#oldtaku

[anna-neko]

cosplay so old** ... it was shot ON FILM (during the last millennium no less), atta con that still exists at least **yes, the cosplayer is even a teen! Not quite the chara's age, but close enuff

[acquired-stardust]

Dirty Pair (OVA) Sunrise 1987

[retrodeluxe]

[rxgeryoxng]

The dub is always better

[icarus-suraki]

Thinking about that "Western names for MDZS characters" post and, yeah, let's not do that. But it reminded me of a story:

Back in the early 2000s, a rumor was floating around the anime internet that there was going to be a US-made live-action movie version of Neon Genesis Evangelion. All of us fans were, naturally, appalled. But a game developed among us where we created "fan" casts of plausible but awful actors and then tried to come up with horrible Westernized character names. Because that was what happened back then. And we knew whoever was trying to make this rumored movie would fuck it up so bad. We had a good, cynical laugh about it.

I don't remember many of the names we came up with, but I do remember someone betting on "Sean Icarus" for Shinji Ikari.

Thank fuck it was just a rumor.

Nowadays they might keep the characters' names the same, but they'd all be played by Scarlett Johansson.

[frogshunnedshadows]

Army guy from AKIRA costume completed.

Details below:

I think I was up just past eleven last night hanging the flak jacket to dry. Got up at 6:30 AM to finish work this morning.

Took a little time to try to iron in some creases to accentuate the top stitched details on the front and back.

Decided on the back symbol and redrew it in Illustrator. Cut an adhesive black vinyl version, which would not stick to the vest fabric (?!), so I cut a stencil out of some other adhesive vinyl. Mixed up a 'primer' coat of orange by eye to seal the edges of the stencil, quick dried it with a heat gun, then applied the black paint and heat gunned that.

Clumsily hand-sewed the shoulder patch on. And, of course, forgot the gloves in the car.

Moderately proud of this. Pretty accurate, all things considered. All cotton, so about as cool as it could be. Flak jacket made entirely from scratch, based loosely off a store-bought pattern. Fully lined and interfaced! Wire in the collar, fully functional box-pleated pocket, and fully functional zipper! A big, dumb, sweaty, sore, pain in the ass to make, but mission accomplished.

[neonscandal]

I DON'T KNOW WHO NEEDS TO HEAR THIS BUT-

this girl right here, THIS GIRL RIGHT HERE!? Really lived our dreams. baby girl was isekai'd into a book, courageously undertook a transformative adventure as a priestess (fraught with a sprinkle of trauma for zest) and managed to bring her 2D man irl at the end of everything. Miaka was the original simp and she deserves her flowers.

[mxkitchimera]

Celeste - [Lyrical Rollerskater Magical Melody] acrylic gouache, 5.5 x 5.5"

So there's this series on tiktok I adore by bunmira and friends. It's a magical girl show with so many of my favorite past-life-in-a-different-world-and-hazy-memories-about-it tropes. I just genuinely enjoy this collaborative citypop-soundtracked project. I think the things that this group of people created have really inspired me to put on my rose-tinted nostalgia goggles and sift through memories of overnight downloads to watch an episode of Fushigi Yuugi or Hime-chan no Ribbon in 240p. Sounds silly, but the warm fuzzies I get when a new lil ep drops help me reach through time and remember what it felt like to engage with anime and manga when it/I was shiny and new. In the past year and change I've explored my color palettes, I revisited classic anime, I've been enjoying new anime and manga... I've tapped into a source of art and joy that had been turned off for like a decade. Sometimes it's just nice to have a silly cute little episode of a thing to look forward to.

I end up sketching Celeste the most--I love the ouji styles she wears! But this is the first piece of her I actually finished!

[therealzoddvongotz]

Reposting old art I did in the past

[balrog-slayer66]

Old anime con booklets

[damescarletaznable]

🔹 Rest In Peace 🔹 Rest In Peace, Kevin Lilard Kevin inspired me to write convention reports and document my adventures since I was in high school. Kevin ran Fansview, an anime con media site that documented cosplay photos and event summaries. He provided his thoughts on the convention and countless cosplay photos through the weekend. You can truly get a feel of what cons were like through his reports. Kevin would take everyone’s photo. If you had a costume, he would take it. It didn’t matter if you made it or if it was thrifted, he loved meeting cosplayers. He was always friendly and I’m happy to have known him personally. Kevin have me the nickname of “most dangerous woman of anime” after running into me cosplaying as Yomiko Readman many a time at anime cons in the 00’s 🔹 Photo taken at Anime Los Angeles 2007 during a photographers / media mini meet up. 🔹 Photo is a screenshot of Fansview when I was on the cover of the website in January 2009 #fansview #animecons #animecon #kevinlilard #cosplayphotography #cosplayphotographer #oldtaku https://www.instagram.com/p/ClAv9I7rOsH/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[anna-neko]

apropos of nothing - one of the bestest 90s oldskool anime music vids set to Julie Brown's 'cause I'm a blond

the Mihoshi bit never fails to make me laugh

[acquired-stardust]

Dirty Pair Flash 1 Sunrise 1994

[retrodeluxe]

I cant believe I drew this 2 years ago!

