anime

Anime is a more recent addition to my interests. I've always been interested in animation, and Japan's 'annie-may' industry has arguably the best animators in the world.

Before the Web Browser was invented, I was one of the brave individuals who used ftp as a primitive file exchange system. One day I discovered Nadia and Marc Hairston, and the flood gates were opened...


		Nadia (work in progress) Sometimes things strike a very resonant chord deep inside you. That's what happened to me back in 1992, when I was smitten by drawings of Nadia that I found whilst 'surfing' some of the deeper recesses of the internet of the time. This was before the browser, and anime was very much an underground activity that was restricted to a few hundred individuals around the world who had access to ftp clients and internet access. For me, this was 'love at first sight', and I've been hooked ever since...

		Hayao Miyazaki (work in progress) Miyazaki has changed from being Japan's own 'Walt Disney' to becoming known throughout the world for 'Princess Mononoke' and more recently, for 'Spirited Away' and 'Howl's Moving Castle'. But I was one of those fans who goes back rather further than that - in my case back to 1997, when I saw 'Laputa (aka Castle in the Sky' on UK television. I didn't record it, and these were the days before DVD, and so it wan't until several years later that I got a video of it recorded from Central TV.

		Conventions Although I've been an avid reader of science fiction from when I first read through the entire children's section of my local library - it wasn't an SF Con that was my first experience of a fan convention (although I have been to two WorldCons!). No, it was MinamiCon 2, in the days when it was held outside Portsmouth in a Hilton hotel by a roundabout well outside town. And, as it happens, I've been to every Minamicon since then. (Number 14 was in 2008, so I've been to 13 of them so far.) Minamicon

		So what type of anime do I like? Over the years, some very clear trends have emerged in my anime tastes. I've discovered the heady delights of story-arcs that take 26 or more episodes to develop and reveal themselves, and I've bawled my heart out more often over anime than over mainstream movies, although 'Somewhere in Time' did touch something very central to my psyche.

		And you make anime? I've always harboured the desire to make a film. When I was young I wanted to do special effects. Now that I'm older I want to make anime. Unfortunately I'm also old enough to know that this is a huge task, and that it is going to take longer than I expect to do anything useful. But I can be very persistent when pursuing my goals, and I've got the story and the means to make it (Martin Hash's superb Animation:Master software). All I need now is the time...