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What Was, What Might Have Been
One weekend before I left on my vacation I took a shorter trip, going back to my old university for homecoming. I must not have paid close enough attention to the schedule, because in arriving around noon after a lengthy trip by train and bus I found the homecoming events had closed down and displays for visitors were being packed away. Managing to shrug that off, I wandered around campus by myself and dropped in on the arts library, my thoughts turning to a particular article I’d read a certain number of years ago.
One 1995 issue of the science fiction journal Foundation had looked at “SF in the media.” In those later years of fans of written science fiction still looking down their noses at ninety-nine percent of visual science fiction, there’d been something refreshing about some of the articles for me. To top that off, one of the articles had looked at the “the US anime and manga industry,” which I was just beginning to take in the products of through the university’s anime club. The article was by Jonathan Clements, who’s been involved with anime for years; I did notice a comment the piece was “the opening section” of his “MPhil in Publishing Studies” thesis.
While it was interesting to see a bit more about the mechanics of bringing anime and manga over here as or just before I was getting into it in an age of VHS tapes and black-and-white comics still hanging on, I did get to pondering comments from Clemens that the end of the industry appeared to be approaching. This involved “the end of the Japanesquerie fad” in science fiction. His main hope there was suggesting that more “localized” adaptations would start getting on television again, “this time as openly-Japanese works.” Sailor Moon and Rayearth had got his attention there; Sailor Moon did of course show up the way he mentioned but Rayearth didn’t. Contemplating where my interests might have gone had “the anime industry” dried up just after I’d moved beyond memories of Robotech at last was one thing, as was thinking of what might have headed off that particular fate. In any case, having taken so long to get to my university did at least mean I wasn’t stuck behind a wheel when my bus got caught in the backup from a highway accident on the way back.
One 1995 issue of the science fiction journal Foundation had looked at “SF in the media.” In those later years of fans of written science fiction still looking down their noses at ninety-nine percent of visual science fiction, there’d been something refreshing about some of the articles for me. To top that off, one of the articles had looked at the “the US anime and manga industry,” which I was just beginning to take in the products of through the university’s anime club. The article was by Jonathan Clements, who’s been involved with anime for years; I did notice a comment the piece was “the opening section” of his “MPhil in Publishing Studies” thesis.
While it was interesting to see a bit more about the mechanics of bringing anime and manga over here as or just before I was getting into it in an age of VHS tapes and black-and-white comics still hanging on, I did get to pondering comments from Clemens that the end of the industry appeared to be approaching. This involved “the end of the Japanesquerie fad” in science fiction. His main hope there was suggesting that more “localized” adaptations would start getting on television again, “this time as openly-Japanese works.” Sailor Moon and Rayearth had got his attention there; Sailor Moon did of course show up the way he mentioned but Rayearth didn’t. Contemplating where my interests might have gone had “the anime industry” dried up just after I’d moved beyond memories of Robotech at last was one thing, as was thinking of what might have headed off that particular fate. In any case, having taken so long to get to my university did at least mean I wasn’t stuck behind a wheel when my bus got caught in the backup from a highway accident on the way back.