________  ________  ________
   2017-06-20                                   /        \/        \/    /   \
                                               /       __/         /_       _/
   I try to avoid talking about ideas I have  /        _/         /         /
or  projects  I'd like  to do because I have  \_______/_\___/____/\___/____/_
very little follow-through and in most cases    /        \/        \/    /   \
just  sharing the idea  is  enough for me to   /        _/         /_       _/
feel like I've "done  it" and lose interest.  /-        /        _/         /
Maybe that's a little  selfish since  if I'm  \________/\________/\___/____/
not  doing it I'd be happy  for someone else
to  do  the same thing,  I'm  not precious  about that  stuff, I'd rather  see
something cool done rather than "own" a cool  idea  and never do it but that's
probably something to explore in another post.

   Today let me tell you about a project I did start and have been working on,
albeit slowly. I called it the Otarchive  project, a contraction of otaku  and
archive, and if those  words make  sense to you you  can  probably already see
where this is going.

   I was an anime nerd back in the "good" old days of genlocks and tape trades
when the relative obscurity and reliance on physical media at the time birthed
anime clubs and fostered a sense of community. How else would you get shows to
watch, right? You couldn't just download shows and there certainly wasn't  any
Crunchyroll streaming high definition  same-day releases. Hell, back then  you
couldn't even  get legitimate English-language releases for most shows and the
few  titles that did  get legitimate releases  they were usually prohibitively
expensive.

   So  you'd join a club and  everyone was in the same  boat; hooked  on  that
import 2D and fiending for another fix.  You'd make friends  with tapes,  copy
your tapes for them, get tapes in return,  have events where everyone rolls in
with a VCR and dubs tapes all day  from the club's library, etc. It was a good
time.

   Also big in those days were print  zines and fanzines. That's not something
unique  to anime culture, there'd been music  fanzines  and  sci-fi  fanzines,
socialist and anarchist zines and who knows  what  else for decades, but there
were quite a  few zines dedicated to "japanime" or related  stuff at the time.
Some were magazine-style  news-and-reviews  fanzines and  some  were just club
newsletters. Our humble little school club even attempted our own zine; "Super
Deformed Flesh Monster" but ran out of steam before finishing the first issue.

   These fanzines  and newsletters  are primarily what the  Otarchive  project
wants to preserve  and make available  digitally. It hurt  me that  so much of
this stuff just ended  up in the trash because it wasn't important  to someone
anymore so I wanted to do my best to preserve what's left. Any western/English
language  anime  print  culture:  zines,  fanzines,  newsletters, club fliers,
convention material, catalogs, etc.

   It's been a slow trickle since the material is hard to find and it's a one-
man  show. I work full  time  so  don't  have  a lot left over to  dedicate to
cataloging, scanning and  uploading. In fact, I don't think I've dedicated any
time to scanning  for a few years now, just  focussing on growing the physical
library. But even  just trying to do that comes with it's own issue: I live in
Australia and so I'm physically disconnected  from where  most  of these zines
were produced, I've lost  count of how many items I've had to let go  because,
even though they only wanted a few bucks it would have cost me  upwards of $30
just to get it shipped here.

   Despite the  hurdles though, the  project has  been a limited  success: The
library  stands  at  around  60  or  so fanzines and  newsletters,  plus  some
convention guides and a pile of ephemera. In future I might  post about what I
consider some of the highlights of the collection but in the meantime if you'd
like to check out what I've been able to scan so far, I've been putting it all
on the Internet  Archive[1] and if you like what  you see or  know someone who
would, tell your friends!


[1] https://archive.org/search.php?query=otarchive%20project



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