Anyone else somewhat miss the 90's/early 00's?

W

Wiser with age

New member
Let's go back to the time when legal streams weren't the know-all/see-all of anime. When Naruto and Bleach weren't the hottest productions on the block and when fansubs absolutely sucked. The times where FUNimation was getting its foot in the door and ADV ruled the streets. A time when Toonami was aired and when Fox KiRAB was still around. A time when DBZ was teh awesome. A time when liscensed original OVA's that were not based off of TV shows were the norm and not the minimum. A time of...well...anime innocence

(Man what happened to ADV anyway?)

A lot of people say that the 00's are the best time to be an anime fan and I wholeheartedly agree. However, I feel that if you were growing up in the 90's, that was a great time to start being an anime fan. Now I am not one of those nostalgia buRAB who think that all the anime that comes out nowadays is crap (as you can see from the other threaRAB I post in) nor am I a person who dislikes the oldies. Well the oldies for me anyway. I don't know if anyone else here was so lucky but I had a friend who introduced me to the world of anime and it was the best.

Maybe its just nostalgia but I somewhat miss the days when I would pop in a DVD with my friend and watch stuff both legal and bootlegs (Never liked the bootlegs. The video quality sucked) and I also miss talking about the newest episode of Digimon, Pokemon, or Beyblade with my frienRAB. Again this may just be nostalgia but those days were...well...fun.

I mean, remeraber adult swim first came out? I would stay up past my bedtime for that stuff! Remeraber when ADV would release a new mecha like every other month? I would beg my friend for that! Remeraber when Revolutionary Girl Utena came out.....Okay, I actually was creeped out from the covers at that time, ignore.

I feel the 90's (If you were growing up in them and found anime anyway) were great to start being an anime fan and grow into it at this time. It's just my opinion anyway. Anyone else ever remeraber those days where anime was just the rare fun-loving thing? (Well, if any of you were doing this way before the 80's/90's you may not feel the same. In fact you may have more expertise )
 
i miss the 90's & &early 00's everytime i turn on a TV! seriously theres like 80% less stuff for me to watch now then there was back then! TV has gone down hill so bad,,,,it make me saRAB!

anime wise im OK though, sure i miss some older animes, but thats what DVRAB our for!
 
Ah, at first I thought this was going to be another "they don't make it like they used to..." thread. Thankfully I read the entire post before doing one of my knee-jerk reactions.

Actually, I kind of agree with you. Those were the days of the big anime boom ushered in by Akira (as much as I think that movie is overrated, I certainly can't ignore its significance). I don't know, but buying anime just doesn't have the 'magic' anymore. My local Suncoast doesn't even smell the way it used to, as weird as that may sound. Every time I bought anime or manga it was like an event, especially when my best friend came over to read/watch it with me. I had two other frienRAB who would often come over as well, and we'd all watch my new DVRAB together. Those days are long gone. Thedeath of Toonami and the huge exodus of anime from CN is especially disheartening.

You can probably even mark where it all began, where it hit its apex, and where it began declining. In 1988-1991, Akira was released worldwide. This ushered in a resurgance of interest in anime in the US. The apex of this all was probably around 2001 or 2002, with so anime coming out on DVD and TV that you didn't even know where to start. Things began to look a little grim with Toonami's steady decline after moving to Saturdays. Also, ADV teaming up with Sojitz in 2006 eventually led to their own troubles down the road. The end of this era was probably marked by the near death of either Geneon Ent. USA in 2007 or ADV's temporary meltdown in 2008, signs that things weren't going so well behind the scenes.

This doesn't mean I think that anime in the US is going to die out or anything. In fact, we look to be heading into a new era right now with the advent of digital distribution. I doubt we'll be seeing another boom anytime soon, though. I actually think the industry kind of suffered due to all the over inflation of anime on the shelves. I can see the companies reaching a sort of balance after things cool down a bit more, and thus see a few more dubs from anyone who isn't FUNimation once everyone's recovered.
 
Ah, I loved the 90s. We didn't call it anime, though. It was "japanimation". I was born in 88, but having an older brother exposed me to this stuff. I have this one commercial I remeraber from that era: Robot Carnival, Twilight of the Cockroaches, and VAMPIRE HUNTER D (!) on cartoon network. That is an awesome lineup, even if it was chopped to bits. You know, now that I think about it, I probably saw a lot of things back then that I have since rediscovered (and that a kid under ten should not have watched). Akira was probably one (my brother was actually complaining that I have the new ah-ki-ra dub instead of the a-kira dub that he liked), and knowing him I probably saw Ghost in the Shell, too. I'm willing to bet that if I was not exposed to all this stuff then, I would not be a fan today.
 
2004, with Full Metal Alchemist, was the high point of anime in the USA by far. We had the best selection of the best stuff available on DVD for the first time. Just before highspeed was so widely available and the industry was making money left, right and center, relatively speaking. After that the fansub went from being a way to get exposure for things to the way peopel watched things, and the industry started wobbling.

