what goes around

In a week or so I'll be back in Atlanta for Anime Weekend Atlanta, the Japanese anime convention I helped start and that has happened every year (with one exception) since 1995. This year's AWA is notable for a few reasons, first off being the date, which has moved all the way into December from its usual September, sometimes October, very occasionally November time slot. Another reason has something to do with the first reason, namely that the convention has relocated from its Cobb Galleria Center home for the past twenty odd years. AWA has moved to Building C of the World Congress Center in downtown Atlanta! Now I know technically the Cobb Galleria Center has an Atlanta mailing address, but let's face it, once you're on the Cobb County side of the Chattahoochee, well, is that really Atlanta?

All I know is thirty-nine years back the World Congress Center is where I was attending a thing called the Atlanta Fantasy Fair, an old-school nerd show full of comics and movies and vendors and cosplayers before they were called cosplayers. I wasn't old enough to drive, but myself and my friends, we convinced our parents to let us spend the weekend at the show in a scary downtown Atlanta that had yet to be cleaned up and made safe for tourists, just so we could wallow in comic books, model kits, and people dressed like Darth Vader, X-Men, and Elfquest elves.

But what affected me the most from that Atlanta Fantasy Fair wasn't a costumer or a comic book, it's what happened in an Omni hotel room. Some people attending the show from Florida happened to be members of something called the Cartoon/Fantasy Organization. They'd brought a VCR, some cables and a big pile of video tapes of what at the time was termed “Japanimation,” and their intent was... well I don't actually know what they had in mind. Maybe they didn’t know they’d wind up turning that hotel room into an impromptu Japanese cartoon theater, but that's how things turned out. Friends, friends of friends, and total strangers all found themselves camped out in this random hotel room for hours on end, watching Space Adventure Cobra and Dagger Of Kamui and Lupin III: Castle Of Cagliostro. This was the first place I'd seen these films, the brain-melting power of peak 1980s anime cinema imprinting itself upon my psyche.

Atlanta Fantasy Fair 1985 program book cover and map

Perhaps more important than the Rintaro or the Dezaki films, though, was how they came to me; we saw these films because some fans took it upon themselves to haul equipment across state lines and fiddle with the RF connectors around the back of a hotel TV and show foreign-language animated films to a room full of random nerds, just for the sheer pleasure of sharing these awesome things with people who might enjoy them too.

The Dagger Of Kamui

That's how I came to anime fandom. I saw people doing the work and making things happen, and I took this as my blueprint for action, as my guide moving forward. In a few months we'd have our own chapter of the C/FO in Atlanta, I'd be running the anime room at that very same Atlanta Fantasy Fair, we'd be having club meetings and publishing fanzines and screening movies in odd places and eventually we'd have our own anime conventions.

If those Floridians hadn’t had the generosity to share anime with strangers we might not be here today, and by "here" I mean "The World Congress Center", a half-mile as the crow flies from that 1985 Omni suite where we watched Jiro battle ninjas and Cobra romance triplets. Of course, these days Japanese animation isn’t hard to find. We don’t have to rely on strangers showing up from out of state with VHS tapes. We can go to the movies or turn on our streaming services or throw on a Blu-Ray disc and there it is. But that impulse to share, to present, to drop something amazing on some unsuspecting crowds, that's still with us. That's why I'm still finding myself on that institutional hotel carpeting, still telling people about some amazing piece of Japanese animation they need to see.

And what will I be doing at the 2024 Anime Weekend Atlanta? Well, Thursday afternoon I'll be holding down a table in the Super Happy Fun Sell, AWA's garage sale, swap meet, flea market, yard sale event where the previously loved anime and manga merch finds new homes. Bring cash!

Thursday at 8 Neil Nadelman brings back Totally Lame Anime from its lead-lined containment facility, where decades of embarrassingly bad animation and poorly conceived concepts rise up to bring shame upon their ancestors.

Then at 10pm Thursday it's time again for Anime Hell, the whiz-bang, anything-goes kook-clip-fest where confusion, amusement and amazement battle for control of your eyeballs!

Saturday morning at 10:15 Neil and I will take you on a journey to the beginnings of anime localization in America as we look at the pioneers who saw vast opportunity in bringing Japanese animation to America, with only slight assistance from the Central Intelligence Agency.

On Saturday afternoon we'll explore the wonderful adventures of Candy Candy, perhaps America's pluckiest orphan, as she lassos ne'er-do-wells and breaks hearts across two continents in manga and anime that you aren't allowed to see in America!

