The 244th meeting, on 16 August at Gustav Baron's home/comics shop in Sun
Valley, drew 31 attendees: 23 members, 4 guests, and 4 public. Fred Patten
sold YARF! and gave out flyers for Loscon 24 in Burbank in November and BAKA!-con
in Seattle in February. Steve Schultheis took orders for manga imports. David
Bliss set out flyers for the August Inland Empire Anime club meeting, and
advertisements for his Furry Art.
Don Yee opened the Business Meeting by turning the floor over to Lisa Nelson
and Brian Keesler from the Anime Crisis club in Las Vegas. They told about
how a consortium of Japanese companies wanted to hold "the First Pan-Pacific
Animation & Video Gaming Convention" in Las Vegas in October, and had
asked Anime Crisis to help as consultants. The consortium included Sega of
Japan, Japan Travel Bureau, and COSPA (specializing in making costumes to
order of anime & manga characters). Their goal was to create a big
American/Japanese fannish get-together, for promotion in Japan as a $1,500
vacation package tour, and to sell to Japanese pop-culture merchants as dealers.
Tentative plans were to hold it at a major luxury hotel on 10 - 12 October,
with costuming as Friday's theme, anime & manga as Saturday's theme,
and video gaming as Sunday's theme. The sponsors were willing to pay to get
major Japanese anime-industry notables as guests-of-honor. The plan relied
on the expectation of a large American "Japanese friendly" fannish attendance
to offer the potential Japanese vacationers & dealers. The sponsors had
considered offering free admission to Americans, but Anime Crisis was advising
charging a moderate admission (in the $20 range) to keep out non-fan
curiosity-seekers with no real interest in anime. A major problem was that
time was already short to entice fans to Las Vegas for a convention in October,
and too much was still undetermined to begin publicizing it yet. Nelson &
Keesler said that Anime Crisis would begin posting the convention on its
Website as soon as any definite information became available. Other news:
Nevada had recently passed a law requiring all un-rated commercial videos
to be treated as adult fare, and limited for sale to purchasers 18 or older.
This included virtually all anime videos, including those obviously for children
such as the American "Sailor Moon" and "Dragon Ball" releases.
"And now, my turn!", Yee gloated -- except that he didn't have much to report
this month. The Los Angeles TIMES had recently published an article in its
Business section (Thursday, July 31, pgs. D2 & D4; "Buy, Cell, Hold:
With Japanese animation booming in the U.S., collectors are clamoring for
their pieces of the action") about Rick Alonzo's Anime Wink and Enrique Galvez's
Banzai Anime specialty shops. The article had included TIMES writer Evelyn
Iritani's e.mail address, and Yee had e.mailed her to offer the C/FO's services
as a source for information on future articles about anime or manga. She
had promised to keep us in mind.
Vice-President Jeff Roady reviewed Disney's "George of the Jungle" feature
as reasonably true to Jay Ward's original TV cartoons, but aimed more at
children and lacking Ward's satiric bite. The computer effects of the elephant
were wonderful. Other classic cartoon characters who were in the process
of being converted into forthcoming live-action theatrical stars were Dudley
Do-Right and Mr. Magoo (to feature Leslie Nielson). Six more "Spawn" cartoons
for HBO had been approved. The live-action "Spawn" feature was okay, but
did not offer much besides its computer effects. The "Gen 13" OAV, designed
by the crew who had created the first season of WB's "Batman: The Animated
Series", was on hold. Roady favorably reviewed "Machine Robo: Revenge of
Cronos" as,"'Gobots' done correctly!"
Secretary Fred Patten complained about the Postal Service. He'd had to drive
to Redondo Beach the previous weekend to hand-deliver a copy of last month's
minutes to Steve Paschke for this month's BULLETIN, because Paschke had not
received the copy that Patten had mailed him a week earlier.
Don Yee commented that the QVC channel was offering a "Star Wars Special
Edition" video of all three movies in their new versions for $30.00.