[icarus-suraki]

I've been thinking about a post that's been circulating here about the subtle racism present in Western/white danmei fandom (which is definitely there, whether one realizes it or not). And it reminded me a lot of 1990s anime fandom.

First, for the record, I'm white. Just so we're clear. Okay, moving on:

The DIC dubbed version of Sailor Moon was broadcast when I was 13, in 1995 (and I jumped right on it too). Around that same time, the SciFi channel was showing a handful of animes in rotation on Saturday mornings. There were a few dubbed anime and even fewer subbed anime on VHS at Blockbuster. 9 times out of 10, no one ever really knew how to pronounce "Neon Genesis Evangelion" or "Urusei Yatsura." And the general perception of "anime" in general was that it was raunchy at the mildest and only got progressively more pornographic from there.

But as these things started to appear in the US and be available to a wider audience, all these racist stereotypes of Japan and Japanese people started to surface too. To quote someone from the time, "Isn't manga the kinky stuff Japanese businessmen read on the train?" That was the perception: it's all dirty. (Sailor Moon, Dragon Ball, Ronin Warriors and some other early arrivals helped with that some, because they were clearly children's cartoons. But then we had to deal with the whole "children's cartoons" issue when looking at NGE and Miyazaki's movies. But I'm digressing and glossing over whole decades of localized anime.)

tl;dr: in the early and mid 90s, if you were a fan of anime you were very much a consumer of a "foreign" product.

So we loved it but there was a very steep learning curve when it came to actually understanding what we were watching, especially as the internet got bigger and better and we learned that, wait, there are outer senshi? There are whole other storylines?

And there was an entirely different visual language and cultural foundation to these shows (and later movies and manga and so on). Why the heck does she have a giant drop next to her head? Why is she holding that piece of paper? What does it mean to work at a shrine? A shrine to what? What's the deal with the cherry blossoms? Why does he have an expression like that on his face? What does it mean when the characters do this? And this was in the 90s, so the internet then is not what it is today. We had to fumble our way around and learn the details of these "foreign" cartoons, while contending with the stereotypes other people (usually adults lol) had about Japan, anime, and Japanese people. But we did learn! We'd read, we'd hit up the internet as much as we could, we'd talk to one another, we'd go to events and conventions and just try to pick up as much as we could. Because we were curious! We wanted to know!

We were lucky because within a few years we had Princess Mononoke in movie theaters (not many, but some) and Cowboy Bebop popped up and Gundam Wing came along and the internet got better and anime stopped being such a fringe interest and now there's better information and understanding (at least a little).

That's a long story to say that the Western danmei fandom needs to do the same thing: get down into the cultural source and learn stuff.

You have got to acknowledge that you are engaging with works from a culture that is not your own. You can't just slap Western concepts onto it and try to shove an entirely different culture into the framework of your own culture. That's not going to work. And, no, you won't understand everything right off. There's layers in here and you have to acknowledge that and start learning.

You're engaging with concepts and worldviews that are almost certainly not the same as your own, my fellow white danmei fans, and you have got to realize that. Step back from your notions and your expectations and, yes, your racism and stereotypes, and start looking at the complexity of an entire culture out of which a character you love has arisen.

Once upon a time, someone here on Tumblr wanted to do a presentation about how "magical girl" characters like Sailor Moon and Sakura Kinomoto were inherently feminist. The problem was that this person never even considered the ways "feminism" might look or be discussed in Japan. This person was imposing Western feminism on characters that were created entirely outside that worldview/mindset. Don't do that. It's unfair to the creator, it's unfair to the creator's culture, and it actually kind of stifles your opportunity for learning.

Will I ever understand Japanese culture as well as a Japanese person? Absofuckinglutely not. But I know more than I once did, which means I can enjoy more aspects of animanga than I used to. I can get more of it and I'm less likely to misinterpret the creator's intentions. I'm not that great at it and I love a good translator's note, but I can get more of some of it.

So dig in to the cultural foundations and stop shoving Western cultural concepts onto works that weren't created in that milieu. (Yes, I said "milieu!") Get curious! I am begging you to stop assuming and get curious! Ask yourself "why?" and then get to researching!

For your first assignment, stop writing fanfic where Lan Wangji sounds like a robot. He uses short, perfect, referential phrases because he's elegant and educated. In English, the most elegant characters use elaborate language. Not so in many Chinese works: the fewer and more perfectly chosen the words, and the more meaning lying within those words, the more refined and educated the character is. It's like he's so good with language that he doesn't even need to use it anymore.

At least, that's my superficial understanding at the moment. I've got tons more to learn.

So let's get learning and stop shoving our expectations, assumptions, worldview, stereotypes, and cultural baggage onto works that exist and were created outside all of that. Let the works stand on their own and learn their foundations.