{"id":1132,"date":"2010-02-22T20:21:00","date_gmt":"2010-02-22T20:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gatocasa.com\/unimat\/2010\/02\/22\/gaining-a-new-fandom-in-five-easy-steps\/"},"modified":"2010-02-22T20:21:00","modified_gmt":"2010-02-22T20:21:00","slug":"gaining-a-new-fandom-in-five-easy-steps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gatocasa.com\/unimat\/2010\/02\/22\/gaining-a-new-fandom-in-five-easy-steps\/","title":{"rendered":"Gaining a new fandom in five easy steps"},"content":{"rendered":"

Though I didn’t realize it at the time, I first became an anime fan probably around the age of six, when I saw a single episode of “Speed Racer”. I didn’t know what was going on in the story, but that car was awesome<\/i>. Later on, I unwittingly fed the growing otaku inside me when I became addicted to “Battle of the Planets”. The show seemed oddly edited, and the plots a bit repetitive, but that plane\/spaceship* was awesome<\/i>. My final step came with my introduction by rattrap<\/a> to “Robotech: Macross”. True, I cringed every time Minmei appeared on screen**, but those transforming fighter planes were awesome<\/i>.<\/p>\n

(What pattern? Yes, I’m a SF hardware nerd, so what?)<\/p>\n

But my first “hey, this is in Japanese” anime told the story of a comedy alien invasion<\/a> led by a green-haired, tiger-stripe-bikini-clad princess named Lum. I saw a single episode before leaving for a con, and began learning the fan technique of “supplying one’s own storyline to go with the untranslated video”. Still confusing, but the princess was adorable, and the love interest was clearly a complete dork: a character I could relate to!<\/p>\n

Oh, I still might have escaped anime fandom. Pretty unlikely: I still had the “Dirty Pair”, “Captain Harlock”, and “BubbleGum Crisis” ahead of me, and all those wonderful, wonderful, animated spaceships and giant robots. But no, I was doomed: at the next con I attended, a local fan delectably costumed herself as Lum.*** That was pretty much it for me. I’ve been con-going, costuming, and performing ever since. And now that Starr’s picked out a couple of characters to try, and I’ve hooked up with Luna-C, I don’t see this changing anytime soon.**** As was said at Farpoint, I’ll stop by reality long enough to get the bills paid, but I’ve got the next con marked on my calendar…<\/p>\n

*The Phoenix was only supposed to be a plane, but American translator\/editors turned it into a spaceship. I have no grounds to criticize, as I did that often enough with my toys when little.<\/p>\n

**In the Japanese original, Minmay does sing better… but she’s not really much less annoying.<\/p>\n

***Longtime members of southwest Virginia fandom may well remember the lady in question. Especially if they’re straight males or gay females.<\/p>\n

****Fear not; I have enough respect for your collective eyeballs to never wear a Lum costume. Besides, it’s drafty.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Though I didn’t realize it at the time, I first became an anime fan probably around the age of six, when I saw a single episode of “Speed Racer”. I didn’t know what was going on in the story, but that car was awesome. Later on, I unwittingly fed the growing otaku inside me when […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[10,7,41,106,36],"class_list":["post-1132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-anime","tag-costuming","tag-fandom","tag-luna-c","tag-tv"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1xCb9-ig","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gatocasa.com\/unimat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gatocasa.com\/unimat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gatocasa.com\/unimat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gatocasa.com\/unimat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gatocasa.com\/unimat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gatocasa.com\/unimat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1132\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gatocasa.com\/unimat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gatocasa.com\/unimat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gatocasa.com\/unimat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}