have plummeted at an absurd rate this year

>>117372043
This >>117372315

Though, I honestly might have over exaggerated a lot in the previous post. Japan doesn't give a fuck about us or any other county, but how long before that manages to change somehow?

Anything that gets too popular goes to shit. This is the rule, not the exception. What actually triggers the change from popularity is debatable, but it always fucking happens. On the west's side, we already have lots of retards shitting up communities, /a/ included. Though, that doesn't really effect anime itself.

>>117372570
I'm not sure what you're trying to say.

>>117372145
See, I actually see that the other way around. Your kind gets its hands all over anime, which is getting more popular, and you smudge it with your filthy, degenerate culture into something that pleases as many people as possible, and it turns, as all things have in your degenerate country, into the lowest common denominator.

>>117372669
You realize that anime has been popular over there for like 30 plus years, right? Most normalfags in japan still have one anime they watch. Unless the japs decide to change, they won't.

>>117368253

Better on average because almost all of the access to TV series was removed, they only have OVAs and movies to peruse. That leaves them with the impression that all anime is high budget, sci-fi/fantasy oriented, and relatively mature.

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I remember back in the day I bought bootleg VHS anime from a store called "QuakerHead" on South Street in Center City Philadelphia.

I remember that same store was on a Fox news article that was demonizing anime as porno for kids. I remembered I taped that anime fox news article. One of these days I'm going to go through all of our old VHS tapes, find it, convert it, and upload to youtube or something.

>>117372979
Do it faggot.

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>>117372979
Woah, I'm this anon >>117368990 and bought mine from the same place. I also bought plenty of OST CDs from there, as well as what were almost certainly bootleg figures.

I was pretty bummed when that place closed.

>>117372814
If you're talking about Doreamon or other well known stuff like Miyazaki films, yeah it's popular. Most Japanese don't like anime for the hardcore though, that's why it's niche and still good overall. But sales get better and better every year in Japan, and that worries me to a degree about increasing popularity.

Also, with the 2020 Olympics, I'm also worried about pressure from other nations actually effecting the industry somehow. More exposure and popularity over here in the states can't help.

>>117373082

Well you said you used to live in philly. If you're here now we've probably met. I do wind up meeting quite a few /a/nons from the tri-state area. /a/nons usually have /a/non friends.

>>117368100
right stuf international

>>117373187

It's ironic that they'd crack down on further genital censorship when the west doesn't even have that. But they'll do it anyway.

>>117373200
No, we've probably never met. I've never been to any meetups or anything like that, and since I graduated high school in '08 I haven't been back to Philly except intermittently.

>>117373187
>Also, with the 2020 Olympics, I'm also worried about pressure from other nations actually effecting the industry somehow. More exposure and popularity over here in the states can't help.

You're just getting paranoid, man. Most people going to the olympics aren't the kind of people who watch anime. They'll clean the tourist parts up, but that'll be it. It'll blow over, how long are the olympics anyway?

Whatever you say OP
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZmRw9o63RM

>>117373343
>You're just getting paranoid,
But my porno convention was already cancelled!

>>117373343

The games last two weeks, but the international press may arrive months ahead to do their advance coverage pieces. And once the attention is fully on Tokyo for the games, remember that the press doesn't just cover the games, they do pieces across the entire country: culture, travel, food, the sights, leisure, etc. You can bet they'll be in Akiba.

>>117373495
>two weeks
>that paranoia

Like I said, everyone already thinks Japan are creepy sex obsessed weirdos who jack off to cartoons. They'll make Akiba nice and presentable for a few weeks, and that'll be it. No one will care.

>>117373343
>You're just getting paranoid, man.

You're probably right. But just seeing what video games is going through right now and all the stupid bullshit this year on /a/ really has put me on edge.

>>117373495
Akiba's full of touristy parts though.
Also, the winter games were there one time, and I don't think that had any long term effects

>>117373549

The games are just two weeks, the media coverage is more like two months, and it's fucking constant. It's not hard to imagine some bitch from the Today show showing disgust at the stuff on sale in Gamers, and showing it to an international audience of millions. ANY attention in Japan is unwanted, and Olympics will bring that attention worse than the tsunami.

