Our Classic Manga Wish List
It might not feel like it, but right now we're living in a golden age! A golden age of English releases of classic Japanese manga, that is. The pile of localized old-school manga seems to get taller...
View ArticleAnime North 2026!
I think 2026 is the 30th Anime North? I don't know, I wasn't there. Where I *will* be is at the show next weekend, doing a bunch of panels! Seems like every year I make a post here about what I'm up...
View ArticleBANNED Anime Scenes CENSORED by US Dubbers
Let Mecha-May and Mew-Bot 5000 RIP THE LID off the HIDDEN SECRETS of anime LOCALIZATION that THEY don't want YOU to know ABOUT!! It's all happening in the latest episode of The Mecha-May and Mew-Bot...
View ArticleSix Combinations, Three Robots, One Blu-Ray
Lightspeed Electroid Albegas aired from March 30 1983 until February 8 1984 on TV Tokyo Wednesdays at the oddly specific time of 5:55pm. This Toei robot anime show filled the time slot formerly...
View Articlewhat I learned at the Super Happy Fun Sell
2025 was my last year managing the Super Happy Fun Sell. Now you may be asking, what the heck is a "Super Happy Fun Sell" and what does it have to do with this blog, or with classic Japanese animation?...
View ArticleAnime Weekend Atlanta 2025
It seems like just yesterday that a bunch of us anime nerds were sitting in some parents' basement somewhere in the Atlanta metro area, saying to ourselves, by golly, if we don't start an anime...
View ArticleMecha-May and Mew-Bot and SPT Layzner
We live in an amazing age of technology, when computers and robots can accomplish the most outstanding feats. One such outstanding feat is available now for you to enjoy, as Mecha-May the robot anime...
View Article1975: Anime Goes Around The World
A little while ago we looked at 1965 - now we're going to skip forward ten years and look back thirty years at a selection of 1975's outstanding achievements in the field of Japanese animation. And...
View ArticleHappy Halloween with Mecha-May
It's Halloween, and that means it's time to find out what classic anime shows will scare the bolts out of a robot girl! Let Mecha-May and Mew-Bot 5000 take you on a tour of obscure spooky anime to...
View ArticleAmerica's First Manga: UFO Commander 7?
Like many amazing adventures, this one started in an antique mall. Always on the lookout for diecast Japanese robot toys, one day I found one I didn't recognize. And I don’t want to say I’m an expert...
View Article1965: The Year Anime Went Beyond The Moon
Right now it's 2025, and that means it's as good a time as any to take a look back sixty years and see what Japanese animation looked like in 1965. Except it wasn't called "anime" back then, the term...
View ArticleRobotech II: The Sentinels?
When the anime series Robotech came to the rescue of syndicated American TV in the mid 80s, its success created an audience eager for more, and producers Harmony Gold were ready to capitalize on that...
View ArticleThe Northern Anime
It's May, and that means it's Anime North time here in Ontario! And that also means that I've been doing what I do this time of year every year since, um, let me check, since 2005. That's a solid...
View ArticleRevenge Of The Kickstarter Of The Dagger Of Kamui
It was the 1980s. There was no way this movie wasn't going to be treated like exploitation trash, have half an hour hacked out of it and wind up in video stores with a dopey new title. This is how the...
View ArticleLet's Flashback 1993
By popular demand, another long-suppressed issue of the print Let's Anime is up at the Otaku Archive portion of the Internet Archive, complete with all the attitude, factual errors and translation...
View Articlewrite 'em, cowboy
I was there in the 90s and let me tell you, things were pretty grim. For us anime nerds, I mean. There we were, sitting around our anime clubs and cons, looking at the fandom we’d built around the...
View Articlewhat goes around
In a week or so I'll be back in Atlanta for Anime Weekend Atlanta, the Japanese anime convention I helped start and that has happened every year (with one exception) since 1995. This year's AWA is...
View ArticleSpace Shark Versus Fire Bird: The Movie
Early in 1984 I was a teenage nerd at something called the Atlanta Comics Festival, a show hosted by a local comics distributor so that 80s Marvel junkies could witness a panel of X-men inkers roasting...
View ArticleInterview With A Volgar
Thirty years ago the voice cast of the 1979 Star Blazers series was a mystery to American Star Blazers/Space Battleship Yamato fandom. The credits for Star Blazers listed the Japanese title and a host...
View ArticleRosemont: 1999
As occasional historians of North America's anime fandom, sometimes we're called upon to make our research available to the general public. Gerald Rathkolb of AWO has been doing this over at the...
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