The Old School Otaku Lounge

So while we may have some fantastic nostalgic love for stuff from the golden days of anime fandom like laserdiscs, fansubs, rec.arts.anime, magazines like Protoculture Addicts and Starlog, etc, there's stuff that I am glad are gone. While not getting into too heavy of topics, what are some stuff from that era you're glad to no longer see? Here are some of mine.

Poofy hair. Gosh, I really hated how girls would tease their hair and make it so poofy. Especially with a big poof up front and poofy on the sides. They looked like poodles.

Geometric shapes in loud colors. I guess the old Max Headroom and Coca Cola commercials are partially to blame. I know in the late '80s and early '90s, I had my share of shirts and sweaters with these colorful geometric shapes. Lots of triangles and such on top of striped backgrounds. I think this was seen as "technology" with computer graphic programs doing this sort of thing. It's amusing seeing old VHS with computer animated company logos in this fashion.

Floppy, baggy clothes. I guess wearing oversized clothing became real big in Manchester, England and it spread throughout the world. I'm glad those "Parker Louis Can't Lose" style rayon collared shirts are no longer seen. I admit that I had some of those, with matching rayon cardigans and such. At the time I thought they look cool, but they didn't feel too comfortable because they were too loose and floppy, were made of rayon, and buttoned up to the top button. Plus, the patterns were often obnoxious. See above.

Paying too much for CDs. I remember paying $16+ for CDs back then at Sam Goody, The Warehouse, Tower Records, etc. It wasn't until Best Buy came to town that prices were more reasonable for music. All those music stores at the mall eventually disappeared, too.

Telephone modem connections. I really enjoyed discovering the online world of BBSes, FIDONet, and eventually the Internet, but man, those connection times were so slow. And we'd get kicked offline if an incoming call came through with Call Waiting, but if we used *70 to reject incoming calls, nobody could get through to us. Nowadays, we no longer have to hear, "Could you log off, please? I'm expecting a phone call." I am nostalgic for those 2400 baud modem connecting noises though.

Grunge music. Oh gosh, I hate that crap. I won't rant much, but I'll just say that it killed Alternative radio and good music took many long years to recover from that. Up yours, Eddie Vedder!

Nothing but dub-only VHS to rent. I hated how English-dubbed anime was always preferred for rentals. A lot of times I just didn't bother renting a title, even if it was one I wanted to see, because it was dubbed. I remember renting the first episode of Bubblegum Crisis out of curiosity and it was so embarrassing to watch. "So I will like, uh, avenge her death." Not quite that bad, but pretty close.

"640K ought to be enough for anybody." While it may be true that Bill Gates never actually said this quote, the frustration of the PC architectural limitation still remained. I remember trying to configure the AUTOEXEC.BAT file with LOAD HIMEM.SYS or whatever it was just to try to get Wing Commander to play the voice acting add-on. And when I did, it would slow down the game and crash it often.

So what can you think of that you're glad is a thing of the past?

Kind of expected more along the lines of "not having to walk fifteen miles in the snow, uphill, both ways to get my fansubs".

greg wrote: Telephone modem connections. I really enjoyed discovering the online world of BBSes, FIDONet, and eventually the Internet, but man, those connection times were so slow. And we'd get kicked offline if an incoming call came through with Call Waiting, but if we used *70 to reject incoming calls, nobody could get through to us. Nowadays, we no longer have to hear, "Could you log off, please? I'm expecting a phone call." I am nostalgic for those 2400 baud modem connecting noises though.

I never had to worry about Call Waiting, thanks to my cheap parents, but the worst for me was just them going to pick up the phone. Eventually had to leave notes on the kitchen phone when we were online.

One of my cel phones had the old dial up modem tones as a ringer and I was the scourge of the office with it.

greg wrote: Grunge music. Oh gosh, I hate that crap. I won't rant much, but I'll just say that it killed Alternative radio and good music took many long years to recover from that. Up yours, Eddie Vedder!

