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Story Time With Uncle Tokusatsu

Ok, first off let me say that Uncle Tokusatsu is what my brother calls me to my niblings because I have introduced them all to it. I also like the moniker because it makes me feel like the older guy who brings the stories of the old days of fandom. That said, let’s take a trip back to 1997. In 1996 I had begun to attend anime conventions. My very first was Project A-Kon* in Dallas, Texas. This was back when the convention was in a relatively small hotel called the Harvey (which is now the Crowne Plaza) in Addison, Texas. To let you know how small these cons were back then, A-Kon was one of the oldest in the nation and it had an attendance the first year I went of 800 people. The last modern A-Kon (they dropped the Project from the title after I stopped regularly attending) had an attendance of 34,684. Needless to say, the modern Kon would never fit in a modest hotel like the Harvey/Plaza.

I knew people on staff at the Kon, notably folds on the video staff. So, in 1997, when I attended my next A-Kon, I was able to get a special favor. They had an opening in the schedule EARLY in the morning on Saturday and I basically begged, pleaded and volunteered to work if I could fill that spot. The Harvey had a pretty nice conference room, which was being used as the Main Video room for the convention. This is where all the big premieres were shown such as Shin Kimagure Orange Road that year and they held special events like Hentai Fest late night on Saturday.

So, I got a spot on the schedule for what I had brought with me, the first 4 episodes of the newest Super Sentai Series, Denji Sentai Megaranger in raw Japanese with no subtitles. I had gotten it from a local Japanese grocery store as they had a policy of getting new shows on VHS after they aired in Japan to keep the local Japanese diaspora current with what was airing back home. It also gave us hardcore US fans a chance to see shows we could never get otherwise in the days before bittorrent and digital file sharing.

So, at 6am on Saturday morning my friend who ran the video room, about 12 hearty (or who partied all night and had not yet gone to bed) souls and I watched Super Sentai projected onto a big screen for the first time at A-Kon. It went over fairly well and I got someone asking me for a copy. Fortunately, back then people tended to bring VCRs with them to cons so we just hooked two together and I let him copy my tape. This was my first time showing Toku at a con and since then, I have tried to do it at every convention I can. I actually still run a Toku showcase late at night at Austin convention Ushicon and in 2019 I got to be on vidstaff at AnimeFEST in Dallas to program and show toku (including Megaranger off of the official DVD release). So, that’s just one more story of the Early days of Toku fandom. Now pardon me, I need to take my Geritol and go lie down for a while. *Project A-Kon took its name from the 1986 Parody Anime classic Project A-Ko which was one of the first anime I ever saw back in college in 1993.

#Tokusatsu Fandom #Anime Convetions #Project A-Kon #Denji Sentai Megaranger #Fandom Stories #1990s

Love myself a good Tarte bath! Have you tried our magical Moon Prism Power bath bomb yet? It’s like a magical girl transformation scene in the bath. Pick one up at A-Kon (AA D24) this weekend or order one online.

Update 6/6/2018

A lot has been going on in some of our members’ lives that caused a bit of a slow down, but we’re still working hard.

Justin has been working on flat coloring Gwyn in between sketching backgrounds for our background artists. Along with this, Justin and Noelle have been editing Rory’s main story again, trying to get past chapter five.

Darkenmarr is working on Ashley’s sprite in between working on art for A-kon. After A-kon Noelle and Darkenmarr hope to get back to a normal schedule with the character art and start again on the body pillow designs now that we have it narrowed down to what characters we need for backers. The other characters will be done eventually, but we want to focus on what we need now.

Geoff just sent us our latest song and Justin and Noelle will be listening to it soon to decide if any changes will be needed. If approved, the team will come up with a title and then Geoff is onto the next song.

As we mentioned above, Darkenmarr along with Noelle and Justin will be attending A-kon this week with a table in the artist alley. You can find them at table D10 under the name Naive Sprites and Darkenmarr. We’ll be selling A Very Important Date merchandise, fanart, and some of Darkenmarr’s original art. Any profits made from the AVID merchandise will go towards the Kickstarter stretch goals.

We’ve already shipped out some of the keychains and had hoped to mail out the second batch before getting into Texas, but some travel situations have made it so that we won’t be able to get them out until after the con. Still we will send out tracking numbers as soon as we’re able to send them out.

Today, Darkenmarr, Noelle, and Justin launched another Kickstarter for a side project they’ve been working on called Chimikipos. This little venture will be making a bunch of different kinds of stuff, but our first Kickstarter focuses on our first idea: our adorable sea cow enamel pin! So please check it out and share the link! We really appreciate it. Half of the profits made from Chimikipos will help fund AVID and other games that Naïve Sprites might make in the future.

I’m doing commissions until Jun 7th. Trying to get a few extra dollars before akon. You can haggle with me on the prices. Message me.

#project a-kon #akon #akon28 #akon2017 #momocon #momocon2017 #commission #commission work #artist #artist alley

A few choice shots fro A-Kon 28. I had a blast!

#project a-kon #I wish my phone took less shitty pics indoors

favorite sentai and why?

Ninja Sentai Kauranger!

The why is actually kind of a multi-part answer that goes into why I am a tokusatsu fan and how I ended up being one for over 20 years. You see, back in the early 1990s I got heavily into anime fandom and started attending local conventions in the Dallas/Fort Worth area such as Project A-Kon and AnimeFEST.

At a convention in 1996 (I think) a friend of mine handed me a VHS tape of Kakuranger and told me, "This is the stuff they turned into Power Rangers, check it out.” It was maybe 3 in the morning and I watched every episode on that tape until the sun came up. From that moment on, I was hooked and tokusatsu slowly overtook anime as my primary passion.

Ok, other reasons I love it so much:

1) Tsuruhime

Though Sasuke/Ninja Red may have been the focus character there was never any doubt who was the actual leader of the team, Ninja White a.k.a. Tsuruhime. She was the most serious minded member of the team, the glue that held the group together and the one with the thankless job of keeping her teammates on task at all times. She was also a phenomenal fighter and had some of the best story arcs in the series.

2) Jiraiya

Jiraiya is the American member of the team and was played by American-born actor Kane Kosugi, the son of 1980s Ninja star Sho Kosugi. He started out as the fish out of water coming back to his ancestor’s homeland to hunt the youkai and became Ninja Black. His acting was fantastic and his Japanese never became perfect, always having an American accent to it. He also had some of the BEST individual fight scenes especially in the two-parter where he had to fight the man who killed his Father. The enemy was played by his real-life Father and their fight is brutal and the best choreographed single fight in the entire series.

3) It is steeped in Japanese mythology. Every episode features a monster that is a modernized version of one of the traditional youkai of myth. One of my favorites is Gashadokuro, the hunger skeleton, who has disguised himself as a leather-clad punk rocker.