Sunday we blast off to Iscandar and parts unknown with the Space Battleship Yamato on a fifty year voyage to repeatedly save the Earth, defy any number of space dictators, and move lots of merchandise through a series of originals, sequels, reboots, and reimaginings!

It's been thirty years since we started Anime Weekend Atlanta, and the closest the show has been to downtown since that first year at the ill-fated Castlegate hotel. What was once a whimsical lark for a handful of devoted anime nerds in a few cities has become a nationwide phenomenon, locking down the largest convention centers in America's major metropolitan areas for gigantic, perhaps intimidatingly crowded festivals that make the early days of anime conventions look like a quiet Sunday school picnic. What will the future hold for this phenomenon? I don't know, but I'm exhausted just thinking about it. See you at AWA!

-Dave Merrill

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Anime Hell Presents: That 70s Show

Gang, I am super excited about next week's Anime Hell screening at Eyesore Cinema! It's an all 1970s presentation of Manga Matsuri films and TV episodes and commercials and OPs and some special surprises, too. Most everything is in Japanese with English subtitles! 

It's an evening of super robots, tragic orphans, and international thievery as the Japanese animation of the 1970 explodes across the Eyesore Cinema screen at 8pm on February 22! Doors open at 7:30, admission is only $5.00! 

Eyesore Cinema, of course, is one of the last remaining video rental shops in North America, with thousands of films for rent, movies for sale on DVD and VHS, and some records and zines for good measure. Their screening room has quickly become Toronto's home for offbeat screenings, art sales, swap meets, and badfilm uprisings. If you're ever in town you should wander in and spend some money! 

And of course, if you're in town next Saturday you should wander into Eyesore around 8pm, for ANIME HELL PRESENTS: THAT 70s SHOW! See you there!

twenty five years of anime weekend atlanta

25 years of AWA? That CAN'T be right. Fact is, when a bunch of Atlanta anime nerds got together in 1994 and said "let's put on a show," we figured we'd get maybe a hundred attendees, we'd show some anime and sell each other some junk and look at each other's costumes, and maybe we wouldn't lose too much money. Then we could tell each other that we'd done it, and then we could go on about our business.  

AWA 1995 cosplay contest (photo: Lloyd Carter)

As it turned out, more than 300 badge-purchasing fans showed up. We did show lots of anime, lots of merch got moved, lots of costumers turned up, and the convention actually wound in the black. Year One wasn't even cold and we were already making plans for next year.

AWA 1995 vendor table

Twenty five years later, the convention has moved six or seven times, has grown exponentially right along with the popularity of Japanese animation, is held in world class convention facilities using state of the art AV equipment, and yet, still retains some of that "let's put on a show" attitude. It's still staffed by a crew of volunteers - some 25 year veterans among them - and everybody's looking forward to dropping their regular life for a few days and immersing themselves in the anime con world. 

I'm one of those 25 year lifers, and even though the out-of-body-panic of the early years has faded to a dull roar, I still get a kick out of presenting panels and screening goofy shorts, and I hope I always will. 

Here's what I'm up to this year: 

Thursday night the SuperHappyFunSell is in full effect, in a new venue but still jam packed with pre-loved bargains from the closets and crawlspaces and storage units of the Southeast's most troubled anime hoarders. Bring cash!

Three separate panels on three separate days celebrate twenty five years of Anime Weekend Atlanta! I'm gonna be on at least one of these!

Friday night Anime Hell is back for two hours of tasty short form Japanese animation or Japanese or animation or whatever seems to make people laugh. Guaranteed to confuse!

Followed as always by the anime parody dub showcase Midnight Madness! 

Saturday at 4 the Mister Kitty team of Shaindle Minuk and Dave Merrill will be showing you seventy years worth of terrible comics badness. Free comics for all while they last, too!

Totally Lame Anime's moved to a new time and a new place, Saturday afternoon in the Grand Panel in the Waverly! Still a big dumpster fire though! 

And on Sunday at 2 we'll be going back fifty years to groove on the fantasmagorical freak-out happenings happening in the Japanese animation of 1969! Can you dig it? 

It's all happening a week from now at Anime Weekend Atlanta 2019! 

-Dave M

 

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Anime Hell 80s Night II: The Return

It's summertime and that means just one thing: I take over the screening room at one of North America's last remaining video stores and drop a few hours of ANIME HELL upon an audience of scenesters and cineastes. This Saturday night I'll be in the back of Eyesore Cinema here in Toronto showing three 80s anime classics, some of which were anime-fan must-haves, others virtually-unseen cult classics, and still others modern-day icons of outrageousness. 

