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Sunday, 7 September 2014

April 1990 Pt.1e UK Anime Fandom.

 Post Con thoughts...

To get a feel of emotions that poured out from people with this newly discovered sleeping giant called Anime that many of us had grown-up with and had no idea of it's true origins! What follows are snippets from letters from my fellow UK Anime fans that I met at the Convention and corresponded with prier to the Convention.
To this day they can still invoke memories of how it felt, like a time wonderment to so many of us.

Paul Davison wrote on the 19th. of April -

“had a great time without getting drunk, but days later still had a headache from lack of sleep”

“It was worth it!”, “And I'd do it again next week!”

“I'm going to take your advice and write to everyone and everything and hope I get replies.”

“more than ever I'm going to try and promote Anime and Anime based games in our area. I'm going to make a poster asking for Anime and Manga fans to contact me (if only for a chat, it's a start.).”

“seeing 'Macross: Do you remember Love' just blew my mind, and brought home to me what is my favourite Anime”

“Its been good to find someone else who likes the same thing and I hope some kind of Organisation can be set-up in Britain soon for the likes of you and me”

R. Poffley wrote in April 1990.

“looking back at EastCon there were quite a few people at EastCon who were interested in Anime there but, as you say most had been fans for a while and not many “new” fans at all.”

“Helen had been approached to do an Anime Programme for the WorldCon in the Netherlands in August.”

“I think that the Anime programme was one of the better attended events over the convention and that bodes well for Anime in this Country.”


[Note: The get together on the Sunday was all about making friends and exchanging bits of information, I was even able to introduced Paul to Ashley, even though Paul had read Mektek.]




[Note: Jim Swallow wrote to Jay Felton telling her that EastCon'90 had about 700 attendees. - This was the big national Science Fiction for the UK]


[Amendment\update  "there were about 700 attendees, although the official convention membership count is on record, though without supporting sources, as 1,100 (Anon. n.d. “Eastercon”). The largest audience for the video screening room was considerably in excess of the fire limit of 450; it was usually about a third to half full, but some audiences were in single figures. As I recall, three screenings packed the room: Akira (Katsuhiro Ōtomo, 1988), Urotsukidōji (Wandering Kid, Hideki Takayama, 1989) and Robot Carnival (Katsuhiro Ōtomo et al., 1987). 
The majority of attendees were probably novelty-seekers, who made no further attempt to engage with Japanese animation after the event." ( McCarthy - Re-creating Anime History: The Development of British Anime Fandom and the Developing Comprehension of Anime History as a Transnational Phenomenon. posted on July 2019 wrote about the "Distortion of the historical record". Facebook re-post 5th March 2020 ]   



[NOTE: “that many of us had grown-up with and had no idea of it's true origins!” I was lucky enough to live in Australia from the late 60's to the late 70's and as a kid I loved cartoons, and I remembered seeing 'Kimba the White Lion', 'Speed Racer', 'Marine Boy' , and 'The Amazing 3', so from this early age Japanese animation styles were imprinted on me. Later I lived in Spain for a whole year and was introduced to such cartoons like 'Mazinger Z', 'Battle of the Planets' more imprints.]


[NOTE: I will endeavour to contact as many attendees for their recollections of that day as I can.]


Helen McCarthy – Re-creating Anime History: The Development of British Anime Fandom and the Developing Comprehension of Anime History as a Transnational Phenomenon.





To be continued.......... When more comes to light!

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