>>117373593
The winter games were all the way up north in Sapporo. This is right in Tokyo and it's the summer Olympics. Less people give a shit about the winter Olympics.

>>117373593

That was in 1998 and in Nagano, and before casuals had the internet and a platform to be offended.

>>117373582
fuck off back to /v/, but nothing will happen to anime. The japanese know that normalfags think they're weird, and all they'll do is clean things up so they look nice and presentable.

>>117373644
Take your fucking trip off and shut the fuck up. Some bitch from the today show showing disgust at Akiba won't do shit, because no one cares. The opportunity for her to say that won't even arise, because japan will put everything in the closet for two weeks so the dumb normalfag tourists give them more money.

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I'd love to watch some fansubbed VHSs on a CRT monitor for novelty's sake.

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>>117372979
>I remember that same store was on a Fox news article that was demonizing anime as porno for kids.
Now what would make them say something like that?

>>117368100
I did some fansubbing with some friends in college. One of us knew a guy who knew a guy who knew someone in Japan who would tape episodes from his TV, then mail them to us(at around 60 bucks a tape) which we would then take into the university's A/V lab to create the subtitles and a handful of copies to take home for ourselves or sell to a close group of friends. As we were all just students, none of us wanted to push our luck and never really made much of a business out of selling our work.

>>117374026
Is that the bad girl from kill la kill in the second bottom left pic??

>>117373644
Paranoid. Those shows don't have nearly the journalistic integrity to do something like that. Hell, just setting foot in the store would be a special segment "Tokyo 2020 Olympics Investigative Report"

If anything, it's going to be a series of quick shots of billboards and cosplayers followed by a fluff piece on "electric town". Hell, look at how the winter games went, even with the widespread fuckups and corruption, and bombings and protests, the only media attention on that during the games was about as harsh as "Oh, those silly Russians, ha ha"

I know that feel.

Your hobby goes mainstream and the normies come.

Thankfully, anime isn't as popular as it used to be

>>117374090
I thought anime had become more mainstream now than ever? Doesn't SnK and SAO and KlK make loads of money to plebs?

>>117374090
>anime isn't as popular as it used to be
EEEEEEEEEEH?

I vaguely remember watching gundam or macross of some sort on TV in the 90s, but other than that my first exposure to anime was Pokémon and DBZ. My first exposure to manga was finding random issues of Ranma ½ in the public library.
>hello confused, pubescent boner

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>>117374186

>>117373811
I'm not from /v/ dumb ass. The whole idea is that popularity ruins everything, and the current shit going on with them is a perfect example of that. Any exposure is just more chance for bad exposure.

You think that all the shops in akiba will all of a sudden take all their shit off the shelves because of the Olympics? Some dumb fuck reporter will find something to strum up a shitfit because it's their job to be retarded.

>>117374304
Didn't that one guy who made that Simpsons Death Note thing actually get hired by the studio

You suppose this could have been his doing

>>117374459
It was this year's Halloween special. The bit was about crossing over into alternate dimensions. If you want that concept done right then watch Rick and Morty.

>>117374551
Yes, I know. I was just wondering if that guy still working there.

>>117374186
>westeners
>buying BDs
>inb4 crunchyroll
I don't understand why every extremely popular anime that comes by every few years apparently means anime suddenly became mainstream to Western normals. Usually most Western normie shows do really well in Japan anyway, so their success is due to Japanese sales and not endorsement by casuals from across the sea who only buy shit through middlemen. It's practically expected.

I mean the usual way things are make it so that normals only watch one or two shows that are already hits in Japan and pretend that makes them anime experts or something. They'll then forget about it, move on to other shit and then come back when the next big thing happens.

>>117374304
I can't believe the Simpsons is still on. I haven't watched it in almost 10 years.

>anime cons were organized for enthusiasts
>now attendees are whores, idiots, and posers

>>117376157
That's because actual enthusiasts don't give a shit about petty social interaction and just continue to dig themselves deeper into their hobby.

