To start at the beginning, we’ll have to go all the way back to 1994. HTML was just starting out on the internet, so the only thing you could online was stuff on Newsgroups or through Archie or Veronica (early search engines if you would). Only business people used pagers and you never saw a cell phone.

New and hot Anime at the time was shows like Project AKo, Gall Force, Urusei Yatsura, Bubblegum Crisis, Devil Hunter Yohko, and Ranma ½. The only manga really out was from Viz and included such titles as Ranma ½ and Silent Möbius. Well Dark Horse had just released Oh My Goddess! (which came out at the same time as the AnimEigo OAV release), which was done by Studio Proteus. At A-Kon that year were Tomoko Saito and Toren Smith of Studio Proteus. Studio Proteus really did a lot of the translating of early manga in the US with such titles like Nausicaa, Akira, Outlanders, Gunsmith Cats, and Appleseed.

I had heard about A-Kon the year before at the only local anime store in town (it was easily an hour away from where I lived) but I found out about A-Kon the day of the con so I had to wait until the next year to go. I was only 16 at the time and only had my learners permit so I had to be dropped off at the convention on Saturday morning and had to leave in the evening to go work my shift at Burger King (which I begged my Dad to be allowed to call in sick). I looked around in the dealers’ room and saw all sorts of vhs tapes, music cds and wall scrolls. Yes there was no real Jpop back then, just fans buying the original soundtracks to shows they liked.

I went to a viewing of some ADV show I can’t recall. Or maybe a fansubbed show. But regardless it was basically watching a VCR and a 30 inch TV regardless. I also went to a panel from the folks at ADV and they explained how since they had experience in work with a company that brought over video games from Japan, Japanese businesses were willing to sell them licenses to several anime shows to bring over to the US. They further explained that you can have enough money to buy the license for a show, but the Japanese wouldn’t necessarily sell them to you unless you could show you’d also knew what to do with a show.

I remember being excited because Adam Warren was there because I was a big fan of his Dirty Pair work. And when I say Dirty Pair work, Adam Warren actually did his own story and art based on Japanese characters. You could almost say he was one of the first people to do a Original English Manga long before we started using such terms. I remember walking up to him and asking about a sketch and I recall he got annoyed with me because I didn’t know (or understand) that you have to pay for a sketch (and have paper with you and such).

The big guest of the show was Monkey Punch, but I had no clue who he was at the time. Much later I found out he was the creator of Lupin III and I’ve never really been a fan of that manga, so luckily I didn’t miss out on much.

And oh yeah, there were no American Voice Actors at the show. I don’t even think anyone knew about them at the time.

So all that was done in roughly 6 hours and I felt like I was cheated because I couldn’t stay longer.