The Deciding Factor

One night John received a LaserDisc of the second Urusei Yatsura movie—Beautiful Dreamer. It was this film that decided me on a career in anime. I thought that anywhere where someone could be allowed to produce such a masterpiece of weirdness must be the place for me. It was the most interesting animation I had ever seen! I figured the director, Mamoru Oshii, must be a mad genius. (He is.) To this day it remains one of my favorite anime films of all time. Anybody who has an interest in anime should see it.
I wanted desperately to work on something like that. I knew that I would find my voice through anime and I would be able to communicate what I really wanted to through it. (What, exactly, I want to communicate remains a mystery to me even now.)

You are here.

A Real Trip

I heard about the Japanimation ’86 tour, a group of anime fans that was going to Japan for two weeks in August of 1986, and figured that I could use this as a chance to see what Japan was really like (and to add to my ever-growing anime collection). I finally made that first trip across the Pacific (11 hours—it seemed like it took forever) and got my first look at (and smell of) the Land of the Rising Sun, or to me, Anime Nirvana.
Culture shock exploded in my face. Everything was wrong! Hey, I can’t read any of the signs! Whoa, the food is all funny! Everybody is driving on the wrong side of the road! (At least there was a Wendy’s near the hotel so I didn’t have to go into food shock too badly.)
On the way in to the city we looked out the windows of the bus and tried to find shops and logos we recognized. “Hey, look! They have 7-11s!” It was just such an overwhelmingly alien experience that we might as well have gone off to a different planet.

The night we arrived, I went out and wandered the streets around Hamamatsucho station for an hour or so to try to get over the shock a bit. (Keep in mind that I had never been to a city bigger than Denver by myself.) I bought a can of melon soda at a convenience store and since I didn’t understand when the clerk told me what the total was I handed him a 10,000 yen note—the equivalent of handing a 7-11 clerk a $100 for a can of Pepsi in the US. I saw two girls in kimono and a drunken businessman fall off a bicycle.

We visited Tokyo Movie Shinsha (TMS), Toei Doga, Production Wave (now defunct), Kaname Pro (now defunct) and the offices of Animage magazine where we got to meet Shinji Kawamori, the director of the Macross movie and mecha designer extraorinare.
The studios were very surprising to me. I remember thinking there must be no such thing as a claustrophobic animator because they had stuff filling every available space in already tiny workspaces. (Now I look at Toei and TMS and think how they are so big and empty in comparison to most studios.) It was very different that what I expected and I was initially put off. How could I possibly move to and work in such a place?
The heat and humidity of Japan in August was absolutely incredible! Thankfully there were drink vending machines ever ten meters or I would have melted down completely.
We saw a bunch of temples and did a lot of shopping, mostly for anime stuff. A small group of us met up with a friend from Denver who was living in Tokyo (Chiba actually), Ken McDonald, and he showed us around the various anime and manga shops and we went back to his apartment and looked at some shows right off the air. (It may seem silly but it was a thrill for us.)
After Tokyo, we visited Hakone (the beautiful hot-springs resort), Kyoto, then Osaka. (I was so fixated on anime that I didn’t pay a whole lot of attention to Kyoto and Hakone. I’ve had the chance to go back to both and experience them for their beauty and I feel very lucky that I got a second chance for both of them.) We were in Osaka for Daicon V, the largest Japanese science fiction/anime/etc. convention at the time.
At Daicon we were terribly unimpressed with the opening animation, expecting something to top the wonderful animation from Daicon III and IV, which was produced by the then-amateurs who would become GAINAX.
Yoshitaka Amano (the illustrator and designer of characters from Vampire Hunter D and others) was there and we forced out way in to talk to him after his panel. (Hey, we’re foreigners—let us in!) He was very warm and interesting and we found that he had a great interest in American comic books. His favorite animation? 101 Dalmatians.
I saw Mamoru Oshii there and although I wanted to talk to him and get him to sign my Angel’s Egg book ( I had Amano’s signature in it.) I just didn’t know what to say. I had to wait 10 more years for the chance but then I got to work with him. It was worth it. (I still don’t have his signature in that book though)

A New Hope

     When I got back home, the idea about moving to Japan had intensified. Even though it was a really weird experience for me and I had no idea if I could actually live there, I began trying to find a way to go over. The first thing I looked at were the animation schools but there was no way I could attend without first understanding at least some Japanese. In the November 1986 issue of Animage there was an ad for the International Animation Institute (Kokusai Animation Kenyuujyo) and at the very bottom, in small type, was:

Teach Japanese which is necessary to the foreign students.

I didn’t know exactly what that meant but I figured that it was my chance! (I figured that the school must have language training.) I sent a letter to their office requesting more information but didn’t get a reply so a Japanese friend requested a catalogue, translated parts and sent it to me. I had to do four small illustrations (none of which were any good) and on February 6, 1987 sent it off to them. I sent off the application and the requested fee ($211.74 = 30,000 yen) and waited very impatiently. I had no idea what to expect. I figured that there must be some foreigners there because of the ad but I had no idea how big the school was and how many people attended every year.