what did "otaku" mean in 1993 in the UK?

[@BrianM_3rd]

Your latest video just reminded me I forgot to comment on this when I first watched it. Here in the UK, we had Manga Entertainment, who were responsible for importing and dubbing loads of stuff in the early 90s. My dad had almost the entire catalog on VHS. The stuff they put out was mainly pretty violent and lascivious, things like Golgo 13, Wicked City, Ninja Scroll, Hokuto no Ken etc. Which def made it stand out in my young mind as something super grown up and forbidden, different even from a lot of the 18-rated action films I'd already seen by then. (Die Hard, Terminator, Blade and so on. Having a cool dad is a huge plus growing up!). Thing is, I don't recall ever taking notice of them being Japanese products, though. Just figured it made sense that animation for adults was naturally drawn more elaborately than a kid's cartoon would be. Still, great memories of sneaking upstairs to watch them while he was out at work. Thank god I was too young to understand what was going on in something like Legend of the Overfiend! Although I do remember spending a long time staring at the cover for Tank Police... without quite knowing why at that stage. I was almost certainly too dumb to rewind them before putting them back, too... haha.

[@GSTChannelVEVO]

what a fascinating perspective: "anime looks different because it's for adults" + no awareness of its import status. but that does seem like a pretty reasonable assumption for a kid, especially in that context!

[@RabbitEarsCh]

the funny thing about anime culture in US and UK in that era is that patient zero is so very trackable. Everything was so underground and yet coming up right as usenet gave way to the internet letting you spread everything far and wide, that it was the perfect moment for things to blow up despite repeated attempts by various groups beforehand. Great editing, great story. I think you hit the nail on the head.

[@64_three]

i swear to god these video titles and thumbnails are gold without context

[@GSTChannelVEVO]

I really had no idea what to do with the thumbnail, lol eta: yeah i ended up doing the "try 3 different thumbnails" test thing thats built into youtube. a collage of random logos might not be "great" :P

[@kaneda010]

I'm a Brit, and you astutely and correctly predict my first exposure to the word 'otaku' was in the hallowed pages of Super Play. There quickly followed Manga Mania magazine and, of course, Manga Video. There were thousands upon thousands of us all delving into this world during those early nineties, it was a mini explosion, not quite into mainstream, but seemed like it might.

[@ironmanTetsuoTV]

What a time!

[@blahblah6787]

so many favourite stuff in one video, gosh. great dig!

[@polybay]

your production quality keeps getting better and better! jon bois-style yet again proves to be a very versatile way of presenting things that involve a timeline of events

[@A2music]

This is very Jon Bois, especially the reveal of the timeline. Absolutely loved every second of it!

[@GSTChannelVEVO]

lots of inspiration from (and much love to!) jon bois and bobby broccoli

[@AcrosArchive]

Loving all these non-mix videos you've been doing lately.

[@tcscomment]

oh, hi, didn't expect you to be here

[@tverdyznaqs]

My man, I knew you had EXQUISITE musical taste as soon as I spotted that igorrr cover on screen in the intro! Than I took a brief glance at the playlist and noticed a couple more names that I recognize like spoonbill, haywyre and some others so I'll definitely be checking it out in full later! Thanks a lot for sharing :3

[@GSTChannelVEVO]

I mean, the list has igorrr, but it also has dj paul elstak. it's an odd portrait of my tastes 😅 hopefully it's still a good time for you and anyone else that gives it a perusal ~

[@DefamedRice]

Interesting to dig these up and re-look at them. Coming out of the 00s era weebzone--pre the ubiquitous videos in 3 parts on youtube--a lot of my frame of reference is coming between that time where manga UK and central park media put out those dubs and yellow hard subbed releases (I still own a bunch of the classic US Manga Corp stuff), and when I first got uTorrent in probably 2006-7 and started going to Nyaa and Tokyo Toshokan. One of my friends older brother was a turbo weeb (and I didn't notice it at the time, but it's pretty obvious in hindsight), and a lot of the anime I saw outside of cartoon network and saturday morning cartoons was through the stuff he had on hand, which was the standard OVA stuff. The electronic music connection might have been imported to the US via toonami by looking to 90s UK culture, because Manga UK and Central Park Media tended to put a more hardcore Thrash/death metal "this ain't your dad's cartoons" look (The iconic Celtic Frost trailer for Manga UK still speaks to me on a physical level).