I'll admit, I am partial to grunge purely for nostalgia value. Unlike my rekindled love with 80s synth, punk or ska, I don't think I'll ever seek out new artists or the like when it comes to grunge.

greg wrote: Nothing but dub-only VHS to rent. I hated how English-dubbed anime was always preferred for rentals. A lot of times I just didn't bother renting a title, even if it was one I wanted to see, because it was dubbed. I remember renting the first episode of Bubblegum Crisis out of curiosity and it was so embarrassing to watch. "So I will like, uh, avenge her death." Not quite that bad, but pretty close.

I found this problem typical when renting from chains like Blockbuster, but I was lucky that when I had the spare change to rent tapes more frequently, there was a more locally owned place that stocked a fair bit of subtitled stuff. Unfortunately, it didn't last long but a couple of years later, I found a place that rented out fansubs and never looked back.

greg wrote: "640K ought to be enough for anybody." While it may be true that Bill Gates never actually said this quote, the frustration of the PC architectural limitation still remained. I remember trying to configure the AUTOEXEC.BAT file with LOAD HIMEM.SYS or whatever it was just to try to get Wing Commander to play the voice acting add-on. And when I did, it would slow down the game and crash it often.

I was just thinking about this going to store today - how no one necessarily thinks about size constraints writing software because storage is cheap now, which gets us into this cycle of it doesn't matter how much space you use, storage is cheap, I need new hard drives, 300GB isn't enough, need 1 TB... and so on.

What am I glad is gone now: VHS storage, both on the tape and of the cassettes. When you were watching a new show, needing 4 episodes to get the whole value at SP because if you're like me, you can't have a tape of this week's Dragonball, this week's Kenshin, an episode of Marmalade Boy and Macross 7 all on the same tape. Now I can stream stuff week to week or wait until a few episodes pile up and watch a couple hours. If it's something rare and I have to download a fansub of it, I just grab a few episodes until I need to create a couple of Data DVDs. And even then, I don't even really need to burn DVDs if I keep HDDs around the house.

Drew_Sutton wrote:I found this problem typical when renting from chains like Blockbuster, but I was lucky that when I had the spare change to rent tapes more frequently, there was a more locally owned place that stocked a fair bit of subtitled stuff. Unfortunately, it didn't last long but a couple of years later, I found a place that rented out fansubs and never looked back.

Renting fansubs? That's interesting. My comic book store local to the Glendale/North Phoenix area, Stalking Moon (RIP), used to rent out VHS. Most of the time, they'd only purchase dubbed anime to rent out. Why? Because the price of dubbed anime was cheaper (stupid), and most customers wanted dubs. Grrr!

That modem dialup ringtone is such a cool idea. Man, that would be cool. My current phone makes no provisions for stuff like that.

Too bad about the dubbing of anime. It's the preferred version it seems. No more people wanting to learn Japanese it seems. I'm on one of the bigger DBZ sites and most peeps hate the Japanese original voices, especially Goku's. But that's the version I started with and I love it. I'm in an extreme minority on that site it seems...

The prices. I'm glad those days of VHS anime at $29.99 for 2 episodes a pop are behind us now. Oh, and not to mention how subtitled anime was always about $10 more expensive than dubbed. There was also more acceptance of substandard video quality back then. I sometimes look at my old VHS tapes and I wonder how I ever could have watched such crummy video quality once.

The collector's market for comics. All those people buying up every new comic in the hopes that their issue #1 would be worth something, and not even reading the comic. I remember having to beat people to the comic store every Wednesday in order to get any copy of Jim Lee X-Men comics or Todd McFarlane Spider-Man (was it even worth the effort?). I'm glad this mentality has pretty much crashed and comic prices have generally deflated due to reprints aplenty. Of course, now it's happening again with video games.

If you had told me in 1991 that Pearl Jam would go on to become the superstars of grunge while Mudhoney would languish in obscurity, I would not have believed you. Nirvana self-destructing wasn't really a surprise, though the exact details did come as a shock. Don't worry about grunge coming back; Foo Fighters played David Letterman out and they were dad-rocking all the way, the exact opposite of cool. I'm not saying Grohl and the gang aren't talented and don't deserve success, but exciting it is not.

