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Thursday, 31-Dec-2009 12:49:22 CST
History
of Anime in the U.S.
Early US Anime Availability
 For
a long time, if you were a fan of those Japanese cartoons, you were
probably a member of the Books Nippon Japanese Animation Fan Club
... or you knew someone who was. In this way, you could get at least
some information about the movies and shows you were interested
in, albeit somewhat slowly. If there was a powerhouse in the 1970's
and 1980's, this was it. For those of you who don't believe this,
witness the fact that when later editions of the Macross Perfect
Memory book arrived in the stores, a card was bound into the spine.
This (non postage paid) postcard basically offered this excellent
Japanese TV series reference book TRANSLATED into English.
While it was never actually printed, it was originally solicited
in 1987 (the same time that The Right Stuf International was formed)
... well before the market was to change in the US. It therefore
came as little surprise when the company (the division in question
was called US Renditions ... literally, a US version of a Japanese
title) announced with a bit of a flourish that they were going to
be distributing anime VHS tapes in the US. What DID come as somewhat
of a surprise was that there was another company (calling itself
AnimEigo) which was beginning to do the same thing. These tapes
were different than that which had previously surfaced in the US
market ... both companies seemed to be committed to releasing the
Japanese product with accurate translations, subtitled, and at a
price much lower than the Japanese import versions. Before you laugh
at the lower price part, yes: a $40 copy of MADOX-01 was actually
significantly cheaper than the Import version.
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