00:19It was just so different from everything else that we had watched before.
00:24They had problems, there were conflicts, they loved each other, they died, which certainly
00:29you never saw in American cartoons at that time, but the main characters just didn't
00:33die.
00:34I would rush home every day to watch it, I mean, if I had to do detention, I would say,
00:40you know, I will make it up to you, I'll come in on the weekends.
00:43It had this magic to it, the characters were so fascinating, the storyline that was being
00:51told, I mean, essentially it's a love story.
00:53It was the show, I think, where everyone realized, this is not regular animation, there's something
00:59unique going on here.
01:00The animation style was very different than anything else that was on television, I think
01:03that was the first thing that really kind of struck me about it.
01:05It's still phenomenal.
01:09This is actually the very first Japanese tape I ever got, it's not actually a professional
01:15copy, this is the Japanese copy and the stickers came in, I believe, Anime Out Magazine, so I
01:22just stuck them on there so I'd identify it.
01:24But that's actually the first two episodes of Macross, this is the very first raw Japanese
01:27tape I ever got.
01:29Macross resonates throughout.
01:34From that point on, the first Laserdisc I ever bought from Japan was the Macross motion
01:38picture, and I have large quantities of Macross merchandise.
01:44I had a friend call me up one day and tell me to turn on the TV that he was
01:48watching this
01:49cartoon on there, science fiction story, and they just had this big spaceship come down
01:54and they did this hyperspace jump and they were too close and they ended up taking part
01:59of an island with them to Pluto and all, and I just thought it really sounded kind of silly,
02:03actually.
02:03But I turned it on and I watched it and the characters were just so engaging and everything
02:08that I just really got into the story.
02:10That was, of course, Robotech at the time.
02:12This all happened because of a fish head.
02:16There was a song at the time called Fish Heads and it played on children's radio and my brother
02:21and my sister and I really liked it.
02:23And my mother was out shopping one day and she was at a bookstore and they had a comic book
02:27on sale and it had a giant fish head on the cover.
02:30And she thought, that's really funny, I'll buy it for my kids.
02:33It was actually Comico, it was a comic company at the time, it was their adaptation of Robotech
02:39the Macross Saga issue 4.
02:42And it has on the cover Rick, as he's called there, and Min May and the tuna fish head that
02:48he manages to rescue in that episode that they decide to cook and it's them sitting there
02:53morose looking at the fish head and my mom thought, haha, funny, and bought it.
02:57And we thought, haha, funny, and read it and we thought, what is this?
03:01Buy us more, mom.
03:03When I was in 6th, 7th grade, Robotech came out and it just kind of flipped the switch
03:08with me.
03:09Right about that age is kind of when you're going through puberty and a lot of things
03:12are changing with you and I think the thing that really struck me about Robotech was it
03:17had more adult themes than anything else I was watching at the time.
03:23I guess it just hit right at the right time, right, so I'm going through those changes,
03:27I'm getting more adult themes and it made me feel more grown up watching that show.
03:32A friend of mine in high school, we were in art class together and I would always draw
03:36the Veritech planes from Robotech and what he would do is just look at it, he's like,
03:42so you like Robotech?
03:44And I'm like, yeah, of course, who doesn't?
03:47And he's like, well, what else do you like?
03:48So I started naming off all these series and he's like, you're an anime fan.
03:52And I honestly had no idea what that meant.
03:54The following week actually, he came back with a ton of videotapes that his brother made for
04:00him because his brother was actually stationed in Japan.
04:04And it blew me away because I've seen things I had never seen in animation before, nudity,
04:11everything else, and including Macross.
04:13And mind you, I didn't even know what Macross was and he's like, well, it's Robotech.
04:18And I saw it and I was just amazed.
04:20I've always, since I was a little girl, read science fiction and fantasy and my husband
04:24and I were going to science fiction conventions.
04:27And generally, you would find this dark room off in a corner somewhere, a video room where
04:33they would be screening these programs that were cartoons that weren't in English and yeah,
04:41that's pretty much how we got into it.
