NEO-TOKYO 2099 INTERVIEWS: An interview with “Anime Stuff” (1987-1995) Owner/Publisher, Tom Mitchell

Years before anime publications in English such as “Animerica”, “Anime UK” and “Protoculture Addicts” were released in magazine and comic book shops, anime fans would have to obtain news and information through BBS and text-based zines.

“Anime Stuff”, which was created by Tom Mitchell back in 1987, was the go to publication for the latest in anime information. With wonderful insight to the world of anime, anime and anime soundtrack releases, what was going in the anime industry in Japan and the blossoming of the industry in the United States. And featured also many big names for those involved in the anime industry and fandom at the time.

As Neo-Tokyo 2099 BBS was one of the few online anime BBS that carried “Anime Stuff”, it was no doubt one of our most popular downloaded files.

While downloading an issue of “Anime Stuff” via text or with images may take a seconds with today’s high speed Internet, back then, it would take anywhere between 15-30 minutes or possibly close to an hour as 300, 1200 or 2400 baud modems were the fastest speeds to connect online back in the late ’80s and early ’90s.

But for our visitors from all over the world, reading the latest issue of “Anime Stuff” was worth the download and the wait (and also, the long distance phone bill for people to obtain these files). We would often received mail from readers who wanted more!

I easily can remember reading “Anime Stuff”on our PC’s, laptops (from Windows 3.0, then to Windows 3.1 and then Windows 95) and then added to my PDA, a Casio Cassiopeia E-100 (using Windows CE) back then, to read back issues during my breaks between classes during college.

Those were good times and “Anime Stuff” was no doubt an inspiration to me, may it be to be part of the first Neo-Tokyo 2099 Mega-Zine, the work that we did with J!-ENT including migrating to PDF-based articles and interviews but also for the initial beginnings of the SPY! CREW covering anime conventions as press and eventually leading us to cover entertainment worldwide.

And as J!-ENT and Neo-Tokyo 2099 are celebrating our 25th anniversary, we felt that since “AnimeStuff” was a big part of our lives when we started the BBS that it would be cool to interview the man behind the newsletter publication, Tom Mitchell.

Tom, can you please tell us how you came to create “Anime Stuff”?

TOM MITCHELL: The basic impetus for it was the desire to help fans new to the anime hobby like when I was just starting out, as kind of a pay-it-forward in a way that the first expert fans that I encountered helped me.

So, I wanted to get information out on things that I had found and learned about, and have that information packaged in a way that would save other fans time and trouble to find it for themselves. For example, when ever I would write about an item, like a soundtrack album or a video, I’d always include the catalog number for it. Catalog numbers were the key to getting things imported then. And they could be hard to find for a new fan who didn’t have access to magazines or media catalogs from Japan. And of course I was sure to list sources where these things could be ordered.

For about the first ten years that I was an anime fan, there were no online anime shops on the Web. So you’d mail-order anime goods via phone, fax, or email with a shop. And if they didn’t have what you wanted in their printed catalog, but they were willing to import something for you, the item or catalog number from the publisher was key.

How long did it take to create an issue of “Anime Stuff”? And was your staff all volunteer based?

TOM MITCHELL: Yes, everyone volunteered. I loved it when someone else could contribute as well. Anyone could contribute, although most of the folks contributing were members of CompuServe’s Anime & Manga group, as that was our social island among the walled commercial gardens of the Internet at the time. But occasionally someone who was a friend of someone in our group would come in with a submission from the outside; the world of Usenet and Newsgroups from the university networks.

The nice thing about “Anime Stuff” was that since it was just a text file, it could be any length. There wasn’t a limit to the amount of pages or problems with cutting things for cost.

As to how long it would take to create an issue, I just had a feel for how long I wanted the issue to be and what I wanted to get out as soon as possible. When it looked like it was filling enough, a new issue would be posted on CompuServe and my short-lived account on GEnie, and then it would get passed to the Usenet systems from the folks with access.

