I can’t express how emotional and soft-hearted I am right now. After looking through the zine and reading the message in back, I was overcome with a wave of emotions and nostalgia.
Tsuritama wasn’t my first fandom by any means, but it was the first time I ever kept up with an anime from the very first episode’s air date and watched all the way through to the end, week by week, and interacted with the fandom while this happened. I watched No. 6 weekly starting at about episode 6, but I didn’t talk with the fandom as it happened.
Tsuritama was different. Something about the show charmed me- the art, the music, the characters, the story. Every week I fell more in love with the colorful, refreshing world of Tsuritama and the fandom was just as bubbly and friendly as ever. I remember every Thursday we’d get hyped up and share a bunch of excited gifs and silly text posts as we watched the episode. We drew adorable fanart, made colorful alien OC’s and wrote lots of fics.
I wrote so many fics- particularly NatsuYuki, which was my OTP for many years (and still is a favorite ship of mine)- on LiveJournal and Fanfiction.net, and have since uploaded one of the fics onto Ao3. I roleplayed as Yuki and I made so many amazing friends. I had phonecalls with some of these friends too! We’ve since lost touch but they really made my fandom experience so much better. And best of all, I cosplayed both Natsuki and Yuki and still do to this day. I’ve made friends in cosplay as well! I’ve had both Akira and Haru with me before, so having a group was just so exciting.
I stuck with Tsuritama for as long as I could, but since it’s such a small show, the fandom fizzled out about a year and a half after the show finished airing. I remember fandom events- Tsuritama Thursdays continued on, and we even had a Coco Fashion Week in which artists drew Coco in all sorts of lovely outfits!
I even remember buying my first betta fish because of Tsuritama and learning all about the lovely species. I didn’t realize how much work it’d be to give him a healthy, happy life, but it was so worth it. He had a huge tank with nice, filtered and heated water, and a very healthy meaty diet! I named him Kiro in the spirit of Tsuritama as an attempt to mimic the alien’s style of names (two or three syllables) and eventually had 2 more fish, named Aki and Kin.
The Tsuritama fandom was the most peaceful, comfortable fandom I have ever been in to this day. Maybe it’s because we were such a small fandom, and maybe it’s because of the nature of the show, but we seemed to be one big happy family. I have not a single bad memory of my interactions with people in the fandom… only lovely, touching and exciting ones!
I would say I want Tsuritama to have a second season, but I truly don’t. The show is just perfect as it is. It’s so simple and joyful and heartwarming and I feel like changing it would only ruin it. However I would love to see an OVA some day, or perhaps a manga adaptation… who knows! It would be so nice to see the boys and their friends someday again.
So to get this Zine today really made my heart melt and took me down memory lane. The Tsuritama fandom has all but withered away, simply consisting of occasional fanart and the even rarer fanfics. There are no more monthly or yearly fandom events, no more themed weeks or a large enough group with interest to do such a thing.
But that’s okay! What did happen that was unexpected was this Zine, and man is it a blessing! To see fans of the show come together again and create something so lovely- with the funds going to help preserve marine life- is just so perfectly in the spirit of Tsuritama itself.
So thank you, @tsuritamazine, for this project and lovely product. I will always treasure this Zine as well as the adorable merch that came with it. I’m sorry for rambling so much, but you pulled so many emotions and memories out of me. It’s been years but I’ll never forget Tsuritama- I actually rewatched it last year!- and now I feel the pull to rewatch it another countless time. It just brings a huge smile to my face and so did this Zine.