Fight! Iczer One, the thrilling saga of lushly-illustrated space lesbians battling for the fate of Earth itself, was released in October 1985. Written, directed and character designed by 80s anime MVP Toshiki Hirano, Iczer One tells the story of an Earth under attack by alien invaders called "Cthulhu" who infiltrate and replace humans with parasites known as "Vedims". Mysterious fighter Iczer One must find a human with whom she can "synchronize" and control the Izcer Robo to defeat the aliens! Iczer One is based on the original manga that appeared in the magazine "Lemon People," portions of which are probably illegal in Canada. 

Flying Warped Boy Ranpou aired for 21 episodes in 1984, produced by the animation division of an ad agency and broadcast opposite major league baseball, not a great programming decision on somebody's part. Ranpou was a normal high school kid who was kidnapped by a flying saucer and returned to earth shorter and goofier and with a talking mouse companion who is also a genius inventor. When he's not harassing Coach Hiroshi or Miss Iwasaki, his teachers, he's harassing his girlfriend Mutsumi. This zany gag comedy series is based on a manga that ran for nearly ten years in Shonen Champion, and has never been released on any kind of home video anywhere. Without 80s anime nerds swapping VHS tapes through the mail we'd never be able to see this show. You're welcome!

Mad Bull 34 the anime was released in December 1990, which completely defeats my 1980s theme, but hey, it's based on the 1980s manga drawn by Noriyoshi Inoue and written by Kazuo Koike, who also gave us Lone Wolf And Cub and who passed away recently. So relax. This is the story of Daizaburo Ban, a New York City cop assigned to the tough 34th Precinct, where his partner is John "Sleepy" Estes, a giant monster of a policeman who is WAY OUTTA LINE, YOU'RE THROUGH, TURN IN YOUR BADGE! This ridiculously hardboiled piece of attempted grindhouse mixes cartoony slapstick with ultra-violence and is one of those "not for kids" Japanimations you're always hearing about. 

If you're in town, come on over Saturday! Doors open at 7:30, show starts at 8! That's Eyesore Cinema, 1176 Bloor West, Toronto Ontario Canada!

 

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2019: the 1960s show

Gang, I don't know if I mentioned this before here, but last year I started doing Anime Hell presentations at Eyesore Cinema here in Toronto. Eyesore is one of the few remaining video rental stores in the city, and they happen to have a screening room in the back that's perfect for schlocky horror festivals, bone-smashing Asian martial arts action, and celebrations of everything obscure and/or poorly-thought-out in the world of film. 

This Saturday I'll be presenting Anime Hell presenting The 60s Show, a two hour look at some of the Japanese animation that made the 1960s a landmark the world over. I'll be screening clips from TV shows like Astro Boy, 8th Man, Gigantor, Kimba The White Lion, Golden Bat, Sasuke, Princess Knight, and Marine Boy, showing selected scenes from films like Little Prince And the Eight Headed Dragon, Gulliver's Travels Beyond The Moon, and Jack And The Witch. I'll also be showing entire episodes of Prince Planet and Speed Racer as well as our feature presentation, the 1969 film Flying Phantom Ship. 

I've been doing Anime Hell for a while and I've learned it's pretty easy to entertain an audience with short-form funny clips. But this is the first time I've really opened up and let my 60s freak flag fly, really been honest about the kinds of things I want to make sure people get a chance to see, and as it turns out the kinds of things I want to make sure people get to see involve space boys with Metalyzers, high-stakes auto racing, and worldwide soft drink conspiracies opposed by flying battleships. Will this version of Anime Hell get the same standing room only crowds my previous shows did? Or will I be showing these cartoons to an audience of myself? We'll know on Saturday. 

Anime Weekend Atlanta 2018

23 years ago our forefathers, well, okay, me and a bunch of my pals, we got together and put on a Japanese animation convention in Atlanta. It seemed like people had a good time so we figured we'd keep doing it, and so we did. In less than two weeks we'll be getting together again at the Cobb Galleria Convention Center and the Renaissance Waverly to hold Anime Weekend Atlanta 2018. 

I'm still a part of the show, and that means the last weeks of my summer are spent getting panels in order and sending lots of emails to lots of people to try and get things squared away before the show. The more prep you do, the less stressful the convention is. So what will I be up to at AWA? 

AWA's SUPERHAPPYFUNSELL continues to be a signature event for everyone looking to clean out their closets of unwanted anime stuff, and also for people looking to score deals and fill their own closets, crawlspaces, basements, attics, spare rooms, storage units, and warehouses full of anime stuff that at one point will likely become unwanted and find itself back at the SHFS. 