You can see that the first issues of “Anime Stuff” were very short. And that was just me, by myself, passing along any new-found anime knowledge I had. And issues got longer as we all learned and saw more.

You are closely approaching the 32nd year anniversary of “Anime Stuff”. It’s hard to believe it’s been this long but looking back at the memories, what are your favorite memories of working on it and what was your most challenging memories of the past working on “Anime Stuff”?

TOM MITCHELL: I think overall the favorite memory of making “Anime Stuff” was how it evolved, as we anime fans in our small forum on CompuServe evolved. And the larger view of how the anime industry and fandom grew and changed in the US, Japan, and in other places. Here in the US, it evolved to the point where “Anime Stuff” or CompuServe wasn’t needed any more as the Web opened the Internet up and information and contact among anime fans really exploded. Isolated pockets of fans and their knowledge and passions could merge and grow quickly.

Another favorite thing is the fact that folks found value in it and wanted to contribute. It felt good that my new friends in the hobby wanted to use it as a platform for a review or an essay. Particularly those friends who were much more experienced and knowledgeable in anime than I was at the time.

Compared to the pioneering fans who took on the pain-in-the-ass job of creating anime publications in print, there weren’t any really challenging aspects to the “Anime Stuff “newsletter, other than sitting down and getting something written amid the busy times of school and work.

Perhaps the biggest challenge for me was a lesson in loss of control when you set something free on the Internet, and find others altering or editing “Anime Stuff” without any notice.

That challenge was to be answered by moving from text and GIF graphics files for the distribution, and publishing with Adobe’s PDF digital document format as soon as that emerged. Then the whole thing could stay intact as it got passed around.

I remember when I first discovered “Anime Stuff” and I would always think, “How does this guy afford all these cool things!?” (laughing). The LD’s and hardware you had were by no means cheap, but I was grateful each time you covered these because it really influenced us whether or not to purchase the LD’s that were featured.

TOM MITCHELL: My entry into the anime hobby was rather different than most fans at the time. I pretty much bought everything I wanted to see because I was an isolated fan. I wasn’t a member of any tape-trading groups, or anime fan groups. I didn’t really know about those things at the start. It was just myself for a few months at the start until I discovered the anime group on CompuServe. That group was founded as a sub-group of the Comics & Animation Forum by Takayuki Karahashi. He was the first expert fan I encountered, and I consider him my anime sensei since he introduced me to the works of Hayao Miyazaki, and answered my questions on Japanese language, and many other anime and manga related things.

Taka was one of the main reasons I started cobbling together “Anime Stuff”. I wanted to help new anime fans in some of the same ways that he helped me with questions and information.

At the time I became an anime fan, I was transitioning from high school to college and I was working at that time and had a good job selling computers and consulting, and savings and investments. So, I was a single otaku that could afford a favorite new leisure time hobby.

Of course, most fans today get into anime as a hobby in their teens, so they can’t really afford to go importing stuff from Japan to watch and collect. But they really no longer have to in order to see something today, of course.

Before discovering anime, I was also a bit of an audio and videophile, so I always wanted to see and hear stuff in the best possible quality. So that’s the main reason I got into LaserDiscs.

And when I started, there were no commercial anime releases here in the US either, so I got into the habit of importing stuff from Japan or purchasing things in stock from places like Books Nippan, Nikaku Animart, or Sight & Sound; famous sources for fans at the time.

Well, I’m glad to hear that “Anime Stuff” helped you make some informed choices about what to spend your money on when you bought something we talked about. I hope you didn’t regret any the advice! If something was bad, we’d say so. If we got burned somehow on quality or presentation, or ordering problems, we’d mention it!

Our group of fans on the CompuServe Anime & Manga group helped each other avoid bad stuff and find good stuff. And that spilled into “Anime Stuff”. We’d often say we’d “lab rat” something. That is, someone in the group would be the first to check something out and let the rest of us know if it was worth it. It also helped that most of us were watching many of the same titles and had similar tastes.