[@FoxerTails]

I just love these niche deep dives you make. Also, that out of bounds with videos you made also is making a whole lot more sense now. Lol I could tell it was being used a couple of times here.

[@GSTChannelVEVO]

the funny part is... I used an entirely different 2D-to-3D technique in this video :P

[@FoxerTails]

@@GSTChannelVEVO Really? Fooled me then. It looks pretty cool all things considered.

[@NiJiFa]

When I was getting into anime as a teen (in the UK around 1991), I just absorbed anything about the medium that I could access, which then was predominantly, but not exclusively, offline (rec.arts.anime was also a big deal for me) and what physical material I could get was mostly accessed through London's network of comic shops. Helen McCarthy was an absolute legend and premier anime authority for me. I think it was through her writing that the term "otaku" was introduced to me, through repeated use in her different features and columns over the years -- not just in the gaming magazine Super Play (which I read religiously) but also Manga Mania and Anime UK Magazine, which were probably the most influential / widely distributed UK monthlys for manga and anime respectively (I think she was at the helm of both publications at differing points). The understanding I had formed from reading those magazines was that "otaku" was a word that had had another meaning in/up to the 1980s, before becoming synonymous with the concept of a 'hardcore' fan. It wasn't UNTIL I saw the VHS version of Otaku no Video (mid 90s) that I started to learn of the negative associations.

[@månemannmånemann]

Amazing 3d graph and camera animations. Combined with sick highlights and bg music

[@VastGecko909]

Damn I've been checking out you're vgm mixes for years i must have missed this newer set of videos! Honestly fantastic production style here i love the seamless 3d timeline!

[@saturnjr9136]

This is crazy cuz I just discovered this song and black dog about a week ago, and was curious about this myself. Very good video :D

[@moot6794]

Great motion design and editing

[@uss_04]

That Manga logo in the thumbnail takes me back. Back to a time when anime and video games felt more niche, when my budget was smaller, and the world felt bigger. Back when I’d buy whatever was on the shelf, and watch the same 9 episodes of Martian Sucessor Nadesico not ever knowing if I’d ever finish the series because the tapes werent on the shelf at my local store. Now its an endless backlog of content I workthrough, watch, and forget about. Sometimes I write in a personal journal how I felt about a show to try to recapture the wonder. But nothing can quite replace being in a media desert and stumbling upon new content that happened to find its way into your little corner of the world.

[@bounceysteve]

editing on this is so cool, same with the otaku story

[@nobel11]

What a wonderful rabbithole, thank you for sharing

[@LampDX]

wicked taste in music man, what a start to a video

[@morganlak4337]

Fantastic as always :)

[@supamalleo64]

Gonna be a cool video to watch.

[@flowermunchy]

amazing editing

[@ab_0vo348]

The video is so cool!!!

[@SylphDS]

Fantastic visuals!

[@rbmunik]

great stuff this video, thank you!! I'm still waiting for these worlds to come together a lot more, even tho they have been living side by side since the beginning :/ I would love to see a video game with 90s/00s era warp music, and idk wipeout was cool I guess but I feel theres so much more there, I feel so much more listening to that music than just some spaceships zooming around (even tho thats cool too) I guess tekkonkinkreet is one of the closest things along with some others like earthbound for example, but I feel like electronic music and animation and video games together... theres still a whole world to explore there!! 👾♥

[@GSTChannelVEVO]

there is more out there! off the top of my head, Neil Biggin was pretty much an honorary Warp Records alumn. go listen to "Blueberry Hills" from the CD32 version of Zool 2 and tell me it doesn't fit right alongside Black Dog or B12 or F.U.S.E. :P

[@rbmunik]

@@GSTChannelVEVO cool, thanks for the tip!! I'd say I dived relatively deep into vgms but I didn't know about that one!

[@gamerdude0]

Manga Mania magazine was a big thing for me back then in the uk.

[@luckybooks13]

You're videos are peak! Btw, is the mentioned favorite songs list posted online somewhere?

[@GSTChannelVEVO]

I have a youtube playlist but not every song is on youtube. also it's a little embarrassing I guess? lol It's relevant though so I may as well add it to the description, huh? added now :)

[@ramens]

0:19 hell yea venetian snares

[@flmalegre]

VENETIAN SNARES MENTIONED

[@GSTChannelVEVO]

love me some venetian snares!!

[@tcscomment]

this is really cool

[@zeffen_vgm]

Another banger

[@L_Bribus]

Really good video although I preferred the first thumbnail.