Friday night I'm bringing back my famous kooky clip show full of short subjects and entertaining nonsense that I like to call Anime Hell. It's a little later in the night and as always it's part of a triple-threat late-night lineup of unauthorized video funtime,  and you shouldn't miss it.

Saturday morning at 10 I'm taking a short trip through the Psychic World Of Go Nagai, at least as represented in movies and TV anime from 1970-1990. Yes, it's "The Devilman Went Down To Georgia!" 

Later Saturday, professional translator Neil Nadelman and myself will be investigating some anime that's fallen out of North American license and really deserves to be rescued! 

Then early Sunday morning I will hop into the time machine and take us all back to 1978 where we'll ask each other the eternal question - was 1978 Anime's Greatest Year? 

If you're reading this blog you probably already have strong opinions on this issue, and I welcome everyone who can get up early enough to make it to this panel. Pajamas are OK.  And that, apart, from wandering the vendor room halls, catching up with old friends, and probably eating too much BBQ, is what I'll be up to this year at AWA!  See you there! 

happy holidays from Let's Anime

Hey gang, I meant to get another Let's Anime done before the end of the year, and then Life stepped in and my end-of-year free time is not so free any more. So I want to take a minute and thank you all for visiting Let's Anime, and wish you all the very best for the holiday season and for the new year!

It's been a great year for classic anime fans - you can read Leiji Matsumoto's Queen Emeraldas manga and wallow in tons of Ge Ge Ge no Kitaro and other Shigeru Mizuki manga, all now in English. You can enjoy (?) Charge Man Ken on DVD from Discotek.  You can watch Ideon and  Xabungle on Hidive, and you can finally catch up with Space Battleship Yamato 2199 - or Star Blazers 2199 if you prefer - on Funimation and Crunchyroll's streaming services. And the new year promises Go Nagai's Devilman manga, Leiji Matsumoto's Captain Harlock manga, and a host of other classic titles becoming available here in the West. It's tough to keep up with everything!

As for me, I have a slew of projects ongoing for 2018, some here, some at our Stupid Comics home Mister Kitty dot Org, and some happening maybe at a convention or a venue near you. 

my first event for 2018

I'm looking forward to the new year and new/old anime and manga to enjoy, and I hope to see you somewhere along the way! And hey, if you haven't visited the Let's Anime Facebook page, why not check it out today?

Stay well, be careful driving in the snow, and we'll see you in 2018!

-Dave Merrill

it's may so it must be time for

Hey, why no Let's Anime posts lately? Well, it's not because I don't have goofy stuff to write about. Nope, I've been working on getting things ready for the upcoming Anime North, which is this weekend. If you're in town you should come on by! It's a great show full of events, guests, dealers, costumes, dances - check the website for full details - and I'm doing some panels and things. Three-day passes have already sold out but you can still get one-day tickets for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. 

So what am I up to at AN this year? Friday at 7pm Shain and I will be holding down the Mr Kitty table at the NOMINOICHI, Anime North's garage sale swap meet event. It takes place in the Convention Center, hall F. We're giving our closets one final cleaning and that means YOU get to take home our old anime VHS, anime posters, books, manga, and anything else we can get rid of. 

Of course Friday at 10pm in the Plaza Ballroom in the Doubletree is Anime Hell.  This two-hour freeform clip show event has been a mild amusement to Canadian audiences for more than six years, and this year's show promises to be just as confusing and laff-packed as previous installments. Followed at midnight by our feature film presentation, 2010's SPACE BATTLESHIP YAMATO.

  

 This screening features special custom subtitles unavailable anywhere else! 

Saturday at 1pm join Helen McCarthy and I as we take a look at the animation of the god of comics, Osamu Tezuka's animation legacy. It's happening in International B in the Doubletree and will be packed with clips from the thirty-plus years Tezuka created animation to go along with his voluminous manga output.

  

And yeah, some of it gets kind of peculiar. 

At 3pm on Saturday in the same room Mister Kitty brings you Stupid Comics - LIVE! Shain and I are bringing our popular web feature to real life as we highlight some of the lowlights of our investigation into the world of bad comics. It's guaranteed to shock and amuse, especially when we get to the bad wanna-be manga.

And on Sunday at 1pm, again in International B I'll be taking a look at Spooky Classic Anime, the kind of cartoons your parents wouldn't let you watch in the 60s and 70s, except if you had been able to watch these cartoons in the 60s and 70s you'd be Japanese and it would be OK.