The pricing of home video in Japan was and still is rather astonishing compared to the rest of the world. The reasons why are another story we could get into, but I do find it funny to see fans here in the U.S. crabbing about prices of boxed sets here that might cost $100 – $200 when we were paying say $98 for a single episode LaserDisc of Bubblegum Crisis imported from the Land of the Rising Yen. Boxed sets of TV shows were hundreds of Dollars and occasionally more in Japan. And still are, often.

Serious anime gourmet fans are very aware of the Japanese Yen to US Dollar ratio.

So at least we all tried to describe the stuff we picked up in detail to let other fans know if it was worth it. And to us otaku crack-heads, it often was.

One thing that fans in the US still don’t really know or get to experience is the quality of a Japanese boxed set, or even just an individual video release though. Then, and still often now, the quality of presentation and materials is at another level. So for a serious fan, importing an item related to a favorite anime or manga can be worth it to have the best possible quality packaged presentation available. It’s all relative to what you value and how rabid you are, of course.

The folks seen participating in “Anime Stuff” were very serious fans, indeed.

One of the coolest things about Anime Stuff was involving Hitoshi Doi, known for covering a lot of his anime adventures via event coverage through reports in English. Did you ever hear back from many Japanese anime fans who were fans of “Anime Stuff”?

TOM MITCHELL: I don’t recall ever hearing from any Anime Stuff readers from Japan, if there were any, that I didn’t already know from CompuServe. But again, it was a problem of pre-Internet fan isolation.

Many Japanese fans probably had no real idea there was a growing anime fandom in the US and elsewhere, much the same way that many anime studios and publishers in Japan had no notion that we were interested in watching and collecting their stuff in the West. Seriously, this would often come as a shock to them. They’d have no idea or thoughts about the overseas market. And then there was the big factor of the language barrier too.

Anime fans in the US were strange unicorn freaks to them. Haha! The anime group on CompuServe once got coverage in “Animage” magazine in a kind of a “Hey! Look at this surprise! Fans in America! Strange. Moving on…” kind of article. This was in the late 1980’s.

I did get to meet and converse with some very cool people from Japan through our group though. Folks both serious fans and pros in the industry. Hitoshi Doi is one of those cool people. Kind of an astonishing guy. And a true early ambassador to anime fans in the West.

Another interesting person from Japan in our group was Dr. Yoshitaka Ishigami (a.k.a. “CALCI”) how would even participate in our weekly forum text chats. He’s a serious fan who has been heavily involved in the famous and huge bi-annual Comic Market anime and manga fan doujinshi publishing event in Tokyo. He introduced me to that culture, and a few other otaku culture angles in Japan. And in return, I dubbed him the “OtakuDoc”. Haha!

Speaking about Japan, possibly the most popular articles from “Anime Stuff” and really gave insight to people outside of Japan about Japanese culture and Japanese high school life was “Japanese High School Life”. Of the many articles I saw being distributed taken from “Anime Stuff” and released on its own as a text file was that article. Not sure if you received a lot of comments on the article but I know for our BBS, it was popular!

TOM MITCHELL: Oh, yeah…I wanted to do more “anime life” related articles for “Anime Stuff”, so that was a welcome addition. Of course, as I mentioned before, I had no real idea of what folks were doing with “Anime Stuff” when it was released. But rarely sometimes I would get a request to be allowed to republish an article or review in print! Mostly from other fan publications dealing with anime or sci-fi. I seem to recall getting one request from a fan circle at the Comic Market in Japan wanting to reprint, translated, some things from “Anime Stuff”. Another interesting one was a fanzine in the US called “Hardwired Hinterland” that put a lot of our reviews in their pages.

But another person with inside connections that contributed to “Anime Stuff” was Chris Swett. Chris was one of the huge anime fans back in the day, but it seems his focus is now on farming. But he was one of your main anime insiders at the time. What was it like working with Chris and do you still have any contact with him today? Is he still into anime?