04:43And then we started seeing similar things on TV in English, Robotech being the big one.
04:52There was a Captain Harlock show and some other things like that.
04:54It wasn't until then that we realized some of the things that we watched when we were
04:59very small children, like Astro Boy, were actually Japanese in origin.
05:04The unique thing about Macross is it was a big hit in Japan.
05:08And most anime at that time ran on television and that was it.
05:14They were gone and you never saw them again.
05:17Macross and one or two other shows like the Studio Ghibli films were so successful in Japan
05:24that they put them out on Laserdisc.
05:25You could actually get a good quality copy.
05:28Plus, they had a lot of merchandise that stayed on the market as opposed to something that came
05:33out for while the show was on.
05:35So by the time the show was over, the merchandise was gone.
05:38Macross for years and years afterwards, you could pick things up.
05:41And of course, where it really resonated for American fans is when it became part of Robotech.
05:47I was probably nine and then my siblings were six or seven at the time.
05:52And we watched cartoons on TV when we could.
05:55We actually didn't watch as many as other kids because we had a music school on Saturdays.
06:01So we lucked out.
06:03Robotech was on at 7 a.m. on Saturday mornings and 7.30 on Sundays, so before music school
06:09and before church.
06:10We didn't even have a VCR at the time, so we actually had to be up at that time to
06:14watch
06:14it.
06:14And we are not morning children.
06:17We never have been.
06:19So that was just amazing.
06:20My mother never understood why.
06:22So much trouble getting us up for school, but Robotech.
06:24It made me feel more, it got me outside of the whole school work thing.
06:30It got me out of the whole home life thing.
06:32For at least 30 minutes, I was just sitting there and I felt like I was a part of something.
06:38I felt, and so did my brothers.
06:40We all felt like we were a part of something.
06:42We would sit there and, you know, hum the theme song when it's on, like right when it comes
06:46on.
06:47And sure enough, when the story starts, everybody's like, shh.
06:49You know?
06:49And it was great.
06:50When I watched Robotech and I saw major characters like Roy being killed off in the stories,
06:58I mean that was something that you just didn't see in animated programs in the U.S.
07:01My mother actually approved of it much more than other shows because she liked, there's
07:06so many shows out there that have, you know, war situations but they're not realistic and
07:12the fact that there were casualties on this show, that they got brought up, not just main
07:18character deaths, which of course is amazing, but they'd actually tell you, you know, X number
07:22of civilians died, we took this many losses.
07:24That impressed her and so she definitely didn't discourage us watching it because she always
07:29felt that we needed to know, you know, more about the real costs of war.
07:34I was so used to watching like GI Joe or even Bugs Bunny for that matter where, you know,
07:39no one really got killed.
07:41Whereas in anime, people actually died and it was kind of traumatic.
07:45I think some of the things that attracted me to anime were the storylines, some very
07:50complex storylines.
07:52It wasn't just episodic stuff, there was a continuing storyline from episode to episode
07:57to episode.
07:58For me and my sister, we were just amazed, wow, there are romances on TV.
08:02So, of course, we got really into the Rick, Minmay, Lisa triangle and taking sides on that.
08:10Just better stories than anything we were getting on American TV, even live action at the time.
08:16The look of that show really kind of spurred me to get into drawing, right?
08:22And so how I actually got into art was mimicking the look of the show.
08:27I mean, I remember, you know, we would record, you know, VCR every day so we could watch it
08:32when we got home from school and what we would do is we would pause frames of it and put
08:36paper
08:37up on the TV screen so that we could trace, you know, and that's really how I learned
08:42to draw.
08:42I worked a lot with technology.
08:44The things I noticed in anime is like a lot of the technical things, like when they do,
08:48you know, they really do these creative interfaces, right?
08:51So like someone's in a robot, you know, they got this interface in front of them and they
08:54have, you know, the ability to drag and drop something on screen by touching or dragging
08:58around.
