Monthly Rant  @#$%&*!

March  2002

My Fellow Otaku

My fellow Otaku, I have a dream…a dream of a greater anime nation (not the website) for us all! A place where companies releasing anime don’t mock us by proving on the first tape of a series that they *can* put four episodes on a tape, and then put three apiece on the subsequent 25... A place where subtitles will always cost the same as dubs! And anime on the cartoon network at one in the morning could maybe be subtitled for once! I dream of a place where the TV series *could* as good as the OAV series was! Where plastic anime figures and run-of-the-mill CD’s aren’t $60! I dream of a place where conventions will be purged of those minor things that annoy us. Scadians and Trekkies will be forced out with extreme prejudice! Where fanboys will be forced to shower daily by a strong SWAT presence in the hotels, who will turn the hoses on them if need be – the same hoses that will be turned on the same fanboys after their fourth minute of openly ogling lum-dressed fangirls! Where the tables at the dealer’s room will be equipped with automatic snowplows to regularly clear that crowd away that hasn’t moved in twenty minutes! And where the hotel you stay at won’t rape you and leave you bleeding on the streets for parking in their garage!      Anyone – guys or girls – showing up to a con in a costume that exposes the legs and most of the torso will be forced to go between a pair of barriers labeled "You must be at most this girth to enter". The Virginia Silhouette laws (the law that lethal force is authorized if cops even suspect you have a gun) shall extend to the following people: Beautiful girls dressed as Sailor Venus who turn out to be men, anyone who says "Is that Speed Racer?" of your Bubblegum Crisis T-shirt, con dealers who charge $36 for a CD claiming its rarity when that guy over there was selling a stack of ‘em for $15 all along, photographers that ask to get a photo of the girl in your hall costume theme and no one else; and that dweeb who sat behind me and talked all the way through the Ah! My goddess movie.      (Out of the con and on the homefront, tortured to death shall be anyone who’s ever dubbed over an anime opening theme song and had the dub voice actors re-sing it in English. And most self-insertion fanfic authors shall be lynched).      In this beautiful world I see, cosplayers who whisper on stage will be removed after rehearsal! Linkin Park will be off-limits as anime music video material! And forever banned shall be anime convention dances that DO NOT FEATURE ANIME MUSIC! Yes, in this grand new world we shall work to create, anime music "perfect collections" will actually have all the good songs on them! A simple system will be devised to play Japanese import games on the home console of your choice! And online fanfic sites will feature all three good fanfictions and nothing else!    My fellow otaku, these are just a few of the pressing subjects that we struggle to overcome, adversities that we must conquer and obstacles we must cross, but we shall someday live in this new world I see in my dream! It is this utopia for which we strive here at the organization of OTACU, and with determination and maybe the odd doomsday device, our dreams shall become a reality and we can change the world!      Remember, Uncle Dan Wants YOU! Recruit today and become one of the growing ranks of OtaCu marines, mecha force, stormtroopers or ninja agents to push back the growing tide of bad dubs, dark horse manga interpretations, and money-hungry elitist con dealers! There is only us, the Otaku of the world…and the time is now. Banzai! -Dan Heichel President