TOM MITCHELL: I keep up with Chris on Facebook currently. He’s a very cool guy, and I was grateful to have his help on the “Anime Stuff” and “Anime Stuff R” projects. At the time Chris, Jeanne Hedge, and I were sysops to the anime group on CompuServe, and it should be noted that Chris was one of the first anime fans to produce his own doujinshi at the Comic Market in Japan… So, that’s how serious of a fan he was.

I think it’s funny that you make it sound like he became a farmer…It’s more like he enjoys growing things for his own enjoyment and selling some. He’s recently gotten involved in creating a vacation rental business these days. The place he and his wife created looks like a really nice and relaxing getaway spot!

However in regards to anime, I think Chris has had his fill of the anime fan experience and has moved on to other life pursuits for the most part.

Back in the day, I was a SysOp of Neo-Tokyo 2099 BBS, and “Anime Stuff” was one of the most popular files being downloaded and part of the reason was that access to anime magazines were difficult. Anime Stuff was literally an online publication that people could depend on for anime information in text format before anime zines became popular. Was there a way to gauge how many readers you had at the time? And how was your reader mail?

TOM MITCHELL: That’s great to hear that you guys enjoyed it and found it so useful! Feedback and reactions from the online community outside CompuServe was so rare that I would have had no idea.

There actually was no way to ever know how many copies of “Anime Stuff” were distributed and read once it got beyond CompuServe. You could see how many copies were downloaded on CompuServe, but that was it.

And reader feedback outside of CompuServe was extremely rare. I did get a couple mailed letters from overseas, like from Germany and even South America. But nothing really from the Usenet crowd, etc.

One thing you learn about in marketing or creative media is that hearing back from folks who consume a product or an entertainment work is a very low percentage. That’s one of the lessons that “Anime Stuff’ taught me as well.

CompuServe taught me that when I was a sysop (something akin to a community moderator, along with some technical stuff) on some of the art Forums. People posting works would often see big downloads but were dismayed about getting little or no feedback on what folks thought about their work.

So not hearing feedback back much on “Anime Stuff” was not a surprise to me, really.

But since then, I’ve always made it a habit to thank the creators of stuff I love when I have the opportunity, and to let them know how much I enjoyed what they did. Of course, the Internet makes this much easier today.

But humans are still humans, despite the great power the Internet gives consumers for feedback. You will only often hear from folks when something is wrong or broken or involves money or offends someone in some weird way.

Many people may not know this but with issue #7, you brought Rick Sternbach to the team as part of the “Anime Stuff” staff back in 1988, before he became huge with “Star Trek: The Next Generation”. You brought Rick aboard because he reviewed anime model kits, but how did he join the staff? And curious, did you maintain contact with Rick after he became popular with TNG and moved on to “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine” and “Star Trek: Voyager”? And is he still interested in anime?

TOM MITCHELL: Rick was another member of the anime group on CompuServe, so that’s how I came in contact with him. So, I also welcomed contributions from him as well. At the time I met him in our anime group, I didn’t really know about his Star Trek connection or art career, I just knew him as another fun otaku in our group. But considering what a model builder he is, he was certainly a guy you’d want to have reviewing an anime model kit!

Although I’m also a Star Trek fan, I never really bugged him about it as I figured he, like other folks, were hanging out in our group to enjoy their anime hobby and to take a break from what they do outside of it.

I think the only thing we all really had fun with in that regard was when Rick was hiding some anime references inside “Star Trek: The Next Generation”, and we’d have some goofy suggestions for him. Another odd thing I worked with him on was the creation of our jackets we made for our anime group. We did two of them. But that’s another story that we can always bring him in on to tell.

But Rick Sternbach is just another example of the interesting and diverse people I met in the anime and manga hobby.

And yes, he’s still into and watching anime. I’m still in touch with him and we still make anime recommendations to each other. Rick and quite a few other folks from “Anime Stuff” and the CompuServe Anime & Manga forum now hang out in some of the anime groups on Facebook.

What is interesting about Anime Stuff is that before the masses even discussed anime on HDTV, you were discussing it issue #6 (March 1, 1988). What I loved about Anime Stuff is that in many ways, you were an influencer at the time. Making people want to buy LD. Making people interested in watching anime in the best way possible. Part of the reason why I bought my first LD player and S-VHS player was because of Anime Stuff. Was it your goal to promote LD to your readership?