[@GSTChannelVEVO]

I'm still running youtubes thumbnail-test thing. it says the first thumbnail performs a whole 1.5% worse. I suspect I'll keep it after the test :P

[@L_Bribus]

@@GSTChannelVEVOHope it boosts your KZbin algorithmic appeal.

[@uhpkkim]

Honey come in here, GST Channel is doing some cool Jon Bois shit with old game magazines and Usenet posts

[@bolyplank1379]

Good taste.

[@r.g.thesecond]

Could you please share a list of music like?

[@GSTChannelVEVO]

You mean the list of my favorite songs that I mentioned? I just cleaned up the youtube playlist version (though it still says 1 video is unavailable?) but yeah, you can peruse it here: kzbin.info/aero/PLLrM5fZr_JtUCoxNqe-4RckcgqDUaaCqe

[@zachabel805]

ay, s/o The Black Dog n Ed Handley for being based in a time like that, even tho he dont care for anime (and me thinking black dog was only a song by Led Zeppelin and another by Taylor Swift) he never realized 30 years the ''otaku'' (and furries) of today would b making eletronic music associating with anime aesthetics with what is currently known by zoomers as ''breakcore'' and ''l0licore''

[@MiniKodjo]

What's the music used in rhe video?

[@GSTChannelVEVO]

The Back Dog - Otaku (remixed by me) :P

[@MiniKodjo]

Going full BobbyBroccoli ?

[@PlaystationTaxation69999]

Who's that character in the thumbnail?

[@GSTChannelVEVO]

I actually wasn't sure of her name, as it's a character for a show within a show. apparently it's Misty May? she appears on all the promotional material for Otaku no Video

[@joshlbiomechanic]

There is nsfw history that greatly influenced this. Trevor Brown is good but sick example. I remember here in canada calling them ‘weebs’ or something like that.

[@GSTChannelVEVO]

That's true too. I think there was a perception that Japanese animation was just more "mature" than any cartoon you'd get in the states. sex and violence. the contemporary discussion of the former is a bit less well-preserved as far as I was able to discern, sadly

[@Taruby]

​@@GSTChannelVEVO I've been translating articles from primary sources that delve into the true history of Comiket and the Otaku subculture, and one I'm working on recently is a talk between Nagai Go and the general producer of Dream Dimension Hunter Fandora, where they talk about manga and anime overseas in the 1980s. Their comment on western fans is that they're much older and devoted to collecting media than Japanese fans because western comics are more 'mature' than 'manga' and 'anime'. In Japan, anime and manga is generally considered to be for children, and very disposable (after reading a manga, you would trade it in to receive a roll of toilet paper from a waste paper collecting service).

[@GSTChannelVEVO]

​@@Taruby what an interesting facet! it feels a bit more true today, though I wouldn't call it universal. it's sharply in conflict with the anglosphere's perception in the early 90s. Akira comes to mind. I think that movie had a huge impact on how we (english-speakers) see anime. I vaguely recall someone in the films industry saying Akira was a shock: "animations can be this violent!?" etc. As for the western comic fans... that's something I'm all but blind to. I've seen at least one contemporary account of "mature comics" + manga being grouped together. there's a lot to explore huh

[@mablungbalrog424]

well the term "weeb" was an English invention

[@flyableheart]

@@GSTChannelVEVO I'd say it's in line with the beliefs we had at the time if we're just talking comics. In the west cartoons were seen as basically only for children in the 80s, but comics in the 80s tried really hard to be "dark and mature", and the comics in the 90s were basically a reaction to that.

[@Fallen-Saint]

Honestly? Makes seance, i think about lain when i hear that definition

[@saltedmutton7269]

🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉

[@drywail]

i see that bandetto

[@GSTChannelVEVO]

i know bandetto is very Sampling-Masters-inspired but nothing quite beats "pleasure animals" for me!

[@harmonyProtector]

You must see NapoleonVII, that you basically extrapolate certain information from little context. Imo this movie is not radical in the slightest. It just preaches what has been preached constantly in that time. It says that despite world being inherently unequal it ultimately falls on people with power to be the good guys or the bad guys. It literally contrasts the good elite member and the bad elite member. You know - The good king and the bad king. Stories about good and bad kings are not supposed to radicalize you to thinking that kings are a bad idea. It just emphasizes that if you have the king you may want to observe his qualities and if you ever become one - please be aware that some things you do will reflect on the whole society, so be a good and upstanding person.

[@Alianger]

The weeb hipster