What an overwhelming week it’s been for me! On Monday I announced my new project, Anime Origin Stories, and immediately got inundated with your amazing fandom histories. We just passed the 100 submissions mark today, and since I’m planning to post one a day, I’m going to have my hands full for a good part of 2017! I couldn’t have done this without my readers sharing and encouraging people to check out the project.

I’ll be posting Anime Origin Stories even on the weekend, but that’s only two links. So here, have a ton more, several of which are inspired by my dive into early fandom:

• How VHS Tapes and Bootleg Translations Started an Anime Fan War in the 90s. Back when American anime was for boys and nobody would take a risk on shojo, fansubs were the only way to get Fushigi Yugi, and stuff got heated.
• What were early fansubs like? Somebody asked Answerman at Anime News Network why a fansub circle called Kodocha had purple VHS tapes, and it turns out Answerman was part of Kodocha! Anime has come a long way.
• Speaking of subs, my first Anime Origin Stories interviewee, Mark, told me about AnimEigo, one of the first companies to legally bring anime to the US and, what’s more, with extremely detailed liner notes describing all the untranslatable jokes that might go over viewers’ heads. They have them all archived, and I can’t believe how deep they go into things in Urusei Yatsura, for example.
• Megan covers the Josei Renaissance, and how a manga marketing shift in the ’00s led to an increasing number of manga being made for, and read by, adult women.
• From Daicon to Gonzo to EMON: An interview with Shouji Murahama. Wave Motion Cannon translated this interview that details the producer’s storied career.
• What does ‘otaku’ really mean? Is it an insult? Everyone’s favorite dictionary covers the history of my favorite Japanese loan word.
• Finally, this is just a good time to remind you of the existence of 80s Anime, a Tumblr that belongs to khoda who also happens to be an excellent translator—though it may be old, some of the stuff she posts is in English for the first time!

Scan via Fushigi Yugi.