TOM MITCHELL: As mentioned previously, I always want to see, hear, and collect my favorite stuff in the best quality possible. And I was importing what I wanted to see from Japan. Between LD vs. VHS tape, there was no contest in regards to quality. But you also have to keep in mind that VHS tape wears out with multiple viewings and LD didn’t. And there’s also the fact that commercial releases of anime on VHS in Japan often cost as much or more than on LaserDisc, so VHS wasn’t even worth the investment next to LD.

So, I also had no idea what the VHS tapes were like; I only talked about what I had on hand in Anime Stuff.

I was also an enthusiastic tech evangelist at the time, and LD was exciting! Being in sales and marketing, I can really sell a product or an idea if I have too. But that was not operating in “Anime Stuff”. I was just excited to talk about what I was seeing and trying to inform fellow fans on what I had picked up.

And I suppose I was in a bit of a bubble in that all of the anime fans I personally knew were collecting anime on LaserDisc as well, like a lot of the CompuServe gang.

You think about today’s anime fans who are preferring to watch their anime via digital streaming, while I prefer to watch my anime in Blu-ray (and for films, now moving to 4K Ultra HD), I’m curious what is the primary format of you watching anime? Digital, HD physical?

TOM MITCHELL: It’s kinda funny how today, streaming is typically even higher quality than LaserDisc was. When you were reading “Anime Stuff”, who would have thought we’d be slinging around HD video across the Internet to your couch or your phone?

I will watch anime I want to see via streaming today. Or if it’s something from Japan that hasn’t been released here yet, I’ll torrent it to check it out. When I find a show I love, I’ll pick up the Blu-ray discs to keep it. For the moment, Blu-ray is still the king of quality for fans wanting to see the best version of their anime when it’s done right. But now anime presented in 4K UHD resolution is just starting to show up. Ooooo. (^_^)

The last Anime Stuff that we ever had on our BBS was issue #20 (March 28, 1994) which featured “The Lost Interviews” but you alluded to an issue 21, but was there ever an issue 21?

TOM MITCHELL: There was a 21st issue released on March, 23rd, 1995. However the format of this issue was different in that it was the first issue to use Adobe’s then brand new Acrobat PDF format (Portable Document Format). But I suppose this issue wasn’t widely distributed outside of CompuServe because the users of Usenet were probably prejudiced against it due to it not being text-based, and since the format was new at the time, the folks who would normally grab it either wouldn’t touch it or know what to do with it.

I guess it was me, a GUI and font guy vs. the command line and ascii text users. Haha!

I did format a text-only version of it, just in case. It looks like the previous issues. But I never released it since nobody asked for one or I just put my foot down and didn’t release it at all, if I recall correctly.

Again, it was a way to keep more control of “Anime Stuff” as a package of text and graphics and how it was presented. Also I was tired of text only, and I wanted to do something digitally in presentation like the print anime magazines were doing at the time. But without the associated costs, etc.

I also used some of the digital rights management in the PDF format to prevent copying stuff out of the issue to maintain my presentation (Yeah, I was still pretty sore over what the anime gang at GEnie did to “Anime Stuff”, etc.) (grin)

It was a fresh experiment for Anime Stuff, and would be the way it would go forward. I did get some nice notes on it from some of the print anime magazine editors about it, which made me feel good. I really admired what the fans at “Animag” and “V.Max” were doing at the time. The gang at “Protoculture Addicts” were very kind too.

What made you decide to end “Anime Stuff”?

TOM MITCHELL: It I guess it never officially ended. At that time my career changed, and I wanted to go back to school and work towards my master’s degree. So, working for myself and getting back into school took my “Anime Stuff” time away. I was distracted, so I let it slide away. Ultimately, my feeling was that it really wasn’t needed anymore anyway with the emergence of anime fandom taking advantage of the World Wide Web to gather and share info and the excellent print magazines that were being published.