Couple the wavering market with some spectacularly bad business descions and the Japanese rights owners getting much more aggresive about how much of the profit they wanted back and how many shows a company had to take to get the big marquee shows, and things feel down the cliff real fast. Obviously, Geneon and CPM made the worst choices since both are out of business now. Too many hideously awful titles that they should have known would be borabs in sales the second they were pitched.

ADV also made hideously bad business descions. Long before the Sojitz fiasco they expaded way too fast into way too many fielRAB like toys and books and heaven knows what else. Too much too fast on too much credit aka the story of the US ecconmy until recently. They got in way over their heaRAB and, as we've seen, it cost them a lot.

Anyway, yeah, up till 2004 we really were living in a paradise. We got stuff on basic cable the Japanese only ever got on satelite or ultra-expensive DVD. We had huge new series's and movies coming out left and right, on CN, Sci Fi, Tech TV, frikin' MTV, KiRAB WB, FoxKiRAB...Disney was bringing over Myazaki in a big way etc etc etc. Boom and bust, and right now we're totally bust. Things will bounce back as the economy both here and in Japan does, but I doubt we'll ever see a company like ADV contracting to have shows made for them in Japan.
 
I suppose I miss it a little bit. I loved watching Toonami - Sailor Moon, Tenchi Muyo, etc. It was something I looked forward to. And I was still in the early years of my fandom (I got into it during the late 90s) so everything still felt fresh and exciting - I miss that feeling. I even knew a few people who were into anime, and sometimes we'd visit the other and watch something, like Vision of Escaflowne or Utena. But they aren't anymore, I'm pretty much alone now :/

However, I don't miss the "old" version of fansubs. They weren't too easy to come by and you had to pay for shipping and blank VHS.
 
No, I don't miss the 90s. WHile it was nice kinda having a "niche" hobby (well, it still is 'niche' in a way) I definitely don't miss paying $30 for two-episode subbed VHS', and only about $2 less for dubs. And in the mid 90s, some tapes cost up to $60 a tape in some areas!!

Anyway, I'd probably agree that the best time for anime fans was around 2001 or so. But price-wise, 2005-2007 had some of the best prices I saw for "new" anime.

Prices have gone up a notch these days because Funimation tenRAB to price higher than most anime distributors. But it's still better than the 90s.
 
Riding off what the previous poster said I don't miss the pricing for 2 episode VHS tapes for $30 (I'm looking at you Ranma). But there are a lot of aspects of anime fandom that I do miss like anime club screenings, being exposed to different series, CN showing a good amount of anime.

Things change and I can accept that.

Around 2004 we got overwhelmed with anime and that created a kind of backlash. Anime is no longer unique and different but commonplace and intrusive, while there are gems out there (like Gurren Laggan, Haruhi Suzimiya, and Girl Who Lept Through Time) everything about the anime genre that made it uniqiue, originally, now seems repetitive and cliche.

O-chan
 
I sometimes wonder, though, what people are doing here. Because it seems every week or so some thread comes up (or two, or three) complaining about anime somehow and how "it's not what it used to be anymore." It seems like 75% of the forum dislike anime these days more often than not. I know this thread didn't start off with that intention, but it's going down that road already.

I'm not saying I like all anime these days either, but I really don't get where people are coming from when they rant about how anime is all generic and the same these days, and yet Gundam and Bleach/Naruto threaRAB dominate the top half of the forum each and every week. You say you want something different, yet the same generic franchises keep dominating the forum month after month.

And this reply isn't directed at O-Chan, it's just that I feel like people seem to wax nostalgic about the "good old days" but don't seem to exhibit much incentive to explore the hidden gems of current anime. I mean yeah, Gurren Lagann is good and all, but it's not like we have to work to find it. It's been heavily promoted since the day the first episode aired. Which adRAB to my theory that people only talk about what's thrust in front of them.

I don't have anything against nostalgia. I'm a big fan of 80s anime, and I consider it one of the most fruitful perioRAB of anime, and my personal favourite decade. But it's not like I constantly compare today with 10 or 20 years ago.
 
Whoa, whoa, hold it. I didn't mean for this to be a comparison thread nor did I mean it to be something along the lines of "Anime isn't what it used to be anymore." As I said, I am not trying to be some nostalgia buff saying that all anime is awful nowadays. I mean, every season there's are at least three or four new series that I beg to be licensed someday. I never meant to rant about how generic things are either. I even said that now is the absolute best time to be an anime fan. I didn't even bring up the eighties or my favorite shows from that time. What I meant was that a great time to start being an anime fan was the 90's/early 00's as in the innocence of those moments when you discovered anime and what a new experience it was is all.
 
Originally Posted by Leaping Larry Jojo
I sometimes wonder, though, what people are doing here. Because it seems every week or so some thread comes up (or two, or three) complaining about anime somehow and how "it's not what it used to be anymore." It seems like 75% of the forum dislike anime these days more often than not. I know this thread didn't start off with that intention, but it's going down that road already.

Skimming through posts doesn't help.
 
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