Programmer Richard Reichman announced that British TV had just started the
entire "Babylon 5" series, but was only showing one episode per week. At
that rate, they would not reach the new episodes until just about the same
time that they would be broadcast in the U.S.; so it might not be possible
for the C/FO to "preview" them. Reichman thanked Steve Schultheis and the
SB3A club for providing the fan-subtitled "Maze" for today's program, and
Jerry Shaw for allowing the C/FO to tape his latest anime laser discs for
our future programming. Two titles mentioned were "Debutante Detective Corps"
and the "El Hazard" TV series. Reichman offered a choice to be voted on later
for this evening's feature: the scheduled 1997 "City Hunter" feature, or
a brand new feature which was not supposed to be on video yet.
BULLETIN Editor Stephen Paschke had seen the new "Anastasia" animated feature
promoted on TV. He had cut the mailing list from about 60 copies to 42 copies.
Warren Johnson and Robert A. Sandler enlivened the meeting by arriving in
costume from a Renaissance Pleasure Faire. Sandler asked if anyone could
confirm a rumor of a new "Thunderbirds" TV series in production. Nobody had
heard of it, and there was skepticism that any new TV series could be produced
in the Supermarionation process today. Sandler also asked if anyone knew
where to buy an original video copy (not a dupe) of Nelvana's "Rock 'n Rule".
Nobody did. There were estimates that an original video would cost about
$80.00 today, and debates as to how many different edits and video releases
"Rock 'n Rule"/"Ring of Power" had had in the U.S., Canada, and Britain.
Treasurer "Red" Baron said that there was $185 left in the Treasury after
paying Don Yee the $250 owed him. That was not enough for the club's expenses
for the rest of 1997, so suggestions of ways to raise some income would be
appreciated.
Don Yee had a correction to the July minutes' report of the anime programming
at the Comic-Con International. The programs announced as being on Friday
and Saturday had actually been on Thursday and Friday, respectively.
General announcements. Warren Johnson reported that today's Dragonvale Pleasure
Faire at the Hansen Dam Equestrian Center had been very enjoyable. He recommended
its last day tomorrow. Several other Medieval and Renaissance faires around
Southern California were discussed.
Don Yee felt that we ought to raise money for our Treasury by asking fans
going to Japan to buy various brand-new anime items to donate to our auctions.
"Red" Baron felt that it was unrealistic to get much good stuff by asking
fans for expensive donations. It would be better to promise to reimburse
them for expenditures, and to auction the items with their cost + $5 as the
minimum bid.
A small auction was held. $7.00 was raised, from Don Yee and "Red" Baron.
The vote on the evening's feature was held between "City Hunter" and an animated
feature which had to remain officially anonymous since it was not supposed
to be available in the U.S. yet. It was described as so bad that it might
never be commercially released; therefore this might be our only chance to
ever see it. Its theatrical trailer was shown. The vote was 4 for it to 3
for "City Hunter". Most of the audience walked out after the first ten minutes,
but those who did watch the whole thing said that they were glad for what
they agreed probably would be the only opportunity to ever see it.
During the day, Jerry Shaw passed around a tentative C/FO Web page that he
had designed for comments. The general reaction seemed to be that both his
and Ed Ngai's C/FO Web pages were fine; were we ever going to use either
of them? The front room TV monitor was kept busy copying some of Jerry Shaw's
latest anime laser discs onto tape for future programming. The August program
shown was:
Heroic King Gaogaigar, #.01, 'The Heroic King is Born!'
Flash Gordon, #4, 'To Save Earth'
Spicy City, #2
Spawn, #5
Hyper Police, #1, 'A Nine-Tailed Fox? Sakura Is Introduced'
Maze * Mega-Burst Time-Space, 'Bold & Wonderful Challenger!!'
Maze * Mega-Biirst Time-Space, 'Bold & Radical Adventurer!!'
feature: [anonymous]
front room:
CanCan Bunny Extra, #1 - #3
Tattoon Master, #1 #2
Jungre de Ikou!, #1 #2
Those Who Hunt Elves, #2
-- Fred Patten, Secretary
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