My fandom interaction time was spent on the Anime & Manga Forum on CompuServe, and having fun there.

I know one of the toughest challenges you had was people removing the graphics and editing your content. CompuServe and Genie were the main locations and then those were taken and uploaded to anime BBS. We would get Stuff through our network of Anime BBS SysOps and surprisingly, the majority of all “Anime-Stuff” that BBS carried, including ours at the time, were all text-based without the graphics. I always wondered about that… Did every issue come with graphics?

TOM MITCHELL: Including graphics files with “Anime Stuff” started with issue 7. Since I participated in the group that developed GIF at CompuServe, I was all gung-ho to do something with the new graphic file format. I may have been one of the very first people to create anime fan artwork in that format.

A lot of the text based anime places on the ‘net still separated or dropped the graphics from the issues, even though many still had file downloads. So again, when PDF came along, I jumped onto it to control the presentation.

Of course the graphics for “Anime Stuff” now look primitive in terms of resolution. For multi-color graphics, we typically just had 320 x 200 pixels and a limited color palette.

The best personal computers for graphics at the time were the Commodore Amiga and the Atari ST. I had the Atari ST and enjoyed using Tom Hudson’s D.E.G.A.S. painting program for drawing and painting. I also had a primitive new monochrome video digitizer that would let me capture now-crappy looking frame grabs from the anime I was talking about in the issue of “Anime Stuff”.

Post-“Anime Stuff”, years later, did you ever feel like bringing it back and were you ever interested in the state of the anime industry, especially anime in America and seeing how it evolved?

TOM MITCHELL: I’m always interested in anime and the industry around it. It’s been fun, and sometimes painful, to see how anime has evolved since the time I started watching and collecting stuff since 1985.

Anime was always kept as a hobby for me, even as I saw many fellow fans getting into it as a business. Being into business and marketing, I always have an analytical eye on the anime industry in that regard, but never thought about getting into it as a business myself due to the high risks and low profits. Haha! Plus, I’d seen some fans turn anime into a job and burn out on it. I don’t think that would happen to me, but it made me wonder.

However, I do observe the anime industry in Japan and the US. I don’t comment on it often because the average fan really could care less about that kind of detail. The majority of fans just want to be entertained and never really think of “show business” really meaning the business of putting on a show. But that stuff fascinates me. I remember being looked at as odd by in high school when during study hall and lunch time I’d be reading fresh issues of “Billboard” Magazine and “Variety”. Had it been just bit later, I’d probably bringing Japanese anime magazines and manga there too. Haha!

I do often think of bringing “Anime Stuff” back, as I do get the itch to write or talk about anime. At the time, I actually had a lot of notes, writing, and submissions for Anime Stuff 22 that never made it out. Perhaps I’ll do a “closet cleaning” issue sometime!

I’m not sure if you’re aware, but “Anime Stuff” did come back in a different form from 2001 to 2006. I did an Internet radio version of “Anime Stuff” called “Anime Stuff R” on the Live365 Internet radio service.

I’m a big soundtrack fan and collector, and I always collect the music from the anime that I love. Along with “image albums” and audio dramas too. I also did student radio in school, so I got pretty excited when it became possible to set up your own radio station online that could be heard by anyone with an Internet connection at an extremely low cost and no rules or limitations! I had to try it.

I then set up “Anime Stuff R”, but I wanted it to be a bit different from the typical anime radio stations you heard then and still today. Most stations are just collections of anime music tracks randomly streamed. So my idea was do to “Sessions” (inspired by Cowboy Bebop’s episode titling) of shows that would be based around a theme. Say a show on Macross music, a show on the the music of Patlabor, or a show on music from popular romantic anime. The sessions featured talk about the show or theme, explaining it to new fans, along with the music. Each session ran around two to three hours, and was broadcast for about a month.

“Anime Stuff R” also had an associated website where fans could see what the album art and graphics from the show being featured looked like, along with other related information.