I do miss the fifteen or twenty minutes where indy rock seemed poised to take over the world, and was almost immediately co-opted by record companies and/or heroin, leaving us with Soundgarden and whatever nonsense the guy from Jane's Addiction was up to that particular week.

Don't miss: swapping VHS tapes through the mail, giant unwieldy rear-projection televisions, the whole SVHS format, AOL, acid-washed mom jeans, Zima, Woodstock '99, sitting in hotel rooms in Dallas pretending to be interested in whatever it was your host was babbling on about so that you could talk him into loaning you his set of fansubbed Future Boy Conan episodes, dealing with the guy who thought Japanese animation was all Legend Of The Overfiend and/or Ninja Scroll, day-glo everything, the Morton Downey Jr. show, the Arsenio Hall show, Spawn and the whole McFarlane/Liefeld run of terrible incoherent "superheroes" that killed so many trees, Blockbuster Video....

Sorry to say, the speculators market for comics is alive and well.check out prices for things like the first appearance of Jane Foster as Thor in an early issue of one of Marvel's "What if" books from the 1970s...$400 in mint! This for a book worth under $10 a year ago? Lots more examples of sheer lunacy every week...

Poofy hair. Geometric shapes in loud colors. Floppy, baggy clothes. <--I actually still like these, haha!

I think I miss more about the old days than being glad certain things are gone.

The assumption that everything is violent or adult in anime. Although now it's like all the "manime" is totally gone from anime. So while I'm glad it's more accepted...I miss those older anime it feels like a film buff or someone who likes animation in general could get into.

Single issue comics at $4 a pop! I much prefer graphic novels! But I do like the look at nostalgia of those old single issues, and all the pretty cover art. (which is why I still collect them)

The nasty look when you buy something. I remember getting worst looks when I bought something anime related (which might be related to the first thing I mentioned). Also got lots of snark from the clerks. :/

llj wrote:The collector's market for comics. All those people buying up every new comic in the hopes that their issue #1 would be worth something, and not even reading the comic. I remember having to beat people to the comic store every Wednesday in order to get any copy of Jim Lee X-Men comics or Todd McFarlane Spider-Man (was it even worth the effort?). I'm glad this mentality has pretty much crashed and comic prices have generally deflated due to reprints aplenty. Of course, now it's happening again with video games.

X-Kid Z is always showing me videos and articles from the 90's, when books were selling MILLIONS of copies! I never got to experience it, but man it was kinda nuts! I do miss the 90's look of comics, and super star artists. I just can't find comics to get into much anymore, they all look so generic now.

ryoran wrote:

llj wrote:The collector's market for comics. All those people buying up every new comic in the hopes that their issue #1 would be worth something, and not even reading the comic. I remember having to beat people to the comic store every Wednesday in order to get any copy of Jim Lee X-Men comics or Todd McFarlane Spider-Man (was it even worth the effort?). I'm glad this mentality has pretty much crashed and comic prices have generally deflated due to reprints aplenty. Of course, now it's happening again with video games.

X-Kid Z is always showing me videos and articles from the 90's, when books were selling MILLIONS of copies! I never got to experience it, but man it was kinda nuts! I do miss the 90's look of comics, and super star artists. I just can't find comics to get into much anymore, they all look so generic now.

There's still lots of indie titles that are good...except I don't read many of them. I still like B.P.R.D., Hellboy, Groo, etc. might buy the Archie vs. Predator mini-series or get the collected volume when they release it in a few months. Went through 74 long boxes of comics (ie. many thousands of books) for my bud's store inventory but only stopped to look through a handful of titles from 1992 - 2005. Just nothing much of interest to me. It's like that for a lot of stuff now, not just comics. Little enough time left in a day when it's all said and done and I want to read for the pleasure. Making it a chore doesn't work for me anymore...