Don't be afraid! See you at the show!

the quiet time is not so quiet

Apologies for my lack of blog here for the past few weeks. I've been busy as heck on a few real-life projects that have taken my time and energy that otherwise would have been spent talking about thirty-year old Japanese cartoons, and for that I am deeply sorry. At any rate here's what's been going on instead:

This weekend is the Toronto Comics Arts Festival which I am a volunteer at. It's two days of indy cartoonist stars and legends of comic art meeting the public at the Toronto Public Library Main Branch - and it's free! So if you have a free couple of days it's well worth your time.

Two weekends later - that's right, it's Anime North, Canada's number-one Japanese animation festival! I'm on staff at that show as well. Additionally, I will be on a "Classic Anime" panel Saturday at noon, and Sunday at 1pm I will be delivering an illustrated lecture on the influence of Western literature upon Japanese animation (meaning: Captain Future, among other things). And Saturday night... well, Saturday night is special.


Anime Hell returns to Canada for one night only of cerebral-cortex-crushing video madness. Followed by TOTALLY LAME ANIME: AFTER DARK!! Don't miss it.

And then I go to a wedding and then May is over and I spend June goofing off. Er, I mean, writing for Let's Anime!! Of course. See you then!

the untold saga of Anime Hell flyers

For years I've been doing a free-form anime-themed clip show called "Anime Hell". It started out as hotel room parties at SF conventions in the late 80s, and as anime cons came into being, the event moved into function rooms and eventually 1000+ seat ballrooms with giant video screens, projectors, PAs, and all the technological accouterments that are really hard to operate when it's 10pm on a Saturday night and you've had a few. Today five or six separate groups of people do "Anime Hell" type events at anime conventions in two different countries.

The show itself has been described as "all about the corniest, strangest and otherwise anime/anime-related things out there," and that's not a bad description. I've shown educational films, anime music videos, fake commercials, clips from 60s 70s and 80s anime, scenes from 8-bit video games, homemade Indiana Jones films, parody subtitles, promotional beer cartoons, anti-drug PSAs, European TV singers, and dogs riding bicycles.

Part of the fun of the show is the promotional flyers; I started making flyers for the Anime Hell parties in the late 80s with clip art and markers. When I started doing all-night Anime Hells at Atlanta's Dragoncon, the flyers got more elaborate.

(flyer from Dragoncon 1996)

Eventually stronger graphic elements started to come to the fore, as I determined scientifically that teeny tiny text might not be the best thing to read when it's taped to the wall of a hotel elevator.

Anime Central's Hell, 1999

The "Hell" logo with the flames was taken from the early 70s Marvel war comic "War Is Hell". The other clip art elements came from damn near everywhere - Chick comics, old UFO magazines, Weekly World News, Archie comics, Dirty Pair "mooks", old encyclopedias, whatever would hold still long enough to photocopy. I stopped doing Anime Hell at Dragoncon in... I wanna say 1999, and concentrated on Anime Weekend Atlanta and Anime Central, but for some reason I didn't do flyers for the AWA shows. Anyways, everybody at the early AWAs knew what Anime Hell was.

(flyer from Anime Central 2001)

In the early '00s the capacity crowds and my laziness meant I wasn't doing any more flyers, which was OK since the months before two conventions were taken up with feverish preparations anyway.

When I moved to Canada in 2004 and started doing Anime Hell at Anime North, I knew I couldn't slack off any more. Canada had no idea what Anime Hell was. I needed to get back on the job!

This flyer is my first color flyer, and features a totally reverse-engineered "Canada" logo. For the next year I went back to black and white, but produced five different flyers, of which this is one:

At this point I was getting more into taking an image that already had ironic or kitsch value, and manipulating it in a very basic way. There are 10,000 people at Anime North and most of them are only going to be able to see this flyer for five seconds, max, so a lot of frippery details and confusing, conflicting images will only deflect my message. So simplification became my watchword. My AWA flyer for that year was even simpler:

For the next Anime North I went back to color, taking a cheesy movie poster and reworking it to my own advantage. It's still a little busy, in my opinion.

For AWA that October, I had been really stuck for ideas and was getting desperate, until I saw a one-sheet for EASY RIDER. What resulted is the simplest and the best Anime Hell flyer I think I've ever done.

Sailor Moon's head is a little off, but other than that, it's perfect; the quintessential mix of weird and powerful and kitsch. Besting that flyer is a tough challenge, and I don't know if I'll ever do it, but this year's Anime North flyer is a strong contender:

Anime Hell, Saturday May the 24th, 8pm, Doubletree International Hotel, International Ballrooms B and C, Toronto Ontario Canada. Brought to you by Anime North. See you there!

-Dave Merrill

Thanks for reading Let's Anime! If you enjoyed it and want to show your appreciation for what we do here as part of the Mister Kitty Dot Net world, please consider joining our Patreon!