>>117372315
The only kind of damage I can think of video games experiencing due to their popularity (aside from the obvious watering down of quality) is the invasion of SJWs. I don't think that's going to happen very soon with anime/manga, with shit like Trinity Seven or Twintails airing. Those represent two things SJWs hate, male sexual dominance, and transexuality (even if its genderbending) being used so lightly.

So yeah, I don't expect any damage aside from what we've already seen with the decline of quality.

>>117377739
Asians and Slavs are cold emotionless robots. They don't care what americans bitch about. They will make what they want and won't stop.

>>117372979

This would be fun to watch if you could do it.

Most of /a/ would appreciate the work.

How are raws acquired in Japan?

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>>117373344

Never thought I would say this, but anime fans are LESS cringeworthy than they use to be.

I think that's a good thing.

All those greasy foreheads.

>>117378211
DVR

>>117378150
Yeah, I'd really like to watch that broadcast. Sounds pretty funny to me.

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>>117377739
>The only kind of damage I can think of video games experiencing due to their popularity (aside from the obvious watering down of quality) is the invasion of SJWs.
Except that's not damaging, or even a really an actual thing that's happening to begin with.

>>117374026

what the fuck happened? back then we had proper titties, not fucking beach balls.

>>117368313
1992 for instance. People bring tapes given to them by a friend of a friend overseas or that one guy who could afford laserdiscs. Now imagine 24 people in a basement with all of their VCRs in a big 12:00 blinking daisy chain (gold plugs only) taping everything we watched all weekend.

>>117378150

I'll say bits and pieces I remember of it.

>Fox news warning parents that most anime their kids watch on TV contain mature sexual themes, encourage homosexuality, ect.
>they had some weeaboo on interview who claimed he learned full japanese watching DBZ subbed.
>showed the Ryoko and Aeika kissing clip from Tenchi (they censored the kiss)
>show Sasami in a very suggestive pose saying stuff like "some females in these shows are not even of age"

My memory is really fuzzy, this is from like, 1998.

>>117378625
And we totally didn't have subtitles or dubs. We did have one or two people studying Japanese and honestly winged it.

>>117378640

Sounds like comedy gold.

Upload that shit if you get the chance.

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>>117377939
Yeah but what have Slavs ever done for the world?

>>117378302
Its all a matter of opinion. I would say that the standards fans have these days are way lower. I kind of wish I was back in the day of sweaty neckbeards getting up in a fuss about pandering and such, but these days many are content or even happy with some off the terrible garbabe that is put out.

>>117378697

I mentioned in the thread earlier today that i'm not even sure if I have the tape around anymore. If it IS in the one box full of random assorted VHS tapes I have, i'd have to get a VCR, somehow hook it up to my PC, record from my PC if in the 0.00001% chance I find it.

Basically, it probably won't happen. i'll make a thread one day if I ever find it/get around to it. Surely some data base has every news report ever made by Fox news on the internet.

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>>117368135
Plenty just go through google's archive.

>>117373344
>skip to a random point
>some balding guy wearing a NERV shirt talking about how he was in love with sailor jupiter

I'd expect nothing less. Beautiful.

>>117374066
This is pretty cool. Thanks for sharing.

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>>117379062
Lina will always be no. 1 waifu for me.

>>117379510
Amelia is where its at.

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>>117379555
No

>>117379062
>shinji is in the waifu rating category
>only seven places behind Asuka
Are the 1990s trying to rustle my jimmies across vast gulfs of space and time?

>>117378640
>encourage homosexuality
funny how now they cannot use that as a negative

>>117374026
Wait, in the "anime then" section, what's the source for the girl bent over on the bench, third down on the right hand side? I don't want to have to ask but searching for that would be a difficult prospect.

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>>117374090
>anime isn't as popular as it used to be
anime is more popular now than ever, and only growing.

>>117379794
>I'm fourteen years old

The most popular anime has ever been in america was 2002. It got fucking huge, then the bubble burst, and everyone stopped caring.