08:58Those things are really cool and, you know, we do a lot of different types of interface
09:02work and as technology is starting to catch up now, it kind of reminds me of a lot of
09:07those interfaces and things that I always thought were on the cutting edge back in the day when
09:11I was watching Robotech is I actually kind of have the ability to design some of those things
09:15now.
09:15Unlike a lot of people who would get something that was copy off a copy off a copy, I wanted
09:21to see really how it was done, what techniques they were using, so I was buying the Japanese
09:25laser discs and analyzing very carefully.
09:28And because of this, people started saying, well, you ought to run a club so other people
09:31can see this.
09:31And I said, well, sure.
09:34Someone else will organize it.
09:35I'll be glad to.
09:36And of course, I ended up running the club because the other people flaked out.
09:40And through that, I met John Ledford, who was running a store in downtown Houston and renting
09:50Japanese animation.
09:51At the same time, I actually was working for a company in Houston that primarily sold electronics
09:57to NASA.
09:59But I had talked them into, since they had a retail front, oh, let's start buying these
10:03laser discs so I can supplement my own collection and at the same time rent them out.
10:07And I had solved some of the rental problems.
10:11So John had heard about what I was doing in my club and everyone said, you two guys need
10:17to link up.
10:18If you had told me when I was in high school or college that I was going to end up
10:21working
10:22with Japanese cartoons, I, no, it just, the plan was never there.
10:30But once we started getting into the anime and looking for it, Matt Greenfield was running
10:36a club in town.
10:38And we started going to that once a month and watching the anime with it.
10:42So when he and John founded the company, they were like, you want to help?
10:47And we were like, oh, yes, please.
10:48I was working as a programmer at the time and I felt very secure in that, made a decent
10:55salary and everything.
10:56But I've always felt like you should do what you enjoy as opposed to trying to get a big
11:04paycheck.
11:05I wanted to do what I enjoyed and this is what I really enjoyed and I still love it.
11:10I was working for Mr. Lifford when he owned the Japanese video game company, Game Tronics.
11:18And like I said, I had a ton of videotapes and I would show them to John and we would
11:22just
11:22sit down and watch these things all night long sometimes.
11:25And he was very interested in it and he really wanted to get the rights to these things.
11:31And he didn't know exactly how to do it until Mr. Matt Greenfield came in to walk right
11:38through our doors basically.
11:39I want to say it was almost fate.
11:41It was just instant.
11:44We both had the exact same ideas.
11:46We knew exactly what it was about anime that was appealing to fans at the time.
11:51And we both agreed that the companies that were releasing at the time really didn't see
11:55the whole picture.
11:56Sure enough, that's how ADV got started basically.
12:03Really surprised how big it's gotten.
12:05I mean we never anticipated it would become as huge as it has.
12:09We thought it would be a really successful business and if we were doing well we would
12:13lose a title a month and that would be huge.
12:17Now of course there's a television channel and we're co-producing a lot of shows and live
12:23action films.
12:24It's just, it's amazing.
12:26I really love what I do and I think that's very important.
12:30This is a hobby where I get paid and I love it.
12:33I love to go out and meet people and talk to people about anime.
12:36It's the honest truth that Macross influenced my life in a very disturbing manner.
12:41Here was the show that changed my life that put me on this anime path that helped me get
12:47the job that I have today and my name is now in the DVD credits.
12:51How did that happen?
12:54It's really crazy and I can really trace all that back to that fish head cover.
12:58It's kind of weird.
13:00Why is this series important?
13:02Well I can tell you why it's important to me.
13:04I mean it's the catalyst that brought my awareness of anime and got me into viewing this whole new
13:11way of telling stories.
13:13The characters were so captivating that it brought a lot of people together.
13:17A lot of clubs formed up after seeing Robotech and Macross and all.
13:22It just, it brought people together and once we had enough people together, we kind of had
13:29a critical mass to, you know, bring off anime fandom that we have today.
13:35I mean it's really what brought a lot of fans together and kicked off the whole process
13:40of what we have today in the anime world.
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