Again, I had help from fellow fans from CompuServe. Along with all the shows I did, fellow forum members Richard Rae and Chris Swett submitted shows too. Probably the most famous episode that’s known and pirated around the Internet is Richard’s “Zimphony” show, where we made one non-anime exception and featured Kevin Manthei’s music from the American cartoon series “Invader Zim”.

Ironically, the folks pirating this show usually strip out all the narrative parts of the show…Just like the graphics were often stripped from Anime Stuff. Bastards. (grin)

Another episode, the “Mach Go! Go! Go! / Speed Racer” music session got me a consulting request from the producers of the live action “Speed Racer” movie from 2008.

I’m currently toying with making Anime Stuff R available again to fans to hear, and perhaps doing some new shows. At the moment I’m creating HD album art for each episode so that they will look good playing on modern playback devices.

“Anime Stuff R” ended when I had to put everything aside to care for my ailing parents for a few years. So that was the end of “Anime Stuff” stuff.

Curious, have you remained an anime fan since the last issue of Anime Stuff? Do you still watch it today? And what are your favorite titles?

TOM MITCHELL: Oh, yeah. I’m a huge anime fan, and I don’t see that ever ending. Anime and manga just encompasses many of the things I love into one medium: art, design, film, music, sound design, story, character, voice acting, business, marketing. And it’s influenced me in many valuable ways, from design and presentation, to introducing me to the Japanese language and culture. In addition to the diverse and interesting friends I’ve made, and people I’ve met.

I watch old stuff, I watch new stuff. My favorite titles are really too many to list, but the very first anime I ever saw in Japanese that hooked me was the Macross movie “Do You Remember Love” from 1984. It was my first anime LaserDisc, of course. This week I’m watching current titles “Darling in the Franxx”, “Sword Art Online – Alternative Gun Gale Online”, and “Yowamushi Pedal”, among others.

There’s always too much to see, so I try to stick to genres I enjoy, like noir-ish sci-fi, for example, and then look to see what else is really hot among the fans, or unusual or lesser known stuff that the seriously gourmet fans are recommending.

I certainly have way more than enough old and new anime to talk about if “Anime Stuff” were to start up again. And perhaps I’d get more into talking about the industry and social commentary on fandom as well.

Tom, I am grateful for you in taking part of this interview. Back then, “Anime Stuff” was a publication that gave a lot of information to fans, information that couldn’t be featured in print publications and for the most part, I think people would be surprised that prior to “Animerica”, “Protoculture Addicts”, “Anime UK”, “Anime Stuff” was the first mass online anime publication to feature the anime scene domestically and also what was going on in Japan. It was the go to anime publication (note: Animag was also released in 1987 but it was not easy to find). How does that feel to have created something so special that people today are starting to discover?

TOM MITCHELL: I’m just glad to know that folks found it so useful and perhaps entertaining. It’s also nice to have contributed some firsts with it to anime fandom on the ‘Net. And for folks who might be curious to read it today, I hope it provides information on some classic titles along with a glimpse of what collecting anime was like in the 80’s and 90’s. At least from the point of view of our little unique Galapagos Island of fandom that was the group of fans on CompuServe in the pre-World Wide Web days of Internet anime fandom.

Many people will be discovering Anime Stuff for the first time with this interview. What final words would you like to share with them?

TOM MITCHELL: Respect the old, and embrace the new!

Too many new fans are missing out on some amazing stuff from the past few decades of anime by limiting themselves to only recent titles. “Old” does not equal bad or dull. Some things in the past are actually superior to what’s made now. The golden age of the Original Anime Video (a.k.a. OAV or OVA) from the 80’s and 90’s come to mind. Explore those!

On the other side, a lot of older fans are locked into the notion that anime today sucks, and if it’s not on a cel, it can go to Hell. However, they are missing out on some amazing gold among the usual gravel if they look hard enough for something to fit their tastes. There are still some amazing works made today, even if you have to explore outside of the usual mainstream or heavily promoted choices.

And that said, I’m gonna go stuff some more anime.

You can download all issues of “Anime Stuff” here

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