>>117379864
>everyone stopped caring
Go outside. I was walking down the street in New York the other day and there was a big fucking poster for Attack on Titan on a building. It's pretty goddamn popular now.

>>117379898
God, I have no idea how many times I'll have to say this.

ATTACK ON TITAN IS THE NEW NARUTO EVERYONE KNOWS WHAT IT IS BECAUSE IT DOESN'T LOOK LIKE A LOT OF OTHER ANIME AND THE CHARACTERS LOOK MORE EUROPEAN

Seriously, man. Attack on Titan has been popular for the last year and a half, it doesn't mean that everyone's importing BDs. That's like saying anime is dying because they played Cowboy Bebop on adult swim back in 2000. Attack on Titan is one of the most popular things to come out of japan in a while, and that'll be it. I don't know if I'm articulating myself well enough, but I hope you understand the gist of what I'm trying to say.

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I miss the times I first "discovered" anime.
It felt so exotic to watch it.

First, it were just some dubbed kid's shows.

And then, they put up Cowboy Bebop, Ninja Scroll, 8 Man on TV.
And then, Nuku Nuku and Patlabor.

Shit was fucking bangin'.

>>117379992
Crunchyroll just reported over 400,000 paid subscribers. Anime sites pull immense traffic. Anime-style game are ported all the time. Hot Topic and other such hellholes sell a ton of anime merch constantly. Cons are wall-to-wall full of the stuff, and anime-centric cons easily get 5-digit attendances or more.

I get that 2002 was a huge bubble, I lived through it, but you're still wrong if you think anime isn't at 2002 levels now.

>>117367821
>being an otaku
Please kindly omit your comments form this board, if you don't even understand this terms.

WEEEAAAABOOOO

>>117372570
at this point we're just spectators

>>117370936
>there was one good year of good anime tops

>>117367705
Weren't the "older days" like how Star Trek fans are, sort of like a hidden society?

>>117380069
You know that anime conventions also have like fucking super hero comic books too, right? My point is that there have always been casuals, and there will continue to be casuals. 400,000 subscribers across the entire world for a fucking streaming service is kind of pathetic, because there are non-mainstream youtube channels that get that many people watching their videos. Seriously, in the last year, I've only seen people wearing attack on titan stuff. Back then, it was naruto headbands. Casuals will always jump on shit, but they won't actually be involved in the culture like a lot of us are. Anime is not mainstream. Losers and reddit nerds are not mainstream.

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>>117367705

>I remember the days when anime was a gentleman's pursuit.
It was full of closet nerds and fat people watching every single thing of anime we could find. Since it was so scarce.

It was no golden age.

>Anyone else feel like it's become too popular?

It never got overly popular. There was a short binge of anime between 1998-2004. And then the market fell under its own weight because of a lack of marketing and focusing entirely on shows on Toonami.

It didn't get popular with the general public. It was a short fad that has once again returned to the nerds and freaks. We just moved to the internet instead of fansubbed VHS tapes.

>>117367705
I don't know, entry level anime has become absurdly popular, but the overwhelming majority of people don't go any further than that.

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>>117368100

We watched them on fansub VHS. Through comic book stores, Asian friends or the VERY scarce anime store.

Once internet chat rooms started getting big in the late 90s, people started passing VHS around more professionally. I actually got the first season of CardCaptor Sakura and GTO through fansubs. Not to mention the really professionally remasters of Sailor Moon S and Stars on SVHS.

Around 2000, right when Hajime no Ippo and Love Hina came out, stuff like DivX became the big thing. And we finally could get anime online. Even though it looks like shit today, back then it was a revolution.

Now adays, people bitch if they don't get a show within an hour of it airing in Japan. Back then, you had to wait a year just for someone to get the show raw. Let alone sub and time it by hand.

/geezertalk

>>117368100

The great VHS smuggling ring

>>117378839
You could buy one of those VHS to DVD converters.

>>117380537
I would recommend against that unless he has more stuff he wants to preserve.

It would be cheaper to send it off to someone and having them mail him back a DVD.