About Me

My favorite subject ;-)

Beware, some mild exaggeration in order to make me look good. Grains, or bags, depending on your level of paranoia, of salt are advised to be taken digesting the following.

Just to rehash my profile a little. I'm a male, born under the astrological sign Virgo and in 1970 which makes also makes me a Dog. And yes, that's not a typo, that's really 1970 there, which in general lands me in the 'around-from-before-the-dinosaurs' age segment of the typical anime fan.

My first contact with anime was, and while I can't pinpoint an exact date, in my early teens. Back in those days I didn't have 100 channels on my TV (most of those I do have now are 100% worthless so not that it really matters, but I digress) and I happen to see in the TV guide that an anime movie (Akira) was to air late on BBC 1 and I managed to get permission from my parents to see it. I can't really tell what an impression it made on me ... you know, old age an such ... but suffice to say it was a profound one. It wasn't to last long though.

This television airing marked what I think was basically the first, and from what I can tell also last, anime wave that hit Europe as pretty soon afterwards the local video rentals began sporting anime titles. Only a precious few though and the whole hype lasted maybe six months, a year tops, before anime was virtually nowhere to be found yet again. During the time that there was a little to be had I can remember renting Oh! My Goddess OAV. It's probably my shy nature that since then, till this very day, I have a real soft spot for romance anime (yeah, yeah, sue me).

When the hype was over it also spelt the end of my interest because, back in those days, internet didn't exist, so if you weren't a real fan back then and had knowledge of fansubbed tapes on VHS, you were pretty much stuck on empty and it would take about a decade for me to find my way back again. This time I was heavily into FPS gaming and it was around when the father of all FPS online shooters stood up, i.o.w. Counterstrike, that someone pointed me the way to the light again.

A fellow clan member, and I'm unsure if it was in the CoFR (Crusty old Fossil Rockers) or in the CGA (Certified Gamer Alliance) that a member on the forum sported an anime signature. An Initial D one to be exact. And while I'm not really into cars his signature called onto some almost forgotten dark part of my soul and I ended up asking where that signature was from and, after he told me it was from an anime series, where I could download episodes of it. The rest of it is history as they say.

I downloaded a few episodes and before I knew it I ran my PC for days on end (shudders remembering using Direct Connect) just to be able to get it all. Pretty soon I discovered there were more series then I almost could shake a stick at and I started my anime obsession in earnest. In my search for ways to download the most in the shortest amount of time I stumbled over a small forum that had access to anime stored online. You needed a paid account, but the price was ridiciliously low compared to what I could my hands on and in no-time I ended up with a year account as my monthly account couldn't handle the strain. Very shortly after that I was asked to become admin on this board and if I'd like to help out maintaining the anime archive. Well, they didn't need to ask twice and so I entered my service to the streamload anime community.

Sadly though earlier this year this service ended rather abruptly when the service that followed up streamload, The Link Up pulled the plug (actually in between them was another service called MediaMax, but it was all the same company) despite our, probably against our better judgement, efforts to try and make it develop in a service yet again the envy of all. It was in this twilight period I ended up as a contributor on a blog trying to keep things afloat.

When they pulled the plug they also effectively destroyed all that we had collected over the years with basically no chance to save it except for what we could download in the little time we had left or what we already had in our own personal archives. And while I have over a TB of stuff at home it's only a fraction of what we had online.

Next to this service ruining our archives, the non-functionality that had sprung up a couple of years ago, also ruined the community. In our best days we had 100ds of people coming to us for their fix, but only a handfull remained in the end. It's actually rather depressing, even after a year or so, to think back about it. In fact, it led to me giving anime a wide birth for about a year. A year in which I spend my time playing some games again and Fallout 3 in specific for those that are interested.

Recently though I've given myself a slap in the face and I'm slowly finding my way back again. Hence this blog.