The Anime Industry Then and Now Section 3: The Anime Boom Era Finale: Con Going Madness and a Harbinger of Things to Come

Blerg. Life stuff. By the end of this week I’m going out of town to my second outing of Acen (Anime Central) and because of my “crazy” work schedule I have very little time to prep for the con (and see Iron Man 2) before I leave. I think I’ll try to wrap up my Anime Industry series before I go but given how I’m beginning the “Anime Recession” era with an article about Abridged Series that doesn’t seem bloody likely.

Oh well, so right now we’re circa 2003-2006, I’ve already gone on about what was going on in the industry but shortly after I graduated college I was invited to a friend to this community college anime con called JAFAX somewhere in the middle of Michigan. JAFAX held two significant points for me, it would be the first con that I cosplayed in (Shishio Makoto from Rurouni Kenshin) and it would be the place where I saw the premiere of the English dub of End of Evangelion (I had already seen the movie in Japanese several time and am still recovering from the mental scars). The friend who had invited me had a sister who was good at making costumes so it was fun getting measured for a tailored costume. I do have to say though that since the costume was a full body suit that thing became a nightmare if I had to use the bathroom. Yesh.



It was around this time period that the whole going to anime clubs thing started to dissipate. You have to think about what was going on at the time, I had Wizzywig to appease my rental needs (by this point that had enough rentals that rivaled my own DVD collection) and I lived in a student co-op (basically a combination student living environment, Smurf village, not quite a dorm and not quite an apartment deal) so I always had anime buddies to marathon stuff with, and with all the companies constantly licensing the new “it” shows going to public anime screenings just seemed futile.

Then shortly after I left the co-ops I met an acquaintance who work at Wizzywig. Suffice to say the bond was short-lived but he did reveal to me how much money the store was losing money and how within the next few years the store was going to be downsizing. Little did I know these were signs of the anime bubble beginning to burst. Similar to companies like ADV, Wizzywig’s financial gain relied heavily riding the anime boom bubble so when the wave was beginning to go down so was their assets. First thing to go was the CDs, then the new anime DVDs, then the old anime DVDs, and the kiss of death for me was when they stopped their rental program and liquidated it. After that occurred I found myself going there less and less, then they moved out of their large store to a much more smaller location somewhere near the local mall that was tucked away in some obscure mini-mall building. I recall going there 6 months ago just to buy a shirt for the last anime convention I went to and I was surprised how all they sold were a few anime/game themed nicknacks and that was it. This would be a sign of things to come.

But I’m going to leave off my the Anime Boom era series on a high note and speak of my first BIG NAME anime con experience Anime Central/ACEN. The irony is I’m returning to this con over the weekend so it makes some sense that I’m reviewing what my previous experience was like.

Well, after re-reading my Live Journal to revisit that era I could say that the whole experience was overwhelming. It was like a 24/7 anime party, the environment was really engaging and the experience was awesome. I went with a group of my co-workers (most who kind of split up during the duration of the convention) and despite all the intense line waiting and cosplay picture taking it was fun.

It was here that I got the autographs of Vic Micgona (Edward Elric from Fullmetal Alchemist), Catlin Glass (Winry Rockbell/ FMA, Vivi/ One Piece), Steve Blum (Spike/Cowboy Bebop and Mugen/Samurai Champloo), Beau Billingslea (Jet/Cowboy Bebop), and Chris Patton (Greed/FMA and Sosuke Sagara from Full Metal Panic series).

…and with this we leave the Anime Boom era where dubs evolved, many series were licensed, and anime was very prevalent on TV. Now we enter a darker time where things aren’t flourishing as much, up next we enter The Anime Recession.

The Anime Industry Then and Now Section 2: The Pokemon Era Part 1: Wizzywig and the Pokemon Phoenix

Well I’ve already went through the VHS Era which covered the majority of my high school inauguration into anime through my early college years. The reason why I define this era as the “Pokemon Era” is because this Pokemon created a rebirth of anime on TV (as well as resurrecting the popularity of the Nintendo Gameboy) that led into the big Anime Boom that dominated the early 2000s. Sailor Moon and Dragonball Z had a marginal degree of niche popularity but it wasn’t enough to make anime significant in the public’s eyes. But before I get into Pokemon I wanted to bring up an important aspect of my growth as a anime fan, Wizzywig Collectibles.

These days Wizzywig Collectibles has descended into a Japanese gimmicky store that sells the likes of Beerchan T-shirts, Japanese Nintendo merchandise, fluff pillows, and candy and it was that way during its humble beginnings but there was a period of time where Wizzywig was the definitive place to rent anime VHS/DVDs from as well as buy various anime related paraphernalia (calendars, figures, posters, and the like). Before Pokemon aired on TV, Wizzywig opened up a store just down the street from my dormitory on the University of Michigan campus. Gradually they decided to start anime rentals and many hard-to-find series (i.e. Urusei Yatsura pre-DVD) became available to me through their rental program. Wizzywig played a humongous role in my continued love of anime fandom as I no longer had to commit to buying a series to see what it was like. It’s rare that an anime fan (during those days) could test out a series without committing to it so this was a humongous blessing.

The second blessing came in the form of Pokemon airing on US TV, as stated before Sailor Moon and DBZ only made a slight scratch in advancing the popularity of anime in the US. Pokemon, OTOH, was like the second coming. Much like Power Rangers that came before it the marketing of the Pokemon name was a phenomenon in and of itself. It was kid-friendly, pimped by Nintendo, and engaging. Now of course my history with anime guaranteed that I was going to be into the series and I can actually vouch that I’m a rarity in that I got to see both the Japanese version (thanks to Wizzywig having a Japanese copy of the first VHS tape) and English version of Episode 1 on the same day. I was impressed how outside of Misty (Kasumi) slapping Ash (Satoshi) almost nothing, including music was altered from the US broadcast. Of course, over time 4Kids would get worse with such things but during that time they actually were doing a better job than the English versions of DBZ and Sailor Moon.


I recall that even my very Japanese specific friends applauded how Pokemon took risks (the episode where Pikachu and the others were separated from their masters and the majority of the episode was subtitled to translate the Pokemon speak) with their format. The fact is, Pokemon was a major event for anime fandom and video gamers. On the anime end it’s popularity opened a door for companies wanting to license more shows to show on public TV. The show proved that anime could succeed and thrive on television in a way the previous efforts could not. Even it present day it’s one of the few anime shows that Cartoon Network had not dropped because it has the financial backing to support it.


This has a dual effect of sorts, on one hand it gave the opportunity for the growth of anime in the US. On the other hand it spearheaded the very things that would eventually lead into the big anime recession. Nevertheless, for now, Pokemon made anime something that, possibly, gave it a stronger presence here than even its home country.